"Ashuco!" Stephen screamed into the rain. "Ashuco! Where are you?"
The dense canopy and violent thunderstorm had killed any hint of daylight. Stephen peered into the dark deluge, searching for any sign of his guide or the others.
He saw only the jungle, thick, wet, and hostile. It surrounded him, pressed against his skin, threatened to suffocate him in its malevolent greenness.
"Ashuco! Darcy! Esteban!"
He stood motionless in the downpour, straining for a reply. The only response was the pounding of the rain, falling so hard and so heavy Stephen wondered if he might actually drown while walking in it.
"Ashuco!"
His hoarse voice was weak and pitiful, barely audible to his own ears. How was it possible for rain falling on leaves to be so loud?
He scanned the foliage around him for machete marks, a footprint, any hint of human life.
Nothing.
Stephen stumbled ahead into the choking, dripping brush, weighed down by his sodden boots and clothes, bent beneath the deadweight of the backpack that held his crippled cameras and the crushing burden of his own disappointment.
This was supposed to have been his golden opportunity, his shot at the big time. A better life not only for him, but for his boys.
Poor Sean, Ryan, and Ian. They’d already been through so much. He’d told himself he was doing this largely for them, that a successful expedition would somehow result in more time together, new adventures for the four of them to share.
Instead, he was leaving them fatherless.
His own words haunted him.
"Don’t worry, Sweetie, I’ll be okay. God’s going to take care of me."
Poor kids. They would probably never believe in anything again.
A deafening clap of thunder rattled Stephen’s teeth, a phenomenon he had previously thought to be only a cliché.
Unbelievably, the rain fell harder.
A hanging vine clawed his face. He reached up to yank it down, and caught a pungent whiff of his own sweat.
God, he was so tired. So tired and so hungry and so bruised and so bug-bitten and so wet.
"Ashuco!" he screamed with a raw throat. "Ashuco! Where in God’s name are you?"
No response.
He was alone, lost in the jungle. And night was coming.
A sickening sensation rose in his gut. He struggled for control, fighting the irrational panic he felt welling up inside.
No, he realized, that wasn’t right.
The most frightening thing about this panic was that it wasn’t irrational. This fear was well-founded, justified, reality-based. Barring a miracle, he was going to die in this jungle. Perhaps today, in this very spot, alone in the rain.
Stephen knew what the jungle could do. He had seen the animals, the bugs, the fungi, the effects of the constant heat and humidity.
They’d never find a body.
The fear bloomed into full-blown panic, a wave of overwhelming dread that left him shivering in the tropical heat. A hot rush of adrenaline threatened to send him screaming into the jungle, crashing blindly through the wet foliage.
"Run!" Some primitive instinct screamed. "Get out of here! Just drop the gear and run!"
But there was nowhere to run to.
Instead, Stephen fell to his knees in the mud and groped at the zipper of his backpack. With shaking hands, he retrieved his battered journal and fumbled to a blank page. Clutching his shiny Fisher Space Pen ("Guaranteed to write upside down, underwater, and even in outer space!"), he hunched over the journal, struggling to keep the paper dry.
A splotch of bright red blood splashed across the page, spreading like a fungus. Stephen choked back a sob. He knew it was nothing fatal, nothing even serious, just a little seepage from the deep gash on his torn left hand. But the sight of that crimson stain blooming on the page was horrific, a portent so dreadful the hinges of his mind creaked in protest.
He ripped the bloodstained page from the journal and threw it into the rain. It fluttered to the forest floor and lay there curled and limp, like a wounded bird. Sweat poured down his face, mixing with the rain and his tears. He scribbled in a wild, rambling hand.
This trip was a mistake, a fatal mistake. We are going to die here. All of us – Ashuco, Esteban, Darcy, Mario, me. The jungle is going to take us all.
Thunder rumbled, then exploded in an ear-splitting clap that shook the soggy ground beneath him. A brilliant bolt of lightning illuminated the rain forest, revealing in a flash his utter, complete aloneness.
Stephen stared down at the journal. His words were barely legible, a black, spidery scrawl that looked like fear crawling across the page. Looming up at him were the words die here.
He ripped out the page and ground it into the mud, then forced his fear into a corner of his mind. He felt it waiting there, rabid and feral, struggling to get out, to gobble up the last of his reason.
But he had regained enough clarity to know he could not allow those frantic, faithless scribbles to be his final message.
Stephen took a deep, shuddering breath. He gripped the pen between white knuckles, waiting until the trembling in his hands had quieted to a barely noticeable quiver. Then he wrote.
November 12, 1995
By venturing off course, I fear we have put together a plan that could end our lives. Even if someone came searching for us, they would have no idea where to look. We are miles from the river, and the canopy is too thick for any hope of sighting or rescue by plane.
I still have faith. I’m praying and putting my trust in God.
But I have to be realistic.
Christians die just like everyone else.
