Avery McShane Read online

  ‘I’m not too worried ’bout the gators,’ he replied. ‘It’s all the poisonous water snakes that’re trying to get away from the river that’ve got me jumpy.’

  Billy and I especially did not like snakes, whether they were the kind to fill you up with enough poison to melt your guts on the inside, or the wrap-around-you-and-squeeze-the-guts-out-of-your-mouth kind. They were a lot harder to see in the dark than gators, and the dark was when they liked to hunt. With gators, you pretty much knew where to look, and that was down. With jungle snakes you had to look down at the ground and up in the tree branches. Never saw a gator drop down out of a tree to get you.

  The machete was getting pretty heavy in my hand, but I was sure glad I had it. Not only to protect us from hungry reptiles – which I knew Billy was praying we wouldn’t have to use it for – but also because I was having to hack a trail through the thorny bushes and ferns. There were a lot of stands of bamboo too, but we had to go around them because they were way too hard to cut down. We’d come about a mile I guessed, and so far we’d seen a couple of boa constrictors in the branches above us, a long, thin poisonous snake of some kind on the ground and even an ocelot that acted way more scared of us than we were of it. It had stared at us for a minute or so before running away in the other direction.

  ‘How much further d’you figure?’ moaned Billy. ‘I’m getting tired and I surely am hungry enough to eat a whole cow.’

  ‘Should be almost there,’ I replied, although I had no clue really.

  A minute later I proved to Billy that I was a real jungle man when we stepped out of El Monte and on to the red dirt road. It was the same dirt road that went next to Pablo Malo’s farm, only we must have been a couple of miles from the farm. A hundred metres or so off to the left I saw the dark outline of the small cement building that housed the old water pump. I didn’t see any light coming from under the door, but I figured that Todd wouldn’t want to give away their hideout by turning on his flashlight. The roar of the river was a lot louder now since we weren’t surrounded by all the trees and the cover of El Monte.

  ‘I think that we’d better sneak up on the pump house,’ I said. ‘Might be Pablo Malo’s already found them and is in there waiting to ambush us.’

  ‘Good idea.’

  We went back into the jungle and started working our way towards the river again until we got right across the road from the building. The rain was starting to ease off a bit and we could see things a lot clearer than before. Even better, the sun was starting to come out and we could just see the first rays of yellowish light on the rain clouds that were opening up enough for us to see some early morning sky. The storm in the sky was over, but the storm in the river was still going strong.

  The pump house didn’t have any windows and just one metal door, which was closed. I took my slingshot out and put a ball bearing in the sling. I aimed at the door and let loose a shot. The ball bearing pinged off the door. We waited for about a minute, but nothing happened.

  I shot another one at it and then the door opened up. Out came Mati, with his muzzle still on, and he didn’t waste any time finding us in our hiding place across the road. He came running over with his tail wagging like mad and whining in that super happy, can’t-get-enough-of-your-loving kind of way. We hugged him while he squirmed and jumped around, hopping between Billy and me, making sure that he was getting all of the hugs and pets that we both could give him.

  ‘Mati, good boy. Calm down,’ I said. ‘Good to see you too.’

  About then Todd came out of the building and when he saw us with Mati he put on a great big grin and started running towards us. We stepped out of the bushes and met him in the middle of the muddy dirt road. He gave me a crushing hug and lifted me off the ground.

  ‘You guys are still alive!’ he cried. ‘I can’t believe it. This is so awesome.’

  After he’d about squeezed the life out of me, he let go and hugged Billy like the boa constrictor that we’d been trying to avoid for the last couple of hours.

  ‘What happened to your eye?’ said Todd. ‘That’s a real shiner.’

  ‘Think that’s bad?’ chuckled Billy. ‘You should see the other guy.’

  It was right then that we heard the unmistakable sound of Pablo Malo’s jeep in the distance – and the sound was getting louder. He was headed our way.

  Chapter 13

  Showdown at the Pump

  From the sound of it, Pablo Malo was just around the next bend. There was no time to get Gómez out of the pump house in time for us all to move into the jungle to hide from him. It probably wouldn’t have done us any good anyway – especially if he had Loca with him. I made up my mind then and there. This was my war and mine alone. I was going to finish it now.

  ‘You two grab Mati and get inside the pump house,’ I yelled. ‘Lock the door from the inside and don’t come out until the coast is clear.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘Billy, there’s no time to argue. Get in the building now!’

  While Todd and Billy scrambled into the pump house with Mati, I ran back to the place where we’d just hidden on the other side of the road. I heard the metal door slam and the latch slide shut. It was all going to be up to me. I was scared to death and shaking like a leaf, but I was sure that I was doing the right thing and I still had one ace up my sleeve. If that didn’t work I was going to die, and I doubted that Pablo Malo cared any more how it happened. He’d probably want to torture me. Pablo Malo kind of looked like an Apache, but I hoped he only looked like one, because Apaches used to love to tie cowboys down on top of ant hills, then cut open their stomachs and pull out their intestines for the cowboys to see. Then they’d just sit around some place nearby and watch the ants and buzzards eat the guts while the cowboy had to watch too. Then, if the cowboy had been brave while he watched his guts being eaten, they’d go back and scalp him. I was definitely hoping that he wasn’t part Apache.

  The noise of the old jeep engine suddenly got louder. Pablo Malo had made it around the bend and only had another quarter of a mile or so to the end of the road. There was just one place he was headed to because the collapsed bridge was at the end of the road and the only other thing out here was the pump house. I could see where the bridge had been washed away. There was only about ten metres of it still sticking out over the raging, flooded river. I was betting that the last bit of the bridge would be coming down pretty soon too.

  The jeep skidded to a muddy stop right between me and the pump house building. Pablo Malo hopped out of the beat-up truck and then reached back into the cab and pulled out his shotgun. Loca jumped out of the back at the same time and started sniffing around on the ground. Before long Loca had followed the scents around to the other side of the jeep and then started to growl really nasty-like. Pablo Malo laughed out loud and followed Loca around the jeep until he stood right in front of the metal door.

  ‘I know that you are in there, gringos,’ he yelled at the door. ‘Come out and die like men.’

  There was no sound from inside the building.

  The rain had completely stopped and the sun was now starting to heat up. Since everything was soaked from the rainstorm, the air was heavy with humidity. I was already sweating from fright, but the wet heat was making it worse. My T-shirt stuck to me like glue.

  ‘No? You won’t come out?’ he yelled. ‘Well then, maybe you can cook in that oven for a while. It will be getting much hotter soon, amigos. You cook like chickens for dinner. Loca likes her meat cooked.’

  Pablo Malo laughed again. He was very pleased with himself, it seemed. I couldn’t see him on the other side of the jeep, but I heard the sound of bottles clinking against one another and then the quick hiss of a bottle being opened.

  ‘I will have a few cold beers while I wait for my dinner to cook.’

  I heard him chugging his beer. I knew he was doing it as loud as he could so that my trapped friends would hear it. He was probably just as happy – maybe even happier – torturing them t
o death rather than just getting it over with quickly.

  ‘Ahh . . . a cold beer on a hot morning in El Monte. There is nothing quite like it, amigos. Sure you don’t want to come out and share one last beer with Pablo?’

  He laughed again. He was really enjoying himself. Well, I had had it up to here with his shenanigans. I stepped out of the bushes with my slingshot aimed right at him, my heart almost beating its way out of my chest. Loca heard me first and gave a quick bark before tearing around the jeep at me. She skidded to a stop when she saw the slingshot and started her fangy growling. The fur on her back stood up at about the same time the hair on my neck did. Pablo Malo turned around real casual-like with the shotgun in his right hand and the beer bottle in the other. The smile on his face was not the kind of smile that I had just seen on Todd’s face. This one had cold, dark eyes above it. I knew he could see the wild pumping of my heart through my glued-on T-shirt, and I’m sure that made him even happier. He lifted the beer to his lips and took another swig of it without taking his snake eyes off me. He didn’t even lift his shotgun to aim it at me.

  ‘So the leader of the Machacas is the only one brave enough to face me,’ he sneered. ‘What do you think you will do with that puny rubber band, eh? Maybe kill me like David did with Goliath?’

  ‘You leave us alone or else,’ I said. Boy, was that feeble or what?

  Pablo Malo’s head flung back as he looked up to the sky, laughing really loudly in the way that all the crazed maniac bad guys did in the movies. Only this wasn’t a movie, much as I wished it was. I let loose the sling and the ball bearing landed right where I aimed. It went straight into his open, laughing mouth. That shut him up real fast, which was the only good thing that came of it. He dropped his beer bottle and reached up with that hand to cover his mouth. At the same time he pulled up the shotgun and aimed it straight at me. The hand that covered his mouth was now oozing with blood. The blood came dripping out from between his fingers and bright red drops of it fell on to his chest and on the mud at his feet. He stood there staring at me for a long moment with his hand still covering his mouth.

  Maybe I couldn’t see things clearly because I was so frightened, but it seemed his eyes had changed, like in the movies when vampires’ eyes change when they smell blood. Pablo Malo’s eyes didn’t seem human. They were totally dark. It was the scariest thing I had ever seen: the bright red blood, the blackest eyes in the world and the two barrels of his shotgun aimed at my chest. I was about to die and I knew it.

  He started to walk slowly towards me with the shotgun aimed straight ahead. He still hadn’t said a word. Maybe I had smashed something in his mouth that he needed for talking. Or maybe he figured that the shotgun would be doing the rest of the talking. I took a step backwards for every step he took towards me. We were only ten paces apart, so I knew that he couldn’t miss and that they’d be lucky to find hand-sized pieces of me after he pulled the trigger. Another step forward, another step backward. I could hear the roar of the river behind me. I realised what he was planning now, but there was nothing I could do about it. He was going to blow me away into the raging water. They would never know what had happened to me. And when he was done with me, he would repeat the procedure with each one of my friends in the pump house.

  Step forward, step back, step forward, step back. I was getting ever closer to the river and even though I knew it from the roar of the water, I glanced over my shoulder to take one last look at my final resting place. I was now at the jagged edge of the bridge, on one side of the road that used to go over the river, and Pablo Malo was on the other side of the road directly across from me. The raging torrent was right there, five metres below where we each stood. I had reached the end of the line. It reminded me of one of those gunfights that I loved reading about in my Louis L’Amour westerns, only I didn’t have a gun and no one was going to see who had the fastest draw. Pablo Malo finally took his blood-drenched hand away from his mouth and placed it on the barrel of the shotgun. He put the shotgun to his shoulder and peered down the sight, aiming the barrels straight at my head, like a soldier in a firing squad about to carry out his orders. Only there wasn’t going to be a ‘ready, aim, fire’ this time.

  Pablo Malo smiled again and the blood kept dripping from his lips on to his chest. He spat out the pieces of some of his front teeth and they landed on the ground between us. I looked at them, then back up at the black vampire-ghoul-zombie-murderer eyes.

  ‘And now, Avery McShane, you die!’

  He pulled the trigger. The finger drew back and I saw what happened next in the slowest motion possible. I saw the tiniest give when the trigger passed the point of no return and that little gear inside let the hammer smash down on the back of the casing of the shotgun shell. I swear that I saw the steel barrel of that shotgun swell a little near where the pellets began their supersonic journey to blow my head off, and I swear I could see that murderous bulge of lead death move down the barrel on its way towards me. And when that packet of pellets hit the rock that I had jammed in that barrel – on that day at the airstrip, the day we bought the bombitas – I swear I could see those pellets stop and turn around and head in the opposite direction, in the only other direction they could, in the direction of the path of least resistance. Now, while I cannot be sure that I saw all of that, what I can tell you for sure is that a split second later Pablo Malo’s head was gone from his shoulders! The face, the one with the horrible black eyes and the bleeding mouth, was gone! The kickback from that jammed shotgun barrel had blown his head clean off. His headless body didn’t move for what seemed an eternity, and then – in real slow motion this time – it fell backward right over the edge of the bridge and disappeared into the chocolate currents of the flooded jungle river.

  Chapter 14

  When You Think It Is Safe . . .

  I dropped to my hands and knees there, at the edge of the washed-away bridge. My legs had gone to rubber and my heart was pumping the blood in my veins to every place in my body except my head. I was dizzy and nauseated to the point of throwing up, when I remembered about Loca. That cleared my mind real quick. I looked to where she’d been growling at me during the death march I’d taken with Pablo Malo, but she wasn’t there.

  I didn’t waste any time getting back up on my feet or putting a new ball bearing in my slingshot. Loca wasn’t over by the jeep or next to the pump house. She was standing at the exact spot where Pablo Malo had been standing before he lost his head, and she was looking down at the river where his body had fallen. She barked a question at the river, but it didn’t answer her; it just kept on roaring past us. I actually felt kind of sorry for her right about then, but when she turned around and looked at me, I went back to just being plain scared witless about what she’d be trying to do to me for killing Pablo. I pulled back on the slingshot and took careful aim at her. I expected her to snarl, to show me her huge fangs, but she didn’t. Instead she just looked at me with a confused expression and barked at me once, just like she had at the river.

  ‘He’s gone, Loca,’ I said.

  She cocked her head when I told her that, as if she knew what I meant, and glanced one more time at the river. Then she just turned and walked away into El Monte. She was headed downstream, so I figured that she was going to go and find her master and, knowing Loca, she wasn’t going to stop searching until she found him.

  I knocked on the metal door of the pump house. It was our super-secret Machaca knock.

  ‘You guys can come out now,’ I yelled. ‘The coast is clear.’

  It took them a full minute to respond. I could hear them whispering to each other inside.

  ‘How do we know that Pablo Malo hasn’t got a gun to your head?’ came the reply. It was Billy’s voice. ‘Maybe he’s making you trick us into coming out.’

  ‘Guys, Pablo Malo’s not going to be shooting anybody ever again,’ I said. ‘He’s on a one way trip down the river to the ocean.’

  I heard the latch slide back and the door opened. Fi
rst one out was Mati and he didn’t have his muzzle on any more. He jumped up on me, planted his front paws on my chest and started licking my face like I’d just rubbed dog food all over it. Next one out was Todd and he came over without saying a word and gave me a great big bear hug. I looked over his shoulder while he was squeezing the air out of my lungs and saw Billy come out. He had been crying and the tears were still on his cheeks. He didn’t walk over to me, but just stood there looking at me. Todd unwrapped his bear arms and stood off to the side, watching Billy and me look at each other.

  ‘Avery McShane,’ said Billy, ‘don’t ever do something like that again. We’re best friends and we’re Machacas. We stick together through thick and thin.’

  ‘Billy, I’m sorry,’ I replied. ‘It was the only way I could see this thing play out.’

  I walked over to Billy and when I put my arms around him he started to bawl like a little baby, and I did a little crying too.

  ‘I thought you were dead,’ sniffed Billy. ‘When that shotgun went off . . .’

  ‘I know, I’m sorry,’ I replied. ‘But it’s all over now and no one else is going to die today.’

  Todd and I helped Capitán Gómez out of the pump house and we had to work extra hard to get him into the driver’s seat of the jeep. He was wincing and groaning, and you just knew that he’d be holed up in the clinic for a while. Once he was in the front seat, he scooted around until he got as comfortable as he could. Then he looked over at me and managed a smile.

  ‘Señor McShane Junior, you are one brave gringo,’ he said. ‘You must tell me what has happened.’

  So I told him. Billy already knew most of the story and he kept interrupting with comments like ‘it was a huge ball of fire’ and ‘caymans all over the place’. Todd looked at me like I was a real-life G.I. Joe, and come to think of it, I guess I would’ve made that soldier real proud if he’d known what I’d done. I told Gómez about the bombitas, jamming the stones into the barrels of the shotgun and blowing up Pablo Malo’s farm. The Venezuelan police chief smiled weakly, even though I’m pretty sure it hurt to do it. In the sunlight it was easier to see how beat-up he really was, though his cuts and gashes had stopped bleeding and were starting to scab over.