Final Chase Scene CLIMAX

MC Silencio is chasing after Silo Pol who, with seven-year-old MC Abbie in his clutches, is trying to make a getaway through the jungle. This is the second to last chapter in the book.


The Climax CHAPTER

Silencio came sideways through the front vegetation and went to one knee. Everything was a haze of murky green shadow and half-light. The air was filled with the rich tang of Jacaranda and the rotting, sour smell of fungi and dead leaves. Thin beams of sunlight slanted through the trees exposing immense spiderwebs shimmering in oval rainbows. As his eyes adjusted, he began to see broken ferns trampled on by La Joyita escapees. Any hope of hearing Abigail and Silo Pol was quashed in an endless cacophony of joyous birds. The outside breeze was gone now, and the air was still. Sweat rolled into his eyes.

Counting to three in his head, Silencio made a twenty-yard dash, stopped, ran twenty-yards more in a slightly different direction, and then another and another. He was following the route the escapees had taken and eventually came to a tin-roofed fishing cabin, now overtaken by the jungle. He stopped here to listen for the river he knew must be nearby, but again, heard only the birds.

The jungle was long and narrow, stretching for miles east to west with a river on one side and a highway along the other. Silencio moved on, continually taking the same short sprints, always changing direction. A jungle fighter again, his training came rushing back. There were so many places Silo Pol could wait in ambush, Silencio’s only real plan was to keep low and keep moving. To not be an easy target.

The tracks of the many fleeing escapees led him to a spot where daylight came through less tangled vegetation. He knelt here and looked out at a dry creek bed with a scattering of once red Balboa beer cans half-submerged in drying mud. Beyond this was a wide expanse of open marshland and then the Pacora River just out of view. In the far distance, he saw separated groups of men hobbling across the boggy flatland. Silo Pol and Abigail were not among them and Silencio thought now he might know where Silo Pol was heading.

Further on, maybe five hundred meters, the jungle split in half. In the middle gap, he remembered a dam followed by a public swimming area with picnic tables. This memory was from ten years ago, so it could be reversed, maybe first came the swimming area, then the damn. What he knew for sure was that further on, where the jungle began again, was what Silo Pol had called Lake House. It was a grand name for a one room, palm thatched hut on stilts. They had used the hut as a safe house after crossing the Darrien Gap from Colombia. If the hut still existed, it was where Silo Pol was taking Abigail.

******
Abigail had to pee so bad it wasn’t even funny. She could hear Silo Pol breathing harder and harder, but still, he didn’t stop. He didn’t even slow down. On and on they continued with Abigail bouncing on his shoulder.

Silo Pol occasionally switched her from one shoulder to the other as he swatted his way through the jungle vegetation. Because she was always facing backwards, she was always watching for Silencio but only saw more bushes and trees and long hanging vines. She could hear a zillion million birds but couldn’t spot even one and then she could hear helicopters overhead. It sounded like two of them. Her heart soared, but when she looked up through the trees, she couldn’t see them either.
******
The roar of two quickly passing helicopters caught Silencio by surprise. They were there and gone, leaving the jungle silent again. As Silencio waited for the cover of chirping birds to begin again, he thought about Silo Pol struggling with Abigail. He’d be on edge and impatient in that angry, bitter mood he got into when everyone around him became morons and incompetent fools in his eyes. Silencio had watched Franco take the brunt of this rage too many times before and knew that if Abi made any noise at this point, Silo Pol would silence her one way or another.

Another helicopter arrived, this one circling overhead. Silencio now ran full out, using the helicopter’s noise for cover. He moved at a steady, pace, ducking under vines, jumping over fallen trees. He sidestepped the spikes of Chunga Palms and the sharp barbs of prickling shrubs but ran straight through the ferns, unworried about the noise.
When the helicopter pulled away, he squatted down to listen for which direction it was headed and decided it was going back toward the freeway overpass. They would have roadblocks setting up by now. He looked ahead through the jungle for Silo Pol and saw nothing but more jungle.

******
Abigail wanted to tell Silo Pol she had to pee, but how could she with tape wrapped across her mouth and around her head? With all the bouncing she had to pee now more than ever and so, what could she do? She peed. All over him. It felt warm and wonderful, and she wanted to find it funny, but she knew it was not funny, not even a little bit, and she was amazed that for a few moments longer Silo Pol just kept running and Abigail closed her eyes waiting for his anger. Three of four more running steps and, “Mother fucker!” He stopped and set her down and she tried desperately to explain in frantic humming through the tape how she couldn’t help it and didn’t mean to when the back of his hand came hard across her face. Again, she was on the ground looking up into a monster’s eyes and she knew he was going to kill her this time and was relieved to find herself being lifted again and then she was bouncing again over his shoulder.

Still there was no sign of Silencio behind them and she tried to be glad of this, but she wasn’t, not really, and she continued to watch for him as the jungle tumbled up and down behind her and her face throbbing with every bounce.
Then she saw it. She looked down, and there it was. She reached as far as she could, knowing her arm wasn’t going to be long enough, and it wasn’t. She was surprised to see blood rolling off her fingers onto Silo Pol’s sweat-stained shirt. Afraid to squirm, she let herself be bounced slightly further over his shoulder and now her hand was so close the blood was landing right smack on top of the gun stuck behind his back in the belt, but still… she couldn’t… quite…

******
With the helicopter gone, the jungle was silent again, and Silencio had little choice but to wait it out. If he didn’t catch up with Silo Pol in this part of the jungle, he would catch him in the next part, or even at the hut.

The birds were just coming around--when the sound of a single gunshot rang out from the distance. The sound was still reverberating as birds flew from the trees and Silencio was running again, heading straight for the gunshot’s general proximity. Everything went back to being quiet in that instant, and the only sound left was of his own making. A crushing fear drove him on without caution. He ran maybe sixty meters crashing through bushes, making no attempt at stealth, and stopped cold when he heard the calm, unhurried voice; “The hero arrives….”

Silencio closed his eyes trying to vector in the voice’s location. It came from somewhere close by. Somewhere just ahead in the bushes. Ten meters more? Maybe less. And a smidge to the east.

He began moving again, now at a walk, heading two points east. His straight razor was in his hand, but he didn’t expect to use it. His only real weapon at this point, his only power, would be to make a false offer to Silo Pol, to give him back his money. And it would work too if he actually had the money.

After going well past the ten yards he’d predicted, he called out, “Where are you, Silo?” He got no response. He moved on again, at the same pace, always expecting that after the next bush he’d find Abigail either lying dead or with a gun to her head.

The vegetation was thick here and Silencio used both hands to part the branches and vines before him. Eventually, he pushed through a final shrub, took one step, and knew not to take another.

Abigail was holding Silo Pol’s Glock in both hands. It wasn’t the gun that scared him, it was the little girl holding it. Her face looked swollen. Blood flowed from her nose which Silencio saw was broken. The gun looked huge in her small hands.

Silo Pol was kneeling in a puddle of blood and floating leaves. He looked at Silencio by moving only his eyes. They were asking, “Can you believe this shit?”.

Then came the distinctive click. Both men brought their attention back to Abigail. The hammer on her gun was now cocked. Blood continued rolling from her nose down over the tape now bunched beneath her mouth. Her finger was firmly on the trigger. Her eyes were locked on the kneeling man at her feet.

Silencio said, “Abi.”

Her lips were a thin white line.

“Abi, look at me.”

The gun was now shaking.

“Abigail! Let’s go home!”

“Pull the fucking trigger, you miserable little brat!”

The gun dropped from her hands, and she came to Silencio in a rush. He lifted her, and she buried her forehead into the crevice of his neck. She wasn’t crying. She was stiff, she was trembling, almost vibrating. Silencio realized how hard he was squeezing when he felt the birdlike bones in her back scrunching together.

“You’re safe now,” he heard himself saying. He looked at Silo Pol kneeling in his own blood, his head lowered, his eyes open, frozen, staring at nothing.