the hill, and disappear into the bush all around.
The village itself seems empty of humans; but in the bean field beneath the hill, there is a huge helicopter, painted khaki, covered with bulbous, streamlined projections. This ultramodern vehicle seems wildly out of place here, as if it has travelled in time, is taking part in an invasion of the eleventh century by the twenty-first. There are men milling around the bean field, a few white men in military fatigues and body armour, and many black soldiers in ragged khaki. The helicopter is embossed with an American flag and with the words AIR AMBULANCE.
The sight of the American flag is like a jolt of electricity, makes Veronica's heart soar with the most intense joy she has ever experienced. She has never been so happy to be American. America has reached across the world to save its daughter. She can barely move, but she feels alive again, alive and triumphant.
Two men in civilian clothes, a wiry black man with dreadlocks and a tall gray-haired man with an acne-scarred face, supervise as she and the other survivors are strapped onto stretchers and lifted into the helicopter. A man with a red cross on his camouflage uniform stoops beside her and begins speaking to her in a Southern accent. She can't make out what he says, partly because the engine roars to life beneath them, partly because her mind has lost its ability to comprehend. It doesn't matter. She is safe now. She has been rescued. She can let herself go. The rotors of the helicopter begin to spin, and Veronica feels like her mind is spinning with them, corkscrewing up into the blue sky and the dark void beyond, losing all awareness of the world and time.
Chapter 11
She wakes to bliss. There are sheets over her body, pillows beneath her head, and her body is free of pain for the first time in recent memory. It feels like floating in a warm bath. She rolls onto her side, keeping her eyes closed, trying to draw out this deliriously wonderful daze as long as possible - but there is something against her arm, some kind of thin plastic tube. She tries to push it away but it seems stuck to her wrist. In fact it feels stuck in her wrist.
Veronica opens her eyes, alarmed. She is in a room decorated with wicker furniture, a big TV, a ceiling fan, and a leopard-print blanket. It looks like a hotel room except for the wheeled cart next to her bed and the IV drip in her arm. She doesn't understand where she is or why. Her memory is a jumbled collage of nightmare images, blood and slaves and feral teenagers with dead eyes, chains and guns and pangas, Derek's severed head, their desperate escape through thickets of thorny bush.
Recollection trickles slowly into her muzzy brain. She lifts up her blanket and peers beneath. Somebody has dressed her in a hospital robe. Her numberless wounds have been treated and dressed with white gauze bandages, although several are already dark with seeping blood. She feels oddly dissociated from her body, like it used to belong to someone else. Veronica puts her hand to the side of her head and feels fresh stitches. It doesn't hurt. She's drugged, she realizes distantly; that IV is overflowing with analgesics, maybe even morphine. Which is fine by her.
She lies in bed for a long time before deciding to mount an expedition for the TV remote control. It lies tantalizingly close, on a table not ten feet away. Sitting up is hard. Swinging her legs over the side of the bed is harder. Standing up is nearly but not quite impossible. She grabs the IV rack and uses it as support as she shuffles dizzily across the room. Through the window she sees daylight and palm trees. She wonders where she is. Maybe she's been flown back to America and that's Miami outside. She could look, but the window seems so far away. The TV will tell her. She harvests the remote control and is on her way back to bed when the door opens.
"Well, aren't you a lively one," the plump, middle-aged black woman says cheerfully. She wears an army uniform and speaks with an American accent.
"Where am I?" Veronica asks.
"You're safe. I'm your nurse, my name's Irene. Let's just get you back to bed." She helps Veronica back to a horizontal position. "How are you feeling?"
"I feel great," Veronica says enthusiastically.