In Flames (15 page)

The slob seemed almost meditative, looking around, nodding. His hat wobbled. His hands moved to his belly again, fumbling, and a stream launched out from his middle. I almost fell over at the shock. This hadn't appeared in my dreaming. This wasn't part of my rehearsals, this green-yellow stream leaping out into space, the idiot taking a piss. What an effort not to scream at him. Or laugh. He tilted his body back, jet arcing out in a smooth flow away from his middle. I saw his hands, his potbelly and groin. I could almost see his face beneath the wide hat brim. If he looked up, and I had to throw, I had no choice, he was unmissable.

Keep peeing…

Take your best-of-the-morning, stallion-long piss, and leave. His urine flowed undiminished, and I heard nothing but the surf noise roaring in my ears. The whole forest could have been singing, screaming, and I wouldn't have heard. I wanted to kiss the spear's blade, and in my imagination I did. The soccer-ball belly was in my sight line, and in my mind flashed an image of Delgado Vinny lying at the foot of a sand dune, his head blasted away. I drew strength from this outrage, from the injustice of betrayal, and also from my perch, from the solid tree itself. I sensed a surge of near-madness on the brink of an act of strength, a mind rush that ruins everything or works, turns the near thing, the close miss, into perfect performance.

The thug moved, not his body, only his head. Still urinating, he looked up, and I saw his face. At first the swine didn't seem to know what he saw. He had no reaction. He expected green vines, green leaves, brown tree trunk. Not a man bathed in green light, part of a tree, grown out of a limb several body lengths above him, a man perched, waiting as still as a snake. He opened his mouth, but I heard nothing.

My body was at full stretch.

I rose on my toes and I was going down, driving the spear out into green morning air.

Nothing in my hand.

I hunched over in a crouch and fell. My left foot slipped off the branch and I crumpled over, grasping at the tree limb, driving my legs into it as if riding a runaway horse, bareback.

I fought for breath and looked down.

He was slowly sinking to his knees, as if a pious man in prayer swaying side to side enacting some primitive rite, and he was pulling at the blade in his groin, his crotch and thighs turning dark, and across his faded khaki trousers a deep stain grew. His hat fell off. He had a small bald spot on the crown of his head. His knees hit the ground, and he leaned back on his haunches, gripping the blade and shaft. And then he did a most frightful thing. With what strength he had left, he yanked at the blade and pulled it from his body. A red and gray tangle—his bowels—followed, clinging to the blade. His stomach cavity emptied all over his lap, didn't stop tumbling out, and he toppled over on his side, his legs twitching furiously, as if trying to run for his life.

I smelled a stench from his insides and the stink jolted me. I slid over the edge of my perch, dizzy with fear I'd fall into his guts, clawing at the branch, pulling myself up, inching along the limb. I slipped over onto the main trunk and my feet seemed to find their way down as I descended, dropping to the root step and onto the ground.

I approached him cautiously and stopped still as stone to watch a blue and yellow butterfly big as a hand floating down a beam of light circling the body slowly, once, twice, before flickering to another beam and alighting on a passion blossom opening to daylight above the dying man's head. Here the butterfly closed its wings and nearly disappeared.

The forest was abruptly silent, no air stirring leaves and vines, a green light so tactile I could squeeze it. The shaft of the weapon lay where the dying man let it fall, the blade entangled in his guts, his last breaths a few convulsive, rattling snorts. I fell to my knees on the rank ground, and gagged on acid bitter stink, a putrescent stench filling my throat, clogging my nostrils, vapors thick as fluids. Around the corpse, the rotting earth came to life, ants marching over his face, the swift rhythms of the forest—discovery and defeat, death and replacement—all occurring within moments.

The early morning heat grew more intense, the noise of insects swarming around the body the only sound in the world, a dark cloud of bugs, buzzing, diving, feasting.

Morning bird cries tore from trees, and I looked up at the canopy, amazed at my situation. The light was stronger. I examined myself. Insect bites covered my legs and arms, one leg scraped raw, my shirt dark with sweat, pants caked in my own filth. Everything reeked, and I dry-heaved, unable to vomit, because nothing was left.

Find the river
…

If another pursuer discovered me before I reached the road, I'd have to be armed. I examined the dead man more closely. I needed his long machete, lying partly under his body. I couldn't bring myself to touch the spear and disentangle it from his intestines. I shifted the body with my foot, and the movement forced a large gob from the dying man's mouth, the blood emerging like a ripe red tropical fruit. I retrieved his machete, and with the flat of the blade I poked at his body until I hit something metallic. Scraping spilled insides away from the side of his trousers, I found what I was looking for, protruding from a pocket. A revolver. I steeled myself for the effort of removing the weapon, examining the gun. It was loaded, and I was confident I could kill again that day if I had to. I tucked the weapon in the back of my waistband. Machete, gun, furious brain—I was fully armed. And as rage drove me toward the river, a kind of numbness took over, holding me together. I could hear a water rush, but the river stayed hidden. Some people can smell water. I smelled only my own filth.

On the forest floor, even in first light, vegetation remained dark, undergrowth too dense for me to walk upright. I crouched and crawled, slicing a tunnel through greenery. My hearing proved correct. After several hundred yards, maybe more, I reached the river, at that point flowing steadily, but not rapidly, and about ten yards wide. Trees formed a low arch over the water. The bank where I stood was thick with large roots stretching out into the stream, and I could see no more than a few paces downriver. The opposite bank appeared the same. Between fighting forest and wading downriver, I saw little choice. Walking in river water was quiet, left no tracks, drained less of my small energy than slicing a path through jungle—fighting more forest might have finished me off. And so groping past undergrowth and roots, I pushed out into water foliage to a point in mid-current. Up to my knees in water, I pressed forward, heading downstream. Current ran around me, the river bottom varying between muck and rocks. Walking was slow and painful, at any moment I could slip on a tangle of submerged roots and break my ankle. Progress came inches at a step, the only sound the river.

I paused and raised the gun and machete over my head, lowering myself in water up to my armpits, washing away filth and stench.

How long could I continue
…I felt an implacable weight on my heart, an inescapable affliction, and under the slippery glaze of water, in the face of the morning's rising heat, I shivered. The early sky was turning pale ghostly gray, river forces entering me, and I pushed ahead, forgetting pain. Surf sounds reemerged, roaring in my ears. Flickering green shadows swirled, flying at my eyes. I oozed sweat, a consuming energy that burned, pain and fear the fuel. And as the sun moved higher, heat and light grew more intense. Above the river, the atmosphere blazed bright, the air compressed into diamond-hard intensity, motionless, the only movement water and birds. I felt the sun's pressure, so great as if sun alone, a malignant intensity of unfiltered light and heat, impelled me downstream.
Such dreadful beauty
…I was fit for nothing except forging ahead, scanning the horizon, barely distinguishing reality from hallucination, and almost all that persuaded me otherwise was a refusal to die, that and an inchoate regret and anger. I stopped, listening, straining against the ocean roar in my head. A macaw's cry pierced the inner surf sounds, and another bird screamed in response. A future was starting to form in my head, faint but undeniable, talking like a distant voice through static over a satellite phone, and I sensed a second person accompanying me, an invisible brother in the river, a perverse person eroding with rage and revenge, a man humiliated and betrayed by others, full of self-recriminations, a first-time killer, and this other person—not me—was the exhausted man who needed ministering, craved counseling, depended on meds, a man who drank far too much, and if this real me survived the ordeal, I'd have to be my twin brother's caring nurse for the rest of our lives together. A dizzying thought, vertiginous, disembodying, but this shimmering vision of fate, however morbid, wouldn't stop me, no way, dying was too strange, recapture unacceptable. And justice had to be done. No matter how much less than whole, whether guilty or innocent, I'd live for exactly this.

Elaine
…

I pictured her back in charge at the club, clipboard in hand, and this preposterous image drove me forward. What thoughts, what clawing thoughts under a glaring sun burning in outrage at everything it saw, anger flaming white, heat packing down on me like earth over a new grave. I had to punch holes in this fetid atmosphere, the morning so spiritless as if the air itself denied life, everything lurid and crushing, the river immutable, relentless, inscrutable as destiny. Heat and death lurked in air and water and endless forest, and above all in insects swarming around my head, an incessant buzzing cloud, a sound barely distinguishable from invisible surf.

The river widened rapidly, three times as wide, and as the horizon opened, an unnatural noise exploded, rapid and metallic, a distant sound at first, a growl over the river's rush, nothing alive, nothing animal, nothing but a great mechanical thumping. Only a sound alone, until around a bend in the river a helicopter swayed into view in the immensity of empty sky, several hundred feet above the surface of the water.

Thwock-thwock-thwock
.

I waved my arms and yelled. Not that I had to attract their attention, that I ran any risk of not being seen. I was the sole sign of humanity on that river.

They spotted me and held over the bend, the helicopter swaying toward one bank, then back to the other, an Xy Corp. logo on its side. They had to realize it was me, the person the whole island was said to be looking for, this madman in a rainforest river waving a machete and a pistol at the sky. A side door on the helicopter opened, and someone leaned out. He held a video camera, and pointed it at me. The helicopter moved up to about a hundred yards in front of me, and turned, holding the same distance. The man with the camera waved, they wanted me to keep following them. The helicopter couldn't land on the river or in the forest.

As turns in the river quickly multiplied, I couldn't say how many bends I rounded, or how the bends differed one from the other. After a quarter hour or so, the sun almost at its noon apex, the heat pounding down, I turned into a bend exactly like the rest, and on the horizon a low concrete bridge appeared. The helicopter swung out over the river, over trees, rounding above the bridge before descending and landing on the road, its blade still rotating…
thwock-thwock-thwock…
The door on the side facing me opened wider, exposing a man behind a heavy machine gun, his blond hair blowing wildly in the rotor wash downdraft from the helicopter blades. Two men carrying a stretcher raced around from the far side, followed by a third still aiming his video camera at me. They wore standard contractor uniforms—black Ray-Bans and Kevlar armor over whatever clothes made them feel comfortable, casual clothing that, assault weapons aside, gave them an appearance closer to civilian sportsmen than mercenaries for hire. They strapped me onto the stretcher, and carried me from the river up to the helicopter on the bridge. And in moments we were airborne, flying west along the coast to Ciudad San Iñigo.

I heard music murmuring through the walls, the voice of Lady Gaga from a nearby room.

I'm not leaving without you
…
I'm not leaving without you
…

A nurse at Xy Corp. base medical facility—an American nurse—poked his head in the door.

“A doctor will examine you, Mr. Shedrick, he'll be by real soon.”

I nodded and said nothing. No strength to talk. The door closed, and I turned over on my back, bending up from the waist, an uneasy muscular act, the veins in my forearms popping out as clear as an anatomy diagram. I looked around my private suite, a spacious accommodation with its own bathroom, but stark, almost colorless to my eyes after a thousand lurid greens under a glare of hot white sun. The blinds were closed, air-conditioning set high, the room chilly as an Alpine cave in winter. Shutting down my mind, I no longer heard the repetitive music from next door, Lady Gaga was fading away. My heart compressed and sadness squeezed me, I had nothing I wanted to say to anyone, not even to a doctor. At least not yet. Although when I felt ready to talk, I had some questions for Elaine, that much was certain. Hard questions, as hard to ask as answer, and that might mean trouble, not the worst trouble for me that I could imagine, but definitely for her. Elaine had earned her turn.

I slid off the bed and shuffled into the bathroom. I glanced at myself in the mirror, a walking corpse, survivor of some cataclysmic blast, sunburned and bearded, a mirthless mute. My scraped leg and side, wrapped in bandages, were tight throbbing bundles. I removed the bandaging slowly before stepping into the shower and pulling the plastic curtain closed behind me. Hot water sprayed down, and my leg grew heavy, bleeding slightly. I watched pink rivulets circling around my feet, disappearing into the drain. It wasn't impossible that river-water parasites had invaded my body through cuts, but I was too exhausted to contemplate infection. A doctor would shoot me full of antibiotics again, and inject me with God only knew how many meds to get me through debriefings. And about that part of the process no one had to forewarn me. I knew I could count on this other sort of ordeal soon enough, a procedure as unavoidable and inevitable as a kind, steady smile from Reg Townsley, as disarming as any San Iñigo dusk shot through with deceiving colors. The bastards would pick my brain. Standing in the shower, I nearly fell asleep, and when the warm water abruptly turned cool, then cold, I shook myself awake. On the back of the bathroom door, I found a clean hospital gown and a bathrobe, both embossed with the Xy Corp. logo. In the chill air, scabs quickly formed on my leg, cracking whenever I bent my knee or turned sideways. The real bone-crushing fatigue was ebbing, and although I felt strength—if not exhilaration—returning, a vague discouragement choked me, as if I were on an endless train trip at night, riding into a land I knew nothing about, forced to finish a silent supper all alone in my compartment. An Xy Corp. steward served me a salad, grilled meat, fresh fruit, cold Coors, and mineral water. The food looked good, and everything was good, but I was past appreciating real food and drink. Tucked in beside a plate was a handwritten note to me from the U.S. ambassador to San Iñigo. I saw the official seal on the letterhead and set this aside. I picked at the meat and salad, passed over the fruit and beer, sipped some mineral water, and swallowed a sedative. What was left of my bloodied filthy clothes I rolled up, and handed the entire mess to an orderly, a local man who came in to collect the dishes. I made motions of throwing the bundle away. He smiled and nodded, I smiled and nodded. And when he left, I opened the ambassador's note.
Congratulations, Dan Shedrick, you're a genuine American hero…
Damn, they were crazy, the whole rotten lot of them. I read on, and I could feel hair roots tingling on my unshaven face…
The president called the embassy, and asked me to extend his warmest wishes, he's very proud of you. I think you're due for a White House dinner invitation. The minute you're ready for me, we'll talk. Meantime, eat well, sleep well. You're in the best hands where you are. My wife and I send our warmest wishes and highest regards
…They were insane, no question in my mind any longer. Sleep was what I needed most, not applause for questionable heroics, certainly not admiration, and as soon as my eyes shut again, I nodded off, dozing, half dreaming of puffy white clouds and childhood summers, rented houses on a beach and dinners at Cottage Club. Until my eyes snapped open at what sounded like far-off echoes, the faint shrieks of angry birds, a bass howling of frightened monkeys, all those awful remnants of the forest returning as if the entire bestiary were right there in my hospital room. I rubbed my eyes, peaceful sleep was impossible, the sedative too weak to obliterate memory.

The room phone buzzed. At first I ignored the noise, closing my eyes again, hoping to drift off somewhere beyond slumber, defying memory, outstripping death, painlessly floating free on those fluffy white clouds. But the buzz persisted, and I answered.

“Dan, I've been so worried, I'm desperate…” Something was wrong in Elaine's voice, something more chilling than the air-conditioning. I shivered and pulled the bedcover up around my chin. I said nothing. Her tone was something I'd never heard from her before, strangely plaintive, on the brink of frantic. She could have been a stranger, a local pleading for a day's work on the harbor site, a beggar's newly learned English struggling to convey a need for which the right words might never be found. I felt a permanent silence descending between Elaine and me, like a heavy curtain coming down on a theater stage. And suddenly all the hard questions I meant to ask her were impossible. Hard questions were pointless. She lied too well. “Dan, I'm sorry, really I am, I swear to God. It was so confusing there. I panicked. Can you forgive me? They treating you okay, are they giving you meds? You got everything you need, honey…”

I didn't answer her. What I absolutely didn't need was any more bullshit from Elaine. Some pains—I was certain of this—have to be faced without meds, no drug will ever guarantee amnesia. My throat felt stuffed with cotton, and when with effort I did speak, my voice sounded as unnatural to me as hers did. “Everything's changed, Elaine, it's like I've just gone through a doorway, and the door's slammed shut behind me. Know what I mean? After all this, I won't ever be able to get out and go back again. The door's locked. Nothing is like before.”

“But you made it. You're safe. You'll get counseling, they've got good therapy for survivors, it'll help you recover, and you'll be better, I promise.”

“You think I'm sick? I only mean I'll never be like I was. We've all…shrunk.”

“A good doctor can help you. They have ways of preventing post-trauma—”

“No, Elaine, I don't have a disease. I just feel dirty. I feel punished for some crime I've never committed. And now I'm afraid I'll never get clean again. I don't know anything for sure anymore, everything's too confusing. There are too many things I'm not ready to talk about, not yet, and certainly not with you, not now.”

“Things like what?” She was so eager to hear, so self-punishing, and this was utterly unlike her.

“All right, if you insist.” My tone was dry, damaged, dead. “I'll never be the same after so much shit. Not with you, and not with myself. Not with anything we used to do. I'm way past lying at this point, especially to myself and still thinking it's sanity, and that it's all so goddamn clever and smart. We shouldn't have started in again, right after the funeral the way we did, certainly that much was our fault, both of us. And I don't excuse me on that count either, although I've already tried conning myself, tried thinking maybe none of this crap was because of anything I ever did. That everything was beyond my control—I mean, what the hell did I know? But that's all horseshit on a platter, it's absurd. You get right down to it, Elaine, and it's all nonsense. I'm not ignorant, and neither are you, definitely not you.”

“Once you're in counseling, and you get therapy, you'll be better. Nobody's shrunk. For godsakes, Dan, you're a real hero.”

A puff of air escaped my nostrils. “I'm getting out of here as soon as I can. As soon as they let me go, I'm off.”

“Take it exactly like you feel. I understand.” She sounded as if she meant every word she said, but I could believe nothing that came from her any longer.

“You need time, Dan. The first thing I heard on the news after you disappeared…was how
I'd
been abducted. Can you imagine—”

I hung up, too numb to talk or even think. I felt as if I were melding into the mattress. I closed my eyes, and let the air-conditioned, tropics-smelling air cover me like a balm. A chaos of green leaves and dark shadows crawled across the back of my eyelids. And in this daydreamy forest tangle, a night hunter's yellow eyes reappeared, feathery mask, jungle bird gaze, nocturnal predator testing me once more. A dark great shape formed around those evil eyes, and it rose off its perch to fly at me, again and again. I shook my head to get rid of the awful image, and as I did, my ear brushed against a damp spot on the pillow, tears running down my face. When I passed my jungle test, those were tears of joy, now I felt a swelling shame, a hurt bubbling up in my throat, erupting in a choking cough, a sob followed by another, and then more.

I tried praying…
Oh my God
,
I'm sorry, truly sorry
…and I ran out of words, floating away from myself, drifting off, up and out of my room, off into the air, and it was as if I were witnessing something that happened to me a long time ago, a recovered memory returning, and someone inside me was speaking to a new friend, his twin brother, and the speaker was me…Once I lay in a hospital room, brother, in a tropical country after killing a man and nearly dying myself, and because of this, I turned my back on life…The daydream repeated itself, this absurd nonmemory, until at last I fell asleep. And in a new delusion, a far-fetched phantasm, I was standing in a great vine-covered church before an empty altar shrouded in gray sepulchral light. A choir chanted strange music more like screeching than song. I stared, fixated on singers lacking the cherubic faces of choristers, their bony cheeks covered in scales or fur or garish plumes. And as their voices grew louder, they scratched each other, and shuffled around, unashamedly relieving themselves on the church floor. Their flaunting of bestial behavior in a sacred place was disgusting, and pain like a shard of broken glass ripped across my chest, overwhelming me, as my own arms grew scales, chest bloomed feathers, face sprouted fur like an animal. Panicking, I searched imagined church vaults for help. The pain was transcending, raising me up into a spire, opening the church roof to a star-filled sky, out of which a shooting star, meteor, comet fell and hit the spire in a loud explosion, filling the church with a brilliant light, a vast cosmic heat. I woke up covered in sweat despite air-conditioning, and I lay there, wet, shivering, confounded, afraid to fall asleep again.