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When the crowd of hollering black men in blue shirts makes its move toward us, many swinging machetes above their heads and holding long sticks, I grab Michelle by the back of her T-shirt and pull her away. I don't care that she's going to be angry for my ruining her shot. This isn't the time for amateur photography.

I force her to run with me down the shabby street, little bright parrots taking flight above us. Our driver, Anthony, disappeared on us with the excuse he'd find me a cold beer. I've no idea where we're going and don't care, just as long as it's away from the mob. We go deeper into this shantytown, my shirt sticking to my back in the heat.

“My shin splints,” Michelle cries. “We have to slow down.” Is she kidding? A Christmas vacation in this tiny island country was her idea, and now we're facing possible death.

I squeeze her hand harder and speed up, the shouting not far behind. “We won't be around to see New Year's,” I yell at her, my chest wheezing, “if we can't find somewhere safe to hide.” Goddammit. This is Anthony's fault. I don't trust him, haven't since the moment a few days ago when I first saw him trawling for fares in his beat-up Subaru at the tiny airport.

We round a corner, almost tripping over a mangy dog that darts out from beneath our feet, tail between its legs. It stares back fearfully over its shoulder at us. My chest is tight and my head pounds, and as I raise my eyes from the dog, I skid to a stop, Michelle whacking into me, her camera digging into my sunburned lower back. A block away and moving our direction, another gang of angry and sweating black men approach, these in red shirts, shouting and swinging more machetes above their heads.

Pushing Michelle back around the corner, I pin her against the wall. “This is not good, honey,” I whisper, looking to my left along the street we've just run down, knowing that any moment the gang in blue will appear like a nightmare in the dusty streets and harsh sunlight. I know my eyes are wild and bloodshot. I know I must look as frightened, as freaked out as I am. Michelle stares back at me, her own eyes wide, her face flushed and sweaty.

Three days ago we flew here. It was Michelle's last-minute idea to escape the crappy Toronto snow, my widowed mother and her holiday depression, Michelle's brothers and sisters and their constantly growing families that spawn faster than mould. We walked out of that tiny airport and into the humid heat of this island that smells of rotting fruit, dragging our wheeled suitcases behind us like stubborn pets. A taxi driver pushed his way through the loitering cabbies and made his way straight to us. He introduced himself as Anthony, his mirrored shades hiding something. He didn't even bother to ask if we wanted him to be our driver as he took Michelle's suitcase and led us to his rusting car.

Michelle smiled back to me as he opened his trunk and lifted her heavy bag into it as if it weighed no more than a baby. I noticed Anthony's muscled arms through his cheap tropical shirt. I've gained some weight in the last year. I think it's due to the struggling economy. It's caused me a lot of stress.

“Where's Anthony?” Michelle asks, her face desperate. “We need Anthony.” I can hear the mob in blue moving closer somewhere to our left, the mob in red much closer and heading our way, too. It hits me like a slap that we have found ourselves in the middle of some kind of gang war. Michelle and I are standing at ground zero. I scan the street. Of course all the doors are shuttered. Christ. It's Christmas Day, and this place is about to explode in violence. I could be watching my nieces and nephews tear open gifts, my mother dozing on the chaise with an empty champagne glass beside her. I stop myself from spitting at Michelle, “This is all your fault.” We have to stay calm. We have to find a way out of this.

Driving us from the airport to our hotel, Anthony was good at wiggling his way like a dysentery microbe into our vacation plans. By the time he got us to the resort that didn't even resemble the pictures on the Internet, he'd made plans with Michelle to pick us up in a few hours and drive us to the best restaurant in town. I watched her over-tip him and only felt tired at the idea of dragging our suitcases up the steps and to our room.

I pull Michelle toward an alley. I have to cover my mouth and nose. Michelle gags. The alley's nothing more than a muddy dead end, pocked with stinking pools of water. A dead pigeon buzzes with flies.

Our first full day here, I lay out by the pool in our compound, embarrassed to take my shirt off. I knew Michelle wanted to get out, see some sights, but I was exhausted. A cocktail with an umbrella in it and a good mystery to read was what everyone said made for the perfect vacation. When I finally did peel my shirt off, my head swimming in coconut rum, I didn't care that my belly was fish white and loose, or that when I rolled over onto my stomach, anyone walking by would see my back hair. I fell asleep before I even finished the first chapter, and when I awoke, I knew I'd made a bad mistake. Heat radiated from my skin like a 100-watt light bulb.

Michelle slaps my back and I almost scream. “Not here,” she says. “I can't stay here.”

Loud cracks echo down the street suddenly, and we both flinch. My God. Gunfire. “We have to stay,” I tell her. “Just hide behind me.” Think What do we do? My hand aimlessly reaches for my Blackberry in its case on my hip. My phone. I have my phone. “Tell me you have Anthony's number with you,” I whisper to Michelle. She begins digging in her purse.

On our second day here, Anthony and Michelle agreed he'd drive us out sightseeing. Anthony arrived at the hotel far too early, waking us with a call from the front desk. He drove us through ramshackle after ramshackle town, the roads of the highway too narrow and full of potholes and farm animals. I spent most of the day sullen, my back weeping in pain as I stared out the window at scowling men swinging machetes through fields of cane.

But when we turned off the highway and through a jungle to a river, I perked up. Anthony had me pay a rail-thin and ancient man the colour of a tire for three fat inner tubes. We marched through thick green foliage, the air singing with birds, our tubes slung over our shoulders. The cool river water eased my stinging back, but the inner tube infuriated the tender skin, and so I lay on the tube on my stomach, paddling my hands lazily, watching Michelle and Anthony flirt and splash water at one another as we wound our way gently down the river.

The pleasant part of this outing and the beers I drank on the drive home in Anthony's shitty Subaru made my mouth say “yes” when he offered to take us to this town that we now are about to be murdered in for a Christmas Day he promised we'd always remember. I shouldn't have trusted him. We're going to be robbed and killed.

Michelle pushes Anthony's cheap business card to me. I punch in the numbers fast as I can. I can't believe it when he actually answers his own cellphone, can hardly hear him for the noise in the background, the shouting and what sounds like people being tortured. “Anthony,” I scream. The line crackles. “What the hell's going on? What do you want from us?”

Anthony shouts back, trying, I think, to ask us where we are. Even if I could tell him, should I? It's like telling the thief in the house that we are hiding upstairs under the bed. “What do you want from us?” I shout again.

“Just wait where you are,” I think he says. He laughs on the other end. I'm sure of it. And then the line goes dead.

“He laughed at me and hung up,” I say. Michelle stares at me dumbly. Her lips quiver. She's about to cry.

The men in red shirts round the corner, only yards from us now. My stomach slips even further when I hear the roar of the blue-shirt men approaching them. The image of these muscled thugs hacking each other to death with their sharp machetes right here in front of this stinking dead end, then turning on us, too, makes my legs tremble so that I find it hard to keep standing. I pull Michelle down into a crouch with me. We are stupidly and completely exposed.

The noise rises as the two gangs reach one another directly in front of us. The front men of the two mobs lift their heads into the air and scream, their machetes above their heads. I hear a cacophony of whistles blowing, my pulse a thundering of drums in my ears.

And then, when the noise can't possibly get any louder, it ceases. The screaming, the whistles, everything, it just stops. I stare as the jostling in front of me, the dozens of men in my line of sight, lower their machetes and sticks to their sides, lowering their heads, too, as if in prayer.

As the seconds tick by like hours, my legs shaking, Michelle straining against me, the birds begin their singing again. The men remain stone silent, heads bowed, eyes closed.

As if in stereo, two plaintive voices rise, each from somewhere far down in the crowd. Women's voices, high and pitch perfect. I recognize the Latin words immediately. The women sing Ave Maria. It is the most beautiful rendition I've ever heard.

In those minutes, everything falls away. Michelle stands and helps hoist me up. The sky is a hot, deep blue above us, full of song. I pray that the singers never stop.

But of course they do. They have to. A silence returns. Even the birds seem hypnotized. And then I hear the clatter of metal striking stone, just a couple of clanks at first. I blink back sunspots as the sound of machetes dropping into the street grows in volume till it sounds like rain on a tin roof.

The two gangs are smiling at one another, the leaders raising their arms in unison. Whistles pierce the air again and drums, real drums, begin to pound out a beat as I watch the men embrace. Blue and red shirts mingle. People start to dance and laugh. Women, some younger, others old, join the men until the scene in front of me throbs with happy bodies.

That's when Michelle moves beside me, takes the lead as Anthony pushes through the mass and approaches us, his mirrored shades hiding his eyes but his smile big and bright. We meet at the edge of the crowd, and Anthony has to shout to be heard.

“The oldest celebration on the island,” he says. He holds three bottles of beer between the fingers of one hand. “Our tribes, they come together.” He takes off his sunglasses and mops sweat from his forehead. He looks much younger without the shades.

Michelle is pulled into the dancing by a woman missing a front tooth. Children dart through the adults' legs, lighting and throwing firecrackers. Anthony says, “I told you it would be a good trip,” and slaps my back. Pain and heat radiate across my skin. “I told you, friend.” Michelle grins at me as I watch her trying to copy the woman's dance movements. Anthony smiles watching Michelle then turns his smile to me. We both know, I think, I am a fortunate man.

Canadian author Joseph Boyden's second novel, Through Black Spruce, won the 2008 Scotiabank Giller Prize for English-language fiction last month.