Free Orchid House by Cindy Martinusen Coloma

doorway. It was the young man—a boy himself, really—who had killed the boy from Barangay Mahinahon.
    Manalo strode the steps between them and smoothly pulled the knife from his belt. “We do not disrespect our dead,” he said as the blade entered the young man’s stomach, slicing through his liver and back out with such ease that Manalo was reminded how without even a thought, a man was so easily dead.
    The other men jumped back as blood spurted from what looked like the splitting of an abdomen, they’d been so close.
    The boy held his stomach, blood spilling between fingers, then went to his knees. His mouth gasped like a fish pulled from the water. Manalo thought of Timeteo’s desire to fish more in retirement. They would never get to retire.
    The young man fell beside the corpse. Turning his head, he stared into the empty expression of his victim. It could take time, this young man’s death. Manalo thought to finish him, a cut to the heart or neck, but now it was too late. The brutality would turn the other men’s shocked fear to terror if he jumped on the kid for another blow, however merciful his intention.
    The suffering was excruciating. The others stood staring at the young man dying on the ground. None moved to help him. The boy cried tears but not words.
    Manalo knelt down and took off his jacket, pressing it into the boy’s wound. The boy gasped, and his body shook beneath Manalo’s hand. Warm blood quickly soaked through the material. And then the boy was dead.
    Manalo stood in the silent room. He knew all eyes were staring at him, but he didn’t look toward any of them. “Do not let anything like this happen again. Discipline your men.”
    â€œYes, Comrade Manalo.”
    â€œTake a photograph of your man there, and in two months’ time send it to the family of the boy at Barangay Mahinahon. Do not sign it from us, but make it evident without confession that we have done this for the innocent slaughter of their kin. It will not help, not really. A terrible mistake was made here today, and we may all pay for it. But do what I say nonetheless.”
    Everything in its box, he thought. Organized mayhem.
    Or perhaps nothing was organized at all, but all a form of mayhem.
    Manalo and his men walked for a long while without speaking; then their spirits slowly roused and the mood eventually changed. They had participated in and seen too much death for it to cast lasting clouds over them.
    They stopped for a Coke, and Manalo used the comfort room to wash his hands. He returned to hear Frank telling some animated story.
    â€œLet’s go,” Manalo said.
    â€œBack to the safe house?” Paco asked.
    Manalo shook his head and slapped Paco’s back. “No, to see Bruce Willis and Die Hard 2 .”

FIVE

    T hey stood beside a rural highway with Julia’s luggage stacked in the tall grass as the bus spewed out a hefty burst of exhaust before deserting them there. From the windows, dark eyes stared and an old woman waved good-bye.
    â€œWhere are we?” Julia looked from one end to the other of the long stretch of asphalt road. The dark gray highway cut through a path of lush vegetation that crept along both shoulders. Behind the shrubs, rows and endless rows of tall coconut trees dwarfed the foliage that grew taller than her own height.
    â€œWe are at the outskirts of the hacienda,” Raul said.
    Julia felt a flutter through her stomach. That close.
    Raul carried the heavy pieces of luggage, struggling with their weight across the street toward a small wooden structure nearly overgrown by the encroaching jungle. Julia followed with her own purse and satchel, feeling the ache in her shoulder of two long days of travel since she left San Francisco International Airport.
    Inside the shed, Raul picked up a walkie-talkie from a slot beneath a lone bench and talked into it, then got a staticladen response.
    â€œOur ride will be here