“All right,” he says in a curiously blank voice. “Give me a few minutes and I’m going to drag this away from camp so no predators come this direction. Why don’t you head back to the tree?”
I nod and head back to our makeshift camp. It feels cowardly to run away, but I don’t care. I go to our nest in the trees and I’m not entirely surprised to see that Mendoza’s been super busy while I’ve been in the bushes, exploring the area. There’s a nest of leaves as a makeshift bed, and he’s started a lean-to that’s lashed with a few leaves and more vines. For a guy with one eye, he’s pretty handy. So what if the dick in his pants is bigger than the snakes in the jungle? I set the wood down on the leafy bed and work on the A-frame for a bit. I may be pretty helpless, but I know how to tie a knot or two, and I’m left handed, so that means I can just use my right arm as support.
I work on this for a bit to take my mind off the dead guy . . . and the very-much-alive guy. By the time Mendoza comes back, twilight is arriving, I’ve slapped a hundred mosquitos off my skin, and the lean-to is mostly done. I had to guess at how things worked, but Mendoza gives me an impressed look when he returns. “Good job,” he says.
“If I did it wrong, I’m sorry. I just—”
“No, you did great, Ava. Really.” He moves to my side and pats my shoulder, then awkwardly removes his hand again. “I left the body on the riverbank. Figured some predator will get it by morning and won’t come this way looking for it.”
“Okay.”
He squats near my pathetic bundle of firewood and I flinch, expecting him to give me shit for not finding more. He picks one piece up, squeezes it, and then shakes his head. “Too wet for a fire tonight. If we cover it and keep it in a safe spot, maybe it’ll be dry by morning.”
I swallow hard and slap at another mosquito. “Will we be okay?”
“As long as no big predators come looking for us, yes.”
“That’s not very comforting.”
Mendoza turns to look at me and reaches into his shirt. “I’m not a fan of making promises I can’t keep.” He pulls out a pair of small bags and smiles. “I did find this, though.”
Pretzels. “You found the drink cart?” My stomach growls hungrily, and I want to rip both bags out of his hand and scarf the contents down.
“Part of it. There were a lot of smashed cans and these two bags. I’m hoping we can scout for a bit longer tomorrow and find the rest of it.”
“No more water, though?” I’m really thirsty and the sips we’ve been taking from our bottle haven’t been doing it.
He shakes his head. “We’ll refill it when it rains again with a leaf, just like we did earlier.” As we’d walked, he’d taken a big leaf from a tree and held it, making a funnel while the rain poured, and I held the bottle. It had provided us some water, but I felt as if I could drink an entire jug.
“And no sign of your Boy Scout bag?” I ask.
Another grim shake of his head. “Or Afonso. If that bastard got away . . .”
“It won’t do him any good. If we can’t get out of here, he can’t either, right?”
He rubs a hand over his wet hair, careful not to touch the bandages on his face. A rueful smile crosses his face. “Right.”
Rain starts to spatter once more, and I want to scream when the first droplets hit my skin. It has rained off and on all day, and just when I start to get dry, it starts again. I’m not looking forward to sleeping wet in the dark jungle, and Mendoza just shakes his head and moves to the firewood, bundling leaves around it and tucking it against the tree trunk. He then moves the lean-to over one side of the trunk and gestures that I should join him. “We’ll have pretzels for dinner, unless you object.”
“And here I was hoping we’d dine on bugs,” I say lightly, and step in.
“That’s breakfast,” he teases back.
It’s so ridiculous that I laugh, and he smiles at me in the twilight.
We scarf down a bag of pretzels each, wash it down with a few mouthfuls of water, and then try to get comfortable. There’s not a lot of room in our tiny, half-assed shelter. Water still drips down, but it’s protecting us from some of the worst of the rainfall, so there’s that. Mendoza moves to the outside, and I realize he’s doing that so I can be in the most sheltered part of the lean-to, where the least rain will hit.
That’s . . . sweet.
“There’s room for both of us,” I tell him as a fat raindrop plops on his head, right where his bandage is. I gesture at the covering over his eye. “You need to keep that dry.”
He shifts uncomfortably and doesn’t move toward me. “I’m fine.”