The Last Photograph
by Wrestlr
2.
The next morning, we met Lucas. He pulled up in this ancient Ford truck; calling it “beat up” would be too kind—it looked like it had been driven off a cliff repeatedly. Mick had brought a backpack, he threw it in the back, and we climbed in. Mick and Pedro rode in the cab with Lucas, and I climbed in the back with Mick’s pack and Lucas’s toolbox, preferring the open truck bed to the tight squeeze of the cab.
Lucas drove like a maniac. Though he was probably around eighteen, he’d obviously been driving these roads for years. He went way too fast over roads that were way too rough, bouncing me around the truck bed like a rubber ball, and once nearly causing Mick’s backpack to go over the side. Might have, too, if I hadn’t grabbed it.
The roads turned to dirt, then to a barely there trail into the jungle. Lucas barely slowed. The truck bucked more than an amusement park ride. If I got pitched out, would they even notice I was gone? Bodies disappear quickly in the jungle.
He drove maybe two hours, possibly more—I lost track of time. The jungle was thick, made getting a good read on the sun’s position difficult. Still morning, but hard to say when. The truck slowed, rolled into a partial clearing. Now I could hear something other than the sound of my body slamming against the truck again. Lucas stopped the truck, killing the mariachi-rock version of “Twist and Shout” playing on the radio. There was a cinderblock house, the remains of one anyway, being dismantled by the jungle. The others piled out of the cab. I handed Mick’s backpack to Pedro and hauled my banged-up self over the side and down to the ground.
While Pedro went off to one side, unzipped, and pissed, Mick was his usually chatty self. “This place, I love it. The jungle, the beaches. Very beautiful. We started in Mexico City, you know, and that was wonderful, but very much like Manhattan, but it was always hot. And then, we went to Guadalajara and around the coast to Acapulco, and down to Costa Rica, then down the peninsula to here, and the jungle and the beaches are the most beautiful thing I have ever found. We came down here to get drunk on the beaches and fuck. It is also very lucky for us too, because we make such good friends.” He grandly waved his arm at Lucas and me. Lucas, returning to our group in the middle of Mick’s chatter, smiled nervously. I wasn’t sure he spoke English well enough to have understood half of what Mick said.
God help me, I wasn’t sure I could get through the day if Mick didn’t shut the fuck up.
Lucas hauled two machetes out of his toolbox. He hefted one and offered the other, grip-first, to the three of us. I took it, knowing I could handle it and not sure I trusted the two New York gym-rats with a blade.
Lucas led the way, with me right behind. The underbrush wasn’t bad. The trail had been traveled recently, but here, if you turn your back on the jungle for even a couple of days, the jungle kicks your ass and tries to take back what belongs to it. Pedro and Mick brought up the rear. Mercifully, Mick did indeed shut up, apparently willing to lose himself in the ambiance of his jungle adventure and the stories he would tell about it back in the concrete jungle called Manhattan.
The jungle was dense. Too dense to see much beyond the trail. Lucas knew the way. We hiked for at least an hour into the growth. Even in this shade, the summer heat and humidity were choking. Lucas took off his shirt. Mick and Pedro immediately doffed theirs too. A few minutes later, even I had to bow to the necessity and pulled my tee-shirt off, tucked it in the back of my jeans.
Pedro asked in Spanish how much farther. Lucas laughed and said, also in Spanish, “Those boys, they were all the time saying the same thing when I brought them here: ‘How much farther, how much farther.’ American boys can be such children!”
I thought to myself, Those American boys were probably the same age as you, you skinny smart-ass punk. Then I realized just what Lucas has said. He brought them here? The night before he had said only that he gave them directions. Maybe I wasn’t one of the Hardy Boys, but I knew enough to be suspicious. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe he took my brother and his friends on a nice, simple hike through the jungle and back, and then they disappeared sometime later. Maybe there was no connection to my brother’s disappearance at all. But there was also the possibility Lucas was the last person to see my brother alive.
Suddenly I was glad to have the other machete. Just in case. I didn’t want to be a killer. I didn’t want to be a mad dog again. But I would if that’s what it took to find out what happened to my brother, rescue him if he was still alive, bury him if he wasn’t, and get out of this in one piece.
And then we started finding paver stones underfoot. Then through a little tunnel of trees, and into a broad open place, there were the ruins. I’m not big on sightseeing, but it was pretty cool.
Lucas played tour guide. He pointed out a partial ziggurat that he said must have been the local temple. There was a structure like an arena. “Big,” Mick said, impressed.
Lucas said it was where they played a game that involved putting a ball through a stone hoop still mounted on one side of the “court.” The other side had already collapsed as the jungle reclaimed the place.
“This is where they put the heads through to score?” Mick asked in English.
Lucas looked confused. Pedro translated what Mick said into Spanish.
“No,” Lucas said in Spanish. “They used a ball.”
Mick looked at me. “I thought heads?”
“You’re thinking of Central America,” I tell him. “There’s some evidence the losing teams were sacrificed.”
“And they played like soccer?”
“Any body part but your hands.”
“See, soccer rules. Much better than American football.”
I turned away. The time was well past noon now; I was losing patience, and we still had the long return trip to make. “Show me where you took the boys,” I said to Lucas in Spanish.
He led us to the collapsing “temple.” We picked our way through a gap and down into a space below the ziggurat itself. Pillars supported the ceiling. Sunlight probed through cracks here and there in the ceiling, enough half-light that we could see. Carvings like crawling snake bodies lined the walls.
“This,” Lucas said, “was where they got separated.”
Separated?
I knocked the machete out of Lucas’s hand and a second later had him against the wall, my arm at his neck to let him know how easily I could break it. I snarled in Spanish, “Okay, asshole—tell me everything, and tell me the truth. Do you understand?”
Lucas’s eyes were wide, panicked. I’m a big, strong guy, and the Army trained me well.
Mick and Pedro were stunned. “What are you doing?” Mick asked, tugging at my arm but unable to budge it. Like I said, I’m strong.
I said in Spanish, for Lucas’s benefit, “This punk knows a lot more about my brother than he’s been telling us.” Mick gave up, unslung his backpack, rummaged through it. I snarled, “He said he brought them here, and they got separated. Then what, asshole? Then what happened?”
Lucas gasped around my arm. “I—I—”
If Mick and Pedro were over here, what was making that noise over there? I looked and glimpsed a shadow break away from a pillar and run.
I don’t know exactly what I was thinking, but suddenly I was off Lucas and tearing off into the shadows after the runner. He headed back into the darkest part, but I’m fast and heard him directly ahead. I launched myself. My shoulder connected with his hip, and we both went down, rolling on the rough floor. He fought, but I was a trained professional, and I soon had him immobilized on the stones.
He hadn’t shaven in a while, and he was a lot thinner, but even in the half-light I recognized his face. Not my brother, but he was the second from the right in that photograph. “You! You’re one of Paul’s friends. Tell me where he is!”
“Lemme go!” he croaked.
Footsteps ran up behind me. “He caught him!” Mick said.
Under me, the kid struggled fiercely and jabbed: “No! Lemme go!” I still had him down—I weighed more, I was stronger, and I knew what I was doing. He didn’t even come close to getting away from me.
“Hold him still,” Mick barked. While I had no trouble holding the boy down, I wasn’t sure holding him completely still was an option. He wriggled, desperate to escape. I’d let him up once he calmed down, and said so, didn’t he know we came here looking for him? What the hell had him panicked like this?
While I was saying that, Mick stuck his hand in the boy’s face. He held a small bottle with a mister top—one of those little three-ounce spray bottles. Fsst!—Fsst! He squirted it twice in the boy’s face.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I snapped at Mick, craning my head to look at him, realizing too late the boy under me was gradually ceasing to struggle.
Fsst!
Mick sprayed me point-blank in the face with something that felt like water but stank like weeds. I yelled, “What the fuck!”
Fsst!—Fsst!
Twice more. I couldn’t make my arms or legs work right. I was having trouble thinking right. Everything seemed to spin.