Pamela backs against a wall, hands raised defensively. One of the men stands behind Gwen. With one of his hands, he clenches a fistful of her hair, jerking her head back, and with the other hand, he places the sharp edge of a machete on her neck. Bill is facedown on the pavement.
“Let us go! We have no money,” Pamela screeches. “My husband needs a doctor.”
Dispassionately, Action prods Bill with his feet. Bill does not move.
“Husband needs a grave digga,” Action laughs, deep and malicious.
We stand in the flickering light from a raging fire down the block. Action wears shorts and an unbuttoned vest without a shirt. The fire light causes his gaunt face to appear unusually cadaverous. His baleful eyes lock on mine; the malevolence in his dead, black stare makes it clear that begging for mercy is pointless.
“Well, well, what a pretty fishy caught in de net,” Action slides a skeletal palm over Gwen’s face and over her breast which he roughly kneads.
Panting with fear, she whimpers, and a tear slides from her eye
“Get your fucking hands off her,” I seethe.
Action mockingly cups a hand to his ear. “What’s that, you say? I’m sorry. You made a mistake, mon. You must be tinkin’ we still work for you. Maybe you wan Action to do a trick for you?”
He does a herky-jerky dance towards me, like an evil marionette, causing the men with him to laugh.
Drawing his face near to mine, his lips pulled into a leering grin. “Dis island is ours—not yours. Life…she roll de dice. Now we on top and you on de bottom. De water, de food, de women…” he nods knowingly to Gwen. “Dey all belongs to us. Now we are de ones in control.”
My heart thuds in my chest and my skin feels strangely cold even as sweat gushes from my pores. This is a feeling of bone chilling terror—the trembling pulse of a man who knows he is about to die, but despite my fear, a fury builds within me.
“You’re a fool,” I sneer. “We should be working together, not burning homes to the ground, raping and stealing.”
Action’s face twists into a cruel mask. He yanks the machete from his comrade and raises it to strike.
“Kneel,” he commands.
“Phillip!” Gwen cries.
Held by the man behind me, I cannot escape this execution. Time slows to a crawl. Life is pointless. All my hopes and fears, my tiny tragedies and puny triumphs—the love I felt and lost—none of it matters. Six billion lives vanished overnight; the loss of one more is beyond insignificant. In a moment, my head will roll into a trash-filled gutter, my blood pooling into the hard packed dirt. My life is a thing of no consequence, just as the lives of kings or heroes will cease to matter with no one alive to remember them, and their monuments blasted to dust.
“Kneel!” Action roars, and one of his men punch me in the solar plexus. The wind rushes from my lungs in a hoarse gasp and I sink to my knees.
I look to Gwen, my poor Gwen, the wife I could not save. In a moment, my suffering will be over; Gwen’s is just beginning. Our eyes meet and I know the only kindness this absurd life will ever give me is to look upon her face as I die.
Suddenly, Bill crashes into the man standing next to Action. In all the commotion, none of us observed Bill rise to his feet. Like a kamikaze, Bill hurls his weight into the man who yelps in pain. I take a second to realize that Bill took my fallen knife and buried it in the ruffian’s ribs. Howling in pain, the ruffian slumps to the ground and pulls the knife from his side. Blood spurts from the wound like a geyser.
“Run!” Bill yells, his voice faltering.
The man holding Gwen is so distracted that she whirls on him with a kick to the groin and breaks free. I roll to the side and dash towards Gwen
Bill wobbles and falls. Standing in shock, Pamela screams his name, but Gwen seizes Pamela’s wrists and yanks her away. As we flee, I dare to look back. Bill is on the ground. Machetes descend as Action and his men hack him to death.
At the end of the alley, Pamela digs in her heels and tries to run back to Bill.
I spin her so that we are face-to-face and state, “Bill’s dead. They’re coming for us.”
I cannot see the thugs, but their shouts echo through the twisting alleys as they fan out to trap us. Hysterical, her cheeks streaked with tears, Pamela looks in the direction of where her husband’s body lay. The sound of feet slapping on the hard earth increases. Fear of the murdering ruffians overcomes her grief; without a word, she runs with us. We dart through the maze of alleys, not pausing for a second. I cannot see the men, but I hear their shouts from several different directions, like the howls of wolves tracking their prey.
Through the curtains of a ramshackle home, I glimpse light. Frantic, I try the door. Locked. The voices close in, encircling us. I kick the door. It shudders. I kick it again and it swings open. We race inside, Gwen slamming the door behind us and holding it shut with her body.
“Whatcho doin’? Git out! Git out of my house!” A petite woman pummels me.
I swat her blows away , and hearing men approach, I seize her and clamp a hand over her mouth. Her struggle is so fierce that despite her small size she drags me to the floor where we grapple like Olympic wrestlers. I must not lose my hold on her mouth. If she screams, the men will know where we are.
I drop the entire weight of my body onto the woman and warn, “Quiet! We are not going to hurt you.”
Men skulk past the window. Gwen and Pamela, panting for breath, eyes wide as saucers, press themselves against the door. The knob twitches as the thugs try to enter. The woman beneath me freezes. Far off shouts call the men away. Cautiously, I relax my hold on the woman, releasing her when I am certain she will not scream.
She crawls away from me. “Git out,” she hisses.
I shake my head. “We can’t leave. Not while they’re out there.”
Gwen creeps from the door towards the woman. “Please, let us stay, just until the men are gone.”
The woman’s stern expression makes it clear she will not offer us refuge. A sound at the back of the room—the frustrated squall of a toddler—draws her attention. Holding the child, she soothes it with a gentle back rub, but her eyes point at me like loaded cannons.
“Shhh, baby, I know you are hungry, shhh,” the woman murmurs to the child, coddling it with soothing noises. “Momma will get you someting to eat soon.”
The frail light from a single candle illuminates the sparsely furnished room. The presence of a small dining table, dilapidated sofa, sink, and stove indicate that this one room serves many purposes. An open door leads to a lightless room that I assume is the bedroom. The poverty of her situation is marked. Gwen notices it, too.
“This woman’s entire home is no bigger than the bathroom back at our bungalow,” Gwen whispers to me. “No wonder the islanders are trying to kill us.”
I crawl to the entrance and listen for the whereabouts of the thugs.
Dazed, Pamela sits on the floor, her back pressed to the door. When she speaks, her voice is frail and weary. “Anything?”
“They are farther away,” I answer, straining to detect every sound. “They’re calling to each other…trying to figure out where they lost us, I think. It’s hard to tell, but they don’t sound close. Maybe something else distracted them.”
Pamela closes her eyes and releases a trembling sigh.
“I’m so sorry,” I rest my hand on her shoulder. “Bill died to save you…to save all of us.”
The hardships and horrors of the last few days have taken a toll on Pamela. Her eyes flutter behind her closed lids like trapped moths. Scores of tiny wrinkles that I did not notice before line her eyes and mouth.
“How could this happen to us?” she places a sun speckled palm on the flat of her chest. “One minute Bill was with me…and now he’s gone. I’m alone.”
She buries her face in her hands and silently weeps, her shoulders convulsing from the strain.
“You are not alone. We’re with you,” I rub her back and say. My sentiment
s are flimsy things to offer a widow who just saw her husband slaughtered in front of her, but they are all I have. I sit beside her until her weeping subsides.
Staying low, I creep back to Gwen who sits before the island woman.
“I am Gwen and this is Phillip. What’s your name?”
The toddler is quieter but not at peace, still stirring fitfully in the woman’s arms. She regards us with open hostility.
“You should not be here,” she says. “You put my baby in danger if dey finds you here.”
Gwen nods solemnly. “I know, and we are sorry. The woman by the door—they murdered her husband and they would have killed us, too, if we did not hide here. As soon as it is safe to go we’ll leave.”
The woman settles into a scowl, patting her fussy child, and then accepting the fact that we are not going to harm her or immediately leave she says, “Dellas”
“What?” Gwen asks.
“Dellas. You asked my name. My name is Dellas,” she responds. “Dis is my little girl, Rhodesia.”
“Hello,” I wave.
“Do you have any watt-tuh?” Dellas asks, pronouncing the word “water” with a heavy accent.
We shake our heads, to which Dellas purses her lips.
“You plan on leaving when it is safe,” she says. “It won’t be safe—not now, and not in de morning. De gangstas—dose rotten bums—dey will watch de roads in and out of town for you.”
I inch closer so that I will not have to raise my voice. “What happened here, Dellas? Where are the authorities?”
“All dead. Once de gangstas learn dat no more food or watt-tuh is coming dey
get to drinkin’ and den de run wild,” she shakes her head with righteous disgust. “We only had de sheriff and two deputy—no match for de gangstas. Nobody could stop dem, robbing and carrying on like such.”
Rhodesia starts to bawl again. Dellas rocks her back and forth with diminishing results.
“She is hungry,” Dellas explains.
“Dellas, is there another way out of town?” I ask.
“Over de hills, through the countryside, yes, if you know de way.”
My eyes narrow. “And you know the way.”
“I do.”
“There is plenty of food and water at our resort. If you guide us safely back we can give shelter for you and your daughter.”
Dellas cannot be more than twenty years old, but she regards us with the steely-eyed circumspection of a banker considering a loan. I wait expectantly, knowing her cupboards are bare and that rocking and tender words will not soothe Rhodesia much longer.
“Okay, I take you,” she agrees. “First light, we go.”
Chapter Eleven
Long past midnight, as the last hour of darkness surrenders to the coming dawn, Rhodesia’s restless cries rouse me from sleep. How long have I been asleep? I glance at my watch; an hour has gone by, but it seems I only closed my eyes a second ago. I sit on the floor against the entrance, blocking the door from opening with my body. Pamela dozes nearby and appears as light-hearted as when I first met her. Perhaps she dreams of better times. What a shame it will be to awaken her and steal her from this blissful state.
Snoring on the couch, an exhausted Dellas is oblivious to the child fidgeting in her arms. Gwen lifts the child and coos sweetly to her. Rhodesia falls silent, mouth agape, trying to comprehend whom this new, strange woman is that holds her. Gwen rocks her back and forth, tickling the little girl’s chin and any other gesture to distract and placate her.
As Gwen coddles Rhodesia, Gwen’s apprehensive expression becomes tender and dreamy. Watching her, I recall our own plans to have a baby. I used to picture how beautiful our child would be, and I imagined that Gwen would be as caring and warm to our child as she is now to Rhodesia. Early in our marriage, we discussed having a baby, but she was not ready. “When we’re more financially stable,” Gwen said, and so we put it off. Whenever I mentioned the subject, she raised the same objection, pointing to a stack of bills that was hard to refute. Maybe we’ll have a baby next year, I told myself, and told myself again the year thereafter.
“What?” Gwen asks, startling me. I did not realize I watched her so intently.
“Uh, nothing,” I stammer. “It’ll be sunrise soon.”
She nods and quietly asks, “What’s going on outside?”
I peek through the curtains. “It looks like most of the fires have burned themselves out. The sky isn’t red anymore. I don’t hear the thugs…maybe they’re asleep.”
The air in the home is stagnant and still.
“I’m so thirsty,” she swallows hard. “Back home I’d turn on the faucet and there it would be—clear, cold water. What I wouldn’t give to be able to do that now.”
“I know,” I agree. “I’m starving. These past few days I must have dropped 10 pounds—and I didn’t have any weight to lose. By the way, you were pretty impressive back there—kicking that guy in the crotch the way you did. Did you take a kung fu class over the summer?”
A slight smile crosses her lips. “It’s surprising to find what you’re capable of when you have no choice.”
It feels good to talk so easily with Gwen, but something has been weighing on my mind.
“Gwen, when we get back to the resort what’s going to happen with us? I suppose you want the bungalow to yourself.”
She pauses, perhaps trying to find the right words, and then, “My main goal is simply making it back to the resort alive. I hadn’t thought of anything beyond that. I could move out of the bungalow if you prefer.”
What I really want to say is that I prefer Gwen to share the bungalow with me. The strength of this desire surprises me, and the fact that I even have this desire at all is bewildering. However, the ease by which she yields the bungalow is certainly not the sign of a wife who would insist on remaining with her husband, so there is no point in entertaining this desire.
“I can keep the bungalow, but I’m not going to have you sleeping on the beach,” I counter.
“Someone will take me in…maybe Conner and Alexandra.”
Conner would love that—his own little harem. “Or Pamela—she is alone now, after all,” I snidely suggest.
“Fine, I’ll move in with Pamela,” she shoots back.
I have to get the last word. “Fine, then it’s agreed. I’ll keep the bungalow.”
Tense silence settles on the room, and then Gwen shakes her head and with a bitter chuckle says, “One good thing about the rest of the world getting blown off the map—at least we don’t have to go through a long, expensive divorce.”
Like scurrying mice, we sneak from Dellas’s home. Clutching Rhodesia to her chest, Dellas leads the way. Acrid smoke drifts from the black, charred ruins of smoldering buildings. Dellas sticks to the shadows, hugging the walls, moving swiftly. I bring up the rear of our column. Pamela walks ahead of me, eyes darting everywhere, looking, I suspect, for the remains of her husband. Thankfully, we do not pass his body, but I see others, sprawled on the street, slick with blood, swarmed by flies in the morning heat.
We come to a point where we must cross an open space. Atop a nearby hill, two men stand on the corner, drinking bottles of beer and laughing.
“Are they one of the thugs?” Pamela asks.
“What udder men would stand outside so easy-as-you-please?” Dellas mutters. “All de good people are hiding in dere homes or ran off into de hills.”
Crouching in the alleyway, completely exposed should a thug suddenly emerge from nearby, we wait for the men to turn away. A bead of sweat slides down my side. Every muscle tenses, ready to sprint.
The men leave the corner and wander out of sight. Without a word, Dellas bolts across the open space and we immediately follow. Safe on the other side, we slip down other alleys until we reach a cracked and twisting road that snakes out of town. A rusted guardrail runs along the other side of the road, and beyond the rail lies a rocky gulch dotted with scraggly bushes.
“Dat is de way we go,�
�� Dellas points to the gulch. “De won’t see us if we take dat way.”
We clamber over the guardrail, but climbing into the gulch is no simple matter. Loose rocks skitter from our feet. Each step requires great care to avoid tumbling head first to the bottom of the gulch. I reach behind to guide Pamela down while Gwen assists Dellas. Our movement is distressingly slow. The clattering stones sound as loud as firecrackers in the early morning stillness. Any moment I expect to look up and see murderous thugs standing above us. Progress is not any easier by the fact that the people of Rio Galera use the gulch as a convenient garbage dump. Busted appliances, broken bottles and the rusted out hulks of old automobiles litter the gulch.
Pamela accidentally kicks an empty liquor bottle. It shatters and we freeze. Voices—men’s voices, from the streets above, grow closer. We look at each other, panic on everyone’s face. No time to dawdle, we jump the last few feet to the bottom of the gulch and dive behind the nearest rusted automobile.
My head is near the ground. The men’s words are indistinct, but there is no mistaking their nearness. I peek around the tire of the car and see the dark skinned bare legs of three men. There is no doubt they have come to investigate the sound they heard. Pamela grips my arm like an eagle’s talon. We dare not speak or even breathe. The men do not move. Suddenly, not far from us, a flock of chickens comes forth from behind a bush. Two of them squawk and fly at each other. The men above us chuckle, assuming, I pray, that the chickens are the source of the noise that drew their attention.
The men wander off. Several minutes pass without hearing or seeing the men. I chance standing up for a better view; the men are gone. We head east, the gulch taking us away from Rio Galera into the hills.
Hunger saps my strength. Overhead, the rising sun bakes my skull like pottery in a kiln. The tree cover is sporadic. The sky is a cloudless, blue bowl offering no protection from the sun. The rest of my ragtag group plods onward, feet dragging, heads bowed. Dellas slows to a crawl. I volunteer to carry Rhodesia for a while. The little girl cannot be more than thirty pounds, but she weighs on me like a stack of bricks. We tread across deserted roads and fields of golden grass as high as our knees. The trickling sound of water has us stumbling and running to a tiny stream in a small gully. The water pools in pockets before disappearing into the parched soil. A clump of trees shades this spot. In all my life, I have never seen any place more beautiful.
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