Mapuche (48 page)

Time went on and on, interminably. No one spoke anymore. The dark took them all in its coils, oppressive, an almost physical mass that seemed to crush them more every minute. A feeling that El Toro didn't know inexorably invaded him: claustrophobia. A foretaste of panic, which had to be kept at a distance. He could no longer distinguish the others at the foot of the tree where they had made their improvised camp. There remained only the odor of the shriveled-up old men, stinking of fear and death.

“Maybe we should make a fire,” El Picador murmured alongside him. “I've got some matches.”

“To make it easier to locate us! That's a great idea!”

“We can't see a damned thing in this fucking forest, boss!”

“Another reason to stay hidden until dawn,” Parise growled.

The pain was making him nasty. The silence surrounding the forest became even more suffocating, punctuated by the creaking of the branches overhead. Branches or something else. As if they were being watched.

“What if there are animals?” El Toro asked with concern.

“What are you afraid of, jaguars?” his buddy teased him.

“Are there any?”

“In your ass!” the other mocked him.

“Shut up and open your eyes,” the bald man grumbled in a hostile tone. “We're going on guard duty while the others rest.”

But in the darkness, with this mass around them, minutes had become hours. Time went on. The old men no longer complained, shivering with cold. The wind was shaking the tops of the trees, but it was barely audible, as if the forest stifled everything. It was only eleven o'clock by El Toro's digital watch, a knockoff with a leather band that irritated his fat-ringed wrist. He cursed the dark and the hunger that were tormenting him, slumped in a bed of scratchy ferns, thought about that night's soccer match to drive away his bad thoughts. A snapping sound quite close to them made him jump. It wasn't a bird. Too heavy.

He shook his companion.

“You hear that?”

“Huh?”

“That noise,” he whispered.

“Nah . . . a squirrel, shit . . . ”

El Picador didn't like to be scared—not like that. Once someone had told him a story about guys whose car had broken down at night. One of them had set out for the closest village to get gas, and had never come back. His friends, who had stayed in the car, had been awakened by a dull, repetitive knocking against the door: the head of their companion, who had gone to get gas.

“And that?” El Toro jumped.

“What's going on?” Parise whispered on their right.

The fat man could have sworn he saw a form move through the trees. Very nearby.

“I saw something go by,” he whispered.

“What?”

“I don't know, damn it!”

El Picador peered into the darkness, his hand gripping his automatic pistol and his senses on full alert. They heard a series of slight cracks behind them, like furtive footsteps, at eight o'clock. They turned around, aimed their guns into the dark, and waited, their hearts pounding . . . Not a single sound more.

Parise had stood up without putting weight on his wounded ankle, his eyes dilated.

“There's someone there,” El Toro whispered. “I saw a figure . . . ”

“It's pitch-black, stupid!”

“Exactly!”

The old men stood up in turn, waiting to see what would happen.

“What's going on?” the old general asked.

Then El Picador saw it on his right, for a fraction of a second: a shadow striped with white slipping at high speed among the trees. Vertical stripes. A fucking ghost. He fired three shots one after the other into the bark of a nearby tree.

“There's something there,” he shouted. “There!”

“Where?” the bald man growled.

All he could smell was gunpowder and the fear of the others clinging to each other.

“At ten o'clock!”

They had lost their bearings, and the shadowy figure had disappeared.

“What?” Parise said angrily. “What did you see?”

“An animal,” El Picador retorted. “An animal with white stripes . . . they were phosphorescent!”

“Yeah!” El Toro confirmed.

They couldn't see anything but the trembling darkness.

“You're crazy!” Ardiles grumbled. “You've become completely sick!”

Time remained in suspense: then he also saw it, on his right, a ghost or animal whose shadow was turning around them at high speed.

“There! It's there! On the right!”

The shots crackled in the saturated air of the forest, unveiling for a brief instant their dumbfounded faces, but if there was a figure, it had disappeared.

“It's the devil,” von Wernisch burst out. “It's the devil who has led us here!”

The general felt around blindly, caught hold of Parise's jacket, and did not let go.

“Give me a gun!” he ordered. “Give me a gun!”

The giant wrenched himself free. They had only three pistols and the clips were still under the Land Cruiser's seat. Then the head of security thought he sensed someone behind him. He hesitated to fire for fear of wounding one of his own people, but it was certain: something was roaming around them.
Something
that didn't seem human.

“What is it?” El Toro roared.

“We mustn't stay here!” the cardinal repeated. “There are evil spirits in these woods, I feel them. I feel their presence around me. They're on the prowl. Don't you feel them?”

The devil was moving through the forest, all around them. A terrible threat that would soon strike. Even General Ardiles was trembling alongside him. The old fear of the dark had taken him by the throat. There was a breath of panic when the phantom's head appeared behind a tree trunk: a white stripe, hardly perceptible in the obscurity, ten feet away from him.

“Give me that!” Ardiles hissed, grabbing for Parise's pistol, but the bald man brutally shoved him away: the two old men were losing it. Thrown to the ground, Ardiles howled with pain when he fell on his wounded arm. A bullet grazed Parise's skull and ricocheted off the araucaria's trunk. A bullet fired by a revolver at very close range. No, they weren't ghosts or phantoms, but instead several hunters lying in ambush. Parise crouched down and opened fire, at the risk of making himself a target.

“Get out of here!” he shouted, aiming his automatic weapon. “Goddammit, get out of here!”

He pulled the trigger. The clicking of the firing pin stunned him. He tried again, in vain: the Glock was empty.

“
Mierda!
”

A bullet split the shadows on their right. El Picador started to squeal, waving his arms around him.

“Damn, I've been hit! Aah! Goddamned fucking piece of shit!”

“Where is it?” El Toro yelped in panic. “Where is it, goddammit! I can't see anything!”

“
La concha de tu abuela!
”
18
El Picador swore. “My fucking leg is broken, I'm sure of it!”

The bullet had broken his tibia. He was leaning against the trunk without knowing how he could stand up. Parise cursed in the dark: they were going to be shot down like rabbits if they stayed there. He no longer had a weapon and the killer was observing them at this very moment.

“Every man for himself!” he growled, helping the general to his feet.

The boss took off. Panicked, El Toro and El Picador fired three times to cover their escape, abandoning von Wernisch to his fate. Supporting his wounded friend, El Toro made his way between the brambles. Parise had gone in the opposite direction with Ardiles, leaving the cardinal under the tree—they were out to save their skins. The giant banged his head on branches, recovered, gritting his teeth to keep from howling.

“Wait for me!” the general cried. “Parise! For the love of God, wait for me!”

“Hurry up, shit!”

The forest was haunted, you couldn't see anything. El Toro and El Picador groped their way, thinking only of getting out of the trap. They heard the cardinal's calls for help behind them, frightening cries that froze their bones. They continued on through the thickets, needles in their blood.

“It hurts!” El Picador swore a few yards away. “It hurts, damn it!”

“Shut up for fuck's sake; they'll hear us and know where we are!”

Somehow they moved on, groping, wandering through this tangle of vines and brambles that led nowhere. El Toro went first, his hands bloody from pushing through the thorns; he tried to step over the roots, the bushes, and bounced around like a mad pinball. His mind occupied with fleeing the hell into which he had been led, he walked headfirst into a tree trunk.

“Fuck!” he swore in a low voice.

Furious, he swept away with his hand the bits of bark encrusted on his forehead and caught his breath, peering into the dark all the while. He didn't know how many bullets he had left in his pistol; his pockets were empty, and fear was dripping down his face. Then he realized that he was alone.

“Picador!” he shouted. “Where are you?”

No answer. He swallowed, out of breath: he'd lost his buddy. He'd been right behind him just a moment ago—at least he thought he was. A whiff of fear gripped his heart. Should he go back? To do what? To be skinned alive by those damned striped phantoms?

“Where are you, for God's sake? Pic! Hey! Pic!”

The darkness muffled his calls. Still no response. Only a resounding emptiness. All he could hear was the rustling of the wind in the treetops and the creaking of the branches below, the forest sounds that made his skin crawl. El Toro thought he sensed something on his left, and fired two bullets into the forest. Sweat was running into his blind man's eyes; he opened them wider, in vain. His intestines were in turmoil.

“Hey! Where are you?”

El Toro drew back, aiming his gun at an invisible target, stumbled on roots, and caught himself by grabbing the vines. “
Hijo de puta, hijo de puta
,” he cursed, his pulse racing, gripped by an unfamiliar fear. The shots could come from any place, hit him any time, the forest was a fucking giant hood around his head. Then he heard footsteps in the leaves, footsteps that were coming closer. He fired his last two bullets, which disappeared into the night.

“
Hijo de puta! Hijo de puta!
”

He pulled the trigger several more times before hearing the firing pin clicking at the end of his arm. His eyes went wide; frightened, he tried to move backward: he was being watched. Somewhere. Between the branches. There was something there, he could feel it, there, in the heart of darkness. Suddenly his hair stood on end: the shadow was rushing toward him like a tiger. Too late to retreat. He screamed, ready to strike with the butt of his pistol. A red point appeared on his chest: El Toro was about to strike the unearthly beast when an electric charge atomized his nervous system.

He staggered in the damp air of the forest, and collapsed heavily onto the roots, his muscles paralyzed. A few seconds passed, outside time.

“
La concha . . .
”

The beam of a flashlight dazzled his bovine eyes. El Toro made a desperate effort to get up, but in vain: the rifle butt fractured his jaw.

 

*

 

It had rained during the night, transforming the clearing into a mire. The first thing El Toro saw when he opened his eyes was a woman's vagina that was pissing on him. A stream of lukewarm urine was dripping from a tuft of black hair, the kind of pussy he liked best, crouched a few inches from his face.

El Toro tried to move but his limbs were bound and his head riddled with countless wood splinters. Images came back to him, in disorder: the mad flight through the forest, the panic that had made each of them take off in a different direction, the total darkness, the disappearance of El Picador—he'd been right behind him!— the beast that had attacked him . . . He turned his head aside: the piss was running over his split lips, and the open wounds were burning.

“That's to keep you from getting septicemia,” Jana said as she finished emptying her bladder.

The blow with the rifle butt had demolished his mouth and part of his upper jaw. El Toro spit out the two incisors that had ended up at the back of his mouth, and almost suffocated as he rolled on the mud. He blinked his eyes. The Indian was buttoning up her jumpsuit—she looked pretty scary with her broken nose and her eyes still ringed in black. He started back: it was the girl from the delta, what the fuck was she doing there?

“Don't worry, I'll be back,” she said, disappearing among the branches.

Her daubed face and her sepulchral voice made him shiver. El Toro sniffed down clots of blood, lying on the ground, still unable to stand up. As for speaking, the slightest movement of his jaw brought tears to his eyes. He was completely naked, thrown like a sack of dirty laundry in the middle of a clearing, his mouth in shreds. Above him, immense trees swayed in the wind; their tops could be seen in the early morning light.

How long had he been there? His hands were tied behind his back, and his feet had also been hobbled with handcuffs that cut cruelly into his skin. The fat man twisted around and saw El Picador lying a few steps away, also naked, next to an old man whose bones stuck out of his emaciated body—the cardinal and his sad face. Bound hand and foot, the prisoners could hardly raise their heads. Von Wernisch seemed to be praying, his eyes half-closed, curled up as if to hide his withered penis. El Picador was in a similar position, dazed and livid. His leg was broken, an open fracture exposing the tibia which, to judge by the dull glow in his eyes, seemed to be causing him to suffer atrociously.

A flea-ridden dog was observing them from the thickets, impassive, his paws crossed under his gray muzzle. El Toro's head was spinning terribly; he made a painful effort to sit up, grumbling into his blood-soaked beard. The little whore had broken his jaw. It took him several seconds to fully recover his wits. A damp cold was seeping into his bones. He still had some reserves. Where were the others? Parise, General Ardiles? The clank of a chain on his right made him jump: a man with a bald head was crouching at the edge of the clearing, a guy in his seventies chained to a tree by his neck, like a dog. Was it Díaz? El Toro met his crazy eyes, and the inexplicable fear he'd felt in the forest gripped the pit of his stomach. Another sound caught his attention. He turned toward the araucaria: the Indian woman was digging a hole, a little farther on, under the branches.