Chapter 5 Occupied Territory
OCCUPIED TERRITORY
Thirty-three years ago …
A few of the villagers chase, but Mei Chi has a head start and they don’t really want to catch her.
Just scare her off. She is soon able to reach the woods.
They can’t follow her so easily there, or perhaps aren’t willing to venture among the trees after her.
If she really were a demon, that would be foolish of them.
When her lungs and legs burn too much to keep going, she stumbles to a halt and bursts into tears.
She shouts at the trees for a while, demanding to know what is wrong with her. They don’t answer. Nothing makes sense. She thinks about sleeping, doesn’t dare, is afraid to have more nightmares.
Slowly, Mei Chi gets to her feet. It is past noon, now. She cannot stay here forever. Numb, exhausted, dehydrated, hips and feet aching, she limps barefoot through the woods, seeking a way out, some kind of path.
She gets lucky, again. Eventually, she emerges from the woods at a paved crossroads.
One path is unmarked; the other has signs pointing toward the city.
Mei Chi looks northward, where the unpaved path winds into denser trees and stubby hills.
She does not know how to live out there.
She has vague memories of a farm, and maybe fishing, but they are truly vague, and anyway that is untamed land. Not a tilled and managed farm.
She looks southward, where buildings rise in the distance.
Hong Kong belongs to the Japanese, or so the village man told her. She has a sense of what that means, understands the vague concept of war, even if “Japan” as such doesn’t conjure up any associations. War sounds bad, but surely the city will be calmer now it has surrendered.
Not like she has any better options, either.
She sets off walking, keeping her gaze on the buildings ahead.
Mei Chi soon figures out why the man warned her against going to Hong Kong.
It takes at most an hour and a half to walk to the city boundary, winding through the rural New Territories. She doesn’t know at the time how lucky she is not to encounter soldiers.
The corpses are the first thing she sees here. Corpses in the streets and alleys, corpses on the boardwalks and slumping against doorframes. Corpses piled on corpses in great stinking mounds of flesh.
War has left its mark.
Oddly, the sight of death doesn’t bother her, and she isn’t sure if that’s a bad thing or not. But it does make her cautious, because where there are bodies, there are also killers and weapons.
Many of the bodies have a warding fu talisman stuck on them, deterring any ghosts from arising.
In some cases, multiple bodies are arranged in a large pile or pit, with one enormous fu talisman on the lot.
Occasionally she spies captured monks standing over mass graves, being forced to pray and ward to the point of exhaustion.
The Japanese have been efficient in their takeover. They do not want the dead interfering with occupation; such ghosts would wreak terrible vengeance. It is almost admirable, this level of organization.
She picks her way around corpses and ashen-faced pedestrians, none of whom meet her eye, and sticks to the shadows.
Soldiers are everywhere, now. Men in uniform practice drills in courtyards, congregating outside the bigger buildings like the hospitals and government offices.
If any civilians catch their attention, it is a toss of the die whether they murder, beat, ignore, or drag someone away.
Mei Chi, after watching in horror as a pair of soldiers batter an old man to death for no discernible reason, decides to exercise extreme caution. She flits from alley to alley, avoiding the main roads.
She is still hungry and thirsty, and has no money.
Not that it matters, since no shops are open.
Money is likely worthless, too. She manages to find a shop front that has been bombed to rubble.
Most of the foodstuffs are destroyed or looted.
She searches anyway, picking through slag and brick dust to find a jug of juice, a few dried mushrooms and—immense treasure! —two small jars of salted fish.
She drains the juice, finishes the mushrooms, and is midway through the first jar of fish when she spies an elderly lady, small and wiry, peering at her through one of the shattered windows.
Unlike the man at the village, the elderly lady smiles, open and warm. She gestures at Mei Chi and says, “Any to share for a hungry old woman?”
Mei Chi hesitates. She’s hungry herself, and one jar wasn’t enough food. But the elderly lady is even leaner than she, and twice as frail.
Reluctantly, she nods and holds up the last jar. “Yours if you want it, grandmother.”
“Thank you. Such a kind heart.” The elderly woman steps inside with delicate agility and crouches next to her, two souls taking shelter in a destroyed building.
“I am not so fast as I used to be. I cannot outrun the young people who are looking for food.” She pops the lid, pulls out the scrap of fish.
“My name is Poon Li Fan. How are you called?”
“Chen Mei Chi,” she says, after a moment. “I think.”
“You think?”
“My memory is not working well. I woke up on the beach some miles away and walked here by myself. No family, no money. I remember some things, but very little.”
“Ah.” Li Fan nods around a mouthful of fish. “Sometimes people have injuries to their head which does this. More common in war. I am sure it will come back to you.”
“A man told me the Japanese took over months ago,” Mei Chi says, trying to shove away the memory of holding that man’s head underwater in a fit of fury. “Why is it still so bad here, in the city?”
“Occupation is different from war,” Li Fan says. “The soldiers control the city, but cannot feed it. Many people are starving, and the government is paralyzed. Everything is chaos. Has been for months, will be for years.”
Outside the shop, gunfire ricochets and a person screams. Mei Chi folds tight into a corner and doesn’t move again until the street is fully quiet. Li Fan does the same, pausing her chewing to huddle in perfect stillness.
When it is safe again, Mei Chi says, “What should I do while I wait for my memory to heal?” She thinks, What if my memory never heals? but doesn’t dare ask that, in case saying it aloud somehow makes it happen.
“Survive,” Li Fan says, bluntly. “That is all anybody is trying to do right now. Stay alive, think about today only. Cannot remember the past? Fine, never mind. You are not living in the past, you are living right now.” She points in the direction of the street.
“The present out there is our danger. The past cannot kill you because it is done with.”
“But how?” Mei Chi says, desperate. “How do I survive when I do not know anything and the world is so dangerous?”
“There is Kowloon Walled City,” Li Fan says, with a sidelong glance. “All of Hong Kong is dangerous right now, but the Japanese will not go in there.”
“The Walled City?” Mei Chi echoes. She doesn’t know of the place, but then who can say what her memory has forgotten.
“It may have a bad reputation, but do not judge it too harshly,” Li Fan says, mistaking the reason for her question.
“Kowloon is crowded and dirty, but so is the rest of Hong Kong right now. At least no one will shoot you just for walking around.” She sighs.
“I am going there myself, if you want to come with me. I was already heading there but had to stop and eat.”
Mei Chi thinks about it. Why not, she has no better idea for where to go or what to do.
“Is it far?” she asks.
“Not at all. It is just a district like any other. Come, I will show you.” Li Fan gets up and leads her to a different window, pointing in the distance.
“See that cluster of buildings? We walk toward it, then circle around to the left. A few blocks behind that, and just out of sight, is the Walled City.”
“How do we get through the wall that surrounds it?”
Li Fan beams. She is so friendly, so genuine despite the harshness of their surroundings. “There is not much wall these days, little miss. Not anymore. It used to be an old fort, but now it is just like a neighborhood.”
“I see.”
“The Japanese have been rebuilding the wall, to keep the ghosts inside, but it is early days, and at the moment there are more gaps than bricks,” Li Fan continues. “If you reach the edge of it, you can just stroll in and—”
A bullet careens through the window. The back of Li Fan’s head blossoms like a bouquet of squirming gray and pink roses, like a gift nobody ever wants, and lands all over Mei Chi’s arms and face. All she can smell is blood and brains.
Time cracks like a dropped egg.
Skips in her memory.
Men in green khakis with tall boots and long guns, all firing.
A soldier surges up and over the nearest rubble, and her fists move of their own accord.
Catch him.
Her knuckles slam into his eye socket and he sprawls flat from the force of it. She is strong, despite her size.
Hold him.
No. There’s no water, no time, too many. She savagely ignores the intrusive thoughts and runs, instead. Runs, and runs, and runs.
Mei Chi knows only fleeing and dodging for several streets.
Out of the building, covered in red gore that isn’t hers.
Open air feels exposed and unsafe. Back to alleys.
Bare feet pounding, eyes dry. No crying, she’s too dehydrated for tears.
Glass and rubble underfoot, cutting her toes.
Keep going. Her stupid brain thinking: I should have eaten that last jar of fish, after all.
Something else catches the soldiers’ attention—men brawling or fighting, a distraction, doesn’t matter. Most of them peel away. Two keep pursuit, calling out lewd taunts that strike a chill in Mei Chi’s heart. She needs a direction, she can’t flee aimlessly like this.
Keep running, or the past will catch up and kill you, she thinks. Keep running, or you’ll die in the present.
Ahead, she spots the cluster of buildings that Li Fan—who did not deserve such an end—pointed out earlier. Fine, that will do. Anywhere that isn’t here is all she wants. Circle around to the left, just a few blocks away.
She can see it. A sunken mess of low-rise buildings, decaying and decrepit.
The shape of the old fort still visible, some of the walls crumbling and some of them partially rebuilt.
Slums fester within, the shadows and leaning frames beckoning Mei Chi with their promise of no soldiers, no bullets through brains.
So close. She casts a glance over one shoulder. The two men who were still chasing her have stopped, looking disgruntled. They know where she is headed, and don’t care to follow.
For the moment, Mei Chi is too relieved to worry about what that means.
She crosses the boundary, leaping feetfirst into darkness.