These vultures were different. Their tight pattern circled above a single, distant mound, dropping lower and lower. Spooked by some movement, they scattered upward. Only to begin their slow circling again.
Vicki had seen that patient waiting game before. There was fresh meat out there.
And it was still alive.
Brushing back a wisp of hair the breeze had tugged from her ponytail, Vicki leaned precariously farther, blinking away the burning in her eyes. Had that blur of black beneath the circling carrion birds just moved?
Then, in one of those glimpses of clarity where tears themselves act as a magnifying lens, the blur coalesced into focus. Black plastic. One of the industrial trash bags in which wealthier Guatemalans disposed of their waste.
And, yes, a definite movement had just sent the vultures fluttering upward again. Had one of the mongrels infesting the dump crawled inside and been stuck? Maybe even a child?
Vicki rushed to an opening in the adobe wall, where two boys sprawled against the mud brick. She’d tried earlier to coax them into the schooling program but to no avail.
“
Hola
, Pepe, Luchito.” In local custom, her chin pointed the direction rather than her hand. “I think there’s something hurt out there. Would you go see what it is?
Te lo pagaré
.” “I’ll pay you.” The five-quetzal note dangling invitingly from her fingers should have had the boys scrambling to their feet.
Apathetic stares were explained as they dropped filthy faces back to sniff at disposable plastic cups filled with a pungent golden molasses. They’d already earned the few cents needed for their ration of industrial glue and would spend the rest of the day lost in the illusion of warmth and food and comfort. The street kid’s best friend.
Exasperated, Vicki stepped from the opening into a rutted alley that petered a few meters away into the path leading down into the ravine. Threading single-file up that path, a procession of
basureros
emerged over the rim of the ravine, backs stooped under their gleanings.
“¡Señores!” Vicki called. The title was a courtesy few would give these laborers. This time she forgot her training and used a finger to point. “There’s something out there moving. I think it’s hurt.
Si me podría ayudar
.” “If you would help me.”
Heads swiveled to follow the foreigner’s rude gesture, then swiveled back. Vicki recognized astonishment behind the impassive blankness of dark faces.
“A dog, perhaps,” one man called from under his pack. “Or rats.”
“But it might be a person. Maybe a child.” Vicki displayed the five-quetzal bill. “Look, I can pay if you’ll just go take a look.”
The column didn’t even break its slow, measured pace as it came abreast of Vicki.
Crazy, rich gringa
, she read in the flicker of black eyes.
Only the laborer who’d spoken paused to shake his head. “No one goes out that far, señorita. It is too dangerous, and there is nothing left of value.
Los gringos preocupan demasiado
.” “You foreigners worry too much.” Like most people here, the man was Mayan, stunted by life and diet to little more than five feet tall. He added, “If it is a person, it is dead. The destitute leave them there. Cemeteries cost money. Do not worry. The vultures will take care of it.”
As though he considered it payment for his advice, the man snatched the bill from Vicki’s hand and fell back in with the procession.
“Hey!” Vicki exclaimed, then subsided.
Count it as a contribution to the local economy
. The man was probably right. The movement she’d seen was far out on that wasteland of smoldering fires and rotting debris, well beyond where trucks and bulldozers or the
basureros
themselves dared venture.
Stepping to the edge of the slope, Vicki squinted against the fumes. Yes, there it was, swimming into watery focus. A black trash bag. If the movement had been a small animal trapped inside, it was no longer moving, the vultures now beginning to settle. Her stomach roiled as beaks ripped into the plastic. Time to retreat to a more savory meal, if she could stand to eat with this stench lingering in her nostrils.
But just as she was blinking the tears from her eyes, she saw a human hand thrust upward imploringly from that black bundle. This time it was no illusion that it moved.
“
¡Esperen!
Wait. It
is
a person! And it's still alive!”
The
basureros
did not even look back.
Anger propelled Vicki across that wasteland. Not at the garbage pickers toiling up out of the ravine nor at the sprawled teens drowning one more day’s misery in a chemical haze. At a world where a human being tossed on a garbage heap for the vultures was too commonplace for even a moment’s concern.
The trail downward was as slippery with rotting foodstuff as mud. Vicki’s shoes and clothes were saturated with muck, her lungs burning by the time she reached the landfill and ventured out onto its precarious surface. A nearby bulldozer shoveled trash deeper into the gorge without regard for the workers still picking through it. Following the operator’s example, Vicki shook filth from a bandanna tied around her ponytail and retied it to cover her mouth. How did the
basureros
breathe this all day?
When Vicki had covered fifty meters, she understood the Mayan’s warnings. The landfill was dangerous, glass and metal shards too small for salvage cutting into her rubber soles. Decomposition and the fires smoldering continuously underground created sinkholes that could swallow the unwary without a trace. After a near miss, Vicki slowed her pace, the heat underfoot burning through her soles to a painful level no matter how carefully she chose her path.
Vicki was close enough now to see she’d been right. The black of the trash bag covered a human shape, and where the plastic was torn, she could glimpse cloth. More horribly she could see bloodied flesh, the upthrust hand torn by sharp beaks. Vicki snatched up a rusted length of tailpipe that burnt her fingers before she threw it. It had the effect of fluttering some of the scavengers skyward.
The last meters were a difficult scramble over a metal jungle of stripped car frames, the rusted edges dangerously sharp. Vicki was bleeding from half a dozen nicks before she reached the mound that was her destination.
Which brought forcefully to mind the
basurero
’s insistence. The industrial-size trash bags that held wealthier Guatemalans’ garbage served as housing and bedcovers for street kids. Or burial shrouds for the poorest of poor. But neither had cause to be out this far.
More oddly, sprawled like a tossed potato sack on top of the mound, this trash bag was still largely intact where the vultures had not ripped at it, untouched by
basurero
rake or bulldozer. And it was clean, the black plastic still shiny. It might have dropped from the sky for its unlikelihood here.
There was no time to be wasted on questions. The heap was ominously still. Had Vicki imagined that earlier movement? Grabbing a broken-off car door to shield against angry beaks, she shooed away the vultures and dropped to her knees for a closer look.
The rips in the plastic—whether from the birds or the victim’s own efforts—were largely at the upper end, exposing head and shoulders and one arm. Vicki’s stomach rose into her throat as she saw the ruin the sharp beaks had made of the exposed half of the face.
Tearing at the plastic, she pushed aside matted hair for a clearer view. Her heart grew hot and tight in her chest. The victim was female. And she was neither a strayed
basurero
nor pauper burial.
Nor Guatemalan at all. Where not darkened by dried blood, the hair was flaxen blonde, newly exposed skin freckled and pale. Both only too familiar.
Please, no!
Sick and trembling, her fingers fumbling, Vicki felt the slow pulse at the girl’s neck. Incredibly, even horribly, she was still alive. Vicki began to rip further at the plastic, then stopped. Her medical knowledge covered only basic first aid, but she could see enough to recognize what had happened. The girl had been shot point-blank in the chest after being forced into the trash bag, the powder burns and bullet hole still distinguishable against the plastic.
And that alone was why the victim was still alive. The bullet must have missed any major organs, and the plastic sack itself had acted as a pressure bandage, the blood flow that had drawn the vultures coagulating beneath the victim to seal the exit wound. But for how long?
Rocking back on her heels, Vicki glanced around wildly, her mind dizzy with helplessness. Even if she could attract the attention of the
basureros
, it would take far too long to track down a medical team and get them here across that dangerous surface.
She’s going to die! What do I do? Hurry, hurry!
A rapid beat was pounding at her temple, her breath coming so quickly that she felt herself beginning to black out. Clenching her fists, she dug fingernails into her palms, welcoming the sharp jolt of pain.
Take a deep breath. Hold it. Let it out. Take a deep breath. Hold it. Let it out.
Vicki’s fingers brushed against the cell phone in her pocket as her head began to clear. She tugged the phone free and slapped it open. There was no 911 service here, but 125 was the emergency code for the International Red Cross.
Please let them have a chopper in town!
But the phone was overly hot to the touch, and even as Vicki began inputting the number, she could see there was no service, whether from heat or some interference from the twisted metal and mounds of rubble all around.
Her next action was not even a conscious decision. Jumping to her feet, she began screaming and waving her arms to attract attention. It might have been hours, minutes, or maybe even seconds before Vicki caught the attention of a single file of
basureros
, perhaps even those she’d begged earlier for help, starting down the path into the ravine.
Vicki let her arms fall in exhaustion when she felt a featherlike touch against an ankle. Glancing down, she sucked in a sharp breath. The one exposed arm was moving, the hand groping pleadingly. As Vicki dropped again to her knees, a moan confirmed an unwelcome return to consciousness. Vicki reached to catch the bloodied fingers, and as they moved against hers, the mutilated mouth moved, the sounds so garbled Vicki had to strain to interpret.
“I’m . . . so sorry. . . . You were right. . . . No, I was right—” The last word came out with a whistle of exhaled breath. The head sagged back, and the fingers clutching at Vicki’s went limp.
Vicki fumbled frantically for a pulse, forced her own breath into the girl’s lungs.
Oh, please!
What began as an exclamation became a cry of despair.
Oh, please, no!
Admitting failure at last, she bent her head. Tears that were no longer from smoke and fumes spilled down her face onto the bloodied material of the girl’s T-shirt, washing a bright trail across a gold chain Vicki’s administrations had dislodged around the slack neck. The original green of that material was no longer discernible, and only a sharp eye could have made out the single word of its logo presently exposed. But Vicki did not need to rip the plastic further to complete the Save the Rain Forest slogan hidden beneath or to identify the flawlessly shaped gold jaguar with brilliant emerald eyes that dangled at the end of the chain.
“Holly! Oh, Holly, no!” Only as Vicki struggled to regain some control did she realize that other words were intermingled with that despairing cry. “Mama! Papa!"