Las Hermanas

by Raedene Jeannette Melin

  “What happens if I guess wrong?”

  She smiled. Clearly, he had played this type of game before. More than likely, he had been the one in control, the one dishing out the punishment, and as she stared at the coward in front of her, she couldn’t help but feel like this was exactly how it was meant to happen.

  “I shoot you,” she replied calmly.

  “And if I get it right?”

  She smiled again, entertained by his optimism. There was no way he would guess right. “I’ll let you go,” she replied. “Sound fair?”

  Martinez nodded.

  “Alright then.” She leaned back against the wall. “First guess.”

  Martinez watched her for a moment, trying to read her, but failing. “You came in the bar with that kid,” he replied cautiously. “The one who bought the ammo. You didn’t like what he got,” and before Adi could open her mouth to reply, he quickly added, “and you didn’t like the price. You want your money back.”

  She looked down and smiled, chuckling. He was a smart fucker, she would give him that, but no matter how many guesses he crammed into one, he wouldn’t be able to save himself. She looked up and watched the hope on his face fade. “No.”

  Before he could blink, she pulled the trigger, the bullet slamming into his shoulder. He doubled over, screaming in pain.

  She walked up and crouched down so that he could see her face. “This isn’t going to end well for you.” She pushed his torso back up with the barrel of her gun. “Come on, you can do better than that.”

  He sobbed as she stood, his cries filling the warehouse. “Just do it,” he said. “Just kill me.”

  While his offer was tempting, Adi wanted more than just revenge for her sister. It was one thing to simply kill those responsible for Leti’s death, but another to have them realize why. Out of all the crimes he had committed, all the families he was responsible for breaking, she wanted him to know that it was Leti’s death that would be the end of him. That the moment he ripped the life from her beautiful, pure soul was the moment he guaranteed his own, violent death.

  “Next guess,” Adi said. When he didn’t answer, she drove her gun into the wound, making him scream. “Next guess.”

  “I don’t know!” he yelled back, his voice filled with rage. “I don’t fucking know!”

  She studied him for a moment, waiting for some sign of deception to reveal itself, but when it didn’t, she relented. “I’ll give you a hint. Your name is Pedro Martinez, but I know you as Commander Martinez.”

  Adi watched it sink in, a faint look of disbelief falling over his face.

  “You were part of the movement?”

  Adi smiled. “I was. Along with my family.”

  “But the village was massacred,” Martinez said almost to himself. “There were no survivors.”

  Adi laughed. “Yes, that’s interesting, isn’t it?”

  The sound of her voice broke his concentration and he looked back up.

  “There were no survivors and yet, here I am and here you are.”

  Martinez eyed her suspiciously.

  “Tell me,” Adi said, knowing she finally had him where she wanted. “How exactly did you and your two worthless dogs escape the death that came for the rest of us?”

  Martinez said nothing as his face turned hard, as if he was stiffening his resolve.

  “Come on,” Adi warned. “Don’t make this any more difficult than it needs to be.”

  He remained silent.

  “Fine,” she replied as she pulled out her knife. “Just remember, this was your choice.”

  She grabbed his hand, pulling it back over the chair as she pried it open, and sliced off his fingers in one fell swoop.

  The intensity of his screams filled the room as Adi casually dropped his severed digits onto the ground and resumed her position in front of him, watching as he clutched his hand, the gushing blood too much to stop. She waited for another minute before she grabbed his other hand and bent it over the back of the chair, knife ready.

  “How did you survive?” she commanded.

  “We went to the ranch to fight.” This time the words poured out of him. “But he was waiting for us. It was over in less than an hour. We made a deal. If we told him where the village was, he’d let us live.”

  Adi released his hand, slowly walking back to the wall. “Your life for everyone else’s.” When she looked back at him, she expected an answer, to find some sort of guilt, but when he remained silent, the anger radiating from his face, she nodded.

  “Time for guess number two.”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “Come on,” she said calmly. “We had a deal.”

  “Fuck you and your fucking deal.”

  The words were said with such contempt that it made Adi smile. It wouldn’t really matter if he knew his death was because of Leti; he was so full of hate that there was nothing else to him. He wouldn’t care that he had killed her sister. He had killed so many that a feeling like remorse, guilt, or regret was no longer possible for him. As she looked at the soulless body in front of her, she knew that the worst death she could give him would be one where he had no idea why.

  Adi raised her gun to his head, sudden panic filling his eyes.

  “No,” he said desperately, validating her realization. “Tell me why. Please, tell me why.”

  She smiled sadly at him, hoping that somehow his unanswered questions would torment him forever. “You know why.”

  As the bullet broke through the centre of his skull, jerking his head forcefully back, Adi dropped the gun, a calm feeling overwhelming her. She had no idea what was going to happen, but for the first time in her life, she could finally let go. The pain, the fear, the guilt of the past had been dealt with, and knowing that she had fulfilled her promise and avenged her family, she could finally move on and live.

  Chapter Fifteen

  She hobbled away from the warehouse, hoping she had given herself enough time to escape. The moment she entered the trees, she breathed a sigh of relief, but suddenly, the air around her shook, the explosion erupting into the early morning sky. Grey and red smoke thickly billowed out, pushing Adi to run faster as the ammunition inside the building began to burst and fire in all directions. Knowing how much attention it would draw, she continued northwest, going as fast as her injuries would let her.

  The pain radiating from her calf stopped her a couple hours later, and she struggled up into a tree, wedging herself into a cluster of branches, quickly falling asleep. The next time she woke, it was late afternoon the following day.

  Gingerly climbing down from the tree, Adi stretched out her muscles, every one of them stiff as she walked towards the water. Her gunshot wounds were feeling better, the red sap doing its work as she slept. Digging the bullet out of her shoulder was something Adi would never forget, the pain excruciating, but as she washed the night off her face, she knew she needed to keep moving.

  The sound of a stick creaking caused her to pause, if only for a second, as she continued to lift the water up to her face, listening intently. She was being watched, she could feel it, and so she stood, pretending to look at the jungle in front of her as she pulled the knife down into her hand. Turning her head ever so slightly, she saw the figure behind her, not moving as they watched from only a few feet away. Looking ahead once more, she took a deep breath and spun, the knife flying from her hand like an arrow shooting towards its target.

  If he hadn’t moved his shoulder at the last second, Adi’s knife would have pierced him right in the chest, the blade just barely nicking the side of his shirt as it passed.

  “Easy,” Thiago said as he straightened back up, hands raised.

  Adi was at a loss for words, too many questions filling her head. He was the last person she expected to find her, but when he said nothing else, she asked, “What do you want?”

  He didn’t answer right away, instead searching her face as if he was looking for the answers he needed. But when he didn’t g
et any, he replied, “You know what you’re doing, right? You have a plan, one that will get you out of this mess.” He studied her face once more. “Tell me you do and I’ll go.”

  Adi looked away. The truth was she didn’t have a plan; this entire situation was new for her. While she wanted nothing more than to go back to the village and the others, she wasn’t sure she should. She had done things Helena wouldn’t approve of, and if she told them the truth, she wouldn’t be welcomed back. “Why do you care?” she answered eventually. “You don’t even like me.”

  Thiago smiled and looked at the ground. “It doesn’t matter if I like you or not,” he replied, looking back up. “Helena does. That’s all that matters.”

  Adi studied him as she crossed her arms. “So, you’re doing this for Helena. How exactly does that work?”

  “Simple,” he replied. He picked up the knife Adi had thrown at him and twirled it in his hands. “Helena sent us on an easy run. How pleased do you think she’ll be if we return without you?”

  Adi smirked. “So this isn’t about Helena. You’re doing this to save your own ass.”

  Thiago sucked in his breath sharply. “Careful what you say now, or you just might turn into a hypocrite. Or are you going to tell me that what you did back at that warehouse was for the collective good?”

  His patronizing tone irritated her to the core, but she forced it down, matching his sarcasm. “What? Are you sad your friends are gone? I hate to break it to you, but they weren’t the kind of people Helena would want you making deals with.”

  “Oh, so now you care about what my abuela wants?” Thiago replied, feigning gratitude. “Well then. Please feel free to murder some more people.”

  Adi snapped. “That wasn’t murder,” she said, instantly hostile.

  “No?” he replied, meeting her anger. “Then what was it?”

  She said nothing as she glared at him, refusing to be baited into telling him. What she did was justified and she didn’t care if he thought so or not. She walked past him, climbed up into the tree and grabbed her bag.

  “What?” Thiago mocked as she dropped back down and started walking away. “No answer? Well, this is a first! The great Adelita doesn’t have anything to say.”

  “You have no idea what I’ve been through!” she yelled as she spun, unable to calm the rage inside. “Unlike you, not everyone got to have a safe and easy life. While you’ve been living out here with your entire family, the rest of us have been fighting, doing whatever it takes to survive.” She paused, glaring at him. “You don’t know shit about what people have done to us. What they’ve done to us,” she said as she pointed back towards the town. “You think what I did was wrong? Fine! I don’t care! But I don’t regret it for a second. For once in my life, I just needed someone to pay.”

  Thiago said nothing, his expression unreadable. She took another breath and waited, unsure of what was going to happen, but when he didn’t say anything at all, she got the hint. Lifting her bag onto her shoulders, she turned and walked away.

  “You know,” Thiago said, his voice slowing her to a stop, “you’re a lot of things.” She turned slightly, enough to see his face. “I just never knew that you were such a coward.”

  Out of everything he could have said, calling her a coward was not something she expected. She stood there, a mixture of confusion and anger rising up in her face.

  “I mean, forget about leaving all your friends, even your brother behind,” he continued. “I just never thought you’d be so scared of something you’d rather run away then face it. I guess you’re not who I thought you were.”

  Adi glared at his smug face. She knew what he was doing: he was trying to trick her into going back and she wasn’t about to fall for it. But when her feet stayed planted in place, she knew he was getting to her.

  “So what’s the plan?” she asked. “We go back and pretend nothing happened?”

  “If you want,” Thiago answered with a shrug. “It’s up to you.”

  Adi was quiet, trying to decide what to do. She wanted to be with her family, but as Martinez’s bullet-ridden body flashed before her eyes, she knew Helena would never forgive her. She was about to say so when the sound of a dog’s bark diverted her attention. It took her a second to realize what it meant, but when she looked at Thiago and saw his face, she felt sick. They had found her.

  Launching into a run, she followed Thiago as he led them west through the jungle away from the town. He was fast, his body effortlessly moving through the trees as she struggled to keep up, her wounds and the weight of her pack slowing her down. But when she saw the river ahead, she sped up and threw herself into the water.

  The current carried them down and away from the bank, eliminating any trail for their pursuers to track. While the dogs might be able to chase them from the shoreline, it would slow them down considerably and Adi was happy to let the water do the work for her. But when she saw Thiago swimming towards the shore after only a couple bends in the river, she didn’t feel so relieved.

  “Stay in the water!” she said as she swam after him, but he only shook his head.

  She struggled to push through the current, the strength of the water holding her hostage, but when she finally broke through and reached the riverbank, she didn’t waste any time. “We haven’t gone far enough. They’ll find us.”

  Thiago silently wrung the water from his clothes. When he glanced up and saw her worried face, he nodded towards a large rock that sat along the shore. “Look for yourself.”

  The moment she scaled the rock, she saw the problem. Two, maybe three bends farther, the current doubled in speed, sending the water crashing over cluster after cluster of rapids. If they had stayed in the river, they wouldn’t have made it out.

  “Come on,” he said. “They won’t be far behind.”

  From the river they continued west, the landscape morphing from rolling hills to enormous mountains. It was the most difficult terrain she had ever seen, let alone climbed, and as they reached the top of the first hill, Thiago turned south, Adi stopping when she saw what lay before them. It was a spectacular view, rivers winding below the jagged cliffs and tall peaks of the mountain range, the warmth of the sun fading as it set in the distance. But knowing that this was their way home, she quieted the inner dread and caught up with Thiago.

  “Where are Catalina and the others?” she asked when they finally stopped for the night, her muscles throbbing as she lowered herself onto the ground. They had been climbing for hours, the straps from her heavy bag digging into her shoulders and aggravating her wound.

  “They’ve already gone back,” Thiago answered. He casually sat against a tree, cutting away at a stick as he chewed on a dried plantain. “Should be home tomorrow.”

  “And us?” she asked. She kept still, trying to breathe out the discomfort. “When will we get there?”

  “Two, three days at most. Depends on how much those slow you down.”

  She turned and saw that he was looking at her injuries, a concerned expression on his face. “I’ll be fine,” she replied, unwilling to show any form of weakness. “You’ve never been shot before, have you?”

  He didn’t answer for a moment. “No, I haven’t.”

  She quietly rolled her eyes as she looked back up at the sky. It seemed that nothing bad ever happened to him, while death and mayhem stalked her every move. The two of them were nothing but different.

  “Is that what happened to your hand?” His voice interrupted her thoughts.

  She lifted it, examining the light scar that almost filled her entire palm. The last two fingers had never recovered, sitting on the end like useless blobs. Mariana said that she should be thankful her hand still worked, but as she looked at it in the moonlight, she doubted she would ever feel that way. She dropped it to her side. “No, it’s not.”

  The following day was no better than the first. They didn’t stop climbing, going up the mountains and then back down again. Adi desperately wanted a break but knowing
Thiago was already questioning her condition, she remained quiet and focused all her energy on just making it to the next tree. But by the time they descended the first ridge on the third day, she didn’t think she could take another step.

  She didn’t ask why they had stopped; all she cared about was that she could rest. She sat down on the ground, leaning against her pack as she slowly chewed on some raw pacu, and suddenly understood why they weren’t moving.

  She could hear the river without seeing it, a thunderous roar reaching her ears as she reluctantly pushed herself off the ground and walked towards it. When she finally saw it, she could do nothing but watch in awe as the white water raced by at an almost unbelievable pace. She had never seen anything so powerful, almost every inch of it filled with rapids and steep drop offs. When she saw how far away the other side of the river was, she knew this was going to be trouble.

  “We have to cross this, don’t we?” she asked as Thiago walked up, having to yell over the noise of the water.

  He grinned, answering her question, and she followed him back into the trees, the noise slowly dimming as they went.

  “I found a way across,” he said as he stopped, finally able to speak at a normal volume. “It won’t be easy, but it’s do-able. Here.” He reached out towards her. “Give me your bag.”

  “I’m fine.”

  Thiago’s hand hit her shoulder so quickly, she found herself on the ground staring up at the trees before she could blink. Surprised, she couldn’t even get an angry word out before he pulled her back up by her good arm.

  “You’re not fine,” he said firmly, “you’re injured. And if you’re going to make it across this river, you’ll need everything you have left.”

  She wanted to argue, but knew he was right. Listening to the ominous hum of the water, she took off her pack.

  They walked back towards the river, Thiago taking them farther south. The current was beginning to flatten, slowing down the raging water. But when he stopped at the edge and Adi saw the line of rocks protruding through the current, her muscles convulsed in protest.