Pete Cawdron - Feedback

“Leave me alone,” he cried again, kicking at the loose straw with his feet and flinging another handful of debris at the rat.

Lee kept his wounded hand close to his chest. The muscles in his forearm spasmed as he sought in vain to protect his bloodied hand. His actions were a pathetic attempt at keeping the wound clean and he knew it. He could no more protect his hand than he could demand that the sun rise. Regardless of whether it was Eun-Yong or the revolutions of the planet beneath him, the cruelty of his captors or the rhythms of Earth, Lee came to realize he had no control over his own life, and that realization hurt. For a captain, someone that was in charge of a flight crew and a multi-million dollar helicopter, this was a sobering thought, bringing tears to his eyes. His heart sank in despair. This ache was a pain no other could ever inflict on him: it came from his own realization of helplessness.

“Please,” Lee said, pleading with the rat.

As a pilot, he had exquisitely tuned control over his world with just the slightest twist of his wrist. Rocking to the left as he sat there in the cockpit of his Sea King helicopter would cause reality to obey his slightest whim. Eight tons of steel would sway gently through the air in response to his touch, following his fleeting thoughts as though the craft were an extension of his body. Just the lightest of touches on the pedals would cause corrections, minute or sweeping, allowing him to perform aerial ballet. He’d been a god in the sky. Here in this prison, he had been cast down out of heaven, a mere mortal, naked and bleeding.

“Please,” he said again, his voice breaking, barely a whisper in the night. The rat seemed to understand. It turned and crawled away, its tail dragging on the ground as it disappeared silently into the shadows.

The guards continued their routine outside, and each time they marched past on the gravel Lee listened for an extra set of footsteps, but there was only the soft rustle of the breeze through the trees looming over the barracks.

Had something happened?

Had one of his rescuers been caught?

His mind raced in panic. They couldn’t have been caught, he reasoned, as there would have been a flurry of activity from the other soldiers in the camp. Instead, a few lonely guards trudged through the night. They were still coming, he told himself.

What was keeping them?

Peering out through the bars, Lee could see rain beginning to fall. The soft patter was soothing, filling the quiet of the night with a gentle rhythm.

One of the guards marched along the gravel, right on time, but this time he stopped beside the cell. In the dim light, Lee could see the man looking around as he stood there silently in the rain with an old carbine rifle slung over his right shoulder. Casually, the guard stepped off the gravel path and down the concrete steps leading to Lee’s holding cell.

Lee felt his heart pounding in his chest. His hand throbbed. The sound of the key in the lock teased him. He wanted to spring forward and out of the door, but he held his nerve, waiting for the guard to open the rusted lock.

“Come,” a voice said softly in Korean.

Lee crept out of the sunken basement, slipping the heavy overcoat across his shoulders as he stepped out into the rain. Although his left arm was in the coat, he struggled to get his right hand down through the sleeve. Just the slightest of touches against the rough wool sent pain shooting up his arm. He fought to curl his wrist and jimmy the coat on, trying not to let his wounded hand scrape against the inside of the sleeve.

Lee looked at his rescuer.

At first, he didn’t recognize him. The young man’s baby face looked slightly rounded and plain. His hair was hidden beneath a cap, warding off the rain. He didn’t smile. He barely acknowledged Lee at all, treating him with what seemed like disdain.

“I …” Lee began, not sure what he was going to say, but feeling an overwhelming sense of gratitude. Freedom lay a long way off, but to stand on the other side of those bars, no longer humbled by the filthy straw and the low wooden ceiling, made him euphoric, if only for a moment.

“We must hurry,” the soldier said softly.

As the moonlight lit the side of his face, Lee caught a glimmer in his eye, a glimmer he had seen briefly the night before in the light of a fire burning inside an old wooden cabin. This was Sun-Hee’s brother.

“We will help you, but you must help us.”

Lee nodded, walking alongside the young man.

Clouds passed in front of the moon and the ambient light faded.

Rain fell in a light drizzle.

Gravel crunched underfoot, revealing the distinct sound of two men walking slightly out of sync.

Lee stepped to one side and walked on the muddy grass to hide his presence from anyone sleeping in the rude buildings. He kept to the shadows that were cast by the huts, afraid of prying eyes peering out from behind their darkened windows.

“Sun-Hee and my grandfather are waiting by the coast. I will take you there. From there, you must take all of us to the south.”

“Won’t they stop us?” Lee whispered, gesturing at the gate, more concerned about getting out of the camp than getting back to South Korea. To Lee, Seoul seemed as unreachable as Mars or Jupiter. All he could focus on was the next step. Beyond that, chance would play its hand, but until then he wanted to take control of anything he could.

“Ha,” the young man laughed under his breath. “This is a North Korean army camp. We have rice, maize, fish and eggs. We keep peasants out, we don’t keep them in.”

“What about the boy?”

The soldier stopped in his tracks and turned to face Lee as he spoke. “We leave him.”

“No!” Lee replied, surprising himself with the vehemence of his response. “We have to take him with us.”

“He fell from the stars,” the guard replied, his eyes looking up at the clouds billowing across the sky. “If he can travel through space, he can care for himself.”

“He’s just a child,” Lee insisted, trying to keep his voice low. His mind brought back the eerie words the boy had spoken after his torture, speaking of his death. How could the child possibly know anything about Lee, let alone how he would die?

Perhaps he should leave him.

Perhaps he should run from such a dire prophecy?

Perhaps by running he could avert disaster?

There was something about the boy’s face, some innocence that demanded justice.

“He is under guard,” the soldier said, turning and walking on in the rain. “General Gil-Su arrived earlier this evening. Tomorrow, he will take the boy to Pyongyang to see the Great Leader. There is nothing to be done.”

“No,” Lee repeated, keeping his voice low but speaking with determination. He continued on beside the guard, his boots squelching on the sodden grass. “We cannot let that happen.”

“Why would you rescue him?” the soldier asked.

“Why would you rescue me?” Lee asked in reply. “For the same reason I rescued Sun-Hee. Because it is the right thing to do.”

“But if we are caught.”

Lee held up the bloody stumps on his right hand, saying, “Too many people have died, too many people have suffered for all this to be in vain. I’m not sure I buy the whole star-child thing, but that child is in the eye of the hurricane. I can’t leave him to the storm. If they did this to me, what will they do to him?”

“He is in there,” Sun-Hee’s brother said, pointing at a nearby building.

A dim electrical light hung over the door, barely lighting the wooden steps leading to the entrance.

They walked cautiously up to the administration block. Lee wasn’t sure what Sun-Hee’s brother was thinking, but for all his bravado, it was clear he dreaded being caught.