‘Contact my mother. She has a small amount of quinine,’ said Run Run. ‘She will bring it.’

Alak shook his head. ‘It will take her two days to get here. That will be too late. The next forty-eight hours will see us all dead if we stay here—sitting targets for Saw and Boon Nam.’

Alak picked up the radio and moved to higher ground. As he tried to get a signal, Run Run went back to tending Mann. He was shouting in his delirium.

Helen was suspended by her arms, she was twisting with pain. Mann couldn’t make her hear him. He couldn’t make the man stop whipping her. Helen was screaming in agony.

‘No one is answering and the signal is weak,’ Alak said, returning after another attempt to find a signal. ‘We need to know what is happening. We must get to Gee’s village and find out where Saw is and what he intends. We cannot be here in the break of day. That gunfire was no more than a mile away.’

‘We are a few hours’ walk from my village now,’ said Gee. ‘I will go and try and find some help for Mann. I will find out where Saw is.’

Run Run shook her head. Alak knew what she was thinking because he was thinking the same; that Gee might not come back. That they would still not know what was happening and that Mann would die anyway.

‘No,’ said Alak. ‘They know you, Gee. If something is not right they will give you away. I will go.’

‘No.’ Run Run stood. ‘It is better if I go. They will not be suspicious of a woman on her own and you need to keep in contact with Captain Rangsan.’

‘What if Saw is there and he sees you?’ Fear was in Alak’s voice. He was torn.

‘He won’t see me. I will look and come back, that is all.’

Alak tried to argue back but he knew she was right. Their survival depended on stealth now. Run Run prepared to leave. She bent over Mann. He was quiet now; he was slipping away into a world of darkness and coma. ‘Come back to us, Johnny Mann,’ she whispered. Mann’s eyes flicked open, focused on her, then they rolled away. Run Run stood.

‘Head straight for the dip between those hills,’ said Gee. ‘Then skirt around and come in at the far side of the village. The whole of the approach is mined.’

‘Do not worry, Gee. I have lived all my life amongst mines. I will avoid all the paths and stick to the woods.’

Alak embraced Run Run. He whispered in her ear.

‘So wise, and so beautiful, my Run Run.’

She held him closer and replied: ‘I will be, and have always been, your Run Run, Alak.’ She looked at him in the darkness and reached up to kiss him softly on the mouth before she turned and disappeared into the jungle.

Alak spent the next few hours trying to reach either Captain Rangsan or Mo on the radio whilst Gee took over looking after Mann. After trying for three hours, Alak finally got through to Mo.

‘Alak, you must turn back,’ she said. ‘There are not enough of you now. Too many things are against you—Boon Nam is closing in on you on one side, Saw the other. We will fight together. Turn back, Alak.’

‘We cannot move from here. Mann is ill with malaria. Run Run has gone to Gee’s village to try and find some help and to scout for us. We are due to liaise with Rangsan very soon. We must carry on.’

‘You have sent my daughter to Gee’s village?’

‘Yes, I have.’

‘Then you are a fool. Saw is on his way to attack Gee’s village.’

81

Alak loaded up his weapons. He carried his machete on one hip, his gun belt around his chest. Around his head he twisted a scarf that Run Run had given him. He turned to Gee as he left.

‘Stay here. I will return by tomorrow, sunset. If I don’t, and Mann dies, give his body to the river; you will have done all you can.’

With that, Alak disappeared.

Gee sat next to Mann and looked back and forth from him to the jungle. He looked up at the moon overhead. It was just gone midnight. It would be a long night of waiting. When daybreak came, they would be at their most vulnerable and Gee could not keep Mann still or stop him from shouting. He felt an enormous anxiety. His whole being was telling him he should get out fast. He was stuck in a forest full of murderers with a dying man who was shouting their whereabouts. Because Mann didn’t just have a fever—he had malaria—cerebral malaria. And that meant that Mann had been carrying the virus for a while without realising it. Now it was too late and he was likely to die. Gee knew it—he had seen it many times. He knew that Mann’s temperature would rise so high that soon he would slip into a coma that he would never come out of. He must leave, he told himself —and yet he could not leave. Gee sighed and fretted, washing Mann’s head and talking to him when his eyes opened wide. Gee could see his heart and lungs racing, fighting the fever, fast and stressed. Gee soothed him as he would a baby. Gee had many of those; from his four wives, he had twenty children. Gee wondered sadly whether they would miss him when he was gone. When the Burmese came to cut his throat and Mann’s, then what would Gee’s life have added up to? Mann convulsed and Gee gave him water and searched in vain through the backpack for any quinine he might have missed. In the haste and confusion at the old refinery, the medics had taken the only medicine they had when they took Riley. Now there was nothing to give Mann. He sweated as Gee held him down.

Mann saw Gee’s image swimming in front of his eyes and from a distant planet he heard him speak.

‘They say there is nothing to be done—you must sweat it out, dear friend, or you will die.’

Man looked into Helen’s face; her eyes stared back at him, through the plastic, lightless. She smiled and beckoned to him.

82

It was the middle of the night when Run Run approached the outskirts of the village slowly and with great caution. As she neared the village she had heard the commotion and she knew exactly what it meant. She heard the crying women and the screaming children and she heard the howling. It was the same sound that she had heard at Mae Klaw—Saw and his men. She crouched low in the undergrowth until the first peek of the sun illuminated her way, then she crept forward just enough to be able to see the track that led to the start of the village. Run Run gasped silently and backed away. Guarding the entrance to the village were frightened villagers, standing beneath poles. On top of the poles were the heads of Captain Rangsan and his men.

She retraced her steps and crept back through the forest, making her way in a wide arc to come around to the rear of the village. There, at the edge of the paddy fields, amongst the dead and dying mown down as they tried to escape, she watched what was happening. The village had been destroyed. Fires were still burning. Slaughtered men, women and children lay where they had been chased down and murdered. The air was filled with the sound of wrenching grief and fear; small children whimpered for their mothers, mothers wept for their dead children.

Run Run moved closer until she could see Saw’s men. They looked as if they were preparing to move out. They had rounded up six of the women who were standing huddled together amidst the screams and chaos as their children tried to get near to them. They were killing any child that still clung to its mother. Run Run crouched low, crawled on her belly and moved in again, hiding herself amongst the dead. Now she came to the first of the houses and she could see the young volunteers. She recognised them from Mae Klaw. They were bound, tied at the wrists. She could see the blonde girl, Anna, and she saw Jake. At first she could not see the others. Then she saw another of the boys—Lucas. He was sitting on the mule. He was lashed to its back. His head lolled as the animal pawed the ground with its hoof. She edged closer to look for the other. She hid behind a tree. She held her breath as she saw Saw Wah Say. She recognised him straightaway, even though it had been many years since she had seen him. Not since the day she refused to become his bride and he had tried to rape her. Not since he fought with Alak and her brother died. That day he had run from their village, limping and bleeding from Alak’s beating. Now, seeing him again, his body wet and streaked with the blood of others, seeing his once handsome face turned into something so savage and evil that there was nothing left of hope of humanity in him, Run Run wished Alak had killed him on that day. Her mind caught in memories, long buried, Run Run failed to hear the stealthy approach of Handsome creeping up behind her until she felt a rifle butt dig into her back.