If We Survive

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Before I could react, the rebels started shooting at us. I saw the flame spit from their rifle barrels. I saw pebbles kick up out of the road as the bullets hit the pavement just behind us. The van continued to race away from them, swaying and bouncing as Palmer kept his foot jammed down on the gas.

My sluggish mind finally came to life. What do I do? I thought.

And I heard Palmer answer: Shoot them.

Shoot them? I thought.

The rebels were getting smaller behind us as we pulled away. But once again, they raised their weapons, steadied their aim, got ready to fire again.

And I thought: Yes! Shoot them!

I lifted the machine gun from my lap, pointed it in their general direction, and pulled the trigger.

The gun leapt and jerked in my hand like a living creature as it rattled bullets out the open back door of the van. Of course, I had no chance of hitting anybody. We were too far away and I’d hardly even taken aim. But I saw the rebels duck to the side at the sound of fire, trying to get out of the way. And by the time they recovered, we were pulling around a bend in the road. They had lost their opportunity to take another shot at us.

I blinked. Hey! I thought. Hey! I had done it. Okay, I hadn’t shot anybody. I didn’t want to shoot anybody. But I had stopped them from shooting us. That was pretty good right there, wasn’t it?

I smiled, feeling pretty proud of myself.

And just at that second, another rebel stepped into view. He seemed to come out of nowhere, but suddenly he was just off to my left, raising his machine gun, ready to blow out our tires.

Without hesitating this time, I turned the machine gun on him and let off another round of shots. I didn’t hit him either. I wasn’t really trying to. I just wanted to scare him— and I sure did. The moment the machine gun leapt in my hand, the rebel let out a scream and dived for the dirt. The van raced out of his range before he ever got a shot off at us.

I laughed out loud. This was cool!

It happened again. Two more rebels—they staggered out of a house by the side of the road. They stared at us bleary-eyed as we rocketed past. Then they stepped into our dusty wake and aimed their machine guns at us.

I fired again—now I was purposely aiming my machine gun above their heads so I wouldn’t really hurt them. And it worked: I didn’t have to hurt them. Just the fact that I was shooting at them was enough to make the drunken rebels dodge for cover—one leaping one way, the other leaping the other.

I laughed again—in fact, I couldn’t stop laughing. I mean, you know what this was like? It was almost exactly like a video game. There are all these levels in Gears of War—in a lot of games—where you’re in some tank or some vehicle or other and you’re racing along a road and every now and then some monster jumps out at you and you have to shoot him with your plasma gun or something. This was just like that. Except the monsters were people and they didn’t explode into gobs of gore because I didn’t have to really shoot them. All I had to do was fire in their general direction and watch them jump for cover.

And to make things even cooler, we were actually getting away! We were already leaving the village now. We were on the road that wound down out of the hills. The van was rocking and bouncing violently over the broken pavement. There were just a few more cottages here and there to either side of us. Soon we would be racing through the jungle to the airfield where Palmer’s plane would be waiting for us.

I let out a shout: “Whoo-hoo!” Just like a video game: Escape Trophy Unlocked!

And then I raised my eyes and I stopped shouting, stopped laughing. Because I saw what was coming after us.

A truck had appeared on the road coming out of Santiago, the road behind us. It was a battered old pickup—but it was coming on like wildfire. There were two rebels in the cab and four in the open bed behind. And all of them had machine guns.

The truck quickly got larger and larger as it closed the distance between us.

I shouted over my shoulder into the van. “Palmer! There’s a truck coming after us! They’re catching up!”

He shouted back, “Well, stop ’em, boy, that’s what the gun is for!”

My breath went short. I swallowed hard. I looked out the back of the van with wide, frightened eyes. I felt clueless. How was I supposed to stop a truck?

Then I thought: the tires. What if I could shoot out the tires… ?

I had no idea whether I could actually shoot at something— and whether I would hit it if I did. But I figured it was worth a try at least.

So I sort of raised the machine gun to my face and looked down the barrel. My finger tightened on the trigger as I lined the gun up with the oncoming truck’s front right tire.

But I never got the chance to shoot.

Before I could, a man—another rebel—ran out of one of the houses we were passing. He stepped up to the side of the road. He lifted his hand—and I saw he was holding a grenade.

The truck full of rebels sped after us on the road behind. To the side, the rebel with the hand grenade grasped the grenade’s ring and pulled it free. That meant the grenade was going to explode a couple of seconds after he released it. And of course, when he released it, it would be because he was throwing it at us.

I lifted my machine gun again. I did what I had done before: I fired over his head. He flinched a little, but he was braver than the others. He didn’t dive for cover. He didn’t stop at all. He drew his arm back, ready to throw the hand grenade at us.

Panicking, I let off another round of bullets at him. It had no effect—none. He just stepped forward and started to throw the grenade at us. Down the road, the truck kept racing our way. One of the gunmen in the truck bed was trying to steady his machine gun on the roof of the cab so he could take a shot at us.

I didn’t know what to do—that is, I did know. I knew what I had to do. And I had less than a second—a microsecond— to make up my mind and do it.

I lowered the machine gun. I aimed directly at the man with the grenade. He had just begun to bring his hand forward in a throwing motion. He was just about to hurl the grenade at the van. If he threw well, the thing would go off and blow us to smithereens.

I pulled the trigger of my machine gun.

As I looked on in fascinated horror, the bullets from my gun struck the man with the grenade in the chest. I could see his shirt ripple and see the black spots where the bullets hit.

The man’s mouth opened wide in shock and pain. He stopped in his tracks. He clutched his chest with his free hand and toppled over backward. He lay still in the dust. I was pretty sure he was dead.

The grenade dropped weakly out of his other hand and rolled into the middle of the road.

I sat there cross-legged in the back of the van and stared at the fallen man—almost as if I were surprised to see him there, as if I didn’t even understand that I was the one who had shot him, that my pulling the trigger was what had sent the bullets into him and killed him.

I shifted my eyes and saw the pickup truck with its cargo of rebels racing toward us. Gaining on us. Getting closer and closer.

Then, just as the truck ran past the fallen rebel, just as its front fender rolled over the grenade—the grenade exploded.

It made a sound like whump—not a great big blast but a surprisingly dull thud. A black cloud of smoke and shrapnel flew up under the pickup—and the force of it actually lifted the front of the truck right off the road into the air.

The truck went up quickly and came down hard. And when it came down, it swerved sharply and started to tip over. Even from a distance, I heard the rebels in the truck bed screaming. I saw two of them leaping out of the bed, jumping clear. The other rebels were still holding on for dear life as the truck bounded off the road out of control and dropped onto its side. Flames shot out from the undercarriage and smoke poured from the windows. More of the rebels were jumping off it, and the ones inside the cab were quickly scrambling out.

Then our van turned a corner and the truck went out of sight.

“Nice shooting, kid!”

I looked back over my shoulder at the shout. It was Palmer. He had seen what had happened in his big side-view mirror. He pumped his fist at me once even as he guided the truck forward at high speed with his other hand.

I nodded to him. I smiled. But it was a sickly smile. Holding the machine gun weakly in my lap, I looked out the back of the van and stared at the winding jungle road spinning out behind us.

I didn’t feel like laughing anymore. I didn’t feel like shouting whoo-hoo. This didn’t seem like a video game now. It didn’t seem like any kind of game at all. This was happening, really happening, happening to me.

And I—Will Peterson—sixteen years old—from the quiet little town of Spencer’s Grove, California… I had just killed a man.