Andrew Klavan - If We Survive

“He will not get very far, I’m afraid,” Mendoza went on. “Our armies have come out of the mountains in force and we are everywhere. But”—he gave a casual gesture—“however far he gets, it is not going to be of any help to you.”

With that, he turned to the gunmen and gave them an order in Spanish—and then he translated the order into English, because I guess he wanted to make sure we understood— that Meredith especially understood.

“Take them to the wall and execute them,” he said.

Do you want to know what it’s like to die? What it’s like, I mean, to know that you’re about to die. To know for certain that the end of your life has come—not someday, but now, right now.

Well, let me tell you, because I know.

Once again, the soldiers started screaming at us, prodding us with their gun barrels, striking at us with their fists. Herding us, in other words, back the way we came, out of the hotel room, down the corridor, to the stairs—down to our place of execution.

It all happened very fast. It was all very violent, very confusing.

But here’s the strange thing: inside my mind, it wasn’t fast or confusing at all. Because something happened to me then—something weird. It was because I knew where we were headed; I knew that I was about to die. And somehow, knowing that made my mind feel detached from my body in some way. Even as the rebel gunmen shouted at us and hit us and forced us out the door of the room into the upstairs hall, I felt very quiet inside and all my thoughts were very clear.

Was I afraid? I guess so. Sure. But not as much as you might think—or, at least, not in the way you might think. You might think that going to be executed was the scariest thing that could ever happen, the real-life version of the last scene in a horror movie, the scene where the kid walks through the basement where the monster is hiding somewhere—you know, that kind of jangling, unbearable suspense as you get closer and closer to the place where it’s going to happen.

But instead, I felt sad. Not just a little sad. I felt this huge, huge sadness. Sure, in church we talk about an eternal life and heaven and all that, but I wasn’t in church now—and I was so, so sorry that this life was coming to an end. I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to leave this world. I didn’t want the new school year to begin without me. I didn’t want to miss all the stupid ordinary things that happen in life: you know, just playing games or messaging your friends or going to the beach or whatever. I wanted to see my parents again. I wanted to grow up and go to college and get a job. I wanted to meet my wife and my children. I wanted to live—I wanted to live so badly. And it made my heart feel heavy as lead to know that I wouldn’t, that everything in this world was over for me now, everything here was finished.

We stumbled down the hall, the gunmen shoving us and striking us and shouting. And my eyes turned hungrily in every direction. I wanted to see everything before it was done. I wanted to drink in every small second of life I still had left.

Everything looked different to me now. Everything looked clearer, much clearer, as if I had been watching the world streaming through a bad wireless connection and suddenly was watching it in hi-def or on Blu-ray. The incredible new clarity made even the littlest things seem kind of beautiful. The hall was just a shabby, dark corridor, the walls chipped, the paint peeling, but somehow it seemed like some kind of work of art. I wanted to slow down to appreciate it. I wanted it to last forever.

And the faces—people’s faces—they all looked so amazing. So clear and beautiful. And everyone seemed different to me than they had before.

Like Nicki, for instance. There was Nicki, stumbling down the hall beside me, barely able to stand she was so afraid, barely able to walk. I saw her sobbing and heard her crying out pitifully again and again, “I want to go home! Please! I just want to go home!” And she wasn’t pretty anymore or glamorous, the way she had been. But she just looked so wonderful, like such a wonderful person. I thought about how happy it always made her to dress up and wear jewelry and put on makeup and about the sweet way she would sit with the little girls in the village and teach them to do their hair. It was as if I realized for the first time how great she was, how perfect, really, the one and only perfect Nicki of the world.

And Jim—I saw Jim. The dazed look on his face as the gunmen shoved and jostled him. I could see what a smart guy he was, and how serious he was about wanting the world to be a better place. I was so, so sorry I had yelled at him back in the room because I could see now how good his heart was. The perfect Jim just like Nicki was the perfect Nicki.

I know it sounds weird, but this is what I saw. This is the way the world seemed to me, now that all the little stuff we think about and care about was over, now that there were only seconds left until I was shot to death.

We stumbled down the hall to the stairway. We stumbled down the steps. The stairwell was narrow, the walls chipped and scarred. I wanted to study it, to see every detail, to hold on to every second. My eyes went on moving everywhere, staring at everything.

But it was over too soon. The rebels forced us down into the corridor below. As I came off the last step, I bumped against Meredith and I looked at her now, looked at her face.

Meredith always looked kind of wonderful to me. I guess the truth, I realized now, was that I sort of had a crush on her. Whenever I was around her, I wished I were older, wished I could get her to pay attention to me—pay attention to me as a guy, instead of just a kid. And now, at the end, she looked even better. She looked like one of those things you see that are too beautiful even to describe, like a sunset or a mountain or something. She had her arm around Nicki’s shoulders. She was holding Nicki up, helping her walk to the place of execution, shielding her as best she could by taking the gunmen’s blows on her own back and arms. As always, she was very straight, her eyes clear, her chin up, even as the rebels pushed and slapped and prodded at her. Her lips were moving and I knew she was praying—praying calmly, full of confidence. She had faith and courage even now.

The rebels shoved us out the cantina’s back door. The next moment I was out in the alley, blinking and squinting in the bright daylight, still looking around me, still trying to take in every moment of life that I had left to live.

I looked up and saw the sky: big black majestic thunderstorms blowing across the last patches of blue. I saw the church bell tower rising nobly against those racing clouds. I saw the balconies of the hotel above, the dust of the alley swirling up below my feet, all of it clearer than anything I had ever seen before. All of it somehow beautiful.

Shouting, the rebel gunmen marched us toward the alley’s end—to the same place where they had taken Pastor Ron.

My sadness grew heavier as the end came closer. It was like a great heavy weight inside me that I had to drag along. But even so, in my mind, there was still all that clarity and beauty and perfection, and the strange bright eagerness to live every second until all the seconds were gone.

I looked around me as we approached the end of the alley—and here is one last amazing thing I saw.

I saw the gunmen. I saw the faces of the gunmen. And I know this might sound like the weirdest thing of all—I know you might think they must have looked terrible or that I must have hated them because they were the ones who were about to shoot me. But they didn’t look terrible and I didn’t hate them. I felt sorry for them, kind of. I even liked them a little. I know: bizarre, right? It was as if I could see all their life stories in their eyes. How they had wanted to be heroes and men, real men, and how somehow they had become this instead, these killers, these murderers—like demons almost. It was like I could see that they were trapped forever inside their demon selves. Even now, even yards away from my execution, I was glad I was me and not them.