Winfred Wong: Son of the Tank Man

I didn’t nod, but he went on, “He was one of us. And he was caught when he was about to set fire to the hotel.”

I couldn’t quite concentrate at that moment, maybe I was totally blown away by what he just said, but on a whim, I asked, “Why did he try—”

“Because by setting fire to the hotel, we could kill two birds with one stone. To force you to come with us, and to create a window of opportunity for us to kill that Chief of Police,” Kriss pulled herself together and interrupted.

“But how did you know I would survive it? You couldn’t have—” I paused as something came to my mind. “That’s why Ciara was there? She was there to make sure I could get out, wasn’t she? But what about Jack?”

“Yes, she was there to help you escape, and we were all so worried about you when Ciara climbed down the ladder alone. But Jack, he wasn’t part of our plan,” he said. “And I was honestly dazed when I saw him with you. It’s the last thing I could have imagined.”

“So, who is he really?”

“He was there with your father in front of the tanks. The man riding a bike. And he was there with your father when he passed away as well,” she quipped. “And by the time you saw him, he was a professor working in one of the universities in the Port. But we, Kaylen and me, have known him since we were small. He was a friend of our fathers.”

“But did you ask him? Did you ask him what he was doing there?”

“Of course I asked, he never answered me though,” he said. “My guess is, maybe he knew they were going to close the border, and that’s why he went back, to help us.”

And I remember on that day we had kept on babbling and chattering like we were suddenly old friends for more or less a day before we headed back to the house.

But anyway, at that time, I had no idea why she had my picture in her palm when she ended her life and felt disoriented trying to rationalize my findings when the boat staggered forward, disrupting my knotted thought, making me realize the boat, which had been moving as fast as a dinghy for the whole time, was currently sailing with no one in control. I was afraid the boat would run into some kind of a big rock that could rip it apart and get me killed, and so, I discarded that thought, returned the pendant to her, lifted her cold, pale-turning body up and laid her down on the floor with care, putting her head down first, then her torso. I didn’t have the basic concept of how to maneuver a boat, but obviously, for me to learn it quickly was the only option I was given.

And I took the helmsman seat and, nearly shiveringly, put my hands on a small wheel, which looked more like the one in a car than that of it on a real boat I’d often see on the big silver screen, this actually uplifted my confidence because I’d earned my driver’s license on day one after I had just turned eighteen on the first try, yet steering a boat that had a car-wheel-like wheel was not as simple as I’d thought.

It took me a couple of wild attempts of randomly changing the course of it; I, for once, had it turned halfway upside down before successfully reobtained balance, before I began grasping the most fundamental sense of how to use it, like how much should I turn the wheel when there was an obstacle up ahead, when should I apply the pressure, and something like that. And the idea of slowing it down a bit had never come to my mind before I happened to take a glimpse at a speed meter, which indicated the boat was proceeding with three-fourth the maximum speed, on a control panel to the right side of the wheel.

And instinctively, I looked down at the corner before my feet, trying to find a pedal-like thing for deceleration, assuming it was somehow identical to a car. Of course there was nothing noteworthy. Then I shifted my attention to a short control handle that stuck out below the control panel; it was so short that it seemed to have been truncated and perhaps that’s why I had failed to notice it until then. It’s so short that I had to lean forward in order to get hold of it. But when I placed my hand on top of it and tried to tug it down, which I couldn’t, then tried to lift it up fruitlessly, my fingers felt something like a lock from under the handle. I guessed maybe it was a protection gear, or some sort of that, working to prevent something bad from happening.

So I tried to move it left and right, up and down, in literally every directions I could think of as if it was a joystick of a game, it didn’t even move a bit though. And I thought there must be an easy way to unlock it if whoever assembled this craft had ever intended to make it usable. Thus, on a whim, I tried to shove the handle inward into the panel, I couldn’t, then pulled it outward, and then I heard there was a sound of cracking open something. And after that sound, I moved it like a joystick again and fathomed out that tugging it down meant deceleration while lifting it up meant picking up speed.

Everything went smoother after spending some more time on becoming more proficient in maneuvering it adopting a trial and error method, my experience in driving a car helped a lot, and as I thought I was ready, it occurred to me there were still two things I had to figure out before I could actually set off on my way home and they were my current location and a detailed map, which made me think of the cafe embellished with detailed maps of every countries. Then after trying to shake off my homesickness, a thought dawned on me as if it was the upshot of the shaking. There was no way Kriss wasn’t carrying a map with her if she was supposed to be the one piloting this craft in the first place; after all, I thought she was the only one among us who had been involved in hatching up this escape plan.

Therefore, I pushed down the handle, letting the propeller did its magic, until it fully stopped with some dying engine sounds, left the seat, walked over to her, squatted down and searched her really nicely and gently by patting here and there, and frankly, searching on a corpse – hers, as I remember, hadn’t started rotting or else I would’ve given up this idea straight away – was by no means a pleasant thing to do, and so I did it quite roughly. But, fortunately, when I got my hand over her trousers pocket, where people tended to put all sort of things in, I found her phone. And I slid it out and unlocked it by tardily holding up her right hand and kind of unwillingly pressing her right thumb against the sensor on the bottom of the phone; not because I found it disgusting to touch a corpse, but the spooky feeling I got when I realized she was still talking to me a moment ago.

Behind the lock screen was exactly what I had been looking for, an electronic map, a detailed map with the sea route from the beach to a dock on an island due east to Port Aroma drawn out on it, and I thought it would be better for me to stick to her plan if possible as she hadn’t pointed out where that dangerous outlying island currently surrounded by military vessels was on it. And for that to happen, now I needed to know my current location. And after a few more pats, I was sure there was nothing else helpful on her. So I rummaged around the ship and heaved out every drawers and every secret compartments I could find, leaving no stones unturned, the drawers and compartments looked as empty as a granary after a famine though.

Then I prayed for help and sat on the floor to think as the boat was floating around along the growing wrath of the waves, causing it to rise and sink every now and then, and every time when a wave smashed at the side of the boat, some splashes would mysteriously end up in my mouth and I had to spit it out; I could still recall the saltiness of seawater for quite a long while after that. But that didn’t last for too long.

As I had had enough of the seawater-end-up-in-my-mouth thing, I hissed and got to my feet. I wasn’t expecting anything when I looked around. But when I did, I caught sight of the beach that we were on. I guessed the waves had brought me back there. And to me, it’s like a miracle, or even something like a deus ex machina that would only appear in a novel. So I laughed and screamed while throwing my hands up like I had just won a game seven, “Thanks, God, for saving my life!”