Siberia
Yerofeysky
“Have I told you of my first time in the woods?” the tall Cheng Bao said, idly stirring a tin pot. His eyes reflected the light of the small gas stove with a sharp inner light shining ahead from distant memory.
“No, I don't think you ever did.” said another. Yu Huan. It had not been a more than a year they were in the Siberian back country, a few months. But far from the comforts of civilization to the south his pudgy face had worn away. Now it looked shallow and it sagged. His face beginning to sharpen. He looked with a muted expression, but spoke lively. His knees pulled up to his chest he sat resting his arms out around the side, twisting at a tree branch. He shivered against the cold nocturnal air of a Siberian autumn.
“I was maybe five or six, maybe seven.” began Bao, “My dad took me hunting. We were out to find muntjac. Lately they had been rooting about in the vegetables so it was decided to thin the herds. We'd also have some meat to eat. So in the early morning, before the sun rises he comes to me in my cot and wakes me and my brother up and tells us it's time to go.
“He used to keep his rifle wrapped up in a burlap sack underneath his bed, and he had it out that morning leaning against the stove. It was some Japanese rifle he had picked up during the Revolution, an Arisaka. But work had been done to it somewhere along the line I assume. It always just looked heavier to me. But anyways: he takes the gun and he leads us out, I and my brother sleepy as we step out onto the dewy grass and trudge along after him.
“My dad has always had a long gait, and he walked fast. I couldn't keep up, but neither could my brother although he fared better than I in keeping up. I had to start jogging to keep up, which wasn't hard so long as we were going along on the road. But the moment we got to the woods then it was much more difficult.
“But he made do along a small path that split from the road. High up in the hills passed the woods was where the farmers had their rice fields and that was the only route up to them. We were still too early yet for anyone to be awake, and we had the path to ourselves. But among the bamboo and the trees the world began to darken quick and soon it was like the thickest of night, like right now.” he stopped stirring the pot briefly to gesture about. They sat out behind their barracks, boiling a pot of dried rice ration they had scrounged up from the commissary. The village around them was dark, and the sky clear and speckled with starlight. But without a moon there was no real light to it all. Only the faint twinkling of some reflected star or planet in the creek and the vague shapes of trees and horizon gave shape to where the village ended and the wilderness began. A dry clean presence hung on the crisp cold air and Wu Hong could feel it chill the back of his throat at each breath. He shivered, though it was no cold he was unfamiliar with ultimately.
“It is unusual, being in the woods early because while it feels and looks so lifeless there are always so many birds singing somewhere in it. That has always struck me, how noisy they are. Someone could hide themselves well in the darkness of the very early morning and no one would hear their footsteps with all the bird song. This was my problem, because too tired and too small to keep up with my older brother and my dad I began to lag behind and I had to race to keep up. But always I would hear as their footsteps became more distant and harder to hear among the birds.
“Eventually the path came to a fork. I've never been up there much before then, and I remember clearly not knowing which way to go. So I must have guessed. I took a path. Right I think, but it was much narrower and lesser kept. I think it might have been something only a child could see because remembering back I clearly remember it being very ill used. Though it may have been an animal path for pigs or the like.
“But after a while, I noticed the path was headed me downhill, and I suspect I believed I needed to go uphill. And what worried me was that I couldn't hear any more foot steps. I was terrified, you know. Terrified! I probably started breaking down in tears and I started crying, and turned back to head up hill. I skipped the path though, I think I thought if I did that it would be a shortcut: you know. Anyways, I started to go up.
“But it's hard to find direction in the woods. I learned that then, and I soon became terrified that I would never find the path and started running. I must have switched back and forth many times because I never did find it. But I did eventually break into a clearing. There were a lot of broken pieces of metal every where. There was a smashed plane, in the grips of creepers and vines with bamboo growing right through the cockpit!
“I had never known it was there, so I went to it. Maybe, you know: I could have found some direction. But I never did. I ended up stumbling through, or maybe I tried to climb the wreck and fell into a bush. And I'm surprised I never had nightmares about it later, but falling out of the bush with me came half a human skeleton, all held together by, like creepers and vines and shit and whatever bit of tendon had dried to it. I screamed, or I must have screamed but I guess something happened to terrify the birds because they all began scattering and screaming too and there in the grass looking up at me was this cracked and busted skull, it looked like it had shot itself through the head. I don't know whose head it was or why it was there but it froze me and I was crying and making loud noises.
“But I must have made enough, because anyways my father came bounding out of the woods with my brother in toe and he scooped me up. He said some stuff to me to calm me now and dropped the rifle and picked me up and saw the skull.”
“So did you finish the hunt?” Ju Gan said, reclining against a stack of fire wood.
“You know: I can't remember. But, some time later my father went back or must have been soon on the family alter he had placed the skull. I was terrified of it for a long time and would try to find excuses to paying my respects just to avoid the skull and its empty staring nightmare eyes. But as I grew older over the year it lose its effect. I came to recognize it as just an object, really. It was a man: yes. He had been alive: yes. But now he was just an object. I never got the full story on why it had been placed there. But over time I began to pick up bits and pieces and I began to suspect it was the head of a Japanese pilot and that maybe he had once flown over the village and killed some people, we had lost family in the Revolution; I don't know if it was battle of starvation or disease but we had lost them. I think this might have been a way for my dad to help placate the ancestors if any were vengeful. So there it stayed, and remained there until I left. I think it's still there.”
“How old are you now? Nineteen or something?” asked Keung.
“Something like that.” said Cheng Bao.
“So you had to be, what, four or five when the revolution ended?”
“Well it had moved beyond my village when it did. But I don't remember anything about the time. But I do know for some time after there was a problem with unexploded bombs in the area and that probably terrified my dad more than being lost in the woods, if anything. Fortunately, I never had a run-in, but I've heard stories told of people having stumbled upon an old bomb and loosing a limb or a life. It's rare, but it happened.”
“We were afraid of that too.” chimed Wu Hong, “the unexploded bombs. There were a few of those in the fields.”
“Oh? If you don't mind me asking though: where are you from. I don't think you have said, Hong.”
“Jilin, Changbai County. It was around where Baekya operated.”
“How'd you end up in Manchuria?” asked Lei.
“My family moved up there early. Or rather, my father volunteered in the army in the north and moved north to fight for the Korean Anarchists, met my mom. They eloped and married. Technically they moved to the village I was born because they eloped, they were escaping their parents; I don't know my grandparents well at all.”
“That's unfortunate.” Lei remarked.
Wu Hong shrugged, “It never bothered me.”
“So what about the bombs?” Cheng Bao asked.
Wu Hong clammed up, looking to the side. He knew all about those. He had seen them even. Artillery shells that never exploded, aircraft bombs. Some were chemical, he was told. Others just blew up.
“You saw one go off?” asked Cheng Bao. Wu Hong nodded.
“That's harsh.”
“It was a friend of mine, he was digging in the dirt because he thought he found a rock he could throw in a pond. He... he evaporated, basically.”
A collective wince ran through the group as they recoiled.
“I didn't go back outside again for maybe a year after.” Hong added.
“Have they been cleaned up at all?” Ju Gan asked.
“I think so. Perhaps. I wouldn't really know. I wanted to get out when I could.”
There was a long silence after. Cheng Bao checked the rice and announced with a sigh, “I think it's done.”
There were murmurings of thanks as they dove in with their hands. The rice was tasteless and bland, sticky on the fingers but the fresh hotness of freshly prepared rice was a relief to the soul cooled by turning winds; it was worth the burning of their fingers.
Their mute enjoyment however was cut off quickly as with a knock the pot was knocked aside, scattering hot rice everywhere as in the moment following the crack of a rifle echoed in the night. The squad scrambled and dove for cover as all at once the silent night was brought to life with the sound of gun fire. Wu Wong dove for the ground and covered his head as over his head rifle bullets cracked into the wood of the house being used as a barracks. Distantly the chattering reports of machine guns sang along the tree line as phantoms from the forest attacked the sleeping village.
Hong was forced to his feet as Ju Gan dove over, assuming in an instant the sergantly demeanor expected of him as he began to shout orders. So were others as lights were thrown on and the entire village erupted in a furor of voices. The intensity of the gun fire rose as the men on patrol gave their answer to the fire and out on the edges of the village made their painstakingly blind shots into the wood line.
Hong felt like a puppy as he was lifted up by and pushed along by the force of his instinctual training. A hard spirit tossed him through the door of the house as he dove for his bed, producing a rifle wrapped in burlap under the bed. Strange, he thought: this felt familiar.
The windows began to glow as a bright phosphorescent light took on the brightness of a midnight sun and scattered the darkness. With it too was scattered the cold air. Now it all tasted stale as Hong was forced back out to the street with staggering and confused ape men with their brutish rifles. Mustered up by his sergeant, Hong found himself again by the side of Ju Gan. The others were there, they were armed. But where was the radio? Huan looked to be without it. He had a rifle, that was certain. His glasses shone with the same phosphorous glow of the flare hanging high in the sky. It was not alone, or not for long; several more diamond white burning phoenixes had joined it; swooping up high into the air from beyond the trees as a war cry bellowed from beyond.
But they were on the move again. Had Ju Gan gotten the information he needed somehow? Was there a telepathy between the officers, even the non-commissioned? If so, why was there even radios. Never the less, perhaps it had something to do with the trailing great coat of the senior office running ahead, a pistol raised as he screamed. And then he was off into the labrynth, running up against the pine wood and plank siding as he heard joining into the chorus the frightened screams of children. Was this really the place? The time?
The dimensions of the place seemed to change. There was so much more going on now then there ever had been. Was their group this big before? There were soldiers now, it looked to be hundreds. He could not count all the men as he ran along. He could barely hear his heart beating as they drew up to where the bullets were flying. Window glass lay strewn across the ground, shimmering like diamonds at the bottom of a pool in the hard packed clay of the street. Bright white splinters of wood too joined it, along with rose pedals. Hundreds, and thousands of them bleeding out of bodies. Wu Hong felt sick, he had to fight it back. He looked away and closed his eyes. Again he opened them when he felt a firm hand grip his shoulder and he looked up to the conciliatory glare of Huan. He could swear his glasses were a window into a much more calmer soul.
“Keung, is there a back door?” Sergant Gan called out.
“No, I don't think so.” Keung called back. Their voices sounded distant.
Darting down the road a man riding a gray horse tore onto their street, a raised saber. Hong Wu looked up at the rider, a gray phantom and a sparkling ghostly scimitar. With a crack besides his ear a rifle shot towards the rider as the horse turned towards them, a second and a third shot rang out and each bullet landed. From alongside Wu Hong he watched the rider's shoulder bloom as the bullet tore his shoulder. A second pierced his gut from behind and a third tore through the horse's shoulder and it ran careening several feet before crumpling into the dust.
But soon after the rider came others. Sepia gray phantasms that tore threw, lashing out with sabers or turning handguns against them. Hong Wu could do little but to raise his rifle and blocked the swing of one sword. Its biting tip stinging his nose as it drew back and the rider kept going.
Bullets raced after them as they left. Hong Wu lay pressed tight against the wood house feeling warm and numb. He looked to his side, Keung seemed to have taken something across the face and he sat clutching at his brow with the sleeve of his coat. The riders down the street were dropped by the rifle follow that pursued them, but not all of them dropped and their horses kept charging.
“What's going on?” shouted a man on the other side of the street as them.
“I don't know!” Ju Gan shouted back.
“Do we have orders? Do we have a plan?” answered the other.
“No! Just to come here!”
“The fucking eggs!”
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