Silence.
He pushed the stepstool to the edge of the barn, eager to get to May, when four boots walked by, just inches from his head. They stopped at the septic system. One of the soldiers spied the stepstool and yanked it out from under the barn.
“What about this?” he asked.
The other soldier took it into his hands and felt its girth.
“Nah. Too light.”
The soldier bent down and pushed the stepstool back under the barn, and complained, “what the…” when it wouldn’t go back in, and pushed harder. The stepstool was hitting Winston in the head and shoulder. He shifted out of the way and the stepstool went back under.
“What about these concrete blocks?”
“It smells like shit over here!”
“Must a been that same fuckin’ gook. I remember seeing him clean out them toilets a few days ago. Must a emptied them buckets of shit water here.”
“Yeah, but I could a sworn I saw him bring them outside the fence. Kinda felt bad for the little dude.”
“Fuck him. Major’s gonna make him suffer.”
“Yeah, these’ll do just fine.”
Winston listened to the impeccable English that these soldiers spoke, and watched them pluck the concrete blocks off the wooden pallets.
“Get a couple more guys, and grab them pallets, too.”
Winston thought surely that their deception was over as he watched the soldiers’ feet systematically uncover his handiwork. It took only a few minutes for the work to be done. One pallet was removed, and then the other, and Winston felt his stomach in his throat.
“You see this?”
“What is it?”
“I dunno. Maybe an old septic system?”
“House is old as shit. Doesn’t matter anyway — we’re outta here in the morning.”
The last two soldiers carted off the pallets, and Winston slowly emerged from the protection of the barn. The soldiers had all gathered at the lakeshore, where he assumed that Woo-jin was being drowned. He felt sorry for his new friend, but he had May to save, and she was his only priority. He put the stepstool down in front of the window, but as he slid it up, Captain Jennings walked through the barn door with three soldiers.
“Charge the drone batteries to full capacity.”
“Yes, Sir,” came from several voices.
Winston waited several minutes, listening to the soldiers move the boxes of drones out of the barn and to the driveway. He was vulnerable out there in the open, and anxious to get to the safety of the apartment, and to May. When he thought he heard the last soldier exit the barn, he checked again, slowly raising his head just enough to get a look inside the barn. Save for the crate, the barn was empty. He silently crept through the window and closed it behind him. The barn doors were left wide open and the soldiers charging the drones were busy setting them up and running power cords, while the remainder of the camp was preoccupied with Woo-jin. Winston crouched low and moved to the apartment door, opened it, thankful that he didn’t have to kick it in, and was shocked at what he found. Blood. And lots of it.
May was swaddled on the bed, wrapped in a blood-soaked blanket. She was unconscious, but alive. Winston gently peeled away the blanket to reveal a bullet wound in the upper thigh of her left leg. She wore only a pair of boxer briefs and Love t-shirt, and she had used the .22 rifle’s barrel and the George Michael t-shirt as a splint and tourniquet, the word Faith showing prominently.
“Good girl. May, if you can hear me, I’m gonna move you ‘round a bit. Gotta check on this here wound — see if the bleedin’ stopped.”
She stirred a little and mumbled, “I don’ wanna get up yet,” while Winston straightened her legs flat on the bed.
“There you are. Stay with me now.”
He unwound the tourniquet only a few rotations when the wound erupted and sprayed blood onto his face. He quickly retightened it, but her leg still bled.
“Ow!”
“Shhh, now. Soldiers still outside.”
“It hurts.”
“You done good, May, with the tourniquet.”
She fell unconscious again when he lifted her leg up to check for an exit wound. He felt all around her leg but didn’t find one. He knew by the amount of blood that the bullet had hit an artery, but there was a chance that it had only nicked it. God help them if the artery had been severed — that would require surgery, and their surrender. There was just no way of knowing the scope of the damage until he could remove the tourniquet without her bleeding out. He shifted her body and raised her legs to both keep the blood loss minimal and lower the risk of her going into shock, and he rifled through their meager collection of medical supplies. They did bring a few medicines into the apartment — adhesive bandages, some Neosporin-type salve and isopropyl alcohol — but not much more than that — nothing that could be used on a wound like hers — not enough to quell the bleeding if Woo-jin’s bullet had severed an artery, and Jesus there was blood still leaking through the tourniquet. He scratched under his cap, trying not to recall the memories of Vietnam and Tran and his own wound that nearly killed him. He stood there alone, a desperate and conflicted man.
When he opened the curtain, he found a wide swath of blood near the back corner of the apartment where she had hunkered down, where it had seeped through the floorboards — and found the bullet hole just above the metal hurricane shutters. Winston guessed that the bullet ricocheted off the back wall and struck her. He tried to gauge the amount of blood loss by the stains on the floor, bed, and clothes, but he couldn’t. It was just a lot.
He bent to her unconscious ear, and whispered, “May, I gotta go out an’ see if I can find help. I have an idea. Stay with me an’ I’ll be back. I love you.”
He kissed her on the lips and left the apartment. Praying that the soldiers wouldn’t see him in the broad daylight, Winston bolted to the low-hanging branch, put the stepstool down, pulled himself up, reached down and plucked the stepstool off the ground, and scurried over the fence. He plopped down on the other side and hid the stepstool, painfully aware that he had no way of knowing if May’s condition would worsen while he went for help.
He ran off through the cover of the woods along the property and fence line, toward the shoreline. The soldiers were vulgarly loud, taunting and insulting Woo-jin, giving Winston cover. He saw his beloved truck and its crushed bed, and wondered if Med’s .357 magnum was still there. Crouching and cat-like, he crept to the lake’s edge and saw his friend face up on the ground, his arms and legs spread-eagle under the two pallets that were laden with what Winston estimated to be three hundred pounds of cement cinder blocks, and his head submerged in Robin Lake. The soldiers hooted and snorted as Woo-jin pulled his head from beneath the water’s cold surface and gasped for air. He held it there for a few seconds before disappearing back under the surface. It was only a matter of time before his strength would give out and he would drown.
Winston felt a rage build inside him, wishing he could do something for Woo-jin, who only had compassion in his heart. He silently prayed for the young man, but his primary allegiance was with May. As he turned to leave, he saw the one-eyed North Korean soldier bend down and pull Woo-jin’s head out from the water. Winston appreciated the soldier’s empathy, and slinked quickly away in search of medical supplies.
But this is actually what Dong-joo said to Woo-jin:
“I knew your girlfriend’s face looked familiar and now I remember why. It was you who did this to me. You took my eye. My only regret is that I was unable to finish her off. But when I get back to Sajik-dong, I’m gonna find her, fuck her, and kill her and her entire family.”