— I want you to go first.
— Then I’ll go first. I’m going to run between that one there, and the two that are on his right.
— But that one is the biggest.
— If we go to his right we will be headed for Tuxpan. And look, there are probably forty others if we choose the other directions.
— Crocodiles like to eat human feet because they know we make boots out of them.
— You can wait and if they come after me you can run where they are not.
— No. I go with you. You have a gun.
— Let’s do this quickly, Juan. I’m going to stand, take the suitcase in one hand and my gun in the other, and run like hell.
— I will also run like hell.
— Let’s stay close to each other in the jungle.
— I don’t know where the road is.
— I know you don’t. We can find it. Okay, Juan-let’s get it done.
Hood drew his pistol and grabbed the long-side suitcase handle and started up the beach. The bag was waterlogged and profoundly heavy and the drenched sand sucked his feet deep, then closed quickly over them. He was aware of Juan behind him and slightly to his right. He saw the logs coming to life around them, even the ones far up the beach. The big croc on his left suddenly rose and watched them. The two animals to his right both stirred and stood alertly. Fifty feet to the thicket of jungle. His heart beat very fast and his feet were sinking deep and were hard to pull out of the heavy sand and the bag was a cumbersome anchor. Forty feet. The big croc looked at them and Hood knew that their eyesight was excellent. The two animals to his right did likewise.
By the time all three of them had focused and made up their minds to kill them, Hood and Juan were just fifteen feet from the foliage. Under the weight of the suitcase and sunk nearly to his knees in drenched sand, Hood stumbled. Juan appeared on his right. Ten feet to go. Five.
The crocodiles launched with speed supernatural. Hood swept up Juan with his gun hand and held him tight against his shoulder and he charged forward into the black jungle. He churned across the firmer ground, ramming his lowered head and shoulder through the branches and the leaves, ripping the heavy suitcase through behind him. He ducked onto a path through a stand of river cane.
With the harder ground under him he managed a balance between the boy and the luggage and he leaned forward for speed. The dog shot past them, ears back and disappeared around a bend. Through the high walls of Carizzo cane the trail wandered, a faint, meandering miracle. He tried to run faster but had no strength left. He was pretty sure that crocodiles hunted only in water but he didn’t look back. He slipped and stumbled but kept a hold on both of his precious bundles. His breath came in short fast bursts and his legs felt heavy and slow. Up ahead he saw a clearing. He told Juan to be ready. Hood plodded all the way through to the end of the clear ground before launching Juan as high into the cane as he could, dropping the suitcase and turning to face the crocs with his gun up and ready, the barrel of it pitching down and up with his desperate breathing like a ship on high seas.
No crocs. Hood tried to hold the weapon steady where the monsters would come in but he couldn’t quite. He tried to listen for them but he couldn’t stop panting. Suddenly Juan slipped off the thick slick poles of the river cane and landed hard and now he crouched at Hood’s side with a short length of green cane in his hand, ready to fight.
— Is there. A way out?
— Yes, see the dog.
— You. Go.
— I fight.
— I won’t. Argue.
— You are too fast for them.
Hood stopped and wrestled the suitcase upright, then went down on one knee and rested his pistol on the bag. With the butt held firm he could cover the narrow opening into the clearing. He still had not heard them, no sounds at all coming from the jungle, no monkeys or night birds, no fish hunting in the mangroves or river lapping the shore, nothing but his own deafening breath.
A minute went by. Hood recovered quickly as young men do.
— They don’t come.
— I hope you’re right, Juan.
— I’ll show you the trail. It is made by cows.
The dog vanished again and Juan led. Hood lugged the suitcase from the clearing onto the trail. It was a narrow trail like the other. They marched briskly, taking long strides and the only sound was the sloshing of their shoes in the mud and cow dung and the lighter splashing of the dog up ahead. It was dark but there was enough light for them to follow the trail. Behind him Hood heard a flare pop open and at the edge of his vision he caught an echo of its light.
Half a mile toward Tuxpan the trail broadened to a path and became firmer and Hood was able to pull the suitcase rather than carry it. He pulled it gladly, his left arm aching. He looked at the dog trotting gaily on point and Juan not far behind, and he glanced down at Erin McKenna’s rescue bouncing along the muddy trail and he knew that he had gotten away with something huge and impossible to get away with, or maybe possible to get away with only once in a lifetime, and this had been that once.
The trail became a path that became the road and they trudged toward Tuxpan. There were fallen trees and clusters of giant river cane and grass and sea grape heaped upon the road, leaking snakes of every size, and Hood ploddingly dragged the suitcase around them like an exhausted passenger in a late-night terminal.
They walked into Tuxpan just before one in the morning. The electricity had not been restored and the streets were under a foot of water. Most of the buildings were still standing. City Hall was intact and appeared to be open as a shelter of some kind, generators humming, some lights on, people coming and going through the front doors with food and supplies. There was a Red Cross truck parked outside with its red lights flashing. The Palacio Municipal and the downtown shops and offices and hotels looked fine also. People had gathered on the higher floor balconies and they looked down at Hood and the boy as they sloshed along. Some waved. As they walked, Hood saw that a small mercado had fallen in upon itself, and an apartment complex was missing, and some of the humble homes on slightly higher ground above the river were gone also.
The Floridita was now only half a foundation tilted radically toward the street, the other half undercut and washed away by the raging waters. Hood and Juan stood and looked. The quaint old hotel was simply not there-no hand-painted Hotel Floridita sign, no welcoming lobby, no cheerful floral display or ceiling fan visible through the high glass windows, nothing. What was not swept away lay visible before them for a hundred feet or more, the water racing through it like a river around rocks. There were jagged piles of cinder blocks with the rebar jutting out, and the twisted remnants of water pipes and faucets and sinks and bathtubs and toilets-anything heavy enough to sink and resist the flood.
Hood saw that Juan’s chin was trembling.
— We’ll find them. Let’s go to City Hall. Where do you live?
— Veracruz.
— Why did you and your mother come to Tuxpan?
— To see my aunt. My father stayed home to work. What if everybody is dead?
— Let’s be hopeful.
— What if God only had time to save us and not them?
At City Hall they found Juan’s mother and Luna and most of the other people who had been in the room. Two of the elderly and one child were still not accounted for, and there were volunteers ready to search the riverbanks between Tuxpan and the harbor as soon as there was enough light. There were rumors of government help but no actual help.
Juan fled to his mother’s arms and they both cried and hugged each other and Juan’s sisters closed in also and Hood felt good in a way that he had not felt good in a long time. Juan’s mother looked up at him through her tears and smiled.
Hood and Luna sat on folding chairs in a corner and ate flavorless Mexican pastries and drank good coffee.