The Heaven Trilogy (118 page)

For long minutes she crouched, still, drifting between abstract thoughts. At one point the ache on her skull grew like a boulder in her mind, and she put her fingers into a gash along her crown. A sticky wetness she thought must be blood drenched her hair. She wondered what would happen if a spider laid its eggs in that gash up there. Mother had warned her a hundred times, “An insect’s eggs can be much more dangerous than its bite, Tanya. You be careful in those rivers, you hear?”

Yes, Mom, I hear. But now I don’t hear. I don’t hear a thing ’cause you’re dead, aren’t you, Mother? They killed you, didn’t they?
She cried after that thought.

Her mind cleared slowly. A pain gnawed in her arm, and she ran her fingertips down to a deep cut below her elbow. Now the spiders would have two places to plant their eggs. Tanya sucked deep, suddenly aware that the air in her hole was stuffy, maybe recycled already. She could suffocate—drown in her own carbon dioxide.

She reached for the ceiling again and pushed. It might as well have been a brick wall.

Her head ballooned with pain. If she had to die, a quick death would be good. But she wasn’t ready to die, and the thought of dying slowly in this black box made her cry again.

A voice called from her memory—her father in his deep, confident way, “Tanya! Tanya, where are you, honey? Come to the hall; I want to show you something.” It was her first week in the jungle. She’d been ten then. Father had come ahead of her and Mother to build the house. Now, after three months they’d joined him. Three months of waiting and explaining to her American friends that yes, she was leaving them for a very long time, but not to worry, she would write. She’d written three times.

“Come here, honey.” She found her father looking into the hall closet and smiling proudly.

“What is it, Papa?” He’d ushered her to the spot and squatted next to her. “It is a secret storage place,” he’d said, beaming. “Think of it as a place we can hide things.”

She had peered into the dark square and shuddered. “It’s so dark. Why do you want to hide things?”

Her mother had intervened then. “Oh, you never mind your father, Tanya. He’s just playing out his childhood fantasies. You are not to go in there. It’s not safe. You understand? Never.”

Jonathan had chuckled and Tanya had skipped away, giggling. There were many more interesting things in her new surroundings than a box in the ground. In fact, her father had never actually used the hiding place, at least to her knowledge.

Except now. Now he had led his daughter down in there and left her to die. The thought stung and Tanya widened her eyes despite their blindness. All right, she had to think this through or she might do just that. She might die.

For starters, she had to find a way to move in this tiny space. If she didn’t stretch her joints, they would lock. Her knees were already cramping. She sniffed at the wetness covering her upper lip and ran her wrist under her nose. The walls on either side rose a mere six inches from each shoulder, and she’d established the ceiling’s proximity as maybe eighteen inches above her head. She stretched her legs out. They encountered no wall and she found her first sliver of relief. She sat like an
L
with her back against one end.

Tanya reached farther with her feet, but they struck the far end of the box. She swore. Lying down straight was out. All right think.
Think!

Heavens, listen to me. I’m stuck down in this box and I’m swearing. I don’t swear. Especially when the only person who can possibly get me out of this is God
.
Help me, dear Father. Please, help me!

Okay, all right. What do I do? Tanya stilled and forced her mind to work logically, one step at a time.

Father, if you will let me live, I swear . . .

You’ll swear what to God? As if that would make a difference.

Just let me live and I’ll do anything. Anything. I swear.

The side walls were set in dirt or concrete—she didn’t know which, but either way they were going nowhere. The end walls would be the same as the side walls. The floor beneath her led to even more dirt.

It was a grave.

The ceiling had already proved uncompromising, although she had only tried force. Maybe finesse would do better. Yes, finesse.

Tanya sat up and blinked in the pitch-darkness. She should explore the entire box with her fingers. Especially the ceiling—maybe she would find a lock or a crack or some simple way out of this box.

A sliver of hope brought some light to Tanya’s mind. What she needed was light in her eyes, but this was a start, she thought, and she needed a start badly. She lifted her arms above her head and began walking the rough-hewn wood with careful fingertips as if she were pretending to read Braille.

“God, help me,” she breathed. “I’ll do anything, if you help me. Anything.”

THE THUNDER of a gathering storm cracked overhead as Shannon fled for his life. Less than a hundred meters to his rear, the shouts of men were drowned by the sky’s booming voice.

The rain came quickly, in sheets, just as Shannon approached the steeper grades ascending to the cliffs. Now would be a good time to return home, he thought. Mother had said they were having seven-bean soup for supper and he loved seven-bean soup.

The thought struck him like a wedge to the forehead and ignited a string of images. His heart leapt to his throat and he sobbed, but quickly cut off his breath. Not now. Not now.

Shannon had run under these trees many times, often ignoring the path and scrambling through the jungle, laughing with Yanamamo Indians chasing his heels. Of course, those times had been times of play. The sun had been shining then, the jungle floor visible, and the foliage dry. Now the rain carried rivulets of mud down the steep slopes.

He glanced down the mountain and saw blurred figures no more than sev- enty meters behind. He veered off the path and lunged for the steep incline to his left. Through the steady downpour, he heard muffled shouts followed by a
Pop!
The weapons’ fire came in close succession then, ripping through the air like a string of firecrackers.

His foot dug into the soft embankment and found a root. With the greenery around him crackling at the sound of flying bullets, he leapt into the jungle and began clawing his way up the incline. He crested the slope and launched himself forward, panting hard and shaking from exertion. The black cliffs rose above the canopy.

Heavy pounding drifted through the leaves behind him—the sound of helicopters. So they had joined in the pursuit! They would cut off the cliffs.

Shannon came to a full stop in a clearing at the base of the cliffs. The stark contrast between heavy green jungle and the sheer black shale towering above sparked an image of a tombstone rising from a cemetery lawn. The cliffs couldn’t be climbed except in two well-marked passes.

He rested his hands on his knees and gasped for breath in the thin mountain air, thankful that for the moment the rain had ceased. The beating of blades warned of the heavy pursuit.

Shannon turned his tear-streaked face to the jungle below. He’d left them for the moment, but they would find him quickly. He had to think. His heart thumped in his chest like an overworked pump bleeding through blown seals.

The pond! He hadn’t been to the water hole in over a year, but maybe he could hide there.

Shannon grabbed a handful of grass and quickly wiped the mud from his soles. Keeping his eyes on the trees, he ran parallel to the forest, leaping from rock to rock.

He had managed two hundred meters before the sound of chopping rotors pushed him back into the jungle. He jogged through the trees along the black cliffs without breaking pace, occasionally catching glimpses of the helicopters unloading men onto the cliffs.

He reached a small, muddy pond, dropped to his belly, pried his eyes to the sky, and then snaked out of the jungle. A clump of brush consisting of little more than twisted, broken reeds floated in the middle of the pond. Shannon slipped into the stagnant water, submerged himself, and swam for the clump. He surfaced in a small cavern formed by the brush and grasped a root.

Thin shafts of light filtered through the mass of broken reeds above. He spat at a large
Durukuli
lizard, closed his eyes, and shook his head at the swelling of tears in his eyes.

Voices barked around the water’s perimeter. He held his breath and forced his muscles to relax. The feet padded by and passed into the brush. For the moment he was safe.

He swallowed hard as he stared past the unmoving lizard that sat flicking its tongue. The sound of sweat dripping from his chin and into the water echoed through his ears, like the passing of seconds leading nowhere.
Drip, drip, drip
.

Then images of the attack began to draw gauze over his mind again. He just wanted to go home, now. It was over, wasn’t it? It was all over. He should go home before darkness drew the snakes.

But he couldn’t move. He let more tears—streams of them—run over his face and he found some comfort in those tears. Nobody could see him. Soon though, he would have to do something.

Soon.

TANYA COLLAPSED to her rear end, thoroughly stuffed with dread. She’d spent long chunks of time walking the box with her fingertips. The minutes faded into hours, but they could actually have been only seconds. It was that kind of feeling: a strange confusion staring relentlessly into midnight, but knowing morning must have come. And gone.

She had found no way out.

Besides the small crack around the trapdoor, her fingers had felt only parallel lines separating exactly eight stacked boards on all four sides of this crate. She’d estimated each board at eight inches in height. That would make the box just over five feet deep and roughly the same in length. Five by five by three, she thought. A good size for a grave. Big, actually. Now the Egyptian tombs— there were some serious graves.

But this couldn’t be her grave. Not really. She was only seventeen! And her father had meant to
save
her, not bury her alive! She began to cry in steady streams. Her shoulders shook with the emotion as she wept.

Oh, God
.
Why? What have I or my father or my mother ever done to deserve this? Why would you allow them to die? Just tell me that, if you are so loving and so kind
.

She lifted a dirt-packed nail to her lips and chewed. The dirt ground between her incisors, like tiny pieces of glass that sent shivers down her back. They were so innocent, her parents. So loving and patient. They gave their lives for others. For her.

Please, Father, save me. I will do anything.

Tanya’s mind began to crumble. She had come to the end of her senses. There were no more meaningful tasks to occupy her fingers. Her nostrils were stuffed with the musty smell of decay; her ears heard only weak sobs; she could taste nothing but her own leaking mucus.

A thousand pinpricks of light flashed in her forehead, like star bursts on the Fourth of July and she thought it might be because her brain was tearing loose from its moorings. Her hands trembled like those of a very old man in desperate prayer and her eyes began to ache. They hurt because they had rolled back into her skull, from where they had a better seat for the fireworks. Her mouth yawned, exhaling stale air.

Then she heard the screaming.

It started low and distant like an approaching train blowing its horn, but quickly grew to a shrill screech, as if the train had thrown on its brakes and slid uncontrollably forward.

It occurred to her that the sound was hurting her throat and she realized that the scream came from her.

She was screaming. It wasn’t a yawn at all—it
was
a scream. Sometime during that scream she fell asleep. Or passed out. They were the same down here in the box.

It was then, as she lay dead to the world, that the first vision came, like a bolt out of heaven. In a single white flash, bright sky blossomed above her. The darkness was gone. And there, huddled in the box, Tanya gasped.

She was like a bird high in the sky, circling a clearing in the jungle far below. Such relief, such contentment washed through her that she shuddered in pleasure. Silent wind rushed past her; bright sky made her squint; the smell of jungle rose wet and sweet. She smiled and twisted her head.

This is real,
she thought
. I’ve become a bird or an angel flying high over the trees.

A yellow bulldozer snorted gray smoke as it carved a swath of trees leading to a large square field to the north. The plantation. Shannon’s plantation. And directly below, the mission.

She dipped her wings for a closer look. A stick house was being built in the center of the clearing. The tall blond-headed man working there leaned judiciously over a table saw and Tanya recognized her father immediately. His bright blue eyes glanced to the sky, smiling. He lifted a hand, as if he wanted her to come to him, and then he leaned over the saw once again.

But this was all very strange. She had never seen the mission or the house before its completion. And now through a bird’s eye she saw each detail. She saw that he had carefully placed the roof joists with eighteen-inch centers for added strength; she saw that one of the windows lay cracked on the floor, waiting replacement. She saw that he had rested several large timbers against the corner and now one of those timbers slipped toward him.

With sudden alarm, she realized that the timber would smash into her father, and she screeched a warning. Jonathan pried his eyes to the sky, saw the falling timber, and dove from its path with scarcely an inch to spare. Wide eyed, he rolled to his feet. For a moment he stared at the timber in disbelief, obviously shaken badly. He lifted his eyes to the bird hovering above—to Tanya—and he smiled.

“Thank you, Father,” he whispered.

And then, as if speaking directly to her, he said, “Remember, always look past your own eyes.”

The sky suddenly went black, as if someone had flipped a switch.

Only no one had turned out the lights. She had just opened her own eyes. And in the box there was no light.