Necropath by Eric Brown Read Free Book Online Page A

she remembered the standpipe under
which she and her sister had washed when they were little girls.
Stripped down to their knickers and sharing a cracked sliver of soap
between them, they had laughed and played under the great surging
column of cold water. Those had been good times, life in a small
village on the border with Cambodia, and she wondered how it had come
to this. So many things might have happened to make things different.
Their mother had died when Sukara was five, and she had looked after
her sister while their father worked in the fields. She took Pakara
to school with her in the mornings, a little sleeping bundle strapped
to her back, and then worked in the fields with her father in the
afternoons. Later, when Sukara was twelve, she worked in a small
factory in a neighbouring town, sewing dresses for the city while
Pakara worked with her father. She wished that she could have worked
in the fields instead of the factory, but her father said that they
needed the money. Sukara resented her sister the privilege of being
with her father in the afternoons, and grew jealous of the close
relationship that had developed between her father and Pakara over
the years. Her little sister was the pretty one, lighter skinned than
Sukara and with big, round eyes, unlike Sukara’s Chinese eyes.
She was her father’s favourite; that much was obvious. He said
that she reminded him of her mother. Sukara told herself that it was
not her sister’s fault, and that she should not feel jealous
because of it.
    She would never forget the day a farm labourer
rushed into the factory and told her that her father was dead—killed
in the blades of a tractor’s plough. She remembered her
reaction—a sadness, yes, but at the same time a
stomach-churning apprehension about what would happen next.
    Her father owed money to the landowner he had
worked for, gambling debts he had never told his daughters about.
Sukara sold their hut, but still they
owed money. Her wages were taken from her every week, and her sister
was forced to work in the fields all day. They lived in a communal
hut on the farm, eating just two meagre meals a day. Pakara was often
beaten for not working hard enough, and Sukara set off to work in the
factory before dawn and did not get home until after dark. For years
and years she hardly saw the sun.
    It was Pakara’s idea to run away. One night,
after watching a film on the communal vid-screen about a young boy
who worked his way up from being a beggar to owning a factory in
Bangkok, Pakara had said to Sukara, "We must leave here.
Tomorrow night we take the train to Trat. Then we take another train
to Bangkok. I know times, okay? Don’t worry." Sukara had
agreed, nodded her head in wordless wonder at her little sister’s
audacity.
    She was sixteen when she saw Bangkok for the first
time, Pakara just ten. The films had not prepared her for the noise
and the smell and the crowds of the city. Pakara had managed to steal
fifty baht from the commune kitty, but even eating just one meal a
day it soon ran out. They walked the streets in the tourist area of
Patphong, begging for money and food. For two nights they slept in
alleys, growing hungrier as the hours passed. There were other street
kids begging too, and others who went with rich farangs. Her sister watched them, then dragged Sukara to the bar where the
street kids worked. Her little sister talked to the owner, and then
miraculously they were given a meal and a hot shower, and told to sit
at a table in the bar. Men came and talked to them, bought them
drinks, strange bitter tasting stuff that made Sukara laugh, and then
be sick. Late that night an old Westerner took Pakara’s hand
and led her from the bar. Pakara gestured for Sukara to follow, and
whispered to the farang, who glanced at Sukara and didn’t seem pleased that she was
coming too. He took them to a hotel room and, while Sukara watched,
he undressed