The poodles were being kept in a large pen on the orphanage playground. The circus people had been asleep when Chase tiptoed up to put Pepe in the pen with his friends. He thought the little dog might start barking and wake everyone, but Pepe trotted over to the pile of his fellow poodles sleeping in the corner and snuggled into them without a whimper.
“If there are any problems, I’ll be in the church,” the doctor said. “When the girl wakes up, she will be thirsty. You can give her water but not too much. There is a case of Montaña under the bed. It’s also important that she and her mother do not move. I’ve only been able to splint and wrap the broken bones. Undue movement could cause further damage. In fact …” He reached into his pocket and took out some pills. “If the girl wakes up, give her two of these.”
“What are they?”
“They’re sedatives, but tell her they’re antibiotics. She’s been a little difficult. Hard to keep down. I was thankful when she finally fell asleep. The best thing for her now is to rest.”
John stopped and pulled the topo map out of his go bag.
“Are we lost?” Mark asked.
“Not exactly,” John answered. “I just need to check on where we’re going.”
“What about the GPS?” Nicole asked.
“You need a satellite signal to use the GPS.” John pulled out a compass.
“We are lost,” Mark said.
“Not as long as we keep the plume on our right. We’re about here.” He pointed to a spot on the map. “Here’s the lake and the village.” He moved his finger. “They’re above the tree line, so we should be able to see them from this vantage point if they have any lights on.”
“If they have electricity,” Mark said.
John nodded. “That’s the tricky part. If the power’s out, Lago is going to be hard to spot, especially with all this ash floating around. They’ll be using candles and lamps and have fires going in their houses. It’s warm up here because of the plume, but down in the village, I’m betting it gets pretty cold when the sun goes down. I realize the plume is entertaining with the colors and lightning, but we’re going to have to concentrate our attention down the mountain to the left. If we miss Lago, we could end up circling the mountain clockwise. I’d prefer not to do that if possible.”
“Circling the drain,” Mark said.
John laughed. “I haven’t heard that phrase in years. And you’re right. If we miss the village, we’ll be in big trouble.”
They started off again, looking down the mountain rather than up at the plume. John took the lead, followed by Mark, then Nicole.
Being a competitive swimmer, Nicole had great stamina, but she was learning that walking sideways on a volcano was using muscles she didn’t know she had. Her legs and joints were killing her. But what bothered her more than her aching muscles was that skinny Mark, who looked like he’d never seen the inside of a gym, was loping behind John Masters with the ease of a mountain goat. And what about John Masters? She wouldn’t be surprised to see him start flying. All he seemed to need was a sip of water and something to do, and he was good to go. Seemingly forever.
She was still terribly worried about her mother and Leah…. And now Chase, she thought. I can’t believe he got robbed in this desolate place. I just hope Tomás and Cindy have caught up to him and that he’s okay. What if he’s alone in the dark, maybe injured, maybe even —
She stopped suddenly, then took a step backward and shined her headlamp down to make sure, hoping her eyes had been playing tricks on her in the dark. They weren’t.
“Back here,” she called out.
John and Mark were about thirty feet ahead of her. Their headlamps turned in her direction.
“What is it?” John asked.
“Don’t tell me you’ve found another chimp,” Mark said.
“You’d better come look.”
The men walked back to where she was standing. She hadn’t moved an inch.
“Well?” John said.
Nicole shined her headlamp down. “On the ground.”
“My God!” Mark said. “They have bears here?”
“That’s not a bear track,” Nicole said, her mouth suddenly dry. “It’s a tiger track.”
Chase sat between Mrs. Rossi’s and Leah’s beds, trying hard to stay awake. The last patient he had watched like this was his father. The doctor and nurses had begged him to go home, but he had stubbornly refused. The only time he’d left his father’s hospital bed was to go to the bathroom. He’d even eaten his food in the chair next to the bed, willing his father to come out of his coma.
Mrs. Rossi and Leah were pretty, like Nicole. The same black hair. The same complexion. With their eyes closed, he could only guess at the color, but he bet they were brown. Except for their height, it was obvious they were all related.
Leah began to stir. Her eyes fluttered open.
He smiled. Brown.
“Who are you?” Leah asked.
The blunt question startled him. He should have been thinking about what he was going to say in the event that she woke up.
“My name is Chase Masters.”
“You’re American.”
“Yeah.”
“What are you doing down here?”
“I’m a friend of Nicole’s.”
“My sister, Nicole?” She started to sit up and winced in pain.
“You’d better stay down.”
“Okay. Is there any water?”
Chase took a bottle of Montaña water out of the case beneath the bed. As he unscrewed the cap, he looked at the colorful label. It featured the lake, the church, and, looming behind them, an erupting Popocatepetl. He gave Leah a sip.
“That’s better,” she said.
“Oh … the doctor wanted you to take these.” He handed her the two pills.
“What are they?”
“Antibiotics.” He was off to a great start with Nicole’s sister. He told himself that it was for her own good, but that didn’t make him feel better about lying to her.
She popped the pills into her mouth and washed them down.
“You say you’re a friend of my sister’s?”
“We came down to look for you after we heard about the earthquake.”
Leah’s eyes went wide. “Nicole’s here?”
“Not here, but she’s … uh … close.” Chase had no idea where Nicole was. If they hadn’t heard about the Rossis being in Lago, they were probably in Puebla by now.
“I must be dreaming,” Leah said.
Chase tried to explain, but it was difficult because he didn’t want to tell her about the hurricane and losing her home. She had enough to worry about. When he finished his abridged story, she asked for another drink of water and seemed to be thinking about what he had told her. She turned her head and looked at her mother.
“How is she?”
“She’s … uh … sedated.”
Leah nodded. “We need to get her to a hospital. What are the chances of us getting out of here?”
“Not real good at the moment. There’s only one road in and it’s impassable.”
“Then how did you get here?”
“I climbed over the trucks jammed in the gap. I wouldn’t want to do that again.”
“I bet. So your friend Tomás is from here, and you two split up.”
“Right. We ran into a landslide, and I went ahead on a quad to find a way around the slide.” He hadn’t mentioned that he had gotten hit in the head and had everything stolen, including the quad. “Tomás is Arturo’s brother.”
“Our Arturo?”
Chase nodded.
“And Nicole is with your dad on the way to Puebla.”
“Or on their way back here if they got word that you and your mother are in Lago.” He hadn’t mentioned Cindy and Mark. That was way too complicated, and he wasn’t sure he understood why they were here himself.
“I’m still confused,” Leah said. “Actually I’m shocked. It’s not like my dad or my grandmothe
r to let Nicole miss school and her swimming. Weekends are out too. She’s a lifeguard at the local pool.”
Chase hadn’t known Nicole was a lifeguard, but he wasn’t surprised. He wished he’d never started this conversation. His mother would have called it a trie — not quite the truth, but not exactly a lie. Nice trie, she used to tell him.
“I know most of Nicole’s friends,” Leah continued. “I don’t think I’ve ever met you.”
Here we go, Chase thought. “I just moved to Palm Breeze.”
“Why would your dad drop everything and come down here to help us?”
“Actually he came down here to help Tomás and his family. It just turned out you were down here too. I guess it was fate.”
“Fate, huh?”
Chase shrugged.
“What does your dad do for a living?”
“He …” Chase hesitated. “He rescues people.”
“That’s a job?”
“He used to be a Navy SEAL.” Chase wasn’t even sure this was true. “Look, your dad said you’d be shocked when Nicole showed up down here. He said to tell you that Momma Rossi was convinced that Nicole had to come with us or bad things would happen.”
Leah smiled for the first time. “You should have started with that,” she said. “What else did Momma Rossi have to say?”
“Not much,” Chase answered, relieved, and wanting badly to keep the smile on Leah’s face. “She was a little distracted because of Pet’s calf.”
“Pet had her baby! Tell me about it!”
Chase described the birth, leaving out anything having to do with the hurricane. Leah’s smile broadened with each detail.
“Dad must have been frantic!”
Chase was certain Marco Rossi had been beyond frantic, considering he’d been trying to get back to the farm for Pet’s labor during a Category Five hurricane. “He was pretty excited,” he said.
Leah’s smile turned into a yawn. “Excuse me,” she said. “I don’t know why I’m so tired. I’ve been sleeping for hours.”
Chase knew exactly why she was tired and hoped she would fall back asleep before she asked any more questions he couldn’t answer without trie-ing.
“He’s definitely in front of us,” Nicole said.
“He?” Mark asked.
“The tigers on the show are all males.”
They had followed the tracks for at least a hundred feet.
“The question is how far ahead he is.” John squatted down to take a closer look at the tracks. “Pugmarks are a little out of my expertise.”
“Pugmarks,” Mark said. “It would be nice if you guys spoke English.”
“Pug comes from the Hindi word for ‘foot,’” Nicole said.
“Hindi, as in India, where man-eating tigers are from?” Mark asked.
“He’s not a man-eater,” Nicole said.
“Not yet,” Mark said.
“What are the circus tigers like?” John asked.
Nicole looked at the plume. The lightning was still crackling in the black funnel. Out of his cage, in the dark and the wind of Hurricane Emily, the big lion, Simba, had been a completely different cat than he was on the show. Ferocious, aggressive, terrifying. Nicole shuddered.
“They’re fine in their cages,” she said. “But out here the tiger will be confused, hungry. He may be injured.”
“In other words, we’re in deep trouble if we run into him,” Mark said.
“It would be best if we didn’t,” Nicole agreed. “Although at some point the circus is going to have to try to get him back. We can’t leave a tiger running around Mexico.”
John looked ahead into the darkness. “Where do you think the tiger is going?”
Nicole followed John’s gaze. “I doubt even he knows.”
“I assume none of these houses are yours,” Cindy said quietly in Spanish. They were on the final stretch of buckled road leading to the village square.
Tomás walked between the ruins with uncharacteristic slowness, scanning the rubble with his headlamp. “Our home is not here, but these are the homes of my friends. I have seen Popocatepetl erupt many times in my life. There is always damage. This is the worst I have seen.”
“Why would anyone live this close to an active volcano?”
“Because it is where we have always lived. The lake provides the water. The mountain provides the floating stones. It is a good place. There is no place that is completely safe.”
Cindy couldn’t argue with him, but she still thought living in the shadow of an active volcano was tempting fate.
They reached the square.
The only light came from the flickering fires next to where people were sleeping. It was cold. Thunder pealed from the flashing plume.
“A lot of people,” Cindy said.
Tomás looked across the broad cobblestoned square at the crude campsites and shelters. “This is only half the people.”
He looked beyond the fires and saw the patch of shrouded bodies lined up in neat rows. Next to some of them, people were kneeling. He crossed himself and walked over to where the dead lay.
Father Al saw them approach and stood up from where he was comforting an old woman grieving for her son. He gave Tomás and Cindy a weary smile. “The boy said you would be here.”
“Chase?” Cindy said.
“Yes.”
“Is he okay?”
“He is fine. He is watching the Rossis in the orphanage. They are badly injured.”
Tomás continued to stare at those who were now beyond injury.
Father Al put his hand on Tomás’s shoulder. “None of yours are here,” he said quietly. “The orphanage was spared. Guadalupe and the children are alive and well.”
Tomás nodded stoically, but it was clear that he was greatly relieved. “The generator?” he said.
“Broken,” Father Al said. “But it can wait. You and your friend need to rest. You’ve had a long journey.
“I will fix it now,” Tomás said.
Chase felt a hand on his shoulder and started awake. He turned around. Cindy was standing behind him with her finger to her lips, motioning for him to be quiet. He looked at the Rossis. They were both sound asleep. He stood up. Tomás was not with Cindy, but she wasn’t alone. A girl, a few years older than Chase, was standing in the doorway. They walked over to her.
“This is Blanca,” Cindy said. “Tomás’s oldest daughter.”
Chase recognized her from one of the photos on Tomás’s dashboard. He gave her a smile and she returned it with a smile of her own.
“Guadalupe is down in the kitchen cooking. Tomás is with her. Blanca will watch the Rossis.”
“I don’t mind watching them,” Chase said.
“Tomás needs your help with the generator.”
Chase couldn’t imagine Tomás needing help with anything mechanical, but he was pleased to be asked.
As they walked down to the first floor, Cindy explained what had happened since they had separated. Her voice got a little shaky when she came to the part about dangling over the abyss. He knew how she felt. If the pileup had given way when he was crossing it, he would be dead.
Fate, he thought. “So Nicole and my father are okay,” he said.
“And Mark,” Cindy said.
“Right.” He had completely forgotten about the sixth member of their team.
“As far as I know, they are all good. Like I said, the connection was terrible. From what I gathered, they’d found the circus stranded on the road to Puebla. They can’t go forward. They can’t go back.”
“Kind of like us,” Chase said.
Cindy nodded. “He said something about elephants and cats getting killed. Apparently, a couple of circus trucks went off the road. I think the drivers died as well. He said some of the cats — or one of the cats — had escaped. It wasn’t clear.”
“What kind of cat?”
“I think he said it was a tiger. Your father was afraid he was going to lose the signal, so he was talking fa
st. He brushed over it like it was no big deal.”
That’s because he’s never come face-to-face with a big cat in the dark, Chase thought.
“Did he say where he thought the tiger was?”
Cindy shook her head. “But just before the signal went dead, he said something about trying to arrange a rescue. I have no idea what he meant by that either.”
“Did you tell him about me getting robbed?”
“Yes, and he was very concerned.”
“Then he’s on his way up here to find me,” Chase said.
Cindy looked at him for a moment, then nodded. “I hadn’t thought of that, but you’re probably right. It’s not going to be easy in the dark with essentially no way to get here.”
“The only easy day was yesterday,” Chase said.
Cindy smiled.
Mark stumbled and fell. He had been walking behind John and Nicole. They ran back and helped him to his feet. He was more concerned about his camera than he was about broken bones.
“I’m fine,” he insisted, checking the camera. “I was focusing on the pugmarks, not paying attention to where I was stepping.” He turned the camera on and looked through the viewfinder. Satisfied that there was no damage, he turned it off and asked John, “Why are you following the tiger? Aren’t we in enough trouble? Things getting a little too dull for you?”
“I’m not following the tiger,” John said. “I’m taking the easiest path across the mountain. Apparently, the tiger is doing the same thing.”
“He’s right,” Nicole said. “Cats are generally lazy. This one’s taking the path of least resistance.”
“Really,” Mark said. “Then why did he walk up the mountain instead of down?”
John laughed and looked at Nicole. “Mark has a good point.”
“I guess,” Nicole conceded.
“Here’s the deal,” John said. “We may bump into the tiger or we may not. It doesn’t really matter. We don’t have anything to defend ourselves with. We can’t outrun it. Therefore the best thing we can do right now is to forget about the tiger. We need to concentrate on getting to Lago. That’s our only option.”