Andrew Klavan - If We Survive

It was tall—really tall—taller than the surrounding trees. It rose up in layers of stone with a flight of stairs rising up the middle of it to an open door just beneath the peak. It stood there in the dying light, dark and mysterious, like something the hero might stumble onto in a jungle adventure movie. Will Peterson and the Temple of Outrageous Weirdness . Here and there throughout the clearing there were other stones, single stones, standing and lying on the grass. Looked like some kind of ancient cemetery or something.

“Whoa!” I said.

I stared through the deepening dusk. I remembered the ceremony we had watched in Santiago. The cave and the torches and the candles—and the painted idol who smoked a cigar while the people sang his praises. I wondered if some painted, cigar-smoking idol had ruled this temple long ago, commanding the villagers to carry out all kinds of bizarre ceremonies and human sacrifices and other cool stuff like that. Anyway, the idea gave the place a sort of spooky feeling, as if the ghosts of all those sacrificed people might still be floating around the graveyard stones, watching us, haunting us.

“There’s a room up top,” Palmer said, gesturing to that open door. “We can sleep in there tonight. It’ll keep us off the ground away from the animals.”

What a great idea! I felt a flood of relief that nearly made me laugh out loud. I had been worrying about that, you know, wondering what we would do when we couldn’t walk anymore, when we had to go to sleep. I had been trying not to worry, trying to pray instead, but all the same, I hadn’t been looking forward to lying on the forest floor in the darkness with coral snakes and spiders the size of bread loaves. I could just picture myself, everyone else sleeping soundly around me, and me lying awake waiting for something to slither over my face.

“There’s a freshwater spring on the far side of the clearing,” Palmer went on.

“Oh!” sighed Nicki. “Water!”

Palmer said, “Let’s get a drink and then we’ll try to gather some kindling before nightfall, start a fire, warm our clothes.”

I wondered how Palmer knew so much about all this. The hidden trail off the airstrip. The temple. The spring. But I didn’t wonder too much. I was just glad he did know, glad he had shown us the way.

I remembered again how much I’d disliked this guy a few hours ago. But boy oh boy, he was a great guy to know in a crisis.

We headed into the clearing.

Forty-five minutes later we were sitting inside a little chamber at the top of the temple. We found enough dry wood in the surrounding trees to get a fire going. Palmer set it up just at the chamber door so that the smoke blew outside but there was enough room for us all to sit around the flames and catch some of their warmth. It was so expertly done, I got the feeling he had done all this before.

It was full dark now in the jungle. Over the crackling of the fire, I could hear the noises of life out there. Kind of like the noise you’d hear in any forest or swamp, only on amplifiers, you know, with the crickets and frogs and whatever else so loud and busy, it was just incredible. Now and then too, there’d be something else. Like a big boom of some kind, or a rough grunt or a growl—I had no clue what any of it was and to tell you the truth, I didn’t really want to find out. Better not to think about it. Suspend the imagination. For now at least I was feeling pretty good, pretty safe in here in this temple with the fire going and my friends around me and the darkness way out there beyond the fire.

Better yet, I wasn’t thirsty anymore. I had drunk so much from that freshwater spring, I could still feel the water sloshing around in my stomach. And even better still, after we got the fire going, Palmer revealed that he had some food with him. He opened the backpack he’d given Jim and took out a plastic bag—and there were sandwiches inside! There were only two of them—Palmer had brought them along for himself—but they were big old submarines and we broke them into sections and shared them around. It was enough to kill the hunger that had been gnawing at me so painfully during our march.

After we’d eaten, we all just sat there awhile, staring into the fire, trying to get warm, trying to get our clothes dry. I stole glances at my friends, their faces lit in the orange glow. They stared into the flames, expressionless. They all looked as exhausted as I felt.

I stared into the flames too. So much had happened in so short a time that I could hardly think about it. Was it only hours ago we had been gathered in the cantina ready to go home? Only hours ago I had faced the rifles of a firing squad, trying to come to terms with death? Only hours ago I had shot a man as he tried to hurl a grenade at us? And was it only hours ago… ?

“I keep thinking about Pastor Ron,” said Nicki quietly.

“So do I,” said Meredith.

“Me too,” said Jim.

“Me too,” I said.

We were quiet then, thinking about him.

“He was going to get married soon,” I said after a minute.

“He was,” said Meredith. “I met his fiancée at coffee hour once. She’s studying psychology. In Nevada somewhere, I think.”

Frowning deeply, Jim picked up a twig and threw it into the flames. “Stinks.” His voice sounded heavy and dead.

I remembered how I’d shouted at him back in the hotel after the soldiers had dragged Pastor Ron away.

“You did this! You told him to go!”

“Hey, Jim,” I said now. “Back in the hotel… back in Santiago… I didn’t mean that stuff I said. Wasn’t your fault what happened, dude.”

Meredith put her hand on Jim’s shoulder. “It really wasn’t, Jim.”

He nodded, staring into the fire, frowning into the fire. “I just keep thinking… if we could get word to Fernandez Cobar in Santa Maria… You know? I read his book…”

Soldier of Justice, I thought. Whoopee .

“He’s not like Mendoza and these others,” Jim went on. “He’s a man of… of culture, an intellectual… He only wants justice—justice for his people. If we could just explain our situation to him…” His voice trailed off.

I remembered what Palmer had said about Cobar, that he was a “soulless psycho killer.” So far, Palmer’s assessments of human nature tended to be a lot more accurate than Jim’s. Frankly, I was hoping that if we had to explain our situation to “Soldier of Justice” Cobar, we would do it by e-mail, from far, far away…

“What are we going to do?” I asked Palmer. “No plane. No van. How are we going to get out of here? Where are we headed?”

Palmer was leaning back on one hand, relaxed, one knee raised, his other arm resting on it. He watched the flames like the rest of us, but I could see he wasn’t just staring, exhausted. He was thinking.

“We’re going to make a run for Santa Maria,” he said after a moment. “I know an airfield just outside the city. Plenty of planes. I figure we’ll borrow one, so to speak. Fly to the border. We could reach Belize from there in no time.”

“Santa Maria,” said Jim. “That’s over a hundred miles away. And we’d have to cross the mountains…”

Palmer gave one of those ironic smiles of his, lifting one corner of his mouth. “Well, I know a place where we might be able to get ourselves a lift, but I wouldn’t worry about that yet.”

“Why not?” asked Jim.

“Because the jungle’ll probably kill us before we get there.”

I laughed. Meredith smiled. Even Nicki smiled. After having some food and water—the warmth of the fire, a place to sleep above the jungle—I guess we were all feeling a lot better. More hopeful, more brave. Funny how little it takes to turn your emotions around.