Whirlwind

by David Klass

  85

  Darkness falls, but we don’t break off our march. Kidah leads the way through the forest, carrying a torch. It’s just a tree branch that was soaked in some potion he concocted, and then set alight. As it flames, it casts a wide circle of silvery radiance, and it never seems to burn down. He holds the torch high over his head, and we stream after him through the darkness, the way the Israelites must have stayed close to Moses after he used his staff to part the Red Sea.

  The rain forest has always been threatening to me at night, but as I follow behind that old wizard, with three hundred Indian warriors marching by my side, the beasts that scream and growl no longer feel like my enemies. I’ve joined cause with them, and even the darkness that shrouds us so completely seems somehow to be trying to protect us.

  Now and then helicopters drone overhead, searching the rivers in vain for us. I’m certain we will soon burst out of the sheltering trees and find ourselves right in the colonel’s fortified backyard. The final round of this fight is coming very soon.

  I keep flashing back to the young soldier I stabbed. I recall the shock in his eyes, his desperate attempts to repair the damage my blade inflicted, and then how quickly he toppled and bled out. He had such a wild look in his eyes. Was it fear, or did he flash to his mother, or a girlfriend, or to some cherished future plans that would now never be realized?

  Was he planning to marry? Did he think about the children he would never have? Did he call on his God to save him?

  You were heroic to volunteer for that sneak attack, Gisco tells me, sensing my somber mood. Did something happen back there, old fellow?

  Yes, I tell him. But I don’t want to talk about it.

  We’ll respect your silence, Eko promises from my other side, and for a few steps I feel the reassuring touch of her hand on my shoulder.

  The trees whisper in the night wind and I find myself remembering the woman who raised me. I picture her kneeling, weeding her garden, and glancing up with a smile to watch me sink baskets in the hoop over our driveway. I recall Dad throwing footballs to me in Hadley Park, and reading me Treasure Island with all the different pirate voices. How strange to think that they were both living out a lie, and that they’re gone now. I wonder if I’ll be seeing them soon, and how they’ll explain themselves.

  P.J. may be there, too, if the helicopter gunship got her. Did she think of me with her final breath? Did she curse me for getting her into this mess, and then leaving after I promised that I would never desert her again? If there is an afterlife, and I die in battle, I’ve got questions to ask, and lots of explaining to do.

  Suddenly I become conscious of a flame over my head. Kidah is walking next to me, and our procession has reshaped itself behind him so that we’re now leading the parade. Eko, Gisco, and Mudinho drop back to give us space.

  “You were far away,” he observes quietly. “What were you thinking about?”

  “I was wondering if there is an afterlife.”

  He nods. “A natural thing for a young man to ponder before a battle.”

  I look at that wrinkled old face in the flickering torchlight. “Well, is there?”

  “How should I know?”

  “You’re the great wizard of the future.”

  He grins and then shrugs. “Do you know what the Buddha answered when his disciples asked him what would happen after they died? He said, ‘Why do you ask me about death when you don’t yet begin to understand life?’”

  “I don’t understand life either,” I mutter miserably. “It’s pointless. Everyone you love dies. Everything you believe turns out to be a lie. Every vow you make, destiny forces you to break. I stabbed a kid to death back there, and he could have been my brother.” I shiver. “And then you die and the worms eat you. What a swell deal.”

  Kidah looks back at me and bursts into low laughter. “Wow,” he says. “And I thought I had problems.” He slowly lowers his arm and suddenly the flaming torch is right in front of me. “Would you hold this for a second, Jack? My arm is starting to cramp up.”

  I don’t believe that his arm is cramping, but I reach out and take the torch.

  It’s just a tree branch, but when I touch it I feel its power. For a moment I’m not only leading an army through the rain forest, but I’m also plugged into something bright and vibrant and very beautiful.

  I can feel the men around me, the jaguars prowling through the trees, the snakes slithering between fern stalks, the raptors circling high above us, and untold billions of insects creeping and crawling through grass and over leaves. We’re not just leading an army—we’re at the convergence of a great web of life, and tears run down my cheeks as I take it all in at once.

  I understand that by letting me carry the torch, Kidah is answering my question. He’s showing me that we’re risking our lives for a cause greater than ourselves.

  “Thanks,” Kidah says, holding out his hand for the torch. “I needed the break.” As he takes the burning brand back, he smiles and says, “Anyway, I think you’re already carrying a torch for someone else.” His voice drops. “I don’t know much more about the afterlife than you do, but I think you just might run into her again.”

  “You do?” I ask eagerly.

  The wizard looks back at me and for a moment his eyes vanish. All I see are twin holes with clouds. It’s as creepy as it was the first time I saw him do this, when he woke up under the stone idol.

  I hear people around us gasp, and I pull back in fear. Then he’s Kidah again, smiling at me. “Seek and you shall find,” he whispers, giving my arm a squeeze. “And try not to look so glum. It’s bad for morale.”

  I manage a small smile. “Okay. Point taken.”

  “That’s better,” he says. “Now I’d better go rally the troops.” He starts to go and then turns back and adds, “Oh, as for the worms eating your corpse, I wouldn’t worry about it. In the rain forest, it’s the ants and the beetles that will get you.”

  86

  One minute we’re walking through trees beneath the protection of the canopy, and the next we emerge into a field of stumps and weeds and dust. Searchlights sweep the darkness and find us.

  Alarms blare. I glimpse the colonel’s tall fence far ahead of us, and hear the shouts of guards on watchtowers.

  Kidah darts forward, across the open field, and for a little old man he puts on a pretty impressive burst of speed. We follow him, and a determined shout goes up from three hundred throats, in dozens of different tribal languages.

  I lend my voice to the swelling roar. “Chaaaarrrrrge!”

  As I run, I register that it is suddenly getting much colder. A freezing night wind blasts us harder and harder. The first bullets from the guard towers whistle down through that wind and tattoo the ground around our running feet.

  A grassy field separates the forest from the fence that guards the colonel’s base. We need only a few minutes to cross the half mile of open ground, but each second when you’re exposed before enemy guns is a lifetime.

  We don’t cross this no-man’s-land alone. A mysterious legion of dark forms breaks from the trees and runs alongside us. I’m passed by a jaguar that covers fifteen feet with each enormous bound. A dozen peccaries stampede by, their tusks glinting in the spotlights.

  Two machine guns open up at us. Their earsplitting RAT-TAT-TAT sounds like the ominous thunder that precedes a summer squall. Then the rain of lead hits us.

  I’ve heard the phrase “war is hell,” but I’ve never really understood it before. Now I’m in the middle of that hell, with pain and death sweeping the field all around me.

  A young Indian warrior running near me cries out and then collapses to the ground, holding his stomach. I break stride for a moment and glance down at him. Bullets have sliced his belly open like a melon, and his guts are spilling out onto the dust. As I start running again, I nearly trip on the thrashing, screeching body of a monkey that has had both its legs shot off.

  There’s no safety here, no way to minimize the d
anger, no magic charm against this murderous, maiming barrage. The only two options open to us are to continue forward, into what seems like certain death, or to turn back toward the safety of the forest.

  No one turns back.

  Kidah holds his torch above his head as he runs. It makes him an easier target, but the sight of the flame gives us the courage to keep following. Now I understand why armies through the centuries always carried standards into battle. As long as the standard bearer lives, his bravery and momentum carry his army forward.

  The freezing wind shifts so that it’s behind us, pushing us on toward the fence.

  A laser weapon sizzles down at us and in seconds sets the grass on fire. I see an eagle streak through the white-hot beam and turn into a flying cinder.

  Two helicopters appear as if from the dark side of the moon, and their guns join the deadly barrage.

  There’s no possible escape. We’re being blasted from all directions at once, lit up with lasers and shredded with machine guns. Even if we tried to make it back to the trees, we wouldn’t get halfway there. Our army will be obliterated in seconds.

  I know I’m going to die, but I still keep running forward, following the torch, shouting, “Chaaaarrrrrge!”

  The helicopters swoop low to strafe us, pinpointing us with their own powerful searchlights. One of the lights finds me, and the helicopter flies right toward me.

  I stop running and watch the copter come on, mesmerized by the bright light and the chance to watch my own doom unfold. The copters are now so close that their pilots and gunners are visible, taking final, deadly aim.

  In the glare of the searchlights, I see a funnel-shaped black cloud rise quickly from the ground. It envelops and swallows both helicopters. I’ve seen such a funnel cloud once before, when P.J. and I were paddling with the Korubo chief.

  Gnats. Tiny mites. Billions upon billions of them.

  The copters’ guns fire wildly from inside the inky cloud, as if trying to shoot holes in an unknown foe. Then the guns fall silent as the two aircraft lose their bearings.

  I try to imagine what’s going on inside them—pilots suddenly unable to see out blackened windows, frantically trying to pull out of their dives, relying on navigational controls. The tiniest mites breach the interior of the cockpits, flying in through air exhaust systems and cannon muzzles. They crawl down throats and fly onto the pupils of eyes. More and more microscopic bugs pour in, till the cabins are awash with them.

  BLAM, one of the copters crashes into the stumpy ground and explodes.

  WHHIIRFF, the other one zigzags down and is swallowed up by the trees at the edge of the forest.

  As I watch the helicopters fall from the sky, I remember the army ants that broke up the colonel’s ambush on the river. It’s ironic that the rain forest’s smallest and most despised creatures are now coming to the aid of its largest ones, and turning the tide of the battle.

  I start sprinting again. We’re close to the fence now. I can see a machine gun and a laser weapon clearly, mounted atop platforms on the guard towers. I spot the colonel himself taking control of the laser weapon and aiming it at Kidah and his torch.

  The personal battle between these two titans from the future has now been joined, and it promises to be a brief one. The white-hot beam flashes across the dark field, searing a savage path toward the wizard.

  87

  Kidah flings his torch high into the air, like a cheerleader tossing a baton. When the burning branch reaches the apex of its arc, the flame turns blue and then goes out. At the same second, the searchlights crisscrossing the clearing all pulse and then blink off, as if the colonel’s electric generators were shorted out by the extinguishing of the wizard’s torch.

  For a heartbeat, the vast field is plunged into pitch darkness. I stop running and begin to pick my way forward.

  Then an apocalyptic peal of thunder rips the sky open, and a blazing bolt of energy flashes down like a serpent’s forked tongue. A laser from the sky streaks toward the man-made laser atop the guard tower.

  A shadow dives off the platform a split second before the lightning strikes. I’m pretty sure it was the colonel, making a desperate escape. Then the bolt from the stormy black sky flashes into the guard tower, and nothing is left standing save a few scorched and twisted metal bars.

  I reach the fence in the first wave of attackers, and start climbing. It was probably electrified, but the blue pulse of Kidah’s torch took care of that. Even so, it’s not easy to climb a three-story fence in rainy darkness.

  Amazon warriors hit the wire and start climbing beneath me. Dozens of Indians wrestle their way up the mesh, trying to get secure hand- and footholds in the gusting downpour. They’re used to scaling palm trees, and pass me on the way up, but coils of razor wire at the top stop them. Monkeys outstrip the warriors, but also stop when they hit the concentric rings of tiny blades.

  We hang near the top, unable to climb over and too weak to clamber back down. Our combined weight makes the fence sag, but the posts still hold.

  Then the whirlwind comes. It’s the mother of all friagems, a frigid blast that made it over the Andes and now howls like a monster as it gusts at our backs. The colonel wanted to destroy the earth with global warming, which hits the poles most severely. They’re getting some of their own back now. For a moment we’re pinned to the fence by the force of this Antarctic gale. It pushes my chest flat against the wire so that I can barely breathe.

  These powerful winds would normally whistle harmlessly through the mesh fence. But the hundreds of us clinging near the top give the storm something substantial to blow against. Our backs become like the cloth of a sail, and as the friagem pushes against us, the metal barrier buckles and grinds and begins to give way.

  The mesh dips inward, bowing submissively before the force of the blast. Then the posts start to snap, and soon large sections of the fence begin curling to the ground. We ride them all the way down, pick our way gingerly over the razor wire, and race off toward the colonel’s compound.

  A wave of threatening shapes surges from the darkness to stop us. They’re soldiers and prison guards, armed with guns, clubs, and knives.

  A guard with the long hair of Samson and the build of a rugby professional swings a club at me. I sense the blow coming, and just duck under it. I wrap him up in a two-legged wrestling takedown, and lift him off his feet. He’s still trying to club me as he falls, but my head is tucked tight to his chest and he has no target. I slam him down and his skull thunks against a rock. The impact knocks him cold. I grab his club and run forward.

  The outline of the colonel’s compound looms in the darkness. I recognize the prison where I was confined. Something tells me that if P.J. is alive, that’s where I’ll find her. I feel a surge of adrenaline, and leap forward with a savage shout.

  The struggle grows fiercer as the colonel’s men become more desperate. This is hand-to-hand fighting, the way it must have been for a Spartan phalanx or a Roman legion. I’m stabbed in the hip, and a second later a soldier grabs me from behind and tries to gouge out my right eye.

  He’s got me in a headlock that I can’t break, while his thumb grinds into my eye socket. Then his grip relaxes and he falls to the ground. Eko has run a spear straight through him. Thanks, Ninja Girl, I owe you one.

  Twenty feet away, a prison guard grabs Mudinho and raises a club to brain him. Gisco darts over so fast he’s a blur, and sinks his canines deep into the guard’s calf. The guard screams and tries to kick the snarling hound away. Mudinho jumps on the guard’s back and soon the three of them are rolling around on the ground.

  Fifty yards to the prison. Half a football field. The rain freezes into hail that comes pelting down at us like iron Ping-Pong balls.

  I press forward, leading the final charge. Blood runs down my nose and cheeks, into my mouth. I feel its heat and taste its salty tang and it stirs me to a new level of savagery. This is pure blood rage. Punches and kicks don’t faze me. I will not be denied.
/>   Lightning strobes the battlefield and I see images that I will never forget. A soldier is gutted by a peccary’s tusks. The wild pig lifts him off his feet and runs around in circles, while the impaled man’s arms and legs flail in the air. A guard hacks at a jaguar with an ax. The big cat dodges, and then leaps forward and catches the man’s head in its jaws. The ax clatters to the ground as the guard pushes with his hands against the jaguar’s neck, trying to extricate himself. The cat bites down, there’s a crunching sound, and the soldier goes limp.

  I hurdle two dead bodies and reach the prison’s front door. It’s chained and locked. I punch it and kick it and beat on it with the club, but it doesn’t give an inch.

  Then I step back and do the most difficult thing there is to do on a battlefield—I force myself back under control. Eko taught me how to use mind over matter on the Outer Banks, but to do so now I have to shut out all this mayhem. And that takes a colossal act of will.

  I close my eyes and visualize bursting through darkness into light. When the image in my mind is real enough, I jump off my right foot and kick with my left. The sole of my foot explodes into the door, and the chains snap like Christmas ribbons.

  I’m inside.

  88

  I sprint through the labyrinth of dark and narrow corridors. The electricity is out, so I rely on the sixth sense of navigating in darkness that Eko taught me.

  No one challenges me or tries to stop me; the guards must all have gone out to fight. It feels strange to run down these long black hallways alone, listening to my own echoing footsteps.

  I turn a corner, and starlight filters in through a high window. The silence is fractured by two dozen frantic voices pleading for help.