Survivors: A Novel of the Coming Collapse

29. La Casa de la Manana Grande

The GPS receiver showed the Durobrabis was forty miles east of the Belize Cays chain just before sunset on March 26. Four months after first setting sail, they were anxious to come ashore. The depth finder showed they were in three hundred feet of water, but fearing that they would approach reefs and shallows, Carston dropped all the canvas and set both sea anchors in order to wait overnight. He had nautical charts for Belize, but they were several years old. Knowing that profiles of sandbars could change in just one year, Simms decided to proceed with great caution. He said wisely, “I wouldn’t want to make it this far only to end up aground on some sandbar.”

They spent the evening excitedly listing to Wamalali Radio, an AM station in Punta Gorda. The city was most often mentioned by its nickname “PG.” There were also a number of FM stations broadcasting, but they were mostly playing music.

Proceeding cautiously, Simms piloted his boat though the Cays late the next afternoon. Not knowing what sort of passport controls might have been enacted under the current state of emergency, they thought it best to wait at anchor on the far side of Lark Cay until after dark. They could see lights dotted up and down the coastline. Then, as the next high tide approached, they motored quietly to the nearby point, past the Creole fishing towns of Placentia on the point and Big Creek opposite, on the mainland side. As they entered the twelve-mile-long Placentia lagoon, Simms was pleased to note that the local electricity was still on. “A good sign, that,” he told Angie.

The skipper ran the diesel engine at low revolutions for a quiet three knots as they progressed up the lagoon. Carston kept Angie constantly watching the depth finder. They passed by an odd mix of well-lit luxury homes-mostly at Seine Bight-and completely dark tin-roofed Creole and Garifuna shanties. They set anchor again just before dawn at the north end of the lagoon, near the village of Blair Atholl.

This end of the lagoon was very quiet. Just two other yachts were anchored nearby, with their sails covered and bright blue canvases snugged down over their stern piloting areas. From their stern markings, they could see that one was from Dunedin, Florida, and the other from Freeport, Texas. They soon learned that both of these yachts were under the protection of a paid “watchie man” from Blair Atholl. The black man, armed with a single-barrel shotgun, motored up in an ancient skiff with a round-topped outboard engine that looked like something from the 1950s. It used a hand-wound spin starting rope rather than a recoil starter. The man’s shotgun had a well-worn stock and had all of its metal parts covered with thick white grease that looked almost like wax. Andy surmised that it was for protection from salt water.

The watchie man, who spoke in a curious Belizean singsong voice, told them that the recently arrived owners of the boats had moved into houses nearby, one on South Stann Creek and one in the village of Georgetown. Neither of the owners, he said, had any plans to sail back to the United States. He also had been told to relay that neither boat was available for sale or rent.

Simms continued talking with the man, making barter arrangements to refill his yacht’s freshwater tanks, which were nearly depleted. Meanwhile, Andy went below and started gathering his gear. He explained to Angie: “I want to beat feet before anyone comes here with plans to do a customs inspection.”

Angie answered, “I think that’s wise, Andy. Of course, we won’t mention that you arrived with us. It’s best that you slip into the country the soft way.” After clearing her throat, she added: “Andrew, I’ll certainly miss the peace of mind that we’ve had with you on board. I think that buying a gun will be one of Carston’s first priorities here.”

Inflating the dinghy took less than fifteen minutes, and in the dead calm water of the lagoon, loading Andy’s gear was easy. The most time-consuming part was first mounting the dinghy’s engine and getting the fuel primed properly to feed the engine. As they packed the dinghy, Andy made his good-byes. Yvonne and Yvette were crying. Andy shook hands or hugged everyone but Simone, who just gave Andy a small wave from the doorway to the saloon.

Life at the Four Families compound in Prescott continued in a routine to the point of monotony. Without electricity, just hand-washing the laundry was a huge chore. And there was plenty of other hard work, mainly involving gardening and firewood. Their evenings were short and fairly quiet. Tuesday and Thursday nights were “old radio show nights” at Doctor K.’s house. Dr. Karvalich had more than a thousand old radio shows on a set of twenty-six CD-ROMs in MP3 format. He had bought the collection through eBay several years before the Crunch for less than thirty dollars. These were played on his laptop. The most popular shows were comedies like Fibber McGee & Mollie and old science fiction and drama shows like Dimension X and Suspense.

Saturday nights were movie nights, with movies on DVDs played on Alex’s seventeen-inch screen MacBook laptop.

Motoring over to the Cay took only a few minutes. The village of Blair Atholl looked small. There was one fancy estate development to the south, at Bella Maya, and a collection of modest tin-roofed houses to the north, in the town of Blair Atholl itself. In between was a sign that said “Blair Holiday Cottages.” Since that sounded vaguely English, Carston steered toward it. They pulled up to the dock and were greeted by a rotund, aging English ex-pat named Peter Ivens. Ten minutes of quizzing Ivens made it clear that customs officials rarely checked this end of the lagoon, that the only reported troubles in Belize were near the Guatemalan border, and that he would be willing to store Laine’s baggage for a nominal fee.

After depositing Andy’s panniers and duffels on the dock, Simms shook Andy’s hand firmly and said, “Well… safe home, Andrew.”

“The Lord be with you, Skipper.”

He spent the next half hour talking with Peter Ivens, getting up to speed about the situation in Belize and Guatemala. He concluded that Belize was fairly stable but that Guatemala was in a state of crisis. Several key government officials in Guatemala, Ivens said, had fled the country-rumor had it for Honduras-and had hence left a power vacuum. Criminal gangs and Communist rebels had commenced wholesale violence. Thousands of Guatemalan refugees and bandits were crossing into Belize, Mexico, and Honduras.

Andy summarized his situation for Ivens. He mentioned that he had “seen the bright lights of Placentia” and said that he had “made entry into the country,” so the man assumed that Laine had cleared customs. Andy asked if there were any ships likely bound for the Gulf coast of the U.S. “Not a chance,” the man said bluntly. “From all reports, Belize is strictly a ‘to’ destination, since everything in all directions is substantially more risky. You’re sitting in the safe haven. You should think about staying here until things sort themselves out.”

Then Laine asked about buses heading to the Yucatan. Those, he was told, had all been suspended because of the Honduran and Guatemalan refugee situation.

“Is there somewhere I could rent a car?” Andy asked. The man chuckled in reply and said, “My boy, getting a hired car was difficult in most parts of Belize even before this crisis. Even if you got to Orange Walk or Belize City, I have terrible doubts that you’d even be able to hire a moped, much less a car. The news on the radio is that they’ve been having problems with midnight flits. Same with boat rentals. People are petrified of renting out boats or anything on wheels because, sure enough, they’ll end up in Mexico or Honduras, never to be seen again. Cars and lorries are getting stolen left and right these days, so you can’t blame the firms for refusing to hire them out.”

“Could I hire you to drive me up to the Mexican border?”

“Sorry, no. Fuel is nigh on irreplaceable at present. I can’t spare any. I’ve drained all the petrol from my utility and hidden the cans back in the jungle. If they steal my vehicle, they won’t get more than a quarter of a mile down the road.”

Laine pondered that for a moment and then asked, “Do you know anyone who might have a bicycle or a horse that’s for sale?”

“No, but you might go and make inquiries with some of the landholders at Stann Creek. They’ve lots of horses there.”

“Okay.” Laine gestured to his baggage and said, “Give me a few minutes to organize this gear.” Ivens nodded and sauntered off to his office. Andy sat near the end of the dock and sorted his baggage. The dock sat below a set of stairs from the walkway and office above, so he felt safely out of sight.

He decided to travel light. He pulled out a one-ounce American Eagle gold coin and most of his remaining silver coins. He left the rest of his gold hidden in the stove. He briefly debated taking the SIG pistol but decided that on this trip the risks would outweigh the rewards. He tucked the SIG and all of its accessories in the bottom of the duffel bag with the stove. Then he restuffed the bag full and padlocked it shut. The key went on the chain around his neck that held his dog tags and his P-38 can opener.

It took two trips to lug the rest of his baggage up the stairs and into the office.

The luggage room was just an eight-foot-by-six-foot closet with deep, widely spaced shelves. But Laine was happy to see that it was equipped with a solid-core door and a dead-bolt lock.

In his rucksack he packed two cans of stew, a can of corned beef, a bag of raisins, a change of socks, his foul-weather jacket, a water bottle, and a small squeeze bottle of insect repellent.

Later, sitting at his kitchen table, Peter Ivens showed Andy a well-worn map of the district and pointed out the road route to Stann Creek. Andy copied his route onto a strip map on a clean sheet of typing paper. On the same page he jotted down the names of several ranchers whom Ivens had mentioned.

It took Andy a while to get his land legs back. When he first arrived on the dock, he had felt normal, but after he began the walk toward South Stann Creek, his legs felt rubbery beneath him, and he had the false sensation of the land rocking.

There was no traffic on the Riversdale road. Andy concluded that Ivens was right about the locals hoarding their fuel. As he walked, he passed by several citrus and cacao plantations and one banana plantation. The birdcalls were unfamiliar and the humid air had an odd smell that Andy could not place. The day was warming up rapidly, and Laine felt sweat gathering on his forehead and beneath his backpack. He started moving into more hilly terrain.

Suddenly, a group of five young men-four armed with machetes and one with a rusty FAL rifle-emerged from the dense jungle on his left. All of the men had shaved heads and three of them had bizarre facial tattoos.

The leader, holding the rifle at waist level, shouted, “¿Alto!”

Andy made a split-second decision: he ran. Knowing that he’d probably be shot in the back if he ran down the open road, he instead headed for the wall of jungle that began just a few yards to his right and plunged in.

He raced through the jungle as quickly as he could. He expected to hear gunshots but there were none. He could hear the men pursuing him, crashing through the brush of the jungle understory. They stayed just ten to fifteen yards behind him, never gaining or losing much ground. The underbrush was clumpy. He hardly noticed the thorns and branches that slashed his arms and cheeks as he ran.

Laine knew that if he tripped and fell, the bandits would be on top of him in just moments. His path started out level at first, but after three hundred yards the terrain began to drop off, descending toward a creek. Andy started picking up speed. He heard a shouted curse as one of his pursuers fell, but the others pressed on, losing only just a bit of ground. Andy found it hard to believe that they would follow him so far. He hoped to get ahead of them and hide in thick undergrowth. He could dimly make out some rocks along the creek, just sixty yards below. He was still running headlong when the ground dropped off unexpectedly, and Andy took a leap.

He fell fifteen feet, landing unevenly on one foot. He heard a loud snap and felt a sharp pain. He fell into a heap. Laine tried to get up to run again, but the pain in his right leg was incredible. It was a bad break, low in his femur. The pain was agonizing. He gasped for breath and looked up to see himself surrounded. He exclaimed between his gulping breaths, “Hoover Dam!”

His pursuers, also out of breath, were speaking rapidly in heavily accented Spanish. He didn’t catch much of the bandits’ conversation. He did hear “en Peten” twice and “por Guatemala” once, so he assumed that they were Guatemalan bandits.

He looked up to see the buttstock of the battered FAL rifle just two feet away from his face. “CHAVO” was carved in the side of the rifle’s blue-painted stock, and farther up the stock were carved the letters “FSLN.” In an oddly detached way, Andy wondered about the history of the rifle. Perhaps it came from the Nicaraguan Sandinistas three decades earlier. It seemed surreal, looking at the stock of the rifle with the rusty top cover and then at the tattooed faces of the bandits.

They quickly stripped him of his wallet, pocketknife, wristwatch, belt, and rucksack.

One of them started to take off Andy’s boots, but his screams of agony stopped the man.

The Guatemalans started to argue among themselves. Laine was petrified when he heard one of them use the word “Matale,” which he knew meant “Kill him.”

The leader of the group, who wore jeans and a white tank top, ended the argument by grunting, “Santo Dios. ?Vamonos!” He jabbed his forefinger toward Laine’s face and ordered his silence with a stern “¿Callate!” before turning to follow the others.

The five men quietly disappeared into the jungle, walking back up the hill toward the road.

Andy thought through his situation. He had no water, food, or shelter. His only tool was a tiny folding can opener. Getting back toward the road, he realized, was his only chance to get help. He also realized that he had to wait at least a half hour, to give the bandidos the opportunity to get away. If he called for help any sooner, they might come back and silence him permanently.

After a couple of minutes he caught his breath and became more conscious of his broken leg. He had never felt pain so intense in his life. Sweat poured off his forehead and dripped off the end of his nose as he did his best to straighten leg the out.

“Bastards!” Andy muttered to himself. Then, looking skyward, he said, “Give me the will to forgive them, Lord.” He waited for what he estimated was thirty minutes, praying aloud. His throat felt dry.

Laine started to crawl up the hill, pushing himself with his one good leg. There wasn’t much blood from around the protruding compound fracture. Each time that he dragged his right leg forward, the pain made him scream. The screaming set off a nearby troop of black howler monkeys. There seemed to be about eight monkeys in the troop. One of the monkeys, a large male, came to investigate. Peering down from a tree limb twenty feet above him, the monkey let out a grunt. Then it scampered off.

Laine shouted, “Yeah, some help you are, pal!”