by Jeremy Bates
“We’ll move Miranda first,” Sal said. “She’s lighter.”
Scarlett took ahold of Miranda’s wrists, which were cool and clammy, while Sal grabbed her by the ankles. Rigor hadn’t set in yet so she was still flexible and easy enough to lift. As they carried the girl to the church, Scarlett could smell urine and sweat. They returned for Joanna and brought her inside as well. The two bodies now rested side by side in front of the altar.
“We should cover them with something,” Scarlett said.
She went to the recessed apse, where a five-by-ten-foot tapestry hung on the wall. The woven picture displayed a large cross hovering in the blue sky with golden beams of sunlight slanting away from it over a small village surrounded by trees. It took her a moment to realize the village was probably a depiction of the one she was in now, before it had been burned to the ground.
She gave the tapestry a solid tug. There was a brief rip-tearing noise, then the entire thing was lying in a heap at her feet. And she was left staring at a wooden door in the stone wall.
Chapter 31
“Look at that,” Sal said, coming to stand beside her. He gripped the black doorknob and pulled the door open. The hinges groaned like something out of a haunted house. A stone passageway curved away into darkness.
“Where do you think it leads?” Scarlett asked.
“An undercroft, I presume.”
She could feel cool air coming up from the passage. “Maybe we should take Joanna and Miranda down there? It would preserve their bodies better until help arrives for them.”
“It’s too dark. If you tripped on those stairs, you might break your neck.”
“Hold on.” She went to the rucksacks and dug through them, retrieving the two flashlights she’d noticed while searching for the first-aid kit. She flicked them both on to make sure they worked. They did. She returned to Sal, handed him one, and started down.
“You forgot the bodies,” he said from behind her.
“I’m checking it out first.”
The stairs were narrow and steep and curving. The yellow beams of the two flashlights cut circular swaths in the darkness, revealing grimy, crumbling stone walls. The stairs seemed to go on and on before Scarlett emerged in a large open space. She felt dwarfed, like a spelunker who’d just stumbled upon a vast cavern.
She directed the flashlight around. The undercroft was brick-lined with high vaulted ceilings. It seemed to extend not only below the chancel but the nave and transepts as well. Corridors stretched away from the main section at right angles. Except for the slow plink-plink of dripping water, it was tomb quiet, the air dank and smelling of mildew and age.
“Spooky,” Sal said, stopping beside her.
Scarlett said, “Let’s go get Miranda.”
“You wanted to check it out, let’s check it out.”
“I’ve seen enough.”
“Just a few minutes.”
Before she could reply, Sal walked away from her to the nearest corridor, leaving her alone. She hurried to catch up. The arched alcove was about twenty feet deep. At the end of it was a rectangular box.
“Don’t tell me that’s a coffin,” Scarlett said. She was whispering, though she didn’t know why. Nobody was around to hear her. But it seemed appropriate considering this place wasn’t an undercroft as they’d previously assumed; it was a crypt—a place for the dead.
“Give me a hand with the lid,” Sal said.
“Are you nuts?”
“What’s the problem?”
“Why do you want to open it?”
“To see what’s inside.”
“I think I have a pretty good idea, Sal.”
“It’ll give us a clue as to who ran this village before it burned down. Now are you going to help me or not?”
Scarlett wanted to say no, but she knew he would do it himself anyway. That would take longer, which meant they would be down here longer. They each took an end of the wooden lid and lifted. The lid came free with a gentle puff of escaping air. She leaned toward the coffin to look inside. Big mistake. The smell of mold and human dust and dried meat hit the back of her throat like a physical presence. She gagged and stumbled back, dropping her end of the lid. It crashed to the floor, the rotten wood splintering on contact.
Sal, left with the entire weight, cursed and dropped his end as well. Learning from her mistake, he covered his nose with his arm and looked inside. She did the same. Although Scarlett had seen several corpses in the last few hours, none of them had been dead for very long and all had looked human.
What she saw now didn’t look human one bit. The face of the skull stared at her in broken horror. The jaw hung open in a silent yowl, slightly lopsided, showing peg-like teeth. The eye sockets were gaping black holes filled with dust and other decomposed organic matter. The skeletal body was dressed in a royal-blue jacket with a line of bronze buttons down the front, wide knickerbockers, puttees, and leather ankle boots.
“Belgian,” Sal said matter-of-factly. “Force Publique.”
Scarlett stared, transfixed by the clothed skeleton, the ghastly thing that had once been a man—a man who likely at one time had a wife and a house and a family, a man who had felt fear and happiness and love, who had seen beauty in a sunrise and put value to money and obeyed the rules of right and wrong. A man who was now bones in a box.
Scarlett felt like she was being let in on some age-old secret. This is what death looks like, she thought. How Miranda and Joanna would soon look. What she herself would one day be.
She blinked and turned away. She was freaking herself out, and this was not the place where she wanted to be freaked out.
With a jolt of panic, she realized Sal was gone.
Frowning, she swept the flashlight beam across the mouth of the alcove. Shadows danced and leapt. She almost expected to see Michael Jackson moonwalk past in Thriller makeup.
“Sal?” she called.
“Come here!” His voice echoed slightly from somewhere to the right.
“I want to leave.”
“Come here.”
Scarlett found him in the next corridor over, examining another coffin.
“Opening one coffin, fine, Sal,” she said, reprimanding. “Two, that’s perverse.”
“Look.”
He aimed the light at the floor, revealing several sets of footprints in the dust, which weren’t hers or his. They all led from the stairs directly to the coffin and nowhere else.
Scarlett’s first thought: vampire. Some undead thing sleeping its days away down here, waking at dusk to feed on blood during the night. When the rational side of her brain kicked in, it reminded her there were no such thing as vampires and witches and other monsters.
There was a much more logical explanation for the footprints. “Jahja?” she said.
“Who else?”
“Why would he be interested in that coffin?”
“That’s what I want to find out. Give me a hand with the lid again. Try not to drop it this time.”
She joined him at the coffin. On the count of three they heaved the lid off and set it on the floor so it leaned at a forty-five degree angle against the wall. They covered their noses and peered in. The coffin was filled with a smorgasbord of automatic weapons, boxes of ammunition, magazines, grenades, and other miscellaneous military gear.
“Jackpot,” Sal said.
Scarlett uncovered her nose. This time the only smell was that of oil and metal and cardboard. “Why would Jahja be stashing all these weapons out here?”
“I have no idea.”
“Well, whatever. Can we leave now? I want to get Joanna and Miranda down here so I can attend to Thunder.”
Sal nodded but not before he selected a grenade and stashed it in his pocket.
Scarlett frowned. “Why do you want that?”
“We’re still in the jungle, cara mia, still vulnerable. Until Danny arrives, it’s better to remain safe than sorry.”
“Safe from what?”
Sa
l didn’t have an answer to that—or if he did, he wasn’t telling.
Chapter 32
Tick-tock, tick-tock. Counting the minutes until Danny arrived and they were on their way back to civilization.
They sat shoulder to shoulder against the stone wall of what had only recently been their prison. Thunder lay along the floor in front of them, Sal’s torn blazer bunched beneath his head as a pillow. Scarlett had given him the two aspirin and made him drink some water she’d brought from the church. That had been almost two hours ago. He seemed to be doing better now. At least his fever was in remission.
The rain, a steady drizzle, hadn’t let up yet, but it hadn’t gotten any worse either. It was still thundering and lightning, each white blaze visible through the cracks in the ceiling. Scarlett was deep in thought, going over everything she wanted to do when she returned home to LA—which included eating a mammoth cheeseburger from Dukes on the Sunset Strip, ordered in, taking a long hot bubble bath in her Jacuzzi, and maybe calling up her masseuse, Rose, for a three-hour-long pampering.
Thunder’s eyes fluttered open.
“Thunder!” she said, cheeseburgers and massages instantly forgotten. “How are you feeling?”
He grimaced. “Like I just woke up on the bottom of the scrimmage.”
“Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Got any food?”
“There’s some in the church. We ate some earlier. I’ll go get you something.”
He looked confused. “What about, you know, the bad guys?”
“They’re all dead.”
Hearing herself speak those words gave her a thrill. It shouldn’t. Death was still death, regardless of who it had ferried across the Styx, and she wasn’t sadistic, but she couldn’t help the feeling. Jahja and his cronies were dead; she and Sal and Thunder were alive. All was as it should be in the world.
Except for Joanna and Miranda, she thought dourly. Don’t forget about them.
Apparently her words gave Thunder a thrill too. His eyes widened and his mouth opened, as if he was going to ask what she was talking about.
“I’ll explain when I get back,” she told him.
“I’m coming too,” Sal said.
“I can get it—”
“Yes, I know,” he said, cutting her off. “Still, we should stick together.”
Scarlett nodded. She understood. They didn’t know for sure whether the Irishman was truly gone or not. They collected their assault rifles—Sal had shown her how to use hers—and went outside. Halfway across the road, Scarlett froze. She grabbed Sal’s forearm and pointed to the west side of the clearing, where a short column of people had emerged from the woods and were now walking toward the town.
“Who are they?” she said.
Thunder grumbled loudly. The line of men grew more distinct, and she counted at least two dozen. One of the half-naked tribes she’d seen living along the riverbank? A rat-pack of bushman-like Congolese villagers? Yes, it must—
A zigzag of lightning crackled overhead, momentarily illuminating the clearing. She was wrong. Not villagers. They wore backward or sideways baseball caps, bandanas, and baggy T-shirts and shorts. A few even had on mismatched military uniforms and too-large combat helmets. They walked with a swagger, like the Mexican street gangs in LA. They all carried automatic weapons.
“Rebels,” Sal said, stating what she was thinking. “I think that was their stash of weapons we discovered earlier.”
Scarlett wondered if Sal had suspected this back in the crypt, and if that was the reason he’d taken the grenade. But there was no time to press the matter. The rebels had spotted them in the flash of lightning as well. They let out a collective cry and broke into a run toward them.
Sal raised his assault rifle.
“Don’t,” Scarlett said, yanking his arm back down. “There’re too many of them. If they see you pointing that thing, they’ll shoot us down.” She was aware of the quiver in her voice.
“What the hell do you want me to do?”
“Nothing. There’s nothing we can do.”
When the large group of men came to within fifty feet, they stopped and shouted incomprehensible words and waved their guns in the air.
Scarlett and Sal raised their hands.
Bolstered by the show of peace, the rebels advanced slowly. Scarlett realized she had been wrong. They weren’t men. They were boys, most no older than teenagers. It was like a scene out of Lord of the Flies. Or, more precisely, Lord of the Flies meets Boyz n the Hood. Even so, she was trembling. Their expressions were murder, their eyes bloodshot. A few were holding bottles of a murky white drink that she was pretty sure wasn’t milk.
A long, thin, tubular object was strapped to the back of one of them.
A rocket launcher?
Christ.
“Hello,” Sal said, and the confidence he displayed amazed her. “Do you speak English?”
The oldest kid, who was maybe in his early twenties, stepped forward. He was wearing wraparound sunglasses and an extra-large Eminem T-shirt. A red beret sat atop his thick, tightly curled black hair, and it was cocked to one side, almost rakishly so. He looked simultaneously ridiculous and terrifying.
“I am Killer,” he announced.
Scarlett and Sal exchanged a look. A burst of lightning sparked the sky, chased by heavy thunder. The rain fell harder.
“Killer is your name?” Sal said. A little less confident?
“Sergeant Major Killer. I want money.”
“We don’t have any money.”
“You give me drugs then.”
“Do I look like I carry drugs, chief?”
Scarlett rested a warning hand on Sal’s forearm. What was he thinking? These might be kids, but this was their world—a world without rules or repercussions. If they decided Sal was patronizing them, they’d likely shoot him for his insolence.
Undeterred by the rain, the kid with the red beret took out a rolled cigarette and lit up. Not tobacco, Scarlett realized when the waft of smoke drifted in her face. Cannabis.
They were drunk and high.
Killer took off the shades, hooked them on the neck of his shirt, and said, “Give me your guns.”
“No,” Sal said.
“Yes, Sal,” Scarlett said harshly. She lifted the rifle strap over her shoulder and handed the weapon to Killer stock first. He examined it for a moment, then fired a burst of bullets into the air.
Scarlett ducked, covering her ears. Sal stepped backward.
Killer tossed the AK-47 to one of the other kids and said, “I want that one also.”
This time Sal gave it to him without protest.
“Why are you here?” he asked, handing the joint to a guy with a Leonardo DiCaprio T-shirt.
Scarlett knew full well her face could just as easily have been on that shirt, and she wondered if she should tell these kids who she was. Would they suddenly treat her to a big feast with music and dancing like something out of Romancing the Stone? Or would they rape her and kill her for the bragging rights? She looked in Killer’s blood-crazed eyes. She kept quiet.
“We’re Americans,” Sal said. “We were taken here by terrorists.”
“You lie. You are FDLR.”
“Do we look like FDLR?”
Scarlett wiped rain from her eyes. “What’s that?”
“Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda,” Sal told her. “A Rwandan rebel group.”
“See, I am right,” Killer said. “You are FDLR.”
“Why would we be down here, this far south?”
“You are running from the Rwanda Army or the Congolese government.”
“Look at me, kid,” Sal said curtly. “Am I black?”
“You are undercover.” Killer laughed. “No, I know who you are for real. You are UN. You are MONUC. You are working with the armed forces to get rid of us.”
“And who are you?”
“I am Rambo. Major General Rambo.”
“That’s not what I m
eant.”
“So you are MONUC?”
“No.”
“I think you are.”
“Listen, Killer—”
“Rambo.”
“Okay, Rambo—”
“Major General Rambo.”
Sal took an impatient breath and said, “Look, Major General Rambo. There’s a helicopter coming for us very soon. When it gets here, I can get you some money, if that’s what you want. Just relax for now and be patient.”
“We will kill them.”
Sal’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Yeah?” he said. “Good luck.”
“We will eat them.”
Scarlett couldn’t help but feel as if she’d fallen down the rabbit hole. The conversation sounded comical, absurd even, but there was an underlying menace that made the hair on the back of her neck stand tall.
A burst of forked lightning lit the dark sky a broken blue. The kid with the DiCaprio shirt shouted and pointed to Jahja’s body lying twenty-five feet away in the middle of the road.
“You killed him?” Rambo said to Sal.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I told you. We were kidnapped. He was one of the kidnappers.”
“He is a soldier?”
“He’s a terrorist.”
“How many more soldiers are here?”
“None.”
Rambo barked something to his gang. Two of the kids jogged off to search the buildings. They emerged from the prison dragging Thunder by the arms and tossed him onto the muddy road. Thunder, still semi-unconscious, raised his head and started to say something. One of the kids kicked him in the face with his boot. He collapsed and lay still.
Scarlett cringed but held her tongue.
“You lied to me,” Rambo said, then fired a slug into Sal’s leg. Sal gasped, collapsing to the ground.
“Don’t!” Scarlett screamed, flabbergasted by how quickly they’d gone from talking to gunshots. “Don’t!”
Rambo barked more orders. His child soldiers dragged Sal and Thunder and prodded her around the side of the church to a fire pit, where they pulled back a blue plastic tarp to reveal separate piles of dry tinder, kindling, and larger sticks. They started tossing leaves, grass, and bark into the ring of stones.
