Jack Wilder - The Missionary

He wasn’t sure when he’d eaten last, or had anything to drink.

He wasn’t sure where they were going. He didn’t know what to do, how to get Wren out of Manila without risking another shootout with Cervantes and his army of goons.

He may have dozed off. Wren was a heavy weight against him. The bus had emptied significantly, and he no longer had even the slightest clue where they were. His best guess was somewhere between San Juan and Northern Calocoon City. His dim understanding of Manila’s geography told him a northerly route from Mandaluyong would take them into Quezon City. It was far from where they’d been, and that was good enough for that particular moment.

The bus juddered to a stop, belching diesel, and Stone dragged Wren off, held her in the shelter of a building. The late evening sun was hot, and they were both about to pass out.

Gnawing instinct had Stone turning his head around just in time to see a black sedan with tinted windows soar past them. It slowed abruptly, squealing brakes and skidding. Stone buried his face in Wren’s shoulder, and she murmured, mumbled.

“Wren, baby. Gotta wake up. We gotta move. We got trouble.”

“Cold…so cold. Tired.” She sagged against Stone, shaking her head and trembling violently.

He shook her. “Wren!” he hissed into her ear. “He’s back. He’s after us. It’s Cervantes. If you want to stay alive, I need you to pull it together.”

“He’s back?” She turned her face up to peer at him through slitted eyelids.

“Yes. I think he saw us. Get ready to run.”

“I’m not sure I can.”

He lifted his head enough to meet her gaze. “You have to. If you want to get out of this, you have to.”

He watched her visibly focus, struggle, strengthen. She straightened, blinking hard and setting her jaw. “I’m ready,” she said. Her body betrayed her bravado, shaking with feverish violence.

“That’s my girl.” Stone twisted slightly. “Do you see a car behind us? A black one with tinted windows?”

Wren nodded. “Yes. There’s a guy staring at us.” She lifted up on her toes to peer past Stone’s shoulder. “Oh…shit. He’s—he’s getting out.”

A shout rang out from behind them. “Ayun, ayun sila!” It’s them!

Stone whipped around, drawing his pistol and firing in one motion. The man who’d exited the car and shouted and stumbled backward, blood flowering from his chest. The car’s doors opened and several men swarmed out, one of them Cervantes, who had been driving.

Stone pulled Wren along, shoving her ahead of him onto a side street that was more of an alley than a street, narrow and clogged with trash. He twisted around as he ran, adrenaline burning through him. A face appeared, and Stone cracked off a wild shot, missing, and then another, and a third. He wasn’t sure if he hit with the second two shots, but the pursuit slowed, and he stumbled around a corner, hauling Wren by the bicep. He turned aimlessly, left and then right, lungs aching and fear dogging his steps. Wren was flagging quickly.

The street ended in a T-intersection, and to Stone’s horror, Cervantes was waiting for them. He had a big, blocky, chrome pistol in his fist, and he raised it, squeezed the trigger. Stone shoved Wren to the side. She crashed into a wall and stumbled backward, then ducked when Cervantes’ pistol cracked, hiding behind an overflowing dumpster.

Stone felt something slam into him, not exactly pain at first, more of a tremendous sense of impact, pressure, like a wrecking ball bashing into his side. He dropped the pistol, felt his toe send it skidding away. He stumbled, tripped, cursing, and jerked the other pistol from his waistband and sent round after round at Cervantes. He saw red at Cervantes’ shoulder and on his arm, so he knew he’d hit him at least once, maybe twice.

Stone was hit too, though. Bad. His entire side was in agony, on fire. He couldn’t breathe for the pain, but he had to move. He pressed his hand to his side, felt it come away wet and sticky and warm with blood. No time for anything but as much pressure as he could manage with one hand. Cervantes was gone, but he heard tires squealing behind them, shouts, sirens.

Wren was beside him, saying something. He shook his head, pushed her none too gently by the shoulder blades. “Just go. Run.”

“But Stone you’re—”

“Just fucking run!” He pushed her again, and she stumbled into a run, left out of the alley.

He clenched his teeth and followed, twisting as he ran to watch for pursuit. Steps pounded, shouts echoed, and then three men burst from the alley, pistols in hand. They caught sight of Stone and Wren, and shots rang out, bullets buzzed angrily past their heads. Sirens howled not far away, southward somewhere and approaching. Stone leveled a few shots at their pursuers, thought he winged one, then tugged Wren down another alley and into an open doorway, hiding in the farthest, darkest corner.

An old man with white hair and a long white beard sat in a tattered wicker rocking chair, smoking something acrid and heavy from a pipe. He didn’t speak, but his eyes pierced. He rocked twice, paused, inhaled, rocked twice, exhaled, rocked twice, inhaled. Stone lifted a finger to his lips, and the old man’s head bobbed. He sucked at his pipe until his cheeks went hollow, and he held the smoke in his lungs for a long moment, then spewed it out in a slow, thin stream, then rocked twice more.

Footsteps thumped past, voices chattered breathlessly. Stone held his breath, felt Wren beside him doing the same. The voices stopped just beyond their hiding place, sounding angry. Stone was in too much pain to bother translating.

Smoke billowed from the old man’s pipe, wreathing Wren and Stone and the small room in thick, acrid clouds. He tried not to breathe it in, but to do so was inevitable. He felt himself floating slightly, dizzy from the contact high. Long moments passed, and finally he dared to peek out of the doorway. He saw nothing, no one. He had one spare clip in the cargo pocket of his shorts, and he switched it for the mostly emptied one. He took a deep breath and led Wren out of the tiny, smoke-hazed room, away from the silent old man, out into the wild, sprawling slums of Manila.

11

Wren’s heart pounded. She followed close behind Stone as he wended a dizzy path through a strange world of leaning shacks and muddy roads and stench and noise. She couldn’t help staring around her in horror and pity.

“What is this place?” she asked, trying gamely to ignore the stiffness in her muscles, the soreness all over, the ache and the hunger and the gnawing fear and the residual terror at what had almost happened to her.

Stone didn’t slow down or turn around. “This is Manila. The real Manila. One of the most densely populated and poorest cities on Earth.” He stopped at an intersection of sorts, the wider road they were on sliced by a narrow track between shanties. He turned down this narrower track. “Most families live on something like $6 per day. Around here, more like $2 per day.”

“How is that possible? How can someone live on $2 per day?”

“That’s a family living on that, not a single person. It’s about 250 Philippines Pesos per day for a family of three or four, sometimes more.” He tossed this over his shoulder, his head always moving, eyes scanning.

Tripping over a cluster of empty brown glass bottles, Wren clutched at Stone’s shoulder for balance. His skin was feverishly hot under her hand, and he was shivering, although he gave no indication of pain and showed no signs of slowing down.

“Are you okay?” Wren asked, then realized how stupid a question that was. He’d been shot; of course he wasn’t okay. She’d watched it happen, kept seeing the way he’d jerked, stumbled backward, blood blossoming scarlet at his back. “We have to get you to a doctor, Stone.”