The Feast of the Goat - Mario Vargas Llosa [136]
“Aren’t those shots, Pedro Livio?”
“Yes, yes, shots. It’s them, damn it! Step on it, Huáscar.”
He knew what shots sounded like. What they had heard, disturbing the night, were several bursts of gunfire—the carbines of Antonio and Amadito, Turk’s revolver, and maybe Imbert’s—something that filled his spirit, so frustrated by waiting, with exaltation. Now the Oldsmobile was flying down the highway. Pedro Livio put his head out the window but could not make out the Goat’s Chevrolet or his pursuers. Then, at a bend in the road, he recognized Estrella Sadhalá’s Mercury and, a second later, illuminated by the Oldsmobile’s headlights, the thin face of Fifí Pastoriza.
“They forgot Fifí too,” said Huáscar Tejeda. “They forgot the signal twice. What assholes!”
Less than a hundred meters away, Trujillo’s motionless Chevrolet came into view, pointing to the right of the highway, its headlights on. “There it is!” “It’s him, damn it!” shouted Pedro Livio and Huáscar at the moment revolver, carbine, and submachine-gun bullets started flying again. Huáscar turned off the headlights and, less than ten meters from the Chevrolet, he slammed on the brakes. Pedro Livio, who was opening the door of the Oldsmobile, was thrown to the highway before he fired. His whole body was scraped and pounded, and he heard an exultant Antonio de la Maza—“This buzzard won’t eat another chicken” or something like that—and the shouting voices of Turk, Tony Imbert, and Amadito, toward whom he began to run blindly as soon as he could get up. He took two or three steps and heard more shots, very close, and a burning sensation stopped him short and knocked him down as he clutched at his lower belly.
“Don’t shoot, damn it, it’s us,” shouted Huáscar Tejeda.
“I’m hit,” he groaned, and without any transition, worried, at the top of his voice: “Is the Goat dead?”
“Dead as a doornail, Nigger,” Huáscar Tejeda said, at his side. “Look!”
Pedro Livio felt his strength leaving him. He was sitting on the road, surrounded by debris and broken glass. He heard Huáscar Tejeda say that he was going to find Fifí Pastoriza and then the Oldsmobile pulled away. He heard the excited shouting of his friends, but he felt dizzy, incapable of taking part in their conversation; he barely understood what they were saying, because his attention was focused now on the blazing heat in his stomach. His arm was burning too. Had he been hit twice? The Oldsmobile came back. He recognized Fifí Pastoriza’s exclamations: “Shit, oh shit, oh God Almighty, oh shit!”
“Let’s put him in the trunk,” ordered Antonio de la Maza, who spoke with great calm. “We have to bring the corpse to Pupo, then he’ll put the Plan in action.”
His hands felt wet. That viscous substance could only be blood. His or the Goat’s? The asphalt was damp. It hadn’t rained, so that must be blood too. Somebody put a hand across his shoulders and asked how he felt. The voice sounded distressed. He recognized Salvador Estrella Sadhalá.
“A bullet in the stomach, I think.” Instead of words, what came out were guttural noises.
He could see the silhouettes of his friends carrying something and putting it into the trunk of Antonio’s Biscayne. Trujillo! Damn! They’d done it. He didn’t feel joy; it was more like relief.
“Where’s the driver? Has anybody seen Zacarías?”
“He’s dead as a doornail too, back there in the dark,” said Tony Imbert. “Don’t waste time looking for him, Amadito. We have to get back. The important thing now is to take the body to Pupo Román.”
“Pedro Livio’s wounded,” exclaimed Salvador Estrella Sadhalá.