Roots and hanging vines reached out for them like clutching hands as the two men and two women stumbled in single file through the dripping jungle. They hacked at the brush with the sword and the knives taken from the dead Mayas back in Iztal. The weapons proved to be poor substitutes for the curved machete, which was designed for the purpose, and their progress was painfully slow.
“We’ll never get anywhere through this muck,” Connie said.
“Shut up and stay close,” Hooker snapped.
Some ten minutes after they went over the wall, though it seemed like much longer, Buzz cried out, “Here it is! The trail.”
“Are you sure?” Hooker asked.
“Hell, no, I’m not sure. But it is a trail, and that’s a whole lot better than chewing our way through that shit.”
“Amen,” Connie said with feeling.
“Which way do we go?” Hooker said.
There was a subtle change in the sound of the night. The four people looked at one another. Unconsciously, they moved closer together.
“The rain’s stopped,” Connie said.
“A good omen,” Alita added.
As they looked up, there was a break in the clouds and a near-full moon shone through. The pale light that filtered down to them seemed dazzling after the darkness.
“This way,” Buzz said, pointing, “I’m sure of it now.”
“You mean you weren’t sure before?” Connie said. “You sure sounded sure.”
“I was keeping up the troops’ morale,” Buzz told her.
“Oh, swell.”
They started along the jungle trail in the direction Buzz had chosen. Buzz took the point position, with the women in the middle and Hooker at the rear.
“This is more like it,” Connie said.
“Better,” Hooker agreed, “but don’t get careless.”
Underfoot, things they couldn’t see slithered and scuttled out of the way. Once, from a branch above their heads, the eyes of a jaguar glowed like twin jewels. Hooker was reminded of the Tenniel drawing of the Cheshire cat from Alice in Wonderland. Only here it was the eyes instead of the grin that remained.
They had not gone far along the trail when shouts were heard from back toward the city of Iztal.
“We’ve been missed,” Hooker said.
“They’ll catch us,” Connie said.
“Maybe, but they haven’t got us yet, so keep moving.”
“What’s the use? We don’t have a chance of keeping ahead of them.”
Buzz turned around and growled at her, “What’s the use? I don’t want that Indian poking around inside my head; that’s what’s the use. Now will you for Chrissake shape up?”
“Sorry,” Connie said in a small voice. “I’ve never been a whiner. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
Hooker squeezed her arm. “Don’t worry too much about it. You had to do some hard things tonight. You’ll be all right.”
She looked up at him, her face pale in the moonlight. “Have you killed many men, Hooker?”
“Not as many as you might think.”
A smile grew slowly on her face. She laughed. “You know, you really look funny without any hair.”
“Never mind about the hair,” he said in a mock-gruff voice, then grinned at her. “Just keep moving.”
Up in the front of their little column, Buzz grunted and fell heavily to the ground.
Hooker moved past the women to kneel beside him. “You okay?”
Buzz was sitting up tugging on the straps that held the carved wooden foot to the stump of his leg. “Goddam thing came loose. Fucking Indians can’t do anything right.”
“You going to need some help?”
“Shit, no. I’ll hop along on the goddam stump if I have to.”
He pulled the straps tight and fastened the complicated buckle arrangement. Then he stood up, took a step, and fell on his face.
“Hooker,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“I’m gonna need some help.”
Hooker pulled Buzz upright. “Put your arm over my shoulders.” They took a couple of experimental steps together.
“Feel okay?”
“Fucking cripple,” Buzz muttered. “Yeah, I’m okay.”
Hooker turned to the women. “Connie, you stay close behind us, and Alita, stay close to Connie. We don’t want to get separated. The moon helps a little, but it could go back behind the clouds at any time.”
“Aye, aye, skipper,” Connie said.
“Alita?”
“I’m here, Johnny.”
Hooker took a long look, wondering at a strange note in her voice. But he could see only her silhouette in the filtered moonlight.
“Okay, let’s go. If you have any problem back there, call out.”
The moon stayed with them as the clouds thinned, but the dripping water from overhead branches was nearly as heavy as the rain. Hooker fell into a rhythm with Buzz, keeping the bad foot between them, and they managed to make a fairly good pace. He was stopped by the touch of Connie’s hand on his shoulder.
“Hooker.”
“What is it?”
“Alita isn’t behind me anymore.”
“What the hell …?”
Buzz disengaged himself from Hooker’s shoulder. “Go on back and take a look. I can use the rest.”
Hooker made his way back along the trail, calling Alita’s name softly. From back in the direction of Iztal, the sound of voices was becoming more organized. Not a good sign.
“Over here, Johnny.” Alita’s voice, coming from the shadows, was so close it startled him.
“What are you doing back here? I told everybody to stay close together.”
“I took a little rest.”
“This is a hell of a time for it. If you listen, you can hear them coming after us.”
Alita took his hand and got to her feet. “I’m sorry, Johnny. I just got tired for a minute.”
“Hey, don’t you go weak on me, chiquita. I’m counting on you.”
“Don’t worry. I’m all right now. I just needed that little rest.”
Together they walked back up to join Buzz and Connie.
“She just took a little rest,” Hooker said.
Connie shifted her feet nervously. “I can hear them back there behind us.”
“I doubt if they can track us over the wet ground in the dark,” Hooker said, “but sooner or later they’ll get onto this trail, so we can’t afford to slow down.”
As they pushed on through the night jungle, the sounds of the followers diminished and finally could be heard no more. The four of them stopped to listen.
“Do you think they’ve given up?” Connie said.
“Mayas never give up,” Alita said.
“Maybe they took the wrong trail,” Buzz suggested.
Hooker shook his head. “Let’s not get our hopes up. They’re probably just waiting for daylight. They know these trails, and they can cover them all in the light more effectively than we can move straight ahead.”
“You’re probably right,” Buzz admitted. “So we better put as much distance between us and them as we can while it’s still dark.”
They pushed on, groping along the trail, falling, rising again, tearing their clothes and their flesh on thorns, no longer even startled when something live scurried across their feet. At last, the sky turned charcoal ahead of them, then pale gray, and finally a delicate blue.
Buzz stopped suddenly, almost dragging Hooker and himself to the ground. “There it is!” he cried.
He pulled free of Hooker’s supporting arm and staggered forward on the wooden foot. The others stumbled after him. Then they all saw it. With the sun glinting off the wet aluminum, it was the wreckage of Nolan Braithwaite’s airplane.
“I found it!” Buzz yelled. “I found the son of a bitch!”
“You sure as hell did, buddy,” Hooker said. He hurried forward to catch Buzz, who was wobbling badly.
“My God, look at that,” Connie said.
They followed her eyes and saw the skull and scattered bones of Manuel, the chiclero who had died with a Mayan spear through his chest.
“Is that all that’s left of him?”
“The jungle makes quick work of its dead,” Kaplan said. “What the zopilotes don’t eat, the land crabs and the insects finish off. Very efficient.”
Hooker looked over and saw Alita sitting near the twisted tail section of the Orion, facing away from him. She used one hand to shade her eyes from the sun. He walked over and sat down on his heels next to her.
“Feeling better?”
“Oh, sure, I’m fine, Johnny.”
“You’re hungry, probably. We could all do with something to eat.”
“I stashed some coconuts inside the plane,” Buzz said. “We can crack a couple of those.”
“How far are we from the river?” Hooker asked.
“I figure half an hour.”
“Then let’s eat.”
Hooker climbed into the twisted fuselage of the Lockheed and found the coconuts where Kaplan said they would be at the forward end of the passenger cabin. Up in the cockpit, he could see the stripped bones of the pilot, forever waiting for clearance from some ghostly control tower.
He punctured two of the coconuts and poured the contents into a half shell to pass around. Each of them drank deeply of the cool, sweet milk. Then, using the heavy sword, Hooker cleaved the nuts in half. They used the smaller knives to dig out the chewy white meat.
Buzz looked up from where he sat on the ground and cocked his head, listening. Hooker did the same and heard a strange coughing grunt that was repeated from several directions in the jungle.
“What’s that?”
“That’s the way the Mayas tell each other where they are,” Buzz said.
“Then it’s time for us to go,” Hooker said. “Which way to the river?”
Buzz stuffed a last chunk of coconut meat into his mouth and pointed at a faint break in the foliage on the far side of the airplane.
“Through there,” he said. “It’s not much of a trail, but we can make it in the daylight.”
Buzz used the sword to hack off a Y-shaped branch to use as a crutch, and the little party pushed through the brush and started along an overgrown path that took them gradually downhill. After twenty minutes, they could hear the sound of running water. They could also hear the sounds of pursuers behind them.
“Almost there,” Buzz said.
Hooker recognized the false note of heartiness in his voice and tried to match it. “Good. I don’t think we’re all that far ahead of our Indian friends.”
The river came almost as a surprise. The trees stopped, the ground sloped suddenly down, and there it was. Some twenty yards across, brown and swollen from the rains, it flowed seemingly from nowhere around a bend off to their left and to some other nowhere off to their right.
“I can see how the map makers could miss it,” Hooker said.
“Hell, it looks like the Mississippi now,” Buzz said. “Before the rains, it was just a trickle. I didn’t even know if it would float my raft.”
“Where is this famous raft?”
Buzz looked up and down the river bank. His face darkened for a moment, then lit up in a relieved smile. “There she is, downstream at the base of that crooked tree. For a minute, I was afraid she might have washed away.”
The four of them made their way gingerly along the muddy river bank to the twisted ceiba tree Buzz had pointed out. Lashed to the bottom of the trunk were several hacked-off logs tied together to form a raft about six feet square.
“What did you use for rope?” Hooker asked.
“Cut strips from the carpeting in the plane’s cabin.”
“It’s kind of, uh, small.”
“Well, shit, I only planned on it carrying me, not half the population of Veracruz.”
“Didn’t mean to criticize, buddy,” Hooker said. He took hold of one end of the raft and shook it. “We could tighten it up a little.”
Hooker and Buzz cinched the lashings of the logs tighter, making a reasonably solid platform. Then they pushed it gingerly into the water, leaving the rope tethering it to the tree trunk. One by one, the four of them stepped aboard.
It sank under them.
“Well, shit goddam,” Kaplan said.
They scrambled back to the river bank. Alita slumped into a sitting position, her head forward, arms crossed over her breasts.
“Nice try, buddy,” Hooker said, “but it won’t quite carry us all.”
“I think it’ll take three if there’s not too much moving around,” Buzz said.
“So what? There are four of us.”
“Listen, I’m already half shot. I can’t walk, and I think the fucking leg is infected. I probably wouldn’t make it, anyway, so why don’t you three — ”
“Bullshit,” Hooker cut him off. “You built the goddam thing. You’ve spent a year surviving in this rotten jungle. If you think we’re going to leave you — ”
“Will you guys shut up a minute?”
The others looked at Alita in surprise. Her face was pale in the morning sunlight.
“Don’t worry, chiquita,” Hooker said. “We’ll work something out.”
“It’s already worked out.”
Something in the tone of her voice sent a chill through Hooker. He knelt beside Alita and looked into her eyes. Gently, he took her hands and drew her arms away from her breasts. The front of the white dress was a sopping crimson.
“Jesus Christ!” Hooker said. “You didn’t say anything.”
“It wouldn’t have helped. That kid got me pretty good with the knife after I put the sword in him.”
“Oh, God, look!” Connie cried.
Back up the river, where they had come through from the plane wreck, others were now breaking out of the brush. They had the emotionless faces, the staring eyes of the muerateros.