Chapter 10: Run From the Fields Part 1

Mizu could hear the birds chirping as he walked through the jungle-like environment. He felt a sense of ease and comfort with the place. The smells of the location felt different to him. It was not like the artificial air that he always breathed.

He wiped a little bit of sweat from his brow as he stopped walking. He looked at his clothes and noted that they were reasonably used and somewhat dirty. Regardless, the dark blue shirt and green shorts were some of the few things that he had. The overhead trees provided much-needed shade from the heat.

The man continued his walk through the lush green wilderness. His sandals didn’t have to do much to protect his hardened feet. The grass was not that harsh, and his straw hat helped provide protection from the heat and anything that might fall from above.

Mizu had a big smile on his face as he took a deep breath. The smells were unique. They were not artificial but something induced by the environment. Most of the forest consisted of palm trees, but he could recognize one of the trees as the Jackfruit tree.

“Ah, finally found one...” Mizu said to himself, feeling a sense of relief.

He walked up to the tree and could see the line of fruit. The Jackfruit tree was a common tree that grew in Cambodia. It was unique in that it had rather large fruit that actually grew from the trunk. This one was covered in it. He felt inclined to walk to it. The golden light green fruit littered its sides and was ready to be plucked.

The blue sky environment overhead showed Mizu the peace and prosperity of the location. Even though the tree was commonplace, there didn’t seem to be enough. He was well aware of the recent rice farming fields that had cleared out most of these trees. Even the rare, prized Tek Doh trees that had milky fruit were practically gone now.

He pulled out the fruit, took a small pocket knife, and began to carve it open. The golden fruit opened up and revealed its inner side. It was perfectly ripe and had the seeds that he was looking for.

“Ah, perfect...” He said to himself. “I can take these and have them planted near the village. I know the people need food now more than ever...”

A part of Mizu could feel his hunger. He was taking a tremendous risk in leaving the village when the gunmen were holding everyone to work. It didn’t matter anymore. He felt the hunger drive him to eat as much as he could. Knowing his luck, the soldiers would simply gun him down or have him executed if they ever caught him.

Regardless, nature was continuing as if nothing mattered. This portion of the forest was lush and wonderful. He could even see the cause of the aroma. There was a small grove of rumduol flowers that were not that far from him. These bulbous yellow flowers would have three petals to them. They were everywhere in Cambodia. While the scent was far when he reached here, it was naturally most potent at its source. He felt like he could stay here for days. The fruit and the smells had made him appreciate the location more than he ever did in his childhood.

Mizu had accepted his fate. The lives of the villagers had been reduced to nothing. Cambodia had seen better days, and now he felt that he wanted to return to the Earth. He remembered the woman that he loved was taken and never seen again months ago. If he could at least get these seeds to the village, then his death would be a well-remembered one. Part of him even felt inclined just to run away entirely. For now, he had to stop.

He started to eat as much as he could as his hands dove into the meat of the fruit. Each scoop went into his mouth, relishing every bite. The sweet taste permeated his mouth. At this rate, he would have to grab another one of the massive pieces of fruit just to haul back to the village.

The man paused for a moment, letting his body naturally enjoy the food he was putting into his body. The birds that were chirping were mere background noise at first but began to permeate his hearing more and more. He could see the white, puffy clouds that were above the treetops. If it weren’t for the gunmen who were most likely looking for him, he would have cherished this place for its serenity.

Suddenly, he heard it. There was a rustling of leaves not far from his location. It would most likely have been an animal at first, but he could tell that it was more than one person coming towards him. He closed his eyes as he held the fruit in his hand. There was nothing that he could do now. Armed with only a pocket knife, it was no match against the AK-47s that the Khmer Rouge soldiers possessed.

“I think I’ll go ahead and rush them...” Mizu told himself quietly. “I’ll die on this spot ... and I’ll see my beloved again.”

He took a deep breath, as he didn’t feel that much fear. He took his pocket knife and rolled it up to his shorts to hide it. He would be caught red-handed with the food that would most likely be confiscated and left to rot in the sheds that nobody was allowed to approach—all to fulfill the quota.

Mizu opened up his eyes to see something that he was unfamiliar with. Two small anthro reptilian-like women came walking out of the bushes. Wearing clothes similar to him, he stood in awe at what he saw. One had a stubby-like snout, while the other one had a pointer one. He didn’t feel afraid upon seeing them. Despite the claws and feathers on them, the women appeared harmless. Regardless, he naturally backed up a little bit. He felt more at ease that these were not the gunmen that were after him.

“Ummm...,” he reacted to them.

“Oh...” One of the women with the stubbier snout said to him. “I ... umm ... I didn’t mean to alarm you...”

Both women stopped and looked at Mizu. He felt a sense of familiarity with them. Any feelings of ill will were gone. Their voices even made them sound innocent, causing him to relax.

“Are the gunmen after you too?” Mizu asked them.

“The gunmen ... yes ... they tried to shoot my friend,” the woman continued. “We are trying to escape them.”

“Me too ... I was thinking of returning to the village. I found food. Are you hungry?”

“Yes! Jenta needs it more than me. Ummm ... my name is Li’lo. My friend here is Jenta.”

Mizu looked at the two of them, kneeling down to them. Their shorter stature made him naturally go down to their level. He offered what was left of his fruit to them.

They almost appeared as dinosaurs in some way. Jenta was the first to walk up to him. She used her clawed hand to grab part of the fruit as she began to munch down on it hard. The juices of the fruit were pouring down to the grassy dirt below.

“Thank you,” Li’lo told him, reaching and grabbing another piece.

“I ... somehow know you two ... but I can’t remember why.”

“I don’t know you,” Li’lo replied as she swallowed her food. “So hungry...”

“I know. Since you’re here, there’s a possibility that the gunmen will come after both of us now. We should ... we should escape together.”

“Yes...” Jenta almost whispered to him. “He is nice to us,” she gestured to Li’lo. “We should go with him.”

“Umm ... ok,” Li’lo replied. “I trust him.”

Mizu still had a large piece of fruit with him as they decided to walk together. He placed his small pocket knife in his pocket, keeping one hand on the large golden fruit. Within less than a minute, Jenta reached up her small, scaly hand as it found its way to Mizu’s. They began to walk further and further away from the Jackfruit tree. A dark gray cloud was overhead, but it still did nothing to block out the sun’s rays.

They were getting through most of the thicket. While the palm trees were very well spaced, it only meant that the sun would continue to pound into them. The opening also meant that the people after them were more likely to spot the three.

“What village do you come from?” Mizu asked Li’lo.

“We always lived in the forest ... we never had any homes,” she replied to him.

“Bad people ... evil people,” Jenta said. “You will keep us safe from them, right?”

“I’ll do my best,” he replied to them. “They’re more powerful ... their evil cannot be stopped ... We have to escape from them.”

Li’lo turned her head and almost her body towards Mizu, using her digitigrade legs and tail to keep moving to the right. Her attention was focused upward towards him.

“We are faster,” Li’lo said. “They will never catch us.”

“I’m more worried about the dogs,” he told her. “Some of the soldiers have dogs that were imported to them. They track those that escape.”

“What will they do to us if they capture us?”

“Depends ... I’ve seen a man that was whipped and beaten over and over again. It’s possible they’ll just shoot us on sight. I don’t know what they would do to us.”

“Have to find shelter ... have to escape,” Jenta said. “I feel safe with him.”

“I have little left for.”

“Then at least guide us to a place where nobody will hurt us,” Li’lo replied.

Mizu nodded. “That’s what I’ll do.”

Jenta gripped Mizu’s hand tighter. “I don’t want to leave this place...”

“We have to, Jenta,” Li’lo replied. “The bad people will probably skin us if they get us. We have to say goodbye to this place ... we have a gui ... OMPH!”

Within less than a second of her talking, it was interrupted as she walked straight into a tree by accident. She was not keeping an eye on her path and smacked straight into it. The large tree was firm as she bounced off of it.

“Ow ... ow ... owie,” Li’lo remarked as she put her scaly hand on her right cheek.

Mizu and Jenta naturally stopped and looked at her. “Are you alright?” he asked her.

“Oh ... I ran right it that one ... oh...”

Mizu smiled at her and tried to hold back his laughter a little bit. “You have to watch where you’re going. I’m surprised that you’ve lived in the forest your whole life and never kept an eye on your path.”

They began to walk together again as Li’lo was trying to shake off the pain. “It happens ... things just bump into me.”

“She likes to run into things,” Jenta replied.

“I do not.”

“Do, too.”

“Do not.”

They both hissed in a serpentine way until Mizu thought he heard something. It was the sound of dogs barking. His heart began to pump harder, as he knew it only met one thing. Even the two women stopped arguing.

“It’s them ... run!” Mizu told them both.

They didn’t need to be told twice. Mizu’s hand let go of Jenta’s while dropping the fruit at the same time. Speed was the key to escaping as his hardened feet ran as hard as he could on the grass.

Mizu could see that Jenta and Li’lo were right behind him. Their nature seemed perfectly attuned to raw speed. Within seconds, the two women were gaining momentum faster than him. All he could see now were their tails that were swinging. Even their small feathers fully retracted to themselves as they sped up.

In the distance, Mizu could hear them. A dog had found their trail. He turned his head momentarily to hear one of the men that had run through into the opening of the lesser bound areas of the forest. They still had a fair amount of distance, but he knew that a rifle round could go far and quite quickly. A well-placed shot could end him.

“Stop!” he could hear a distant voice yell at him from behind. “Stop, or we’ll shoot!”

Mizu wasn’t going to stop as they were running into a green field of grass. In the distance, Mizu could see the Phnom Tumpor Mountains. He already knew that this was bad. He had fewer and fewer trees to help provide cover for him. As he ran, he could see the sky begin to turn darker and darker. The gray sky was getting thicker and thicker. He had no idea what was happening.

The two women had gained enough ground ahead of him as they started to reach some sort of sandy incline from the grassy field. His adrenaline was working overtime. He was staying ahead of the gunmen, but he noticed that the scenery was changing more and more. He turned his head to see that the trees were withering away. It was as if their life force had been drained. The grass was beginning to disappear and replaced with a brown and orange sludge-like substance. The clouds turned into almost an inky black color as a small amount of rain came pouring down.

Before he knew it, Mizu could see that the landscape had been altered. Something was burning his skin as the rain droplets hit him. Something was in the water, and it was hurting him. He could see the women were doing their best, but he suddenly felt that they were far away from him. The land had been reduced to nothing but sand and burnt stomps where the trees were located. The pain kept going as the gunmen stopped chasing him.

“Ah ... make the pain stop...” Mizu cried out as he looked up at the mountains. There was more of the orange sludge that was all around him. It was in the very Earth itself. He reached the sandy bank where the ground inclined. This was where the two women were before they disappeared.

Exhausted and in pain, the environment was no longer what it was anymore. He was gasping for air as he looked back. The forest was dead and gone. It was replaced with a toxic sludge of orange and red that permeated everything. A sense of horror filled his eyes.

“What?” he asked as he turned around and looked at the sandy bank below him. What he saw only horrified him further. He took a step forward and realized that his sandals stepped on something. He looked down and realized that he was standing on a human bone, part of someone’s ribcage.

Shocked, he stepped back and looked at the field below him. The sandy bank was filled with human remains. It must have been thousands of corpses. Skulls, torsos, rotting flesh, and bones were picked clean; this was a dumping ground. He was well aware that this must have been the place that the Khmer Rouge used as a place to dispose of bodies that died growing the food that was impossible to make. The orange sludge even dotted and threatened to consume them.

There were times he felt that the skulls were looking at him. Clothing and arms were sometimes stretched out, almost as if people were begging to have their lives spared before they were killed or murdered by the people who spared no one. He even recalled seeing the remains of a robe that a monk wore. Some of the skeletons were smaller than the others. Dead children were even dumped here.

It was so distracting for him to look at it that even the pain of acidic rains didn’t do enough to stop him. The two women that he knew were long gone and disappeared. His hands went to his mouth as he gasped in shock at everything.

“My ... no...” Mizu replied. Tears were in his eyes as he knew that this was the end.

“ ... It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” a male voice came from behind him. By this time, nothing seemed to take Mizu by surprise as he turned around to look at the person who was talking.

The man that he saw was somebody he felt that he really knew. His pale complexion was dotted with the fact that he wore a black and red uniform. On his hip was a sidearm. The stranger’s hands were tucked neatly behind his back. His smile made Mizu feel uncomfortable, somehow knowing his name.

“Baxton...” Mizu said.

Baxton walked up next to him. The rain seemed to do nothing to this man—it was as if he was made of something else. Mizu could see the gunmen also approach, but they were utterly loyal to this man. They held their AK-47s, while a few seemed to be carrying some sort of body bag with them.

“Art in its purest form...” Baxton said as he pointed to the sandy pit below. “Never have I seen such beauty...”

“These are dead people,” Mizu replied to him. “Innocent people...”

“Yes ... it is. They sacrificed themselves to make Earth and Batrice a better place. Their sacrifices will not be forgotten...” He lightly turned his head. “Bring in the truck!”

Somehow, a truck had pulled up to the bank. Mizu had no idea how it got there, but it backed up and began to lift its cargo bed. He watched as more dead bodies and cadavers were being dumped into the sandy bank below him.

“It’ll look even better now, won’t it?” Baxton asked Mizu.

Dead bodies. Most of them starved to death, being discarded like they were nothing. Among one of them was one that he recognized too well. His hand reached out into the open air.

“Grandma...” Mizu said.

“Hmm ... a hero to Batrice,” Baxton said. “The price of progress is important ... but I do notice a problem. There are ... parasites that live within our society. They run away when they’re supposed to work. I couldn’t help but notice that you were running away from all of this.”

“I had to ... I couldn’t.”

“Shhh...” Baxton remarked as he tried to hush him. He walked up to his other soldiers, keeping his gaze upon him. “It’s alright if you don’t want to be a part of this revolution. But ... there’s one problem in doing all of that. Do you know what the parasites are? Do you know somebody that’s a threat to what we’ll become?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Hmmm,” Baxton nodded. “Well, I’ll give you a hint ... You can join them...”

With that, Baxton reached for his sidearm. He pressed the button to deactivate the safety and aimed his weapon directly at Mizu before pulling the trigger. The last that Mizu heard was a gunshot blast...

Mizu’s eyes snapped awake. He was breathing hard, feeling the pain that was coming from his chest. It went away quickly as he got out of the bed. He realized that he was standing in his barracks room.

“Fucking nightmares...” Mizu said to himself. He was regaining control over his body as his mind was getting reacquainted with reality. He checked the time and realized that it was 0300 in the morning. It was the first time he had a chance to sleep since the last two watches.