Amanda's Story (12 page)

“Yep, that about sums it up,” she said, following him outside. “I need you to help me move him. We can't leave him here.”

“I know; just give me a moment.” He had walked a few paces towards the fence and hung his head. “I had a heart attack a few years ago. I smoked too much, drank too much; I made millions off of people's retirement funds. Money real people had earned through a lifetime of labor, and I would skim off the top ten percent, all for punching a few buttons. I was what was wrong with the face of capitalism. It was people like me who precipitated the banking crisis, the foreclosure crisis; if there was a crisis, just look behind the curtains and you'd find me or someone just like me. But I got out of that.” He turned back towards Amanda and straightened. “And now I am going to die in this shitty little field. I can accept that; in a lot of ways it's appropriate and just.” He pointed back at the tent. “But that's not just. That's not something I can accept. He could have done anything with his life, but he chose to work for the UN to write charters on human rights. Instructions for assholes like me on how to live our lives. And he dies like that. Fuck!” He screamed and stamped his foot. Amanda could see that the perimeter guard was now on his feet, rifle in hand.

“Larry …”

“I know; we have to get him out of there.” He walked back into the tent, but not before kicking one of the dead Hondurans. “Where do we put him?”

“The old radio tent,” Amanda said, gathering Stephen's feet.

It took a good five minutes to maneuver Stephen's long frame out of one tent into another. “How many more do you …” Two nearby shots, fired almost simultaneously, made them both scramble to the ground. Amanda had shed her rifle just before Larry had arrived, and she could see it lying next to one of the dead soldiers. A wailing woman's voice carried across the field and Amanda thought it was Cami, or perhaps the older Charlotte. Aside from her screaming, nothing moved or made a sound.

“Jesus, that woman needs to shut up,” Larry said, and it dawned on Amanda that it was Larry's hand that had nearly smothered her earlier that morning.

“I'm going to try and reach that gun.” Amanda pointed at the weapon fifteen yards away.

“Are you insane? There are still two soldiers left in this camp. Special Operations Group! Do you know what that means? They'll shoot you before you get five feet. Even if you did reach it, there are two of them.”

Amanda looked back at Larry and nearly smiled. “They'll shoot us both in five minutes if someone doesn't do something,” she said, turning her gaze back outside. She was waiting, almost hoping, for time to once again slip off its rails, but it kept ticking along at the standard pace. She waited a heartbeat and then sprinted for the gun, expecting either a bullet or some significant time compression, neither of which occurred. She snatched up the gun and rolled into the medical tent for cover; nothing followed, and as far as she could tell nothing was moving in the entire camp. Cami was screaming now, and she was certain that Larry was fuming over it, but there were no signs of the Hondurans or any other threat.

After a minute Larry risked a look out of the old radio tent, and Amanda waved back at him. She looked to her left and could see an edge of one of the three tents the soldiers had been using. She knew that they had converted one into a morgue and were unlikely to snipe from there, but didn't know which of the three. Minutes passed and the only thing that happened was that Cami's screaming died away. Amanda was bent into an awkward position, and her calves began to cramp. She tried to rub the cramps away, but the muscles knotted even tighter, forcing her to stand. Larry was frantically signaling her, but she ignored him. If the Hondurans were going to shoot her it would probably hurt less than her calves. But no one shot her. She limped back towards Larry, keeping an eye on the Hondurans's tents, but nothing moved.

“Let's try and make it back to the big tent,” she whispered to him, crouching low.

He hesitated, then nodded. He went first. Bending low slowed their progress, but they reached the entrance of the large tent alive and intact. Amanda followed him into the relative darkness of the shelter, and they both found piles of boxes and crates to hide behind. “Cami, Charlotte, are you okay?” She risked the question knowing that it might restart the screaming. And it did. It was definitely Cami because Amanda could hear Charlotte trying to calm her.

“I can't take any more of this!” she screamed loud enough to hurt Amanda's ears from several feet away.

“God damn, it's like being in an airplane with a screaming child in the seat behind you,” Larry said through clenched teeth.

Amanda realized that if they had just kept going around the south side of the tent, literally only a dozen or so more feet, they could have put the majority of the large tent and its unopened cargo between the Hondurans and themselves. And as a bonus they could reach Cami, in which case Amanda could unleash Larry's death grip on the screaming woman. “Larry …” Amanda's whisper was easily concealed within Cami's screams. “Follow me around the corner.” This time he saw the logic and nodded vigorously. Amanda hoped he was warming up his hand.

They sprinted out and around the tent, and again no shots followed. They spotted Charlotte on her knees in front of a red-faced Cami, who was alternating between wails and inarticulate screams. Larry veered towards the two nurses, and Amanda worked her way towards Bernice, who was awake on the ground and trying to throw things at her hysterical nurse.

“Bernice,” Amanda said, breathless.

A decade of concern fell from the older woman's swollen face. “I thought it was Stephen all over again.”

“Not this time. Don't know where they came from or who shot them,” Amanda said, her breath returning.

“Well, if she doesn't shut up I'm gonna have you shoot her.” Amanda joined her on the ground, but her smile was cut short. A new crop of blisters had appeared all along Bernice's collar line, and her pupils were widely dilated.

“Bernice, are you okay?”

“No, I'm not okay. I've been shot, and if that fool doesn't shut up it's going to happen again.” Abruptly Cami was quiet. “Well, praise Jesus,” Bernice said. “Where the hell have you been?” She looked at Amanda with those frighteningly large pupils. Her IV with the morphine drip was still running, and Amanda was questioning whether morphine dilated or constricted pupils. She was fairly certain that it constricted pupils, which made Bernice's condition all the more concerning.

“I moved Stephen's body into the radio tent. Larry helped.” She studied Bernice closely, almost coming nose to nose with her, yet she didn't respond. “Bernice, can you see outside?”

“No, it's nighttime. Why are you asking such stupid questions?” That subtle shift in personality had reappeared. Amanda checked over her shoulder; the light was muted by the smoke, but there was no way any one with sight would mistake it for night. In a matter of hours Bernice had become blind.

“I'm going to check on Cami. You stay here and I'll come back to get you when it's safe.”

“Well, do it quickly,” Bernice said sharply. “An old woman shouldn't be crawlin' along the floor. Probably snakes out, and there are definitely spiders. I saw …”

Amanda crawled away, leaving Bernice deep in her own conversation.

“She's calm now; Charlotte gave her something,” Larry said as Amanda approached the trio.

Charlotte looked back at Amanda. “Morphine. It's the one thing that we aren't going to run out of.” There had been a subtle shift in the power structure. Larry deferred to Amanda, and now so did Charlotte. “Bea died; so did Charlie,” she said in a purely unemotional matter of fact tone. Just for an instant Amanda wanted to slap her.

“What are we going to do about them?” Larry motioned towards the Honduran tents. “We can't keep hiding over here. Our water supply and the food are on that side. Not to mention the generators are going to need more fuel in a few hours.”

“Do we need the generator on? What are we using it for?” Amanda asked.

“The bodies. Yesterday we put them all under a tarp and hooked up a cooling unit.” Larry seemed uncomfortable with their solution, but Amanda thought that it was rather clever. “There's no more room under the tarp. I thought maybe we could use the radio tent. Problem is that I don't think it will accommodate…everybody,” he said awkwardly.

“Doesn't much matter if we can't reach them,” cheerful Charlotte said.

“We're all going to die out here,” Cami added pitifully as she briefly came out of her morphine stupor.

Amanda had had enough of Cami and took a step away. Larry followed and Charlotte redosed her friend. “I think Bernice is sick again. She can't see and her rash has returned. I am not going to cower behind some boxes and watch her die. I'm going to sneak over there and see what they're up to.”

“Do you have a death wish?” he asked.

“No,” Amanda said quickly—much too quickly to have fully considered the question. She had to admit that her behavior over the last eight hours was at odds with her personality. She was terrified of guns, yet now she didn't feel comfortable without one slung across her shoulder. She was distinctly nonviolent, yet she had killed four men today and couldn't muster a trace of guilt. She had threatened and intimidated Charlotte and Cami when they were rude and dismissive, yet in her entire life she had never threatened or intimidated anyone for any reason, and what was truly surprising was how much she enjoyed it. More to the point, all her life she had been somewhat passive, letting things happen to her, yet now she insisted upon directing events, even if that direction entailed risk. Did that equate to a death wish?

“I can't leave Bernice like that.” They both looked down the tent and found an obviously disoriented Bernice crawling out, her bloody leg leaving a trail.

“I'll help her get back into bed. Don't get yourself killed and leave me alone with the sunshine sisters.”

Amanda hefted the rifle and walked back into the waning sunlight. She stayed close to the edge of the tent just in case the Hondurans decided to use her for target practice.

“See, a desire for self-preservation,” she whispered to herself as she reached the south end of the tent. This was her last real cover, and the next steps would give them a clear shot at her. The platoon's third tent, the one she judged most likely to be occupied, was less than twenty yards in front of her, but it would mean running directly at men who meant to kill her. The only other option was to leap-frog to the radio tent, then the medical tent, and finally the first of the platoon's tents—the one least likely to be occupied—where she would have to work her way down to the other two. Impulsively, she sprinted for the third tent.

Add that to the list
, she thought as she raced across the open ground. She slid the last few feet into tall grass that effectively covered her, and waited for a response.
I've never been impulsive,
she thought, silently catching her breath. Decisions usually paralyzed her.

The absurdity of the situation hit her like a bullet. She was lying in the grass waiting for soldiers to come bursting out of their tent to shoot her dead, and all she could think about was how strangely she was acting. So many people had died around her in the last three days that death had become a matter of course, and she was stressing about how her behavior had changed?
No more introspection until I get the hell out of here
, she swore to herself.

Five minutes passed and she hadn't heard a sound from any of the three tents. It was unnaturally silent. Not a creak, a snore, a cough, nothing. She crawled closer to the grey tent. It had a small flap and a mesh window. She held up a hand to the tent but it cast no shadow. She stood as quietly as her stiff joints allowed and then quickly looked into the window. She didn't take it all in but caught enough to know that she had nothing to worry about from this tent. Two bodies were sprawled against the wall facing her, a halo of blood above each upturned head. She looked again, this time longer, and confirmed the original glance. The only things living in this tent were the flies that flew in and around the faces of the dead soldiers.

She crept to the second and then the third tent. The entire platoon was gone. Seventeen men dead in four days, and that didn't even include the soldiers from Tela. She turned to the left and found her contribution. The four corpses were only a few hours old, but already she could imagine that she could smell them. She slung the rifle over her shoulder and followed the mechanical noise to the smoking generator. An empty fifteen-gallon gas can lay on its side. She looked for more but only came up with three other empty containers.

“More good news,” she said ruefully and started back to the tent and the other four survivors.

Larry's head appeared briefly over the crates as Amanda approached. Tentatively, he stood. “I take it that everything is secured?”

“As secure as they are going to get,” she said with a smile. “They shot themselves. That's what we heard. They were pretty bad off, the infection I mean.” Amanda didn't have to elaborate. “How is Bernice?” The sky was finally beginning to darken and bring this biblically bad day to an end.

“Angry,” he said and then started to push the obstructing crates and boxes aside. “I'm tired of this being in the way.” He managed to shift enough of them to create a corridor. “There, isn't that better?”

“Much,” Amanda said, walking through to the medical side of the tent.

“I think that's the most useful thing I've done since we got here.” He reached for her arm as she passed. “Amanda, I just wanted to apologize for what I said earlier. I don't think you have a death-wish. You're just trying to do what's right for everyone.”