we'll head downstream for a day or two. We can pull in somewhere, add a lean-to and a fire pit. Maybe check the cane, make sure it's still tied tight enough."
That was a dig. The man was still smarting over Ramon insisting that he could tie the floats better with two hands than his twin could with one.
Once Ramon would have risen to the bait, taken offense, maybe pushed it into a fight, but not now. Fine, pendejo, Ramon thought. Dig at me all you want. I know how scared you are too.
"Good plan" was all he said.
Lashing the branches together and binding them to the cane floats was long work, but not difficult. Ramon found himself falling into a rhythm - setting the wood in place, tying it on one side, then the other, then in the center where it crossed another branch. One, two, three, four, then start again. He fell into the work, abandoning himself to the sheer physicality of it. His hands and feet, unprotected by calluses, hurt and blistered. He ignored the pain; it was just part of the package. If the other man could cut away his own stump of a finger bone, Ramon could sure as shit stand scraping up his palms a little.
His twin kept pace as best he could, but the crippled hand slowed him badly. Ramon could feel the frustration rising in the man as he struggled not to be shown up by a pinche banker. As the sun dipped toward the treetops on the opposite shore, Ramon noticed, with some satisfaction, that the other man's bandage showed the bright red tinge of new blood.
At the end, they laid the iceroot leaves over the branches, tacking the broad, leathery fronds together until they were like a carpet. Not wholly waterproof, but enough that they wouldn't be getting their asses wet with river water all the way south. The raft wasn't much to look at. There was no rudder, and only an improvised paddle to steer with at the stern. It wasn't more than two and a half meters square; it was a decent size for a wrestling match, but as a way to travel, it would be pretty damn close quarters. Still, all it had to do was stay on top of the big river long enough for them to float down to Fiddler's Jump. And when they dragged it out into the lagoon, it floated high off the water, and when they both clambered on, it felt solid and secure.
"Not fucking bad, David," his twin said. "You did a man's job of it, eh?"
"We did all right," he agreed. "You want to get out of here?"
And as the words left his mouth, they heard a sound - the distant, gurgling cry of a chupacabra. It sounded as if it were in pain. Ramon's belly went tight, and the other man's face was pale.
"Yeah," his twin said. "We might as well get going."
Ramon paddled them out from behind the sandbar and nearer the center of the river where the current was fastest. The other man squatted at the raft's edge, looking back. Neither the beast nor Maneck emerged from the forest, and the screaming call didn't come again. Ramon, settling back to steer, couldn't help feeling they'd had a near miss. Another night on shore would have ended badly for them. Maybe even another hour. It was a good fucking thing that his twin had tried so hard to keep up. A good thing that Ramon hadn't been able to bring himself to kill the man in the night. One man would never have been able to finish the raft alone in time.
But the sound of the predator - even if it was in pain - also filled him with a strange melancholy. If the chupacabra lived, then Maneck was dead. The athanai of his cohort had been killed attempting to protect his people from the violence that had tracked them across stars and centuries. And the creature who had frustrated Maneck's tatecreude? A jumped-up little monkey from the badlands of Mexico who'd stumbled on the hive while running from the law, and who even now didn't have any idea what the consequences of his discovery would be. At least Maneck had died trying. Died fighting. There was some honor in that, even if it had failed its people. In an odd way that surprised and disquieted him, he found he almost missed Maneck, now that it was over, now