Doomsday Match (The Dresden Codex), page 9
Was this really about the Maya ball game? But, if so, why would someone want them to play it?
The kids had fallen asleep around him—he could hear their steady breathing—but he didn’t think Sarina was asleep yet.
“Honey?” he whispered, nudging her with his shoulder.
She sniffed, lifted her head up, and slid her hand up to his chest. “What’s wrong?” she whispered back.
“Aside from running for our lives in a jungle today? I’ve been struggling to figure out a motive here. Kidnapping would be easy to understand, but this? Why us? Why would the Beasleys pretend to be our friends and lure us to the resort? Is this really about playing the game?”
“I don’t think we can know any of that for sure, Jonny.” She sounded exhausted.
“I can’t stop thinking about it.” He wiped at an itch in his eye.
“If it is about the game, maybe only the rich are permitted to play?”
“But there are plenty of rich people in Bozeman. Why us?”
“Maybe they believed it would be an easy win. For them.”
That made him angry. Was that what they thought? If so, he was determined to upset the whole thing.
“Maybe.” He rubbed her neck. “It wouldn’t be the first time we were underestimated, though. What about those framed photos we found in the resort? Do you think that was some sick memento of past games?”
“Maybe,” she said with a sigh. “But there’s no telling.”
He considered that for a moment, then said, “You’re right. There’s no way of knowing unless we go back, and we’re obviously not going back.”
“No, we can’t go back.” She yawned.
“Get some sleep.”
“You should sleep too.”
He chuckled. “You know how long that takes sometimes.”
She was asleep in minutes, but after their conversation, sleep didn’t come easily to Roth. His mind kept working through different scenarios for why they were being pursued, none of them good. A looming sense of dread filled him, but coiled beneath it lay his determination to keep his family safe at all costs.
The others had fallen asleep quickly. Sarina cuddled against Roth’s body on his left, her head nestled on his shoulder. The Beasley girl lay to his right, and Suki was cuddled up next to her. The boys were curled together, next to their mother. He could hear the comforting sounds of their breathing. But what little moonlight could be seen through the canopy of trees failed to penetrate the thick shadows.
When sleep did come to him, it was in short snatches, during moments when the jungle fell still. Every strange sound roused him—and there were plenty of them—his mind conjuring unseen threats and dangers from the trickling sound of water and the murmurs in the darkness of the jungle. He slept in fits and bursts. His bearded chin kept bobbing against his chest; his eyes were scratchy and leaden. In his fragmented dreams, they were on a ball court, playing the ancient game he’d discussed with Sarina.
It was the sound of the birds that roused him fully, at the first blush of dawn. Their cries and warbles and shrieks called in the new day.
His left arm had fallen asleep from the pressure of Sarina against him. The tingles in his fingertips were uncomfortable, but he didn’t want to wake her yet. Jane Louise’s head was on his thigh. It was probably seventy degrees. Cool. Pleasant.
He thought maybe he’d let them all sleep for another few minutes. They’d need the rest for the day ahead. Then a startled cry wrenched his eyes wide open.
He struggled to get to his feet with two others confining him and saw a black-striped boa constrictor wrapping itself around Lucas’s leg.
“Get it off! Get it off!” Lucas howled.
Roth hated snakes. He was absolutely terrified of them. But with his son in its grasp, the fear was gone. He seized the first aid kit, still attached to Sarina’s bag, and rushed to his son. Bryant was clawing across the scrub to get away as fast as he could.
Roth reached his son and the boa, his stomach sick with worry. The creature was six feet, maybe seven, powerful and undulating. Lucas was pinned by its weight, trying to thrash free but already constricted by the bulging knots of the snake.
Roth let out a primal scream, hefting the metal first aid kit and swinging it at the snake. He felt the impact against its sinewy body. The boa unraveled from Lucas and slunk away, slithering down the pebbled waterway.
Roth stared at it, chest heaving, kit poised in his hand.
Lucas made it to his feet, his body trembling a little. “That was so gross.”
Brillante returned, holding a stick in both hands, primed like a baseball bat. He’d gone looking for a weapon, not to save himself. If Roth hadn’t attacked first, Brillante would have.
Roth couldn’t speak; his mouth was too dry. All the sleepiness had been purged from his system. Sarina came up and stroked Lucas’s hair.
“You okay?” she asked him worriedly.
He nodded.
Roth lowered his makeshift weapon, grateful the snake had given up so easily. It had already disappeared into the growth.
“Dude,” Brillante said. “It could have eaten you!”
Sarina beamed at him, her expression full of the same parental pride Roth felt. “Thanks for coming to your brother’s rescue.”
“Maybe it thought he was a rodent,” Suki yawned, then followed the comment with a mischievous smirk. But she was just teasing.
“A rodent of unusual size,” Roth quipped.
“I’m so hungry,” Lucas said. “My stomach was growling all night.”
“I thought that was Dad snoring,” said Suki.
Roth rubbed his hands together. “I don’t think this hotel serves breakfast until seven. Unless you want me to go after the boa?”
“No thanks,” Suki said. “Utter cringe.” Her glasses were smeared with dirt. She wiped them on her shirt, which was just as filthy as her shorts. “I was having a nightmare about the old ball-game legends. We were wearing these weird outfits. Like bark armor.”
“Bark armor?” Brillante asked with a snort.
She rubbed her nose. “It was weird. Then the whole snake thing went down. I don’t think I could fall back asleep now.”
“Everyone else awake?” Roth asked.
Jane Louise, who’d barely said a word since they abandoned the van, rubbed her eyes and nodded. There was something so sweet and earnest about her, and he wondered how she’d managed to keep those qualities while living with her parents.
“We should get going,” Roth said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. Just as he’d thought, it was dead. That meant no compass.
The direction of the sunrise told him which way was east. But it wouldn’t be useful for navigation for long. He’d read an article once about the human tendency to wander in circles in the wilderness. A German research company had actually used GPS to validate the wandering instinct. Their work indicated that people walking in the woods tended to go in erratic directions and would sometimes literally walk in circles. He could only imagine it was easier to get turned around in a dense jungle. Getting lost was a real danger.
“I need to go to the bathroom really bad,” Sarina said to him, motioning to a covert of jungle ferns.
He nodded. “Does your phone work? Mine’s dead.”
She took the pack and kit from him and then opened the pouch. She pulled out her phone and tested it. The screen stayed black. She shook her head. “It hasn’t dried out yet. Let me try the pump.”
He watched her retrieve the pump and try to activate it. Nothing came on the screen.
His nerves felt like they were twisted into knots. Sarina needed that pump. But he didn’t let it show. He squeezed her shoulder and said, “Go ahead and pee.”
“You peeing in the bushes?” Suki asked.
Sarina nodded.
“I’ll come too,” Suki said. “The boys have it easier. Jane Louise—want to come with?”
The Beasley girl nodded, and the three broke off from the group. After they’d all relieved themselves, Roth asked everyone to drink some more water. Moving the coconut tree had been a physically exhausting ordeal, and Brillante and Sarina had climbed up it. Today would bring its own host of physical challenges. Without water, they’d get dehydrated, which would cause them further problems. They each took a water bottle and then climbed up the embankment. Thankfully, their shouts earlier hadn’t brought any unwelcome visitors.
Roth held the remaining plastic water bottles against his hip, watching as the sunlight pierced the trees to the east. He turned so he could see his shadow pointed in the direction they should go. Following the shadow would work for a little while. But the sun was angled differently in winter, which meant they weren’t going true west. He scratched his neck.
How could they avoid the instinct to get lost? His own sense of direction was decidedly worse than the others’. He knew he couldn’t rely on it to see them through.
“You ready?” Sarina asked with a slight smile. A forced smile, he knew. She looked exhausted, and he thought again of the broken pump.
He couldn’t fixate, though. The only solution was to get her to safety.
“I have an idea,” he said, scratching his beard. A line was made up of points. He looked at Brillante, who was still holding the stick he’d found.
“Hand me that,” he said, gesturing toward the stick. After he had it, he cleared some of the brush with his shoe to expose the soft jungle dirt.
He drilled the tip of the stick into the ground in three places, then connected the dots to form a line.
“If we walk randomly, we’ll probably end up back at the resort. We need to go in a straight line if possible. That’s the fastest route to the fence. So this is what we’re going to do.” He pointed to the first divot. “Bryant stays here. The rest of us walk ahead to here.” He pointed to the second divot. “Then Lucas or Suki goes ahead to this point.” Tapping the final dot, he looked from face to face. “If we stay in sight of each other, we’ll keep going in a straight line. We’ll avoid going in circles.”
“You have boss skills, Dad,” said Suki with respect.
In video games, the boss level was usually at the end. They saved the toughest monster for last. You defeat the boss and win the game. He smiled at the compliment.
“Let’s do this thing,” Roth said with a smile of conviction. “We stay together. We stay close. We cheer each other on. That’s the only way we’re making it back.” He looked at Brillante and winked. “And no more falling into cenotes, okay?”
Not far in, they found a stand of wild banana trees. They had huge green leaves and pinecone-like trunks. The bananas were growing in clusters, probably thirty or forty bunched together. It was Suki who’d found them on her rotation. When they reached her, she was waiting smugly at the tree, her hip propped against it.
“Are those safe to eat?” Bryant asked, jumping up for a better look. Lucas was behind them.
“They’re in the wild. They should be,” Sarina said.
The cluster of fruit was hanging down low enough that Bryant could easily reach them when Roth hoisted him up onto his shoulders. He tore bananas down and started tossing them to the others. Roth’s stomach gurgled just from looking at the fruit. Bananas were a great source of calories and energy.
After Bryant stripped down several of them, he jumped down and grabbed one.
Roth liked peeling his bananas from the black end, not the stem. A friend of his named Alan Cox had taught him to do it that way, and he’d done it ever since. The fruit was firm and a little bitter and had many more seeds than what they’d found in stores, but soon the whole family was eating them. Roth’s smile faded when he saw Sarina eating a second one.
“Whoa, won’t that cause a sugar spike?” he asked her softly.
She shook her head. “These bananas are okay. They’re not ripe, so they have much less sugar, and the fiber has starch that slows the digestion.”
She looked so tired, but she was smiling, trying to remain positive. They all needed to eat to maintain energy.
The noise of a helicopter sounded overhead, revealing that the hunt was on again. But the jungle trees shielded them from sight.
“Let’s bring some with us in case we don’t run into any more trees,” he said.
“Bananas are breakfast, lunch, and now dinner?” Lucas asked with a groan.
“I’m sure we’ll be back at San Miguel in time for dinner,” Roth said. The idea of street-vendor tacos made his stomach growl.
“You doing okay, sweetie?” Sarina asked Jane Louise, crouching in front of the little girl. She clung to Roth’s hand and nodded without answering.
Sarina looked up. “I need to go to the bathroom again,” she whispered.
Roth closed his eyes. She’d just gone. It seemed like another sign her blood sugar was off.
“Okay,” he said, worrying.
When she got back, they continued westward from the banana tree. The boys carried extra fruit in the pockets of their swim trunks, and Suki had two sticking out of the back pockets of her shorts. Roth used the plastic wrapper of the water bottle case to store more bananas, and Sarina had filled her pack with them too. Off they went, heading west as best they could.
The jungle foliage altered dramatically as they continued their arduous walk. Instead of palm trees, the way was blocked by thinner, hardwood trees speckled with gray-and-brown bark. The trees grew close enough together that getting past them became difficult as the undergrowth thickened. The canopy was also thinner, which made them more vulnerable to the helicopter. Sometimes the sound of the rotors grew faint, and at other times it seemed to be right overhead. At one point, they came across a long-tailed mammal that looked like a cross between a raccoon and a badger, with a tail as long as a monkey’s, a long snout, and dark patches of fur around its eyes. Its pelt was as brown as the trees. It stared at them, and when Suki cooed at it, it bounded off in the brush and vanished.
They reached the fence at noon, the sun shining directly overhead. The temperature was in the low eighties, and they were all sweating and uncomfortable.
The fence was iron, the bars close together, but not too close. Roth could only imagine the expense of putting up such a fence. It was ten feet tall, with razor wire on the top, and it came in sections that were about fifteen feet long, lashed together with chains and fixed to cement footers. The bars were coated with jungle slime.
Brillante and Lucas squirmed through the barrier and gave each other a high five. Suki, Sarina, and Jane Louise wouldn’t have trouble with it either.
But Roth knew immediately that he wouldn’t be able to pass. His stomach sank.
“Tire tracks,” Lucas said, stomping his flip-flops.
Roth came to the fence and squeezed the bars. He wrenched against them, trying to jiggle one loose. It didn’t budge. He moved to another set, then tried to force a gap between two of the fifteen-foot sections. Nothing.
Sarina looked at him worriedly. She saw the problem as clearly as he did.
“Maybe you take the kids ahead,” he whispered to her. “I’ll find another way out.”
Sarina shook her head forcefully. “We go together.”
He jerked on the bars in frustration. “Even if I could get high enough, that razor wire would cut me to pieces.”
“Let’s follow the fence, then,” Sarina suggested. “We might find an opening.”
He knuckled his forehead, then looked her in the eyes. “You need to get to a hospital. It’s getting worse.”
“I’m not leaving you, Jonny. You don’t speak Spanish. I’d be worried to death about you getting caught.”
“Suki, come on!” Bryant urged.
Roth looked for her and saw she was standing close to him and Sarina. She’d been listening to their hushed conversation and had a stricken look on her face. Jane Louise was nearby, watching a colorful bug crawl up a tree trunk.
Roth rubbed his mouth and then tapped his lips with his finger. He heard the sound of an engine in the distance. A motorcycle, maybe. Or an ATV.
Roth stared at the jungle on the other side. Yes, there were fallen leaves and such, but they were regularly trampled. It was a dirt path, he realized.
Or a narrow road.
Urgency pumped through his veins. “Boys,” he said. “Get back on this side.”
“Something’s coming,” Suki said nervously.
Lucas squirmed through the bars, but Brillante stayed put and stared down the road.
“Dude, don’t be dumb,” Suki said. “Get over here.”
“What if whoever’s coming can help us?” Brillante asked.
A feeling of danger prickled at Roth. He sensed the newcomers were anything but friendly. “Get back on this side. Now!”
His son came to the fence and began to squirm through, but he got stuck partway. His mouth twisted with frustration as he tried to push past the barrier. Heart pounding, Roth rushed up and pulled him through with a strong yank.
The vehicle on the road was traveling fast. They still couldn’t see it, but its noise was getting louder.
How had they come so quickly?
Cameras.
There had to be motion-sensitive cameras along the perimeter. As soon as Roth’s family had appeared, the security station had been notified, and they’d dispatched a vehicle.
“Back in the jungle,” Roth said, grabbing Jane Louise’s hand. They all raced back the way they’d come.
Thankfully, the dense jungle swallowed them in moments. Two ATVs screeched to a halt, and Roth heard men shouting in Spanish. Their words were clipped and curt and very agitated. Yes, they’d known exactly where to go.
Sarina pulled him close and spoke into his ear. “Let’s stop and listen. They can’t cross to this side either.”
She was right. The boys were bolting over a tree. Roth nearly whistled to them, but he didn’t want to reveal their location.
