The Windup Girl

Kanya shakes her head. Already the windup has saved them twice. Once by spying out the shadow movement of commandos coming toward them, the second time pushing Kanya down a moment before a rain of spring disks shredded the air above her head. The windup's eyes are sharp where Kanya's are not, and she is blisteringly fast. Already, though, she is flushed, her skin dry and scalding to the touch. Hiroko is not built for this tropic warfare, and even though they pour water on her and try to keep her cool, she is fading.

When Kanya catches up, Hiroko looks up at her with fever-bright eyes. "I will have to drink something soon. Ice."

"We don't have any."

"The river then. Anything. I must return to Yashimoto-sama."

"There's fighting all along the river." Kanya has heard from others that General Pracha is at the levees, trying to repel the landing Navy boats. Fighting his old ally, Admiral Noi.

Hiroko reaches out with a scalding hand. "I cannot last."

Kanya searches around her, seeking an answer. Bodies are everywhere. It's worse than a plague, the men and women ripped by high explosives. The carnage is immense. Arms and legs, a foot separated and flung into a tree branch. Bodies piled and burning. Napalm hissing. The clank of tanks rumbling through the compounds, the burn of coal exhaust. "I need the radio," she says.

"Pichai had it last."

But Pichai is dead and they aren't sure where the radio has gone.

We aren't trained for this sort of thing. We were supposed to stop blister rust and influenza, not tanks and megodonts.

When she finally finds a radio, it is from a dead hand that she takes it. She cranks the handset. Tests the codes that the Ministry uses for discussing plagues, not warfare. Nothing. Finally she speaks in the clear. "This is Captain Kanya. Is there anyone else out there? Over?"

A long pause. The crackle and static. She repeats herself. Again she repeats. Nothing.

And then, "Captain? This is Lieutenant Apichart."

She recognizes the assistant's voice. "Yes? Where is General Pracha?"

More silence. "We don't know."

"You aren't with him?"

Another pause. "We think he's dead." He coughs. "They used a gas."

"Who is our ranking officer?"

Another long pause. "I believe it is you, ma'am."

She pauses, shocked. "It can't be. What about the fifth?"

"We haven't heard."

"General Som?"

"He was found in his home, assassinated. Also Karmatha, and Phailin."

"It's not possible."

"It is rumor. But they have not been seen, and General Pracha believed it when we received word."

"No other captains?"

"Bhirombhakdi was at the anchor pads, but all we see is fire from there."

"Where are you?"

"An Expansion tower, near Phraram Road.

"How many do you have with you?"

"Maybe thirty."

She surveys her people with dismay. Wounded men and women. Hiroko lying against a dead shorn banana tree, face flushed like a Chinese paper lantern, eyes closed. Perhaps dead already. Fleetingly she wonders if she cares about the creature or… Her men are all around her, watching. Kanya takes in their pathetic ammunition. Their wounds. So few of them.

The radio crackles. "What should we do, Captain? " Lieutenant Apichart asks. "Our guns don't do anything against tanks. There's no way for us-" The channel crackles with static.

From the direction of the river, a deep explosion rumbles.

Private Sarawut climbs down from a tree. "They stopped shelling the docks."

"We're alone," Pai murmurs.

44

It's the silence that wakes her. Emiko has passed the night in a blurry sprawl, periods of sleep broken by the rumble of high explosives and the whine of high-capacity springs unleashing. Tanks clank down the streets burning coal, but much of it is distant, battles fought in other districts. On the streets bodies lie abandoned, casualties of the riot, now forgotten in the larger conflict.

A strange silence has settled over the city. A few candles twinkle in windows where people keep midnight watch on the ravaged city, but nothing else is lit. No gas lights in the buildings or on the streets. Total blackness. It seems that either the city's methane has run out, or someone has finally shut off the mains.

Emiko pulls herself out of the garbage, wrinkling her nose in disgust at the discarded melon rinds and banana peels. Against the flame-orange sky, she can see a few columns of smoke, but nothing else. The streets are empty. There is no better time for what she plans.

She turns her attention to the tower. Six stories above, Anderson-sama's apartment waits. If only she can get to it. At first, she had hoped to simply speed through the lobby and find her way higher, but the doors are locked and guards patrol within. And she is now too well-known to risk an attempt at direct entrance. But she has an alternative.

She is hot. Terribly hot. A green coconut that she found and smashed early in the night is a wistful memory now. She counts the balconies again, one after the other, rising above her. Water is up there. Breezes. Survival and a temporary hiding place, if she can make it.