The Power of Five Oblivion (43 page)

And then the rainforest opened out and they found ourselves at the edge of a clearing. The helicopter had dropped them on high ground, on a plateau, and suddenly a whole panorama opened up in front of them. It was a sight that none of them would ever forget.

There was a vast, monstrous hole in the ground. It was as if an entire mountain had been scooped out and this was the empty space that had been left. In fact that was exactly what had happened. The hole was man-made. The earth had been cut into, layer after layer, with long ridges and platforms that continued down for five hundred metres. To get from one level to another there were ladders – hundreds and hundreds of them – cut from the branches of trees and roped together so that they looked horribly fragile and unsafe.

And there were people still digging. It was impossible to say how many of them there might be. The ones in the distance were tiny, the ones close by packed together in dense crowds. They were climbing the ladders – swarming up them – carrying wooden buckets filled with earth. Most of them were half-naked. Some of them wore only a loin cloth wrapped around their groin. And they were filthy, so caked in mud and sweat that they barely looked human at all, smothered in brown and grey, their hair matted, their eyes staring out hopelessly.

They were taking soil from the bottom to the top, a back-breaking journey up one ladder after another, with long lines of people in front and behind. Up to the top with a full bucket and then immediately down again with an empty one. Fall and you would die. You could break your neck. You could suffocate in the soft earth. You could be trampled underfoot by the others. Nobody was speaking. These people were worse even than slaves. They had been turned into caged animals: mindless, helpless, existing only in exhaustion and pain.

And Matt and Lohan had been chosen to join them.

“This is the Serra Morte mine,” the bearded man exclaimed. The new prisoners were huddled on the edge of the plateau, looking down at the chasm, knowing that we were going to be sucked into it, that they would become part of it and it would never let them go. “It is the largest gold mine in Brazil,” he went on. “Your lives mean nothing any more. All that matters is the soil that you bring to the surface, the flakes of gold that it contains.

“From now on you will work together and you will live together. Your team name is 1179
Verde
. Remember that.”
“Verde”
was the Portuguese for green. “Your own names do not matter any more. If a guard asks you who you are or what team you belong to, you must answer ‘1179
Verde’
. If you are unable to tell him, you will be punished. Now, before I take you down, are there any questions?”

Nobody spoke. Then one of the boys who had been on the platform with Matt put his hand in the air. He was thin, dark-haired with a sullen face, aged about eighteen.

“Yes?”

“When can I get some water?” he asked. “I’m thirsty.”

The bearded man walked over to him and stopped in front of him. Everyone knew that something bad was going to happen – and they were right. He held out a hand and one of the other soldiers tossed him a plastic bottle of water.

“You want water?” he said. “You can have water.”

He weighed the bottle in his hand for a moment then suddenly swung it with all his strength, crashing it into the side of the boy’s head. Water exploded all over him as the plastic broke. The boy crumpled. It must have been like being hit by a club.

“Learn from this,” the man said, addressing all of them. “You do not ask for water. You do not ask for food. You do not ask for rest. You take it when you are given it and you are grateful. Now let’s get to work.”

Nobody else had any questions. Several guards moved forward, carrying knives, and although some of the slaves writhed or whimpered, it soon became clear that their task was only to cut the bonds and set their hands free. Someone helped the boy to his feet and the whole group was about to make its way down when suddenly something moved through the sky above them, causing them to stop and look up. It was the Legacy 600. It had made no sound on the other side of the forest but suddenly it was roaring right above them as it cleared the treetops.

Lohan watched as it arced over the pit and veered away into the distance, then he turned back to Matt and his eyes were filled with anger.

“Was that your ticket out of here?” he snarled. “Well, it looks as if it’s taken off without us. So what do we do now?”

Somebody pushed them forward. By the time they reached the edge of the pit, the plane had already gone.

THIRTY-THREE

Matt and Lohan spent the next week working in the gold mine of Serra Morte and by the end of that time they knew that if they didn’t escape soon they would die. Their strength was being sucked out of them … by the long hours, the gruelling labour, the lack of food and the constant presence of disease. And this was how it was for the thousands of people around them. It was as if they had been fed into some kind of hellish machine. Individually, they no longer mattered. They were being processed. Eventually they would die, just as others had died in front of them. And there were hundreds more arriving every day to fill the spaces that they would leave when they themselves had gone.

The mornings began with a klaxon, sounding out across the empty pit, echoing in the darkness before the sun began to rise. It might have been five o’clock. It might have been six. Nobody had watches or clocks so what difference did it make? The slaves slept in a town that had been constructed about half a kilometre from the pit, a dark and festering sprawl of huts made from wood, plastic, corrugated iron and canvas, or a mixture of all four. Lanes ran between the huts, giving the impression of a community, but in fact the town was lifeless, with nowhere to go, nothing to do. There was no electricity, no running water, no sanitation. Hundreds of people were forced to share the same latrine, a foul trench dug in the jungle where they would queue in line, waiting to relieve themselves. There was no privacy. The stench was stomach churning and the air was thick with black, buzzing flies.

Each building contained twenty or thirty people lying side by side on camp beds, so close that their shoulders touched. Old sheets and blankets hung uselessly over doorways in a vain attempt to keep the mosquitoes out, but all they did was keep the warm, sweat-filled air locked in. Evening meals were distributed in metal buckets and shared out, the men and women crowding round and filling their own tin cups. The food was always the same: a stew of beans with a few scraps of meat from an animal it was probably better not to identify. After they had eaten, they slept, knocked out by the fifteen hours’ non-stop work that were just behind them but which they knew waited for them again the next day. Mosquitoes droned endlessly throughout the night. There was no respite.

Every morning began with a body count. There was a work detail – they were known as “
os coveiros
”, the gravediggers, and it was their job to drag out the dead and carry them on wagons to a clearing in the jungle. In fact, there were no graves. The bodies would be dumped here, and once a week, when the pile had grown high enough, they would be doused in petrol and set alight. No night ever passed without someone dying. Sometimes it would be from malaria or exhaustion. More often, it was the snakes. Matt would sometimes hear the scream as someone was bitten. It would be followed by raised voices and panic as the other men and women in the same hut tried to find the creature by candlelight before they were bitten themselves.

The work was always the same.

Every morning, in the pale glow of the dawn, the workers picked up a wooden bucket and a wooden spade and climbed down the ladders, all the way to the bottom. Even this could be dangerous. The ladders were slimy with dirt and sweat, and it was all too easy to slip. On their very first day, Matt and Lohan saw a man fall to his death. Perhaps he broke his neck. Perhaps he suffocated in the mud. Either way he didn’t get up again and the other workers simply curved around him, trying to pretend he wasn’t there. Matt and Lohan did the same. They had quickly learnt not to draw attention to themselves, not to do anything that would separate them from the crowd. They had only one plan. They had to live long enough to be there when the Legacy 600 returned.

They dug, they filled their buckets, they climbed. It was dark at the bottom of the pit. The sky seemed miles away and the guards, standing on the edge or patrolling with their Alsatian dogs, were tiny. It was as much as Matt and Lohan could do to stay close to each other. Talking was forbidden, not that they would have had the strength to exchange anything except swear words. Climbing up was much harder because of the extra weight. The edge of the rope cut into their shoulders, the heavy buckets rubbed the skin off their backs. By the end of the day they were in a daze, pulling themselves up, rung after rung, with the next person’s feet in front of them, someone’s hands scrabbling at their ankles. One ladder then another and another. Matt didn’t dare look up to see how far he had to go. If he knew, he might give up.

They dumped the mud that they had collected at the top and there were more workers ready to wash it, to sieve through it, searching for the flakes of gold that were the reason the mine existed. Torrents of muddy brown water flooded back down the hill. There seemed to be very little gold.

They were given water three times a day – when they woke up, at noon and before they slept – but it was never enough. The water was warm and thick with chemicals that were supposed to prevent them from getting sick but both Matt and Lohan suffered from nausea and stomach cramps, and all around them people were collapsing and lying in spasms on the ground.

Before the week was over, the two of them were almost unrecognizable. The sun had burned them, even though it never seemed to shine. Matt’s neck and shoulders were raw and red. His shirt had been stolen from him while he was asleep and he was naked to the waist, although he was so filthy it was impossible to tell where his flesh ended and his trousers began. Lohan kept himself contained in a bubble of hatred, which he directed against the guards, against the
cafuzo
who had sold him and even against Matt.

The strange thing was that there were only a couple of hundred soldiers in the entire area, even though they were responsible for thousands of slaves. At first, Lohan had thought that he might be able to persuade people to join him in a general uprising. Surely it would be possible to break free if they all acted together. But he had soon realized it wasn’t going to happen. A great many of the slaves had chosen to be here. They had sold themselves into slavery and at that moment it was as if something inside them had died. As for the rest, they knew they were going to be worked to death. But they no longer cared.

Just once, at night, Lohan and Matt talked about escaping. They were lying next to each other, whispering as quietly as they could in English. If anyone overheard them, they would almost certainly inform the guards in return for a little extra food.

“I can get us guns,” Lohan said. “All I need is for one of the guards to come close enough…”

“And what then?” Matt sounded defeated.

“We can make a break for the helicopter. Or if that doesn’t work, we could head off on foot, through the jungle.”

“We’d never make it, Lohan. We’re miles from anywhere. And they’ve got dogs. They’d come after us.”

“Then what do you suggest, Matt? Do you want to die here?”

“We wait for the right moment.”

“There are no right moments. There is only death.”

And then Matt became ill.

It was what Lohan had been dreading more than anything, even though part of him still blamed Matt for bringing them here. It was on the eighth morning when the two of them woke up that Lohan saw that the worst had happened. Matt had a fever. His whole body was bathed in sweat and his eyes were glazed. Desperately, Lohan turned him over, forcing a little water between his lips. The other prisoners in the hut stole out as quickly as they could, not wanting to catch whatever the American boy had. It might be malaria. The mosquitoes had been more than usually aggressive. It might be dysentery. It might be something worse.

“Get up, Matt. I can help you…” Lohan tried to pull Matt to his feet but he soon saw that it was useless. Matt’s whole body seemed to be broken, his arms and his legs lacking any strength. His breath was rasping in his throat. Outside, he heard one of the guards calling out a warning. Latecomers were beaten. Sometimes, as an example to the others, they were tied up and left without water or food, roasting in the heat. Lohan had no choice. “I will come back later,” he said. “Try to rest. Try to get well…”

Lohan knew that the hut would be inspected as soon as he had gone. They would find Matt and they would make a decision. There was no medicine at Serra Morte and no doctors to administer it. If the soldiers thought there was any chance that Matt would get better, they would leave him lying there. If they decided he was finished, they would drag him out and throw him onto the pile of bodies waiting to be burned … they wouldn’t even check he was dead before they lit the match.

It was the longest day Lohan had known since he had been brought to this terrible place. All he could do was concentrate on his work, trying to force Matt out of his mind. Already he was making his plans. If Matt died, he would escape on his own. It didn’t matter if he was killed in the attempt. He was dying anyway. He couldn’t take any more.

He was the first back into the hut that evening. Matt was still there, looking not much better than he had been when Lohan had left.

“Pedro…?” he asked, as Lohan leant over him, pressing another water bottle to his lips.

“He’s not here,” Lohan said, wishing that he was. Matt had told him that the Peruvian boy had the power to heal. It was exactly what was needed right now. “I’m Lohan. How are you feeling?”

“Weak.”

“Well, at least you got a day off work.” Lohan tried to make a joke of it, to conceal how worried he had been. “Do you want to eat? Can I get you anything?”