James Rawles - Survivors - A Novel of the Coming Collapse

“No, but you might go and make inquiries with some of the landholders at Stann Creek. They’ve lots of horses there.”

“Okay.” Laine gestured to his baggage and said, “Give me a few minutes to organize this gear.” Ivens nodded and sauntered off to his office. Andy sat near the end of the dock and sorted his baggage. The dock sat below a set of stairs from the walkway and office above, so he felt safely out of sight.

He decided to travel light. He pulled out a one-ounce American Eagle gold coin and most of his remaining silver coins. He left the rest of his gold hidden in the stove. He briefly debated taking the SIG pistol but decided that on this trip the risks would outweigh the rewards. He tucked the SIG and all of its accessories in the bottom of the duffel bag with the stove. Then he restuffed the bag full and padlocked it shut. The key went on the chain around his neck that held his dog tags and his P-38 can opener.

It took two trips to lug the rest of his baggage up the stairs and into the office.

The luggage room was just an eight-foot-by-six-foot closet with deep, widely spaced shelves. But Laine was happy to see that it was equipped with a solid-core door and a dead-bolt lock.

In his rucksack he packed two cans of stew, a can of corned beef, a bag of raisins, a change of socks, his foul-weather jacket, a water bottle, and a small squeeze bottle of insect repellent.

Later, sitting at his kitchen table, Peter Ivens showed Andy a well-worn map of the district and pointed out the road route to Stann Creek. Andy copied his route onto a strip map on a clean sheet of typing paper. On the same page he jotted down the names of several ranchers whom Ivens had mentioned.

It took Andy a while to get his land legs back. When he first arrived on the dock, he had felt normal, but after he began the walk toward South Stann Creek, his legs felt rubbery beneath him, and he had the false sensation of the land rocking.

There was no traffic on the Riversdale road. Andy concluded that Ivens was right about the locals hoarding their fuel. As he walked, he passed by several citrus and cacao plantations and one banana plantation. The birdcalls were unfamiliar and the humid air had an odd smell that Andy could not place. The day was warming up rapidly, and Laine felt sweat gathering on his forehead and beneath his backpack. He started moving into more hilly terrain.

Suddenly, a group of five young men-four armed with machetes and one with a rusty FAL rifle-emerged from the dense jungle on his left. All of the men had shaved heads and three of them had bizarre facial tattoos.

The leader, holding the rifle at waist level, shouted, “¿Alto!”

Andy made a split-second decision: he ran. Knowing that he’d probably be shot in the back if he ran down the open road, he instead headed for the wall of jungle that began just a few yards to his right and plunged in.

He raced through the jungle as quickly as he could. He expected to hear gunshots but there were none. He could hear the men pursuing him, crashing through the brush of the jungle understory. They stayed just ten to fifteen yards behind him, never gaining or losing much ground. The underbrush was clumpy. He hardly noticed the thorns and branches that slashed his arms and cheeks as he ran.

Laine knew that if he tripped and fell, the bandits would be on top of him in just moments. His path started out level at first, but after three hundred yards the terrain began to drop off, descending toward a creek. Andy started picking up speed. He heard a shouted curse as one of his pursuers fell, but the others pressed on, losing only just a bit of ground. Andy found it hard to believe that they would follow him so far. He hoped to get ahead of them and hide in thick undergrowth. He could dimly make out some rocks along the creek, just sixty yards below. He was still running headlong when the ground dropped off unexpectedly, and Andy took a leap.

He fell fifteen feet, landing unevenly on one foot. He heard a loud snap and felt a sharp pain. He fell into a heap. Laine tried to get up to run again, but the pain in his right leg was incredible. It was a bad break, low in his femur. The pain was agonizing. He gasped for breath and looked up to see himself surrounded. He exclaimed between his gulping breaths, “Hoover Dam!”

His pursuers, also out of breath, were speaking rapidly in heavily accented Spanish. He didn’t catch much of the bandits’ conversation. He did hear “en Peten” twice and “por Guatemala” once, so he assumed that they were Guatemalan bandits.

He looked up to see the buttstock of the battered FAL rifle just two feet away from his face. “CHAVO” was carved in the side of the rifle’s blue-painted stock, and farther up the stock were carved the letters “FSLN.” In an oddly detached way, Andy wondered about the history of the rifle. Perhaps it came from the Nicaraguan Sandinistas three decades earlier. It seemed surreal, looking at the stock of the rifle with the rusty top cover and then at the tattooed faces of the bandits.

They quickly stripped him of his wallet, pocketknife, wristwatch, belt, and rucksack.

One of them started to take off Andy’s boots, but his screams of agony stopped the man.

The Guatemalans started to argue among themselves. Laine was petrified when he heard one of them use the word “Matale,” which he knew meant “Kill him.”

The leader of the group, who wore jeans and a white tank top, ended the argument by grunting, “Santo Dios. ?Vamonos!” He jabbed his forefinger toward Laine’s face and ordered his silence with a stern “¿Callate!” before turning to follow the others.

The five men quietly disappeared into the jungle, walking back up the hill toward the road.

Andy thought through his situation. He had no water, food, or shelter. His only tool was a tiny folding can opener. Getting back toward the road, he realized, was his only chance to get help. He also realized that he had to wait at least a half hour, to give the bandidos the opportunity to get away. If he called for help any sooner, they might come back and silence him permanently.

After a couple of minutes he caught his breath and became more conscious of his broken leg. He had never felt pain so intense in his life. Sweat poured off his forehead and dripped off the end of his nose as he did his best to straighten leg the out.

“Bastards!” Andy muttered to himself. Then, looking skyward, he said, “Give me the will to forgive them, Lord.” He waited for what he estimated was thirty minutes, praying aloud. His throat felt dry.

Laine started to crawl up the hill, pushing himself with his one good leg. There wasn’t much blood from around the protruding compound fracture. Each time that he dragged his right leg forward, the pain made him scream. The screaming set off a nearby troop of black howler monkeys. There seemed to be about eight monkeys in the troop. One of the monkeys, a large male, came to investigate. Peering down from a tree limb twenty feet above him, the monkey let out a grunt. Then it scampered off.

Laine shouted, “Yeah, some help you are, pal!”

It took four agonizing hours for Laine to crawl up the hill. His elbows and forearms were soon raw. Once he got near level ground, he realized that he still had several hundred yards to go. He doubted that his voice would carry through the dense jungle, so he didn’t bother to shout for help.

He remembered that he had been traveling due east when he was ambushed. And since he had headed south from the road, he needed to go back north to get back to it. The sun was heading toward the horizon. Andy found a loose branch and laid it down as a pointer, to indicate where he estimated that the sun would set. Now on level ground, he tried to stand again, but the pain was too much. He passed out.