Page 33 of Last Destination

What kind of twisted fuckery was it when passage through the Darién was the best option for their families? What kind of lives were they so desperate to get away from?

My lonely little life as the only child of rigid parents paled by comparison.

When we finally made it to the tree line, Marley wrapped one arm completely around her chest, agony written all over her face. I pressed closer to her under the canopy that shielded us from some of the deluge.

“I’m so sorry, Jagiya.” I whispered directly into her ear before pulling her forward again, as gently as possible, but with enough force to keep us from being trampled.

People swarmed all around us, their bodies bumping us from all sides while we stood in their way of being somewhat protected. Ignoring the pain in my own ribs and the rigid pulls of scabbed skin across my chest, I pushed through the swarm to find our own path to freedom.

If I thought Jamie stunk, I was sorely mistaken. The stench of acrid fear, sunburned skin, and the moldy onions of body odor of thousands of humans in the world’s highest humidity was a toxic mix. My stomach revolted at the array of natural cologne, but pride forced me to swallow the bile and suck up the scent.

It was a sad day in hell when I was begging for a drop of peppermint oil to mask the human soup.

Flashes of vibrant white flickered through the dense leaves a hundred feet above our heads, but the rain now sputtered down as a light shower instead of a downpour.

This part of the jungle was free of the thigh-thick tree roots we’d been tripping over yesterday, but the clay-like mud was far worse to navigate, especially when the terrain grew steeper. Marley’s hiking boots were strapped to her feet, but my expensive loafers were as useless as my cotton clothing as I tried to get through it. Each step became a game of “lose-a-shoe” roulette. Eventually, I removed the loafers and held them in my free hand. Gritting my teeth, I held back full-on gagging as mud squished between my toes.

Each step was a gamble. The slick ground was almost as deep as my shins in some spots. Three boys, early teens at best, lost their shoes altogether and would have to hike the rest of the trip in bare feet.

We were here by accident. They were here by choice. Despite the hot rain and air the temperature of a steam room, the thought chilled me to my core.

Reaching the top, every muscle in my body screamed in pain from the effort, and Marley looked close to passing out. I opened my mouth to check on her, but she silently shook her head, nodding toward a man in a highlighter-yellow vest just a few feet ahead.

The guide wasn’t paying any attention to us. He was helping a hobbled elderly woman with a heavy pack the size of a hockey bag across her shoulders on the next section of terrain — a muddy descent down a winding path along a cliff edge into a sunken crater that looked surprisingly dry.

The migrants were setting up several tents a few hundred feet below. One family was attempting to start a fire beneath the wide leaves of a chunga palm. We were already at the end of the road for the night, but I had no gauge of the time. We could have been running for minutes or hours — the trek had been as much of a blur as seeing through the rain.

I shoved my loafers back onto my filthy feet and offered my hand back to Marley to help her down the winding trail. I almost lost my footing in several places. The rain had reduced to the spray of a shower head. Any harder would have caused a treacherous slide into the crevice. By the time we made it to the bottom, every muscle in my calves and thighs burned like I’d been set on fire. The days without adequate nutrition and barely any water made every movement an electric flame of pain.

I wrapped an aching arm around Marley’s shaking shoulders and steered her toward a break in the trees where Madman stood. He watched our approach, but the expression of disinterest masked his emotions, while his hawkish eyes never left Marley’s limping form. Tessa leaned against a tree at his feet, wearing a grimace and rubbing her ankle. Nikki hovered to her other side, twitching his hands at his sides like a junkie possessed. Jamie slumped into a crouch to Nikki’s left, tilting his face up to the rain.

I’d been wrong. The crater was not dry, but it was rocky sand instead of mud, and a welcome reprieve as the rain sputtered here instead of poured.

Nikki’s arms shot out to collect Marley just as she collapsed into his hold. He whispered into her ear and smoothed his hands over her back while she shook with sobs.

Fuck. Did I comfort her, or try to hide her? She’d been unraveling with each passing day, and while I had expected this segment of our journey to pull at a few of her threads, I hadn't considered it would happen this quickly. Since our first day, she’d carried everyone else, even when she barely had the strength to stand herself. Since the snake attack though, the spark in her eyes had completely disappeared, replaced with the sightless gaze of someone haunted.

Our superhuman leader was turning out to be human, and I had no idea how to help her.

I caught Madman’s gaze when I shifted, blocking Nikki and Marley from view of our fellow travelers, and the concern in his eyes matched mine. With an almost imperceptible nod, he shifted too, and together we stood guard as Marley fell apart. Out of all of us, Nikki was the best comforter. She needed him more than me.

I had been the best person to get her to this point, I could see that now. Madman would have hovered. Nikki would have coddled. I supported her, but pushed her forward, knowing she would make it through even if she had to grit her teeth and bite her tongue to do it.

We all had our roles, as unorthodox as it was, and it felt good to be a part of a whole. I just didn’t know what the fuck it meant once we made it to the end.

“Shit,” Jamie swore under his breath, his tanned face turning bile yellow as he stared at something beyond our backs. I spun around to see a young man, barely twenty, in one of the guide vests headed toward us. He had an assault rifle strapped to his back like he was Rambo.

Shit was right. We hadn’t found Jamie a bracelet yet. Had someone noticed? Had Marley’s outburst drawn undue attention? Was there some sort of sign with our faces everywhere? My mind raced faster than my heartbeat when his dark eyes met mine and he made a beeline for our group.

“Be calm,” Madman ordered under his breath. “They suspect nothing.”

How could he know that? Criminal telepathy? Biting the inside of my cheek, I stared blankly at the guy when he stopped in front of us. He scrutinized our ragtag group of misfits and glanced from wrist to wrist to confirm our passage.

“Did you get lost?” His question took me off guard before he nodded to our bracelets. “This group came through two days ago.”

Triple shit. They had color-coded the bracelets by day? This was a much more organized operation than I thought some cartel should be capable of. I should have known better — clearly, one didn’t become a billion-dollar underground economic powerhouse by being stupid.

“We suffered injuries.” Madman nodded to Tessa and Jamie on the ground, who could have both passed for half-dead. “And she is unwell.” He dipped his head toward Marley. “This journey is harder than we expected.”