If We Survive

CHAPTER FIVE

What happened next was like a dream. If by a dream, you mean a nightmare. If by a nightmare, you mean the weirdest and scariest thing that ever happened.

Palmerturned to the old lady behind the bar. He spoke to her in a quick burst of Spanish. The lady—a tiny, stooped creature with a face like a raisin—picked up a remote control from below the bar and pointed it at the TV. The soccer game went off and the news came on. You could tell it was the news because a serious-looking man and woman were seated behind a desk looking directly into the camera. There was a map of the country behind them.

The man spoke in rapid Spanish—I couldn’t understand a word of it. After a couple of minutes, the picture changed and some film came on. The film showed angry people fighting in the city streets. I assumed they were the streets of Santa Maria.

What made it all so weird—so dreamlike—so frightening— was that we could hear the gunshots on the television and at the same time, we could hear the gunshots in the hills around us. And we knew that what happened on the TV would decide what happened here. It was like watching a zombie movie and suddenly hearing a slow, thudding knock on your front door… The life shown on the television and real life were becoming one dangerous thing.

I stared up at the TV screen. On one end of the street, men—most of them dressed like Mendoza in fatigues with red bandannas tied around their necks or foreheads—were firing machine guns or hurling hand grenades and flaming bottles. On the other side of the street, a ragged line of soldiers cowered behind riot shields or sometimes fired back with machine guns of their own. Sometimes mobs of other people, ordinary citizens, I guess, surged forward. They seemed to be supporting the rebels. They overturned cars and threw rocks and lit fires. Everywhere, buildings were in flames.

I felt my heart pounding hard in my chest. It looked like the rebels had the people on their side. It looked like the soldiers were being overwhelmed. And I knew that if the rebels won, Mendoza would come back here. And I would be killed. Me and Pastor Ron and Meredith and Nicki and Jim—all of us. All of us would be shot dead as brutally and suddenly as Carlos the waiter. I stared at the TV and I knew this was true—and yet somehow I couldn’t really get myself to believe it.

The newsman went on talking rapidly over the pictures.

“What are they… ?” I had to swallow—hard—before I could get the words out. “What are they saying?”

“They’re saying the fighting is intense in the capital but that the army has things under control and is moving steadily toward victory…,” Pastor Ron translated.

“The TV stations are run by the government,” Palmer said. “They say the army’s winning, but it sure doesn’t look like that to me.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. I tried to swallow again, but I couldn’t. My throat was too dry. “What do you mean?”

“Well, look at the video,” said Palmer. “The army’s in complete disarray. They’re right outside the government compound and they’re not even up to full muster. It looks to me like the army is deserting and the rebels have got the people behind them.”

Nicki let out a wail of misery. “Does that mean we’re going to die?”

Meredith patted her shoulder, but no one answered. A fresh round of gunfire started up outside. It wasn’t in the hills this time. It was closer.

I looked nervously toward the door. “It sounds like they’re fighting in the village here,” I said.

Palmer snorted. “That’s not fighting, pal. The fighting here is over. Those are executions. They’re killing anyone who didn’t support them.”

I went on staring at the door. Executions. Something sharp and rancid roiled in my stomach. I thought of the celebration in the plaza last night. The children singing. The women dancing. The men setting off fireworks. The priest thanking God that we had come to their village and helped them rebuild their school.

I wondered which of them—which of those men, women, and children—were being lined up against a wall and shot to death as we stood in the cantina, waiting to learn our fates.

I turned back to the television. The video was over now and they were back in the studio with the newsman and newswoman. It was kind of an awful sight. The looks on their faces… They were trying to go on as if nothing catastrophic were happening. But the anchorman’s brown skin had gone a funny off-color. He was licking his lips between words as if his lips were as dry as my throat. The anchorwoman had turned white and looked like she was on the verge of tears.

“What… what are they saying now?” I barely managed to whisper.

Pastor Ron’s voice didn’t sound much better than mine as he translated. “They’re saying they will continue to bring us the news for as long as it’s possible. They’re saying they won’t desert their posts until the very last minute and that they have full confidence the army will restore order soon…”

“But they’re lying,” I said. “Right?”

Pastor Ron nodded. “It sounds like it, yes. Now they’re saying President Morales will speak to the nation very soon.”

Palmer gave a short, cynical laugh. “Yeah. From his hotel in Los Angeles,” he joked sourly.

I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye. Nicki. She had drawn back from Meredith. She was staring into Meredith’s eyes. The expression on her face was pitiful beyond description. The fear. The helplessness. Like a child lost in a crowd.

“I don’t want to die, Meredith,” she said. “I’m only seventeen.”

Palmer glanced over his shoulder at her. He gave a soft derisive snort—as if to say, Who cares how old you are? You can die anytime. Then he turned back to the TV.

And just at that moment, there were a few bursts of static on the screen—and then the picture went out. There was nothing, not even a test pattern. Just darkness.

We all stood there—we Americans and the locals just the same. We all stood there, staring at the blank screen.

Palmer made a gesture to the old lady. She lifted the remote again. Changed the channels. Nothing. More nothing. Then the soccer game. She cycled through the channels one more time. The soccer game was the only thing playing anywhere.

She shut the TV off. The cantina was silent.

“Well… what does that mean?” I asked. “The picture just… I mean, it just went off like that. It just went dark. What does that mean?” I don’t know why I bothered to ask—I knew well enough what it meant. The rebels had overrun the station. Which meant they had gotten inside the government compound. Which meant they were winning, if they hadn’t already won. “What… what does it mean?” I asked again anyway. I guess I was just hoping someone would tell me I was wrong.

No one answered. No one had to. Pastor Ron put a hand on my shoulder and gave it what was supposed to be a reassuring squeeze. I was not reassured.

“This might be a good time to pray,” he said quietly. He went back to his chair. He sank into it slowly, his eyes cast down, his lips moving silently.

“Is it over?” asked Nicki, turning from Meredith to him and back to Meredith again. “Did the rebels win? Are they coming now? Are they going to kill us?”

“Stop, Nicki,” Meredith said. “We don’t know what’s going to happen. None of us knows.”

But the way she said it—well, it sounded like she did know.

Long, slow seconds ticked away in silence. I took Pastor Ron’s advice: I prayed. Hard.

Then—horribly—my prayer was cut short. The air in the cantina seemed to rattle as gunfire exploded—right outside now—right in the plaza beyond the cantina door.

Nicki let out a short scream at the sound of it, jumping in her chair and covering her mouth with both hands. The gunfire continued. And there was cheering too. Men cheering as they fired their machine guns. There was a small front window, but it didn’t show much. Just a rectangular section of the square. Now and then I saw a figure running by, but other than that, I couldn’t see what was happening.

I glanced over at the guard by the front door. He was looking out the door into the street. I couldn’t see what he saw, but when he turned back to the room, he was smiling. He pumped his fist at the other guard, the hamster-faced guy at the door.

Hamster Face’s hamster face lit up with a hamster-faced grin. All at once—no warning at all—he let out a highpitched whoop of his own. He raised his rifle into the air and pulled the trigger.

Nicki screamed again. The gunfire was deafening. Plaster came pouring down from the ceiling like snow. Hamster Face let out another burst. And now Nicki lost control of herself, screaming and screaming.

“Stop! Stop! Make him stop!” she shrieked, covering her ears with her hands. “Please! Make him stop!”

Meredith could only hold on to her while she screamed. Finally, the pounding explosions of the gun fell silent. The last bit of plaster pattered to the floor. And Nicki, still covering her ears, stopped screaming and bent forward against Meredith, sobbing instead.

That was the only sound in the room. Nicki sobbing. Nothing else for I don’t know how long.

I stood where I was, looking at—well, nothing really. Just sort of staring around the room, from corner to corner, from face to face. Thoughts were racing through my mind at a crazy speed:

Wait a minute… wait a minute… this is me here. The one and only me. Will… good old Will from Spencer’s Grove. I just came to this country to help out. I just came for a week. To build a wall. For my church. To be a good guy. I’m supposed to be going home today. Back to school. Back to ordinary life. They can’t just walk in here and shoot me. Can they? For no reason? Because I’m an American? Because they don’t like the way people behave in this country? I never even heard of this place before I got here. What about my mom and dad? I mean, they may be angry at each other, but they still love me… We’re a family… They’d be heartbroken if they just… I mean, they can’t just… kill me…

Can they?

That’s what I was thinking when the front door opened and Mendoza walked back in.