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His father had been a doctor. So, Poya knew quite a lot. When people or animals were near death, their bowels went, their bladder emptied. Whatever was in there was probably on the brink and crawled in here to die. Maybe best, then, to come back later and take the corpse far away, let the leopards or wolves eat their?—
Another low groan.
The other smell was meaty and fusty. The odor reminded him of Eid al-Adha, the Festival of Sacrifice, when goats were slaughtered and the meat offered to everyone in the village. The herdsman for whom he'd worked in Sarhad had shown him how to soothe the animal then turn it to face Mecca, bring it down on its left flank then make a quick, clean cut with his sharpest blade through the carotid arteries, windpipe, and jugular veins so the blood gushed out. In this way, the herdsman said, the animal died quickly, and its meat would be halal.
Poya never forgot that peculiar stink of wet copper, and he smelled it now, which meant that, in the next room, something was bleeding or had bled?—
“Ahhh.”The exhalation was breathy and long. “My God...”
Oh!Poya had to clap a hand to his mouth to catch the cry that wanted to leap from his tongue. A person, there was apersonin the next room! Man, woman? Poya couldn’t tell.But those shots.He remembered the crisp, brittle snapscracking the early morning air, the booms of return fire—and now here was this person who had crawled somewhere dark the way an animal did when it felt the press of death.
His mind raced. What should he do?Try to help? No, that was stupid. If this person was really badly hurt, whatcouldhedo? But if he ran to get help, then what? How would he explain being up here in the first place?
Did that even matter when a life hung in the balance?
Yes.A small voice from a back corner of his mind.Of course, it matters. You’re on your own. There’s no one to help you. If you go in there, you won’t be able to undo that.
Which was true. If he went for help, he would lose this place forever and with it, any plan to escape. The end result would be that, eventually, Amu would discover hissecret andthen?—
And then, as whoever was in that next room let go of another moan, Poya realized he had a third option.
He could kill whoever was in there. Do that, and his secret was safe.
But with what?There was the folding knife he’d stolen, but the blade was small, and he would have to stab this person many, many times. Unless he cut an artery, this person wouldn’t die fast.
Which left his hammer. Yes, better to bash in the man’s head. It would be bloody. The man in there would suffer. But caving in his skull would be faster. Once the man was dead, Poya would drag the body far from the cave and let the leopards and wolves do their work. Destroy the evidence.
What would Mami or Baba have said or done? The same? Or would they have tried to help? What kind of person would he become if he killed this person?
Conscience is a luxury you do not have.That small voice, again.Do what you must. Time for you to become what you pretend you are.
Cocking his arm, readying himself to swing that hammer with all the force of his fear, Poya wheeled around the edge of the cavern’s mouth and flicked on his light.
10
His flashlight’sbeam pierced the darkness.
Haloed in a wash of silvery light, a woman slumped, cross-legged, against a boulder. At first, she seemed not to notice the light at all. Her head hung. Her hair, matted with grime, fell in a thick curtain and hid her face. She was bundled in a tatty man’s sheepskin coat and an ill-fitting assemblage of odds and ends, as if snatched at random and from whatever was lying around. Even her boots were different colors: one brown, one black.
There was also something very wrong with her. Her arms weren’t still. They moved in restless, herky-jerky movements. Her fingers, painted a dull copper with tacky blood, twitched, cleaned into fists, then spasmed opened again. Every now and again, her head wrenched itself over to one side and then the other and so violently her hair swished and swayed to one side and the bones of her neck crackled.
A man was draped in her lap. He wasn’t moving, although Poya saw his chest struggle up and then collapse. So, he was breathing. His head was flung back far enough that the knob of his Adam’s apple stood out, but the curtain of the woman’s hair and the welter of shadows in the poor light hid his features from view. If the splotch on the man’s coat and puddle of congealingblood on the stone floor were any indication, at least one of those shots from that morning had found its mark.
They both smelled very bad, as if they’d taken a tumble into a sewage ditch. Unlike the woman, however, the man wasn’t twitching or moving. But…Poya squinted…therewassomething resting in his right hand: a small device, boxy and black and with a short antenna. A phone? Poya didn’t know. But the other weird thing: there was somethingfamiliarabout him.
As if I know him.
“Hello?” The word came out as a whisper. Swallowing back a lump of fear, Poya shuffled a step closer. “Hello,” he said, more loudly, “can you?—”
“Ah!”Gasping, the woman reared back. Her left arm flew to shield her eyes and her features went taut, her lips skinning back from her teeth in a ferocious snarl. She fumbled for something lying on the stone next to her right thigh, but her hands wouldn’t cooperate. The fingers splayed and kinked, and her right elbow jack-knifed. Something clattered on stone.“Gaah!”
“No, no, it’s okay!” Poya shifted the flashlight away from her distorted features. What was wrong with this woman? Maybe she was afraid of his hammer? Slipping that under his belt, he patted the air with his free hand. “I’m sorry. Don’t be afraid, I won’t?—”
“Bwah!”Her panicked eyes were wide as full moons and she was twitching all over, her neck writhing and jaws working. Spit foamed on her lips. As she jerked and churned, the man on her lap flopped and groaned.
“Gah!”she spluttered.“Ung!”
What was she saying? He couldn’t handle this on his own. He would have to go to Amu and confess. If he was lucky, Amu might only beat him later.