"Morgy, I'm falling," Sarah screamed. The ground she and I had been standing on began turning to liquid as though it were a custard melting in the tropical heat. As we began slipping down the embankment toward him, I gripped her arm with my left hand and reached up to seize a low-lying branch of the Cebia with my right.
Then, under the weight of the water, all the soil beneath us gave way, tons of wet riverbank that abruptly buckled outward.
Alex Goddard made no sound as the mass of earth lifted him backward toward the river. His sullied garb of white blended into the gray sludge of mud and rain, then faded to darkness as the embankment dissolved into the swirling Rio Tigre.
"Sar, hold on. Please hold on." I felt my grasp of the tree slipping, but now the mud slide had begun to stabilize.
I managed to cling to the limb for a few seconds more, the bark cutting into my fingers, and then my hold slipped away, sending us both spiraling downward till we were temporarily snagged by the Cebia's newly exposed undergrowth. I still had her hand though just barely, but the torrent of rain and mud was subsiding, and finally we collapsed together into the gnarled network of roots.
After a moment's rest, I managed to crawl out and pull her up.
"Come on, Sar. Try and walk."
Together we stumbled and slid down the last incline before the river's edge, then turned upstream along the bank. After about fifty yards, sure enough, the native cayucos, the hollowed-out mahogany canoes I'd told Steve about, were still there just as I'd seen them that first morning, bobbing and straining at their moorings. In the rain I couldn't tell how usable they were, but I figured going downriver was the only way we'd ever be able to get out. We'd have to flee the way Sarah had that first time.
For a moment I thought they all were empty—dear God, no—but then I realized there was a drenched figure in the last one in the row. When I recognized who it was, I think I completely lost it; all the horror of the last two days swallowed me up. I grabbed Sarah and hugged her for dear life, feeling the tears coursing down my cheeks. I literally couldn't help myself.
"They were tied up here just like you said." Steve wiped the rain from his eyes, then reached to take my hand. His bandaged nose was bleeding again, and he looked like he'd just been half killed. "I told those little Army chicos I was a big amigo of el doctor and they saluted and showed me where these were tied up."