That’s all I’m giving out. I reach up to rub my skull, and all my muscles in my shoulder scream in protest. We’re both going to feel like a piece of crap tomorrow. “I’d love to stand and talk all day, but we need to move. There are only a few hours of daylight left, and we need shelter before the sun goes down.”
“I’m not moving an inch until you give me more answers.”
I stare at her, and after a few heartbeats of silence, she throws up her good hand. “Oh, what am I even talking about? I may not even get out of this place alive.”
“Yeah we will.” I look around for a stick. Bamboo would be good. “We’re going to look for some weapons—anything that could be made into a spear, like a shard of metal we can wrap to the end of a stick. There’s a black nylon pack with reflective tape on the bottom. It’s indestructible and if we find it, it has everything we need—tent, sleep blanket, mosquito repellant, water purification tablets, flint, lighters.”
“It’s like a survival bag?”
“It’s not like. It is,” I say smugly.
“All right. I don’t trust you, though, and I’m keeping my eyes on you.”
As if that bothers me. I pick up the half-empty water bottle. There must be more where these came from, although water is the least of our worries. With a leaf and a little sand, we can collect dew and rainwater. We need dry clothes and shelter.
It’s hard to see the sun because of the dense canopy of leaves, but the moss on the tree indicates we are standing north.
“You camp before, Ava?”
“No. Never.” She claps her hand to her neck where a mosquito had just settled.
“Get a malaria shot before you came down to Lima?” One of the biggest dangers came from the mosquito bites.
“No, but Rose did a shoot in Tahiti a couple of months ago and I went with her. We got a number of shots then.”
“Here’s our plan. We need to find long-sleeve shirts and pants. That’ll help protect us from the bites. If we can’t find that, we’re going to cover our exposed parts in mud. The dried mud will protect us from bites. We also need a large tarp or poncho that we can use as our shelter.”
“But if we find your pack, then everything will be okay, right?” She sounds so hopeful I don’t have the heart to tell her that the bag doesn’t have anything bigger than a paring knife disguised in the lining of a water bottle, which is fine for making fishing poles from bamboo but not great for fending off the predators of the jungle. The faint amount of sunlight that is breaking through the trees indicates it’s probably midafternoon. We have only a few hours before dusk sets in, and we need to be somewhere safe before then.
“Right. Let’s go.” I pull off my belt and withdraw the knife hidden inside the buckle and attach it to the end of the leather. Handing the bottle to Ava to hold, I wrap the belt around my free hand. After I have the weapons secured, I pluck the bottle out of her hands and chuck it into the dense foliage to the south.
“What are you doing?” she cries. “That was our only bottle of water.”
“I’m trying to flush out any animals like sleeping snakes and other bugs. There are about two hundred things in the jungle that can kill you, and most of them you can’t see until you’re on top of them.”
“What if we don’t find your bag?” Her tone is a little quavery.
“Then we use what we do have.” I grab her hand and tuck it into the waistband of my pants. “Hang on. Step where I step and watch out for anything that moves.”
She plasters herself to my back and like the sick man that I am, I enjoy the hell out of it.
We move forward and find nothing but the water bottle. After about thirty minutes of searching, I’m drenched with sweat from the heat and the humidity. Ava is panting lightly from the exertion. I mark a rubber tree with my knife. If I have to, we can use the latex the tree produces for protection but at this point, I don’t have anything to collect the liquid in other than the water bottle, and we’ll need that to store water.
“What do you think will happen to Rose when I don’t make it to Pucallpa?” she asks as we cut through another tangle of vines and dense underbrush.
“At some point the plane will be reported missing and a search team will be sent out. The plane’s black box has enough battery to release a signal for about thirty days. We’ll be out of this place by then.” I answer confidently, although my belief in our successful evacuation from the jungle is diminishing. There is absolutely no evidence of the crash—at least not south. “Duval needs you and the buy will take place later. Rose will be freed then.” This is all a lie. I have no fucking clue what will happen to Rose. Most likely they’ll rape and kill her but I’m not telling Ava that. She somehow believes that Rose is still alive. “Let’s go east and then north and see if we can’t make a wide circle of where we landed. There’s got to be something.”
“Like what?” She sounds tired. “There were only a few people on the plane, so there can’t be much luggage or food.”
“You found a few things, so that means there are more.”