Gone Tomorrow

into the shot at the top of the frame and slipped a folded square of cloth under the guy’s head. The figure was Lila Hoth. No question about it. The video definition was not great, but there was no mistaking her. The hair, the eyes, the way she moved.
    The square of cloth was probably a towel.
    I said, “I just saw you.”
    “With the pad? It’s necessary, to avoid self-inflicted injury. And it puts their heads at an angle. It tempts them to look.”
    “At what?”
    “Keep watching.”
    I glanced around the room. My three temporary colleagues were all still working. They were all focused hard on their own business.
    On my screen nothing happened for close to twenty seconds. The taxi driver wailed away, silently. Then Svetlana Hoth stepped into the frame from the side. She was unmistakable, too. The fireplug body, the blunt steel-gray hair.
    She had a knife in her hand.
    She crawled up on the rock and squatted beside the guy. She stared up at the camera for a long second. Not vanity. She was judging its angle, trying not to block its view. She adjusted her position until she was crouching unobtrusively in the angle made by the guy’s left arm and the side of his chest.
    The guy was staring at the knife.
    Svetlana leaned forward and to her right and placed the tip of the blade on a spot about half-way between the guy’s groin and his navel. She pressed down. The guy jerked uncontrollably. A fat worm of blood welled out of the cut. The blood looked black under the lights. The guy screamed on and on. I could see that his mouth was forming words. No! and Please! are clear in any language.
    “Where was this?” I asked.
    Lila Hoth said, “Not far from Kabul.”
    Svetlana moved the blade up toward the guy’s navel. Blood chased it all the way. She kept it moving. Like a surgeon or a wholesale butcher, casual and practiced and expert. She had made similar cuts many times before. The blade kept on moving. It stopped above the guy’s sternum.
    Svetlana put the knife down.
    She used her index finger and traced the line of the cut. Blood lubricated its progress. She pressed down and put her finger right in the cut, to the first knuckle. She slid it up and down. She paused occasionally.
    Lila Hoth said, “She’s checking that she’s all the way through the muscle wall.”
    I said, “How do you know? You can’t see these pictures.”
    “I can hear your breathing.”
    Svetlana picked up the knife again and returned to the places where her finger had paused. She used the tip of the blade quite delicately and nicked through what seemed to be minor obstructions.
    Then she sat back.
    The taxi driver’s belly was open, like a zipper had been pulled. The long straight cut gaped a little. The wall of muscle was ruptured. It was no longer able to hold back the pressure from inside.
    Svetlana rocked forward again. She used both hands. She worked them into the cut and parted the skin quite carefully and rooted around inside. She was in there up to her wrists. She tensed and squared her shoulders.
    She lifted out the guy’s intestines.
    They made a shining, glistening pink mass about the size of a soft soccer ball. Coiled, sloppy, moving, wet and steaming.
    She laid the mass on the guy’s chest, quite gently.
    Then she slid off the rock and stepped out of the frame.
    The camera’s unblinking eye stared on.
    The taxi driver looked down in horror.
    Lila Hoth said, “Now it’s just a matter of time. The cut doesn’t kill them. We don’t sever any important vessels. The bleeding stops quite fast. It’s about pain and shock and infection. The strong ones resist all three. They die of hypothermia, we think. Their core temperature is compromised, obviously. It depends on the weather. Our record is eighteen hours. People say they’ve seen two full days, but I don’t believe them.”
    “You’re crazy, you know that?”
    “That’s what Peter Molina said.”
    “He saw this?”
    “He’s on it. Keep watching. Fast forward, if you like. Without the sound it’s not so much fun anyway.”
    I checked all around the room again. Three people, working hard. I put the fat hand on the fast forward button and clicked. The picture leapt into fast motion. The taxi driver’s head moved back and forth through a tiny jerky arc.
    Lila Hoth said, “Normally we don’t do this one at a time. It’s better to have a sequence. The second guy waits until the first guy dies, and so on. It builds up the dread. You should see them, just