If We Survive

CHAPTER TWELVE

Do you want to know what it’s like to die? What it’s like, I mean, to know that you’re about to die. To know for certain that the end of your life has come—not someday, but now, right now.

Well, let me tell you, because I know.

Once again, the soldiers started screaming at us, prodding us with their gun barrels, striking at us with their fists. Herding us, in other words, back the way we came, out of the hotel room, down the corridor, to the stairs—down to our place of execution.

It all happened very fast. It was all very violent, very confusing.

But here’s the strange thing: inside my mind, it wasn’t fast or confusing at all. Because something happened to me then—something weird. It was because I knew where we were headed; I knew that I was about to die. And somehow, knowing that made my mind feel detached from my body in some way. Even as the rebel gunmen shouted at us and hit us and forced us out the door of the room into the upstairs hall, I felt very quiet inside and all my thoughts were very clear.

Was I afraid? I guess so. Sure. But not as much as you might think—or, at least, not in the way you might think. You might think that going to be executed was the scariest thing that could ever happen, the real-life version of the last scene in a horror movie, the scene where the kid walks through the basement where the monster is hiding somewhere—you know, that kind of jangling, unbearable suspense as you get closer and closer to the place where it’s going to happen.

But instead, I felt sad. Not just a little sad. I felt this huge, huge sadness. Sure, in church we talk about an eternal life and heaven and all that, but I wasn’t in church now—and I was so, so sorry that this life was coming to an end. I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to leave this world. I didn’t want the new school year to begin without me. I didn’t want to miss all the stupid ordinary things that happen in life: you know, just playing games or messaging your friends or going to the beach or whatever. I wanted to see my parents again. I wanted to grow up and go to college and get a job. I wanted to meet my wife and my children. I wanted to live—I wanted to live so badly. And it made my heart feel heavy as lead to know that I wouldn’t, that everything in this world was over for me now, everything here was finished.

We stumbled down the hall, the gunmen shoving us and striking us and shouting. And my eyes turned hungrily in every direction. I wanted to see everything before it was done. I wanted to drink in every small second of life I still had left.

Everything looked different to me now. Everything looked clearer, much clearer, as if I had been watching the world streaming through a bad wireless connection and suddenly was watching it in hi-def or on Blu-ray. The incredible new clarity made even the littlest things seem kind of beautiful. The hall was just a shabby, dark corridor, the walls chipped, the paint peeling, but somehow it seemed like some kind of work of art. I wanted to slow down to appreciate it. I wanted it to last forever.

And the faces—people’s faces—they all looked so amazing. So clear and beautiful. And everyone seemed different to me than they had before.

Like Nicki, for instance. There was Nicki, stumbling down the hall beside me, barely able to stand she was so afraid, barely able to walk. I saw her sobbing and heard her crying out pitifully again and again, “I want to go home! Please! I just want to go home!” And she wasn’t pretty anymore or glamorous, the way she had been. But she just looked so wonderful, like such a wonderful person. I thought about how happy it always made her to dress up and wear jewelry and put on makeup and about the sweet way she would sit with the little girls in the village and teach them to do their hair. It was as if I realized for the first time how great she was, how perfect, really, the one and only perfect Nicki of the world.

And Jim—I saw Jim. The dazed look on his face as the gunmen shoved and jostled him. I could see what a smart guy he was, and how serious he was about wanting the world to be a better place. I was so, so sorry I had yelled at him back in the room because I could see now how good his heart was. The perfect Jim just like Nicki was the perfect Nicki.

I know it sounds weird, but this is what I saw. This is the way the world seemed to me, now that all the little stuff we think about and care about was over, now that there were only seconds left until I was shot to death.

We stumbled down the hall to the stairway. We stumbled down the steps. The stairwell was narrow, the walls chipped and scarred. I wanted to study it, to see every detail, to hold on to every second. My eyes went on moving everywhere, staring at everything.

But it was over too soon. The rebels forced us down into the corridor below. As I came off the last step, I bumped against Meredith and I looked at her now, looked at her face.

Meredith always looked kind of wonderful to me. I guess the truth, I realized now, was that I sort of had a crush on her. Whenever I was around her, I wished I were older, wished I could get her to pay attention to me—pay attention to me as a guy, instead of just a kid. And now, at the end, she looked even better. She looked like one of those things you see that are too beautiful even to describe, like a sunset or a mountain or something. She had her arm around Nicki’s shoulders. She was holding Nicki up, helping her walk to the place of execution, shielding her as best she could by taking the gunmen’s blows on her own back and arms. As always, she was very straight, her eyes clear, her chin up, even as the rebels pushed and slapped and prodded at her. Her lips were moving and I knew she was praying—praying calmly, full of confidence. She had faith and courage even now.

The rebels shoved us out the cantina’s back door. The next moment I was out in the alley, blinking and squinting in the bright daylight, still looking around me, still trying to take in every moment of life that I had left to live.

I looked up and saw the sky: big black majestic thunderstorms blowing across the last patches of blue. I saw the church bell tower rising nobly against those racing clouds. I saw the balconies of the hotel above, the dust of the alley swirling up below my feet, all of it clearer than anything I had ever seen before. All of it somehow beautiful.

Shouting, the rebel gunmen marched us toward the alley’s end—to the same place where they had taken Pastor Ron.

My sadness grew heavier as the end came closer. It was like a great heavy weight inside me that I had to drag along. But even so, in my mind, there was still all that clarity and beauty and perfection, and the strange bright eagerness to live every second until all the seconds were gone.

I looked around me as we approached the end of the alley—and here is one last amazing thing I saw.

I saw the gunmen. I saw the faces of the gunmen. And I know this might sound like the weirdest thing of all—I know you might think they must have looked terrible or that I must have hated them because they were the ones who were about to shoot me. But they didn’t look terrible and I didn’t hate them. I felt sorry for them, kind of. I even liked them a little. I know: bizarre, right? It was as if I could see all their life stories in their eyes. How they had wanted to be heroes and men, real men, and how somehow they had become this instead, these killers, these murderers—like demons almost. It was like I could see that they were trapped forever inside their demon selves. Even now, even yards away from my execution, I was glad I was me and not them.

I faced forward—and my heart went cold inside me. There was the end of the alley. We were only a few more steps away. What had seemed like a long, slow journey inside my mind had in fact been less than a minute, a few seconds of rushing, confused stumbling from the hotel room to this final place.

The gunmen pushed us to the end of the alley and forced us to turn the corner.

“Please! Please! Please!” Nicki kept crying. “Just let me go home! I just want to go home!”

Jim was shouting now as well, his voice hoarse and weak. He was shouting, “Señores! If you would only listen to me for just a second… Señores, you don’t understand… !”

My eyes moved over them—and past them—and I saw Meredith again, her face calm and luminous, her lips moving silently.

We had come around the corner of the church. We were in a back alley now, a stretch of dirt road bordered by the backs of the plaza buildings on one side and a line of old ragged sheds and piles of garbage on the other.

And something else. Something so terrible I can hardly bear to tell it. There were bodies. Just down the way. Three bullet-riddled bodies lying outside one of the sheds.

One of them, I realized at once, was Pastor Ron.

My heart cracked open with grief and fear, and I knew that within seconds my body would be lying there beside his.

The rebels shoved us toward the church wall. I could see that the wall was chipped and riddled with holes and I knew the holes had been made by gunfire. There were bloodstains too. And some of them, I knew, were from Pastor Ron’s blood. And some of them would soon be from ours.

We stood with our backs against the wall while the rebels stepped away from us, ready to form themselves into a firing squad. And maybe you’ll think now: Well, why didn’t you fight? Or, Why didn’t you run away? After all, you had nothing to lose. And the answer is: if we had tried to fight or tried to run away, they would have shot us dead right that second. And I didn’t want to die that second. I wanted to live every possible second I could, every one. Anyway, there was no strength in my legs or arms. I had gone weak with fear. There was nothing I could do but live until life was over.

So I looked around one more time. At the sky, at the ragged tin sheds, at the garbage strewn in the gutter. At Nicki sobbing beside me, and Jim still trying to explain and Meredith praying—and the gunmen, lining up now, starting to lift their guns.

And it was all beautiful and it was all perfect and I wished I could stay forever and see it this way forever because I never would have complained about anything or hated anybody. I would have just been glad to be alive in God’s perfect creation every second of every day.

That was the last thought I had.

Then the leader of the firing squad barked an order, and he and the three other gunmen lifted their weapons and pointed them at us. My mind stopped. My thoughts stopped. There was nothing left to see now or to think about besides the four black bores of the rifle barrels pointed at me, about to spit death.

There was a rumble of thunder. It was that time of day. There was always a thunderstorm here in the summer afternoons. The thunder rolled a long time and it seemed like all the sounds of the world—the thunder and Nicki’s cries and Jim’s voice and Meredith’s barely audible whispers—the leader barking the order to take aim—even the breeze moving through the trees in the hills beyond the alley and the insects humming around us near the wall—all of it sort of blended together into a single buzz. In that last endless second before the gunmen pulled their triggers, the buzz grew louder. It became a roar. It seemed to fill my ears, to fill the world.

Time was up. There was no life left to live. I gasped and swallowed an acid terror and prayed for God to take care of me when it was over. I stared at the rifles and that last second went on and on and the roar of the world grew louder and louder in my ears.

Why didn’t they fire? I shifted my gaze. I saw that the four gunmen of the firing squad were turning their heads— turning away from me.

It didn’t make sense. All I could think was: What? What?

The gunmen continued to turn, to turn away. And that’s when I realized that buzz, that roar—it was coming closer. It was getting louder.

I turned my head too—turned as the gunmen were turning in order to see what the gunmen saw, what they were staring at.

The growing roar was not the roar of the world. It was the roar of an engine.

Palmer Dunn’s black van was rushing toward us down the alley.