Life Blood Part 54

The flash of my pistol had given me the advantage for a second, since I knew it was coming, and with that edge I swung an elbow across his chin, then kneed him in the groin. It should have been enough to bring him down, but instead he merely sank to one knee and redoubled his grip.

Hey, I thought, maybe I know something he doesn't. How to take a fall.

I'd seen enough movie stunts to know what you're supposed to do. It'd be risky, but I knew I wasn't going to win a wrestling match.

I opened up with the automatic, firing everywhere again and again and again, getting off five rounds in a crescendo of light and sound, like a huge firecracker in my hand, enough to illuminate the stairwell like a strobe and catch him off guard. In that fleeting moment I slipped a foot behind his ankle and shoved.

I think I yelled as I felt myself being pulled forward. Then I realized he was wearing a heavy bracelet that had tangled in my hair. I'd been planning to roll down the remaining stairs, protecting my head, and let him bounce, but the pull of his bracelet ruined it. I felt myself being swept into empty s.p.a.ce, my gun flying away.

Then something glanced off my face, the wooden banister of the stair, which had mysteriously come up to meet me. I turned and felt his body beneath mine, arms flailing, a soft landing, till we rolled and I was beneath him again.

I struck out, a right fist, and he fell away, his bracelet disentangling as he tumbled farther down the stairs. Then I rose and tried to take a step, but it wasn't there. In the pitch dark the angle was wrong, off by just inches, and as I toppled forward into empty s.p.a.ce I reached out, taking a handful of dark air.

Finally I felt something clenching my wrist, and the next

thing I knew I was being swung around. I twisted sideways one last time, but then my head hit the wall. The hard marble caught me just above the ear, and I saw the darkness of the s.p.a.ce grow brilliantly light, then trans.m.u.te to vibrant colors.

Or maybe the hall lights had come back on. I only know I felt a set of arms encircle me.

"Come," Alex G.o.ddard was saying as he lifted me up. "They're ready."

Chapter Twenty-eight

When we reached the parking lot, several more Army thugs were waiting, grown-ups now, khaki s.h.i.+rts and dense mustaches, the regulation G-2 sungla.s.ses even though it was still dark, with 9mm automatics in holsters at their belt. I took one look at them and I think I blacked out. Steve and I were about to "disappear," and possibly Sarah too.

Probably in another hour or two. My tattered mind finally just slipped away.

Soon afterward, I sensed myself being transported in a large vehicle, and after that I was being carried, up, up, as though I were floating into the coming dawn. When I regained consciousness, I realized I was standing in a rainstorm near a small stone building. A dozen Army men were huddled inside, s.h.i.+elding their cigarettes from the blowing rain while they guarded a row of olive-green ba.s.sinets. Around me, censers were spewing _copal_ smoke into the soggy air.

I became aware of the cooling sensation of the fresh rain across my face, and wondered if it might clear some of the toad venom (surely that was what it was) from my brain. Maybe it was working. Instead of seeing vivid colors everywhere, I was abruptly experiencing a hyper acute clarity of every sensation. The stones beneath my bare feet were becoming so articulated, I felt as though I could number every granule, every crystal, every atom. The paintings and carvings on the lintel above the door to the stone room--I recognized it as where I'd spent the first night--sparkled, leapt out at me.

"Stand there on the edge of the platform," Alex G.o.ddard commanded, urging me forward. It was only then I realized we'd come up the back steps of the pyramid, where the G-2 men had parked their black Land Rovers, unnoticed and ready.

Looking down at the crowd of people gathered in the square, I realized they couldn't really see much of what was going on atop the pyramid. To them it was just a cloud of _copal_ smoke and foggy rain. Although the sun was starting to brighten the east, the only real light still came from the torches stationed around the plaza.

Then like a ghost materializing out of the mist, Marcelina moved up the steep front steps, leading a line of Maya mothers from the clinic--I counted twelve--each carrying her newborn, the "special" baby she would give back to Kukulkan, perhaps the way Abraham of the Old Testament offered up his son Isaac in sacrifice to Jehovah. It was a sight I shall never forget, the sadness but also the unmistakable reverence in their eyes. I wanted to yell at them to run, to take Sarah's votive babies and disappear into the forest, but I didn't have the words.

Next the women arrayed themselves in a line across the front of the pyramid, facing not the crowd below, but toward Alex G.o.ddard and me.

Then, holding out a jade-handled obsidian knife, he walked down the line, allowing each woman to touch her forehead against its flint blade. I a.s.sumed each one believed it was the instrument that would take her child's life, ceremonially sending it back to the Maya Otherworld whence it came. Had he drugged them too, I fleetingly wondered, hypnotized them or given them some potion to prevent them from comprehending what was really going on?

I kept remembering . . . a hundred other insane episodes of immortal yearning leading to a ma.s.s "transport" to some other "plane." This, I thought, must be what it was like in the jungles of Jonestown that death-filled morning. And Alex G.o.ddard was their "Jim Jones," the spiritual leader of the moral travesty he'd imposed upon the lost village of Baalum.

I was going to stop it, somehow. By G.o.d, I was. I stared at the women and felt so sad at the sight of the hand-woven blankets they held their babies in, primary greens and reds and blues lovingly woven into s.h.i.+mmering patterns that mirrored the symbols across the sides of the stone room. Their faces, especially their eyes, were transcendent in a kind of chiaroscuro of darkest blacks and purest whites, as though all their humanity had been caught by their blankets and shawls, surely created for this ultimate moment. And the mother of Tz'ac Tzotz was there, carrying him, the baby I'd so wanted to hold one last time.

Next Alex G.o.ddard emerged from the stone room bearing a basket filled with sheets of white bark-paper. He approached Tz'ac Tzotz's mother, then took a wide section of the paper and secured it around her face with a silk cord, covering her vision. Down the line, one after another, he carefully blindfolded the women, while they stood pa.s.sively, some crying--from joy or sorrow, I could not tell. Finally, at the last, he also covered Marcelina's face.

So she's not supposed to know what's really happening. n.o.body's supposed to know except him, and me. And, of course, Ramos and the G-2 secret police and whoever else is in on this crime. But, secretly, she does know. The G.o.d of the House of Darkness.

When he finished, he put down the basket, then turned to me. "Stand at the front edge of the platform and lift your hands in benediction. They all want to see you, the new bride."

I took a couple of steps, then looked back to see him adding more _copal_ to the main censer, sending a fresh cloud of smoke billowing out into the rain. As the incense poured around us, the Army thugs who'd been loitering at the back of the stone room began coming forward, each carrying one of the ba.s.sinets. They set them down on the stones, ready to start taking the children. My outraged mind flashed on Ghirlandajo's "Ma.s.sacre of the Innocents." Here, though, Sarah's children weren't being stabbed to death; they were being--kidnapped and stolen.

Revulsion pierced through me as though I'd been hit by a jagged shaft of lightning, but instead of being knocked down, I was energized. Or maybe the final effects of the toad venom were giving me a spurt of adrenaline. Letting his criminal charade continue one second longer became unbearable. What would happen to me, I didn't know, but I couldn't let it go on.

"No," I yelled, startling myself by the sound of my own voice. "In G.o.d's name, stop."

The rain was growing more intense, and I was soaked and bleary-eyed, but before I could think I found myself stalking over to Tz'ac Tzotz's mother, shouting at her. The next thing I knew I was ripping the paper from her frightened eyes. I hugged her as best I could, then yelled back at Marcelina.

"Tell them all to take off their blindfolds. This is obscene."

Then I went on autopilot, shutting out everything around me--the rain, the perilous sides of the pyramid, the pistol-carrying G-2 thugs, even Alex G.o.ddard. The way I remember it now, it all took place in slow motion, like some underwater dream sequence, but surely it was just the opposite.

Anyway, I do know I snapped. I started shouting again, and with the G-2 hoods momentarily frozen, I started flinging the still-empty ba.s.sinets down the steep side of the pyramid, where they just bounced away into the rain. As I watched them disappearing, one after another, I felt marvelously emboldened. I would throw one and watch it go flying, and then I would throw another. Yes, d.a.m.n it, yes!

I wanted to show anybody with two eyes that it was all a sham. Once they realized what was really happening, surely they would rise up and drive Alex G.o.ddard from their home.

For a moment it seemed to be working. A stunned silence was slowly spreading over the square, while everybody around me was paralyzed, like waxworks. Maybe it's the same way you're temporarily caught off guard when a stranger on the street goes berserk.

By the time I'd flung away the last ba.s.sinet, the women had all removed their blindfolds and were staring at me, dumbfounded. Finally, Tz'ac Tzotz's mother whispered something to Marcelina, and she turned to me.

"She wants to know why you're angry. You're the bride. They only want to please you."

Angry? I was terrified, but also fighting mad.

"Marcelina, this is all a ghastly lie." I'd finished throwing and I was moving to the next stage. Get control. Could he risk killing me in front of all these people? "Tell them to take their babies and hide in the forest."

That was when I heard a cry that pierced through the rain and across the square beyond, and I turned back to see Alex G.o.ddard shoving toward me. He's coming to murder me, since I've exposed him. But I wouldn't let it happen without a fight. I clenched my fists, waiting, feeling my adrenaline surge.

Instead, though, he just brushed past me, headed toward the edge of the platform. At first I didn't know why, but he was intent on something off in the mist, his open hands thrust up at the rainy skies.

That was when I heard the Guatemalan Army hoods yelling curses.

"_Vete ala chingada!_"

They also were staring off to the south, in the same direction.

Hadn't they noticed I'd just dismantled their sick pageant? I wanted a reaction that would drive home the truth to Marcelina, to the mothers, to everyone.

"d.a.m.n it, look at me," I yelled, first at him and then at the G-2 thugs. "_Mira!_" But their focus still was on something beyond the square.

Finally I turned, following their gaze, and for a second I too forgot all about everything else. An intense red glow was illuminating the morning sky from the direction of the clinic, a vibrant electric rose weaving its hues in the mist. Then I saw spewing spikes of flame, orange and yellow, dancing over the top of the clinic. There was a finality about it that momentarily took my breath away.

Then it hit me. Steve's in there. It was a horror that, in my initial shock, I couldn't actually process, the thought just hovering in the recesses of my brain defying me to accept it.

Then Alex G.o.ddard turned back, shouting at the Army men in rapid Spanish--I recognized the word for fire--that galvanized them to action. They snapped out of their mental paralysis and headed down the pyramid, toward two Land Rovers parked at the back.