60 km Southwest of Kanavayén, Estado Bolivar, Venezuela
28 March
It was silent during the last leg of their trip because José had said much more than he should have last night. He glanced over at his passenger, a slim nineteen-year-old blonde American named Brittany in what she called a ‘gap year’. He was thankful the concept hadn’t existed ten years ago when his kids were finishing high school.
One of Brittany’s hands wrapped loosely around the Jeep’s grab bar in anticipation of the next bump, while the other held a Médecins Sans Frontières Basic Spanish book. Her lips moved, silently mispronouncing Spanish words. She’d only picked up the book ninety minutes ago, when they’d gotten out of cellphone range and she couldn’t use any of her social networks.
He took a small sip of water to assuage the dry mouth that had plagued him since he’d woken up at three a.m and a pounding headache had kept him from going back to sleep. It was only a small sip because he didn’t want to stop. They’d gotten a late start and he wanted to reach San Miguel before sundown. He’d told Brittany it was so he could avoid the rocks and ruts in what passed for a road, but the reality was that he didn’t want to scare her with the prospect of running into bandits or soldiers. The bandits mostly respected the red cross on the Jeep’s doors. The soldiers mostly didn’t.
He snuck another glance at her. She knew he was looking, but didn’t look back: He had refused to meet her eyes today. She had no idea why.
It had started innocently enough. José was one of those people whose default expression is a smile. He wasn’t smiling last night at dinner. It took half a bottle of Miche Andino before he told her that this was day he should have been leaving for the Latin American Symposium of Microbiology, an annual meeting he hadn’t missed for the last eighteen years. But this year, he had nothing to present. No data. No results. No way to justify to his Dean the expense of traveling to Río de Janeiro.
His lab at the Universidad Central de Venezuela sat idle. He couldn’t get chemicals or supplies. The students were all busy protesting. All except his best student, Carlos, for whom he had been trying to find a postdoctoral position in the United States. It didn’t matter that he had no success. Carlos’s body, decorated with burns from cigarettes and cattle prods, was found two weeks ago, in a ditch outside of Caracas.
Brittany said almost nothing. She just listened, wide-eyed, trying to understand. In the sheltered suburbs of Georgia, her biggest problem had been that she couldn’t find shoes to match her prom gown. She let him talk, then helped him stumble back to his hotel room.
She didn’t say anything when he was late the next morning, nor did she comment when he just pushed his breakfast around on his plate. They hadn’t gotten on the road until six.
Nine hours later, she pointed to an isolated, towering red sandstone mesa rising from the scrubland. “It looks like someone was moving a mountain and dropped part of it in the middle of nowhere.”
“It’s a tepui,” José said, relieved the silence was broken so innocuously. “The plateaus are so isolated from the ground that they have their own ecology. Plants and animals you see nowhere else.” This particular tepui marked the turn to San Miguel. Maybe they’d make it before dark after all.
A bump knocked the book out of Brittany’s hands. José winced. His stomach had settled, but his head still felt like it was in a fog. Brittany bent over to retrieve the volume.
“Shame on you, José.”
José started for a moment before realizing she was referring to the bag of candy she’d found under the seat.
“I thought we were supposed to teach them good health habits.”
He smiled through his hangover. “You cannot teach children anything if they are afraid of you.” She frowned playfully, and shook her head. José protested. “It is only once a year.”
Brittany twisted around and moved José’s ancient rifle so she could put the bag into one of the boxes of supplies crammed into the back seat. Thirty-five minutes later, just as the Sun formed a perfect semi-circle on the horizon, they drove into San Miguel.
Brittany lifted up off her seat, peering anxiously as they slowed to navigate the narrow, red-dirt road that ran through the town. A large, circular common building was the village center. It was surrounded by long huts with clay walls and palm-leaf roofs. The Pemon, one of Venezuela’s indigenous peoples, traditionally lived in small groups that could be one family or as many as six or seven. Their settlements grew as mining and eco-tourism created centralized jobs. At about three hundred people, San Miguel was one of the larger villages.
Brittany stared at a skewer of lizards set out to dry in the sun. She was about to ask José if people actually ate them when she noticed the worried set of his mouth.
“What is it?”
“Nothing. I just wonder where everyone is.” He tried to sound casual, but knew he hadn’t succeeded. He tried again. “We’re a week earlier this year. Maybe word did not get to them.” He stopped the Jeep in front of a garish turquoise cinderblock building with a corrugated metal roof. A sign proclaimed it a recent gift from President Nicolas Maduro to the people of San Miguel de Árboles.
José brightened when he saw a rusty green bike leaning against the building. “Eduardo is here, at least.” He handed Brittany one of the lighter boxes and asked her to take it in, to the very back room. He looked around again, unsettled by the silence.
The quiet was broken by Brittany’s piercing scream – and a crash. José didn’t rush. She probably saw a lizard. Or a mouse. He set his box on the front counter and pulled a flashlight from a pocket of his cargo pants as he ambled back.
There was no lizard. No mouse. Brittany knelt over a boy lying face down on the dirt floor, clad only in a pair of black shorts. Her shaking hands searched clumsily for a pulse.
José knelt and gently moved Brittany out of the way. He put two fingers to the young man’s neck. “Check each house until you find someone. Tell them Doctor José necesita ayuda. Ahora, por favor. Bring them here.”
Brittany stood in place, white as a ghost despite all the makeup she had so carefully applied that morning. “Brittany. Now. Please.”
She ran out, rapidly repeating the phrase so she wouldn’t forget it by the time she found someone. José needed her out of the way more than he needed help. Eduardo, a strong, healthy fourteen-year old when José had seen him last year, was dead.
He clicked on the flashlight. There was no sign of trauma. Violence was rare among the Pemon. Arguments were usually resolved by one of the parties simply disappearing for a few days. When they came back, everyone pretended nothing had happened.
He rolled Eduardo over. Startled, he backed up so quickly he tripped over his own feet, landing hard on the floor.
Eduardo’s blood-streaked face stared back, frozen mid-scream in a superposition of pain and terror. His eyes were so red you couldn’t make out the irises. Tracks of dried blood led from his eyes, ears, nose and mouth.
José pulled himself up and approached the body. The flashlight’s cold blue beam showed that what José had thought was a shadow was actually dried blood mixed with dirt.
Eduardo’s left hand curled tightly around a pen. The appointment book José had left with him last year, in which Eduardo was to gather everyone’s complaints and prioritize so José could see the most urgent cases first, was partially covered in blood. Eduardo must have collapsed on it. José couldn’t make out the text without his reading glasses, which were still in the Jeep.
He grabbed the bag of candy from the floor where it had landed when Brittany dropped the box. He dumped out the contents and wrapped the appointment book in the plastic bag as he walked back out of the clinic.
José tried to clear his head by shaking it, but it didn’t help. Where is she? It couldn’t take that long to find someone. He walked to the nearest hut and froze.
Fifteen bodies lay scattered around the room. A half-dozen had been laid out on the floor, almost ceremonially, but the rest seemed to have been left where they had fallen. Shaking, he ran to the next house, and the next. He found similar scenes. Even through his mind’s fog, it registered that all the bodies were adults and teenagers. Perhaps the niños are somewhere else.
They were. Forty-two children lay dead on the dirt floor of the main building, grouped by family. They had been washed clean of blood, but no amount of washing could remove their frightened, comfused expressions. Scratched into the dirt was a message: Por favor enterrar a nuestros hijos.
Please bury our children.
He stumbled back out, into the main street, and spotted Brittany through a window. He ran and burst through the door
“No! Put it down!” His voice was so loud and held such great fear that Brittany froze, a dead, still-bloody infant cradled in her arms.
A moan. A man’s moan. In one corner, Felipe Pedras, a muscular 22-year-old, lay curled up, sweat dripping from his naked body. His hands were covered in blood, probably the result of trying to stop the steady trickle coming from one ear and his nose.
“He wanted to hold his baby and I was just—”
“Put it down! Now!” Adrenaline cleared his hangover. Brittany started to move back toward the dead woman from whose arms she’d taken the baby, but José barked. “Put it down! Right there! And don’t move until I tell you to.”
Brittany did so, watching José with huge, scared eyes. José stayed at the doorway.
“Felipe,” José called, “Soy José. Lo que pasó aquí?”
“Mátame,” Felipe croaked, “Mátame.”
Brittany tried to follow the conversation, but her brain had stopped working. José asked a question, then waited as Felipe struggled to answer it, gasping for breath and crying out in pain.
José took a deep breath and haltingly asked one last question. Brittany stared, transfixed by a drop of blood pooling in the corner of Felipe’s eye until it was large enough to drip down his face.
“Sí,” Felipe nodded. “Que Dios me perdone.”
José grabbed Brittany by the arm and pulled her outside, toward the Jeep.
“What are you doing? We can’t leave him like that.” José didn’t let go until they’d reached the Jeep.
“Stay here,” he said, his voice shaking. He extracted the rifle from the vehicle.
Even if Brittany had wanted to follow him, her legs were not about to let her. She watched him walk down the dirt street and disappear into Felipe’s house. She stood, fixed in place, not breathing, until she heard the gunshot. She grabbed the Jeep just as her knees gave out.
José returned and rummaged through the boxes still in the Jeep. He pulled out two one-gallon jugs of alcohol — all they had. He pointed at the blood on her hands and arms.
“Anywhere you touched anything, or it touched you.” He opened the other jug and demonstrated, scrubbing his hands as if going into surgery. Brittany mimicked his motions.
José looked down and cursed. He’d cut his knee rather badly a few days ago at one of their earlier stops. He pulled off his pants. The bandage was soaked through with Eduardo’s blood. He washed the area as best he could, swearing at the alcohol’s sting. He left the empty jugs and his pants on the ground and motioned for Brittany to get in the Jeep.
They hurtled through the darkness, bouncing wildly as José pushed the Jeep as fast as he dared.
The tears came in an avalanche Brittany couldn’t stop, forcing her to gasp for breath between sobbing jags. When she had no more tears, she spoke.
“Why are you going so fast? They’re all dead.”
“But we are not. Not yet.