As I watched him depart, hallucinations swirling through my brain like furious fireworks, I had a bizarre thought. In an ancient rainforest all things are still possible. The old fairy tales we grew up with mostly took place in a deep wood where evil could lurk unfettered. Today, though, the earth's forests no longer symbolize the unknowable dark within us. Nowadays, the ogres of our nightmares descend from outer space or even from our inner selves, places we can't physically know or subdue. Here, though, at this very moment, Steve and Sarah and I were marooned in a thousand-year-old forest where horror still lived.
I got off the bed and steadied myself, breathing deeply, forcing my brain to clear. Steve was wearing a shift, but his clothes were hanging from a hook on the door. For a long moment I just stared at the bruises on his face.
"God, baby, what did he do to you?"
No answer.
"Come on, love. Please wake up."
He didn't move, but his breathing was normal, not labored. I immediately decided I'd slap him around if I had to, anything to get him going and able to walk.
"Honey, wake up. Please." I pulled his feet out of the bed and slid them around and onto the linoleum floor. I didn't know what kind of sedative he'd been injected with, but if I had to shake him out of it, fine. This was no time for half measures. "Come on."
I pulled him to his feet and dragged him across the floor to the slatted window at the rear of the room, where the predawn sounds of the forest beyond filled the air, mingled with the rain. What I needed was a gallon of black coffee, but the wet breeze would have to do.
It took ten minutes of working on him, with me barely able to hold a grasp on my own reality, but then his eyelids began to flutter. I kept talking to him, pleading and badgering, and when he finally started coming around, I began to walk him back and forth in front of the window.
Steve, I thought, I'm so sorry, so terribly sorry I dragged you into this.
"Can I please lie down?" His timorous voice startled me, but it gave me a burst of hope. Come on.
"Baby, just walk a little more. Try to get the blood flowing and flush the damned chemicals out of your brain."
"Morgy, are you okay?" His eyes had finally started to focus. And the first thing he asked about was me. I impulsively hugged him.
"I'm going to be." I pulled back and examined him. "You know where you are?"
He grinned with only half his face, and I could tell even that hurt. Then he stared around the room.
"Tell you one thing," he said, "this ain't Kansas anymore. Last thing I remember is, Alan and I were setting down. Then out of nowhere, your Colonel Ramos and about twenty kid soldiers with AK-47's were all over us." He groaned. "They took me and then he told Dupre to get back in the chopper and disappear. I think that son of a bitch tipped Ramos off we were coming. Then Ramos worked me over and gave me an injection. About five minutes later I passed out. It's the last thing I remember."
Ramos. Was he going to kill us both, now that Alex Goddard had gotten everything he wanted? I thought about it and decided this was not the moment to share that possibility with Steve. Instead I turned him around and lifted up his head.
"Are you really awake?" I loved this poor, beat-up man. More than anything, I just wanted to hold him.
"I'm not… but I'd damned well better be." He tried unsteadily, to straighten up. "Morgy, before he put me away, that Ramos bastard was talking about me, and you, in the past tense. Like we'd already been 'disappeared.' He didn't know I speak Spanish. What the hell's going on?"
I wasn't sure how to tell him. But I was getting that super energy God gives you when you realize life is no longer a game. We had to get focused.
"Baby, where's your passport?" I asked.
He looked around then pointed to his battered camera bag in the corner.
"It's in there. Or was. Central America. Never leave home without it." He grimaced then lightly pushed me away and stood by himself. "Jesus, do you know what they're doing? You were right all along. They're selling kids in the States. That Ramos prick is running the operation, not to mention Alex Goddard's slice of the action. And somebody at the American embassy here is handling all the paperwork, so they can grease everything through the INS. But I still don't understand how it is we're-"
"Honey, I know exactly what's happening." I'd long since figured out that Alex Goddard and Colonel Ramos were working hand in glove. But I still couldn't bring myself to tell him how he and I were going to be used. It was just too sick. "Listen, not long from now I think I'm supposed to be taken down there to the village for some kind of rite, as part of this whole disgusting operation, and then after that he's going to use… You don't want to hear. We've-"
"You know, Ramos and a bunch of G-2 thugs are here to take away a batch of little kids," he rambled on, not seeming to hear anything I was saying. He was off in his own world, trying to sort out things in his head. "But what I can't figure is, how can they just take children from here and nobody tries to stop them? Are these indigena so terrified-?"
"Listen, please." Now my hallucinations were returning in spite of all I could do, trails of light that glimmered off all the objects in the room, and I didn't know how much longer I'd be coherent. I'd have to talk fast. "We've got to get Sarah before daylight. She's down in the village. I tried to get her out of there yesterday, but-"
"Is she okay?" He stared at me and his eyes cleared for a moment. "I mean, is she able to-?"
"No, she's not okay. She's hallucinating worse than ever. I'm sure he's giving her more drugs. Really heavy stuff."
"So how-?"
"Hopefully, we're going right this minute. There's a river. But if that doesn't work out, there's something I can do to buy us a month's time. Alex Goddard's got a laboratory here, just down the hall, in back of his office. It's the evil center of this place. So if I can get in there and dump all his petri dishes, his in-vitro culture mediums… Baby, it's all so disgusting. But I'm going to take care of it."
I was starting to have real trouble just stringing words together into sentences. My hallucinations were still growing, the loud whispers of light, but I did manage to tell him how I thought we could get Sarah and elude the Army, if we did it before sunup, though my plan probably came out pretty jumbled. Yet I felt that if we did it together, we could take care of each other…
Then, with my remaining strength, I launched into action.
"Let me check the hall. I just want to shut down his lab. Call it… call it insurance. Five minutes, and then we'll be out of here."
It also would be a kind of justice, to even the score for what he'd done to Sarah and to me.
I leaned Steve back against the wall, then walked slowly across the tile floor to the door and tested it. Surprise, surprise, it was locked. I again tried the knob, an old one, then again, but it wouldn't budge, just wiggled slightly. He'd locked us in.
Now what?
Then I remembered the time Steve and I were in a similar situation. When we got locked in my room at the Oloffson in Port-au-Prince, he'd just taken his Swiss Army knife and unscrewed the knob, then clicked it open. He'd made it look like a piece of cake, but he had a way of doing that.
He was barely conscious, so this time I'd have to do it myself. I glanced around at his bag.
"Is your Swiss still in there?"
"I think…" His mind seemed to be wandering. Then he gave a weak thumbs-up.
I went over and zipped it open. Be there, I prayed. We really could use a break.
I rummaged through telephoto lenses and film canisters and underwear. Then I found it, zipped inside a water-repellent baggie and stuck in a side pouch.
I snapped it open and went to work, him watching me, his head nodding as he struggled to stay conscious.
The main difference between this time and Haiti was, here I didn't know what was on the other side and I was having hallucinations of multicolored snakes.
"You're doing great," he said finally, seeming to come a bit more alive.
And I was. Out with the screws, off with the knob, in with the small blade, and click. Maybe we just think men's mechanical skills are genetically hard-wired. Maybe it's all a secret plot to elicit awe.
I closed the knife and shoved it back into his bag, then turned to him.
"Honey, I'm just going to be a second. While I'm gone, practice walking."
"Be careful, please." He gave a cautionary wave. "They don't want us leaving here alive."
"Just get ready." I quietly pulled back the door and peered out into the dark hallway. It was empty, abandoned, no snakes, with only a light breeze flowing through.
When I stepped out, the fresh air hit my face and I had a moment of intensity that made me realize what I really wanted to do, first and foremost, was see Tz'ac Tzotz one last time. A last farewell to one of Sarah's children. Stupid, yes, a private folly of the heart, but I had to do it.
I was halfway down the hall, experiencing flashes of color before my eyes, when I heard a voice.
"They're all praying for you. It's almost time."
I turned back, startled, barely able to see. Finally I made out Marcelina, in her white shift. We were standing a few feet from the stairs, where I wanted to go, and I was tripping, my reality almost gone. I think she knew that, because she reached out to help me stand.
"Marcelina, where's Sarah?" I grasped her hand, which helped me to keep my balance. "Is she still down there in that… place?"
"She's been so looking forward to the ceremony. She wants them to bring her-"
"You don't know where she is?" I realized nothing was going to go the way I'd hoped it would.
"They all love her. They're taking good care of her."
"Well, I love her too. And I have to get her. Now." I was whispering to her, trying to save my strength. "Marcelina, promise me you'll stop all this. It's so horrible. So sad."
"It's our life," she whispered back, then turned her face away.
I didn't know what else to say, and I was terrified Alex Goddard might materialize, so without another word, I pulled away and started up the steps.
When I reached the top of the stairs, the hallway was lighted by the string of bulbs along the floor, and I made my way as fast as I could to my room at the end. I pulled my passport out of my bag, along with a charge card, slipped them both into my pants pocket, and headed back down the hall.
When I got to the door of the room where Tz'ac Tzotz and his mother were, I gave it a gentle push and peered in, but the glow from the lamp above the bed showed it and the crib were both empty…
No! They must have already taken the children. Next they'd be coming for me. I realized I'd been a fool not to head straight for the lab. I should have just gone-
The room went completely dark, together with the hallway, a pitch-black that felt like a liquid washing over me. The main power, somewhere, had abruptly died, or been deliberately shut off.
Then I heard a thunder of footsteps pounding up the steps, hard boots on the marble.
I made a dash, hoping to slip past them in the dark hall.
I'd reached the top of the stairs when I felt a hand brush against my face, then a grip circle around my biceps. Somebody had been too quick.
I brought my elbow around hoping to catch him in the face, bring him down, but instead it slammed against something metal, which clattered onto the floor.
"Chingado!" came a muffled voice.
I drew back and swung, and this time my arm scraped hard against the flesh of a face and the bastard staggered backward his grip loosening.
I twisted away and dropped to the floor to begin searching for what had fallen. Surely it was a pistol.
The marble was cold against my bare arms as I swept my hands across the floor. Then I ran my fingers down the edge of the stair.
And there it was, on the first step. My left hand closed around the cold barrel of an automatic. I shifted it to my right, grasping the plastic grip, not entirely sure what I should do with it. But at least I had a gun. I'd never actually held a real one before, but it was heavy and I assumed it was ready to fire.
I was halfway down the first set of stairs, on my way to the landing, when I felt an arm slip around my neck. I ducked and twisted away, stumbling down the last three or four steps, and landed on my feet, staggering back against the wall to regain my balance. All I knew was, the next steps loomed somewhere to my right. Just a few more feet…
But he was there again, moving between me and the final stairs. Get around him, I told myself, but at that moment he grabbed me at the waist.
Dancing in the dark, but the swirl had no music and no swing, just a quick, dizzying pirouette. I aimed the pistol as close as I could to his face and pulled the hard metal trigger.
"Mierda!"
Blinding light, a face lost in the burst of flame, stars filling my head. The fiery explosion tongued out past his ear like a brilliant sword of reds and yellows, sending a round off into space. The noise left a ringing in my ears and multicolored hues stuttering across my eyes.
It hit me who I'd just seen. It was Ramos. With a gun! Shit.
The flash of my pistol had given me the advantage for a second, since I knew it was coming, and with that edge I swung an elbow across his chin, then kneed him in the groin. It should have been enough to bring him down, but instead he merely sank to one knee and redoubled his grip.
Hey, I thought, maybe I know something he doesn't. How to take a fall. I'd seen enough movie stunts to know what you're supposed to do. It'd be risky, but I knew I wasn't going to win a wrestling match.
I opened up with the automatic, firing everywhere again and again and again, getting off five rounds in a crescendo of light and sound, like a huge firecracker in my hand, enough to illuminate the stairwell like a strobe and catch him off guard. In that fleeting moment I slipped a foot behind his ankle and shoved.
I think I yelled as I felt myself being pulled forward. Then I realized he was wearing a heavy bracelet that had tangled in my hair. I'd been planning to roll down the remaining stairs, protecting my head, and let him bounce, but the pull of his bracelet ruined it. I felt myself being swept into empty space, my gun flying away.
Then something glanced off my face, the wooden banister of the stair, which had mysteriously come up to meet me. I turned and felt his body beneath mine, arms flailing, a soft landing, till we rolled and I was beneath him again.
I struck out, a right fist, and he fell away, his bracelet disentangling as he tumbled farther down the stairs. Then I rose and tried to take a step, but it wasn't there. In the pitch dark the angle was wrong, off by just inches, and as I toppled forward into empty space I reached out, taking a handful of dark air.
Finally I felt something clenching my wrist, and the next thing I knew I was being swung around. I twisted sideways one last time, but then my head hit the wall. The hard marble caught me just above the ear, and I saw the darkness of the space grow brilliantly light, then transmute to vibrant colors.
Or maybe the hall lights had come back on. I only know I felt a set of arms encircle me.
"Come," Alex Goddard was saying as he lifted me up. "They're ready."