mines honeycombed the hills in this district, and everyone burned the mines' product. The air reeked.
The asphalt turned to dirt. The sun dropped. This was the witching hour. They'd seen it in other cities. The policemen in green uniforms vanished. From doorways and windows and niches in the towering alley, eyes tracked the gweilo – white devils – and passed them on to more eyes.
The darkness congealed. Mr Li slowed, obviously lost. He rolled down his window and waved a man over from the sidewalk and gave him a cigarette. They talked. After a minute, the man got a bicycle and Mr Li started off again, with his guide holding on to the door. Here and there the bicyclist issued a command and Mr Li would turn down another street. Rain sprayed through the window into the back.
Side by side, the car and the bicyclist made turns for another five minutes. Then the man grunted and patted the rooftop. He detached from them and pedaled away.
'Here,' Mr Li announced.
'You're joking,' Wade said.
Holly Ann craned her neck to see through the windshield. Surrounded by barbed wire, the gray walls of a factory complex squatted before them in their harsh headlights. Bits of ominous black thread had been tied to the barbed wire, and the walls carried huge, ugly characters in stark red paint. Half-finished skyscrapers blocked her view to the rear. They had reached some sort of dead epicenter. In every direction, the stone-stillness radiated out from here.
'Let's get this over with,' Wade said, and got out of the car. He pulled at the gate. Concertina wire wobbled like quicksilver. Holly Ann's first impression gave way to another. This looked less like a factory than a prison. The barbed wire and inscriptions appeared to have one purpose: enclosure. 'What kind of orphanage is this?' she asked Mr Li.
'Good place, no problem,' he said. But he seemed nervous.
Wade banged at the industrial-style door. The brick-and-pig-iron decor dwarfed him. When no one answered, he simply turned the handle and the metal door opened. He didn't turn around to gesture yes or no. He just went inside. 'Great, Wade,' Holly Ann muttered.
Holly Ann got out. Mr Li's door stayed closed. She looked through the windshield and rapped on the glass. He looked up at her through his little cloud of tobacco smoke, eyes wishing her from his life, then reached under to turn off the ignition. The windshield wipers quit knocking back and forth. His image blurred with rain. He got out.
On second thought, she reached into the back and grabbed a packet of disposable diapers. Mr Li left the headlights on, but locked all the doors. 'Bandits,' he said.
Holly Ann led. The viciously stroked words loomed on either side of them. Now she saw the scorch marks where flames had lapped at the brick. The foot of the wall was coated with charred glass from Molotov cocktails. Who would assault an orphanage? The metal door was cold. Mr Li brushed past her and went into the blackness.
'Wait,' she said to him. But his footsteps receded down the hallway.
Reminding herself of her mission, Holly Ann stepped inside. She drew in a deep breath, smelling for evidence. Babies. She looked for cartoon figures or crayon squiggles or smudges of little handprints on the lower walls. Instead, long staccato patterns of holes and chips violated the plaster. Termites, she thought with disgust.
'Wade?' she tried again. 'Mr Li?' She continued down the hallway. Moss flowered in cracks. The doors were all gone. Each room yawned black. If there were windows, they had been bricked up. The place was sealed tight. Then she came to a string of Christmas lights.
It was the strangest sight. Someone had strung hundreds of Christmas lights – red and green and little white flashing lights, and even red chili-pepper lights and green frog lights and turquoise trout lights like those found in margarita restaurants back home. Maybe the orphans liked it.
The air changed. An odor infiltrated. The ammonia of urine. The smell of baby poop. There was no mistaking it. There were babies in here. For the first time in weeks, Holly Ann smiled. She almost hugged herself.
'Hello?' she called.
An infant voice bubbled in the darkness. Holly Ann's head jerked up. The tiny soul might as well have called her by name.
She followed the sound into a side room reeking of human waste and garbage. The twinkle of Christmas lights did not reach this far. Holly Ann steeled herself, then got down on her hands and knees, advancing through the pile by touch. The garbage was cold. It took all her self-control not to think about what she was feeling. Vegetable matter. Rice. Discarded flesh. Above all, she tried not to think about someone throwing away a live infant.
The floor canted down toward the rear. Maybe there had been an earthquake. She felt a slight current of air against her face. It seemed to be coming up from some deeper place. She remembered the coal mines around here. It was possible they'd built their city upon ancient tunnels that were now collapsing under the weight.
She found the baby by its warmth.
As if it had always been her own, as if she were collecting it from a cradle, she scooped up the bundle. The little creature was sour-smelling. So tiny. Holly Ann brushed her fingertips across the baby's belly: the umbilical cord was ragged and soft, as if freshly bitten. It was a girl, no more than a few days old. Holly Ann held the little body to her shoulder and listened. Her heart sank. Instantly she knew. The baby was ill. She was dying.
'Oh, darling,' she whispered.
Her heart was failing. Her lungs were filling. You could hear it. Not long now.
Holly Ann wrapped the infant in her sweater and knelt in the pile of putrid garbage, rocking her baby. Maybe this was how it was meant to be, a motherhood that lasted only a few minutes. Better than never at all, she thought. She stood and started back toward the hallway and Christmas lights.
A small noise stopped her. The sound had several parts, like a metal scorpion lifting its tail, poising to strike. Slowly Holly Ann turned.
At first the rifle and military uniform didn't register. She was a very tall and sturdy woman who had not smiled for many years. The woman's nose had been broken sideways long ago. Her hair must have been cut with a knife. She looked like someone who had been fighting – and losing – her entire life.
The woman hissed something at Holly Ann in a burst of Chinese. She made an angry
gesture, pointing at the bundle inside Holly Ann's sweater. There was no mistaking her demand. She wanted the infant returned to the sewage pile in that horrible room. Holly Ann recoiled, clutching the baby tighter. Slowly she raised the packet of disposable diapers. 'It's okay,' she assured the tall woman.
Like two different species, the women studied each other. Holly Ann wondered if this might be the infant's mother, and decided it couldn't possibly be.
Suddenly the Chinese woman scowled, and batted aside the diapers with her rifle barrel. She reached for the infant. Her peasant hand was thick and callused and manly.
In her entire life, Holly Ann had never made a fist in real anger, to say nothing of swinging one. Her first ever connected on the woman's thin mouth. It wasn't much of a punch, but it drew blood.
Holly Ann stepped back from her violence and wrapped both arms around the baby. The Chinese woman wiped the bead of blood from her mouth and thrust the rifle barrel out. Holly Ann was terrified. But for whatever reason, the woman relented with a whispered oath, and motioned with her rifle.
Holly Ann set off in the direction indicated. Surely Wade would appear at any minute. Money would change hands. They would leave this terrible place.
With the gun at her back, Holly Ann climbed over a pile of bricks and torn sandbags. They reached a set of stairs and started up. Something crunched underfoot like metal beetles. Holly Ann saw a deep layer of hundreds of bullet casings coated with wet verdigris.
They went higher, three stories, then five. Holding the child, Holly Ann managed to keep up the pace. She didn't have much choice. Suddenly the woman caught at Holly Ann's arm. They stopped. This time the rifle was aimed back down the stair shaft.
Far below, something was moving. It sounded like eels coiling in mud. The two women shared a
