If We Survive

CHAPTER NINE

Pastor Ron had been beaten badly. His glasses were gone. His eyes were dull. His mouth hung open. His face was covered in blood and bruises. He couldn’t walk on his own anymore—that’s why the gunmen were dragging him. His feet went out behind him weakly as they hauled him down the alley. He wasn’t even trying to move on his own steam. He was barely conscious.

Nicki screamed, “Oh no! Oh no! Oh no!”

At the sound of her voice, one of the two rebels glanced up at us on the balcony. He smiled. It was a grim, terrible smile. I knew in my heart that we were finished. All of us.

Her voice high and thin and filled with tears, Nicki cried, “They’re not going to kill him, are they? Are they? They can’t just kill him.”

“No, no, they won’t do that,” said Jim.

Palmer looked around, looked at Meredith. I saw their eyes meet and I could almost hear the ideas passing silently between them. Of course they were going to kill him. That’s exactly what they were going to do. And once Mendoza had shed blood, once he’d killed one of us—and a clergyman, no less—he would have to kill us all. He had nothing to gain by keeping the rest of us alive to bear witness to what he had done.

Desperately, without thinking, I shouted at Palmer, “Do something! You have to do something!”

Palmer only sneered at me as if that were the stupidest thing he’d ever heard. I wanted to slug him.

But Meredith said softly, “There’s nothing he can do, Will. There’s nothing any of us can do.”

Whatever I was going to shout next died on my tongue. I knew if Meredith said this, it was true.

Nothing we can do. The idea was horrible to me.

I turned and looked down helplessly into the alley.

The soldiers dragged Pastor Ron directly under us. One of them barked orders to the two gunmen who were drinking against the wall. The drunken gunmen snapped to unsteady attention. The one with the bottle tossed it into the dust. Then both men fell in step with the other two rebels. All four of them continued to march Pastor Ron toward the alley’s far end.

Nicki kept screaming and crying, “What are they going to do? What are they going to do?”

Jim kept saying, “They can’t… They won’t… They can’t just…”

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t say anything anymore. I felt as if there were a rock in the middle of my throat. Pastor Ron had come to our church about six years ago, when I was ten. I remembered him visiting the Sunday school to tell us Bible stories. He was always really nice and funny with little kids and we loved him. I remembered him shaking my hand on the receiving line after the service and telling me how much I’d grown. I remembered him saying the prayers at my grandfather’s funeral…

And now—now there was nothing we could do for him.

We stood on the balcony and watched as the four rebel gunmen dragged him to the end of the alley. There, they turned the corner around the church and went out of sight.

I wanted to pray, but I didn’t know what to pray. I just kept thinking the name of God over and over again. Finally, I just held my breath. I guess we all held our breaths. It felt to me as if the world itself had held its breath.

A long, silent second passed.

Then there was gunfire—and Nicki screaming.