“Pamela!” My whisper is an urgent hiss. “Pamela, we have to go.”
Weeping with frustration, she scratches at the door. “I know you’re in there. Why won’t anyone help us?”
I rush up to the door and gently drag Pamela away while Gwen labors to get the cart rolling again. Methodically, without haste, the two men follow us. We pick up speed, almost running now.
“Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God,” Pamela sees the men and whimpers with growing panic.
The cart jostles Bill incessantly, but we cannot slow down.
As we race towards the end of the street, two more machete-wielding men, visible only in outline, step out of the darkness. They stand in the center of the street, blocking our way.
“The alley!” Gwen shouts, and immediately steers the cart down the nearest alley.
We sprint down the alley, crashing through piles of trash and stumbling over the uneven terrain. At the end of the alley, we strike a gutter. A wheel snaps off the cart, sending Bill tumbling to the ground.
“Bill!” Pamela screams.
I rush to lift him up, and then I see a flash of white that snaps my head back and flings the knife from my grip. Falling flat on my back, my vision clears and I see Action standing over me clenching the fist he used to punch me in the face. Before I can move, a handful of men surround us. One of them seizes me from behind and hauls me to my feet while another places the pointed end of a machete against my throat.
Pamela backs against a wall, hands raised defensively. One of the men stands behind Gwen. With one of his hands, he clenches a fistful of her hair, jerking her head back, and with the other hand, he places the sharp edge of a machete on her neck. Bill is facedown on the pavement.
“Let us go! We have no money,” Pamela screeches. “My husband needs a doctor.”
Dispassionately, Action prods Bill with his feet. Bill does not move.
“Husband needs a grave digga,” Action laughs, deep and malicious.
We stand in the flickering light from a raging fire down the block. Action wears shorts and an unbuttoned vest without a shirt. The fire light causes his gaunt face to appear unusually cadaverous. His baleful eyes lock on mine; the malevolence in his dead, black stare makes it clear that begging for mercy is pointless.
“Well, well, what a pretty fishy caught in de net,” Action slides a skeletal palm over Gwen’s face and over her breast which he roughly kneads.
Panting with fear, she whimpers, and a tear slides from her eye
“Get your fucking hands off her,” I seethe.
Action mockingly cups a hand to his ear. “What’s that, you say? I’m sorry. You made a mistake, mon. You must be tinkin’ we still work for you. Maybe you wan Action to do a trick for you?”
He does a herky-jerky dance towards me, like an evil marionette, causing the men with him to laugh.
Drawing his face near to mine, his lips pulled into a leering grin. “Dis island is ours—not yours. Life… she roll de dice. Now we on top and you on de bottom. De water, de food, de women…” he nods knowingly to Gwen. “Dey all belongs to us. Now we are de ones in control.”
My heart thuds in my chest and my skin feels strangely cold even as sweat gushes from my pores. This is a feeling of bone chilling terror—the trembling pulse of a man who knows he is about to die, but despite my fear, a fury builds within me.
“You’re a fool,” I sneer. “We should be working together, not burning homes to the ground, raping and stealing.”
Action’s face twists into a cruel mask. He yanks the machete from his comrade and raises it to strike.
“Kneel,” he commands.
“Phillip!” Gwen cries.
Held by the man behind me, I cannot escape this execution. Time slows to a crawl. Life is pointless. All my hopes and fears, my tiny tragedies and puny triumphs—the love I felt and lost—none of it matters. Six billion lives vanished overnight; the loss of one more is beyond insignificant. In a moment, my head will roll into a trash-filled gutter, my blood pooling into the hard packed dirt. My life is a thing of no consequence, just as the lives of kings or heroes will cease to matter with no one alive to remember them, and their monuments blasted to dust.
“Kneel!” Action roars, and one of his men punch me in the solar plexus. The wind rushes from my lungs in a hoarse gasp and I sink to my knees.
I look to Gwen, my poor Gwen, the wife I could not save. In a moment, my suffering will be over; Gwen’s is just beginning. Our eyes meet and I know the only kindness this absurd life will ever give me is to look upon her face as I die.
Suddenly, Bill crashes into the man standing next to Action. In all the commotion, none of us observed Bill rise to his feet. Like a kamikaze, Bill hurls his weight into the man who yelps in pain. I take a second to realize that Bill took my fallen knife and buried it in the ruffian’s ribs. Howling in pain, the ruffian slumps to the ground and pulls the knife from his side. Blood spurts from the wound like a geyser.
“Run!” Bill yells, his voice faltering.
The man holding Gwen is so distracted that she whirls on him with a kick to the groin and breaks free. I roll to the side and dash towards Gwen
Bill wobbles and falls. Standing in shock, Pamela screams his name, but Gwen seizes Pamela’s wrists and yanks her away. As we flee, I dare to look back. Bill is on the ground. Machetes descend as Action and his men hack him to death.
At the end of the alley, Pamela digs in her heels and tries to run back to Bill.
I spin her so that we are face-to-face and state, “Bill’s dead. They’re coming for us.”
I cannot see the thugs, but their shouts echo through the twisting alleys as they fan out to trap us. Hysterical, her cheeks streaked with tears, Pamela looks in the direction of where her husband’s body lay. The sound of feet slapping on the hard earth increases. Fear of the murdering ruffians overcomes her grief; without a word, she runs with us. We dart through the maze of alleys, not pausing for a second. I cannot see the men, but I hear their shouts from several different directions, like the howls of wolves tracking their prey.
Through the curtains of a ramshackle home, I glimpse light. Frantic, I try the door. Locked. The voices close in, encircling us. I kick the door. It shudders. I kick it again and it swings open. We race inside, Gwen slamming the door behind us and holding it shut with her body.
“Whatcho doin’? Git out! Git out of my house!” A petite woman pummels me.
I swat her blows away , and hearing men approach, I seize her and clamp a hand over her mouth. Her struggle is so fierce that despite her small size she drags me to the floor where we grapple like Olympic wrestlers. I must not lose my hold on her mouth. If she screams, the men will know where we are.
I drop the entire weight of my body onto the woman and warn, “Quiet! We are not going to hurt you.”
Men skulk past the window. Gwen and Pamela, panting for breath, eyes wide as saucers, press themselves against the door. The knob twitches as the thugs try to enter. The woman beneath me freezes. Far off shouts call the men away. Cautiously, I relax my hold on the woman, releasing her when I am certain she will not scream.
She crawls away from me. “Git out,” she hisses.
I shake my head. “We can’t leave. Not while they’re out there.”
Gwen creeps from the door towards the woman. “Please, let us stay, just until the men are gone.”
The woman’s stern expression makes it clear she will not offer us refuge. A sound at the back of the room—the frustrated squall of a toddler—draws her attention. Holding the child, she soothes it with a gentle back rub, but her eyes point at me like loaded cannons.
“Shhh, baby, I know you are hungry, shhh,” the woman murmurs to the child, coddling it with soothing noises. “Momma will get you someting to eat soon.”