Xbalanque hesitated as they struck. He waited an instant for the inevitable pain and final darkness. They didn't come. He looked at the soldiers; they stared back wide-eyed. Some ran for the trucks. Others dropped their guns and simply ran. A few held their ground and kept firing, looking to the lieutenant, who was backing up slowly toward the trucks and calling for Fernandez.
The warrior scooped up a brick from the street and, crying out his name in a mixture of fear and exhilaration, threw it with all his strength at one of the trucks. As it flew, it struck a soldier, crushing his head and splattering blood and brains across his fleeing companions before flying on toward the vehicle. The soldier had slowed its momentum. It was dropping as it streaked toward the truck. The brick struck the gas tank and the transport exploded.
Xbalanque stopped his rush toward the soldiers and stared at the fiery scene. Men in flames-soldiers who had made the shelter of the troop carrier-screamed. The scene was right out of one of the American movies he had watched in the city. But the movies hadn't had the smell of petrol, burning canvas and rubber, and underneath everything else the stench of burning flesh. He began backing away.
Remotely, as if through heavy padding, he felt someone grab his arm. Xbalanque turned to strike his enemy. The teacher was staring down at him through the shattered glasses.
"Se habla espanol?" The taller man was guiding him away from the square up a side street.
"St, si. " Xbalanque was beginning to have time to wonder what was happening. He knew he had never before been able to do anything such as this. Something was not right. What had that vision done to him? He was involuntarily relaxing and he felt the strength draining from him. He began to lean against the wall of a peeling pale-red house.
"Madre de Dios-we have to keep moving." The teacher hauled at him. "They'll bring up the artillery. You're good with bullets, but can you fend off rockets?"
"I don't know…" Xbalanque stopped to think about this for a moment.
"We'll figure it out later. Come on."
Xbalanque realized that the man was right, but it was so difficult. With the fear of death gone, he felt as though he had lost not only the new power but also his regular strength. He looked up the street toward the forested mountainside so far away above the houses. The trees were safety. The soldiers would never follow them into the forest where guerrillas could be waiting to ambush them. The- flat sound of a shot brought him back.
The teacher pulled him away from the house and, keeping his hand underneath Xbalanque's arm, steered him toward the green refuge ahead. They cut left between two small houses and moved sideways along the narrow, muddy alley that divided the clapboard and plaster buildings. Xbalanque was moving now, sliding and skidding in the slippery brown mud. Past rear gardens, the alley turned to a path leading up the steep hillside into the trees. The open ground was at least fifteen meters of utter exposure.
He ran into his compatriot as the other man stopped and peered around the corner of the house on the left.
"Clear." The teacher had not relinquished his grip on Xbalanque's arm. "Can you run?"
"St."
After a frightened dash Xbalanque collapsed a few yards into the forest. The rain forest was thick enough to prevent their being spotted if they stayed still and quiet. They heard the soldiers arguing below until a sergeant came by and ordered them back to the square. Someone in the village would die in their place. The teacher was sweating and nervous. Xbalanque wondered if it was for their unwitting victim or his own unexpected survival. A bullet in the back was not as romantic as a firing squad.
As they trudged deeper into the wet mountains seeking to avoid the soldiers, Xbalanque's companion introduced himself. The teacher was Esteban Akabal, a devoted communist and freedom fighter. Xbalanque listened without comment to a long lecture on the evils of the existing government and the coming revolution. He only wondered at where Akabal found the energy to go on. When Akabal at last slowed down, panting as they worked their way up a difficult trail, Xbalanque asked him why he worked with Ladinos.
"It is necessary to work together for the greater good. The divisions between Quiche and Ladino are created and encouraged by the repressive regime under which we labor. They are false and, once removed, will no longer hamper the worker's natural desire to join with his fellow worker." At a level section of the path both men paused to rest.
"The Ladinos will use us, but nothing will change their feelings or mine." Xbalanque shook his head. "I have no desire to join your workers army. How do I get a road to the city?"
"You can't take a main road. The soldiers will shoot you on sight." Akabal looked at the cuts and bruises Xbalanque had incurred on' their climb. "Your talent seems very selective."
"I don't think it's a talent." Xbalanque wiped off some of the dried blood on his jeans. "I had a dream about the gods."
They gave me my name and my powers. After the dream I could do-what I did 'in Xepon.
"The norteamericanos gave you your powers. You are what they call an ace." Akabal examined him closely. "I know of few others this far south of the United States."
"It's a disease actually. A red-haired alien from outer space brought it to Earth. Or so they claim, since biological warfare has been outlawed. Most of those who caught it died. Some were changed."
" I have seen them begging in the city. It was bad sometimes." Xbalanque shrugged. "But I'm not like that."
"A very few become something more than they were. The norteamericanos worship these aces." Akabal shook his head. "Typical exploitation of the masses by fascist media masters."
"You know, you could be very important to our fight." The schoolteacher leaned forward. "The mythic element, a tie to our people's past. It would be good, very good, for us."
"I don't think so. I'm going to the city." Chagrined, Xbalanque remembered the treasure he had left in the jeep. "After I return to Xepon."
"The people need you. You could be a great leader."
"I've heard this before." Xbalanque was uncertain. The offer was attractive, but he wanted to be more than the people's-army figurehead. With his power he wanted to do something, something with money in it. But first he had to get to Guatemala City.
"Let me help you." Akabal had that intense look of desire that the graduate students had when they wanted to sleep with the Mayan priest-king; or as one of them had said, a reasonable facsimile thereof. Combined with the blood now caked on his face, it made Akabal appear to be the devil himself. Xbalanque backed off a couple steps.
"No, thank you. I'm just going to go back to Xepon in the morning, get my jeep, and leave." He started back down the trail. Over his shoulder he spoke to Akabal. "Thanks for your help."
"Wait. It's getting dark. You'll never make it back down at night." The teacher sat back down on a rock beside the trail. "We're far enough in that, even with more men, they would not dare follow us. We'll stay here tonight, and tomorrow morning we'll start back for the village. It will be safe. It will take the lieutenant at least a day to explain the loss of his truck and get reinforcements."
Xbalanque stopped and turned back. "No more talk about armies?"
"No, I promise." Akabal smiled and gestured for Xbalanque to take another rock.
"Do you have anything to eat? I'm very hungry." Xbalanque could not remember ever having been this hungry, even in the worst parts of his childhood.
"No. But if we were in New York, you could go to a restaurant called Aces High. It is just for people like you… " As Akabal told him about life in the United States for the aces, Xbalanque gathered some branches to protect against the wet ground and lay down on them. He was asleep long before Akabal ended his speech.
In the morning before dawn they were on the trail back down. Akabal had found some nuts and edible plants for food, but Xbalanque remained ravenous and in pain. Still, they made it back to the village in much less time than it had taken them to toil up the trail the day before.