Night Heron Read Free

pawed away the desperation.
    7775 wouldn’t turn Peanut in.
    Not yet, anyway. Wait another hour.
    He was on the slope now, heading into the hills, the ground less stony, a little easier. The darkness was holding, and it was colder, traces of snow on the ground. Exhaustion took his mind in discursive, pointless directions. He wondered idly if he was leaving scent, if they even had dogs. He’d never seen a dog in the camp. Any dog to come within range of Production Squad 20would have been beaten to death and grilled with the cumin that 1414’s mother sent. 1414—
yao si yao si.
It wasn’t his number; it just rhymed with
want to die, want to die
, which was what he shouted at night, and it stuck. Early on 1414 had been in the shackles, hands chained to the waist, and a wooden bar two feet long affixed each end to an ankle, so that when he walked each foot described a half-circle. A couple of the Christians had fed him and wiped his arse.
    Peanut stopped, breathing heavily, and looked behind him. He was gaining height. He saw the lights of the prison camp across the plain, faint now, silver in the night. No sound, no activity, yet. No trucks. Of course no one escaped. Where the hell would anyone go? He looked up again, breathing hard. The slope would steepen, he knew, and then he’d almost be there. Move.
    7775 pondered again the empty bunk above him, then sat up. Time now, Peanut. Sorry, but needs must. In the darkness he felt for the gray jacket hanging from the peg above him, the white stripes across the shoulders. He padded down the center of the barracks, the concrete cold against his bare feet, biding his time. The next few hours would be tricky.
    He leaned over the familiar sleeping form. “Section Chief, wake up! Prisoner Number 7775 wishes to report.”
    From the section chief, nothing, just the hiss of sleep. 7775 bit his lip, then shook a shoulder. “Prisoner Number 7775 wishes to report.”
    One baleful eye opened, grasping for meaning at this dead hour.
    “Section Chief!” 7775 stood upright now. Better make it official, he thought. “Prisoner Number 7775 wishes to report that Prisoner Number 5995 is absent.”
    “What time is it?”
    “Five, Section Chief.”
    A yawn, a thick smell rising from the bedroll. “What do you mean he’s absent?”
    “He’s not there, Section Chief.”
    “Well, where’s he gone? Isn’t it Peanut?”
    “Prisoner Number 7775 does not know where Prisoner Number 5995 has gone, Section Chief.”
    “Why are you talking like that? Have you been to look for him?”
    “No, Section Chief.”
    Over the section chief’s sleep-sodden face, a shadow of realization spread slowly. He blinked and struggled out of his bedroll. Their balding, affable section chief, himself a prisoner—saboteur apparently, though no one knew of what—was oppressor and friend both. Now he was pulling on a vest and standing pot-bellied in the dark, rubbing his hand across his chin.
    “So where’s he gone?”
    “I don’t know where he’s gone, Section Chief,” which got a direct look.
    The section chief turned and looked out of the window at the dust and the glow from the arc lights, breath steaming the glass, fingers splayed against the pane, hopeful.
    “What do we do?”
    7775 opened his mouth, then shut it again.
    “Yes? What?”
    “7775 would suggest reporting to the duty guard officer, Section Chief.”
    The section chief stared at him. “But he must be somewhere.”
    “It’s been… a while.”
    Panic flaring now.
    “A while?”
    The section chief was out of the barracks at a splay-footed run, heading towards the guard house, where the thunders weredozing in front of a Hong Kong movie in which brave monks chopped down the enemies of China.
    Prisoner 5995 had a pain in his chest. The last half-hour had him stopping often, bent double, breath rasping, knees shaking. But now he looked down on a little flooded gravel pit, its black water a mirror for the stars.
    You’d hardly know it was