He walked to the front of the car and bent, all the while checking his revolver in its underarm holster.
Leonora’s window gleamed down. ‘Is the tyre hurt much?’
‘Ruined, utterly ruined!’ He picked up the bright thing that had stabbed and slashed the tyre.
‘Pieces of a broken machete,’ he said, ‘placed in adobe holders pointing towards our car wheels. We’re lucky it didn’t get all our tyres.’
‘But why?’
‘You know as well as I.’ He nodded to the newspaper beside her, at the date, the headlines:
4 OCTOBER 1963: UNITED STATES, EUROPE SILENT!
The radios of the U.S.A. and Europe are dead. There is a great silence. The War has spent itself.
It is believed that most of the population of the United States is dead. It is believed that most of Europe, Russia, and Siberia are equally decimated. The day of the white people of the earth is over and finished.
‘It all came so fast,’ said Webb. ‘One week we’re on another tour, a grand vacation from home. The next week – this.’
They both looked away from the black headlines to the jungle.
The jungle looked back at them with a vastness, a breathing moss-and-leaf silence, with a billion diamond and emerald insect eyes.
‘Be careful, Jack.’
He pressed two buttons. An automatic lift under the front wheels hissed and hung the car in the air. He jammed a key nervously into the right wheel plate. The tyre, frame and all, with a sucking pop, bounced from the wheel. It was a matter of seconds to lock the spare in place and roll the shattered tyre back to the luggage compartment. He had his gun out while he did all this.
‘Don’t stand in the open, please, Jack.’
‘So it’s starting already.’ He felt his hair burning hot on his skull. ‘News travels fast.’
‘For God’s sake,’ said Leonora. ‘They can hear you!’
He stared at the jungle.
‘I know you’re in there!’
‘Jack!’
He aimed at the silent jungle. ‘I see you!’ He fired four, five times, quickly, wildly.
The jungle ate the bullets with hardly a quiver, a brief slit sound like torn silk where the bullets bored and vanished into a million acres of green leaves, trees, silence, and moist earth. The brief echo of the shots died. Only the car muttered its exhaust behind Webb. He walked around the car, got in, and shut the door and locked it.
He reloaded the gun, sitting in die front seat. Then they drove away from the place.
They drove steadily.
‘Did you see anyone?’
‘No. You?’
She shook her head.
‘You’re going too fast.’
He slowed only in time. As they rounded a curve another clump of the bright flashing objects filled the right side of the road. He swerved to the left and passed.
‘Sons-of-bitches!’