Guatemala – Journey into Evil. David Monnery

Чтение книги онлайн.

       1

      Tomás Xicay reached out a hand to shake his sister by the shoulder, then hesitated for several seconds, reluctant to disturb the rare serenity of her face. In the thin wash of moonlight seeping down through the forest canopy she looked almost a child once more, and seeing her like that he felt threatened by an avalanche of memories. Emelia was now a woman of twenty-two, but she had been only eight, and he fourteen, when both had been orphaned by their mother’s murder, and Tomás doubted whether he would ever shake the sense of paternal love and obligation which he still felt for his sister.

      He smiled to himself and shook Emelia’s shoulder. Her eyes opened at once, and her head lifted off the Spanish grammar she had been using as a pillow. The condition of the book’s cover, streaked with layers of dirt and warped by damp, suggested that this was far from the first time that it had been pressed into such service.

      ‘It’s time,’ he whispered.

      ‘Right.’ She pulled herself into a sitting position, conscious of the activity in the shadows around her. She felt hungry, but that was nothing unusual.

      As if in response to the feeling, Tomás handed her a peanut-butter cracker. ‘There’s only two more left,’ he said.

      ‘I can’t wait for breakfast,’ she replied wryly, easing herself on to her haunches and nibbling at the cracker.

      He grinned, ruffled her hair, and moved on to check out the rest of the unit. ‘Ready?’ he asked each compañero and compañera. Some grunted assent, some offered a nervous ‘yes’, some gave him only a grim smile.

      Two minutes later the column of thirteen was on the move, threading its way down through the trees. Each ‘compa’ concentrated on keeping the correct distance behind whomever he or she was following, short enough not to lose contact in the dark, long enough to maximize the СКАЧАТЬ