by Burke Bryant
Kiddo.
The memory burned in Chris’s chest. Joy had been around Natalia’s age when she’d died. It was Joy’s birthday. Chris had been late returning from a job, but his absence hadn’t stopped the birthday celebrations—Karen wouldn’t allow it. Birthdays and holidays, those were two things Karen Rake didn’t let slip by without taking notice. She’d taken Joy out for birthday dinner and returned early, surprising the men who’d broken into their home.
Minutes. Their fate had been determined by minutes. Seconds, maybe. If Karen and Joy had been caught by one more red light, if she had taken one wrong turn or even just ordered dessert at the restaurant, they would have returned home to a robbed house and nothing more. They would have been frightened. They would have had to find somewhere to stay the night, replace stolen items. Overcome the trauma of their home being invaded.
But they would have lived.
The security cameras Chris had installed around his home caught most of what happened. After being surprised by the two men, Karen had done the right thing—what Chris has trained her to do. She’d gotten the gun he kept hidden under the dining room table and, Joy shielded behind her, she’d ordered the men to leave.
They hadn’t.
One of the men rushed Karen before she could pull the trigger. Overpowered her. He wrenched the gun from her hand and beat her with the butt, breaking her face in five places. Then he’d done the same to Joy. Blood dripping, bones broken, Karen had managed to crawl on her hands and knees to her daughter, pull Joy’s unconscious form into her arms. Into the same arms and the same position Karen had held her daughter in the first few minutes of her tiny little life. The man had shot twice, and when the paramedics arrived both Karen and Joy were gone.
The memory was carved into Chris’s eyes, stamped on his retina so it was there, waiting, every time he blinked. A constant reminder of his biggest failure—he hadn’t been able to save his family. Joy would never live to drive her first car. Never see prom, or graduation.
His poor, dead daughter was just as sightless as the girl sitting quietly at his side. Joy, like Natalia, would never see.
As if sensing the anguish washing over him, Natalia reached over and took Chris’s hand. She said nothing, but when his fingers moved in hers, she giggled. Her hand fell away from his as she stood on the rock, spinning in circles with her arms over her head like a ballerina in a child’s music box.
Chris was on his feet before he could think better of it, dancing with the small girl. For a moment he forgot it all—the jungle, the village, Grace dying somewhere in the distance. For a moment, he was with his daughter, dancing and spinning. A smile pulled at the corners of his lips and he let it spread, until the corners of his eyes ached and the pain in his neck was gone.
They spun until they were both too dizzy to stand, and then they fell together back onto the rock’s smooth surface, laughing. Beside him, Natalia stood, attempting one last, courageous spin. Chris held her hand, keeping her steady.
“We’re friends,” she said.
It wasn’t a question.
“Yes, we’re friends,” Chris confirmed. He turned on his side to look at the burlap strap around the girl’s eyes. “Can I ask you a question?” he asked.
“You can ask me whatever you want.”
“How long have you been blind?”
He’d thought maybe she’d sigh or scowl, but Natalia laughed.
“Most of my life,” she said. She crouched, searching around with her other hand for her teddy. When she found the bear, she lifted it, dropping Chris’s hand so she could dance with her stuffed toy.
“I got an eye infection when I was young,” she explained, still dancing as if the memory of her lost sight meant nothing. “My family did not know how to treat it. When the dark took one eye it moved to the other, and then it took it, too.”
“I’m sorry,” Chris said, and he was. He considered how it might feel to lose such a valuable sense. He’d temporarily lost his hearing from time to time, his eardrums blown out by gunfire or the shock of explosives, but it had always come back. Perhaps not as strong as it had once been, but his instincts made up for any loss and he’d never really been able to tell the difference. But sight? What would it be like to live in a world of darkness?
“Do you remember what it was like to see?” he asked.
“No,” she said. Her tone was light, dismissive. “I was too young.”
Chris watched Natalia with her bear, still wondering how a child could survive everything she had and still find joy enough to dance. Her dress billowed out in a puff of dirty brown cloud behind her.
“Why do you cover your eyes, if you can’t see?” he asked.
The question was like someone had pulled the needle off the record of her music. Natalia dropped to her bottom on the rock, her feet left to dangle over the side in small, careful circles. She bowed her head and her palms pressed against the rock as the edges of her upper teeth bit into her lower lip. Finally, she let out a heavy sigh that sounded too old for her few years.
“Because I don’t ever want to see the monsters that cause the pain,” she explained. “I would rather stay blind. Even if my sight came back, I don’t ever want to see it.”
Confusion twisted Chris’s eyebrows. “But monsters don’t exist anywhere other than fairytales and storybooks,” he said.
Natalia shook her head fiercely. “Then you are too used to monsters to see them like I do. But they’re there.”
Chris felt his lips tighten. He had seen monsters enough, but the way the girl spoke didn’t give him the impression she was speaking of angry giants or evil queens. “Okay, can you show me a monster?”
“No, I can’t show you a monster.” She bit her lip again, thinking. “But I can show you where they have been.”
Natalia turned and pointed back in the direction of her village.
Chris clasped his hands behind his head and exhaled. He thought of the ruined huts, the burned bodies. Whoever had done this had certainly been a monster.
“I get it now. I’m sorry.”
She shrugged. “It’s okay. Sometimes you have to be blind to see. That’s what my madre always says.”
“I guess you’re right, kiddo.”
“Kid-doh.” Natalia tried the unfamiliar word out as she twisted the ends of her hair through her fingertips.
She giggled. The sound touched Chris and he laughed too.
Dark thoughts crept around the edges of Chris’s mind as more serious matters took their place. “I need to ask you one more question, okay?”
“Okay.”
Not wanting to break the happy mood between them, Chris kept his voice light. “Do you know where the nearest village is that might have some sort of hospital or medical supplies? One of our team members is very sick, and we need to find her some help.”
There was no hesitation. “Si.”
Chris adjusted himself on the rock, adrenaline already tingling under his skin. “How far?” he asked.
“My father gets there in one day.”
One day. That might be all Grace had left.
“Do you know how to get there?”
The girl’s lips twisted to one side and she sniffed. Nodded. “I can show you something that does know how to get you there,” she said.
Something?
Natalia climbed to her feet and reached for Chris's hand.
“Where are we going?” Chris asked, taking the girl’s hand and allowed himself to be pulled onto his feet, tugged down the rock and back onto the grass.
Natalia kept pulling. “Where is my rice?”
Chris shook his head. He had almost forgotten how fluid children’s minds were, how quickly they could shuffle and reprioritize. “Okay, I guess you can eat first, but then I need you to tell me what this something is.”
Nick was tending to Grace, feeding her water and a few saltine crackers from his pack. Caroline had just woken and was in the middle of her morning stretching routine—a few side b
ends and hamstring pulls, all textbook military—as Chris and Natalia approached. Her icy blue gaze darted to Chris’s hand curled around Natalia’s, then snapped up to his eyes.
“This is getting to be a regular thing I see,” she said. Her tone was playful, but sharp around the edges.
Chris shrugged. “She is blind.”
Caroline smirked but let it go. She knew about his wife and daughter, though it had been Nick who had shared that particular tragedy, not Chris. Transparency was important in a team like theirs, when they often put their lives in the hands of each other. But some truths just weren’t meant to be shared by the person they belonged to. Sometimes the best way to build trust was to share secrets in quiet and know they wouldn’t be spoken about aloud—or ever again.
Natalia let go of Chris’s hand and raised her nose as if scenting the air. She stepped slowly to her right, then moved a few feet forward until she came to a stop in a small patch of long green grass. Her small chest rose as she sucked in the scent of grass, and then she held her stuffed bear in front of her and resumed her dance.
Caroline cocked her head to the side, considering as she dropped to a knee to rummage through her sack. “Could she smell that patch of grass?”
“I think she can smell a lot of things,” Chris said.
They both watched as Natalia spun in circles. Round and round.
Ashes, ashes, all fall down. The nursery rhyme completed in Chris’s thoughts, the melody haunting and strangely melancholy in this scorched placed.
“She’s a smart girl,” he told Caroline, still watching Natalia dance.
“She’s smart like every parent thinks their child is smart, or she’s actually really smart?” Caroline asked without looking. “Because there is a difference, Rake.”
He laughed. “No, she’s actually smart. She also says she knows about another village, about a day away, with medical supplies.”
Even with her attention inside her pack, Chris could feel Caroline’s eyeroll.
“Don’t tell me the blind girl is going to lead us there.”
“No, but she said she knows something that can.”
“Something?” echoed Caroline “Like a fucking map, a compass or maybe a messenger pigeon?” She laughed again at the absurdity of her own question. “And where exactly is this something?” she asked as she pulled a small protein bar from her pack and began unwrapping it.
“Well, that’s the thing, I’m not sure yet. I guess eating is further ahead on her list of priorities.”
Caroline glanced at Natalia in the grass, swaying with her bear. “And dancing.”
Chris smiled, watching the girl play.
“How would she have even made rice if we hadn't found her? She may be smart, but she’s young. Could she do it on her own?”
Chris’s eyes tightened. He shook his head. “I’m not sure.”
“The rice is over there.” Caroline pointed to the base of a small, brown fern. The small burlap sack rested against it.
“Thanks.”
Chris walked over to retrieve the bag. As he lifted the sack into the air something on the side caught his attention.
A faded blue type marked the words Pueblo Del Arroz. Just below, in the same blue type RICE CO. was stamped, and below that, a small, barely legible blue on which was drawn a map. Chris pulled his gaze in close to get a better look. He could see the village he was currently at stamped in blue, and a broken line winding around a large mountain to end at another village. Pueblo Del Arroz.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Chris pumped the bag onto his shoulder and felt his grin bite into his jaw. “Natalia,” he called, “what’s the name of the village we’re going to?”
Natalia swung the bear in her arms. “Pueblo Del Arroz,” she sang.
Chris laughed, the sound growing louder when Caroline raised both arms in the air, palms up.
What’s up, her gesture asked. She shook her head, not understanding.
Chris laughed harder. Where was her rice, indeed? He lifted the rice bag over his head, pointed at the map. “I told you she was a smart girl!”
He shot a look at Nick, still tending to Grace. “Get her ready to move, Brannon,” he called. “We know where we’re going.”
6
By mid-morning everyone was packed up and ready to head out.
The early hours had been cool enough, but as the sun crawled toward its zenith the day had turned warm and humid. Small clouds of steam rose from the tops of the trees, filtering off plants and leaves. A light mist hung over the area, a pocket of fog rolling through the dense jungle foliage as howler monkeys echoed in the valley below.
Caroline slung her pack over her shoulder even as Chris knelt to zip Natalia’s bunch of bananas in his. He checked his pockets and pulled out the small test vial he’d found on the man the day before. The contents were the same as he’d last seen them.
What the hell are you? He turned the vial over in his hand, then slid it in a small upper pocket on his pack, slinging his pack over his shoulder as he stood. The rice bag he’d have to carry in one of his arms. That would affect his mobility, but he’d need to keep an eye on the small map on its side as they moved.
Nick and Grace joined the party, and Chris was relieved to see Grace walking on her own. She was still pale, and she moved slowly, one foot dragging behind the other, but she was upright, and her eyes were open.
“You look like you’re doing better,” he said.
The older woman let out a gust of air. “I can’t say I’m doing better,” she replied, “but I am feeling better. It comes and goes in spurts.”
“The only easy day was yesterday,” Nick added.
Chris’s thoughts ran through the events of the previous day. Sure. Easy.
Grace laughed weakly. “Yeah, you young bucks got it all figured out, don’t you?”
Caroline smirked at the mention of bucks but said nothing.
Nick shouldered his pack and Grace’s and took a look at the map stamped on the rice bag in Chris’s arms.
“Are we ready?” he asked.
“Yeah, let’s do this.”
At the edge of the village they stopped and looked back. No one said anything as they surveyed the burnt huts. The pit that had only just stopped smoking. When Chris had left the village on his last visit, small children has run after him, the voices of their mothers on the wind calling them back. Life had pulsed at the edges of the space. Now, as they queued up to start off through the jungle, they left nothing behind but death.
No, not just death, Chris reflected as he glanced at Natalia. They had saved a life here. Just one, but it was better than none.
“North, about half a mile, then east,” Chris directed as they started off. He checked the measurement on his watch, glanced at the compass, and shifted the rice bag in his arms.
Chris and Nick rotated the weight of the packs between them as the team trudged forward, Caroline in the lead, her knife in her hand. When one got tired and needed a break from the extra weight, they would switch so one would carry and the other could support Grace.
Natalia kept close to Chris as they walked, sometimes holding onto his hand, sometimes playing with her teddy. She was familiar with the trail, he noticed, side-stepping rocks, tree roots, and other hazards as if she’d walked this way many times before. When the trail got too narrow or rocky, Chris would put the girl on his shoulders until the path evened out again, but even this he did only to keep up their pace.
He refused to think about Joy when Natalia’s black hair blew in the wind, the tips whipping around her face and stinging her cheeks. It would have been too easy to mourn his dead daughter with the weight of the small girl around his neck, but he swallowed the emotions down.
After they had walked a short distance, the jungle seemed to return back to normal. Birds chittered from the branches of trees overhead, and small animals scuttered through the grass. A small stream ran alongside the trail for many miles, carving varyin
g shades of blue through the green and brown of the underbrush. On occasion they would stop to rest, dipping their heads into the water to cool off, and taking large sips from its naturally filtered freshwater pools. Large white birds sat atop tall green reeds. The loud huffs and screeches of the howler monkeys always close by, protecting their property and their mates, punctuated the jungle sounds with loud, booming echoes.
Temperature was a funny thing this deep in the jungle. The sun beating down was blotted by the trees, taking the high, choking, humidity with it so a soft breeze blew, cooling the sweat on their backs and faces.
For a moment, Chris almost forgot what he had just witnessed. What might be still to come.
Grace seemed to have found a second wind after a few hours, and was able to walk on her own for the most part. Nick kept her cool by rinsing her down with water every twenty or so minutes, and made sure her temperature was staying something close to average. Sometimes Grace would attempt to engage in small talk to pass the miles, but Nick was always quick to remind her she needed to save all the energy she had for making it to the next village. On occasion she would need to rest after a long bout of coughing, but she seemed to recover within minutes and was back on the trail pressing forward.
“We still have at least a day to go,” he warned. “Talking requires energy you don’t have to spend.”
He didn’t say what Chris knew he was thinking—that sometimes a burst of energy, a false turn to improvement, came right before the end.
After a few more miles, the team pushed through the trees and came into a clearing atop a large, rocky mountainside. The jungle opened up for miles on either side, affording an incredible, perilous view of the landscape below. A lush, dense jungle canopy spanned beneath them, a giant sea of swaying green as wind thrashed through the foliage.
The view above was just as dangerous. Large gray storm clouds darkened the sky in the distance. A storm in the jungle could mean falling trees, flash floods, landslides. Without shelter, it could mean death—especially for Grace and Natalia.
