The guards climb quickly into the trucks. They still hold their guns at the ready, aimed out the windows at us to keep us away.

One guard remains outside just long enough to light a cigar. He takes two puffs, and then touches the glowing ash to a bottle-like container with a long fuse.

He draws back his arm and steps forward, hurling the bottle high and far, like a centerfielder making a long throw to home plate. He doesn’t wait for the projectile to land, but rather dives into the nearest truck. Immediately, both flatbeds head back out of the forest along the logging trail.

Ernesto and the other prisoners don’t hesitate either. They take off after the trucks at as close to a sprint as they can manage. Most are weak from confinement and malnutrition, and some can only manage a stumbling shuffle. Still, they flee with wild desperation, dodging overhanging branches and even pushing each other off the path when necessary. It’s a mad, pathetic scramble.

I lag behind for a second, fascinated by this odd race. And then I suddenly understand why they’re running for their lives. The homemade bomb that the guard threw lands and ignites. And the rain forest seems to explode around me.

It’s not a single circumscribed boom, it’s more of a dull roar—I recall the jaguar’s cry that scared Gisco out of the gondola. But that was a natural sound, with a beginning and an end. This roar is unnatural and endless.

I find myself running. Sprinting. Fleeing in a wild panic. Now I realize that when they directed us to pour the gasoline, they were laying down a pattern and creating their own way out. The bumpy logging road to the river is the only bridge through the flames—the sole possible escape from this inferno. The trucks are already almost out of danger, rumbling along a half mile ahead of us, nearly to the river and the plane.

For the rest of us, it will be a much closer call. I’ve always been a swift runner. Fastest in my school, in my town, in my whole county. I got a late start in this race, but now I’m making up for it, flying along at full sprint with my arms pumping and my legs churning.

The heat is all around me. It’s like racing through the center of an oven. The rain forest is not green anymore—black smoke is billowing in all directions and has obscured everything. Red flames shoot out of that black cloud and singe my skin and sear my eyes and throat.