Andrew Klavan - If We Survive

“But you got in trouble for interrogating the policeman.”

“Somehow a reporter back home got word of it, started asking questions. The brass were afraid of being embarrassed by some headline like ‘Marine Tortures Sad-Eyed Shepherd.’ You know how the headlines work. So they gave me a choice: leave the service quietly or face court-martial, maybe even prison…” There was a pause and then he added, “I don’t think I would have liked prison.”

Palmer lay down again and they were both quiet. I lay where I was with my eyes fully closed now. It was a strange feeling, eavesdropping on the two of them like that. Not a good feeling. I mean, I was sixteen—not all that much younger than Meredith and Palmer. But just then, I felt so much younger than they were that it was almost embarrassing. I mean, I felt like I was about four years old, lying upstairs in bed listening to the grown-ups talking at a dinner party downstairs. I felt like a child, while Meredith and Palmer were adults.

“I’m sorry that happened to you,” Meredith whispered.

“You’re not going to say something inspirational, are you?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re not gonna say something like: ‘Everything happens for a reason,’ or ‘When God closes a door, he opens a window.’”

“No,” said Meredith. “I wasn’t going to say anything like that.”

“Good. I didn’t want to have to shoot you.”

She laughed. “Well, I do want to say something,” she told him.

“Hold on, let me get my gun.”

“I want to tell you I’ve changed my mind about you. I said I thought you were in danger of losing the man you were meant to be. I don’t think that anymore.”

“Well, Liberty, that is a great relief to me,” said Palmer. “I was seriously planning to lose sleep over it.”

“Oh, shut up,” said Meredith gently.

I heard Palmer shifting on the floor in the dark. “So what about you?” he asked. “What happened to you?”

“Me? What do you mean?”

“I mean: What made you the way you are?”

“I don’t know. What way am I?”

Palmer paused only a second. Then he answered her with a single word: “Fearless.”

She gave a little huff. “That’s silly. Nobody’s fearless. That snake almost made me scream like Nicki.”

“Yeah. But the way you spit in Mendoza’s eye. The way you looked when they put you up against the wall. I saw your face as I came driving down the alley. I’ve known a lot of really tough guys in my life. I’ve never seen anything like it. I want to know what happened that made you that way.”

In the silence that followed, Nicki whimpered softly in her sleep. Jim snored loudly. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I strained to listen—to listen in—because I wanted to hear Meredith’s answer.

But all she said was, “Go to sleep, Mr. Dunn. We have a long trip in the morning.”

Palmer chuckled softly. Then neither of them spoke again. After a while, I heard Meredith’s breathing grow deeper and more steady. Palmer’s too.

But I lay awake for a long time in the darkness.

I woke up stiff and sore. My legs ached from so much walking. And every time I touched the bruise on my face where Mendoza’s gunman had slugged me, the pain shot through my whole body. Plus I was hungry. Plus the idea we had to travel a hundred miles made me tired before we even got started.

We were all in pain, all complaining, groaning, as we tromped down the stairs of the temple back to the stone-dotted plain below. We got some water from the spring. Meredith had salvaged a plastic bottle from the truck. Palmer filled it with water and put it in Jim’s backpack for later. He found some coconuts too—which didn’t taste all that great but at least stopped my stomach from grumbling. Palmer put some pieces of them in Jim’s backpack as well.

So anyway, by the time I slung my machine gun over my shoulder and took a last glance at the ancient temple and marched off with the others into the jungle, I was feeling okay—as okay as could be expected, anyway, under the circumstances.

The good feeling didn’t last long, though. The trail out of the temple clearing was narrow, and it got narrower with every mile we walked. Soon we were pushing through thick underbrush. Palmer had to take the knife out of his belt and cut through some of the tangled branches. It was slow going.

As the day wore on, it got hot too. Really hot and really humid. The sweat poured off me and my clothes got damp again. I was panting hard—harder with every step. The air was so thick you could hardly breathe it. I was getting so tired I hardly had to work at suspending my imagination. I was too hot, too sticky, too wiped out to be afraid of what might happen next.

I started to look forward to the afternoon thunderstorm. It would drench us, but at least it would cool us off. As it turned out, I shouldn’t have worried about it. Because very quickly, the heat became the least of our problems.

It got to be around noon. Palmer called a halt and said we should rest. He gave us a sip of water and some pieces of coconut. It wasn’t much—it wasn’t enough—but it was something and made me feel a little stronger.

We were sitting in a small open patch of ground. There were two big trees here. Jim and I had our backs against one. Palmer and the girls sat against the other. We were all dripping sweat in the steamy heat, all sitting with our heads thrown back, resting against the trees, our mouths open as we tried to catch our breath and gather our strength to keep on walking.

After a while, I lowered my head and I saw that Palmer was gone. I could just glimpse him up ahead through the trees. I decided to see if I could help him with anything.

I worked my way to my feet and headed off. Pushed through the thick branches until I found him. He was standing still, staring into the tangle of the jungle. As I came crashing up to him, he raised his hand to get me to stop. I stood beside him.

“You hear that?” he asked.

I listened. For a second, all I could make out was the usual sounds of the jungle: the birds laughing and calling, the monkeys screaming once in a while. But then I picked out something else. A sort of steady hissing whisper. It blended in with the other noises so it was tough to hear at first.

“Water,” I said.

“The river,” said Palmer. “About a half mile off. We’re going to have to cross it.”

“We have to swim?”

He shook his head. “It’s not that deep here. But it’s fast… and there are rocks a little way down… a falls after that. Get swept into the rocks and they’ll cut you to pieces. And if they don’t, the falls’ll finish you.”

“Great,” I said. I hardly felt strong enough to walk at this point, let alone cross a raging river with my life at stake.

Palmer glanced at me with those mocking eyes of his. His face was rugged, and his stubble of beard had become a lot darker. He looked like a hard man, a tough man who had seen a lot of bad things. Which I guess is what he was.

But to my surprise, he reached over and slapped my shoulder— almost affectionately, I thought.

“Don’t sweat it so much, kid,” he said. “You got it in you.”

I didn’t understand him. “Got what?”

“Everything you need. You just don’t know it yet. Come on, let’s go round up the others. We gotta get moving.”

He headed back toward the clearing. I stood for a moment, watching him go, trying to figure out what he’d just said, what it meant. I wasn’t sure exactly, but it sounded like a compliment. Rotten with sweat and exhausted as I was, it made me feel a little better about things, anyway.

I followed him then. Even before I got back to the clearing, I heard the others groaning as Palmer urged them to their feet.