If We Survive Page 12

  Red touches yellow kills a fellow. Red touches black, you’re all right, Jack.

  I peered down narrow-eyed through the rain and saw that the bands of red on the twining creature’s scales touched the bands of yellow. It was a coral snake, all right. One bite from one of those and you were history. A lousy way to die.

  In a panic now, Nicki was trying to draw her feet up away from the oncoming thing, but that just made her lose her footing so that her body slid down the mud wall toward it. I could hear her whimpering under Meredith’s hand as she realized she had to let her feet down into the mud to stop her fall. She planted her feet right next to the snake—and the snake didn’t like that. He lifted his head as if he were ready to strike, his tongue darting out of his mouth as his cold, blank, unfeeling eyes stared at Nicki’s sneakers.

  Nicki, wide-eyed with terror, somehow managed to keep still. Finally, I guess the snake decided the danger had passed. He lowered his head to the ground again and went on slithering toward her.

  Meanwhile, above us, I heard Mendoza speak again. I wasn’t sure what he was saying, but his tone of voice had definitely changed. He sounded discouraged before. Now he whispered harshly. An order, I thought. Then silence. Of course. Mendoza thought he had heard something—Nicki’s gasp. But he couldn’t be sure in all this hammering rain. And he still couldn’t see us, still didn’t know we were right beneath him. He was telling his men to listen. They were listening—in case the sound came again.

  Shivering, I held my breath. I looked at Nicki. Meredith still had her hand clamped over Nicki’s mouth and Nicki’s eyes still beamed out over it, their brightness dimming as they filled with tears. I looked down and saw the coral snake. It was slithering now right over Nicki’s sneaker. I saw Nicki’s whole body give a huge, disgusted shudder. I saw the tears spill from her eyes. But somehow she managed to stay quiet, stay still.

  There was quiet above me too as the rebels listened, waiting for us to make another noise so they could find us, kill us.

  The snake slid slowly over Nicki’s sneaker, slanting upward toward Meredith’s leg. It paused to explore Meredith’s muddy slacks and then slid on over them at the shin. I looked up at Meredith. The sight of her shocked me. Up until now, even facing death before the firing squad, I don’t think I had seen the slightest trace of fear in her. Her courage, her steadiness were almost uncanny. But everyone’s afraid of something— that’s the truth. Everyone has something that they fear. And clearly, Meredith was terrified of snakes.

  If she had seemed pale before—and, like I said, the cold and damp had turned her as white as marble—she now seemed gray and colorless as a corpse. A tinge of horrible zombie green had even entered her cheeks. And her eyes—they were red-rimmed and seemed almost lifeless with disgust.

  But for all that, like Nicki, she didn’t move, she didn’t budge, as the snake made its slow, slithering way across her shin. She simply stared down at it with her dead eyes and her deathly pallor, giving one enormous shudder as the thing passed over first one of her legs and then the other.

  Then it moved toward me.

  A knot of disgust and fear rose in my throat—but before the snake got to me, it turned and headed back down the muddy slope toward the running water below.

  At the same moment I heard Mendoza speak decisively.

  “Vamanos.” Let’s go.

  As I watched the coral snake nose its way back down into the stream, I heard the footsteps start up again above my head—the sharp, determined footsteps of the rebels moving away from us, moving back through the jungle toward the trail. Quickly, the sound of them faded. I heard Mendoza shout one more string of orders, his voice growing farther away with every word. I could tell the rebels were already back on the trail, already marching back toward the airstrip.

  Cautiously, Palmer rose up again to peek over the top of the ravine. I watched him, waiting for him to give the signal that it was clear.

  I saw him nod to himself and let out a breath, the tension flowing out of him.

  He lowered himself until he was in the stream and came walking toward us along the ravine wall.

  “They’re gone,” he said, still keeping his voice low.

  With that, Meredith let Nicki go. Nicki immediately rolled away from her, sobbing violently. And for once, Meredith didn’t comfort her. She just bent forward and covered her own face with her hands. I heard her make a noise and I knew that she was crying too.

  I reached out to her. I wanted to touch her shoulder, to comfort her, but somehow I didn’t have the nerve. I hated to see her so upset—but I couldn’t work up the courage to put my hand on her. I glanced up at Palmer. I saw him look down toward the water. He saw the coral snake moving away on the opposite bank of the stream. He nodded once, as he understood what had happened.

  “Hey. You. Girl.” He nudged Nicki’s shoulder with his knuckle.

  She gasped out of her sobs and stared up at him as if he were some fresh danger.

  “What’s your name?” he asked her.

  “Nicki,” she managed to say in a trembling voice.

  “Good job keeping quiet, Nicki. Saved our lives. Personally, those snakes always make me shriek like a banshee.”

  Nicki went on staring up at him as if she couldn’t comprehend what he was saying. Then she did comprehend. Almost at once, her sobs subsided to a series of smaller sniffles. She nodded her thanks. She was proud of herself.

  Then Palmer looked up at me—and with one swift smooth motion, he pulled that giant hunting knife of his out of his belt.

  “Hold still a second, kid,” he said.

  Before I could even react—before I even understood what he was saying—his hand flicked like a bullwhip and the knife came flying toward me, flying straight at my face.

  I didn’t have time to flinch. I didn’t have time for anything. The knife struck—plunged into the mud of the ravine wall—right next to me, right next to my head, maybe an inch or two away, no more.

  I turned to look at it. And—I couldn’t help myself—I let out a sharp cry and scrambled away from the spot, slipping and splashing in the mud.

  There on the mud wall, pinioned by Palmer’s knife, thrashing in its hideous death throes, was a spider the size of a loaf of bread. Really. I’m not exaggerating. The size of one of those big, round loaves of sourdough bread.

  I gagged as I watched it die. I had to fight the urge to throw up. I guess my reaction must have looked pretty amusing because Nicki said, “Ew, gross!” and then covered her mouth to hide a laugh. Even Meredith, the tears still on her cheeks, smiled quietly.

  “Ha ha,” I said as I tried to recover a little dignity. “Laugh riot.”

  Palmer gave one of his wry, sardonic smiles. “Those things’ll kill ya, kid,” he drawled. Then, all business again, he tilted his head toward the ravine wall. “Vamanos,” he said.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  We made our way back to the trail and followed Palmer along its narrow, winding way. He walked ahead of us at a quick, steady clip.

  The storm was passing now. The thundershowers always came on hard and fast in the afternoon and dwindled away again just as suddenly. As we walked, we caught glimpses of the sky through the dense leaves above us. And as the black clouds dissipated, we saw there was still some light left. The sky behind the storm was gray-blue, and the sun, low in the west, came to us through the forest in slanting rays.

  We trudged on. As the storm faded, and as the noise of the storm faded with it, the jungle seemed to come alive with new sounds—a lot of them. Birds made weirdly human whistles and laughing calls to one another—and sometimes they burst out of the leaves with a fluttering explosion as we walked by. A rattling commotion made me raise my eyes—and I saw monkeys climbing among the lacework of vines and branches over our heads. Kind of an eerie sight— like furry little human beings crawling along over us. And sometimes they let out a scream—wa-a-a-a-a-a-a-a!—that sounded like something from a totally other planet.

  But I
didn’t look up at them for too long. I had to keep my eyes on the ground. I had to keep watching for spiders and snakes. Not to mention leopards and crocodiles. Or maybe I’ve already mentioned them.

  I became aware of something else too. I was hungry. As in: way hungry. And crazy thirsty. Palmer had told us not to drink from the ravine or it would make us sick. I had caught some rain in my mouth awhile back, but other than that I don’t think I’d had anything to eat or drink since Mendoza had walked into the cantina. I hadn’t noticed it before, what with all the danger and excitement, but now, with every step, I was conscious of the rumbling pangs in my belly and of the dry crust coating the inside of my mouth. Back home, when it was getting to be dinnertime, sometimes I would say to my mom, “I’m starving,” or sometimes, coming indoors after some touch football game or something I might say, “I’m dying of thirst.” But I had never been hungry like this before. I had never been this thirsty ever. Yet, somehow, I had to keep going on—and because I had to, I did.

  The sun sank lower. The air grew somewhat cooler, less dense. The last raindrops dripped down off the leaves and fell on us. My clothes were still damp and uncomfortable, squishing and chafing my skin with every step, but it was better than getting rained on. And anyway, I was too hungry to care very much.

  We walked a long time. The jungle began to grow dark again—not as dark yet as during the storm because the low sun still cut through the foliage and sent its beams in to us, but the trees around us were beginning to sink into shadow and the sky, when we could see it, was less blue, more gray. I wasn’t happy about this. Not at all. I wasn’t happy about the idea of walking through this place in the nighttime, unable to see where I was stepping—or what I might be stepping on—unable to see what might be following us, what might be watching us hungrily through the darkness . . . As the dark grew deeper, my fear started to grow worse and worse. I watched the others ahead of me, marching on. I wondered if they were as scared as I was—or was I just a coward?

  I remembered once in English class we read some of the works of Ernest Hemingway. I remembered Hemingway said that cowardice was “a lack of ability to suspend the functioning of the imagination.” To be honest, I didn’t really understand that when I read it. But I sort of got it now. The more I imagined the bad things that might happen to us out here, the more scared I got; and the more scared I got, the more nervous and weak I felt. If something bad did happen, well, I was beginning to think I wouldn’t have the courage to deal with it, that I might run away and leave my friends to face it alone. That was no good. If I was going to stay strong, I had to somehow stop thinking about it all—about the snakes and spiders and leopards and crocodiles and so on. I had to find some way to force it all out of my mind. “Suspend the functioning of the imagination.” Easy to say, Mr. Hemingway. Not so easy to do.

  A monkey chattered and screamed. I tensed and gasped so loudly that Meredith, who was just ahead of me, actually glanced back to see if I was okay. I had clutched my machine gun and was pointing it in the direction of the noise as if I were going to blow some monkey away or something. I felt like an idiot. I had to find a way to calm down.

  I thought of something. I thought of Pastor Ron. Not the way I’d seen him last, his body lying in the alley after the rebels had murdered him. I thought of the way he used to be. Back in our church. I thought of him the way he was when he would preach sometimes when Pastor Francis took a Sunday off. I could almost see him in my mind’s eye, standing above us up in the pulpit. I could picture him so clearly, in fact, that I could almost hear his voice, as if he were walking along beside me right that second. I remembered once he said to us:

  “Don’t worry about anything—pray about everything instead.”

  That was a quote from the Bible, I knew, though I didn’t know what book or anything. But it sounded like good advice. Practical too—you know? I mean, it wasn’t just like saying, “Don’t worry.” It was something you could actually do with your mind instead of worrying. A way you could “suspend the functioning of the imagination,” like Hemingway said.

  So I tried it out as we marched on through the darkening jungle. I focused on praying. I prayed that everything would be okay. Not just for me but for my parents too. They were probably getting pretty worried by now as news of the revolution in Costa Verdes reached them. All of our parents were probably getting worried. It was hard to imagine Palmer having parents, but he must have had them at some point, and even they were probably getting worried. So I prayed for all of our parents.

  It worked. It distracted me, anyway. It made me stop thinking about the snakes and whatnot. And it made me feel that we hadn’t lost Pastor Ron—not totally. It made me feel that he was still right there with us, at least in some way. So I forgot about all my fears for a while. And before I knew it, Palmer was lifting his hand at the front of the line and we were all slowing to a stop.

  I came up alongside Palmer and the others. And I looked past them at an absolutely amazing sight.

  We were standing at the edge of a clearing. It wasn’t a full clearing like the airstrip, not flat and grassy like that. There were still some trees here and there and the grass and bushes were overgrown. But it was obvious that someone had cut away part of the forest here not so long ago. Without the thick jungle roof, the space was a little brighter. The sun was just visible through the western trees and the last of its rays were turning pale and dying. A sort of shroud of darkness seemed to be slowly settling down over the open field.

  And in the center of this clearing, there was, so help me, a building. A stone pyramid of some sort. An ancient temple, I guess.

  It was tall—really tall—taller than the surrounding trees. It rose up in layers of stone with a flight of stairs rising up the middle of it to an open door just beneath the peak. It stood there in the dying light, dark and mysterious, like something the hero might stumble onto in a jungle adventure movie. Will Peterson and the Temple of Outrageous Weirdness. Here and there throughout the clearing there were other stones, single stones, standing and lying on the grass. Looked like some kind of ancient cemetery or something.

  “Whoa!” I said.

  I stared through the deepening dusk. I remembered the ceremony we had watched in Santiago. The cave and the torches and the candles—and the painted idol who smoked a cigar while the people sang his praises. I wondered if some painted, cigar-smoking idol had ruled this temple long ago, commanding the villagers to carry out all kinds of bizarre ceremonies and human sacrifices and other cool stuff like that. Anyway, the idea gave the place a sort of spooky feeling, as if the ghosts of all those sacrificed people might still be floating around the graveyard stones, watching us, haunting us.

  “There’s a room up top,” Palmer said, gesturing to that open door. “We can sleep in there tonight. It’ll keep us off the ground away from the animals.”

  What a great idea! I felt a flood of relief that nearly made me laugh out loud. I had been worrying about that, you know, wondering what we would do when we couldn’t walk anymore, when we had to go to sleep. I had been trying not to worry, trying to pray instead, but all the same, I hadn’t been looking forward to lying on the forest floor in the darkness with coral snakes and spiders the size of bread loaves. I could just picture myself, everyone else sleeping soundly around me, and me lying awake waiting for something to slither over my face.

  “There’s a freshwater spring on the far side of the clearing,” Palmer went on.

  “Oh!” sighed Nicki. “Water!”

  Palmer said, “Let’s get a drink and then we’ll try to gather some kindling before nightfall, start a fire, warm our clothes.”

  I wondered how Palmer knew so much about all this. The hidden trail off the airstrip. The temple. The spring. But I didn’t wonder too much. I was just glad he did know, glad he had shown us the way.

  I remembered again how much I’d disliked this guy a few hours ago. But boy oh boy, he was a great guy to know in a crisis.

  We headed
into the clearing.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Forty-five minutes later we were sitting inside a little chamber at the top of the temple. We found enough dry wood in the surrounding trees to get a fire going. Palmer set it up just at the chamber door so that the smoke blew outside but there was enough room for us all to sit around the flames and catch some of their warmth. It was so expertly done, I got the feeling he had done all this before.

  It was full dark now in the jungle. Over the crackling of the fire, I could hear the noises of life out there. Kind of like the noise you’d hear in any forest or swamp, only on amplifiers, you know, with the crickets and frogs and whatever else so loud and busy, it was just incredible. Now and then too, there’d be something else. Like a big boom of some kind, or a rough grunt or a growl—I had no clue what any of it was and to tell you the truth, I didn’t really want to find out. Better not to think about it. Suspend the imagination. For now at least I was feeling pretty good, pretty safe in here in this temple with the fire going and my friends around me and the darkness way out there beyond the fire.

  Better yet, I wasn’t thirsty anymore. I had drunk so much from that freshwater spring, I could still feel the water sloshing around in my stomach. And even better still, after we got the fire going, Palmer revealed that he had some food with him. He opened the backpack he’d given Jim and took out a plastic bag—and there were sandwiches inside! There were only two of them—Palmer had brought them along for himself—but they were big old submarines and we broke them into sections and shared them around. It was enough to kill the hunger that had been gnawing at me so painfully during our march.