Don't Look Back (26 page)

Eve looked at the base of the wall where she’d slept. She kicked aside her jacket, searching. “The first-aid kit is gone.”

Will leaned with his good knee on the mattress, throwing back the sheets. He pulled the drawer from the nightstand, his skin glistening with sweat. “My antibiotics,” he said. “My goddamned antibiotics. I’m
fucked
without them.”

“We’re all fucked,” Sue said. Her fierce tone, punctuated with the uncharacteristic curse word, cut Eve to the bone. Sue kept on, growing strident. “We are trapped here, and he is … he is
stalking
us now. He is here, right here, hiding in those trees. We are at his mercy. Why are we here in this hut? We need to leave
now.
We need to get out of this jungle
n—
”

Another explosion rippled the floorboards. They started, Eve leaving her feet in a panicked hop, and Lulu shrieked. Through the open door, a flash of yellow came visible at the lodge’s periphery, licking the gray sky. Black smoke followed, pluming up from the protective bamboo wall behind which the generator was housed.

Lulu bolted.

Neto caught her arm, but she ripped free, and Eve felt a wisp of dream memory overlie the moment—her own hand reaching for Nicolas’s before the blast shot him out of her grasp.

Neto’s voice wrenched high: “He’s waiting out there!”

But Lulu flew through the doorway. She almost tripped leaving the porch, her fist glinting, something clenched in her fingers. Eve scrambled after her, logjamming with Neto in the frame. He knifed through first, stumbling and banging off the bamboo railing. The others rustled behind them.

“¡Lourdes!”
Neto shouted.
“¡Espere un momento!”

Sprinting for the cantina, Lulu was yelling, snatches of words whipped back by the wind: “… butchered by …
not
wait to be…”

Eve was on the stairs, Harry bellowing over her shoulder: “What about us? Hold on!”

Lulu threw open the door of the van and vaulted inside. She shouted through the rolled-down driver’s window, “I’m
not
waiting! You can get in, too, but I’m leaving
right now
!”

Neto ran across the clearing, his gaze darting from the tree line to the stables. “We’ll go together, then. Let’s just make sure he’s not right here.”

Lulu’s fist glinted again. She jammed the keys beneath the steering column.

Eve’s vision expanded like a lens to encompass the black smoke rising from the generator across the clearing and the smashed bits of the satellite dish rocking on the roof of the shack, those spots of movement trying to tell her something. It walloped her mid-sprint, an impression of what the next second would bring.

Time slowed to a molasses crawl. She sensed her arm swinging up, her knee lifting to ninety degrees, propelling her forward. The muscles of her throat corded with her scream:
“Wait!”

Lulu’s arm tensed as she turned the key, and the van erupted, blown upward on its hind tires like a bucking horse. Glass ejected from all sides, an expanding disk of coruscating bits, the circumference holding the shape of the vehicle for a fraction of an instant before blurring outward. The flame billowed forward, haloing the driver’s seat. Lulu’s head swung, her rolling eyes finding Eve’s an instant before the blaze cocooned her.

Chapter 35

The rain-pounded earth sucked at the back of Eve’s head. She was staring up at a dense sky overrun with storm clouds. They drifted and swirled, and some part of her brain registered that they were pretty indeed, like one of Nicolas’s finger paintings if he’d run through the bright end of the palette and had to resort to purples and grays. She thought—as she’d thought ever since she was a girl—how lovely it would be to skip across the puffy blanket up there, sinking in, getting a cushiony bounce. The ringing was in the air and all around her or—perhaps—only in her ears. She blinked against the falling drops, and they ran down her temples like tears.

She sat up.

Neto, who’d been a few steps ahead of her, lifted his face from the mud. His forehead and cheekbones looked raw, sunburned. He pulled himself to all fours, spit and spit again, clearing from his mouth something invisible. She went to him and helped him up. The others were behind them now, and they stood and watched the thatched veranda of the cantina burn. The rain worked on the flames, muffling them as it had muffled the fire around the detonated mezcal activity center. Holes singed the yellow letters of the Días Felices Ecolodge™ banner, stretching them out of proportion before the tethers pulled free and the whole damn thing curled into itself like a dying insect.

The back half of the van was little more than a smoking hull, though the front looked surprisingly intact. Lulu remained nestled in the scorched upholstery of the driver’s seat, clearly dead.

Neto staggered to her. He clutched at the door handle and shrieked, jerking away and shaking his hand. At the back of the cantina, a beam crashed down, smashing a picnic table.

Neto spun to face the others. “I need to get to her. Help me get to her.”

Fortunato picked up a bucket rolling by like a tumbleweed. He scooped up some puddle water and threw it on the door handle. The hot metal sizzled, then quieted. Neto flung his burned fingers beneath the latch, popping the door. His arms were spread to catch Lulu, but she remained there, propped stiffly. Embers spun down, showering his shoulders.

He tugged at her, and she toppled backward into him. Holding her beneath her still-raised arms, he tottered in reverse, falling onto his rear and shoving away from the fire with his heels.

He sat in the clearing, holding her, panting.

The rain tamped down the burning veranda until the fire was no more.

Neto turned to Eve. “Her pulse. You have to check her pulse. Give her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. You helped Will. You can help her.”

The body in his arms was so evidently lifeless that Eve’s usual responses in the face of denial seemed inadequate. She worked saliva into her mouth so she could get out the words: “She’s gone, Neto. Look at her. She’s dead.”

Cradling her lovingly, Neto hoisted the body atop a picnic table that the explosion had shot out from beneath the veranda. Lulu sprawled supine, elevated in inadvertent display like a sarcophagus lid, eyes turned to marbles, a ribbon of black drool oozing down one frozen cheek. Given what Eve had witnessed, the body was not as bad as she would have thought. The stomach-churning scent of charred flesh laced the air, but the burns weren’t terrible. What had killed her was the pressure from the blast, splintering bones into organs, causing massive internal ruptures.

Neto started compressions on her chest, the body wagging up slightly around the union of his hands. His lips moved continuously as he counted, sweat falling from his face, sprinkling hers. The sight of those drops of perspiration, distinct in the air, made Eve turn her gaze upward. The creamy gray sky sparked with electricity, but for now there was no downpour. She’d almost forgotten what it was like to breathe air with no rain in it. Two vultures crested the mountaintop, drifting in lazy rotation, and it struck her how devoid of life the skies had been since the storm began.

Neto kept pushing, kept counting.

Eve shook her head, the ringing in her ears growing louder before receding to a background whine. She talked loudly to hear herself over the tintinnabulation: “No one move. No one touch
anything.
He can use all this stuff, anything we touch, against us. This is what he does. We can’t act predictably.”

Sue’s chest heaved with sobs. “What’s
predictable
in this situation?”

Will wobbled on his one good foot. “Panic.”

They formed a loose circle in the clearing, talking at one another but keeping their focus turned outward.

“Is he gone?” Sue spun in a frantic full turn. The air wafting from her carried the scent of perfume and decay. “He has to be gone.”

“Everyone stay close,” Will said. “As in right fucking here.”

Sue clung to Harry, holding him from behind. “Why doesn’t he just charge us with the machete?”

“Because he doesn’t have to,” Eve said.

Claire gave a nod. “He can cull the herd, one by one. Let’s call it like it is: We’re all easy targets. Two old folks, one of whom is sick. An
indígeno
kid. Neto’s an able-bodied man, but he’s…”—a glance to him still laboring over Lulu’s body—“well, he’s been taken out of the equation for the time being. Eve, a skinny broad who’s afraid to swim through an underwater channel.” She flicked her head toward Will. “And Gimpy over there, competing for my Miss Cripple tiara.” She smirked. “We’re not exactly SEAL Team Six.”

“The longer we stay,” Will said, “the worse the odds that we’ll survive.”

“Next move is the Jeep,” Eve said. “Next
predictable
move.”

They turned their attention to the stable at the edge of the clearing. Black flies circled the stalls above the remains of the burros. Fortunato stayed back with Neto, but the rest of them eased over as a single unit, holding an amoebic perimeter.

Will used the flashlight to scan the dim stable. The beam crawled over the Jeep, settling on the rear brake light. It had been smashed, the bare plug yanked free of the plastic casing so it dangled over the rear bumper. A few feet away, the gas lid was popped, the cap unscrewed. Clearly the plug had been meant to drop in the tank.

A tap on the brake would send a charge to the socket. A spark and a partially filled gas tank would take care of the rest, as the van had proved. Eve replayed how it had reared up from the back, like a bucking horse. “Why didn’t he leave the wire in this gas tank, too?” she asked.

The pain forced noises from Will every time he moved. He hobbled over, leaning on the stable posts, and pulled the plug toward the open mouth of the tank. It stopped several inches short.

“Not long enough,” he said.

“So the question is,” Harry said, “what did he do to the Jeep instead?”

“Maybe he didn’t have time to do anything else,” Will said.

“Hope springs eternal,” Claire said.

“I’ll take a look, make sure it’s not rigged some other way.” His speech was uneven, gaining pitch with each breath.

“You gotta keep that foot elevated,” Eve said. “You’re sending too much blood down there.”

Harry stepped forward. “I’ll do it.”

“You don’t know … what to look for,” Will said.

“I can figure it out.”

“We can’t afford for you to be wrong.”

Sue clutched Harry’s arm. “Let him.”

Harry pursed his lips, then nodded, relenting.

Will said, “Help me onto my back. I’ll check out the undercarriage, elevate my foot at the same time. Two birds, one stone.” He tried a grin, but sweat sheened his face and a high color had come up under his cheeks, the pain right there beneath the surface.

Harry and Eve lowered him down.

He paused on his back, squinting up. “Keep an eye out while I’m under here.” Leading with the flashlight, he wriggled beneath the Jeep. As he squirmed about, they stayed clear of his bandaged ankle, watching him and one another and the jungle all around. Eve sensed movement at the edge of her vision, but when she whipped around, it was just a parakeet taking flight, the vacated frond bobbing in its wake.

Sue’s knees buckled, and she sat abruptly in the hay. Harry rested a hand on her head but made no move to help her up, and she seemed content to stay. “What do we do about Lulu?” she asked.

Claire said, “There’s nothing we
can
do about Lulu.”

They watched the jungle some more. Eve caught her leg bouncing anxiously up and down and, with effort, stilled it.

At last Will shoved himself free of the Jeep. “I can’t see anything out of the ordinary. Pop the hood.”

Eve did as Harry helped Will around to lean against the front, where he poked and pried at the engine. Sue found her feet again but was wobbly on her legs until Harry stepped over to prop her up. The seat of her shorts was smudged with dirt, a few stray pieces of hay stuck to the denim. Eve thought about brushing them off for her, but the gesture seemed hopeless and somehow exhausting.

“Nothing here either,” Will announced.

“Given that we’re dealing with the Zen Master of Terror,” Claire said, “how do you know you’d
notice
a bomb?”

“Don’t know that I would.” Will bit his lip. “Only one way to find out.” He leaned around the open driver’s door, dipped the sun visor, and caught the falling keys.

Eve felt her stomach plunge, a roller-coaster drop. “Really?”

“We wait around here, it’s a death sentence anyway. One of us might as well try.”

“Why you?”

“Because of this ankle. I’m the most expendable.” With his good heel, Will pushed himself into the driver’s seat. He took a moment with his forehead to the wheel, catching his breath, then straightened up again. A metallic purr as he slotted the key. “You all probably want to stand back.”

“Will—”

“Come on, Eve. Look at us. Without this Jeep how the hell are we gonna get out of here?”

The others had withdrawn to a safe distance. Sue was again sitting on the ground, too weak to hold herself up. Harry looked gaunt with concern. Claire swung her locked-out legs, concentrating to place each step properly in the deep mud as she put real estate between her and the Jeep.

Eve hesitated at the open window. Will held out his hand, and she took it.

“Okay?” he said.

“Okay.”

He squeezed and let go. She backed away to the others, beyond reach of the blast radius. The top of his head remained barely visible above the headrest, and she fought an urge to shout out and stop him.

“Clear?” he yelled.

“Clear!” Claire shouted back.

Eve saw Will’s shoulder’s bob as he leaned forward toward the dash. She closed her eyes and braced for a second explosion.

Chapter 36

A click sounded from the stable as Will turned the key.

Nothing happened.

As in nothing at all.

Eve felt a burn in her chest and blew out the breath she’d been holding. Will had already clambered out, hopped around to the grille, and stuck his head under the hood.