Maruti: a followup

He woke up, his gasp loud. Rasping. His throat was dry. It was night time. The sky above him was moving. He was disoriented. No, he was moving. It was bumpy underneath. The car trudged across speed bumps. Good thing he had cushions underneath him. He moved his hands behind him to adjust them and froze. He felt hands. He felt his way up the hands, arms, a torso. His heart chilled. He tried to get up. His legs were like jelly. Again. Nothing. They crumbled back down. Again, he felt the strain in his neck. A third time. He got up. He stumbled and fell onto all fours. He looked in front of him in horror. All around him. Bodies. Cold. Stone cold. Eyes closed, or wide open. They were all dead. Tumbling around like so many things. All in various states of decay. Some were rotting, flies buzzing around, they smelled the worst. Others were fresh, looking almost as if they would wake up any moment now. Peaceful, worried. Scarred, unmarked. Blood caking some of them. Others without any blemishes.

He got up. He was in a truck. He stumbled over, wincing every step, as he stepped on someone, stumbled over to the edge of the truck, and looked out over it. He could see twinkling lights far away. Was that his city? They were far far away from it. His feet were getting chills with every step. His head hurt. Stomach about to hurl.

He thought of his mother. She was probably in bed, she had very little capacity to move these days. His brother. Was this what had happened to him? They had never found the body. He grit his teeth, and waited to approach the final destination. He sat down, started to cross his legs, then the chills got to him, he got up, and tried to have as little contact with the bodies as possible.

It was a long time. He passed out. He woke up in glimpses. Then kept passing out. The hunger, the heat, the weakness. All of it was getting to him.

One by one by one.

The truck jolted to a halt. He was thrown down into the bodies piled up. His nose on someone else’s mouth. The smell, he wanted to pass out. Two men, loud, raucous, getting out. He looked about frantically. He went to the farthest edge of the truck, away from the opening, and put himself under some bodies. Immediately, he wanted to pass out. He stopped breathing in, heart pounding faster, once for his breaths, once for itself, once for its fear. Thump, thump, thump. He sickened a little inside, bile rising to his stomach as he realized what they were doing. They were flinging bodies like sacks of hay onto something. The sound of rolling. Wheels. A wheelbarrow?

He had always wondered where his brother’s body had been. He had loved to imagine that he had been a spy, his brother was his protector. He had loved to imagine that his brother was a spy, a soldier. And he was caught in the crossfire, or captured. Maybe he was even alive. The police had seemed uncaring when they had told him that he had died trying to steal some food. It was the plausible explanation. The reasonable one. But his brother’s life of that little value? Less than the value of some foodstuffs? He hadn’t wanted to believe it. And he had had an excuse. No body. Meant he could be alive.

Splash. The bodies were dumped into the river.