by Zanz » Fri Jul 28, 2017 6:13 pm
Ruluos Nickle & Cobalt Company (RN&C Co.) Mine Number 36, Near Ruluos, Island of Kamphon, Cifutingan
Suy Ponleak blinked back stinging sweat as his eyes adjusted to the harsh sunlight of the surface. His arms and face were pale from several years working the RN&C mine, but you couldn't tell - those pale and strong limbs were covered in a layer of dirt and grime and sweat so thick as to make Ponleak look like an Asliman from Talmoria. Ponleak's thin frame was covered in taught, lean muscle, but his ribs and bones poked against the skin, and scabs and scars covered the boy's twelve year old limbs and back.
As Ponleak stood in the sunlight, the Crew Leader caught sight and yelled to him to get moving. Ponleak's animal brain remembered the sting of the whip that'd given him those scars, and his feet took him forward in compliance without any conscious recognition of the change.
All around Ponleak other boys moved, too. Kamphonese boys were lucky to live past sixteen in the mines, and Mine Number 36 was particularly bad - fourteen years was what Ponleak had to look forward to.
As the boys moved from the mine shaft toward the mine camp, they were passed, going the other direction, by the second shift. The work leaders had the mine operating at top efficiency - two shifts of fifty boys, twelve hours long, led by crew leaders who were apparently chosen for their ingeniously creative cruelty. Ponleak had seen a boy of ten pushed into an unstable shaft and the supports kicked out, and his closest friend at nine had been starved to death in isolation for hoarding a particularly rich piece of ore.
This group of boys on second shift was particularly young, a new crop had arrived in the evening while first shift was underneath, no doubt. Ponleak remembered his arrival. He'd been sold to the miners by his own stepfather, a nasty Cifu who'd raped and married his mother when his father had died in a riot near Suong when he was six. He'd been at Mine Number 36 for nearly five years now, and still he could remember the face of that man, that man who'd stolen his mother. Ponleak wondered if any of these new boys had come from Suong, like him.
His wandering mind must have been apparent, as the Crew Leader was on him in an instant.
"Was wron' witchou, boy?" His mouth was sprayed with ragged and rotted teeth, a haphazard collection of browned and mossy gravestones. "Got yer firs' hard on for one o' dem?" He nodded, smirking, at the second shift boys. The Crew Leader lifted his arm high and brought his fist down on Ponleak's left ear, leaving the world spinning and bells ringing in Ponleak's head.
"Ge' back in line, fucko. You ain' gon' be dickin' any o' dem down, you eat, breath, an' shit nickle an' cobalt fo' the RN an' C. You ain' got a momen' ta use tha' lil' pecker or I ain' done mejob." As he stopped to breath and contemplated harmonizing the symphony of bells in Ponleak's head with a snap hit to the right ear, Ponleak blinked as the Crew Leader's hand went, instead, to his own jaw, where his cheek had just exploded in a rain of bone and hot, sticky blood.
"Urngggg?" the Crew Leader asked through his shattered face, unsure of what was transpiring. "Urngggg?" he asked again, guessing that no one had responded because they simply hadn't heard him.
The entirety of the camp had stopped dead and was looking at the Crew Leader. The boys, their Crew Leaders, the Cifu work leaders, everyone stared at Ponleak and the man with half a face, Ponleak doubled over in fear, the Crew Leader staring back in stunned confusion.
Shots rang out, and more crew leaders began to explode, their blood and bone striking the startled and blackened boys, most of whom suspected a trick, and stayed very still. The new blood, the boys delivered overnight from Suong and Khŭm Sráng, reacted with in various ways. Some shit themselves, which was not an uncommon occurrence in the mine anyway, and they were basically unnoticed. Some began to cry, perhaps never having seen a man die before, or perhaps having never been in the midst of a battlefield before, or perhaps both, or perhaps simply having wanted to cry for some time but not having felt the freedom to do so around so many others who were not crying. Some ran about, darting between the exploding crew leaders and work leaders, a few with destinations in mind, but none with much success.
The firestorm was ended in a moment, though it felt to Ponleak like hours. The Crew Leader had stopped asking "Urngggg?" and had instead bled to death, the bullet lodged in his lower left jaw having proved too much for him to handle. The Crew Leader's friends, too, were in various states of death when a small group of Kamphonese men - seventeen, eighteen, nineteen years old, and the oldest Kamphonese men many of the boys had ever seen, descended into the mine entryway carrying the rifles that had so violently expelled their loads into the Cifus' heads moments ago.
One of the men walked forward to Ponleak, who still stood holding his left ear, and who had not heard any of the gunshots over his bells. Those bells were clearing, now.
"Hello," said the man. "I'm sorry about that. My name is Preap Rith. These are my friends. We're here to take you home."
Just a bunch of shit.