RUNAWAY ROSE
Chapter Sixty-Four
Rose sat up slowly as the world came back
into view. Blinking to clear her vision, she touched her aching head gingerly, assuring
herself that she was still alive.
What happened? she wondered, trying to recall the events of the past
fifteen minutes. Someone shot at us, and the plane went down...yes, that’s
right. I’m still alive...I think.
Pulling off her cap and goggles, she touched
the lump just above her hairline. It was bleeding profusely from a shallow but
wide cut. The vision in her right eye was blurred and red. Have I injured my
eye? she wondered.
No,
she decided, touching her eyelid carefully. It wasn’t injured. The redness and
blurring came from the blood running from the cut on her head. With the edge of
her sleeve, she wiped the blood from her eye, then looked around.
The plane was in ruins, one wing torn off and
lying about sixty feet away, the body of the plane crushed against the rocks
they had crashed into. Only a thicket of catclaw bushes had softened the
landing enough to save her life.
Cautiously, Rose pushed some of the debris
away and climbed out of the plane, noticing that it was twisted into a mass of
metal and wood only feet from where she had been sitting. She was lucky to be
alive.
As she climbed out of the ruined cockpit, her
head spun dizzily for a moment and she clutched the plane for support.
Regaining her equilibrium, she moved forward carefully, ignoring the thorns on
the catclaw bushes that ripped at her hair and clothing.
The front of the plane was crushed, flattened
against one of the boulders. A smaller boulder had been dislodged in the crash,
laying atop the very front of the plane, a third of it buried in the wreckage.
At first, Rose saw no sign of Will. The
twisted mass of metal and wood partially hid the spot where he had been
sitting, and that part of the plane had twisted to the side, smashing the
passenger seat against the boulder.
With a sinking feeling, Rose grabbed the mass
of wreckage, trying to pull it away. "Will?" she called softly.
"Guillermo?"
There was no response. When the wreckage
refused to move, she hoisted herself up, avoiding the sharp pieces of metal
that threatened to tear into her hands.
The twisted mass groaned in protest as she
pulled herself atop it. Leaning against the boulder, she carefully moved to
look into the remains of the passenger seat.
Will was there, his body as twisted and
broken as the airplane. Blood soaked the inside of the passenger seat and was
spattered across the lower part of the boulder. Swallowing hard, Rose looked
closer, wondering if there was any chance that he was still alive.
There wasn’t, she saw, as she stared at the
broken body of Esther’s grandson. His eyes were wide and staring, what remained
of his face frozen in a permanent expression of shock. She hadn’t seen anyone
look that way since the Titanic had sunk, the frozen look of horror on the face
as the person realized that they were going to die and nothing could save them.
What he had thought of, in those last few seconds of his life, she could only
imagine.
It was a miracle that she had survived, the
part of the plane that she was in crashing into the much softer catclaw bushes,
slowed down just enough that when it hit the rock it had remained intact, along
with its occupant.
Climbing down from the wreckage, Rose worked
her way out of the thorny shrubs, taking stock of her situation. Will was dead,
and the plane was completely destroyed, in an unfamiliar section of the vast
Mexican desert. She wasn’t sure how far from the United States she was, or even
how far from the nearest town, farm, or ranch. Settlements were few and far
between in the desert.
Crouching down in the shade of the brush,
Rose tore a piece of her shirt free and held it against the cut on her head
until the bleeding stopped. She didn’t seem to be too badly injured, but she
was miles from any source of help, afoot in the desert. The few supplies she
had carried in the plane had been destroyed in the crash. She had no food or
water, nor any way of carrying any if she found it.
As the gravity of the situation settled over
her, she put her head in her hands, trying not to panic. She had been in bad
situations before and had survived. She had lived alone for months on the
Arctic tundra, had wandered along the roads of Southern California for weeks
before settling down to help Esther, had flown over a good-sized portion of
Mexico searching for Will. She wasn’t a tenderfoot with no knowledge of how to
survive in the wilderness, and she had never been one to give up.
She had failed Esther, Rose realized a moment
later. She had promised to bring her grandson back, and instead she had crashed
the plane, killing him. It would have been far better if she had never found
him, for then at least it would have been possible that he would have survived
and eventually returned to California, though the chances of Esther’s living to
see him were slim.
Rose had thought of all sorts of things that
might happen—running out of fuel, engine failure, getting lost, even being
thrown out of Mexico. But it had never occurred to her that the plane might be
shot down. That was something that happened over in Europe, where the war was
raging. It wasn’t supposed to happen in the Mexican desert.
On reflection, Rose realized that she should
have thought of the possibility. A war was going on in Mexico, albeit a much
smaller one. A revolution could be equally violent with an international war,
even if it was on a smaller scale, and someone might well have thought of the
plane as belonging to an enemy.
It was this thought that brought her to her
feet, ready to flee. Whoever had shot them down might still be around. She had
no idea how long she had been unconscious after the crash—it could have been a
few minutes, or it could have been as much as an hour. The person responsible
might have left by now, or they could still be lingering nearby, waiting.
In the distance, Rose could see the trees
around the small oasis. The plane had flown perhaps fifteen hundred feet before
crashing into the boulders. Whoever was responsible for the crash might well be
gone, perhaps concluding that no one had survived the wreck.
Moving slowly, looking around her, Rose moved
from the shelter of the catclaw bushes, debating whether to try to find out if
anyone was around, or flee as fast and as far as she could. She had no water,
and she needed to wash the cut on her head before it had a chance to become
infected. There was water in the small desert pond, and possibly some kind of
plant that could be used for medicine. But if anyone was still around, she
could be killed or taken prisoner.
The sound of a horse nickering made her
decision for her. Turning toward the desert, Rose hurried away, trying to put
as much distance between herself and the airplane as possible. They would look
there first before pursuing her—at least, she hoped so.
She could hear men’s voices and the sound of
hooves on the rocky ground. Running blindly, she dashed around a pile of rocks
and fled onward. Her heart pounding with dread, Rose put on more speed as she
heard one of the men shout, and then the sound of horses galloping after her.
The men had seen her footprints.
Looking around desperately, Rose searched for
any hiding place she could find. The vegetation was sparser here, with only low
brush and cacti dotting the barren landscape.
Glancing back over her shoulder, she saw the
men pursuing her, riding skillfully around the spiny vegetation. Rose was
gasping for breath, fighting against the stitch in her side, and she knew that
she couldn’t run much farther. When one man pulled a gun and fired, narrowly
missing her, she ducked behind the largest cactus she could see and crouched
down, seeking any shelter possible. Over and over she cursed herself for being
stupid enough to fly into a land torn by revolution. She should have let Will
stay there and be a Villista, though refusing to search for him would have hurt
Esther.
They were upon her in a moment. One man spoke
harshly to her, gesturing to her to stand up. Rose didn’t understand his words,
but she understood the gesture. Standing, she looked around at the four men who
had shot her plane down, wondering what they intended to do.
The one who had spoken to her shouted again,
a question in his voice. Rose strained to understand, then shook her head. He
spoke too quickly for her to understand anything with her limited Spanish.
"No habla Espanol," she told
him, remembering that much.
He stopped speaking to her and called to one
of the others. The man rode up to her, making a remark that she did not
understand, but which made his friends laugh maliciously. Taking one booted
foot from the stirrup, he lashed out at her, giving her a kick that sent her
tumbling into the cactus. He laughed again as she shrieked and struggled to
free herself from the spiny plant.
Rose got to her feet, glowering at the man
who had kicked her. She tugged at the spines embedded in her skin, then darted
around him, trying to escape. He grabbed her before she got more than a few
feet, flinging her to the ground. She landed hard, the wind knocked out of her.
One of the other men dismounted from his
horse, yanking her to her feet. Pinning her hands behind her back, he spoke to
the man who had first spoken to her.
The man responded, nodding, indicating what
he should do with her. Before Rose could protest, he had tied her hands behind
her back. Marching her over to his horse, he mounted, then dragged her up in
front of him.
Rose squirmed, trying to move off of the
uncomfortable saddle horn. She knew that she couldn’t escape now.
Her captor laughed, hauling her into a
sitting position and smacking her backside. He said a word that she did
recognize, "Puta," and rode off with his cohorts, still
laughing.