If We Survive

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

A hand shook my shoulder. I woke out of a sound sleep to hear Palmer’s whisper in the dark: “Move it, kid, let’s go.”

I was still only half awake when Corinna put a tortilla in my hand and kissed me on the cheek and sent me out the door.

We piled into the back of a pickup jalopy: Nicki and Meredith and Jim and I. Paolo drove and Palmer sat beside him in the cab. We bounced down out of the village on the rough dirt road. Even though I could feel the first fresh breezes of dawn coming down to us over the tops of the jungle trees, the open sky above us was still night black, splashed with bright, white, twinkling stars.

We rode in silence mostly. Nicki was sleeping. Jim, I could see, was staring gloomily down into the truck. Meredith—I stole a glance at Meredith now and then and she was leaning back against the side of the truck bed, gazing up at the stars. She looked as if her mind was far, far away. I wanted to ask her what she was thinking, but I wasn’t really sure I wanted to know the answer.

So I sat quietly too and thought about all the things that had happened. I thought about the stuff Palmer had said last night. About how the government were bad guys and the rebels were bad guys too, and no matter who won, the regular people, the natives in their villages, were going to get hurt. The more I thought about it, the sadder it seemed. Costa Verdes was a beautiful country. The people we’d met had mostly been nice people, just like anyone you’d meet back home. The children especially were just like children anywhere. I remembered how excited they were when we came to rebuild their school and how they’d watch us shyly from a distance and how happy the girls were when Nicki did their hair for them and so on. And no matter who wound up running the country, nothing was going to get better for them. Because everyone was fighting to make them be what they wanted them to be, but no one was fighting for their right to be whomever they chose.

I was thinking about that—and then my mind flashed back to the man I had shot. I saw him again, the bullets from my weapon ripping into him as he tried to throw the hand grenade at our escaping van. The image of it made something go sour in my stomach. I found myself wondering about the guy. I wondered if he’d had a family: a wife… kids… He had a mom and dad somewhere, for sure, just like I did. I wondered if he had really wanted to be standing there, throwing a hand grenade at a group of people he never met, who never did him any harm. I wondered if he would have been different if his government had left him alone to live whatever life he chose…

I must have drifted off a bit while I was thinking about it, because the next thing I knew my head sort of jerked up off my chest and when I looked around, it was lighter than it was before. I lifted my eyes to the sky and saw that a faint touch of gray had seeped into the deep pool of blackness up there. There were fewer stars than there were before, and with every second that went by there were fewer still.

Dawn was coming.

And, as it did, the helicopters came as well.

There were two of them. I heard the beat of their rotors first, and when I looked around I saw one and then the other come swiftly into view over the trees to our right. Black, insect-like shapes against the lightening sky, they got closer and closer, larger and larger, until they swept right over us, pounding the air, the noise deafening. They didn’t pause or hover. They just kept going, the noise fading swiftly as they disappeared over the trees to our left.

Whew, I thought. That was close. But it seemed they hadn’t seen us.

The next thing I knew, the truck—already bouncing hard in the deep ruts of the dirt road—stopped short, jerking me and the others forward toward the cab, then flinging us back to the rear of the bed. The truck started moving again right away, but now the sound of voices reached us from inside the cab—Paolo’s and Palmer’s voices, raised in anger.

Meredith and Jim and I exchanged looks. Then we peered forward through the dusty rear window of the pickup’s cab.

We could see Palmer and Paolo in there, Paolo behind the wheel, Palmer sitting to his right in the passenger seat. We could see Palmer gesturing angrily with his hand, his face dark, his voice harsh. And Paolo was shouting back at him, also gesturing with one hand while steering the truck unsteadily with his other. Their voices, muffled by the cab, were still loud enough to reach us where we were sitting.

“What’s going on?” I asked Meredith.

She shook her head. “Not sure. I can’t hear it all. But it seems Palmer wants Paolo to stop the truck and let us out.”

“Let us out? Why?”

“Something about the helicopters,” she said.

“I don’t think they saw us…”

“That’s what Paolo’s saying,” said Meredith, “but Palmer seems to disagree.” She shuffled herself a little closer to the front of the pickup. Listened through the dusty glass. “Palmer says it’s too dangerous for Paolo to stay with us now.”

“But what will we do without the truck?” asked Nicki. I thought she was still asleep, but all at once she seemed to be totally awake.

The truck continued moving—but the front passenger door—Palmer’s door—suddenly came open. We heard Paolo shout and the pickup bucked again, stopping and starting. It was still moving forward when Palmer jumped out.

Palmer hit the ground and stumbled a few steps before he could bring himself to a halt. The truck slowed, then jerked forward with a squeal, then bucked again, then stopped.

The passenger door was still ajar and Paolo was leaning over in the front seat shouting at Palmer in Spanish. Palmer ignored him. He came back to the bed where we were and said sharply:

“Get down. We’re going on foot from here.”

We didn’t hesitate. I pushed open the tailgate and climbed down, my rifle strapped over my shoulder. Meredith and Jim and Nicki tumbled out right behind me.

Paolo was still shouting at Palmer through the truck’s open door. Palmer rudely slapped the door shut, making Paolo’s words difficult to hear.

“What’s happening?” I asked.

“Crazy Indian wants to get himself killed,” said Palmer. “But too bad, we’re not gonna let him.”

“Is this about the helicopters?” asked Meredith.

“If they spotted us, there’ll be rebel gunmen here any minute. We gotta make a run for it, see if we can reach the airport before they find us.”

Paolo hammered with his fist on the truck window.

“Get out of here!” Palmer shouted at him. Then he muttered to himself, “If the rebels find him here, they’ll kill him. Then they’ll go up to his village and kill his wife and daughter and anyone else they don’t like the look of. Just like they did in Santiago.”

“Well, what’ll they do if they find us?” Nicki asked.

“Pretty much the same thing,” said Palmer. “So let’s get moving. The airfield’s only about a mile and a half from here. With luck, we might just get there before the rebels show up.”

Paolo was sticking his whole torso out of the driver’s window now, half standing up and yelling at us across the top of the truck—or yelling at Palmer, anyway. Palmer just started walking down the road, the Spanish tirade bouncing off his back.

After a couple of steps, Palmer turned as he walked and shouted at Paolo, “I said get outta here, you crazy Indian! Or, so help me, I’ll shoot you myself.”

Throwing up his hand in frustration, Paolo angrily dropped back into the pickup. The truck backed up quickly, spewing dust from under its tires. Then it turned around and bounded back along the road the way we had come.

I shrugged and was about to follow after Palmer. But I saw Meredith was standing still in the road, watching Paolo go. Palmer, glancing over his shoulder, saw her too.

“Hurry it up,” he said gruffly. “The rebels could be here soon.”

“We didn’t even thank him,” said Meredith.

Palmer gave an angry laugh and kept walking.

Jim and Nicki went after him, but I stayed with Meredith another moment.

“You know that whole thing about Paolo being a crazy Indian and if he didn’t get out of here, Palmer would shoot him?” I said to her.

“Yes,” she murmured, still looking with concern after the receding pickup.

“I think that was Palmer’s way of thanking him. It’s a guy thing.”

Meredith blinked. “Oh,” she said after a moment. “Right. Right.”

And finally, reluctantly, she started down the road, and I went after her.

It was easier walking on a road in the open than through the jungle, so Palmer kept us moving at a fast pace. The sky grew lighter as we walked. The sun rose. The cloudless blue stretched wide around us. The heat grew more intense and the air grew thicker. Pretty soon we were almost as sweaty and breathless as we had been when we were fighting our way through the trees.

But the jungle had fallen away behind us completely. In its place there were green valleys and a horizon ringed with hills on every side.

After a short while trudging uphill, we came to the top of a rise. Palmer, in the lead, waited there for the rest of us to catch up.

I crested the hill and saw the city. Santa Maria. The capital of the country. Its buildings rose blue-white out of the green scenery: impressive skyscrapers, churches, office buildings and open parks and playing fields. We had passed through the city when we first arrived, and I knew it looked a lot better from this distance than it did up close. When you were actually there, you could see that most of the buildings were old and worn and dirty, the streets full of litter, a lot of people homeless and poor.

But to me, from up here, it looked great: the end of our journey, maybe a way home. Everything seemed to lift up inside me at the sight of it.

“There’s the airfield,” said Palmer.

He pointed and I strained my eyes. But all I saw were stretches of empty green and then houses gathering and growing more dense until they blended with the rising capital.

“If we can make that, I’ll have us out of here in an hour,” Palmer said.

Nicki let out a little exclamation of joy. “That would be so, so, and did I mention so awesome.”

Palmer made a little come on gesture with his head and started down the hill.

This time, instead of bringing up the rear, I walked alongside him. He didn’t seem to notice me. He just kept his eyes moving, scanning the empty skies and the open road.

“No sign of them yet,” I said, trying to make conversation. “Maybe the choppers didn’t see us.”

“Don’t get your hopes up.”

“What do we do if they do show up?” I asked. “Will we have to fight again?”

Palmer seemed to consider it. He tilted his head back and forth a little. “Depends on the setup.”

I walked another few steps in silence, unsure if I should say anything more. Then the words just sort of came out of me on their own.

“I sure hope I don’t have to shoot anybody else,” I said.

Palmer sent me a mocking glance—just a quick one before he went back to scanning the skies and the road and our surroundings.

“You didn’t like that, huh?” he asked.

“Shooting someone? Let’s just say it isn’t as much fun in real life as it is in video games.”

He laughed once. “No. I guess not.”

I didn’t want to look at him so I just sort of did what he was doing: scanned the hills and fields ahead. “It kind of keeps bothering me, you know,” I told him. Palmer didn’t say anything, but somehow I felt I had to keep talking anyway. “I keep thinking about… I don’t know. Maybe the guy I shot had kids or something. Or maybe he had, like, a mom who loved him.”

“Well,” said Palmer, “most people do have a mom, it turns out.”

“Yeah. Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. I mean, maybe he didn’t even want to be in this stupid revolution.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.”

We continued to move quickly down the road to the valley below. I kept my eyes on the blue-and-silver city growing more and more clear on the horizon. “I was thinking about Pastor Ron, you know,” I said. “He gave a sermon once about how you shouldn’t answer evil with evil, you should answer it with good.”

“Mm,” murmured Palmer, squinting up into the bright sky. “Turn the other cheek, you mean.”

“Yeah, I guess. Like that.”

“Except it wasn’t your cheek to turn, was it?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, if you hadn’t shot that guy—with his wife and his kids and his mom who loved him—he’d have thrown that grenade and killed every single one of us. Nicki. Jim. And your girlfriend Lady Liberty too.”

I looked away from him so he wouldn’t see me blushing. “Yeah,” I said. “I know.”

“I bet if you asked them, you’d find out they have moms too. Nicki and Jim. Meredith. They maybe all have moms.”

“Maybe even you,” I said.

“Well, let’s not jump to conclusions,” Palmer drawled.

I walked another moment in silence. It was a pretty miserable choice, you know. You either kill a guy or he kills your friends. Either the murderous rebels win or the murderous government. It was like the whole country was just one big series of bad choices.

“Back at the river,” Palmer said. “Back when the croc was coming at you, remember?”

“No,” I said. “I forgot. I always have so many crocodiles attacking me, they just sort of slip my mind.”

Palmer gave another laugh. But then he stopped laughing. He said, “You were ready to die there, weren’t you?”

“Not very.”

“Ready enough. You were ready to die so someone else could live.”

I shrugged. “Yeah. I guess. So?”

“So sometimes, in a war, you have to be willing to do even worse things than die—and to live with the consequences afterward.”

“But that stinks!” I burst out. “That just stinks!”

He sighed. “It does. That’s the truth. It stinks.”

“I just came here to build a wall! To build a school!”

“I know you did, kid.”

I was about to say more—to complain some more, basically— but just then, we heard the choppers again.

Palmer stopped, holding up his hand to bring the others to a stop behind us. I looked up, panning my eyes across the cloudless blue, looking for the source of the noise. At first I didn’t see a thing. There was just that stuttering thunder filling the air, seeming to come from everywhere at once, growing louder and louder. But when I saw Palmer looking off in the direction of the airfield, I picked out the black dots hovering against the morning sky.

Jim and Nicki and Meredith had joined us now.

“Do you think they’re coming for us?” asked Jim.

Palmer nodded vaguely as if he was only half listening. His eyes were scanning the territory and I knew he was looking for a way out. Meanwhile, the chopper noise got louder and the black machines got larger and more distinct as they flew our way.

“Shouldn’t we run? Shouldn’t we get away?” asked Nicki.

Palmer still didn’t answer for a moment as he looked around. But then he said, “Dump the guns.”

“What?” I asked.

“They’ve got us,” said Palmer. “Those choppers are just for backup. There must be trucks on the way too. Dump the guns and we’ll keep walking and tell them we’re just innocent tourists trying to get home.”

“But Mendoza must have been in contact with Santa Maria by now,” said Meredith. “They’ll know who we are.”

Palmer nodded. “Probably. But this is our only chance. If we try to run or fight here, they’ll just shoot us down.”

“And if they don’t believe we’re innocent tourists… ?” Jim asked.

“They’ll arrest us first—and then shoot us.”

“Great.”

“If you’ve got another option, let me know, ’cause I can’t think of one.”

Right, I thought. That’s Costa Verdes for you. Nothing but bad options.

I looked around. I spotted a small field of tall grass just to the left of the road.

“There?” I asked.

Palmer looked at it—nodded. He and I jogged quickly off the road to where the high grass grew. Palmer slung his machine gun and pistol and knife in there. I threw in my machine gun after it. Funny—after talking about how I didn’t like shooting people, I was sorry to let the weapon go. It had saved my life more than once—in the van and in the river too. I hadn’t realized it before, but just having it with me sort of made me feel safe. Without it, I felt sort of undressed, sort of vulnerable.

Unarmed, Palmer and I jogged back to the road. We all started walking again, just like before.

The choppers were already plainly visible in the near distance. They were coming on fast. Half a minute later the machines were right over us, making the air shudder with their rotors.

They didn’t fly by this time. They just hung up there above us. In each of them, there was a man with a machine gun sitting in the open door, looking down at us through dark sunglasses.

We stopped. Palmer shouted to make himself heard above the chopper noise. “Here come the rest of them,” he said.

I looked and sure enough, there was a cloud of dust on the road ahead.

My mouth went dry and my heart started beating faster. Trouble again. Danger again. Would there ever be an end to it? Would we ever get free from this nightmare country? Jim must’ve been thinking the same thing. His pale features turned even paler. Nicki clutched Meredith’s arm and her lip trembled, but she didn’t cry or scream or anything like that. In fact, she seemed to be working hard to keep herself under control. Meredith put her hand on Nicki’s hand.

We watched the road as the trucks burst out of the cloud and rolled on toward us. We could see now that the truck beds were filled with men. And all the men had guns. And all the guns were pointing straight at us.