“Not a problem.”
Xavier shook his head. “My editor pulled the plug. I can’t pay you, Halley. No more bribe money.” He laughed, but the sound of it was small; he sounded lost.
The wind suddenly howled across the rooftop and heavy, warm raindrops began pattering against Phil’s skin. And then a sheet of rain swept over them, soaking them.
“The car leaves in twenty. Are you in?”
Xavier shook his empty glass and glanced at Phil. “What hell. Of course, we are. I want this story.”
Xavier leapt to his feet and hurried down the stairs and out of the rain, Halley following.
Phil pushed himself back to his feet; his clothes were soaked and heavy against his skin. He would go too. He would get this elusive photo. He needed this shot to change his life. He had no choice.
He was halfway to the stairs when he remembered that he had forgotten the dropped whiskey glass. When he turned, he saw his reflection in the rusty waters of the pool.
His face was drawn, sallow, almost unrecognizably old. He was naked, emaciated, the shape of his ribs visible against his skin, elbows and knees bulging, muscle eaten away. As if he stumbled out of a concentration camp. And his face… His face was stretched in terror. His reflection screamed, mouth wide, eyes red. Behind it, something black and malevolent formed, a tentacled beast born of dark swirling clouds and a crimson sun. Something pursuing him.
He screamed.
Lightning flashed and the scene in the pool burned away so that it was only Phil against the storm clouds. Thunder shook. A veil of rain ate the city and the distant mountains faded.
His jaw trembled at these sudden visions, this madness that was real one moment and then gone the next.
He grabbed the glass, and ran back into the hotel, out of the storm, but he suspected he was not really escaping what attached itself to him.
11
They drove into the storm-darkened morning, heading towards a horizon narrowed with dark gray clouds. Rain sheeted so fiercely against the windows of the SUV that everything in the outside world was blurry.
Phil sat in the back, staring at smears of buildings, blobs of huddled people, the light that streaked through gaps in the clouds. His thoughts kept returning to the reflection of himself in the swimming pool and the thing of terror swelling behind him. Looking out the back of the SUV, he half-expected a gargantuan, tentacled shadow to rise up over the buildings - but nothing did. His mind was playing tricks on him. Because what he was seeing could not be real.
Maybe he needed to find a therapist to help him get this all sorted out. None of what he was experiencing was normal. Phil settled on a plan; he’d snap the photo, get back home, and talk to his doctor. This was more than just an afterimage from a car explosion.
Half an hour later, and after more greased palms at roadblocks, the broken asphalt of the highway gave way to a gravel road marked with muddy furrows; they were forced to slow down despite the urgency that pushed them.
Phil looked through the rear window. The capital had become small, insignificant, and it seemed the mountains and jungle could swallow it at any moment, and he wondered whether it would survive this war. But he did not really care. As long as the airport was still functioning when he returned, with the photo, the country could consume itself for all he cared.
“Another fucking roadblock,” said Xavier. “I’m running out of spending money here.”
Ahead, masked men had parked their battered pick-up trucks in a vee, barring the way; they flagged Halley to slow down. “These guys don’t want bribes,” said Halley.
“Then what do they want?”
Halley answered by gunning the engine as they got closer. The SUV surged forward, and as Halley veered left Phil slid towards the opposite window; the car bounced as it shot off the road. He gritted his teeth as the wheels lost traction for a moment before biting into firm soil. Halley corrected the steering, and they raced back onto the road, bypassing the parked trucks. One of the men chased after them, swinging a machete.
“Either of you have guns?” asked Halley.
Phil shook his head.
“We’re journalists,” said Xavier.
“That’s not going to protect you where we’re going.” Halley glanced into the rear-view mirror.
Phil looked over his shoulder. The trucks remained parked in a wedge. The men weren’t pursuing them. As he unclenched his fists, he realized he had been squeezing them tightly.
Halley continued. “Where we’re going, there are different rules at play. Your life isn’t worth a hundred-dollar bill. Money means nothing to the people we’re going to meet. You need to understand that. If you fuck up, you die. Got that? So, you listen to me, you do what I say. And maybe, if we’re lucky, we get out of here alive and unscathed.”
“I paid you,” said Xavier, his face suddenly pallid. “You protect me.”
“Just do what I say,” said Halley.
They drove on, mostly in silence, as the morning transitioned to afternoon. The storm died and the rain sputtered and faded away. They drove beneath dark, expectant clouds, the landscape muted by shadows. They saw no more roadblocks. The forest crept higher on either side of the road, full of shadows, the depths endless. Every so often they passed small clusters of houses, clapboard structures on stilts, chickens dashing in the yards, bright colored clothing hanging from lines, a few surprised-looking souls staring as they carried baskets of fruits, or led mules. Despite the people they saw, Phil had the sense of the whole countryside being deserted, emptied out. Most of the houses and yards were empty, doors left open, fire-blackened pick-up trucks, dogs tearing at feathered corpses on the side of the road. He felt as if they were descending into the underworld.
Eventually Phil saw a town ahead on the road, where the forest had been cut back and cane fields stretched. A concrete road marker welcomed them to Santa Clara.
The houses were a mix of the clapboard and institutional concrete. Painted stones, white and red, marked the road. A church bell rang slowly. A soccer field spread next to a school complex.
The soccer field was filled with blue tarp shelters. A Red Cross tent dominated the center of the field. Farmers lined up behind trucks, hands raised to receive bags of rice and cans of meat.
“We’ll stop here,” said Halley. “Get some gas. Not sure that we will find any food. Get out, stretch your legs. Be back at the car in half an hour, okay? We can’t afford to be delayed here.”
Phil and Xavier got out.
“Maybe there’s a story here, too,” said Xavier.
They wandered into the soccer field. Phil began to shoot photos: hands stretched towards a bag of rice; a woman staring emotionless into the camera while her child screamed and struggling to escape her embrace; a mangy dog sneaking away with a child’s doll.
Good images. More than just good. He was capturing the suffering, the effect of war creeping closer. Maybe there was something here.
He checked the camera display, scrolled back through the photos he had just taken; all of them clean, no black marks, tentacled shadows, nor sunspots that marred the images.
The photos were perfect, and they captured the suffering.
Xavier squatted next to a grandmother and scribbled notes as he listened to her talk about the armed men - the soldiers and the rebels - and how neither side cared about the people, about the homes they had to abandon, about fields left to the animals.
A woman dressed in blue medical scrubs came up to them. “I don’t know why you are here, but it is not safe here. It is now, but it won’t be. These are the innocents caught between.” Her hair was blonde, her cheeks high. Her accent narrowed her to Scandinavia. She seemed out of place.
“We’re journalists,” said Phil, lifting his camera.
“You’ve come to tell these people’s stories? To create awareness to stop the war from coming?” Dark blood stains painted the front of her scrubs. She was in her early thirties, but gray streaked her hair and the skin aroun
d her eyes wrinkled, and sagged as if she had seen more than a lifetime of death and sorrow.
Phil suddenly could not swallow. He did not want to tell her the real reason why he was here. To capture a photo that would salvage his career and then leave. He felt ashamed. “We are passing through. That’s all.”
She laughed humorlessly, shaking her head. “Vultures always descend for the corpses.”
“I can take these photos back. Share these images.”
“The only place beyond here belongs to El Diablo. Why would you go there?”
Phil wanted to go back to the SUV. He did not want to talk to her anymore. Guilt grew into a sharp pain between his shoulder blades.
“You’re trying to get his picture, aren’t you?” she said. “The great prize. You are not the first, you know?”
“If I get his photo, then I can also share these photos. Help tell the story of what is really happening.”
“Except you don’t really care, do you? That’s not what matters to you. War porn. That’s what this is to you. These aren’t even people. They’re subjects. Sanitized horror that you take back to the US. The photos will shock people for a day or two and then they’ll vanish, seen and then forgotten. And nothing changes.”
“I don’t control the world,” said Phil. The pain had risen to his temples, and his face felt flush with heat. “What do you want me to do?”
“How is the world not yours? Do you not decide where to take your next step? Doesn’t that shape the world?”
“Staying here and taking photos changes nothing.”
“Or maybe it changes everything,” she said. “I could be in Copenhagen, at a clinic, putting bandages on the knees of children who fell at the playground. I could be checking the blood pressure of a man who can’t resist the temptation of an extra sweet in the morning. I could be warning the unhappy housewife that she needs to stop drinking so much. I have made a choice. I am shaping the world by being here.”
“You made your choice, and you are here, and all these people are still suffering,” said Phil. A group of children had gathered around them calling out “American.” He tried to ignore them. “How has the story changed with you being here? If you were in Copenhagen right this moment, sipping a latte at a cafe, tell me this camp would not be here. Tell me these children would not be tugging at my pants. War will still come. Death will still come. Even if I stay here and take photos.”
“Their story will be told and you will be a part of it.”
“And still, I make no difference.”
“I make a difference every day,” she said.
The sharp blaring of a horn interrupted them, and Phil turned towards the sound. It came from their SUV. Halley stood on the running board, head visible over the roof, glasses flashing against the gloom. He waved with one hand, while the other hand pounded on the horn.
Xavier hurried past Phil with his notebook, and a few of the pages tumbled out into the mud; the wet seep began eating the words he had just written. But he either didn’t notice or didn’t care.
“Time’s a wasting,” Xavier said. “Let’s roll. El Diablo waits.”
The doctor, if that was what she was, had turned away and was walking back towards the medical tent.
“I can’t!” Phil called out to her. “I want to, but I can’t. I’ll be back. I will!”
She showed no sign that she heard his words.
Phil hesitated wondering if he should call to her again, but the horn blared again, and hurried off towards the car, avoiding the outstretched hands of children. Then he was in the car, slamming the door behind him, cutting off the buzz of life from the tent city.
“We can gas up a couple of miles ahead,” said Halley as he steered the car through a gathering crowd of refugees. “After that, no more stops until we get to El Diablo.”
Phil shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He thought of telling Halley to stop, of leaping out of the car and returning to the refugee camp, taking photos that maybe would make no noticeable difference in the world but that might orient him.
He imagined the photos of the refugees in newspapers and magazines across the world. He pictured himself on talk shows. He dreamed about Justine calling him, telling him to turn on the news. The dictators of La Plata had been overthrown. Phil’s photos, Phil, had made a difference.
He thumbed on his camera and looked at the display. The photos were ruined, a black splotch consuming them, the lives he had captured destroyed.
12
Several hours later, they plummeted deeper into the jungle, now far from the lights of the city and the masses at the refugee camp. The road was a dark cut against the forest. The trees were no longer restrained by fields or grassy margins. Instead, the road twisted and turned amongst towering trees, trees that weaved together again, their branches stretching across the roadway, and intertwining, turning the day into a perpetual twilight, until the murky sky was hidden.
It seemed to Phil as though they were slipping beneath the earth; any hint of sunlight was swallowed. As if the jungle forbade the light from touching the ground.
He had turned his camera on and off several times. Each time, he saw the same thing: his photos, destroyed by a consuming black splotch. He closed his eyes, and furiously rubbed his face and eyes with the palms of his hands. The photos had been perfect, until they had left the camp.
“You okay back there?” asked Xavier.
“I’m wondering if I’m making a mistake,” said Phil. He caught Halley, glaring at him through the rearview mirror. He slid across the seat, behind Halley, no longer visible.
Xavier plucked his cigarillo from his lips and pointed it at Phil. “Mistake? Driving away from the safety of the capital, deeper into rebel territory, qualifies as making a mistake.”
“It’s more than that. I don’t know where the decisions I make are leading me. I fear I made a wrong turn somewhere along the way.”
“You can’t worry about that, Phil. You’ll drive yourself mad wondering. The past is dead, gone. You can’t get it back. Yeah, you’ve fucked up with Samantha. We’ve all fucked up in some ways. But mistakes don’t define us.”
“I should have stayed in the camp. Taking photos. Telling the stories of people’s lives. I should go back there. I can’t do this anymore.”
“Settle down. We’ve got a job to do. El Diablo. We need to get the story, the photo, and then you can do whatever you want. Then you can start living your life differently.”
“Why can’t I start right now?”
“Because I need you. I can’t take photos for shit. And if you get out now, you got a long, lonely walk back to the refugee camp.”
Phil stared out the window into the shadows of the forest. He wanted to tell Halley to stop, but the words froze on the tip of his tongue. He thought of a leaf swallowed in a raging river, carried along without choice.
But his thoughts were interrupted by Halley. “Another roadblock. I’m going to kill someone.”
But there were no soldiers at the roadblock. Only a farmer who had chopped down a length of bamboo and set it across the middle of the road. Phil imagined they could have just driven through the meager obstacle, but Halley stopped, muttering curses.
The farmer was an old man, white bearded, barefoot, skin dark like leather, a baseball cap tilted on his head. He carried a machete in his hand and used it to flag at the SUV. A goat lay on the side of the road tied to a tree with a length of blue rope.
Phil rolled down his window, sat on the sill, and leaned out to take photos. There was a story here. A man profiting off the chaos of war.
He lifted the camera to his eye. Through his lens, the farmer lay crumpled on the ground, eyes rolled back to show the whites, chest ripped open with bullet holes. Blood soaked his shirt, and his pants were stained yellow. Black flies swarmed about him.
Phil gasped and nearly dropped the camera. He looked again with his naked eye. The farmer, alive, untouched, waved the machete. “My camera, what I see…,” he
murmured, shocked and angry. “It’s cursed. I can’t take a photo!”
“Photos? You want photos?” said Halley. “I’ll give you fucking photos.” He kicked open his door and stormed across the muddy ground towards the farmer.
The farmer yelled at them, his words nearly lost beneath the rumble of the truck engine, but Phil could just about make them out. Go, he said in Spanish. Go back. Turn around. Only death ahead. Hell lies beyond this gate.
Halley swore at him and told him to move the bamboo.
The old man wagged the machete, and muttered something about El Diablo. He told them to turn around, before it was too late.
Halley drew his pistol. Phil expected the old man to run back into the forest. But he didn’t get the chance.
Halley fired twice. Both bullets hit the old man in the chest. He remained standing for a moment, a look of shock on his face. Blood bloomed across his shirt and his pants went dark with urine. He tottered, reaching towards Phil, and then he collapsed. His eyes rolled back in his head, and he exhaled, then was still.
The goat was scrambling around, yanking at the rope, screaming in an eerily human manner, hooves tearing at the dark, wet soil.
“What the fuck, Halley?” screamed Phil. “You killed him!”
“There’s your photo. One for the books.”
“You’re crazy!” Phil turned back to Xavier. “We need to go. Please. Halley’s lost his shit.”
Xavier clutched the dashboard. His eyes were wide, his breath clipped.
Halley circled around to the side of the car where Phil still hung halfway out the window. “Take your photo.”
“Get away from me, you monster.” The pistol loomed, giant in Halley’s hands, and Phil imagined it weighed a hundred pounds. He swore he could see the air buckle in the heat of the fired weapon.
“You want the iconic shot, don’t you? The photo that will catapult you into stardom? Start shooting. I shoot first, and you shoot second. How’s that for a deal?”
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