One last glance at the troop carrier racing toward us, and I dashed off after them. Into the building, out of the dim daylight of the narrow street, into the interior darkness.
I couldn’t see a thing. My eyes hadn’t adjusted. The prison siren was dimmer. I heard screeching tires outside. The rebel reinforcements. They were on our trail. They were right behind us.
Up ahead, I heard running footsteps. My friends. I stumbled toward the sound. Then there was a loud bang and another door flew open, sending in gray light. I saw we were in a shabby corridor. I saw Palmer and the others rushing out the door at the far end of it, into the gray light of the day outside.
I rushed down the dark hall—out the door—into a cramped courtyard: a square of dead grass with a broken stone fountain at the center. Litter—empty bottles, crumpled newspapers, old cans—was strewn everywhere. Out here, the siren was loud again—so loud I couldn’t think. I didn’t try. I just looked for Palmer.
There he was, racing toward the courtyard wall. He leapt at it. Grabbed it. Swung up until he was sitting on top.
He stopped there, straddling the wall. He reached down for Nicki. She took his hand and he hauled her quickly up, helped her over the side. Meredith had already started to climb. Palmer grabbed her arm and helped her over. Jim clawed his way up next.
I raced toward the wall and leapt as I’d seen Palmer do. In a moment, I was up and over.
Palmer dropped down beside me.
“This way.”
I was breathing hard as we went down a very narrow passage between two buildings. There was barely room for us to move along it single file. I glanced behind me, knowing the rebels were only a few steps away, knowing they could appear at any moment—and that if they caught us here—or blocked the way out—we’d be trapped and helpless.
But we made it to the other end and came out into a cobblestoned plaza. A large church blocked out the sky and cast the square in shade. Its heavy wooden front doors were shut. Its stained-glass windows were dark. It looked completely empty.
All the same, Palmer raced across the plaza to the church door. I looked left and right as we ran after him. There were no rebels in sight for the moment, but there were other people. An old woman, a hefty man in overalls, a young woman with a scarf over her head . . . They stood watching us, blank-faced, as the siren filled the air around us.
I saw Palmer bang on the church door—what sounded like a code—three pounds, then two. What was the point, though? The church was obviously closed, obviously empty. The rebels were right behind us. There was no time for this. No time.
I glanced back anxiously over my shoulder, expecting to see the rebels come racing down the little alley while we dawdled here.
When I turned around again, the church door was open. Palmer and the others were ducking through it into the darkness beyond.
I followed after them. The shadows of the church closed around us. The smell of old incense filled the air, along with the hollow chill of stone. I peered into the dark and saw Palmer and my friends following a small, almost dwarfish figure into the shadows. As I moved to join them, I felt eyes on me. I looked around and saw statues against every wall. The statues seemed to be staring at me. There was an angel with a sword. A man with arrows in him. The Virgin Mary. Jesus with his hand upraised to give a blessing. All of them were carved out of wood, their faces painted. Their eyes seemed to follow my movements as I hurried past.
Up ahead, there was a raised altar with a carved pulpit. A wooden Jesus hung on a cross behind it. On the floor just below it, there were several tombs—stone boxes—set in a row against one wall.
Palmer and the dwarfish figure reached one of the tombs. They stood shoulder to shoulder on one side of it and began pushing at the lid. The heavy slab shifted with a grating noise.
I shivered, watching them. It seemed a gruesome enterprise: Palmer and that dark, small figure opening a coffin in this shadowy, mysterious place. I glanced around at the statues on every side of us—then up at the crucifix on the altar. Jesus seemed to be looking down at me. Man, I hoped he was!
I came up alongside the others. Now I could see: the dwarfish figure was a Catholic priest. He was a tiny, scrawny little guy with a wrinkled face and a down-turning mustache that made his expression look mournful. In his black suit and white collar, he looked almost like a child playing dress-up. It didn’t seem like he could possibly have enough strength to move that coffin lid.
But with Palmer’s help, he did. The slab kept moving. In another moment, the tomb stood open before us.
“Come on,” Palmer said in a harsh whisper. “Get in the coffin.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Meredith was the first to move. She stepped up to the tomb. Palmer held out his hand to her and she took it. He held her steady as she put one leg over the side of the coffin, then the other. She climbed in and lowered herself down until she was out of sight. Nicki came forward next. I could see the fear in her eyes even in the shadows. Palmer helped her over the side as he had Meredith. Again, I watched her as she sank down into the stone box. Jim took a deep breath and followed.
Then it was my turn. I swallowed hard as I approached the tomb. I had this idea in my mind that I would look over the side and see Meredith and Nicki and Jim in there all huddled together with a long-rotten corpse lying close beside them. I stepped up to the side of the coffin and looked down.
I breathed a sigh of relief. In fact, the tomb had no bottom. It hid an opening onto a stairway. The stairs led down into a darkness lit only by a dim, red, wavering light.
I climbed over the edge of the tomb and lowered myself onto the first step. Then, clutching a metal railing to keep myself steady on the narrow stairs, I made my way down.
My sneakers touched a rough stone floor. The darkness was even deeper down here than in the church above, but by the small flickering red glow I could make out the silhouettes of Meredith, Nicki, and Jim standing nearby, their eyes gleaming. As my eyes adjusted a little, I could see they were standing at the entrance of a shadowy maze of vaulted corridors. I could see the halls going off into darkness in all directions.
Another moment and Palmer stepped off the stairs and stood beside me.
“What is this place?” I whispered.
“Catacombs,” he said softly. “They’ve been burying people down here for five hundred years.”
Now I heard stone grating on stone over my head. I looked up just in time to see the dim light of the church disappearing up there as the little priest—without any help at all this time—pushed the great slab of the coffin lid back into its place.
Palmer whispered, “This way.”
We all followed him into the corridors.
We wound down one stone hall and then another. In moments, I had lost my sense of direction. I had lost my sense of the world outside. Out there, in the light, it was warm with summer. But here, it was dank and cold. The chill that I’d felt in the church upstairs grew deeper with every step we took. It seemed to creep under my skin and into my bones.
We took another turn. The wavering red glow grew brighter. In its flickering light, I looked at the catacomb walls. Now and then I’d see a little alcove in them. Some of the alcoves were empty. Some held what looked like coffins. In one, there was all that was left of a skeleton, grinning out at me through the red glow. Its hollow eyes spooked me as we went past. Then it was gone—and I told myself it had just been my imagination. But a few yards on, there was another skeleton lying embedded in the wall. Generally, I kind of think skeletons are cool. But it turns out I don’t actually like sharing space with them.
At last, we turned a corner and came into a more open area—a sort of room where the various corridors came together. There was a large heater set against one wall here. A large electric fire was flickering in it, warming the dank air and giving off a bright red light. Nearby, there was a watercooler with a stack of paper cups beside it. And there were sleeping bags rolled up neatly in one corner, as i
f the space had been prepared for us as a place of rest.
“All right,” Palmer said. “We’ll be safe here for a while.”
I glanced over at him. His eyes glowed with the reflection of the heater.
“How did they know?” I asked him. “How did they know we would be coming?”
He shrugged. “It’s a hard country with a lot of trouble. They knew someone would be coming, they just didn’t know it would be us.”
I was about to ask another question, but suddenly I didn’t have to. I understood. The church was a sort of safe haven for people in trouble with any of the various violent factions in the country. Palmer had known about this just as he’d known about the temple in the jungle. Just as he’d known about the village where we found protection and food.
I guess there’d been no time for me to think about it before because only now, dimly and for the first time, did I begin to get a sort of picture of Palmer, an idea about who he was and how things had been for him these last couple of years.
He knew about these places—these secret safe havens around Costa Verdes—because he had been using them himself. Hiding from the authorities. Running guns to the natives so they could protect themselves from slaughter. Smuggling people to safety when they were in danger of being captured or killed. Fighting both the government and the rebels who opposed them—because one side was just as evil and murderous as the other.
Chased unfairly out of the Marines, Palmer had come to this hard and terrible country to hide away from the world and nurse his bitterness. I think he must’ve wanted to disappear, to stop being part of the human race that had treated him so badly. Instead, he had ended up helping the local people, protecting them when they had no other protector. Because he couldn’t stop himself from doing that, I guess. He was still the same man who had joined the Marines to protect his country. Hard as he might have tried, he couldn’t run away from his own nature, his own soul.
“There were people outside on the street,” I said. “In the plaza outside the church. They saw us coming in here. Won’t they tell the rebels?”
Palmer shook his head no.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because they don’t believe in the rebels anymore than they believe in the government,” he said. “But they believe in this place.”
“Yes,” said Meredith. “I’ve seen that. They do.”
“Fernandez Cobar says religion is the great oppressor of the people,” Jim said—but he didn’t say it in his usual way, as if he were trying to start an argument. He murmured the words softly, almost as if he were talking to himself. “He says people won’t be truly free until all the churches are destroyed.”
“Yeah, I bet he does say that,” said Palmer with a tired smile. “There’s a power here he can’t get his hands on and he can’t stand it. The old government was the same way. They murdered any priest who spoke up against them.”
“They always do that,” said Meredith. “It’s always the voice of God they try to silence first.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Tyrants,” said Palmer.
I expected Jim to start making some sort of argument or other. I expected him to tell us again about what a brilliant guy Fernandez Cobar was and how he’d written a book and articles in the newspaper and so on. But to my surprise, Jim didn’t say anything. In fact, I thought I saw him nodding a little.
“That’s why the rebels will suspect we came here, whether people tell them so or not,” said Palmer. “They’re sure to come in and search the place any minute. I’m going back to the stairs to listen and make sure Father Miguel doesn’t get himself hurt.”
“You want me to come with you?” I asked.
He shook his head quickly and was gone into the shadows.
Left alone, Nicki, Meredith, Jim, and I turned and looked at one another in the flickering red light from the heater. The expressions I saw on their faces were grim: blank and exhausted. They all seemed to be wondering the same thing I was: How in the world had this happened to us? We had only come here to build a wall. We had been ready to go home. We had been laughing, kidding around in the cantina one minute . . . When was it? Three days ago? Four? I had lost count. And suddenly—so incredibly suddenly—there was nothing but death and brutality all around us—a kind of danger none of us had ever known before.
The people I saw looking back at me through the darkness were not the same people they had been back in the cantina. I mean, sure, it was still Meredith and Nicki and Jim—of course it was. But it was not the same Meredith and Nicki and Jim. They had changed. Or maybe it was I who had changed. Or maybe it was all of us.
Nicki let out a long sigh. As she passed close to me, it sent a pang through my heart to see the bruise disfiguring her pretty face. She moved to the wall and slid down it wearily, sitting on the floor. Meredith gave a little groan and joined her. Jim settled onto the floor cross-legged. I poured some water from the cooler and drank a few cups greedily. Then I joined them, sitting down next to Jim.
There we sat, it seemed a long time. We went on looking at one another, too tired to do much else, too weary even to speak for a while.
“Amazing,” said Nicki then.
And the rest of us nodded. We all knew what she meant.
“What happened to you?” I asked her. “What happened to your face?”
“Oh,” she said—as if she’d forgotten all about it. “Don’t you like it? It’s the latest look. All the kids are into it. I call it: getting punched in the head by a rebel guard.”
I didn’t know whether to laugh or not. I mean, it wasn’t like Nicki to make a joke about something like that. She was more the complain-and-pity-herself type.
“A guard punched you?” I asked.
Now, even more surprising, she smiled at me in the halfdarkness. It was a lopsided smile of . . . pride, I think it was. She was proud of herself and her eyes were gleaming. And she said, “Yeah. He got mad because I cursed at him.”
I have to admit, that was more surprising than anything. My mouth actually dropped open. Was this our Nicki talking? Our bawling, screaming, please-don’t-hurt-me-I-want-togo-home Nicki?
“Really? You cursed at a guard?” I asked.
She turned to Meredith for confirmation. “Didn’t I?”
“She did,” Meredith said with a small smile. “I was shocked,” she added, not sounding very shocked at all. “I’ve never heard such language in my life!”
“You’re kidding me,” I said. “One of those guards with the machine guns? You cursed him out?”
“He was disgusting,” she said. “The way he was treating us. The things he was saying. I told him exactly what I thought of him.”
“Well,” I said, “I’m not sure that was very smart, but it was definitely very brave.”
Nicki looked down at the floor. I couldn’t tell for sure in that red light, but I thought she was blushing. Then she lifted her gleaming eyes to me and said, “It was because of you, Will.”
Really. She said that. I’m not making this up. “Me?”
“Yes. Because of the way you stood in front of me when we were attacked by that alligator.”
“Crocodile,” Jim said softly. “Or maybe a caiman, I’m not sure.”
“Oh, like, whatever, okay? Giant-reptile-going-to-eat-me,” said Nicki, rolling her eyes. It was kind of hilarious hearing her talk like that—talk just like the Nicki we knew before—here, in this skeleton-filled catacomb, with the gunmen all around us, looking for us everywhere and us with no idea how we were going to get out and get away. “After I saw you do that,” she went on, “I just thought, if Will can do something like that for me, just, like, totally risk his life for me, then I should at least be able to stop screaming and crying all the time and making poor Meredith take care of me like I was a baby.”
“You mean, me standing in front of the croc . . . the cai . . . the scaly green people-eater made you stop being afraid?”
“Oh no! Are you kidding? I’m st
ill way afraid. Right this minute I’m so scared I think my head’s going to just come off and roll down the corridor and then explode. I mean, did you see those skeletons in the walls back there?”
I laughed. She didn’t sound afraid to me. “I saw them.”
“I’m still way afraid,” she said again. “But I just thought maybe I could stop acting so afraid. You know? I just thought, even if I wasn’t really brave, I could start pretending to be brave so the rest of you didn’t have to listen to me throwing a fit every five minutes.”
“Yeah, but I mean . . . that is brave,” I said. “I mean, like, we’re all scared, right? We’re all just trying to act brave.”
“Oh . . . well . . . really? I don’t know . . . ,” said Nicki. “I don’t think Meredith is afraid.”
I looked at Meredith. We all did. She was sitting against the wall, her head tilted back. She was gazing up into the darkness above us. When Nicki spoke her name, she glanced our way, but didn’t say anything.
“No,” said Jim. “You’re right. Meredith isn’t afraid.”
“No,” I agreed. “She’s not.”
“You should have seen what she did!” Nicki burst out. Her voice was animated and bright, as if she was describing some cool scene in a movie. “When the guard punched me? We were in that horrible, awful cell. And the guard hit me so hard, I fell down. I mean, I was, like, lying there against the wall, almost unconscious—all, like, dazed. And the guard gave this horrible laugh and he started to come toward me. And Meredith stepped in front of him. And he, like, grabbed her arm? And she just stuck her finger in his face and started screaming at him in Spanish—I mean, like, giving him a lecture, like he was five years old or something. And all the time, the guy is holding a machine gun, right, and grabbing her by the arm and ready to punch her too. Only he didn’t. It was, like, he didn’t dare.”
I laughed. I could imagine that. “What’d you say to him?” I asked Meredith.