by T. R. Ultra
Looking down from the cement staircase, I saw movement among the slum houses and alleyways. The rotors of the helicopter sounded like a thunder storm. Gloria Santa had become a battle zone. Fights were taking place in the crevices and ghettos of the slum. Not in plain sight.
Maybe we could try to hide inside some of those crooked houses anchored on the hillside. There were so many of them in the slum. Would the police, the local drug faction, or even Flávio Beirario’s be able to rummage through every one of them? Certainly not. But, would someone give us away?
Our best chances were staying low key and avoiding contact with anyone else till that helicopter took off and we entered the trail into the woods--the pathway that would take us out of the favela.
But we were in an open space, at the top of a staircase that slithered up amid buildings since the foot of the hill. Our taking cover from the police was just a matter of luck and positioning. Had they walked on the opposite side, they would have stumbled upon our desperate asses, as we mumbled and babbled and staggered down the steps like prey.
Our time was running out. The police would eventually patrol the perimeter of the plateau. We’d be discovered, soaked in sweat and fear. Hiding away with Renato was out of question. His wounds required proper medical care to avoid the spread of infection. His life was at risk.
Our only option would be sneaking down the steps of Gloria Santa, back to the gas station. From there, I could take Renato to a hospital. After the torture he received on his shoulder and the additional gashes opened, any bullet trace would’ve been erased, so doctors wouldn’t be obligated to warn the police.
“Let’s go back,” I said. “We need to leave Gloria Santa by the entrance.”
He shook his head. “People will see us, they’ll track us down.”
“Whatever. You’re going to die sooner or later without medical treatment. And my face is already on TV. I mean, we should use that in our favor.”
Renato tapped his shoulder with his usable hand, his face contorting in pain. He looked down the steps then stretched his neck to try and snatch another glimpse of the police, and breathed in heavily.
“Ok, let’s go.”
I got up and helped him. We started heading down the steps, keeping our bodies tight against the walls that ran alongside the staircase.
The stairs winded down, steps bending in many places to fit the awkward construction of walls and ceilings perched on top of one another. All the paths divided into two branches to be joined up by tributaries coming from other parts of the maze.
We had gone down a few steps when I saw a man coming up. He scurried past the alleyway, avoided us and leaned his head from behind buildings.
I recognized the face I had already met. Not long before, he had taken his pants off and scratched his muddy fingers over my skin. And now he was coming for us.
Chapter 21
Renato tugged at my shoulder and pulled me into a corridor so narrow we were unable to walk side by side. I tripped as I crammed into the path, and when I looked at him his face grimaced in pain.
“This way, Emily,” he sighed, “We must change course.”
He also had seen the rapist coming our way. Did that man want to finish off what he had started with me back at the clinic? Or did he want to capture us and arrange a ransom from Paulo Pinto on top of the slum?
Renato led the way between the buildings, water pipes exposed outside the walls leaking constantly, turning the dirt into a muddy swamp. We slithered past a corner, Renato’s shoulders scratching against the walls, his eyes tearing.
We came to a dead end.
The din of gunfire mingled with screams continued, but the helicopter whirr had silenced.
“We have nowhere to go,” I said. And for the first time, I thought of gripping the handgun to protect us from the man coming in from the stairs.
But there was an entrance close by. A rotten wooden window fell from the frame after a small push. We slid it open. Splinters of wood fell from it and insects scurried into the wall and other crevices. Then, we clambered over the windowsill to reach the inside.
A stifling smell of mold and mute darkness dwelled in there. We stepped across the room, barely seeing the shaft of light seeping in through the gap at the bottom of a door. The dense atmosphere inside the house amplified all noises, and I could almost feel the vibrations of Renato’s pounding heart, of his feverish veins, as we walked along.
His health was worsening again. Renato needed a bed, not the struggle of running and hiding and hopping over obstacles on the sloped face of Gloria Santa.
I tried the doorknob but it didn’t yield. The mold in the building made me cough. Renato, panting in exhaustion, slid against the wall to sit on the floor. I tried to force the door open, rammed my shoulder against it—it didn’t move.
I heard a noise coming from the window we had jumped over. I turned around and saw the man with the rifle in hand, narrowing his eyes against the dark looking for a target. My eyes adjusted to the blackness of the room, allowing me to made out the shapes of old furniture and rags on the ground.
But the rapist’s eyes didn´t.
He shouted at the window and pulled himself over to sit on the windowsill. He swiveled his body, doubled up his legs and pulled them into the building. When he raised his rifle back up, looking for someone to shoot at, I squeezed the trigger.
Three times, like in gun demonstrations around the world.
Inside darkness, no blood was spilled. At least, not that I had seen. I heard the thud of the body hit the ground, the squeaking of wooden slabs, the rattling of his gun, and the last gasps of the man who had tried to rape me. Then I dropped the pistol, my hands shaking, the image of that shadowy silhouette jolting after each bullet, falling headlong, rewinded and replayed, as though in an eternal loop inside my head.
A dead body laid there, frozen, in the same damp and rotten place as me. Renato uttered phrases in Portuguese that I didn’t understand. I coughed, trembled, and compared that building to a family-sized coffin.
I remembered home. My cozy place in Atlanta, where I spent my single nights. I missed my mom. How could I ever imagine that fate would derail my life into so much irony, so much agony.
I closed my eyes and cried. My hand was drenched in blood. God, I wished I had had the courage to forgive Marlon. Even though he cheated on me, we still had nice memories together, memories of true, innocent happiness. I’ve carried too much lately, and now even the weight of resentment seemed unbearable. I didn’t want to have it buried alongside me.
I felt a hand grabbing at my shins. I jerked back.
“You’re alive, Emily . . . Alive. You’ll have another chance to forgive. But first you need to open this door, and get us out of here,” Renato muttered.
Was I the delusional one? The one who had talked alone or had chatted with the veil of darkness that enwrapped everything?
I crouched on the floor, after a surge of energy, and groped about for the pistol. Then I squeezed the trigger, three times again, smashing the doorknob and its inner gears into shatters. I thrust myself against the door, it slammed open, and sunlight fell on my eyes as both a spur of life and a cut of razors.
I was back at Gloria Santa alleyways, alive, and poised to fight my way out.
Chapter 22
Renato’s tanned skin and bright eyes had dimmed into an emaciated, bleached appearance as his time ran out. We walked out of the building, most of his weight heaved on my shoulders. We staggered down a steep staircase that looked as damned and shabby as the others. I noticed eyes peering outside. They came from open doors and slammed shut right after seeing us.
The nape of my neck ached, but its pain I could endure.
Our only way was going down the steps, toward the clattering coming up from the foot of the slum. The clear sky rumbled as if a storm was taking place right above Gloria Santa, the rumble and jumble of a berserking throng ricocheted on every brick.
I couldn’t tell what caused
all that noise. My only concern at the moment was to bring medical attention to Renato as fast as I could. Or, perhaps, on a new sudden twist of fate, find someone trustworthy to rely on.
We tripped on slick steps on our way down. My ankle throbbed, probably under the strain of supporting my own weight plus part of Renato’s, but we continued.
People came out from their houses to follow us to the lower part of the hill. They seemed disturbed, unquiet, most of them carrying aluminum pans and pots and big metal spoons. They banged the tools against each other, as though in a march heading downward, producing a din much alike to those coming up from below.
They never looked toward us.
My only resolve was to keep going down, but instead of cutlery and pots, I’d carry alongside me the groaning of a man barely alive.
However, our path swerved before long. I crossed eyes with someone concealed inside a building where the door had been narrowly opened. This stranger didn’t slam the door shut when we stared at each other. The eyes, gleaming like wet rocks through the crack of the door, returned my gaze. They didn’t show fear, nor distrust, only pity.
I averted my eyes, looking down the winding steps that would take us to somewhere lower in the maze. But when we passed in front of the door that had been looking at me, it opened wide. A girl reached out a sympathetic hand, gesturing for us to come inside.
She had been Fatima’s aide at the clinic.
Without a word, I turned toward her, desperately agreeing to her offer. Renato grunted over my shoulder and wavered on the steps, as she came out to share his weight with me.
We laid Renato over a couch that had been worn down. He reclined his head back and fainted.
I pleaded her to help Renato with his wounds. She at first resisted, or didn’t understand me. Then, after many gestures, she walked into another room and came back with what resembled a first aid box to treat his gored shoulder.
I slouched on a wooden chair nearby. The girl, after undressing his old, stained bandages, poured liquid over Renato’s injury. It produced a reddish stream and whitish foam. Renato remained still behind closed eyelids.
“What’s your name?” I asked. I knew that that girl spoke some English.
“Camila,” she replied, finishing up the new dressing.
“Thank you for helping us, Camila.”
She offered me water and bread, which I accepted, even though I wasn’t able to eat the whole of it. My stomach, cramped after pulling the trigger, couldn’t handle much.
Camila stood by our side, looking at me with uneasy eyes, as though I were a beast. I could sense an abyss separating our realities.
Would that mean that she’d also give us away to drug dealers or even the police?
“What is happening in Gloria Santa?” I said, willing to gauge how much English she was able to speak. Relying on Renato alone to communicate with the other human beings was not a smart option, especially with him intermittently coming in and out of the real world.
“A little girl is dead,” she said. “Many shots.”
“Where?” I asked. Of course I knew what to expect as a response, but I just couldn’t let go of the chance of exchanging words in English.
“Down the hill,” she said, giving me those beady eyes. “The police looking for you. The gringa . . . on TV.”
Camila got up and turned the TV on, an old-style screen from decades ago.
The tube sizzled, emitted an electrical odor, and after a couple of seconds bowed images of a news program appeared on TV. People had crowded in a street, blocking traffic. They mounted barricades with garbage cans, hammered cookware, tossed wood stumps against the police and set tires ablaze.
It was a riot. When I saw the gas station on the left of the screen, and the cement soccer field down in the bottom-right corner, I figured out where it took place.
Paulo Pinto, hovering on the helicopter, had been at the head of the squads which tried to fetch me up in Gloria Santa, even though now he was gone. The police sprawled over the slum where the stray bullet killed the little girl. Slum dwellers, mourning the death of one of their children, grinded down and burned their the streets in vengeance of yet another tragedy.
That might give us some room to sneak away. A crowd is always a great place to hide, no matter if it had started in a downtown rush hour or because of a tragedy.
How big of an influence did Flávio Beirario need to have over the government to use Paulo Pinto and Roberto Rôla to marshal a whole squad of officers behind me? US authorities must already be aware of my disappearance, but do they know the whole story?
While I watched the images on TV, Camila didn’t take her gaze off me. Only once she looked at Renato, poked at his arm. When he didn’t respond, she leaned in closer to me.
“Why you still here?” she asked.
I turned my face to Camila, baffled.
“I’m trying to protect us. The police want to hand me over to drug dealers Camila. Did you know that?”
She glimpsed at Renato again, as though worried he might wake up.
“He bad. He’ll die. Run and save yourself. Ask help to the police.”
I blinked, trying to get rid of a crust of disbelief. Camilla didn’t fully understand what I had said, otherwise, she wouldn’t have suggested this nonsense.
“Officers Pinto and Rôla are on the take, Camila. They’re working to hand me over to Flávio Beira’s Rio drug faction, so they can use my life to bargain his release from prison. I need a direct line with the US Embassy, nothing else,” I said.
Camila looked at me without uttering a word. Did she understand what I said? Then I asked her what I needed the most. “Do you have a phone or a computer I can use? I need to send an email.”
She nodded, suspicious, and went into another room. When she left, Renato opened his eyes.
“Emily . . .” he muttered.
I leaned over him.
“Renato, are you okay? Camila is going to help us. She patched you up and—”
“She’s working for them. There’s a bounty on your head. Don’t let her touch her phone,” he murmured.
His words struck me with such a force it took my breath away, especially because I was sure he was asleep. He must have been listening this whole time with his eyes shut.
Camila was a nice, helpful girl. Was Rio so thoroughly corrupted that not even a young girl could be spared from its gloomy tentacles?
“Hand me the gun,” he said.
“Why, what are you going to do?”
“Listen... she’s already talking to someone.” Renato gestured with his hand for silence. I heard Camila’s voice coming from the other room. She spoke in a soft, low tone in Portuguese.
“Camila!” Renato shouted, following his words with a cough.
Camila walked back into our room. She held the phone on her hand, as though holding on a call.
“See... she just called the police. They know we’re here.”
Camila eyes widened, along with her mouth.
“No. I talking to Fátima. Asked her come here,” Camila replied, in a docile and sweet tone. How much of a viper she must be to betray us with such a smoothness.
I could not let myself be dragged into another trap. We had to find our way to the US Embassy ourselves. Drug dealers, police, even Camila were after us. Dressing Renato’s wounds had been part of a ploy. Just a way to waste time before they could get to us
She was a coward like all others.
“Why have you done that, Camila? Why do you want to hurt us? You better tell your superiors we can protect ourselves,” I pulled the gun from my hip and waved it toward her. She staggered backwards, let her phone fall to the ground, and feigned fear.
Just another part of her ploy.
“No. I want to help. Renato bad. Run.”
“I know Renato is hurt. You don’t have to tell me that. We’re getting out of this slum. Give me the phone.”
“Yes,” she said. But when she bent down to pick up the
phone, Renato said something in Portuguese, and she stopped.
Then, he turned his gaze to me.
“Not the phone, Emily. We must leave now before those people arrive. And we are taking no trackable gadgets with us.”
“But this is our chance. I just need to send one email—tell my boss we’re in Gloria Santa—she can send help.”
“No phone. I’ve already told you. We need to protect ourselves. And Camila . . . she must die.”
Chapter 23
I stared at the phone on the ground, its screen bright against the concrete. Camila’s trembling legs contrasted to the stillness of the case. I had a window to the whole world only a couple of feet away, one that would allow me to call for help. A window kept shut from me for five days.
This was my best chance since the beginning of this madness. I could tell the world where I was. But I would not pull the trigger anymore.
“ I’m not killing her, Renato. What are you talking about?”
Renato spoke energetically. “The moment we leave her house, she’ll put the word out. It’s our lives at stake. She’s chosen a side, not ours, and she needs to face the consequences.”
I looked at Camila, her hands shaking and embracing herself as she waited to die. She didn’t seem to be a menace, not at all. She seemed sincerely frightened, as though we were the ones menacing her, not the other way around.
I glanced back at her phone on the floor, its screen black. A terrible desire to pick it up and type on its virtual keyboard gnawed inside me. I’d never be able to shoot her. Not unless she pointed a gun at me, and it was her or me.
“Renato, I’ll send a single message, then we’ll destroy the phone. I need to let people know I’m alive, and where we are. It won’t take long.”
“All right,” Renato sighed. He went on. “But first I need to check her phone, see what kind of messages she might have sent. Hand it over, Camila.”
Camila bent over and picked the phone up. She reached out trembling hands, uttered Portuguese words, pleading innocence. Renato took hold of the phone and thumbed the screen, scrolling it down. Then he pushed himself up, raised his good arm, and threw the phone against the floor.
