If We Survive Read online

  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.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  A jagged bolt of lightning lanced the darkening sky. The thunder rolled again. The rain started slanting down, pelting the road behind us, turning up dust and beginning to transform it into mud. The van went on bouncing and shuddering along at top speed. I sat where I was and stared out into the storm.

  We were clear of the village. For the moment, there were no more soldiers left to attack us. That was a good thing too. I don’t think I would’ve been able to shoot anyone else. What I had done, I had done in a moment of danger and p
anic—a moment when it was kill or be killed. And I know, I know— I had to do it. I had to protect myself. I had to protect my friends. But now that it was over, I felt sick in my heart. I had ended a human life. And it felt lousy. Really bad.

  The van turned off the road and started down a narrow dirt path. If the ride had been rough before, it was really wild now. The van jumped and bucked and leaned this way and that. The jungle trees moved in close on either side of us. The leaves hung over us, so thick they actually held off the falling rain.

  We were on the little side road now that led to the airstrip. I remembered the look of it from when we first arrived. Another few minutes and we would be at Palmer’s plane. We would take off and fly north until we reached an airfield in the south of Texas. From there we would take another plane to Houston. From there, we would fly to Los Angeles and make our way home by bus.

  It would all take only a few hours. In only a few hours we would be out of this nightmare and back in our homes, back with our families, back in the normal world.

  All except Pastor Ron. He wasn’t ever going back to his family again. And neither was the rebel I had shot in the chest.

  I thought about that as the van bounced along. I thought about how we would go home and everything would be the same and everything would have changed too. I knew there was a lot of stuff I was going to have to think about and figure out once we got away. But all the same, I was desperate to go, desperate to leave this madness, desperate to get home.

  The van came around a bend and began to slow. I looked over my shoulder and saw the airstrip through the front windshield. We had arrived.

  The van came to a stop and I climbed to my feet.

  “Thank you, God!” I heard Nicki say.

  Palmer got out from behind the wheel. Jim slipped open the side door and climbed out too. Nicki scrambled quickly off her bench and jumped out. Meredith turned to me and offered me a sad smile, as if she understood all the stuff that was going through my mind. Then she slid off the bench too and got out of the van.

  I set the rifle aside. I was glad to get rid of it. I climbed out through the open back door.

  And because I was the last one to leave the van, I was the last one to see what had happened.

  The airstrip wasn’t much to look at. It was just a line of flattened dirt in the middle of a small clearing surrounded by jungle. The rain was falling fast now and the strip—that line of dirt—was quickly turning to mud. As I came out of the van, I felt the cold drops pelting me, pelting my hair, my face. I had to squint through the water to see—and I saw the others just ahead of me, standing in a cluster: Palmer in front, Jim at his left shoulder, Meredith and Nicki behind his right shoulder. They were all standing still, all looking out across the field, through the rain.

  I joined them—and I saw what they were looking at: Palmer’s plane, which was still sitting where he had parked it at the far end of the landing strip.

  The plane had been totally destroyed. As in: totally. It had been set on fire. Even in the rain, it was still smoking—what was left of it—which wasn’t much. Its landing gear was completely smashed, the tires flat, the struts bent out of shape. One of its wings was in fragments, almost gone. The windows were all broken. And the entire fuselage was burned charcoal black.

  It wasn’t going to fly us home. It wasn’t going to fly anybody anywhere.

  Looking at it, I felt something drop inside me, like an elevator falling out of control. It was an awful feeling. Our only way out of here, our only means of escape—ruined; gone. We had been so close—so close to getting out—only hours from getting back to our families—and now . . . it seemed like there was no way, no way home at all.

  “What happened?” Jim murmured dully. “It looks like someone . . . blew it up.”

  Palmer nodded. “The rebels. Mendoza said they were everywhere . . . Maybe he even sent a few of his guys out here to make sure no one used it to escape.”

  “Well, what do we do now?” asked Nicki. I could hear the panic rising in her voice. She already sounded as if she was about to burst into tears again.

  “Could we drive?” Meredith asked. “Could we get back in the van, drive to the border, try to break through to Belize or Mexico?”

  Palmer turned to her. He seemed about to answer, but he didn’t—he didn’t say anything. Instead, he just stood there. His eyes were on her, but he seemed to be looking right through her into some unseen distance. And I realized: he was listening to something.

  I listened too. Over the heavy pattering of the rain, I heard it clearly. Engines—cars or more trucks. Not far off—and coming closer, getting louder, quickly.

  “They’re coming,” said Jim softly. “They’re coming after us.”

  Nicki let out a noise, a little gasp. She brought her hands to her mouth as if to hold in her mounting hysteria.

  “Mendoza knew we’d come here,” I said. “Where else could we go? He knows right where to find us.”

  I looked at Palmer. We all looked at Palmer. With Pastor Ron gone, there was no question who our leader was now. Palmer might not be the nicest guy in the world, but he was a trained fighter, the only one we had, and we needed him.

  But for another second, Palmer just stood there, silent. The noise of the engines kept growing louder. It sounded as if the trucks—and the rebels they were carrying—would be here in minutes.

  “Shouldn’t we get back in the van?” Jim asked nervously. “Make a run for it . . .”

  Finally, Palmer responded. He gave a quick shake of his head.

  “There’s only one road and, by the sound of it, they’re coming toward us from both directions,” he said quietly, almost to himself. “There’s no way to drive out of here.”

  I swallowed hard. In all honesty, I almost felt like crying. So close, I kept thinking. We had been so close to going home. The lightning struck again and the thunder rolled again and the rain fell harder, washing my hair down onto my forehead. I had to brush it back out of my eyes.

  Then Palmer started moving.

  “Come on,” he said to us.

  “Where?” asked Jim. “Where can we go?”

  Moving away quickly, Palmer answered over his shoulder, “Into the jungle.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Let’s go! Move it!” Palmer barked at us—because the rest of us were just standing there watching him. We seemed frozen where we stood.

  Palmer was now at the van. He was reaching inside. As I stood there watching, he brought out a machine gun and strapped it over his shoulder. Then he brought out a pistol and stuffed it into his belt. Then he brought out a knife—a great big dagger—which he put in his belt on the other side. It was almost comical: the guy was like a one-man army or something.

  I was the first to come to my senses, the first to realize we had to move, we had to help him. I went to Palmer’s side.

  “That’s a lot of guns,” I said. “Where’d you find them?”

  “A couple of rebels tried to stop me from reaching the van,” he said.

  I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. I understood what he meant.

  “Get yours,” he said to me.

  “My . . . ?”

  “The gun, the gun. Come on.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “And here.” He handed me something—a curved metal container that I recognized as being part of the weapon. “Spare magazine,” he said. And when I looked at him blankly, he added, “In case you run out of bullets.”

  “Right,” I managed to murmur again.

  The others had come up to join us now. Palmer pulled out a small backpack and tossed it to Jim. “Put that on. We’ll need it.” He turned to the girls. “Grab anything from the van that looks useful,” he told them. “The jungle’s not a fun place at night.”

  I left them there to go back around the van and get my gun. My mind was a jumble of thoughts and feelings. I couldn’t sort them all out. I was thinking about the gun, I guess. My gun. And the spare magazine. Palm
er was expecting more fighting, more shooting. And he was expecting me to be part of it. That meant I might have to kill someone else—maybe more than one person. The idea made something rise up into my throat, something that tasted ugly. But I swallowed it back down. I clenched my teeth. If that was the only way I could stay alive— if that was the only way I could keep my friends alive—then I was going to do it, I told myself. I had to.

  I reached the back of the van. Took out the machine gun. For a second, I just held it in my hand and stared at it. I wished I was home playing video games. Make-believe violence is a lot more fun than the real kind.

  I went back to join the others.

  The engines were coming closer by the second. I couldn’t see the trucks yet, but they sounded really close and I thought they must already be heading down the side road. That meant they would be here any minute.

  Palmer must have thought so too, because as soon as I stepped up to him, he said, “All right. Follow me.”

  He started off across the airfield.

  Meredith took Nicki by the arm. Nicki cried out as the thunder struck again—louder this time.

  “Come on, Nicks,” Meredith said.

  She struck off after Palmer, holding on to Nicki—and Nicki sort of stumbled along with her.

  Jim followed them. I took a quick glance over my shoulder to see if I could spot the oncoming rebel trucks. There was still no sign of them. I hurried after the others.

  The rain was falling harder now. The dirt of the field had turned to mud. It squelched up over my sneakers as I walked. I felt the cold and damp of it as it soaked into my socks. The sky was already nearly black with clouds and it seemed to grow blacker by the minute as the afternoon turned toward evening. The trees that bordered the airstrip were already growing dimmer in the fading light.

  “The jungle’s not a fun place at night.”

  Yeah, I was willing to bet that was true. As we neared the dense trees, I thought about all the stuff that might be hiding in there—all the creatures, I mean, ready to come out and start hunting as soon as darkness fell. As a rule, I’m not too fond of creatures. I mean, I like dogs a lot. We have a Labrador at home—Feller—getting old now, but generally a great guy. But the sort of creatures you are likely to find in a jungle— man-devouring snakes, crocodiles, and tigers immediately came to mind—don’t exactly make good pets. As I walked on, my imagination playing over the possibilities, I felt a sort of bubbling acid of fear in my stomach. Rebels who wanted to shoot me at my back, animals who wanted to eat me up ahead. But what was I going to do? What was there I could do? Nothing. So I kept walking.