Don't Look Back (22 page)

Eve and Lulu each ducked under one of Claire’s arms and tackled the slope. Claire was able to drive into the mud with them, and they reached the top, where the others had clustered around Will.

He was bellowing now, unashamed outbursts that drove the others into a low-level frenzy.

“Do something!”

“What do you want me to do, Lulu?”

“—open wound in the
jungle,
” Harry was saying. “The infection risk if you don’t—”

“At least get him out of the rain,” Sue called weakly from her slump in the Jeep, which, Eve noted, had been driven out of its rut by the lip of the bank.

“We’ve got to get him back to the lodge until this storm blows over,” Claire said.

Neto said, “Do you have any idea how bumpy that road is?”

“I’m guessing
less
bumpy than the twenty miles downslope to the crossing that’s not a crossing,” Claire said. “Besides, Neto, what’s the option? Leave him for dead like you left Theresa Hamilton?”

Rain lashed down. From her position at the periphery, between legs and hips, Eve saw only slices of Will. His hand making a fist in the mud. The small of his back, arched severely. A tremor shuddering the pale skin of his leg, causing that stick of bone to bob.

Eve locked onto that white shard, thrust up through the shin, and felt a great, unexpected settling. This she knew how to do.

She spoke, but no one heard her.

She cleared her throat, shouldered through to the middle, said, louder, “I’m a nurse.”

The arguing stopped.

“First-aid kit in the Jeep,” she said. “Bring it.”

Lulu backpedaled a few steps, then turned and ran.

“I need two branches this long,” Eve said. “We’re gonna make a splint, stabilize the ankle.”

“You may not have noticed,” Claire said, “but his
bone
is sticking out.”

Eve crouched and took Will’s foot gently in her hands, cupping his heel. He looked at her, breaths heaving his chest, his lips blue. “Is this gonna hurt?”

“Yes,” she said, and tugged.

The pulling traction slotted the bone neatly back through the gash. Will’s cry reached an inhuman pitch. He writhed in the mud, screaming.

She waited, but his foot kept its whitish hue. Lack of blood supply. Which meant, in all likelihood, a compressed artery.

She said, “Your foot—pins and needles?”

He nodded.

“You’re gonna want to brace yourself,” she said. “I have to move the bone off your artery.”

His eyes were watering, but he nodded again.

She shifted her grip slightly, manipulating the bone. He kept his lips sealed, muffling his screams against the walls of his mouth. Another tiny adjustment and the skin of his foot pinked up.

Her hands stilled, holding the precise position for the splint. “Okay,” she said. “The worst is past.”

The others, Claire included, had taken an inadvertent step back. Without raising her head, Eve said, “Where are my branches?”

They scrambled.

Lulu stumbled back with the first-aid kit, and Eve said, “Eight hundred milligrams of ibuprofen. Let’s get ahead of the swelling.”

As Lulu pinched Motrin from the white packets, Eve immobilized the ankle on both sides with stout, snapped-off branch segments that Harry provided. She looked up at Neto. “Gimme your shirt. Now.”

He stared at her with a mix of wonder and surprise, then tugged off his shirt. Rolling it, she used it as a stirrup, then wrapped the entire splint with an Ace bandage.

“No cold packs?”

Lulu poked in the first-aid kit. “No.”

“He needs ice and elevation as soon as possible. Let’s get him in the Jeep.”

“And go back to the lodge?” Sue said.

Eve nodded to where the bare foundations stuck up out of the river. “Where else do you propose we go?”

Harry and Neto carried Will to the cargo hold and loaded him in. Eve sat in the rear, twisted over the seat back to hold Will’s hand. The bags beneath his eyes were puffy and bloodshot, bulged out from the pressure of trying to hold the pain in.

The engine fired on, shuddering the Jeep, and Will let out a growl of pain through gritted teeth. Neto had the presence of mind to accelerate slowly at first so the wheels wouldn’t spin, the vehicle crawling out of the muddy bank toward the road. Once they were moving, he stepped on it, and they fishtailed around, leaving the remnants of the bridge behind.

Claire shot a look back through wet, tangled bangs. “That boulder didn’t get there on its own.”

“Bullshit,” Neto said. “He couldn’t move a boulder that size. He’s just a guy. Even if he is a terrorist, how would he do that?”

“How the fuck should I know?” Claire said. “Am I trained in mountain warfare?”

An impulse pressed Eve to lift her eyes to the rear window and fix on the far side of the river.

His
side.

A dark face watched from a bluff above, water dripping from a wispy fringe of beard.

Her throat contracted, choking off her air.

A pulse of lightning lit the thrashing landscape, and it took a moment for her brain to process that it wasn’t a face at all, nor a beard, but a clump of moss hanging in a gnarled bough.

The tangled visage returned to shadow, and the Jeep lurched on into the headlight’s tracks. Her breath returned, and she felt sensation creep slowly back into her body, not least of all the steady pressure of Will’s grip crushing the bones of her fingers, anguish leaving his body, passing to hers.

The trees zoomed past the rain-spotted windows. The storm played games with perspective, making the jungle look perfectly flat, a wallpaper rendering. And then lightning would shock the tableau into 3-D, revealing its boundless depth.

They drove through a long stretch of darkness, the Jeep blazing a fresh trail across ground newly slathered over. Eve kept her hand in Will’s, her eyes on the flickering trees. The air felt wet against her skin.

A spot of light winked at her from between the trunks, a stone’s throw from the road. It vanished, then returned, stabbing her full in the pupils and proving she hadn’t dreamed it.

“Stop the Jeep!” she shouted.

They skidded, plowing up trenches of mud. She knocked the glass with her knuckle, and the others saw it, too.

A flashlight.

It pivoted slightly, catching them directly in its glare.

Staring at them.

Neto opened the door.

Lulu said, “Don’t.”

He stepped out cautiously, keeping the door folded against his body like a shield. “Hello? Do you need help?”

The beam remained aimed at them, sharp and unremitting.

Then, calmly, it turned away, bobbing back and forth in the invisible hand of its invisible carrier.

Breathless, they watched it vanish and reappear, moving steadily into the jungle until it vanished once more and stayed gone.

The downpour drummed soothingly on the soft top of the Jeep.

“We need to drive away,” Sue said. “We need to—”

Neto said, “Shh!”

A muted electronic chime wafted to them, so faint it might have been imagined. The wind shifted, bringing it more fully to their ears.

Tinny music.

At first I was afraid, I was
petrified
!

Will stiffened in the cargo hold. “That’s…”

At first I was afraid, I was
petrified
!

Eve said, “Jay’s ringtone.”

Chapter 31

A swept-back whorl of moldy leaves ringed an oval patch of freshly turned earth the size of a surfboard. They were there in the jungle twenty yards off the road, all of them, regarding the ominous mound. Fighting a scream with every jolt, Will had hopped from trunk to trunk, and Sue had dragged herself along, not wanting to be left alone in the Jeep. It was best, they’d all concurred, that they stay together. Drops filtered through the leaves and fronds, tapping their bowed shoulders.

“Let’s make sure,” Will said. “We have to make sure.”

The ground spoke again:
At first I was afraid, I was
petrified
!

A groove ran from the mound toward the heart of the jungle, disappearing through a curtain of vines. A path by which something had been dragged here. As they watched, rain smoothed the mud over, the ground re-forming, removing any trace.

Will wiped his brow, leaving a smudge of dirt.

Eve said, “Ready?”

They fell to digging, hands and knees, shoveling with their cupped fingers. They worked in silence, Neto, Harry, Lulu, and Eve doing most of the heavy work, but Claire pitching in, too. Pain rendered Will less effective, but he refused to lie down and elevate his foot. Instead he groped at the quick-yielding earth, a band of perspiration gleaming on his forehead. Sue alone sat it out, leaning against a tree, holding the flashlight for them and murmuring feverishly. At one point she bobbled the flashlight, stabbing light onto the seal on her T-shirt:
FRIENDS OF THE OMAHA PUBLIC LIBRARY
. Eve took note of the shirt. It had been bought back in civilization—won perhaps at a luncheon fund-raiser auction. Perfect for tennis, the grocery store, spinning class. Sue firmed her grip and swung the light back, the T-shirt disappearing, replaced by the unearthed grave.

Headway was difficult, the slop seeming to refill itself, but finally Eve scraped down and hit something firm. She sat up abruptly, the motion causing the others to halt.

They looked at one another, the whites of their eyes flashing. Harry hunched forward once again, his hands working deftly.

An arm was excavated.

Harry pulled it free and when he let go, it remained in place, protruding from the ground stiffly, slathered in mud, the wrist goosenecked. Will pushed himself back and sat, his injured foot kicked wide, his arms dangling before him as if he didn’t know what to do with them. Mosquitoes whined, competing with raindrops, and something amphibious croaked at a decibel level and a pitch that seemed wholly unnatural.

They breathed for a time, the arm centered between them like a grotesque centerpiece. Rainwater washed the upthrust hand, mud trickling off in rivulets, unearthing the pale skin.

By some unspoken signal, they started up again, scooping away, flinging sodden handfuls behind them. Different parts of the intact body emerged—a bent knee, the other hand, an ear. Finally Neto stood, taking the two dead hands in his own and tugging to exhume the corpse from the final sheath of mud. His grip slipped, and he tumbled back. He tried again, clutching at the wrists, and the body slid free from the pocket with a sucking sound.

The head rolled, and Jay’s face came into view, a spit curl of hair pasted across his forehead. His eyes were closed, the face at peace, carved from marble.

The only sign of violation was a single deep gash at the chest. The slice in the shirt was evident, but the bloody fabric had twisted around so it showed only intact skin beneath. They stared at the body uncomprehendingly, no one moving, no one breaking the silence.

Will sank his face into his lifted hand.

This little movement broke the spell. Claire leaned forward and pried at Jay’s jeans. The satellite phone popped free from the moist pocket. She brushed the screen with a thumb.

“Signal?” Eve asked.

Claire shook her head. “And the battery’s run down from searching.”

“Then how was it ringing?” Harry asked.

Claire keyed a few buttons. “It was a reminder alert. A stock thing, I guess.” She pointed the phone at them, the letters visible on the glowing screen:
SET LIMIT ORDERS ON BIDU FOR TOMORROW
.

From the depths of his hand, Will nodded.

“Turn the phone off,” Eve said. “Preserve what’s left of the charge.”

Claire’s hand pulsed, and her features fell back into darkness.

Eve thought of that flashlight beam, aimed directly at them through the trees. “He saw us heading here to the body,” she said. “Now he knows.”

“Knows what?” Sue said.

“That we know what he’s done.” Eve stood and sloughed off the sludge from her knees. “Now he has to kill all of us.”

Chapter 32

Though the gas lanterns had been twisted to high and positioned and repositioned, their glow still climbed only partway up the walls of Harry and Sue’s adobe hut. The ceiling remained black and heavy above the sputtering light of the wicks, the room like the inside of an oven, all of them sitting in their own private hell. Will reclined on the bed, his foot propped on pillows, the others spread around the periphery as if magnetically repulsed. No one had a damn thing to say. Or maybe they stayed apart because every other face was a mirror and the last thing they needed to see right now was their stripped-bare humanness, the flaws and cracks and stark animal needs.

They’d left Jay.

There hadn’t been a choice, really. The Jeep had no room as it was, Will and his bandaged leg claiming the entire cargo hold and the rest of them stacked, heads bent against the canvas top. There was nowhere to load a body, let alone an earthy-sticky corpse the size of an NFL linebacker.

They’d arrived back to find the lodge in disarray. Ever-stalwart Fortunato had remained as promised, lashing down the activity center’s tents and sheltering the supplies. Ruffian, Neto’s favorite of the burros, had run off, spooked by thunder, but Fortunato had secured the remaining few in the stable and tarped off the ATVs. The other
indígeno
workers had left, capitalizing on the break in the storm to make headway toward their family
milpas
, where they’d hole up until the wet season ended. The generator was still down, the power cables running to the huts likely compromised as well. Neto had conferred with Fortunato, concluding that neither could be fixed without daylight and a dry spell that lasted longer than five minutes. The Jeep was safely back in the stable, and Lulu had off-roaded the van from its spot beyond the bamboo walkways to the heart of the camp, parking it beneath the thatched veranda of the cantina within sprint distance—a modern version of circling the wagons. The steak knife and the sole remaining machete rested on the foot of the bed within easy reach, the door was bolted, the windows latched, and they were every one of them within eyeshot, save Sue, who required the bathroom at quickening intervals, her vague malady having resolved in the past hour into Montezuma’s revenge. Eve had given her several Imodiums from the first-aid kit, but the meds seemed overmatched by whatever bug had worked its way into Sue’s intestines.