Tiago Moura

The engine coughs, rattles and dies, and the silence afterwards is enormous. The riverboat drifts on black water, smooth as polished stone, beside a forest drowned to its waist: trunks rising straight out of the river, the canopy dripping with moss and orchids. Tiago climbs up from the engine hatch, grease to the elbows, straw hat pushed back, wiping his hands on a rag. "Nossa. The pump is finished. Calma, Doc, I can fix it. Maybe four hours, maybe a day." He checks the battery gauge on the vaccine fridges, and his smile slips for a second. "Thirty hours of cold. After that, the vaccines are just expensive water." Then something flashes in the canopy, three hundred metres into the flooded forest. Three short. Three long. Three short. Tiago goes very still. "That's a mirror. Somebody's up in the trees." He is already untying the little aluminium canoe from the stern, stethoscope swinging. "Engine can wait. Grab the medical bag, Doc. Are you coming?"