21

Suz

 

 

Refugio Tatí Yupí, Paraguay

 

 

The lower the sun set, the denser the swarms of mosquitos grew. Suz reached once again into the side pocket where Jack had put the readily at hand items – a button compass, bug spray, a box of Tic Tacs so her breath wouldn’t smell like the un-dead who were chasing her (that earned Jack a swat), a whistle. . . Suz fingered the whistle. This far from any other tourists, Suz didn’t think that anyone would hear her if she used it. Groups of three. That, according to Jack, was the international signal for help. Three of anything: light flashes, signal fires, blows on a whistle, rock taps on a water pipe. She hadn’t known that. Who learned those kinds of things? It could well be that other nationalities spent some of their school time teaching their students how to signal for help in the event of a disaster. Did the Paraguayans? She doubted it. They’d hear the whistles and ask their guide what strange bird made that noise.

She wasn’t trying to be rescued, she reminded herself. She was supposed to be the rescuer. Yes, that last thought was laughable.

They had at some point arrived at a trail. It was as wide as a single foot tread and divided the forest like a part in a hair line. It moved in and around trees so tall that Suz couldn’t see where they ended in the sky, and so wide that it would take two or three people reaching hand to hand to encircle them. It was loud. Hauntingly loud. The foliage all around her was filled to brimming with noises, and vibrations, yet she did not see a single animal.

Suz was dead on her feet. Her back burned with the exertion of carrying her pack. When they reached the path, the guy pointed to the sky with a frown and mimed hurrying. She got that they didn’t want to be in the forest in the dark without reaching their destination. As Jack would say, “copy that.” He set the pace at a jog. Suz was obviously not in the same shape as this guy, and she was carrying her pack. But fear that he’d just run on without her and she’d be left in the middle of the forest that night… well, arriving almost anywhere seemed like a better end.

She was hungry. It had rained off and on that day. She just kept the poncho on the whole time, draped over her sack. It was like a sauna underneath it, and she was damp with sweat. The cotton from her clothing rubbed her raw at inconvenient places, like the lines of elastic under her breasts and along the legs of her panties. Bet Jack never thought of that.

The humidity levels had been high since she landed in South America and in the back of Suz’s mind there rested stories about jungle rot and other horrors of being too wet for too long.

The man-boy had pulled a small flashlight from his pocket. He could see as they moved through the darkening forest. She could not. After her third fall, he finally put her hand on his shoulder, so she could step where he stepped, though it looked like it cost him – according to his grimace he was loathe to be touched by some like her.

Suz was on the verge of collapse. Emotionally, physically, spiritually she had little left. She focused on lifting and placing one foot and then the other. Her head too heavy to support, she let her chin drop to her chest. She moved forward, looking at the guy’s heels, so it was a surprise to her when he stopped.

There in the middle of the forest was a man-made clearing. Around the perimeter ran a tall chain link fence. It was maybe twenty feet high, Suz would guess, topped with the looping kind of razor wire used on prisons. Her mouth went dry. What the . . .

The guy turned and smirked. He reached under his shirt producing a gun. With the barrel trained on her, he reached into the pocket on her thigh pulled out the phone. Fat lot of good that would do him. Suz scoffed. She had checked it under her poncho periodically, and there had been no bars since they had left the tourist center. So no loss to her.

The man-boy lifted and dropped his brows, and nudged her toward the gate where a guard was posted with a AK rifle. Suz recognized it as what Strike Force carried. There were tents on either side of the gate entrance and an open expanse where she could see a glimmer of sky. In the twilight, there was no other movement. The three of them stood there looking at one another.

The air was heavy, oppressively humid, it weighed down on Suz’s shoulders along with the pack, and made her sway. She locked her legs to hold herself upright then remembered that was a quick way to make yourself pass out. She bent her knees again and now felt like she was falling over. Still they stood and stared at each other.

Movement suddenly caught Suz’s eye. A tall, thin man in dark clothes moved forward, under each of his hands, he gripped the shoulder of a young boy. Suz ran forward and grabbed the fence. “Ari, Caleb, oh thank God.”

The boys tried to bolt to her, but the tall man had them pinned in place.

Another man walked up behind them and moved toward the gate, he unlocked the padlock. Suz turned and saw that her guide had stashed his gun again. As soon as the gate opened, Suz rushed in and gathered the boys in her arms. They clung to her tightly. Their silence worried her. They were hot. Even for a day like today, they were hot. Suz cupped Ari’s chin and tried to peer at his face in the dim light left over from the day. His skin was pink and his eyes glassy. She could see a headache thrumming at his temple. She pulled his head to her stomach as she checked on Caleb. He looked equally miserable.

“These children are ill,” she said. But she already knew that. Jones had told her as much when they were at her house. She asked if she could bring some medicine with her and when he said, “you have ten seconds to grab what you need,” Suz had walked to her medicine cabinet held out her shirt as a receptacle and scooped all of the contents off the shelves. She had stuffed the bottles and vials and boxes into the space that was freed up when the weapons were removed.

Suz looked up as big globs of wet fell on her head. The sky rumbled then opened up as a torrent fell on them. She quickly pulled her poncho over the children’s heads. “Where should I go?” she asked, scanning the tents that stood out as black against a purple and green background. The man who had brought the children out walked to a tent, lifted the flap and gestured in.

Moving up the step, Suz and the boys climbed in. It was empty except for what looked like a heater in the center. Suz shucked off her poncho and backpack and moved over to turn the temperature up high. It gave the tent a little light. Suz was shaking from head to foot. Exhaustion. Fear. Excitement to see the boys were actually at the end of her trail. Her body was short wiring.

The boys crowded close to the stove their knees to their chins, leaning on each other.

“Okay,” Suz said. “Okay.” She blinked. “Okay,” she said again. No. Not okay. What should she do? “Is this where you’ve been staying, Ari?”

He nodded.

“Is there food and water?”

He shrugged.

“Okay.” Water. There was plenty of water outside. She moved over the wooden planks that made up the base of the decking that kept them well off the ground and opened the pack and pulled out a cook pot and a clean t-shirt. Holding the t-shirt in a loose ball, she reached out from under the tent fly, bringing the cloth in and squeezing it into the pot repeatedly until it was full. She pulled a cup from the pack and made each boy drink several servings. She drank straight from the pot. She couldn’t afford to get sick too.

The rain would come and the rain would go, but maintaining a supply of water was imperative. Once they had all drunk their fill, Suz pulled her camel reservoir and funnel to the side of the tent, and there she worked to fill the water bladder. It would hold half a gallon – two liters. That wasn’t a lot for two sick boys.

“Ari, honey can you talk? Can you tell me what happened? How you got here?” Anything the boys could tell her might give her better insight in how to get them back out.

“Rebecca got sick, and we went to the doctor.”

“She’s at home now. She’s okay.” Suz reassured the brothers.

Ari and Caleb nodded, sad eyed.

“The doctor said we were okay to go to school. Mr. Cummings drove us. When we got there a bad man shot Mr. Cummings and a woman grabbed our hands and said we should run,” Ari said.

“We got sleepy in the car.” Caleb picked up. “When we woke up we were at the beach. There was a boat.”

“A boat? Were you scared?” Suz asked gently.

“I was too sleepy to care. You?” Caleb looked at Ari. Ari nodded.

“Were you on the boat for a long time?”

“I don’t think so. You?” Ari looked at Caleb. Caleb shook his head.

“Where did the boat take you?”

“We got out at a boat dock, and we went to a plane and the plane took us to another airport.”

“And then what happened?” Suz asked, topping off the water bladder and turning the cap on tightly.

“We drove in a car, then we walked across a long bridge, then we got in another car.”

“That’s a very long day for you. You must have felt tired.” Suz filled the pot again and moved to put it on the heater to warm so she could clean the children.

“We slept a lot along the way. But I was still really tired. You?” Ari asked Caleb. Caleb nodded.

“Do you remember where the car took you?” She reached in her bag and took out three meal replacement bars and gave one to each of the kids. They ripped the paper off and ate hungrily. So did Suz. She wanted to give them another. She wanted another herself — or maybe all of them in one big munch-fest. But Suz wasn’t sure how long she’d have to make her meager rations last.

When they had licked their fingers clean. Suz tried again, “Do you remember where the car took you?”

“It stopped in the middle of a road. There was a man with four-wheeler, they put us in the back in a wagon thing, and they drove us here and put us in this tent.”

“I see. Do you know how many nights you’ve slept in this tent?”

“Two,” Ari said.

“One,” Caleb said.

The turned to each other. “Last night we were here.”

“And the night before,” Ari said.

“Nuh-uh that wasn’t a night that was just a little dark and then them guys moaning outside.” Caleb countered.

“Yeah, you’re right.”

Them guys moaning? Suz was too exhausted to take in much more information. She decided to wait until the morning to get more details. “And they didn’t give you a blanket or anything?”

The boys shook their heads.

“Okay let’s see if we can’t get more comfortable.”

Suz vaguely remembered Jack telling her some basics of staying alive with the things in the bag, but this had been a joke gift. A zombie backpack, for heaven’s sake. She hadn’t really been paying attention to the contents of the lecture as much as she had payed attention to her teacher, how vivid his blue eyes were. How broad his shoulders were. She had watched his hands and had thought about how much she loved his caresses, how his hands warmed her skin with their broad expanse. She loved his callouses. She loved how he made her feel precious. She loved him. Just deeply and thoroughly loved him. But hated the fear that went along with loving him, she tacked on the end.

Suz pulled out a ground tarp. It was lined in reflective material. Jack had said to use it to reflect heat away or reflect heat toward her depending on the situation. They needed heat. Though the day had been unbearably hot, the night temperatures were dropping quickly. Suz looked around. Jack had said over and under for heat. She reached back in the pack and found a roll of bank line. Stuck inside the spool was taped a razor blade. Jack had showed that to her and said, “One is none and two is one.” Like that should means something to her. She had nodded, because who cared? There wasn’t going to be a zombie apocalypse. She used the razor to carefully cut stretches of cord and then used those in the grommet holes to tie the tarp up to the side of the tent. Now it had a base along the flooring to reflect heat up and a side to reflect the heat from the stove. She couldn’t figure out a way to get it over their heads.

Next, she pulled out a large roll that wrapped inside the top of the bag. She pulled the bands off and was surprised and thrilled to find they were no-slip hair bands. Suz took a moment to pull her hair into a knotted ponytail. She looked over at the boys. They stared at her with glassy eyes. Suz had thought that she was unrolling a ground cloth, to put another layer between them and the wood floor that felt slimy to the touch, but she discovered a vent with a screw top. When she unscrewed the cap, it released its vacuum and the vinyl backed cloth became an air mattress. Not terribly thick – but enough to get the kids little bodies farther up off the moist planks. “Ta da,” she said like she had done a magic trick.

That earned her a couple of weak smiles. Suz needed to take their temperatures and get some fever medicine in them. Get the mud off them and help them to feel restful. The dark circles under both of the boys’ eyes worried her.

Suz pulled out a little cylinder pillow. One end was held together with a draw string. Jack called it a “stuff bag.” “You don’t roll your sleeping bag, Suz, you just stuff it in.” Suz opened it up and pulled out a limp sad rectangle of cloth. Jack said after stuffing it needs fluffing. He’d made her repeat the phrase. He tickled her while she did. By the third repeat she had been giggling so hard her eyes were streaming. And he had kissed her and looked into her eye with such conviction. Love. Love had shone back at her.

Suz cleared her throat as she stood up and started shaking the sleeping bag in the air, hoping it wasn’t too humid to get the down fluffed up and warm. The movement helped hide the emotional pain stretching across Suz’s face. She might not ever get to see Jack again. Wow. The thought almost put her on the ground. She was in enough trouble here. She had to push those thoughts away. This zombie bag is everything “Jack,” Suz thought. Keeping thoughts of him at bay is going to be impossible.

By the time she got their bed made, the water was warm on the stove. She used a small cloth to wash the boys. She dressed them — one in a hoody and the other in a fleece jacket. Suz pulled on a fleece vest and zipped it high.

She took the boys temperatures; both were over a hundred. She had them drink again. “What do you do when you need to pee?” Suz asked.

“I haven’t needed to pee,” Ari said. “You?”

Caleb shook his head.

Well that was something. Hadn’t needed to pee? Had they had nothing to drink? “Do you need to go now?”

Caleb nodded then tapped his brother. “You?”

Ari nodded.

It was still raining. Suz walked the boys to the corner of the tent and lifted the flap. “Can you kneel down and get all the pee outside the tent?” They did, and the rain washed it quickly away, but Suz wasn’t sure how she was going to cope for her own needs. That particular strategy wasn’t going to work for her.

The boys got into the sleeping bag and pushed over. It was a queen sized sleeping bag – she guessed that Jack had planned for Suz and him to share body heat in whatever horrible scenario he had conjured up that would have her using this bag—so plenty of room for all three. She took her poncho now dry from the heater and tucked it around the sleeping bag at a bid to keep the humidity off. Jack had said on the tablet, cold and wet is deadly. Suz stopped to wonder at the marked difference in temperature between day and night. It was pretty extreme.

The boys fell almost instantly asleep.

Suz worked at filling the water bladder again, filling the pot, and warming it on the stove so she could clean herself. Suz had never felt so disgustingly dirty in her life. She washed their clothes in the rain and hung them up to dry over the heat. Opening her boots wide, Suz turned them so the heat could get deep inside. Though they had done a pretty adequate job of keeping her feet dry, stories of jungle rot resurfaced and turned her stomach.

Her immediate chores done, Suz sat in a fresh pair of BDUs and stared at the red glow of the propane heater. She wondered how often they filled up the tanks. Was she wasting resources? She peeked out of the front flap and saw that all of the tents glowed softly with the heater light, and so she decided not to turn it off.

The rain stopped as suddenly as it had started but the drip, drip, drip continued. Now the night was filled with other noises. A jaguar screamed somewhere in the forest, and Suz thought that the fence served not only to keep them in but to keep other things out.

Here I am, she thought. Exactly where I wanted to be. Here with the kids. Here to help these children. It was a weird journey to get here. Now what am I supposed to do?