Don't Look Back (42 page)

She took a step back toward the door. Another. Her hand reached over, clicked off the light, and her reflection vanished.

The view through the window opened up—to the elephant grass and al-Gilani surging through it, coming for her, the sight of him having replaced her reflection almost perfectly. His steps were ragged, but his progress preternatural, the chest-high grass parting for him as before a plow. He passed the shed with the burro, closing in.

She had no internal reaction, only a numb throbbing of spent nerve endings.

She slipped backward through the screen door, the night air enfolding her, freezing the panic sweat on her arms. Every other step sent a pulse of pain from her ankle up into her leg. She hobbled around the far side of the house a second before she heard al-Gilani bang through the screen door to search inside. The shed with the burro was too close and visible, so she struck out for the forest edge past the far end of the mud wallow.

The elephant grass here grew boggier, sodden with storm water. She heard the screen door bang again and looked back and saw al-Gilani standing there, staring out. His head rotated toward her, then stopped. He started coming. The ground sucked at her feet. She tumbled, and her knees sank as well. Getting up was like prying herself from quicksand.

She lunged again and tumbled to the edge of the wallow, the long-suffering hemp bag falling free, spilling its contents. She tried to rise again but could not. Her cheek kissed the edge of the wallow. The grass felt soft beneath her legs. Hidden cicadas shrilled, and she wondered if their call would be the last sound she’d hear. A ways back she could hear al-Gilani’s sucking footsteps as he began his pothole approach through the soggy ground.

Get up. Mom, get up.

I can’t, Little. Not anymore.

It felt so blissful to lie here, not to give up but to know she’d spent every last ounce and now it was finally out of her hands.

C’mon, Big.

She spoke to the grass and the leaves and the mud and her son: “I’m sorry, Little.”

The earth vibrated beneath her cheek from al-Gilani’s uneven approach. A few pretty purple flowers, like irises, pushed up on reedlike stems, presiding over her death. She watched them sway in the breeze.

The footsteps neared.

Chapter 58

Eve lay as she’d fallen, on her stomach, her arms at her sides. She heard the grass rustle behind her and then al-Gilani panting. He circled her. Crouched before her so she could see him. His face was an unholy mess of welts and bites. His cheek bulged cartoonishly where she’d kicked him, smearing his lips and eyes into something inhuman.

“Now,” he said, “it will be bad for you.”

She lowered her eyes, defeated.

He regarded the fallen backpack, the strewn items. “I saw the raft washed up in the river. I know now that you floated the others to hide them. I will search the banks, the inlets, the natural pools. After I kill you, I will search. I will find them.”

With a medieval motion, he reached over his shoulder and slid the machete from its sheath on his back. He touched her face with the tip, then tapped her elbow. “Your arm, here. Then your leg.”

Still in a squat, he sidled forward into position, then paused. She could feel the heat of his breath across her cheek, her neck. She was too tired to brace herself. The last water bottle lay in the mud by her face. He reached for it, unscrewed the cap, and held it a moment before his chin, catching his breath.

She watched and waited. There was nothing else she could do.

He took several deep gulps. Wiped his lips. Took a few more.

She exhaled, rippling the blades of grass by her mouth.

Then he took another crouch-step forward and flipped her over onto her back. She lay, arms flung wide, a tangle of sweat-dark hair across one eye.

His hands were at his buckle, and then he pulled his belt free. “I will make a tourniquet to…” His voice wobbled oddly, the vowels drawing out. He reached for her arm and tried to weave the belt around it, but the leather band slipped through his fingers, his grasp suddenly weak.

He looked at his hand, puzzled, then at her.

Eve summoned what energy she could and started pushing herself backward, her heels and elbows shoving into the mud. He collapsed onto his knees, just missing her shoes.

“The neuromuscular blocking comes first,” she said. “That’s what you’re feeling right now. The cardiotoxic effects follow. They will kill you. You’re already dead. Right now.”

He blinked twice, heavily, then swung his head to the side, taking in the water bottle lying in the mud. It had landed on a tilt, catching moonlight, which brought into clear relief the purple flowers floating inside.

“
Delphinium scopulorum,
” she said. “Glaucous Rocky Mountain larkspur.”

The same flowers that had sent Don Silverio’s cow into excruciating paralysis.

When Bashir turned back to her, his eyes were burning, his upper lip textured into a sneer. The machete was at his side, the tip trailing through the grass.

He brought his torso forward in a half topple, half lunge, falling over her even as she tried to scoot away.

His weight crushed down on her, forcing her breath out in a bark. She felt the damp press of his flesh, the stench of his body. She fought to slide out from under him, her palms shoving at his face, the bone of his broken cheek clicking beneath the skin.

He swung his arm at her, and his hand landed on her shoulder but could not clench. She knocked it away, kept pushing back, back.

The machete was still gripped in his other fist, and she watched it rise. It wavered by his ear, then plunged forward, whistled past her ribs, just missing, and embedded itself in the mud. His fist turned white around the handle as he dug the blade deeper into the earth, dragging himself farther onto her. Veins bulged in his biceps. But his muscles were locking down, his movements turned glacial.

His mouth strained in a pained grimace, his face close to hers, breathing raggedly against her neck. She kept shoving at him, the heels of her hands finding his shoulders, forcing him off.

Finally she kicked herself out from under him, sliding free. He rolled to his side, wheezing.

She pulled herself to her knees, looking down at him.

He made a choking noise. His hand slid out from under him, depositing him flat in the mud. He tried to say something, but the words came out garbled. His other hand rose an inch or two, the fingers straining. She watched until the hand settled back onto the ground.

Then she squatted over him and patted his pockets. He made noises. She felt something hard in the right pant pocket and pulled it out.

The positive-terminal lead for his Jeep.

She slipped it into her pocket, next to the key. His eyes bulged up at her, wrenched to the side to keep her in view. He could no longer turn his head. Soon enough he’d be unable to draw breath.

She rose, swaying on her feet. Her upright. Him lying helpless, still.

“Lower your eyes,” she said.

She put her foot on him and shoved. He rolled down the brief slope into the wallow itself. A ripple moved across the watery surface, and then El Puro lifted his mighty head.

With a flick of his primordial tail, he propelled himself through the sludge. Bubbles rose in the mud near al-Gilani’s mouth, quickening. The tail thrashed once more, and the crocodile glided up and stopped, his snout inches from al-Gilani’s face. Breath from El Puro’s nostrils fluttered al-Gilani’s hair. They stared at each other.

Eve turned and started back for the shed housing the burro. She listened for the snap of jaws but heard nothing.

She did not look back.

THURSDAY

Chapter 59

By the time Eve reached the zip line undulating in the water, morning had broken. For several stretches she’d either fallen asleep or lost consciousness on the back of the burro, and yet somehow they had arrived. Her hemp backpack pulled at her shoulders, filled with food and water from Don Silverio’s house, all of which she’d waterproofed in plastic bags. The Sangre del Sol had slowed significantly, and in the light of day she had little problem swimming to grab the line.

The sandy shoal had reappeared, and she hiked across and over the main trail into the canyon, moving brazenly in the open. Her momentary fearlessness vanished, however, at the sight of the squat house. As she passed, she gave it a wide berth, as if it might suck her back through the front door. She kept her eyes on it all the way until she reached the Jeep.

After she’d fitted the missing piece back onto the battery and connected the cable, she climbed in and turned the key. The engine coughed and sputtered through two false starts, nearly freefalling her into despair, but it caught on the third try. She nosed the Jeep onto a trail at the southern end of the canyon, and a ways down it let onto a path that turned into a dirt road that, miles later, turned into cracked asphalt.

On the descent from Don Silverio’s, she’d debated long and hard about taking the big detour to Will and Claire, but she doubted she could make the underwater swim given the condition she was in and doubted more her ability to be helpful even if she did. They’d have food and water for at least another two days, and so she’d elected to get out and send help back.

The landscape looked like the wake of a bombing, trees knocked over, cladding and fronds heaped on the asphalt. For hours she weaved around and through the obstacles, heading down out of the mountain range. The vegetation shifted gradually, turning subtropical. Royal palms and coconut trees, cacti and papayas, banana groves and tamarind trees with peanut-shaped pods. When she saw a pelican winging overhead, she figured the coast was within reach.

A washout came up abruptly, and she had no choice but to veer off-road. Squeezing between tree trunks and banging over plants, she blew out one tire and then another. She managed on the rims and tattered rubber for a surprisingly long time, aiming more aggressively downslope until she skidded sideways into a lagoon. She braced the gas pedal to the floor, but the Jeep was going nowhere, the tires spinning wetly, the engine’s rev drowning out all sound. The vehicle sank slowly, not in a particular hurry. Water claimed her feet and shins, rising to her knees as she rolled down the window and pulled herself free.

She waded along the milky terra-cotta bank, ducking mangroves and dodging turtles. Green iguanas bobbed on broad leaves, and flycatchers zipped through the air like hallucinations. Her tank top was soaked through, and the air started to grow fuzz, so she paused and drank water from a canteen and forced herself to eat a banana, though she felt like vomiting. She reached the far side of the lagoon and slipped, falling into the warm, soothing mud. She’d read that lagoons digested and purified nature’s waste, and she lay for a moment, decomposing along with it. When she’d gathered strength, she rose, a thing of mud and muscle, born anew.

The way down was evident, but as she hit thickets and tangles, she felt fear creep back into her chest. She was weaker on foot than she’d thought, her ankle blown out, her muscles strained to a point well past exhaustion. The flora jerked by in streaks and lurches, and she blacked out for a time and came to still walking. When she looked down, she saw blood leaking through her sneaker.

She sipped more water but did not sit, because she knew now for a fact that if she went down, she wouldn’t get back up. A row of palm trees ahead beckoned, aligned neatly like a fence, presaging the presence of man. As she started up the hill for them, they swung back and forth more severely than she was moving her head. She did her best to keep them in her sights.

An ocean breeze struck her when she arrived. She could taste the salt, see the curve of one of Huatulco’s famed nine bays below. Seagulls circled, distant specks. Peeking over a rise was the naval compound with its concrete-block buildings, its white stucco walls and clay-tile roofs. Tantalizingly close. And yet she could still fall down here and die of exposure, one ridge away.

She charted the gentlest descending slope, which was not the most direct. The sun pressed on her shoulders. She trampled through a patch of weeds and was standing on a major four-lane thoroughfare. A sign nailed to a tree trunk told her it was Highway 200, which ran from San Diego to Guatemala, and yet, right now, there was not a car in sight.

She trudged toward the bend a half mile away. This distance seemed the hardest of all. The turn wavered with asphalt heat, and when she came around it, the sight beyond wavered as well. A military checkpoint built of white sandbags and a thatch roof, dusky green-gray trucks, soldiers with soft camouflage caps and no-fucking-around anti-narco automatic firearms. She squinted, trying to get them to stop wavering, and she didn’t realize that they were not off in the distance but right before her.

“Ma’am? Ma’am? Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” she said, “I am,” and the road rushed up and hit her in the face.

Chapter 60

Eve came to with IV lines in both arms and her mouth moving: “—underwater passage to a grotto beneath the cascade.” The naval doctors calmed her and treated her while also taking her ravings seriously, which she knew from experience was no small medical feat. Word reached the U.S. consulate in Oaxaca City, and then things moved lightning fast. Helicopters were dispatched. The
secretario de gobernación
gave personal assurances.

Eve asked someone to reach Lanie at home and Rick in Amsterdam, and both were to be given instructions not to discuss this with Nicolas. That she would do in person. She had
lived
to do that in person.

The staff treated her for severe dehydration, second-degree sunburn, a sprained ankle, a cracked rib, and more contusions and blisters than seemed physically possible. The handsome salt-and-pepper doctor had called her a marvel of science, and she had liked that plenty.

Now she lay in her bed, itching to use the phone as soon as the doctor cleared her to talk. A young nurse came in to change the dressings on her sunburn, and Eve paused and laid a hand on her slender brown arm. “Thank you.” Her voice still husky with dehydration.