Page 4 of Vaquero
Chapter One
Meg ran with her six reclaimed stolen ducklings following close on her heels, all of them panting from the relentless pace she’d set since she’d broken them out of Oz’s clutches. Not a one of them complained. At all. Children tended to be fiercely obedient when monsters like Orlando Zapata were after them. They knew from experience what he’d do if he caught them again. Oz was a monster of Godzilla proportions. Maybe not in stature, but most definitely in character. Or lack thereof.
“Hurry, kids,” she urged, as she tried to catch her breath between the pounding heartbeats climbing up her throat. Running wasn’t easy for someone who’d suffered a mild stroke a couple years ago, a stroke that even now, threatened to expose her for who she was. A fool who’d thought she could save these children and their world. Ha. Zapata had shot that dream to hell.
She’d slung her nearly empty backpack, now carrying empty water bottles and a box of ammo, over one aching shoulder because she needed both hands to swat branches and grasses out of her way. The lack of an actual trail hindered her, as much as her partially paralyzed left side. Her feet worked better on solid, flatter footing. It was easier to keep her balance when she didn’t have to dodge roots, carpet vines, or all these bushes. Or when she didn’t have to hurry and hide. But Oz and his men would follow the trails. They had Jeeps and trucks. Meg had six hungry, hairless, frightened children.
Doctors had told her she might fully recover one day. Chances were good she’d regain full mobility. With enough physical therapy, she might even walk like everyone else. Couldn’t this please be that day?
“We’ll rest as soon as we get to the big banyan tree by the river. We can hide there. You know the one.”
“Sim,”sweet Maria murmured Portuguese for yes. Wiping the sweat dripping into her eyes away and blinking hard because the tall stinging grasses and low hanging vines kept whipping all their faces, she hung tightly to Joachim’s hand.
Joachim was smaller than Maria, but like a big sister, she’d taken charge of him. That was what good kids did, and all Meg’s kids were the best.
“Just a little farther,” she promised even as she prayed,‘Please, God. He can’t have them back. Don’t let him win. Not these children, too. They’re Yours, and they’re mine, and no. Just no.’
Oz had taken too many of the local villagers’ children and most hadn’t been seen again. He owned several mines in the state, and he ran his like the dictator he wanted so much to be. With cruelty and absolute power. Public whippings and worse. Hangings. He’d left the poor bodies of adult men and women to rot in village squares until the tendons that held their arm and knee-bones together finally disintegrated in the humid heat. In other words, darned near forever. He treated children no better, not in this destitute, mountainous district of Brazil where law and order was miles away. If Oz caught up with these little ones…
Meg steeled her soul at what she knew he’d do to her and her kids. But stealing innocents from certain death in one of his dark, dank mines was the least she could’ve done. She couldn’t go to the village, not anymore. The villagers wouldn’t hide these babies. They were kind, but they were also afraid of Oz and what he’d do to them and their children if he knew they’d helped her. She needed to get these kids to her new camp by Giant’s Toes, the villagers’ name for an unusual granite outcropping rising out of a nearby forest. Oz would never suspect she’d go there.
A treacherous root across the path snared her slower, sluggish left foot, nearly tripping her. If not for stalwart Pepe running at her side, she’d have face-planted.
“Thanks,” she murmured, her fear of Oz catching her children a living, breathing snake circling her windpipe like an invisible noose. He’d hang her. But first, he’d make her watch while he tortured, then killed these kids. Her kids.
“Is okay. I help you walk, too,” Pepe replied, his one hand cradling her elbow beneath her sarape, the other holding onto five-year-old Pedro.
Meg wasn’t dumb enough to refuse Pepe’s gentlemanly offer. On a good day, she needed her cane just to walk. Running was another agony all together. But here she was, running for her children’s lives.
Sweating like the rest of them, this ten-year-old boy had faced the challenge of saving the kids who’d been kidnapped with him like a man. Never once had Pepe argued in the mine. Instead, he’d simply gathered Maria onto his back, told her to hang on tight, and proceeded to shepherd the others. Encouraging them. Promising them freedom. All those things these little ones needed so desperately to believe as they’d all followed Meg.
She cast a longing glance over her shoulder. Man, she loved them like they were hers. All her shorn little ones. But their hair would grow back. And they would smile again. She’d make certain of that.
Regret warred with anger. Someone needed to end Oz, damn it. Or soon, there’d be no children left in the district. He was a murderer, plain and simple. His mines were all underground. The adults and children he kidnapped were forced to work long hours in dark, stone tunnels with little food or water. The smallest kids had no protection against the bigger, meaner kids. It was a wicked survival test, pitting the strength of babies against the worst kind of bullies. It was genocide, pure and simple. What he was doing to the poor people of this state, was genocide.
At last, she caught sight of the fifty or so tree trunks ahead. All comprised one living tree that ruled this side of the riverbank. One magnificent, stately, humongous tree. The poor thing’s highest branches had been scorched by the latest lumber company to clear-cut the hillside across the river. When they left, they’d set fire to the heap of scrap lumber they’d left behind. That fire had grown so hot and leaped so high, it jumped the river and spread among the tree tops for miles until it ran out.
This beautiful tree, bare of its usual glossy green leaves at the top, looked as shorn as Meg and her kids. But life steadfastly endured in rainforest climates when uninterrupted by man or nature. Even now, the wide, long stand of trunks that comprised this single tree had set down an arsenal of new, aerial prop roots from its scorched, higher branches overhead. The inadvertent damage those loggers caused had merely pruned the tree. Those prop roots had already created a thicker, deeper wall of new growth. These green, grasping roots would eventually dip their fingertips into the riverbank. Others would engulf every living branch, twig, or bush they encountered on their way down.
The banyan tree itself was a fast-growing parasite, an epiphyte that had originally attached to other plants. In doing so, it had strangled its hosts. Now, more like a forest than one, single tree, it had dropped enough aerial roots that it spread horizontally for much of this section of river. Gangs of monkeys and swarms of wasps took over these trees when its fruit ripened. But this wasn’t the season of fruit, and this tree was where Meg intended to hide her children. Right out in the open.
“This is it,” she told her anxious charges. “Maria, climb up as high as you can go. Hurry. Joachim, you’re next. Maria, give him a hand once you’re settled. Make sure he’s got a good hold and won’t fall. Thank you, sweetie. Then you, Phillipe. Take it easy but quickly, please. Climb high and stay out of sight, all of you. Be very quiet. Don’t let anyone see you. We don’t have much time.”
The children were as silent, obedient, and as quick as little monkeys. Ah, to be so young and so agile again. Meg would’ve settled for being able to walk without limping. But watching these kids scramble up into the thick, green cover overhead, then disappear entirely from sight, gave her hope they would all survive what was coming.
Now for her and baby Dom, the barely-breathing man-child tucked inside Meg’s shirt. He’d barely stirred even in the sweaty warmth of her sarape. That was how small he was, so feeble that he fit easily inside her shirt. Despite the tropical heat, he’d been cold when she’d found him. If there were one thing, two things in this case, that Meg had in abundance, it was her warm, sweaty breasts.
Which was why she’d worn a sarape most of the time. Wearing a blanket might make her sweat, but men tended to stare at those jugs, and the last thing she needed in this backward, poverty-stricken part of Brazil, was pretend-romance from some randy Romeo with a glib tongue and a quick eye. Not happening. Not ever. She was an aid-worker, and she’d come to this country because children like Dom—not grown men—needed her.
Poor little guy hadn’t made a peep when she’d pulled him off the ground and into her arms, and asked him why he was there instead of in the cage with the others. She worried she’d arrived too late. The tiny guy was listless and his will to live was nearly gone. But if he were to die, at least with her, he would die surrounded by dignity and love. Not tossed away like garbage on a scrap heap, left for wild animals. She could barely contain her rage at what this sweet little guy had suffered. Damn Oz to Hell!
“Now, you,” Pepe ordered. “Please, my friend. Come up with us.” Hanging nearly upside down from the branch he clung to by one hand, he offered Meg his other. His black eyes were bright and encouraging. His fingers fluttered for her to take hold. That was Pepe for you, always brave, and so much a man despite his tender ten years.
She shook her head. “I’m too heavy for anyone to lift, and it’s better if I stay down here. Hide yourself where no one can see you. Tell the others to be very, very quiet. One small sound will give us away.”
His fingers fluttered urgently. “No, no,Senhorita. Please. I can pull you to safety. I am strong like Papa. I can save you. Come with me.”
Ah, she loved this young boy so, so much. Like the rest of her kids, Pepe spoke Portuguese, the official national language of Brazil, but he was fluent in English as well. Somewhere in his past, he’d been educated and loved. He was not only gallant, but intelligent and a quick learner. Like the rest of these kids, she would die for him.
