Shadows of War

his breath, but his heart still raced and his whole body shook.

He knew he had to move. He pushed himself upright, then rose unsteadily.

Move! he told himself. Move! You’re not a five-year-old anymore. These aren’t the people who killed your parents. Go! Go!

They weren’t the same people, but they were just as dangerous — different incarnations of the same evil, he thought to himself as he started to move.

The memory of his childhood horror — never fully repressed, never fully confronted — rose from the dark recesses of his consciousness. He tried to ignore it, focusing on the forest before him, feeling the leaves that snapped and slashed at his fingers as he started to move again. He heard a noise behind him, below — he was running upward, he realized for the first time, climbing the mountain.

They were after him.

The boy whose family had been murdered hadn’t panicked, entirely; in the end, he had acted very rationally — and very much like a boy. He had started running out of fear. But then something else took over, something stronger. He began to act as if he were a character in one of the games he often played, Star Wars Battlefront.

He became a clone trooper on Dagobah, dodging through the dense swamp and jungle as he hid from the crazy men who’d come to shoot his family. The cornfield, its stalks bitten to the earth by the harvester, became the large swamp at the center of the battlefield. Old Man’s Rock — the marker at the corner of their field and the neighbors’ — became the landing port for the Federation reinforcements. And the Johnsons’ cow field became the portal he had to escape to.

It was not like the game, exactly; he had no weapon, nor options to alter his character. But the boy became the player, dodging through the field, careful to get away. As long as he was the player, rather than the boy, he could survive. He’d done it before, countless times, playing with his older brother.

And he did it again.

Josh slowed, began to walk rather than run. Running only helped his pursuers — it made him easier to hear. His steps became quieter, more purposeful. His breathing slowed. His eyes, nearly shut until now, opened and let him see as well as any cat.

Gradually, a strategy occurred to him, coalescing around questions that began to form in his mind.

How many are after me?

It couldn’t be many, because they were difficult to hear.

Which direction are they coming from?

The camp, now to his right. Southeast.

Did they see me, or only hear me running through the forest?

It must have been the latter; if they’d seen me, they would have shot immediately.

The questions continued, as did the answers. Josh moved very slowly now, so slowly that at times he felt that he was sleeping standing up.

What do I have with me? A weapon?

Nothing of use. He had the little Flip 5 video camera in his pocket, left there after the evening campfire when he’d amused his colleagues by interviewing them. He had a lighter, Tom’s, which he’d used to light the lantern and failed to give back. He had a guitar pick, from Sarah, a token of good luck she’d slipped into his hand at the airport.

No weapon, no gun.

The noises he’d heard drifted away. But he sensed they were still hunting him, just as long ago the killers had followed. They had wanted to kill him not because he was a witness; their twisted minds didn’t care about that. To them there was no possibility of being caught, let alone punished. They wanted him the way a hungry man wants food. Killing his family had whetted their appetite, and now they were insatiable.

He saw rocks ahead. Slowly, he walked to them.

The outcropping was just at the edge of a slope of bamboo stalks.

Hide in the bamboo?

No. It was too thin — someone with a nightscope could see him.

Move through it. There would be another place to hide somewhere.

Josh began moving to his left. There was something to his right, something moving.

He lowered himself to his haunches slowly, crouching, not even daring to breathe.

Perhaps I’m already dead, he thought. Perhaps these are the last thoughts that will occur to me.

* * *

Jing Yo stopped and turned to Private Po, waiting for the rifleman to catch up. While splitting his small team up made tactical sense, it carried an inherent risk. There was no way for the groups to communicate with each other. Like in every other unit in the Chinese army, none of the enlisted men were supplied with radios.

Officially, this was due to equipment shortages. The real reason was to make it more difficult for the enlisted men to organize a mutiny. The fear was well warranted; Jing Yo had heard of two units rebelling against their commander’s orders over the past few months. One of these actions amounted to only a few men who balked at being transferred from the northern provinces where they had been stationed for years. The other was much more serious: two entire companies refused to muster in protest of their failure to get raises. Both cases had been dealt with harshly; the units were broken up, with the ringleaders thrown into reeducation camps.

Their officers suffered more severe punishment: execution by firing squad.

“Our quarry has stopped somewhere,” Jing Yo told Private Po. “See what you can see in that direction there.”

The private raised his rifle and looked through the scope. The electronics in the device were sensitive to heat, and rendered the night in a small circle of green before the private’s eyes. Unfortunately, the thick jungle made it difficult for him to see far.

“Nothing,” whispered Private Po.

Jing Yo became an eagle in his mind’s eye, rising above to view the battlefield. The mountain jutted up sharply ahead; the jungle diminished, leaving vast swaths of bamboo and rock as the only cover. A skilled man trying to escape them would stay in the deep forest.

But was their quarry skilled? There were arguments either way. On the one hand, he had made enough noise for an otherwise incompetent soldier to hear him. On the other, he had left no obvious trail in the thick brush, and was now making no sound that could be heard.

There is no silence but the universe’s silence.

His mentors’ words came back to him. On the surface, the instruction was simple enough: One must learn to listen correctly; hearing was really a matter of tuning one’s ears. But as with much the gray-haired monks said, there was meaning beyond the words.

“Are we in the right place?” asked Private Po.

“Ssshhh,” replied Jing Yo.

His own breath was loud in his ears. He slowed his lungs, leaning forward. The jungle had many sounds — water, somewhere ahead, brush swaying in the wind — a small animal —

Two footsteps, ahead.

Barely ten yards away.

“Your rifle,” Jing Yo said to the private, reaching for it.

* * *

Josh tried to hold his breath as he slipped forward. They were very close, close enough for him to have heard a voice.

He stepped around a low rock ledge, edging into a thick fold of brush. He wanted to move faster, but he knew that would only make more noise. Stealth was more important than speed. If he was quiet, they might miss him.

Something shifted nearby. A cough.

They were much closer than he’d thought — ten yards, less, just beyond the clump of trees where he’d paused a moment ago.