The Windup Girl

40

The tank surprises them all. One moment they are riding a pair of cycle rickshaws down a nearly empty street, the next, a roaring fills the air and a tank bursts into the intersection ahead. It has a loudspeaker that squawks something, perhaps a warning, and then its turret spins in their direction.

“Hide!” Hock Seng shouts as they all try to scramble off their bikes. The tank’s barrel roars. Hock Seng hits the ground. A building face collapses, showering them with debris. Clouds of gray dust billow over him. Hock Seng coughs and tries to get up and crawl away but a rifle chatters and he throws himself flat again. He can’t see anything in the dust. Answering small arms fire crackles from a nearby building and then the tank is firing again. The smoke clears slightly.

From an alley, Laughing Chan waves for Hock Seng. His hair is powdered gray and his face is coated with dust. His mouth moves but no sound comes out. Hock Seng tugs at Pak Eng and they scramble for safety. The hatch of the tank pops open and an armored gunner appears, firing with a spring rifle. Pak Eng goes down, his chest blossoming red. Peter Kuok ducks into an alley and Hock Seng glimpses him running. Hock Seng dives flat again and worms himself into the rubble. The tank fires again, rocking back on its treads. More small arms fire chatters from somewhere down the street. The man in the turret flops forward, dead. His rifle slides down the tank’s armor. The tank engages and spins on its treads, clanking. Garbage and leaflets swirl around it. It lurches toward Hock Seng and accelerates. Hock Seng lunges aside as the tank crashes past, showering him with more debris.

Laughing Chan stares after the retreating vehicle. He says something but Hock Seng’s ears are still ringing. He waves for Hock Seng to join him again. Hock Seng staggers upright and stumbles into the soi’s relative safety. Laughing Chan cups his hands around Hock Seng’s ear. His shout is a whisper.

“It’s fast! Faster than a megodont!”

Hock Seng nods. He’s shaking. It appeared so suddenly. So much faster than anything he has ever seen. Old Expansion technology. And the men driving it seemed mad. Hock Seng looks around at the rubble. “I don’t even know what they were doing here. There’s nothing to secure,” he says.

Laughing Chan suddenly begins to laugh. His distant words tunnel past the ringing in Hock Seng’s ears. “Maybe they’re lost!”

And then they are both laughing, and Hock Seng is almost hysterical with relief. They sit in the alley, resting and trying to catch their breath and giggling. Slowly, Hock Seng’s hearing returns.

“It’s worse than the Green Headbands.” Laughing Chan says, looking out at the street wreckage. “At least with them, it was personal.” He makes a face. “You could fight them. These ones are too fast. And too crazy. Fengle, all of them.”

Hock Seng is inclined to agree. “Still, dead is dead. I would rather not face either.”

“We’ll have to be more careful,” Laughing Chan says. He nods at Pak Eng’s body. “What should we do about him?”

“Do you want to carry him back to the towers?” Hock Seng asks pointedly.

Chan shakes his head, grimacing. Another explosion rumbles. From the sound of it, it’s no more than a few blocks away.

Hock Seng looks up. “The tank again?”

“Let’s not wait to find out.”

They set off down the street, keeping to doorways. A few others are out in the open, looking toward the rumbling explosions. Trying to see where the noises are coming from, to see what is happening. Hock Seng remembers standing on a similar street only a few years before, the scent of the sea and the promise of the monsoon bright in the air the day the Green Headbands started their cleansing. And on that day, too, people had looked up like pigeons, heads swiveling toward the sound of slaughter, suddenly aware that they were in danger.

Ahead, unmistakable, the chatter of spring guns. Hock Seng motions to Laughing Chan and they turn into a new alley. He’s too old for this foolishness. He should be reclining on a couch, smoking a bowl of opium while a pretty fifth wife massages his ankles. Behind them, the rest of the people on the street are still standing out in the open, still staring toward the sounds of battle. The Thais don’t know what to do. Not yet. They have no experience with true slaughter. Their reflexes are wrong. Hock Seng turns into an abandoned building.

“Where are you going?” Laughing Chan asks.

“I want to see. I need to know what’s happening.”

He climbs. One stairwell, two stairwells, three, four. He’s panting. Five. Six. Then out into a hall. Broken doors, stifling close heat, the smell of excrement. Another explosion rumbles distant.

Through an open window, tracers of fire arc across the darkening sky and boom in the distance. Small arms snap and chatter in the streets like Spring Festival fireworks. Smoke pillars rise from a dozen points in the city. Nagas coiling, black against the setting sun. The anchor pads, the sea locks, the manufacturing district… the Environment Ministry…

Laughing Chan grabs Hock Seng’s shoulder and points.

Hock Seng sucks in his breath. The Yaowarat slum blazes, WeatherAll shanties exploding in a spreading curtain of flame. “Wode tian.” Laughing Chan murmurs. “We won’t be going back there.”

Hock Seng stares at the burning slum that had been his home, watching with horror as all his cash and gems turn to ash. Fate is fickle. He laughs wearily. “And you thought I wasn’t lucky. We’d be roasted like pigs by now, if we had stayed.”

Laughing Chan makes a mock wai at him. “I will follow the lord of the Three Prosperities into the nine hells.” He pauses. “But what do we do now?”

Hock Seng points. “We follow Thanon Rama XII, and then—”

He doesn’t see the missile strike. It’s too fast for any human being’s eyes. Perhaps a military windup would have time to prepare, but he and Laughing Chan are thrown off their feet by the shockwave. A building collapses across the street.

“Never mind!” Laughing Chan grabs Hock Seng and drags him back toward the safety of the stairwells. “We’ll work it out. I don’t want to lose my head for the sake of your view.”

Newly cautious, they slip through the darkening streets, working their way toward the manufacturing district. The streets are becoming more deserted as the Thais finally learn there is no safety in the open.

“What’s that?” Laughing Chan whispers.

Hock Seng squints into the gloom. A trio of men crouch around a hand-cranked radio. One of them has an antenna in his hands that he holds over his head, trying to get reception. Hock Seng slows to walk, then urges Laughing Chan across the street to them.

“What news?” Hock Seng puffs.

“Did you see that missile hit?” one of them asks. He looks up. “Yellow cards,” he murmurs. His companions exchange glances as they catch sight of Laughing Chan’s machete, then smile nervously and start to shy away.

Hock Seng sketches a clumsy wai. “We just want the news.”

One of them spits betel nut, still watching suspiciously, but he says, “It’s Akkarat, on the air.” He gestures for them to listen. His friend lifts the antenna again, pulling in static.

“-stay indoors. Do not go outside. General Pracha and his white shirts have attempted to topple Her Royal Majesty the Queen herself. It is our duty to defend the realm—” The voice crackles out of reception and the man begins fiddling with the knobs on the wireless again.

One of them shakes his head. “It’s all lies.”

The one doing the tuning murmurs a disagreement, “But the Somdet Chaopraya—”

“Akkarat would kill Rama himself if he saw a benefit.”

Their friend lowers the antenna. The radio hisses static and the transmission is lost entirely as he speaks. “I had a white shirt in my shop the other day, and he wanted to take my daughter home with him. A ‘gift of good will,’ he called it. They’re all monitor lizards. A little corruption is one thing but these heeya will—”

Another explosion shakes the ground. Everyone turns, Thais and yellow cards together, trying to fix on the location.

We’re like little monkeys, trying to understand a huge jungle.

The thought frightens Hock Seng. They’re piecing together clues, but they have nothing to provide context. No matter how much they learn, it can never be enough. They can only react to events as they unfold, and hope for luck.

Hock Seng tugs Laughing Chan’s arm. “Let’s go.” The Thais are already hurriedly gathering the radio and ducking back into their shop. When Hock Seng looks back again, the street corner is entirely empty, as if the moment of political discussion hadn’t existed at all.

The fighting worsens as they near the manufacturing district. The Environment Ministry and the Army seem to be everywhere, warring. And for every professional unit on the street, there are others, the volunteers and student associations and civilians and loyalists, mobilized by political factions. Hock Seng pauses in a doorway, panting, as explosions and rifle fire echo.

“I can’t tell any of them apart,” Laughing Chan mutters as a group of university students carrying short machetes and wearing yellow armbands runs past, headed for a tank that’s busy shelling an old Expansion tower. “They’re all wearing yellow.”

“Everyone wants to claim loyalty to the Queen.”

“Does she even exist?”

Hock Seng shrugs. A student’s spring gun blades bounce off the tank’s armor. The thing is huge. Hock Seng can’t help being impressed that the Army has successfully loaded so many tanks into the capital. He supposes the Navy and its admirals provided assistance. Which means General Pracha and his white shirts have no allies left. “They’re all crazy,” Hock Seng mutters. “It doesn’t make any difference who is who.” He studies the street. His knee is hurting, his old injury making him slow. “I wish we could find some bicycles. My leg…” He grimaces.

“If you were on a bike, shooting you would be as easy as shooting a grandmother on a stoop.”

Hock Seng rubs his knee. “Still, I’m too old for this.”

Rubble showers them from another explosion. Laughing Chan brushes debris out of his hair. “I hope this is worth the trip.”

“You could be back in the slums, roasting alive.”

“That’s true.” Laughing Chan nods. “But let’s hurry. I don’t want to keep testing our luck.”

More dark intersections. More violence. Rumors flying on the streets. Executions in Parliament. The Trade Ministry in flames. Thammasat University students rallying on behalf of the Queen. And then another radio broadcast. A new frequency, everyone says, as they all huddle around the tinny speaker. The announcer sounds shaken. Hock Seng wonders if there is a spring gun at her head. Khun Supawadi. She was always so popular. Always introduced such interesting radio plays. And now her voice trembles as she begs her countrymen to stay calm while tanks rush through the streets, securing everything from the anchor pads to the docks. The radio’s speaker crackles with the sound of shelling and explosions. A few seconds later, explosions rumble in the distance like muffled thunder, a perfect echo of the ones on the radio.

“She’s closer to the fighting than we are,” Laughing Chan says.

“Is that a good sign, or a bad one?” Hock Seng wonders.

Laughing Chan starts to answer but a megodont’s screams of rage interrupt, followed by the whine of spring guns unleashing. Everyone looks down the street. “That sounds bad.”

“Hide,” Hock Seng says.

“Too late.”

A wave of people pours around the corner, running and screaming. A trio of carbon-armored megodonts thunders behind them. The massive heads sweep low, slashing from side to side, their tusks slash through the fleeing people with attached scythe blades. Bodies split like oranges and fly like leaves.

From atop the megodonts, machine gun cages open fire. Flickering silver streams of bladed disks pour into the packed crowd. Hock Seng and Laughing Chan crouch in a doorway as people flee past. The white shirts in their midst fire their own spring guns and single-shot rifles as they run, but the disks are entirely ineffective against the armored megodonts. The Environment Ministry isn’t equipped for this sort of warfare. Ricocheting ammunition flurries around them as the machine guns chatter. People collapse in bloody writhing piles, howling agony as the megodonts trample over them. Dust and smoke and musk choke the street. A man is flung aside by a megodont and slams into Hock Seng. Blood gouts from his mouth, but he is already dead.

Hock Seng crawls out from under the corpse. More people are forming up and firing at the megodonts. Students, Hock Seng thinks, perhaps from Thammasat, but it’s impossible to tell who they are loyal to, and Hock Seng wonders if even they know who they are fighting.

The megodonts wheel and charge. People pile up against Hock Seng, trying to get out of the way. Their mass crushes him. He can’t breath. He tries to cry out, to clear space for himself, but the crush is too great. He screams. The weight of desperate fleeing people presses down upon him, squeezing out the last of his air. A megodont sweeps into them. It backs and charges again, tearing into the clot of people, swinging its bladed tusks. Students throw bottles of oil up at the megodonts and hurl torches up after, spinning lights and fire-

More razor disks rain down. Hock Seng cowers as the guns sweep toward him, spitting silver. A boy stares into his eyes, yellow headband slipped down over his bleeding face. Hock Seng’s leg blossoms with pain. He can’t tell if he’s shot or if his knee is broken. He screams in frustration and fear. The weight of bodies pushes him to the ground. He’s going to die. Crushed under the dead. Despite everything, he failed to understand the capriciousness of warfare. In his arrogance he thought he could prepare. Such a fool…

Silence comes suddenly. His ears are ringing, but there’s no more weapons fire and no more trumpeting megodonts. Hock Seng takes a shuddering breath beneath the weight of bodies. All around him, he hears only moans and sobbing.

“Ah Chan?” he calls.

No answer.

Hock Seng claws his way out. Others are dragging themselves free of the massacre as well. Helping their wounded. Hock Seng can barely stand. His leg is awash with pain. He’s covered with blood. He searches through the bodies, trying to find Laughing Chan, but if the man is in the pile, he is covered in too much blood and there are too many bodies and it is too dark to pick him out.

Hock Seng calls for him again, peering into the mass. Down the street, a methane lamp burns bright, shattered, its neck spurting gas into the sky. Hock Seng supposes it could explode at any moment, ripping through the methane pipes of the city, but he can’t muster the energy to care.

He stares around at the bodies. Most of them are students, it seems. Just foolish children. Trying to do battle with megodonts. Fools. He forces down memories of his own children, dead and piled. The massacres of Malaya, writ on Thai pavement. He pries a spring gun from a dead white shirt’s hands, checks its load. Only a few disks left, but still. He pumps the spring, adding energy. Shoves it into his pocket. Children playing at war. Children who don’t deserve to die, but are too foolish to live.

In the distance, the battle rages still, moved on to other avenues and other victims. Hock Seng limps down the street. Bodies lie everywhere. He reaches an intersection and hobbles across, too tired to care about the risk of being caught in the open. At the far side, a man lies slumped against a wall, his bicycle lying beside him. Blood soaks his lap.

Hock Seng picks up the bicycle.

“That’s mine,” the man says.

Hock Seng pauses, studying the man. The man can barely keep his eyes open, yet still he clings to normalcy, to the idea that something like a bicycle can be owned. Hock Seng turns and wheels the bicycle down off the sidewalk. The man calls out again, “That’s mine.” But he doesn’t stand and he doesn’t do anything to stop Hock Seng as he swings a leg over the frame and sets his feet on the pedals.

If the man complains again, Hock Seng doesn’t hear it.