The Windup Girl(134)

"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.

41

"I thought we weren't going to move for another two weeks," Anderson protests. "We don't have everything in place."

"Plans must change. Your weapons and funding are still quite helpful." Akkarat shrugs. "In any case, having farang shock troops in the city would not necessarily smooth the transition. It's possible that this accelerated timetable is best."

Explosions rumble across the city. A methane fire is burning, bright and green, yellowing now as it finds dry bamboo and other materials. Akkarat studies the burn, waves to the man with the radio phone. The private cranks at the power as Akkarat speaks quietly, issuing orders for fire teams to be dispatched to the blaze. He glances at Anderson, explains. "If the fires get out of control, we won't have a city to defend."

Anderson studies the spreading fire, the gleam of palace chedi, the Temple of the Emerald Buddha. "That fire's near the city pillar."