Dana crawled out of the sewer pipe that had been her home for the past nine months. There was a break in the clouds which loomed ominously over the once thriving city. She blinked and squinted her cataract covered good eye as she tried to adjust her sight to the light. Papers, shredded cloth and battered pieces of plastic sheets rolled and tumbled in the tide of hot air, each looking as tattered as her skin. She stumbled forward as fast as she could even though pin-pricks of pain shot up her bare calf with every step.
The wind moaned a thousand voices and brought the scent of burnt flesh left to ripen in hidden places. Dana walked, stooped or crawled over a jumble of twisted metal and blasted concrete. A man lay curled up against one standing wall, muttering or crying about things that she was beyond caring. Water, I must find water, her body screamed. The inside of the pipe was no cooler than the outside air yet its darkness had provided a sense of coolness. She regretted having to leave the sanctuary but her need for water had forced her out into the open.
In the first few days after the bomb blast, she had played one of Harry Belafonte’s calypso tunes over and over again inside her head to shut out the noise in the world outside as well as to persuade herself that the life she once knew still existed just beyond her reach. As the days passed, the irony of the gay tune began to eat into her. Yet as much as she tried, she could not rid herself of the noise.
Heat rose like strands of transparent ribbon and covered the surroundings in a deceptive curtain of moist sheen. Dana made headway by choosing debris covered routes that required the least amount of effort from her. She wished she could lie down and wait for the inevitable but almost every shaded spot had been claimed by another as his or her own private space. Bloated, shrivelled or burned; each bore their own brand of pain.
‘DAN’s’, said a cracked red and green sign next to a mound of rubble. Dana knelt beside it, rolled one medium sized slab to the side, then another and another. Like magic, a way opened before her. She crawled on all fours into a tight tunnel of shattered walls and dangling wires. A rumble that shivered the structure showered dusts about her. Some congealed on her skin and fell off her like crumbs as she inched forward. The army must be here, she thought, dressed in camouflaged spacesuits and astronaut helmets. In the pitch dark, Dana shivered as a chill she had not felt in nine months caressed her skin. A splash. She screamed and pulled out her hand from the puddle of liquid. Tentatively, she reached down once more. Yes, it was wet. She stooped and lapped up the soup of oil, dust and water with her tongue. A blast like thunder jarred the surroundings and the ‘rat-tat-tat’ of a distant gun reached her ears. Maybe the man at the wall moved, she thought as she lifted her head. He shouldn’t have moved. Her head returned to the puddle for one more sip. He should have pretended to be dead.
With one hand as guide, she circled the puddle of water and crawled to a dry dark corner. Her hand grazed against a rough clump of ropes twisted together at the end of a stick. A mop: She laid her head upon it as though it was a soft feather pillow. Maybe he couldn’t find a reason to live anymore. But Dana had. Dana found water. Another layer of darkness fell over her as she shut her eyes. She soiled herself but it did not matter because nobody was there to tell her that she shouldn’t. In fact, nobody was there to tell her what she should, could or ought not to do. Not even the voice in her head that had always played her better self. The only way she knew she was still alive was the song that played over and over in her mind: coconut water…Man it’s good for your daughter…four for five. Laboured breathing joined the noise in her head, and a smell that was not hers assailed her nostril. A rock, a wood-beam, or a hand fell down on her throat. Her ears popped as she desperately tried to suck air. Reaching up, she clawed. Her fingers dug into flesh that yielded like the skin of a ripe orange.
A shriek. The hand released her throat and moved away. Dana watched the decrepit shadow crawl behind a shelf outlined in light that was filtered through a cracked window. Then a whimpering, much like her puppy’s when left out in the wet cold, permeated the air. The sound incensed her. She gripped the wood of the mop with both hands, dragged her rage to the back of the shelf and pummeled the sobbing form with all her might. Whack, whack, whack. Every thud was preceded and followed by cries begging for mercy. Finally she swung the handle back like a golf club, and smacked the wood right into the side of its face. The neck snapped. But the crying and hollering did not stop. She lunged at the body again and it rolled flat on the floor. That was when Dana saw the other one: Smaller, but just as filthy, sick and ugly. She pummeled it like the first. Even after the noise stopped, she punched, whipped and smacked it. Then she lifted the mop high above her head, and plunged the handle down – like King Arthur, like Saint George, like Joan of Arc – right into the centre of the silent lump on the floor. The evil dragon’s heart no longer beats. The evil is dead. There will be peace forever more, because the dragon is dead. She has saved mankind because she killed the dragon.
Dana spread the adult woman’s arms and legs wide. Then she lifted the child and placed it across the mother’s abdomen at right angles. The arms and legs were also spread. An eight-legged monster, I killed an eight-legged monster, she noted with glee. She scrambled about the floor and felt around the shelves. Finally her fingers fell on a cone-shaped bottle that had a smooth plastic surface. She twisted the top, and tasted the powder that trickled into her hand. Salt. Ragged breath and shivering with adrenaline, Dana returned to the bodies. She drizzled the salt in a circle around them, just like the way witches in TV do when they want to imprison evil.
As she lay back in her corner, she embraced the mop like a guardian lover. That night, Dana dreamt of applause and a band playing her Calypso tune. A man called her a saviour of the human race. The monster was dead and the world was now a safer place.
Trucks lumbered past newly erected fences that were meant to keep the public out. Yet, the army need not have bothered, for the scanty crowd of people stood way beyond the yellow line just a foot behind the fencing. Love or duty might have brought them there, but terror kept them back. A truck bomb had blown in the heart of Kuching during the Rainforest Festival nine months back. The blast leveled everything in its immediate vicinity and showered burning metal on everything else. With it came the fallout that exposed thousands of civilians to radiation.
Rumour had led a forensic team to a village along the border of Sarawak and Kalimantan, where they found traces of Caesium-137 and residues of TNT along with five new graves. They learned that twenty-four men were paid good money to carry 50-kilogram crates on their back across the border. Except for those who became sick, many made more than one trip. All the villagers had to be treated for radiation poisoning.
A tall man with overgrown hair watched as yet another truck approached a concrete and steel enforced morgue. Again, there was no survivor. His fingers curled on the fencing as he leaned his brow against it. Nine months: He had been waiting behind the fence for nine months, but no one had found his sister. When he first heard of what had happened he had driven down from Miri that same night. Dana was out there. He knew exactly where she was because she showed him the location of her Salvation Army stall on the visitor’s guide of the Merdeka Field. She was so proud of the exhibit she prepared. In fact, on the night before the bombing, she had called him to say that she had collected enough money to build a new basketball court for the boys’ home. The following afternoon the bomb blew at a bus stop just outside India Street, which was packed with shoppers and tourists. Dana’s stall was less than two kilometers away from the blast.
A transistor radio tuned to the news channel cut into Daniel’s thoughts. “…vestigators confirmed that the traces of TNT found are similar to those used by the United States during the Vietnam War. Experts believe that the explosives were cannibalized from unexploded ordnances which had been dropped down onto Vietnam and Cambodia during the years between 1964 and 1975. The traces of Caesium-137 also lead experts to suspect that the materials were taken from Radiation Therapy Equipments. We have here Professor ….”
“Who are you waiting for?” a man’s voice interrupted his concentration.
“My sister,” Daniel replied.
“She lives here?”
“No.”
The radio blared, “…. What effect will this have on Kuching, Professor?”
“Caesium-137 has a half-life of over 30 years. That means that after 30.23 years a kilogram of the material will become 500gm.”
“Will the affect be reduced then?”
“The mass will be reduced but the effect of radiation is still the same for…”
Feeling compelled to be polite Daniel asked in return, “You have a family in there too?”
“My wife and two boys.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Close to nine months.” Immediately the stranger explained, “I was away on a business trip. It took me more than two weeks to find my way back here. I had to fly to Japan first then take another plane to Thailand. Even after I got back to Malaysia, the only thing I could get was a seat to Kota Kinabalu. Nobody wanted to come down to Kuching. I sold everything I had, my watch, my mobile phone, the company laptop; and even my wedding ring so I could buy an old car to drive back here.”
For the thousandth time Daniel said, “My sister is here for the fair. She was doing an exhibit for the Salvation Army. I think they are trying to upgrade the facilities in their boys’ home,” his voice cracked, “and she volunteered.”
Another army truck lumbered towards the morgue.
“They hardly ever find anyone alive now,” the man said. “I heard talk that the soldiers kill any survivor they find.”
Daniel pressed his face against the fence until diamond-shaped grooves appeared on his face. “A lot of people caught radiation sickness. The only way to stay safe is to be in a shelter away from the dust.”
“Some of the victims have bullet wounds.”
As his eyes followed the activity around the truck, Daniel decided not to fuel the argument further. There was no point in reminding people that pockets of terrorists had stood outside the critical zone and began shooting down civilians as they tried to run to safety.
Soldiers filed out from the back of the truck, stepped onto a grated platform and stood with arms and legs spread-eagled as men and women in white body suits and full-face mask respirators hosed them down. One soldier began to tremble violently. His shoulders shook and he retched inside his helmet. Immediately, more men and women in white surrounded him. They unzipped his suit and as he struggled a needle was jabbed into his arm. One woman pulled out a dosimeter from a blue packet she had extracted from inside the suit. Another took it from her hand and rushed into a medical tent to have the film developed.
Her voice muffled by the mask she called out, “Did he touch a radiation source?”
A medical man took off his mask and asked, “What happened during your patrol? How long were you out?”
“Two hours, just as the regulations say. He had a scare, Doctor Ravindra. We all had a scare. We were combing through our assigned area when a dead body fell on him.”
A louder voice added, “He began shooting and blasting away like crazy after that. It took five of us to stop him.”
The doctor from Calcutta turned to Daniel and frowned. He jerked his head to the side and the soldiers quickly stripped out of their suits and marched into an army tent. Two medical personnel placed the sedated soldier onto a stretcher and carried him away. Yellow suited cleaning crew swarmed over the area, sucking up dust and scraps with a wide mouthed vacuum hose. The discarded suits and helmets were collected and carefully placed inside a lead-lined bin on a trolley.
Daniel had watched the trucks rolled in and out ten, twenty, thirty times a day. Each time hope had burst out of his heart, but like soap bubbles they disappeared when night fall. He took out his wallet, and pulled out the only thing of value left inside, a passport photo of his sister. Dana never did like having her photo taken. He smiled as his fingers traced the clenched jaws and glaring eyes behind a pair of black rimmed glasses. There was nothing in the world that he wouldn’t do for his little sister; yet now when she needed him the most he could do nothing but stand behind a fence marked with a yellow line.
The man who had talked to him walked away. The wind began to pick up but Daniel did not care as it whipped his hair around his face. As long as he could still see his sister’s picture, it did not matter. Finally he dragged his feet away from the fence and turned towards the hospital building which was about a kilometer away. Maybe he should walk through the wards again; maybe he missed his sister. It didn’t matter to him if she doesn’t have hair, or if she doesn’t have skin, he just needed her to be alive.
“Excuse me, sir,” a young woman called out as she shoved a padded microphone in his face. “Do you think that the international community has done enough to help here?”
“I have no comment.” Daniel tried to walk away, but she was one step faster and blocked his path.
“How about the freedom fighters that claim to have done this? What do you think of them and the cause they are fighting for?”
“I have no comment.” He pushed her aside a little more roughly.
“There must be something you want to say.” The woman called out vehemently. “Your thoughts matter you know. Maybe it will stop something like this from happening again.”
Daniel turned to study her. Immediately her posture straightened and she held up the microphone once again to his face. Daniel said, “People have been doing that for years; talk about war or causes. None of that has helped our love ones here in Kuching. But there is one thing I want to talk about – my sister. She has so many things planned ahead of her; her charity work, her new blogsite, her growing business…” He held up Dana’s picture.
The young reporter began to fidget. Her eyes shifted to a group of dusty teenagers huddling outside a makeshift tent. Daniel continued, “She came to Kuching to collect money for a boys’ home.”
“Excuse me, sir,” the reporter interrupted. “I will come back to you later. I am so sorry for what has happened.” With a professional smile on her face, she nodded then walked away.
The cameraman put down his equipment. As his bloodshot eyes met Daniel’s, his face crunched into a scowl of sorrow. They nodded to acknowledge each other’s existence then turned and went their own way. Army and fire trucks rattled up and down the dusty street as Daniel trudged along an almost empty pavement. He had gone down this path so often he could mentally map out where all the cracked or loosed tiles were.
The flat pavement turned into the hospital’s car park then sloped gently up to the main building. Daniel’s knee buckled under him, and he was forced to sit on the lowest step and stare into the distant sky of smoldering haze. He could not bring himself to enter the wards yet. The smell, the vomiting, the crying was more than he could endure. A Red Crescent worker stopped in front of him and passed him a bottle of mineral water and a plastic sealed pack of custard bun.
Surprised, Daniel looked up. “I thought we have to go to the supply tent to get our food.”
“When was the last time you dropped by?” said the grey-haired woman. “So few come by that we had to throw out good food. I hate to see food go to waste, so promise me you won’t waste those.” A smile and a nod later she was up the steps and handing out more buns from a white sack with far less cheer but more goodwill than a department store Santa Claus.
Daniel watched her as though dazed. Finally he got up, went to her side and held the sack open for her as she distributed the buns and water along the corridors and in the wards. Many exhausted relatives thankfully received her gifts, but others were so deep in grief they were beyond accepting kindness. She placed the buns within their reach, and took away the mould speckled food of previous visits. As they finished their round, he learnt that her name was Rani.
After that Daniel began to work in the Red Crescent tents; sweeping, wiping and doing any other menial work he could find. On the third day, news that a female adult survivor had been found rippled through the tents. Daniel ran and stumbled his way to the emergency unit and was pointed down a corridor. There were twenty-five other people, including the stranger who had talked to him, waiting in front of a double steel door. Hoarse screams chilled the air.
Daniel wept; it was Dana. One by one, the others walked away as her cries continued to echo down the fast emptying corridor. Weary nurses hurried past him with armloads of blankets and the sound of a television muted as the door of the waiting room slammed shut. But Daniel remained squatting on the floor with his face in his hands.
The heavy door in front of him clicked open. Daniel’s head snapped up and at the same time he wiped one sleeve over his face.
Doctor Ravindran stared into his eyes. “I will need you to identify the survivor, if you know her.” He stood in the doorway, like a barrier between Daniel and his greatest need.
“It is my sister in there.”
The red-rimmed eyes were fierce as they studied Daniel’s face. “Don’t ask questions, just say a name if you know her. If you don’t know her, please walk away without making a scene.” As he turned back to the door, his voice became kinder. “She will look different.”
Again the metallic click as the doctor pushed down the handle and opened the way. An orderly handed Daniel a blue hooded suit, gloves and face mask to protect the patient’s weakened immunity from him. He could see a bandaged form lying on a bed behind a curtain of thick plastic. With trembling hands he put on his equipment then followed the doctor inside.
Of course she is unrecognizable, Daniel thought, she looks like a mummy. A giggle tickled his throat until he saw her un-bandaged eye. The heat of her gaze mesmerized him. Her arms reached out to grab the hand he extended.
Her hoarse voice pleaded. “Kill them, kill them, kill them. You must kill them, Daniel or they will kill you.”
He turned to the doctor, bewildered. Her hand wrested his face back to her. “There are dragons. There are dragons in the city. They kill people, they burn them and then they eat them. You must tell everyone to come here and kill them, Daniel.”
A monitor beeped incessantly. A nurse called out, “Her heart rate is coming up again, doctor.”
Doctor Ravindra leaned forward and said to her, “Yes, I will tell the army. They will send out troops to find these dragons. Don’t you worry, my dear. Let the people with the guns and bombs take care of the dragons, hmmm.”
Dana looked into his face and the monitor beeps slowed. “You are sure?”
“Oh yes. We need your brother here with us. You should not send him away. Now you should lie down and try to sleep.”
“I killed a dragon.”
“I know,” the doctor’s voice cracked. “The soldiers showed them to me.” He added, “You were very brave.”
Dana lay back on the bed but clung on to Daniel’s hand.
Another doctor waved to Ravindran from outside the plastic curtains. He pointed to test tubes of tissue samples from the half dozen bodies found that day.
As they walked out, the nurse said, “Doctor, should we tell the other woman’s family about this?”
Ravindran stripped the gloves off, stooped over the sink and washed his hands. “What good will it do? What will we achieve by punishing an insane woman with such a crime? She had lived in hell for nine months, not knowing who to trust, not knowing who to turn to. The only reason she is still alive is because she went insane. Let us not judge. We were not there.”
“Was that why you lie to her about telling the army to go after dragons?”
“She may not have long to live, Liza. The food and drink she took to stay alive may have been covered with fallout dust. Every one of her moments is an hour of our lifetime. I only wish for her to feel safe at least for the time left to her.”
“I don’t think it is right to lie, doctor.”
Ravindran sighed as he dried his hands on a fresh towel. “I am only a doctor. All I know is that I give morphine to take away physical pain and anti-depressants to take away emotional pain.” He looked into her defiant eyes. “If words will do, then all the better.”
She was unconvinced. He took off his full-bodied suit, dropped it into a bin and walked away knowing full well that if she ever found out who the relatives of the other two persons were; she would tell them that the mother and child were murdered by another person, and that the other person was found alive.
Ravindran stepped out into the afternoon light. In the car park a sand-covered Red Crescent tent shimmered under the heat. Two uniformed workers watched over a handful of visitors who either sat or stood as they stared into polystyrene cups. When he approached the drink stand a worker opened the cover of a box, took out a cup and began filling it with sweet tea from inside a steel cupboard: Preventions against fallout dust. Ravindran smiled wryly as he received the cup, for they were all covered in dust.
Rani entered the tent. She came up to him and asked, “Is it true? Did they find Daniel’s sister?”
Ravindran nodded. She put her sack down and sat next to him. The parched landscape beyond the hospital fencing held their gaze.
Rani asked, “How bad are her wounds?”
“There is no knowing. Her test result is not out yet. She survived the blast but she had been exposed to radiation.”
“Good God, nine months. That may mean that there are more people out there who could still be alive. Why don’t they come to us?”
“Fear. They are afraid even of each other. This woman certainly was.” He almost added, she even killed a child because she was afraid, but he kept the thought to himself.
“How long do you think we should keep searching?”
“That depends on how long we judge our best to be before we stop being guilty about stopping the search.”
Rani’s face frowned as she faced the doctor. “That is a harsh assessment.”
“But it is true. People want to get on with their lives. They will only contribute for as long as they feel guilty about giving up. But once they feel that they have done all they could, they stop.”
Huge covered trucks rumbled down the main road followed by trailers weighed down with loaders, cranes, forklifts or tanks of sticky liquid. The clean-up crew had arrived. Ravindran downed the rest of his tea and nodded to Rani before returning to the wards. Soon another volunteer doctor from Singapore will take over from him and he can go home to his family in India. Until then, he will continue to watch out for survivors.
Read more short stories.