Truck engine. We all duck back from the road. The women aim their AKs. The truck stops at the canoes. One headlight works; the windshield is shattered; looks like from bullets, not hurricane. A palsied black man stumbles out, blood splashed across his pale-yellow shirt and face. He was frail before he was shot and drops before he can speak.
Tafat runs to him. The women rush the truck. The smell of gasoline is strong; probably a bullet in the tank. I wave for a flashlight and crawl underneath.
High in the tank are two holes. If we go uphill not down, we shouldn’t lose much fuel. I crawl out to tell Tafat. All three are pointing AKs at the road.
Tafat says, “Our driver is dead. The Gryphon is close. Possibly ten minutes.”
Her comrades load the canoes in the truck bed, climb in, and aim their AKs. Tafat and I jump in the cab. She jams gears and we lunge forward. The truck reeks of blood. I ask how far.
She leans at the windshield to see. “Twenty miles. Over the four-thousand-foot ridge above Ca Elie. The eye must last or we will perish.”
I squint through the shattered glass, squeezing my hands together to stop the tremble. “Cool, something new.”
The road higher isn’t a road, it’s a path through debris from far away, and over and around downed trees. Much of this will be airborne again seconds after the eye passes. The storm that did this was no Category 3.
***
We make it to our stretch of the river before the Gryphon can cut us off. The river is a jet stream of white foam. To the east, the stars are still visible, but the moon is fading. Either the moon’s natural arc or the storm is walling it off.
Tafat pulls rope from the truck, cuts three long pieces, and tosses them to each of us. “Tie yourselves in.” She points at her comrades and stays with English. “I will put you in the river. Good luck.”
I drag our canoe to the water, climb in to my knees, and tie myself to the bench the way the women are doing. Tafat pushes them in. The river catapults them forward. Thirty feet of gush and they’re pitched airborne. The canoe cants sideways, tips to roll, and they’re gone, rolling into the dark. That fast, and it’s over.
Tafat stares at the probable death scene, anguish on her misshapen face, then asks me if I’m ready. “Prêt?”
Maybe her comrades lived twenty seconds. I look at the road the Gryphon is on, push my knees as far under the front bench as they’ll go, then hunker down for the launch. Tafat climbs in. We touch water, but just the top. Instantly we bang left, fly, bang right, fly, crash, splash, slide, skid, fly . . . smash back into foam, twist, don’t spin, sail high into a bank, slam back down, airborne again. Nonstop, breathless, white-knuckle death.
***
A lifetime later we end in a pile. I drag Tafat out of the water.
The pieces of our smashed canoe float off into Lake Azuéi. Tafat gurgles and rolls to her stomach. I pound on her back until she spits all the water, then roll her back over and give her mouth-to-mouth until she breathes.
She coughs, fights to her side, and screams as her legs move. I pant till I can breathe, wipe water from my face, and touch parts of me for pain. I stand, fall, and stand again and stare at the roar of whitewater dumping into the lake. To the east, we still have stars but very few.
Tafat bends to sit up, touches her legs, and falls back, panting. “Broken.”
Her pants are bloody bags of broken bones.
From her back she points west. “The eye passes. Travels . . . for now . . . where we must travel.”
I look at her shattered body, then her uneven eyes, the pain in her face, then the pistol in her hand. Her other hand reaches inside her shirt and strips a Velcro strap. She tosses the strap to me. On it is a flat rectangular box. She says, “Susie Devereux . . . has a tracking chip . . . unlikely she is aware. Turn the switch on.”
The switch is in a press-plate in the box’s narrow side. A tiny red light pops on. Then blinks once.
“Frequency will increase . . . with proximity. A green light . . . within five hundred meters.”
“The Gryphon has one of these?”
“Many.”
“Is there a road to La Boule from here?”
Tafat’s eyes roll white. She sucks several breaths, then forces herself up to her elbows. “No.” She nods at the lake. “Follow our bank to Fond Parisien, the bottom of the lake; Highway 8. My mother’s family is there, in the shacks. Give them this.” She snaps a chain off her neck, a small queen-conch shell with two silver rods through it. “Tell them I grew strong. That I am with the Rebelyon. They will take you to La Boule.”
“They know about . . . ?”
“I was stolen at age six; our last time together. Ask for the Pendelane family, the women masons.” She strips her armband and tosses it to me. “Dirty your face and hands.”
I strap the Velcro around my chest, then cup muck and smear my face and hands.
Tafat pants, swallows, and says, “Slavery is slavery. Ayiti deserves her freedom from the world’s thirst.” Her features contort against the pain. “Remember this when you divide Ayiti’s spoils. Slaves gave you your life.”
“I can do that.” We stare for a second. “For what it’s worth, thanks.”
“Slaves saved you. Remember.” She extends her hand, palm up. “Give me your hand.” She points at the Ezili carving, and that’s the hand I offer. Her grip is strong. She releases, then transfers the pistol to the hand that just shook mine and points me back.
“Take this when I am done.” She thumb-cocks the hammer, then raises the barrel to her temple. Her eyes blink twice. She mouths the word “Liberté” and pulls the trigger.
The gunshot slams her flat.
I flinch and stumble; the .45’s echo bounces twice, then stops. Absolute stillness.
Tafat’s blood rivers between the wet stones toward the lake. I look away, then kneel at her hip, unwrap her fingers from the pistol grip, check the magazine, touch her arm thanks, stand, and begin to run.
***
At sea level and no longer sheltered by the forests and mountains, the world inside Lana’s eye is postapocalyptic Armageddon times ten, the ground thatched with leveled trees stripped of bark; naked rock that used to be sandy lake beach.
I’m the last man alive, running through gray half-light. My feet hitting the rocks are the only sounds. The air’s harder to breathe, like there’s somehow less of it.
Pant, jump rocks, pant.
This final arc of lakefront at its bottom is the same as the top where I started, except now I’m farther from the mountain and can see the east wall of the eye that’s chasing me.
Pant, jump rocks, pant.
The wall is black with streaks of gray, rotating counterclockwise. It will be the second attack on an already-decimated battlefield.
Up ahead is . . . a road? Concrete-block walls? Must be Tafat’s shacks. The roofs are gone.
I stop way short; catch my breath before approaching. Tafat’s .45 is cocked behind my leg.
The first shack is small, fifteen by fifteen, and the same as the entire row. Four walls: no windows, no roof. Bits of debris—a pot lid, part of a picture frame, a doll. A can of Spam that I peel and wolf down.
I check the remaining buildings. Not a person, car, or chicken. All gone . . . and not a sound. Part of a road sign is buried in the shack’s concrete wall like a knife: “Fond Parisien.” Above the door the name “Pendelane” is chiseled the way a professional would do it.
I lay Tafat’s queen-conch necklace on the windowsill and tell the walls, “Liberté,” think better of it, and scratch “Liberté! Tafat Pendelane 2009” into the wall.
Out front, the road east—toward the mountains and possible safety in the Dominican Republic—is now a death sentence into the approaching eye wall’s towering black. At my feet, part of another twisted sign reads “Port-au-Prince 42 km.”
I have two choices: run the gauntlet until I run into whoever’s still alive on this road—UN troops, rebels, the Gryphon—or get sucked into the sky right here like Tafat’s people just did.
I take a last deep breath, belt Tafat’s .45 in the small of my back, and start running.
If Hurricane Lana is moving at ten miles per hour, the eye will advance one mile every six minutes; lots faster than I can run. I switch on Susie’s chip tracker and it blinks red, but just once. It feels strangely wonderful that a light is lit in Armageddon World.
A rumble behind me—low and ugly. The rumble gains volume. Really loud now, a roar—
A rocket shoots past. I stumble and fall.
Motorcycle.
Brake light. The bike slows, turns with its headlight on, and comes back at me. Fast.
I draw the .45. The rider screech-stops, slides his back tire in a 180, and waves me aboard. I run to an old Triumph Bonneville, belt the .45, hop on, find the pegs, and stomach-hug the driver’s leather jacket. He smells like motor oil and roars west down the centerline.
Again and again the rider brakes hard and swerves, passing through and around and over the remains of small decimated villages and larger towns. A few ragged people are out. They seem dazed and seriously afraid, focused on the rotating black wall marching toward them.
We make fifteen miles of bad road that buys me an hour. I can now see the rotating black sky ahead of us in the west. The rider stops at an intersection with three partial walls standing on one corner. Part of one wall reads: “Croix-des-Bouquets.” I sold rum here in the 1980s.
The rider points a black finger at himself, then north. “Highway 303, three kilometers.”
Going north on 303 toward Port-au-Prince will hand me to whatever’s left of Idamante after he finishes his dance with the hurricane. I point south and tell the rider’s helmet, “Pétion-Ville, La Boule.”
He shakes his head.
I raise the .45 from the small of my back . . . but can’t do it, can’t steal his bike and leave him here to die. Like he could’ve left me back at the lake; where I’d already be a ragdoll in the wind. I step off the back of the bike and say, “Thanks.”
He looks down his shoulder at me and the gun, then twists the throttle and screams north.
Across the road from the three partial walls is another wall, this one with a window hole. Painted above the hole is “Digner 2 km” and an arrow pointing south. We had a Myers’s customer in Digner, an outpost on the Mad River, where the adventure travelers would put in. Maybe one of Haiti’s five new governments since that time has built a bridge.
If I go there and Haiti didn’t build a bridge, I’ll be trapped on low, open ground—
Fuck it. My feet start running.
I make the outskirts of Digner, spent and limping.
Just ahead is its crossroads. A three-hundred-yard walk down the cross street will be the Mad River crossing that everyone used in the dry season. If God loves me, I can get across the river on the new bridge.
I trot to the river. God votes: No bridge.
From bank to bank, the river is five hundred feet of roaring whitewater and debris. Around me, Lana’s rotating black eye wall is the entire sky in every direction. My stomach blinks red. I undo one more shirt button and look at the box in the Velcro strap. The light’s dark . . . but it did blink; it still works.
I’m within ten miles of the castle . . . So move, asshole.
I jog south along the granite riverbank. Up ahead will be my old Myers’s customer, an ex-Aussie football player named Rohan Gittens with the wrong attitude when it was shut-up-and-smile polite time. Zero chance he’s still there.
But the jutting riverfront headland is. So is a roofless concrete building with no sign. Five boat bows are smashed into the tight natural harbor, looking like catfish on a stringer. Down close, the river’s so loud it sounds like a stock-car race.
At the backside of Rohan’s building is a thirty-foot steel pole. The pole is planted in a partially exposed granite pit filled with concrete. Six one-inch-thick support cables anchor the pole into the high granite crag.
My eyes follow a cable across the Mad River: Zip line. Adventure-camp stop. In the rainy season the crazies probably raft the Mad River out of the mountains, stop here for beers, then finish with a zip line across the river.
Damn straight. Just like I’m gonna do.
At the top of the pole, the pulley and its handgrips are still on the line. But how I get to the top of the pole is gone.
Inside the building, I find an eight-foot length of rope.
Back at the pole, I tuck the rope through my belt loops, tie the rope around the pole like a logger would, then do the lumberjack-hunch up the pole. It’s lots harder than it looks. The rope doesn’t break. Takes fifteen minutes. And most of my strength.
At the top—thirty feet off the ground—the fucking pulley is wire-knotted to the cable. I fight the pulley loose, grab the grips, and semi-test with one hand.
Seems okay. Seems okay? I check the sky that wants to kill me, then the river, strip the lumberjack rope, shut my eyes, and lock-in a horror vision of my final dance with either the Gryphon or the hurricane.
I shout: “Flyers rule!” and make my feet push off the pole.
Forty feet of air separates me from whitewater screaming downhill toward Port-au-Prince. The zip line’s fast. My hands don’t hurt until halfway. Half a destroyed house and roof careens out of the river’s bend. The roof peak is higher than the zip line.
No, don’t fucking do that—
My hands and forearms cramp. Foam splashes me from ankles to face. The bank is ninety feet away. My stomach blinks red; gigantic roof fills the sky—
“Shiiiiit!” The roof hits the cable just behind me. It snaps. I slingshot the last ten feet above the water and tumble hard onto the rocks.
I roll, screaming at the cramps, jam one foot between my hands to pry them loose of the grips and pulley.
Gunfire cracks on my side of the river’s roar.
I roll farther behind a snapped tree stump, force my goddamn hands flat, then scan for gunmen. There are no armed crews who will be friendly to me, white-boy colonial master. I need pirate girls and a fortified basement. Everything else in this goddamn country wants to kill me. I plunge my hands into mud thrown up by the Mad River, smear my face black, and start running.
Chapter 31
Bill Owens
A mile behind me, Lana’s rotating eye wall reaches the far bank of the river. Her roar is the soundtrack now. I’m running away, uphill on a paved road. Debris and uprooted trees cover the scraped foundations of used-to-be shanties. Some dwellings still stand, walled compounds that have hurricane shutters.
I make my legs pump faster. The ruined shanties give way to open land that might have been farm. Five dazed goats huddle nose to nose in a ditch. Two horses wander in an odd circle, see me, and bolt. Part of a tractor is crushed into a flattened concrete building. A dog underneath the tractor watches me run past and doesn’t rise from his stomach. My eyes probably look like his.
The road climbs higher. On my right is a long concrete building, the paint scoured on two sides. A black man under a wide-brim planter’s hat grips a rifle out front.
I stop, pant bent over, then walk toward him.
He shoulders the rifle to a dirty white shirt and aims at my chest.
“No. I’m a tourist. Canadian.” I point east. “Was at Lake Azuéi.”
His finger curls on the trigger.
“Whoa. Easy. I have to get to La Boule. Can you help me? Before . . .” I point at Lana rotating all around us.
Headshake behind the rifle.
I don’t show him the armband; he has things to protect. “C’mon, man. I have money.” I pull out US bills.
He half fans the rifle barrel toward the road, then back at
my chest to help me move on.
I remember the pistol and walk toward him waving the money. Gunshot. I land hard, and stay there. He’s done this before or I’d be dead.
A curvy middle-aged woman runs out of the concrete building behind him, yelling angry soprano Kreyol until she reaches his shoulder, stays in his face, then turns to me. “American?”
My hand cinches up my pants as I stand, then drifts to the pistol under my shirt in the small of my back. “Canadian. Toronto.”
Her face is round, dotted with moles; she speaks Tafat’s educated English. “Pétion-Ville is under siege by the rebels. Extensive fighting. New fighting. You cannot go there.”
“Trying to get to La Boule, up above to the south. My wife and kids are at Castle Barbancourt.”
The round face hesitates. “You are friends of Bertie Linge?”
“Yeah. Good friends. From Canada.” I do a fast recall. “Knew his mother, Jane Barbancourt. We buy Bertie’s Rhum Vieux Labbe.”
The man keeps his aggressive stance but lowers the rifle. The woman shouts at him and points inside. “There is little time, but I will take you the five kilometers. Around back, hurry. There is a good bridge in Berthe to the south. Avoids the city center.” She points again, this time at oily black clouds over Port-au-Prince. She says, “The refinery and fuel tanks. Either the hurricane or the rebels.” She sighs. “I will bring the car.”
Her car is a shiny new Peugeot. She hands me a wet cloth to wash my face, pops the trunk, and says, “In the boot.”
***
The Peugeot bounces me against the boot’s metal lid. Tafat’s .45 is in my hand. Hope when the boot lid pops we’re at Castle Barbancourt, not Idamante’s headquarters. The tracker blinks red in the blackness. Susie’s at the castle, has to be. She and Anne are alive. Another blink. We’ll all live happy ever after. Be a goddamn shame if I had to eat this pistol instead.
Gunfire. The car swerves, bangs me into the lid, then left, right, and into the lid again. We add speed, brake hard, and jump a curb or downed tree.
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