Andrew Klavan - If We Survive

I faced forward—and my heart went cold inside me. There was the end of the alley. We were only a few more steps away. What had seemed like a long, slow journey inside my mind had in fact been less than a minute, a few seconds of rushing, confused stumbling from the hotel room to this final place.

The gunmen pushed us to the end of the alley and forced us to turn the corner.

“Please! Please! Please!” Nicki kept crying. “Just let me go home! I just want to go home!”

Jim was shouting now as well, his voice hoarse and weak. He was shouting, “Señores! If you would only listen to me for just a second… Señores, you don’t understand… !”

My eyes moved over them—and past them—and I saw Meredith again, her face calm and luminous, her lips moving silently.

We had come around the corner of the church. We were in a back alley now, a stretch of dirt road bordered by the backs of the plaza buildings on one side and a line of old ragged sheds and piles of garbage on the other.

And something else. Something so terrible I can hardly bear to tell it. There were bodies. Just down the way. Three bullet-riddled bodies lying outside one of the sheds.

One of them, I realized at once, was Pastor Ron.

My heart cracked open with grief and fear, and I knew that within seconds my body would be lying there beside his.

The rebels shoved us toward the church wall. I could see that the wall was chipped and riddled with holes and I knew the holes had been made by gunfire. There were bloodstains too. And some of them, I knew, were from Pastor Ron’s blood. And some of them would soon be from ours.

We stood with our backs against the wall while the rebels stepped away from us, ready to form themselves into a firing squad. And maybe you’ll think now: Well, why didn’t you fight? Or, Why didn’t you run away? After all, you had nothing to lose . And the answer is: if we had tried to fight or tried to run away, they would have shot us dead right that second. And I didn’t want to die that second. I wanted to live every possible second I could, every one. Anyway, there was no strength in my legs or arms. I had gone weak with fear. There was nothing I could do but live until life was over.

So I looked around one more time. At the sky, at the ragged tin sheds, at the garbage strewn in the gutter. At Nicki sobbing beside me, and Jim still trying to explain and Meredith praying—and the gunmen, lining up now, starting to lift their guns.

And it was all beautiful and it was all perfect and I wished I could stay forever and see it this way forever because I never would have complained about anything or hated anybody. I would have just been glad to be alive in God’s perfect creation every second of every day.

That was the last thought I had.

Then the leader of the firing squad barked an order, and he and the three other gunmen lifted their weapons and pointed them at us. My mind stopped. My thoughts stopped. There was nothing left to see now or to think about besides the four black bores of the rifle barrels pointed at me, about to spit death.

There was a rumble of thunder. It was that time of day. There was always a thunderstorm here in the summer afternoons. The thunder rolled a long time and it seemed like all the sounds of the world—the thunder and Nicki’s cries and Jim’s voice and Meredith’s barely audible whispers—the leader barking the order to take aim—even the breeze moving through the trees in the hills beyond the alley and the insects humming around us near the wall—all of it sort of blended together into a single buzz. In that last endless second before the gunmen pulled their triggers, the buzz grew louder. It became a roar. It seemed to fill my ears, to fill the world.

Time was up. There was no life left to live. I gasped and swallowed an acid terror and prayed for God to take care of me when it was over. I stared at the rifles and that last second went on and on and the roar of the world grew louder and louder in my ears.

Why didn’t they fire? I shifted my gaze. I saw that the four gunmen of the firing squad were turning their heads— turning away from me.

It didn’t make sense. All I could think was: What? What?

The gunmen continued to turn, to turn away. And that’s when I realized that buzz, that roar—it was coming closer. It was getting louder.

I turned my head too—turned as the gunmen were turning in order to see what the gunmen saw, what they were staring at.

The growing roar was not the roar of the world. It was the roar of an engine.

Palmer Dunn’s black van was rushing toward us down the alley.

I stared, my mouth hanging open. It was like I couldn’t get my brain to work. I couldn’t understand what was happening. My mind had been so far away, so immersed in the moment of my execution, that I just couldn’t bring it back to what was happening now.

The gunmen looked baffled too. They seemed to hesitate, their guns still trained on us, as if they weren’t sure whether to continue with the execution as planned or to turn around and face this big black vehicle that was roaring down on top of them.

Baffled, I glanced at the others beside me. Nicki was still screaming and crying, expecting to be shot. Jim was looking around, blinking, as shocked and confused as I was.

Only Meredith seemed to understand everything in a single second. She glanced in the direction of Palmer’s oncoming van, and one corner of her mouth lifted in the smallest smile. So help me, it was as if she had been expecting this to happen all along.

The van sped toward the gunmen like a bullet. The confused gunmen hesitated another instant—but then they realized they had to do something, they had to turn and face this sudden threat, they had to shoot… not at us, but at the van.

And they started turning. But it was too late. Even as the firing squad pivoted to take aim, the van smashed into them. It struck the first two rebels full speed, sending them flying through the air. The second two gunmen tried to dodge out of the way as the van kept coming. One got clipped by the front fender. He went spinning through the air, his legs flying, and dropped hard to the ground. The other gunman— the last gunman standing—just managed to wheel out of the way. He staggered directly in front of me, unsteady on his feet. He struggled to regain control. Struggled to point his machine gun at the van’s front window, the driver’s window, where I could see Palmer sitting behind the wheel.

The gunman took aim at Palmer’s head. Palmer stuck a pistol out the window with one hand and shot him. The gunman spun around. He grabbed hold of my shoulders. His face was inches from my face. I stared in terror as I saw the light of life go out of his eyes.

Then he fell at my feet, dead.

“Get his gun!” shouted Palmer.

He had brought the van screeching to a halt. He had jumped out of it even as it stopped moving.

“Get in!” he shouted at us—and then he shouted again at me, “Get his gun, kid!”

Jim stood still for a second, wide-eyed, stupefied. But Meredith was already hauling the stunned and sobbing Nicki toward the side of the van. She pulled back the van’s sliding door, pushed Nicki in, and started climbing in behind her.

At the same time, quick as lightning, Palmer moved around the front of the van. The gunman who’d been thrown aside had already scrambled to his feet. He spun toward Palmer and loosed a wild series of shots at him— rat-tat-tat .

Palmer calmly leveled his pistol at him and shot the man dead.

The other two rebels—the ones who had been struck directly by the van—lay still in the dust. Palmer bent over and stripped their machine guns off them.