by David Klass
“We’ll have to portage,” I agree.
Ernesto has paddled over to us. “Yes. We’ll lose a day, maybe more, but there’s no alternative,” he agrees sadly. “Let’s get everyone over to the bank and we’ll start cutting trees to use as rollers for the canoes—”
And that’s when the guns open up.
58
A loud rat-tat-tat erupts from the far bank and bullets whistle into the water near us.
“Must be hunters … or tribesmen … But those sound like semiautomatics!” Ernesto shouts in confusion, his usually calm face panicked. He rips off his white shirt and waves it back and forth, desperately trying to signal that we come in peace.
In a flash, I realize what must be happening. I recall how at the end of my Firestorm quest, Dargon cut off one of my fingers and planted a tracking device in the plaster cast. Like father like son. The colonel let us go, but he must have planted a bug in one of the canoes. In our last conversation, he compared me to Moses. Now, too late, it occurs to me that Ramses reconsidered and sent his army after the Israelites, to wipe them out. “It’s the colonel’s men,” I tell Ernesto. “They followed us here.”
“This way! To shore!” Ernesto shouts and directs the canoes toward the near bank. But as if anticipating his command, a submachine gun opens up from beneath the trees on the near bank, less than fifty feet away.
The first blast rips a three-inch hole in the chest of the governor general of the free and wild Amazon.
Our fearless leader is blown clear out of his canoe by the blast. Time slows down. He seems to hang in midair, his arms waving. A long stream of blood unthreads from his chest while his handsome face is contorted in pain and disbelief. Then a second burst of bullets rips his body nearly in half, and he disappears into the river.
There are shrieks from nearby canoes. Everyone sees what is happening, but no one knows what to do.
The chief paddles us quickly away from the gun on the near bank, to the center of the river. The other canoes follow us out, but there’s no place to hide.
The ambush has been well planned. We can’t get away by paddling back upriver because the guns are on either bank, right at the narrows. If we try to pass between them, the crossfire will blow us to matchsticks. If we stay out here, they’ll pick us off one by one. And we can’t escape downriver, over the rapids, because it would be like trying to go down Niagara Falls in a barrel.
The canoe right next to us comes under fire. The man standing at its prow manages to dive off. A second later, the four men and one woman remaining on board are shredded alive. Their bodies dance grotesquely as bullets thud into them, and then skulls and chests explode and riddled, eviscerated corpses are blasted over the side.
“Jack!” I look over. P.J. is half standing, horrified. “We’re next.”
She’s right. I can almost feel the soldiers on both banks adjusting their aim. But she’s also wrong. Because there’s no way I’ll let that happen. Even the best traps have a way out, and the only possible escape from this one is roaring just in front of us. Every now and then, someone does make it down Niagara Falls in a barrel.
“Down the falls!” I shout to the Korubo chief, pointing with my arm. “It’s the only way!”
He doesn’t speak a word of English, but we exchange one desperate look and he understands.
We turn the canoe and head straight for the cataracts. I see the other canoes follow us toward the hissing and steaming entrance to a watery hell.
59
We paddle for the abyss. It’s strange to be racing toward almost certain death, straining for it, as if it also represents the only possible chance at salvation.
Bullets hiss around us. Three more canoes are hit. Pieces of splintered wood flap by like flying fish. Horrific screams ring out so sharply that they pierce even the thunder of the falls. Patches of white water churn scarlet. I see men and women bobbing desperately in the river, their eyes wild with the fear of drowning.
I want to try to rescue them, but there’s nothing we can do. The crossfire is too intense, and the current is sweeping us along too quickly. If we did succeed in slowing down, we’d be machine-gunned in seconds.
I have to save P.J. That’s all I’m thinking. You got her into this. Do whatever it takes. Get her out.
A bullet rips through the prow of our canoe. Knocks us off line. The chief straightens us. A second bullet smashes in. A third! They’ve found our range.
I dive forward and cover P.J. with my body. She cringes. I hold her tight. Wait to be shredded. Hope the first bullet is a head shot that kills me. But just before that happens, the bottom drops out of the world.
We tilt so far forward it seems like we will spin end over end. Instead, we plunge. Down, down, down, with the roaring all around us and the spray in our eyes. Blinded. Deafened. Holding P.J. and waiting for it to end.
Surely we’re going to hit a boulder and crack apart. Certainly we’re going to get sucked up in a whirlpool and drown. Positively we must roll upside down and be flayed alive against the rocky bottom.
But we don’t founder or roll or crack apart.
I glance back. The Korubo chief is sitting proudly in his place, somehow keeping us on a relatively safe course. He doesn’t look scared at all. In fact, he’s smiling. I understand that he’s doing what he was born to do, and that he’d much rather die this way than in the colonel’s foul prison. His bravery gives me the strength to help.
I let go of P.J., sit back up, and begin to paddle. We’re almost through the first section of falls. We barely avoid a giant boulder, and veer away from the dangerous clutches of a dead tree.
Then we reach the next huge cataract, tip over the edge, and down we go! Our canoe is in free fall. I try to keep my wits about me and help the chief pick out a safe landing spot. When we finally splash down in an explosion of spray, my first thought is that we made it!
Then I see that the front of our canoe is empty. We’ve lost P.J.! The impact knocked her out. I search the churning river and spot her, being swept toward the next set of monster rapids. She reaches up an arm and seems to wave, perhaps saying goodbye.
I dive over the side. The river grabs me in its powerful arms, but I fight back with everything I have. Always been a powerful swimmer. The best in my grade, in my school, in my town. Aced junior and senior lifesaving. Won gold medals at the town races. Once swam across the Hudson and back to win a bet. Now I put every ounce of strength and skill I have into saving P.J.
She’s trying desperately to slow herself—to avoid being swept down the next waterfall. Foot by foot I claw my way through the white water, moving ever closer to her. I’ll have only one chance to grab her. We’re perilously close to the lip of the thundering cataract.
Too late. She’s gone over! I’ve lost her! No, there she is, clinging to a rock at the very edge.
I grab a leg. Yank her back from the abyss. Find a handhold on the sharp rock she was clinging to. The chief sees us, and steers the canoe in our direction. But there’s no way he can possibly rescue us. We’re too close to the edge of the watery precipice.
P.J.’s freaking out. Thinks she’s gonna die. I grab her in a lifeguard hold. Push off the rock. Kick and stroke and fight my way back against the current.
Somehow I make it to the canoe. The chief reaches down. Grabs P.J.’s arms. Tries to paddle and haul her up at the same moment. I try to anchor us against the current and push her up. She calms down enough to help. I push, he pulls, she climbs, and suddenly she’s in.
Saved her! Our eyes meet for a fraction of a second. She knows I just saved her life.
BAM! Something slams me on the side of the head. A rock? A floating branch? I fade out, and come back to consciousness whirling in limbo. Fight my way up to the surface.
“Jack! Jack!” I see P.J. in the canoe, searching for me, as they tip over the edge of the falls.
I try to wave back, to let her know I’m alive.
And then I go over a different part of the falls. No canoe. Just Jac
k. Forget about negotiating Niagara Falls in a barrel. Try doing it in just shorts and some sandals.
BAM, another rock sucker punches me. OOWW, something knifes me in the ribs. WWWHHISSHHT, I’m whirled upside down in an eddy. ZZZZTTTT, I bust loose only to be sandpapered by the rocky bottom.
It’s like trying to fight twelve big guys who are armed with different weapons. One knifes you, one clubs you, while the next guy loads up with brass knuckles.
Still I refuse to give in. Beaten and bruised and bloody as I am, I kick back to the surface one final time.
See a canoe in the distance. P.J. and the chief are flying over white water, already far in front of me.
She’s half standing in the canoe, looking backward.
And then something massive comes between us.
A boulder, clenching like a giant’s fist. No time to duck. No way to block it.
I actually hear my skull CRACK open against it, and the darkness rushes in.
60
This is what happens when you die. You sail and sink and whirl back to the woman who gave birth to you.
“Jack? Jack?” a soft voice calls out to me.
Is it my mother, Mira, regretting sending her baby away, reaching across the centuries to try to reclaim me as I die?
Too late, Mom.
Is it P.J., swept away from me by the falls, calling one last time to her lost love?
Too late, my dear. I’m finished.
Skimming over water. Must be one of the rivers of hell. Hope it’s Lethe. Let me drink and forget.
There’s a dark figure in front of me, poling the skiff forward. Is it Charon, the ferryman who takes dead souls across to Hades? He’s supposed to be a winged demon with a double hammer. I can’t make out the details, but I see his hunched shadow working us toward the gloomy bank.
We reach the far shore. All movement stops.
Now there will be only the darkness of the damned. But I still feel sunlight.
I’m being held in warm arms. Bathed. Taken care of.
Something cool on my skin. Ointment?
Water is drizzled onto my lips. Not from the river Lethe. It doesn’t make me forget. It gives me strength, and helps me to remember.
“Jack, Jack? Can you hear me?” That same familiar voice again, but now I know it’s not Mira or P.J.
I open my eyes. We didn’t cross the Styx. Haven’t arrived in Hades. Hell can’t be this green and lush.
The shadowy figure bending over me is not a demon with a double hammer.
Quite the opposite. Soft skin. Red lips.
A caring hand strokes my forehead tenderly. Compassionate eyes peer down at me, filled with worry. Sad and beautiful eyes, deep and glittering with purpose. “Jack. Can you hear me?”
I don’t have the strength to speak, so I answer her telepathically: Yes, Eko.
Thank God! You’ve been out for three days. Twice I thought I’d lost you.
P.J.?
You had a concussion. Busted ribs. By the time I pulled you out, you’d swallowed half the river.
Where’s P.J? Did you save her, too?
Focus on yourself. You’ve just had a brush with death. Are you hungry? Do you think you can keep down solid food?
It takes a tremendous effort, but I suck in a breath and open my mouth and the words explode out: “Is she here? Did you save her?”
“I could only save you.”
“No!”
“Yes. It’s vital that you live. You are the beacon of hope.”
“Let me die.” Sinking back into a pit of darkness, craving a drink of oblivion from Lethe, and a one-way ticket to the shadowy shores of Hades.
61
Movement, always forward. Downriver. I can feel the tug of the current. Eko, where are we going?
The only way left to us. Rest.
Never a woman given to long explanations. Silent, sad, mysterious.
Turn us around. We have to search for P.J.
No, Jack. We have to continue on. Trust me.
Even telepathy is draining. I’m still in pain, half floating in darkness.
I don’t trust you.
You should. I care for you deeply.
Then take me back to the falls. Help me find P.J.
Impossible. Rest.
Something tart squeezed between my lips. Berries.
The bandages over my ribs being changed.
Leaves are tucked under my head like a soft pillow.
The soothing voice singing to me. Not in English. Sounds like Japanese.
My dreams take me to a place I visited once before.
A diamond-shaped valley surrounded by cliff walls. Four mighty rivers spilling down in a succession of great cascades, hissing into the same boiling cauldron.
A lush island floats in the center of this whirlpool, a jungle Eden. I glimpse towering trees and pink flowers as big as umbrellas. Giant men are on the island, too—I see their shadowy faces. They’re unmoving, unblinking.
One gaunt face is much larger than the rest. It could almost be just a wind-chiseled crag. Insects crawl over it, birds circle it, and flowers bloom near it, as if they all find the essence of vitality in its lifeless repose.
Someone is watching me. A keenly intelligent gaze. Human eyes! Vaguely familiar and spooky. Ghoul-like. Egyptian mummy eyes, encased in a sand-dry face.
The face is ancient, but the eyes are childlike.
I hear music! Flutes, rattles. And human voices, chanting hypnotically.
That wise old face leans closer.
“Who are you?” I ask. “What do you want from me?”
The old lips open. One word. “Destiny.”
“To hell with destiny,” I tell him. “It only brings misery. I want to save P.J. Can you help me?”
The old face smiles sadly.
I open my eyes. Try to sit up.
The pain is excruciating. I sink back down, defeated.
Dawn light is streaking over the river. A morning breeze rustles the leaves.
I’m on a grassy bank, near a canoe. Eko is thirty feet away, sitting on a rock that juts out into the river. She looks like a forest nymph, a dryad or a naiad. Long flowing black hair, lissome body, gleaming bare almond skin. She’s meditating, her arms spread wide as if she’s embracing the trees, the river, and the lightening sky.
One look at her is all it takes to understand how she kept me alive, fed, and protected while I was unconscious. She lives on such close terms with nature that she seems to be a part of this green expanse of threatening wilderness.
I remember her on the Outer Banks—how she communed with the birds of prey and the dolphins of the deep. I can tell it’s the same for her here—she probably knows every edible plant, every medicinal shrub. It wouldn’t surprise me if she could converse with caimans, and perhaps the chattering monkeys give her navigational advice.
Nature nymph nonpareil though she may be, I’m aware that her skills serve her own agenda. She’s a priestess, a functionary, carrying out the will of the People of Dann. She’s bringing me somewhere for her own purposes, or theirs. Definitely not mine.
What I need to do is clear: go back and find P.J.
“Never let me go again,” she whispered the night we sat by the firelight.
“I won’t,” I promised her.
I sit back up. My damaged ribs stab me. I cross my arms over my body, locking in the pain. Hold on to it, I tell myself. Use it to stay conscious.
I start to crawl across the mud. It’s slow going, but I make it to the canoe. Drag myself up and over the side. Find a paddle. Silently push off from the grassy bank.
I glance at Eko—she hasn’t moved. The rock she’s meditating on is a short distance downriver. If the current pulls me past her, she’ll spot the canoe.
So, weak as I am, there’s only one way to go. Upriver. I can’t possibly paddle a canoe against the current in this condition. Somehow I manage it. There’s no way I can make it back to the falls and find P.J.—this is a fool’s errand.
Well, I guess I’m a fool.
I force my arms to move, the muscles of my shoulders to work. Dig, pull, lift. Every stroke is agony.
It seems to take an hour for me to make it around the first bend, but finally I do. Eko slowly vanishes behind the curtain of trees. I hate to leave her in the rain forest without a canoe, but I know she can fend for herself. This is my only chance to save P.J.
I’m the master of my fate again. And that’s when I see the silver torpedo bearing down on my canoe!
62
It’s not a torpedo, it’s a whale. I can see it above the waterline, gasping oxygen. But we’re in fresh water and it has scales, so it has to be some kind of humongous air-breathing fish.
I try to paddle around it, but I’m already exhausted and it’s coming on much too fast. It dives and I prepare to use the paddle to ward it away when it surfaces again.
A flock of brightly plumed birds is skimming five feet above the river. As they pass near my canoe, the gigantic fish suddenly launches itself out of the water like a flying oil tank and snags one of the birds in its mouth. The rest of the flock veers away, shrieking wildly. As the lunker water-to-air predator falls back into the river, its massive tail clips the bow of my dugout.
My canoe flips wildly, and I’m thrown far and clear. Before I can grab the upside-down dugout, the current catches it and carries it away downstream.
The fin-tailed colossus turns slowly in my direction. It must be twelve feet long and weigh six hundred pounds. I see that it has teeth. It finishes off the rest of the bird in one gulp and looks at me curiously. Does it eat humans? Does it know whether it eats humans or not?
The good news is that it slowly swims off. The bad news is I’m now floundering in the middle of the river, more than forty feet from either bank, too weak to swim.
My nose and mouth sink beneath the surface, and I try to breathe water. I come up sputtering. That’s one.
Panic gives me the strength to take a few pathetic strokes. But I’m just flapping my exhausted arms.
I sink down again, and try to hold my breath. My eyes are open and I see the muddy bottom. The stems of water plants. Tiny fish. This will soon be my resting place.