An Artifact of Death

by J. J. Cagney

  “Which gives the tribes the legal right to break their reservation boundaries,” Anton continued. “We could be talking civil war.”

  25

  Cici

  When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.― Confucius

  Cici’s sleep was short-lived and punctuated by flashes of consciousness. Whenever a coyote howled or the wind switched directions, she woke. For the first time, she understood the alertness of prey animals and their desire to herd. Only in the center of a large pack was a certain level of security attained.

  “You awake?” Anton asked.

  Cici startled, adrenaline crashing her system. “Yeah.”

  “Then, let’s move.”

  Cici remained silent, considering her options.

  “I have more questions,” Cici said, her voice much calmer than she had been the night before, though the rage continued to build inside her. Or maybe the exhaustion mellowed her emotions. Hard to tell.

  “Why am I not surprised?” Anton scoffed. He tilted his face up at the velvety pitch of the night sky with one of those can-you-believe-this looks.

  “I’ve followed you. You’ve saved my life. I’ve saved yours. Whatever happens from here on out, we have that connection. For life. Now I’m asking you to do me the courtesy of explaining why you’re willing to die.”

  She raised a trembling hand to her grime-covered face. She had to stink after the fear, adrenaline, and number of sprints she’d endured. Her feet ached and blisters formed on her ankles and big toes. Soon, if she didn’t wash them, they would burst and fester.

  Then she wouldn’t be able to walk.

  “Can’t you drop the topic?” Anton implored, his gaze darting around the open, rocky terrain. More of the same. They might as well be walking in circles. Seemed as likely as anything else.

  Cici fidgeted for a moment, but then started to walk. Anton fell into pace next to her. They moved across this new plateau, though Cici remained clueless as to their destination, she understood staying still made them targets. Moving made it more difficult for the Russians to pinpoint their location—and they curved in a circuitous route toward any point, anyway. Anton did that intentionally. Just as he seemed to do everything.

  Anton shook his head, probably at Cici’s naiveté. Deserved, no doubt, but this conversation opened her eyes to her fractured worldview. She’d assumed her country was generally right—that other cultures saw the same moral options she did. But that wasn’t how the world worked, and she should recognize the discrepancies of her Pollyanna-ish choices.

  “You’re indoctrinated in American values—”

  “As are you,” Cici said. “Boston boy,” she added to annoy him.

  Anton shook his head but a small smile played over his lips. “And, as such, you tend to believe everyone wants liberty, the right to do as they please, when they please.”

  Cici’s teeth sank into her bottom lip. They didn’t? “Then what do people want?”

  Anton sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. He looked out over the vast, arid land they stood so far above. “To survive. To feel safe.”

  “And that has to do with a Chacoan heirloom? Don’t think I don’t know you haven’t told me what it is.”

  But she was pretty sure she knew. She didn’t want to say it aloud. Not now that the ghosts in the area seemed less angry with them.

  “Maybe nothing,” Anton said, teeth flashing again.

  Cici’s adrenaline shot upward, causing her heart to pound as Anton found this line of conversation amusing.

  “Maybe everything,” Anton continued. “Human nature is a strange, unmanageable beast. But it’s devolved to its worst, most Hobbsian self these past several years. More in-fighting, less compromise here than in any of our modern history. Distrust in the CIA, FBI is at an all-time high.”

  “Which must worry you a small amount at least,” Cici said. Not because she was trying to dig at him but because she wasn’t informed—lacked the information Anton-not-Anton still refused to supply.

  His gaze met hers. “What worries me most is lack of trust in institutions, in the pillars of the collective that have managed to encapsulate the best of Western civilization for hundreds of years.”

  Cici blinked, then blinked again. “You sound…” She trailed off.

  Anton sighed. “We work best when we work together,” he said. “As a team. Because the ideas and ideals of the collective are stronger than any one evil. If the West can maintain its position on human rights, on equality for all citizens, for educating women, then we can hold the line today against any number of threats.”

  “But when we let those threats break ranks and scatter our causes to the greater good we lose. All of us.”

  Anton cocked his head. “Those don’t sound like your words.”

  “They’re my father’s,” Cici said, her voice tight. Frank Gurule wasn’t an easy man to know, less to love, but he was intelligent, capable of seeing a much larger swath of the world than Cici—especially when she was younger and more idealistic, as she’d been in her early twenties, getting her degree in seminary and environmental studies.

  Part of the reason she added the second, environment-focused major to her degree plan was because her father kept taking cases that benefited oil and gas companies. Cici hoped her work would counterbalance his—or better, bring him around to her realizations. Neither had happened.

  She hadn’t spoken to him in months. Yet here she was, quoting him.

  Imminent death created strange lapses in judgment.

  “So, if Russia or some other country wants to stir up unrest, why here?” She peered out over the plateau, wondering if Sam worked nearby, trying to find her. Or, maybe, he’d not bothered to come at all.

  She wanted to believe in him. But with each step, with each hour, Cici’s hope began to falter more.

  “For exactly that reason. It’s easy to get in and get out without detection.”

  “But you’re here,” Cici said with a frown.

  “So are you. They didn’t expect you—or for you to be something of a living-off-the-land expert.”

  “I’m not—”

  “You saved my life from the puma and from a flash flood. Those men who succumbed to the water? They did so because they weren’t aware of its dangers. You’re my good luck charm, Reverend Cecilia.”

  He chucked her under the chin. She let the name pass and instead rubbed her chin. Anton prodded her shoulder to get her moving again.

  “Will you promise to return whatever else you have?” Cici asked. “I don’t know if you saw it earlier, but there was a dust devil that sucked up the pendant—”

  “I saw.” Anton’s voice held a hint of awe.

  “So you should understand that there are beings here that want their artifacts back. Promise to return the other thing. I’m assuming it’s one more thing only.”

  She waited, but Anton remained silent. Cici rolled her eyes.

  “If you promise to return it as soon as you are able, I bet that would go a long way toward getting more spectral support.”

  “Let me guess,” Anton said. “You communed with your sister while you slept.”

  “No,” Cici said. “I just slept. I’m exhausted.”

  “You’ve held your own, I’ll give you that. But we’re not finished here, yet.”

  They walked in silence.

  The gun in her pocket—the one she kept trying to ignore—slapped against her leg. She swallowed down the bitter dryness of its presence.

  Could she shoot someone if it came right down to it?

  Could she live with herself if she did?

  Could she die knowing she might still retain the opportunity to live?

  Were these the thoughts that ran through Jesus’s head as he fasted in the wilderness those forty days and nights?

  Probably not. He remained steadfast even as she questioned so much of her world. She rolled her eyes, annoyed she lasted only
two-ish days without second-guessing not only her faith but the goodness of it—and of humanity.

  What kind of reverend did that make her?

  “I can promise you this, Cici,” Anton said, his voice soft in the coolness of the night. “I’d love nothing more than to ensure the treasures of Chaco stay here with their former inhabitants, never to be used as props or to start international incidents.”

  The air around Cici didn’t change. She tried to reach out to her sister, but she, too, remained silent. Cici grumbled a bit before she sighed. “I guess that’s going to have to be enough of a promise.”

  Anton turned toward her and, though it was dark, she caught the sardonic lift of his eyebrow. “It’s much more of a promise than my superiors would want me to make.”

  Cici blinked at him. “Then why are you willing to say so?”

  Anton walked on for so long in silence, Cici startled when he said, “You’ve grown on me. I don’t understand everything that’s happened here—not by a long shot—but I have a strong sense of your integrity and—dammit, you’re a good person. That’s why we’re both still alive. And, shockingly, since meeting you, I’ve also seemed to find a will to continue to live.”

  Cici bit the inside of her swollen cheek. Any words Cici spoke now, as Anton pried himself from the worst of the gloom surrounding his wife’s death, would be inadequate. Frivolous.

  Instead, she clasped his palm to hers and walked forward across the barren, alien darkness of the early hours of the frigid New Mexican morning.

  Later, after Anton squeezed her fingers and let go of her hand, Cici continued to walk, albeit bleary-eyed.

  The air around her shifted, seemed to feel…agitated. As if the spirits were angry.

  Or like the spectral warriors sensed a growing threat.

  Aci…

  The wind wasn’t soft as it whipped around Cici’s neck. It was cold, wafting of sweat and gunpowder. Another gust shoved at Cici’s knees, causing her to stumble. A harbinger of what was amassing behind them.

  “They’re coming,” Cici whispered as the horrifying realization dawned. “For us. For it. The assassins. They’re coming.”

  Cici stepped closer to Anton. He tugged her forward and they sprinted over the uneven ground. The wind rose to a sharp scream, dust and debris kicking up behind them in narrow dust devils. Almost as if the warriors and Anna Carmen, were trying to buy them enough time to get to some type of cover.

  The rumble of an engine cut through the shrieking wind.

  Anton stopped, he dropped the SAR pack and crouched low, collecting his weapons and checking their chambers.

  “Get out your gun,” he said.

  “Anton…”

  He put two of his weapons in his right hand and touched her cheek. “We’re out of time,” he said, his voice laced with regret.

  He’d told her this was a suicide mission. He’d fought this long for her. He pulled out two small items—they looked like flatter, smaller grenades—from his pockets. Cici’s breathing hitched and broke on a sob.

  I’ll kill you first…There’s always a contingency.

  Cici closed her eyes and pulled out the gun Anton had given her, trying to ignore her shaking hands.

  If we blow up, so does your artifact. If we die, they get it. Cici sent that thought with as much force as she could muster. She repeated it over and over as she pulled out the gun she’d never wanted and checked to make sure the safety was off.

  Her weapon and Anton’s marksmanship were the last options between Cici and certain death.

  26

  Sam

  To lead uninstructed people to war is to throw them away.― Confucius

  First light took an entire lifetime to arrive.

  Unable to shut his eyes for long, Sam instead spent the night replaying every moment of his history with Cici and Anna Carmen. But as the hours crept by, he sought out those few moments that proved pivotal. The first was Sam’s decision to leave New York the morning after Cici had taken him to a Soho club.

  Cici had fallen asleep quickly that night, wrung out emotionally and physically from the amount of alcohol she’d consumed and the ensuing crying jag that started in the cab on the way back to the tiny apartment she shared with two other Columbia seniors. Sam had stayed with her, held her in her narrow bed throughout the night, taking pleasure from being so close to Cici, even if she might not remember it.

  The next morning before she woke, he dressed. He’d been on his way to pick up the bagels Cici liked when he ran into her ex-boyfriend. Who’d spouted off at the mouth about Cici’s inexperience in bed and her all-around naiveté about the world.

  “I don’t want to be with damn Snow White,” Jason muttered to two of his buddies as they slouched forward in line a couple patrons ahead of Sam. “I mean, come on, it’s not like she was ever going to be more than a college fling. She’s got a great body, but a reverend? That’s not hot. I don’t want to talk about Jesus all the time. No amount of hotness makes up for having to listen to someone pray.”

  Sam had stepped forward and tapped Jason on the shoulder. As Jason turned, Sam grabbed his T-shirt, pulling the smaller man closer until they were nose-to-nose. All the while, the need to hit, to hurt, to break Jason’s jaw, his face, pounded through Sam.

  Just as it must have pounded through Sam’s father.

  The need, and the revulsion caused by that need, caused Sam to let go and step back.

  “What the hell, man?” Jason had said.

  “Don’t talk about Cici like that. In fact, don’t talk about any woman like that. She’s more than a body, you asshole.”

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Jason had asked.

  Sam had stepped forward again, more in control of his initial response but still fighting the need to hit Jason. “You,” he’d said, his voice harsh. “All three of you are what’s wrong with me. The way you talk about women. The way you treat them.”

  An older woman behind them peered down at Jason, then at his two friends. “You heard the nice young man. Time to skedaddle.”

  Sam was still surprised they hadn’t jumped on him and caused a brawl in that bagel shop that morning.

  The woman had rounded on Sam, patted his cheek. “You’re a good boy. Now, get lost.” She’d tipped her head toward a heavyset man behind the counter who’d been talking on a phone line. “Arnie’s calling the cops.”

  Sam had left. He’d planned to go back to Cici, but the rage wouldn’t leave him. Jason was a piece of shit and had never deserved Cici, but that didn’t mean Sam did either. Not with the rage and violent desires running so close to his veneer of respectability. He’d walked and walked and walked, unable to burn off the fire lit by Jason’s words and by Sam’s own desires to go back to Cici’s place and kiss her senseless. He couldn’t do that—he’d promised Sandra, Cici’s mother, he wouldn’t tell Cici how he felt about her before she left for Columbia, and he couldn’t go back on that promise now. So, Sam had done the only thing left to him: he took a cab to LaGuardia and flew back to Albuquerque.

  Sam had planned to talk to Cici about his trip to New York when they were both home for the summer. But then Sandra had died and he couldn’t shake the promise he’d made to her, years before.

  When Cici wasn’t nearby—all those years she’d spent in Manhattan and then Boston, and these last few days with her up here in Chaco…those years, these days drove him nuts. Anna Carmen used to sigh into the phone each time he called to check in on Cici via her twin.

  “Why don’t you tell her how you feel?” Anna Carmen would ask each time, before she gave any kind of report.

  “She never noticed me,” Sam would reply.

  “That’s B.S., Sam. You have never given her a reason to look at you. And this secret of yours is a heavy weight—for you and for me. I don’t like carrying it. You need to talk to Cici.”

  Sam had worked hard through college, and with the help of a therapist, he’d come to understand his father’s actions were just
that—his father’s actions. Sam couldn’t control the man, and he shouldn’t have had to at the age of four, six, nine, twelve. By thirteen, Sam had begun to fight back. After one particularly violent bout that left both Sam and his father bleeding and the living room looking like a war zone, Sam’s father quit trying to hit him.

  That’s when the verbal abuse had begun.

  Sam had responded by spending more and more time at Anna Carmen’s house. Sandra Gurule even let Sam spend the night whenever possible. She’d wanted to talk to her husband Frank about the situation, but Sam was adamant—he didn’t want anyone else to know how bad his home life was.

  For better or worse, Sandra became aware of Frank’s cheating soon thereafter. Then, within months of the divorce proceedings, Sandra was diagnosed with ductal carcinoma—a virulent type of breast cancer. She fought the disease for her girls, she told Sam, who’d sit with her, offering her sips of potato broth or chamomile tea during the dark hours of night when neither of them could sleep.

  Sandra had been incredibly good to Sam. So, when she’d asked Sam to not tell Cici how he felt in those months before she left for Columbia, Sam listened.

  But Anna Carmen seemed to think Sandra hadn’t meant for Sam to steer clear of Cici forever—she’d wanted the two of them apart long enough for Cici to get her degree and probably for him to get the help he hadn’t known then, at seventeen or even twenty, that he needed. Anna Carmen had told him this many times after Sandra’s death but by the time Sam had finished enough counseling to feel whole, Cici had met another man. And Sam left the Santa Fe Police Department for the Denver task force.

  Their lives seemed to diverge with only Anna Carmen holding them together. Her murder had thrust Sam and Cici back together, allowing them to grow closer, yet still Sam worried…not just about Sandra’s opinion or if he was good enough for Cici, but if she could ever see him clearly as just Anna Carmen’s friend.

  The next moment in their long history that had changed their relationship was when Sam had kissed Cici earlier this summer after pulling her back up to safety. Her lips had been cold—from shock. But her mouth tasted of coffee and a distinctly Cici flavor that Sam would never forget.