by Eric Walters
“Here it is,” she said. “Do you need me to tuck you in for the night?”
“I think I’m okay from here.”
She released my hand, and I had the strangest thought. What if I gave her a kiss goodnight? I’d never kissed a girl. Up until a few months ago I’d never even thought about kissing a girl. But standing here in the dark, having spent the day with her, having held her hand, well, what if I tried to kiss her?
“Good night, DJ,” she said. She reached over and gave me a kiss on one cheek and then on the other.
“Um…yeah…good night.”
I opened the door slightly and then watched as she started off down the hall to her room. I was going to tell Steve that we’d kissed—twice. That was true. I just wasn’t going to tell him it was on each of my cheeks. And then I heard the explosions.
SIX
“What is that?” I said as I rushed down the hall toward Alejandra and she rushed back toward me.
“It is guns, people are firing guns. Maybe they are setting off bombs.”
“Come on, really, what is it?”
“I know what guns sound like. What else do you think it could be?” she asked.
I didn’t have any alternative theory. “But why would people be firing guns?”
“It can only be for bad reasons.”
“What sort of bad reasons?”
“There is no time to explain. Just come with me.”
Once again she grabbed my hand, but this time, instead of leading me, she dragged me down the hall.
“Where are we going?”
“To a safe room.”
“What’s a safe room?”
“Is that not obvious? It is a room that’s safe. Stop asking questions and be silent.”
I stopped talking, but the gunfire outside continued—it actually sounded louder, or closer than before. But wait—a safe room? Was that someplace we’d be safe from gunfire? But wouldn’t the guards and the compound walls and the walls of the house keep us safe?
Alejandra stopped and let go of my hand. “It is here somewhere,” she said.
“Somewhere? You don’t know where it is?”
There was another loud explosion. In my mind I pictured the perimeter wall around the compound being shattered, and I realized why we needed a safe room. Those bullets weren’t just going to be outside the compound—that’s why we were looking for a safe place. But my mind was spinning. How could one room be that much safer than another, and how come she couldn’t find the room she was looking for? It wasn’t like it could be hidden.
“Here it is,” Alejandra said.
Suddenly a piece of the wall slid sideways to reveal a door.
I gasped. “It’s a hidden room!”
“That is what a safe room is. I just need more light to open it. If only we had a flashlight.”
“I do have a flashlight!” I exclaimed. I pulled my phone out of my pocket. It was useless as a phone out here, but I did have a flashlight app. I tapped the button, and the space was bathed in light. What it revealed shocked me. The door we were standing in front of was metal, and in the middle, instead of a door knob, was a number pad and a big handle.
“It looks like a safe,” I stammered.
“Again—what part of safe room do you not understand?” she snapped.
“I guess all of it.”
She tapped some numbers that beeped as she touched them, and then the door clicked and she pulled it open. I aimed my flashlight into the opening. I was relieved to see that it was a room with chairs, not at all like the inside of a safe.
I suddenly realized that the noise outside had stopped.
“Listen,” I said. “Do you hear that? It’s stopped. We’re safe now.”
“It has stopped, but that does not mean we are safe. It might mean that they have overpowered the guards and are now in the house looking for us. We have to get inside.”
I didn’t need another invitation. I went inside, and she quickly slid the outer panel back into place, followed me into the room and then pulled the metal door shut with a slam, sealing us in. We were now safe—although I didn’t feel safe. Instead, I felt trapped.
A bright light came on, and I shielded my eyes for a second.
“At least the generator is back on,” I said.
“Not the generator. This room has its own batteries that can operate for up to a week if they are used wisely.”
“Thank goodness we won’t need to be in here that long.”
“Hopefully, it will not be necessary,” she said.
“We can’t be in here that long. We need food and water.”
“We have enough food and water to last for a week.”
“But why would we need that amount of food or water unless we had to…” I let the sentence trail off as the answer became obvious. That much was in here because that much might be needed.
“We are a long way from help. It could take days and days for a rescue party to reach us,” she said.
I suddenly realized there was one more thing I needed. “Is there a washroom?”
“You need to bathe?”
“No, I mean a toilet.”
“Through that door,” she said.
I went inside, fumbled around and found a light switch. A neon light in the ceiling flickered and then came to life, revealing a toilet and a sink. I pulled the door closed and went to the sink. I didn’t need to use the toilet, but I did want to do something else.
I turned on a tap and splashed water onto my face. It felt good, refreshing, but it didn’t change the awful feeling in the pit of my stomach. Panic. I let the water run over my wrists and tried to calm down and make sense of everything that was happening.
Okay, here I was with Alejandra, sealed inside a safe room, behind a big metal door, hiding because there might be armed men out there breaking in to kidnap us. Maybe I had pretty good reason to panic. I turned off the water and took a deep breath before heading back out.
Alejandra was looking at a big screen. For a split second I thought she was watching TV. Then I realized it was a monitor, and there were a dozen little squares showing different parts of the house and gardens. They all showed dark and gray and grainy images.
“Look! There’s somebody!” I said, pointing to one of the screens. There were five shadowy figures, and they all looked like they were carrying rifles. They disappeared from view.
I was going to ask where that camera was aimed when I got the answer—there were little labels under each screen, and that one said patio superior. I thought that meant upper patio. Spanish was hard to speak, but I’d noticed that many words were similar in English.
“Do you know who they are? Are they our guards?”
“I could not tell, but even if I could tell, it does not matter,” she said.
“How can that not matter?” I demanded.
“Many kidnappings are done with inside help.”
“You mean it could be the guards who were protecting us who might now be trying to kidnap us?”
“In many cases it could be.”
“Then why didn’t they just kidnap us when we were on our hike?”
“It could be just one of them is helping the intruders. It is no matter as long as we stay inside this room.”
“Maybe whoever attacked was driven away and we’re safe now,” I suggested.
“First, there is no driving away from here. Second, if they have left, why have the staff not turned the generator back on? Why are the grounds still in the dark?”
There was a loud pounding on the door, and I jumped and Alejandra screamed. Thank goodness it wasn’t me who screamed. The pounding continued, and I could make out voices but couldn’t hear what was being said through the thick metal door. Alejandra looked as scared as I felt. We didn’t know who was out there, but they certainly seemed to know we were in here.
SEVEN
Then there was silence. The pounding had stopped. No voices, no sounds, could be heard. I thought they’d gone
away…but then there was a quiet beeping. Whoever was out there was working the keypad to try to get in! That was even worse than the pounding.
“Who knows the combination to the door?” I whispered.
“Only my grandfather…and maybe Berta… but she’s been with the family forever. She wouldn’t be part of harming me…us. She would not tell anybody the combination.”
“What if she was being forced to open it?”
Alejandra looked even more uneasy, more scared. I hadn’t meant to scare her any more than she already was, but what if I was right?
“We have to leave,” Alejandra said.
“Leave? You want to open the door for them?”
“No, there is an emergency way out that nobody knows about except members of my family.”
She went to the far corner of the room. Against the wall was a bookshelf.
“It is here. I just have to remember how to open it.”
“Open the bookshelf?” I asked as she fumbled with it.
Was it like the sliding wall in the hall leading to the safe room?
Suddenly the bookshelf moved to the side. Behind it was an opening and a set of steep spiral stairs.
“You go first,” she said.
“Me? I don’t know the way!”
“Down. The way is down the stairs. Go, and I will slide the shelf back to hide our escape route.”
“Okay, sure, that makes sense.”
The stairs were metal, tight and circular, and they disappeared into darkness, so I couldn’t see the bottom. I started down the first few steps and then stopped and waited for Alejandra. Looking back up the stairs, I saw the bookshelf slide shut, blocking the entrance and blocking off the light. We were thrown into darkness! I reached into my pocket, scrabbled to remove my phone and clicked the flashlight app again, giving us light.
“Thank you,” Alejandra said. “Keep going down.”
The flashlight revealed the way. Still, I couldn’t see all the way to the bottom. The light reflected off the white stone walls that framed the stairs. They were plain and rough. Around and around we went, until finally I reached the bottom. I aimed my flashlight around the area. It was a small room, cupboards on one wall and a metal door on the far wall. There was no furniture and no toilet that I could see.
Alejandra was soon at my side.
“Are we going to wait here?” I asked.
“We cannot wait. If they get into the safe room, it will be no time before they find the way to get down here.”
“So where do we go?”
“Let me have your phone, your flashlight.”
I handed it to her, and she used the light to open up one of the cabinets. Inside were backpacks. She pulled one out and handed it to me, then grabbed a second for herself.
“There should be a flashlight in there,” she said.
I opened up the bag and started pulling things out. There was a jacket, a hat with mosquito netting, some energy bars, an aluminum space blanket. And there was the flashlight. I pulled it out, turned it on and aimed it back inside the backpack.
I gasped. “There’s a gun!”
“There should be one in each pack.”
“Is it loaded?”
“It would not be of value if it was empty. Have you ever fired a gun?”
“I’ve never even held one.”
“It is simple. Later, when we have time, I will show you.”
“Look, it might be better if you don’t show me and it just stays in the pack.”
“That would not be useful.” Alejandra clicked on the flashlight she’d removed from her pack and handed me back my phone. “We must leave.”
“Going where?” I asked.
“Just follow.”
Quickly I put the things back in my pack, piling stuff on top of the gun but leaving the flashlight out and on. I slung the pack over one shoulder. It wasn’t heavy, but it was unnerving to think there was a gun in there.
Alejandra opened up another door. Her flashlight lit the way ahead. It was a narrow passage with a low ceiling. It looked less like a corridor and more like a tunnel. She went in and I followed, ducking my head. The ceiling was too low for me to stand up, and I moved through the corridor all hunched over. The air was chilly, and there were puddles on the floor that we sloshed through. This was going from bad to worse.
The tunnel ended in yet another door. There was a big padlock on it. We weren’t going any farther. Going back would be the only way—or I guessed we could just wait in the tunnel.
Alejandra turned off her flashlight and put it down. “Aim your light on the padlock,” she said.
I watched as she turned the padlock over. There was a key taped to the back of it. She peeled off the key and inserted it in the lock, which clicked open. She removed the lock.
“You need to turn off your flashlight now too,” she said.
“But if I do, how will we see?”
“We will not see, but we cannot risk being seen. Do as I have asked.”
Reluctantly I turned it off, and we were thrown into complete darkness. I kept my finger right on the switch, ready to flick it back on. There was a creaking sound, and I realized it was the door being pushed open. I felt a rush of warmer air, and there was a little bit of light. Not much, but enough to make out shadows and different shades of black.
I saw Alejandra move forward, and I followed. I bumped into something and it fell over, making a loud clanking sound.
“Be careful!” she hissed. “We cannot let them know we are here.”
“Where is here?”
“A toolshed on the outside of the compound.”
“We’re outside the compound!” I exclaimed.
“Quiet!” she hissed.
“We shouldn’t be out here.”
“We have no choice.”
“Yes, we do. We can go back to the safe room.”
“They know we are in there. Sooner or later, they will break in.”
“We could stay in the second room, down below,” I suggested.
“Once they are in the safe room, they will find the passage. That will not be safe either.”
“Then what’s to stop them from walking through the tunnel and finding us here?” I asked.
“Nothing. They will come here eventually.”
“So how is this safer?”
“It is safer because we will not be staying here.”
“So where are we going?” I whispered.
“Out into the jungle.”
EIGHT
“We can’t go out into the jungle!” I hissed.
“We cannot go back and we cannot stay here, so what other choice is there?” she asked.
I didn’t have an answer, just questions. “So we’re going to hide in the jungle?”
“Not hide. We are going to go through the jungle.”
“Through the jungle to where?”
“Back to the city.”
“That’s forty kilometers away. You think we can walk forty kilometers through the jungle?” I demanded.
“We will not walk that far. We will walk to the river and then boat down the river to the city. It is not hard. People do that all the time.”
“Have you ever done it?”
She shrugged. “No, but I know the way to the river. I have been there many times. Then we just go downstream. My grandfather keeps a few little boats with motors there by the river. We’ll take one of those. We simply follow the river. It is not difficult.”
My head was spinning. None of this was simple. All of it was dangerous.
“Look, if it’s too dangerous to stay here, then how much more dangerous is it to be out there without even walls to protect us?”
“We are safer because they believe we are inside. They would not even think to look for us out on the trail,” she said.
That almost made sense.
“I understand getting out of the mansion, but how about if we just find a place to hide by the runway? Our grandfathers will be back
before dark tomorrow or the day after that.”
“That is why we have to leave now,” she said. “If they land, they will be taken prisoner instead of us.”
I hadn’t even thought of that.
“If we start now, we could be at the river in less than an hour, and we could be in the city by tomorrow in the afternoon to warn them not to fly into a trap,” she said.
Instead of our grandfathers rescuing us, it looked like we had to rescue them.
“Let’s go,” I said.
Alejandra opened the toolshed door and peeked out. She motioned for me to follow, and we stepped out. Instantly it was lighter, but that full moon and the millions of stars I’d been admiring an hour before were now our enemies. I felt so exposed, so visible. Anybody looking in this direction could see us. I just had to hope she was right and that every eye was looking for us inside the compound, not outside the wall.
“Do you smell the gunfire?” she asked.
“Yes.” It was a familiar smell, like fireworks. I guess that made sense because they both used gunpowder.
The toolshed was right beside the wall. The tunnel had taken us outside the compound, but just barely. I looked up at the top of the wall but couldn’t see anything or anybody. It was deserted and dark. I couldn’t see any light being thrown up above the compound wall, so I had to assume the generator still wasn’t on.
We pressed close to the wall. Its shadow helped hide us. But why were we just standing there? Shouldn’t we start going?
“Which way do we go?” I asked.
“I am not sure.”
I gasped. “What?”
“I do not know how to get to the path to the river.”
“But you think you can lead us to the city?”
“Once I find the path.”
I looked all around, trying to orient myself and figure out where exactly we were, but all I knew was that we were outside the compound.
“It is close to the front gate,” she said.
It could only be one of two ways. We’d just follow along the wall until we figured it out. “Let’s go this way,” I suggested.
I reached back and took her hand, and we started along the wall, which, as far as I could see, was intact. I’d expected to see big sections blown away. Maybe there were some of those but they were on the other side of the compound.