by Koloen, John
Four large drums stood on end in one corner. One was completely empty. Boyd pushed it on its side, and it floated across the shed into the opposite wall. The others had enough liquid in them that they were difficult to move. They struggled to unscrew the rusting filler caps with their hands. After several fruitless minutes, they looked for something they could use to either unfasten the caps or pound them out. Johnson grabbed the sledgehammer they’d found on the previous trip
“Here we go,” he announced. Boyd held his hand out, and Johnson gave him the hammer. He gently pounded the cap on its edge to try to break it loose but only managed to crush it. He pulled his multitool from the leather holster on his belt, pulled out the flat blade screwdriver and, with the hammer, started banging it against the cap in an effort to get it to turn. Worse than not turning it, he dented the cap, making it less likely that it would come off.
“Shit,” he said. “This ain’t workin’.”
“What’re you trying to do?” Hamel asked.
“I’m trying to get the freaking cap off.”
“Then what?” Hamel asked.
Boyd leaned on the drum. It wouldn’t budge. It was nearly full.
“I don’t know. But then we don’t know what’s in it. You see any labels?”
Work stopped for a moment as they assessed the situation.
“We need a screwdriver or something. My multitool isn’t big enough,” Boyd said. “Anything metal with a sharp point. We’ll just pound a hole in the side. Everybody look for something.”
It didn’t take long for Duncan to grab onto a rusty pry bar that he felt as he shuffled his feet. Pulling it up from the murk, he handed it to Johnson, who approached Boyd with it.
“How many cans do we have?” Duncan asked.
Each of the men sounded off. Three cans.
“That’s not enough,” he said glumly.
“I’ve been looking since we got here,” Johnson said, “and I’m not finding any more.”
“Too bad we couldn’t float one of these drums like that empty one,” Hamel mused, pointing.
“That’s not a bad idea,” Boyd said, “assuming there’s diesel.”
“If there is diesel, why don’t we drain some of it, so the drum floats?” Hamel suggested.
Everyone exchanged enthusiastic looks.
“That’s the ticket,” Johnson said.
With Johnson holding the sharp end of the pry bar against the side of the drum midway from the top, Boyd started to bang on it. On the third whack, he nearly smashed Johnson’s wrist. Johnson dropped the pry bar, stepping back quickly as if to avoid a second blow. Boyd apologized and reached into the water for the pry bar.
“Sorry, man,” he said, handing it back to Johnson. “I’ll try to be more careful.”
“Yeah,” Johnson said, “good idea. But don’t just try.”
Duncan felt uneasy as Boyd and Johnson worked on putting a hole in the drum. What if it was filled with gasoline? He wasn’t concerned about a fire as much as he was concerned about the fumes that would result. The gasoline would float on top of the water and cover every square inch. Even with the door open, there was little ventilation and virtually no wind.
“Cody,” he said, “don’t make a big hole until we know what’s inside. We don’t want to be standing in a lake of gasoline.”
Johnson and Boyd stopped banging on the drum.
“You know what you can do,” Hamel said, “cut a small hole in the cap on top. You should be able to tell what’s inside from the smell.”
Everyone was taken aback by Hamel’s suggestion. Duncan and Boyd wondered why they hadn’t thought of it. Boyd grabbed his multitool and extended the Phillips head screwdriver accessory. One of two things is going to happen, he thought, as he rested the tip of the screwdriver over the metal cap. Either he’d punch a hole in it, or he’d smash his multitool to smithereens. Be gentle, he whispered to himself. With everyone watching, he pounded it several times, each a little harder than the previous. And then the small screwdriver went through the cap. Lowering his head to the top of the drum, he sniffed.
“It’s diesel!” he shouted. Cheers filled the tiny shed.
He and Johnson attacked the side of the drum, and this time, with a newfound enthusiasm, they broke through the thick steel releasing a stream of reddish liquid, which began to fill the room with fumes.
“Thing to do is move the drum out there,” Boyd said, nodding toward the doorway.
Boyd, Johnson and Duncan frantically grabbed the top edge and started rotating the drum out of the shed while fuel poured out of the hole, splashing them with every turn. Once out of the shed, they waited for the level of the fuel inside the drum to drop below the hole. The drum was still too heavy.
“Think it’ll float now?” Hamel asked.
“I don’t think so,” Duncan responded.
“Yeah, we probably need to drain more of it before it’ll float.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Duncan said. “As I recall, we could determine this if we knew the specific gravity of the diesel and weight of the drum.” Stopping himself, he chuckled. “Forget it. Just empty it until it floats.”
While Duncan, Hamel, Boyd, and Johnson worked, Antonio Suarez stood out of the way, surveying the limitless sheet of water that covered the forest floor. He was hungry, and he knew everyone else was as well. He’d heard monkeys in the canopy, but unless he had a bow and arrow, they remained safely out of reach. Likewise birds. And fish, but no fishing line or bait. And he knew there were mangoes and bananas and edible plants in the forest, but none that he could see.
72
While the men were gone, the women had little to do. Professor Azevedo sat against the cab in one corner minding his own business while the women disassembled the makeshift shelter, so they had room to move. By the time the men were out of sight, their nervous energy gave way to talk. At first, they avoided negative comments, so they focused on what they would do once they found high ground. Then Alison Peeples wondered whether they would be rescued.
“You know,” she said, “am I not right, Dr. Azevedo, you talked to your assistant, and he knows we need help?”
Azevedo looked up and nodded. “Yes, he knows we are in trouble.”
“Well, there you go,” Peeples said, optimistically. “There’s probably someone already on the way.”
“Yeah,” Cross said, tentatively. “The only problem is how will they find us?”
“Dr. Azevedo gave him the coordinates, didn’t you, Professor?”
The old man nodded and smiled.
“See! All they need are the coordinates, and they got ‘em.”
“You know, I wanna believe that,” Stephanie Rankin said. She’d taken several surreptitious sips of gin and seemed relaxed. “But, you know, we’re still here, and it won’t be long before it gets dark, and I can’t imagine anyone would be looking for us in the dark.”
“Okay, so what?” Peeples said. “Maybe they find us tomorrow.”
“If we move, which is what the guys are trying to do, how will they know where we went?”
“Yeah,” Peeples said thoughtfully. “I guess it depends on how far we get.”
“Which is why maybe we should just stay here.”
“We can’t,” Cross interjected. “If the water gets much higher or faster it might push us off the road. That’s real trouble.”
“Like we’re not in real trouble already,” Rankin sniffed, frowning.
“I get that,” Cross said. “We’re all scared, okay. So what? We still need to do what we can to get through this. Focusing on our fears makes things worse.”
“I’m not focusing on my fears.”
“Yes you are,” Peeples said defiantly. “What do you call what happened last night?”
Rankin gave her a puzzled look.
“What happened?”<
br />
“You’re saying you don’t remember?” Cross asked.
Rankin statued for a moment. She searched her memory. Nothing there.
“Yes, yes. Really, I don’t remember anything from last night.”
“Really?” Peeples said accusingly. “That’s convenient.”
“Yes, really. Why? What happened last night? Tell me.”
“This is going nowhere,” Cross said. “We need to focus on important stuff, like pooling our food. The rest of it. You know, the stuff you’ve been holding back. I know I have.”
“What about the guys? You think they’ve been holding back?”
“Of course, they have,” Cross said. “We should check their packs, too.”
“It’s the least we can do for ‘em,” Rankin chirped.
Their anxiety relieved for the time it took to scavenge the food, the three women used binoculars to keep their eyes on the men.
“You know,” Rankin said, “I feel safer with men around? Isn’t that silly?”
“It’s not silly,” Peeples said. “Physically, they are stronger. It makes sense. So, yeah, I feel the same way. But don’t tell them that.”
73
With the drum tipped on its side and floating, the men pushed it out of the shed and started the return trip to the truck. With Duncan leading the way, Boyd and Johnson held fast to the drum and struggled to guide it against the moving water. The water was too high to take normal steps, so they shuffled their way toward the truck, careful to keep the fuel from spilling.
They couldn’t help but notice snakes floating in the water along with the current, which unnerved Boyd more than he had thought possible. He shivered when he saw one, even though they were no closer than fifty feet. Johnson tried to calm Boyd after he pushed too hard on the drum, which caused it to begin to roll and develop a mind of its own. Boyd tried to counter the roll, but he lost his hold, and it suddenly came about in the current, breaking free. Like an inflated ball, it began to outdistance them as they shuffled after it.
“Grab the damn thing!” Boyd shouted, but it was out of reach.
Duncan lunged at it but couldn’t gain a hold. Suarez dropped the lantern he carried, dove into the water and with several strokes caught up to it. Fighting the current to keep it from getting away, he worked his way in front of it. Leaning against it, his feet pressing into the mud, he struggled to resist it. With each roll, fuel spilled into the water, releasing a pungent odor.
Momentarily underwater, Duncan regained his footing and, as he and Johnson converged, they managed to grab hold of the lip on each end just as the drum was about to roll over the slightly built Suarez. Quickly, they turned the drum so that the bottom end faced the current. Boyd joined them, and they continued in a tightly packed group.
With the four men pushing the drum, and the women shouting encouragement from the truck, they concluded their trip to the shed with handshakes, fist bumps and wary eyes on the rising water.
74
Getting the diesel out of the drum posed no less of a problem than getting it to float. The drum was less than half full, heavy and with only the smallish opening they’d made on the side. Standing it on end, the fuel did not reach the hole.
“Why did we cut the hole in the middle?” Boyd wondered aloud.
“Can’t we cut another one?” Hamel asked.
“With what? We left the tools in the shed.”
“Can we lift it?” Duncan asked.
“I don’t know. It’s pretty heavy,” Boyd said. “Maybe, if we all got under it.”
“If we could lift it on the bed, we’d be able to roll it so we could pour the diesel into the cans,” Duncan said.
The water was deep enough that as they stooped to get their hands under the submerged end of the drum their heads were nearly submerged. Suarez, the smallest of the group, was under water. At first, they struggled against the suction of the muck. Once they got the drum off the ground, they nearly lost it as the diesel sloshed inside. Finally, with all their strength, they managed to get one edge of the drum onto the truck bed. From there, they rolled it on its end until only a small part of the edge hung over the bed.
The women cheered, and the men once again high-fived themselves. Boyd remained on the ground while the others boosted themselves onto the truck and carefully tilted the drum so that they could slowly fill a pair of gas cans that Boyd poured into the driver side fuel tank. He’d lost count of the number of cans he’d emptied, and the tank was half full. Johnson and Duncan stood the drum on end to keep it from rolling around when the truck was moving. While the others waited expectantly on the bed, with Azevedo in the cab, Boyd pulled himself out of the water and into the heavily worn and duct-taped driver’s seat.
“Let’s get moving,” Duncan said, slapping the top of the cab several times.
75
Carvalho and Santos waved and shouted as Captain Juarez steered his boat toward the cabin. Daniel Rocha watched from the deck as Juarez inched away from the main channel and suddenly came to a stop as the boat scraped against the river’s bottom that several days ago had been Barbosa’s landing. Juarez cut the engine and tied a rope around a tree.
“How deep is the water here?” he shouted at the two men watching from the cabin.
They shrugged.
“Don’t know,” Santos said. “Last time we were here, it was dry.”
“Probably not more than a half meter,” Carvalho offered.
“Idiots,” Juarez whispered under his breath. Using a gaffing pole, he plunged it into the water.
“Looks like he’s right,” he said to Rocha. “Maybe it’s up to our knees.”
Shoeless, they lowered themselves over the side, holding onto the gunwale as they sank into the ankle deep mud. Rocha nearly lost his balance as he lifted one foot.
“Wish I had something to keep my balance. This is slippery stuff and keeps trying to suck you down.”
“Wait a minute,” Juarez cautioned as he clambered onto the deck.
“Think this will help?” he said, handing the gaffing pole to Rocha.
“Yeah, that should work. What about you?”
“I’ll find something.”
Armed with the remnants of a two-by-four pulled from the engine compartment, Juarez dropped into the mud, and together they made their way to the cabin, soaking their shorts in the process.
Santos greeted them like long lost friends and offered them beverages and snacks. Following a moment of fellowship, Santos and Carvalho summarized their story, after which Rocha peppered them with questions about Azevedo and the expedition. Rocha thought the answers were vague and unsatisfying. They couldn’t even tell him how many people were in the group, but they agreed to help find them.
“That’s the least we can do under the circumstances,” Carvalho said, adding quickly, “in the morning. It will be dark soon.”
As anxious as he was to find the professor, Rocha agreed, “At first light.”
76
The young guide, tethered by rope to the front bumper, led the way, using a palm branch that he stripped of leaves to help keep the ancient truck centered on the road. He used the palm to feel the edges of the road. The water was knee high on Suarez, bathed in the dull light of the search lamp mounted on the passenger side door. The dashboard lights gave the cab an eerie green cast. The single working taillight gave the water a reddish glow. Everything else around them was either impenetrably black or, where the moonlight found a way through the canopy, immersed in shadows. Occasionally, Carlos Johnson swept the beam of his flashlight on a three hundred and sixty-degree tour of their surroundings. The light was effective out to fifty feet but reflected hundreds of feet away from the eyes of unknown creatures. They guessed that the eyes belonged to jaguars or giant black caiman. Their imaginations were beginning to run away from them, again.
Boyd’s hands l
ooked bloodless as he squeezed the steering wheel. With every bump, the front wheels twisted to one side, and it was up to him to prevent the steering wheel from spinning and leading them off the road. He sweated profusely, his eyes glued to Suarez, who was all that stood between them and disaster in a ditch.
Professor Azevedo, sitting next to Boyd, steadied the passenger side searchlight and offered words of encouragement, congratulating the young men on keeping the truck on the road though they moved so slowly that the speedometer suggested they weren’t moving at all. The constantly moving water filled the air with a swishing sound not unlike a distant waterfall. Carried along was a cascade of debris, mostly forest detritus stirred up by the current.
Maggie Cross drew close to Duncan, who, from his post standing behind the cab, watched Suarez struggle to keep his balance. They were going too slowly, he thought, but given that they could barely see the road, he saw no alternative. His greatest fear at the moment was of rising water. If it got too high, the truck would end up downstream, and that would end any chance of finding higher ground.
Cross put her hand on his and smiled demurely. He smiled at her.
“Are you afraid?” she asked quietly.
He sighed.
“If you mean, am I worried, yes, I am.”
“I’m not afraid to say that I’m as scared as I’ve ever been,” she confessed. “I know some of the others are, too. This is all too much.”
“Oh, yeah, I agree with that,” he said, looking at her face in the dimness. “I wish we weren’t here. Definitely. But we are, so there’s no point in giving in to fear. We have to focus on things we can do to help ourselves, and at this point that seems to be riding this tortoise until we can’t ride it anymore.”
“You think that will happen?”
Duncan gave her a puzzled look.
“I mean, do you think the truck is going to run out of gas?”
“It could. Or it could fall off the road. If anything, that seems to me to be the most likely negative,” Duncan said.