Year's Best Hardcore Horror Volume 3

by Cheryl Mullenax

  Sebastián was trying to look hopeful but it came off looking queasy. “Maybe they’re gonna ransom us, that’s what this is about. It’s part of the business model now, you know.”

  He was right on that much. Used to, the people might see cartel crews rolling in their convoys of pickup trucks, and as long as everybody kept out of their way, they’d leave the people alone. Not anymore. Times were tougher, even for the cartels. Every time a boss got killed or captured, organizations fractured and the chaos ramped up. Plus anybody who said the Federal police and the American DEA weren’t having an impact wasn’t paying attention. Whenever they lost another tunnel to the north side, or another supply route, that was another fortune lost.

  But all around them were people too scared to fight back. And people who loved those people. Some of them even had a little money to pay to get their loved ones back in more or less one piece. It wasn’t drug-sized cash, but $40,000 for a few days of no-risk work wasn’t a bad sideline.

  Only Enrique wasn’t seeing it. Not here.

  “I don’t know, Bas,” he said. “They didn’t have any interest in Hector. They didn’t give him a chance. And Crispin, he was the one looking like he could buy his way out of anything.”

  Go back to the site now, what would be left? A lot of nothing. The SUV would’ve been towed to a chop shop in Matamoros or Reynosa. For Hector and Crispin, graves no one would ever discover, or maybe an acid bath.

  “What I can’t figure is how they knew where to find us at all. They shouldn’t have known that. Nobody was following. Where would they have picked up on us?”

  Oh god, that look on Sebastián’s face—like his eyes were falling back inside the cold black emptiness of his head, and his skin was on too tight.

  “What did you do, Bas? What the fuck did you do?”

  It came from somewhere so far inside him he could barely squeeze out sound: “I sent out a tweet. Right after we got to the airport.”

  Enrique’s breath left him all at once. Twitter. Sure, why not. Because Sebastián couldn’t wait to get a jump on the image thing. Tell the whole world what lonely, godforsaken, evil place they were going to. Look at us, everybody, see how edgy we are. Never guessing who might be paying the wrong kind of attention.

  “The airplane didn’t kill us, so you figured you would?” Enrique whacked Sebastián across the face, open-handed but with heft behind it, to knock him off his ass and send him sprawling across the dingy wooden floor.

  A few of the dead people, los muertos, looked up at the commotion, decided they’d seen it all before, and tuned them out again.

  Near tears, Sebastián scuttled a few feet away and put his head between his knees. Sofia roused, coming awake, feeling the disturbance in the air.

  “What?” she said, her tongue thick with morning, then she jolted into high alert as everything hit her all over again. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing.” He couldn’t think of a single good result that could come from telling her. Not now. Later, if there was time for it to matter. “Just nerves.”

  She looked around, taking it all in and liking none of it. He noticed, for the first time, a pair of five-gallon plastic buckets in the farthest corner—the communal toilet. Currently in use.

  Meanwhile, Sebastián had gotten brave enough to have a look out one of the barred front windows flanking the pair of main doors, big slabs of wood and iron that looked solid enough to withstand cannon fire.

  Up. Sebastián was looking up.

  He backed away from the window then, one slow foot after another, so tense his tendons were going to pop if he wasn’t careful. His fingertips went to his lips and he stopped, something inside shutting down.

  They took his place at the window.

  Not far beyond the front doors was the biggest Santa Muerte he’d ever seen. She stood fifteen feet tall, easy. Her blue robes were voluminous, enough material there for a festival tent. She seemed too big to have found her a scythe that wouldn’t look like a toy. Yet they had. Somebody must’ve made it just for her, a scythe big enough to cut the moon in half. And somehow … somehow the skull was at scale.

  “That can’t be real,” Sofia said.

  No. It couldn’t. It just looked real. The yellowing of age. The uneven teeth. The missing teeth, random gaps in the jaw. They’d had it made, that was all. Same props company that made the chacmool, maybe. Wouldn’t that be a kick in the head.

  A sight like this, the biggest thing around, your eyes would naturally go to it, linger on it. So it took awhile for them to notice the rest, the bits and pieces scattered around the hem of Santa Muerte’s giant robe. Never mind the skull. These were real. Arms and legs, hands and feet and heads. They were as real as real got.

  “Do me a favor,” Sofia said, quiet as a butterfly. “If it looks like that’s where I’m headed, kill me. If I ever got on your nerves and you wanted to break my neck, that would be a good time.”

  * * *

  After everybody was awake and moving, there was only one person who would talk with them, a graying, droopy-jowled viejo who said he was a priest. Everybody else, Enrique figured it was like that guy in war movies—the tight-faced veteran with the thousand-yard stare who’s been around the longest, and he doesn’t want to get to know the new recruits transferring into the unit. Doesn’t even want to know their names. They’ll be dead in a week, so why bother.

  “What’s a priest have to do to get a cartel mad at him?” Enrique asked.

  “Exorcisms,” Padre Thiago said. “I cast out the devil from the ones who let him in but don’t want him dwelling in them any longer. He doesn’t like that, and neither do his servants.” The old man looked out in the direction of the towering Santa Muerte, then grinned and spread his hands as if to bless his flock. “But you see how God works. He brings me here where prayers of liberation are needed most.”

  Enrique had all kinds of things he could’ve said then about God and deliverance and working in mysterious ways, but there would have been no upside to any of it. You choose your battles wisely. And you don’t drive off your allies.

  “Who are his servants here?” he said instead. “I don’t know what this is about. I don’t know who took us, or why.”

  “That group of men over there?” The priest pointed with discretion at a sullen cluster occupying the farthest corner opposite the toilet buckets. “They say they are with the Sinaloa Federation. This would probably make it the Zetas who have you.”

  “Just me,” Enrique said. “Not you?”

  “Wherever I am, I am only God’s.”

  Knowing who still didn’t explain why. The Sinaloa Federation controlled the northwest. The Zetas, once they’d turned against the Gulf Cartel, took control of the northeast and the coast all the way down to the Yucatan. There were others, but these two were the gorillas, fighting for as much turf as they could take, with strips of contested no-man’s-land running down the center of the country.

  “And there’s that one, too.” Padre Thiago meant a stocky man milling about on the Sinaloa periphery, as though he didn’t belong but was allowed closer than most. “Do you recognize him?”

  The man looked to be in his upper thirties, and like the rest of them, he’d been at least a week without a razor, so his beard was catching up with his moustache. Enrique gave it his best, trying to see who he was under the whiskers and the unruly, unwashed hair.

  No,” he had to admit. “Should I?”

  “You don’t recognize Miguel Cardenas? I thought one music person might know another, but what do I know.”

  Enrique never would have gotten it on his own, but now he had enough for the connections to link. Different music, different look, different everything. He knew the name, ignored the rest. Miguel Cardenas was a traditionalist, singing dusty songs for the provinces. Enrique could picture the man in his cowboy hat, holding an acoustic guitar, in front of a backup band of brass and accordion, tasteful drums and upright bass. He still wore a white dress shirt, dingy now, and
black slacks with silver studs down the sides. What had they done—nabbed him after a show?

  “I bet I can guess,” Enrique said. “The idiot did a narco ballad about one of the bosses in the Federation.”

  Padre Thiago gave a sad nod. “If you seek favor by flattering one side, the other may not turn a deaf ear to it.”

  Enrique couldn’t help but stare. He was looking at the deadest man in this room. A guy like that, there would be no ransom for him. He was an insult that couldn’t be forgiven. He was the pet dog that got killed to make a point.

  And it was one more reason why this didn’t make sense. The three of them, Los Hijos del Infierno, weren’t on anybody’s side. They sang nobody’s praises. It would’ve been like asking whose side you were on between lung cancer and heart disease. They were on the side of life, end of story.

  That was the thing people never got about them. The look, the sound, the lyrics, the stage show … all of it left people who couldn’t look or listen any deeper thinking they must’ve been on the side of death. What else could they be? Because look at them. Look at the freaks. Never once considering the band was another symptom, the world getting the art it deserved.

  You only screamed that loud when dying was the last thing you wanted to do.

  * * *

  It was the middle of the day when they came for Olaf and Morgan.

  A squad of armed guys burst in shouting for everyone to get on the far side of the room, and everybody else knew the drill already. It seemed to be the way the cartel guys handled everything here. They either brought what they wanted or took what they wanted, and did it at gunpoint with lots of yelling.

  If you wanted to die quick, here was your chance. Whatever they said, do the opposite. Go straight at them, screaming for blood. It had to be a better end than you’d get under that giant Santa Muerte. There was every reason to believe whatever happened there would go a lot worse.

  So why didn’t anybody do it? Most of these people had been here for days or longer. Padre Thiago had been here over two weeks. They all knew what was going on.

  The only thing that could’ve stopped them from rushing into gunfire was hope. They still hoped someone cared enough to buy their release. That’s what kept them docile. That’s what would keep them docile one day too long.

  Then again? Forcing a quick end was easy to dream about, but when they came in that first time, all stormtrooping and chaos, the only thing Enrique could do was scuttle to the wall with everyone else and try to wrap the adobe around him. Ashamed, because the thing he wanted most in the world right then was to be invisible. Don’t see me, don’t pick me, don’t act like you even know I’m here. He folded himself over Sofia and that was all the altruism he could muster. When he saw it was Olaf and Morgan they wanted, he’d never been more with disgusted with himself for feeling relief.

  Olaf was still feisty. They had to pry Morgan from his arms and knock the wind out of him with the butt-end of an AK-47 to the gut. He dropped to his knees, gasping, then they dragged him by the shoulders. Morgan went easier, stumbling along with her eyes popped wide and her mouth open in a silent scream, like she’d hit a place of panic so overwhelming she froze there.

  As quickly as they’d come, the extraction team was gone, and everyone unglued themselves from the wall. Enrique drifted up to the front window, forcing every step, because someone who knew them should bear witness. He would watch as long as he could.

  Only they didn’t reappear. Santa Muerte continued to stand alone.

  That was life here, the terrible erratic rhythm of it. Long stretches of boredom and soul-eating dread, waiting for something to happen, and when it did, you shit yourself with fear.

  Within hours, he and Bas and Sofia had become fixtures the same as the rest, subject to the same pecking orders and probing. Even in captivity, the Sinaloa guys had their own mini-cartel going. They’d been watching, taking the measure of the newcomers, and an hour or so after Morgan and Olaf were taken, one of them decided he wanted a woman and wanted one now, and made a move on Sofia.

  Enrique went tense, ready to go off if needed, and he figured he would before it was over. One on one, though, the guy didn’t have a chance. Sofia had been fending off grabby assholes for years. She’d gone through a phase when she cut her hair short and choppy, thinking it might discourage them, but it didn’t, so she’d grown it out again and instead worked on preemptive strikes.

  This one she kicked in the balls, and when he doubled over, gripped him by the curly ringlets of hair on the back of his head to steady him for a knee to the face. He was on the floor before his buddies saw it was going to happen. A few of them moved to step in, so Enrique came forward for the intercept.

  He’d already guessed how they had him pegged. That they saw him as someone for whom size didn’t matter, whose mass they could dismiss. He’d accepted years ago that he was always going to have the round, moonfaced look of some lumpen guy too big and slow to do anything other than let bad shit happen to him.

  Sometimes it was good to leave the wrong impression. When all they saw was freaks with smudged, day-old makeup, you could do a lot of damage before they caught on.

  The first one who got close, Enrique hooked a punch into the side of his neck that landed with the sound of meat slapping onto stone. It sent him staggering until he dropped a few steps away. The next, Enrique stomped a kick into his belly to fold him in half, then brought a hammer-fist down like an anvil to the back of his skull. Another he picked up and threw at two others, a carnival game of pins and balls. It took them by enough of a surprise that one of them stood there stupid, long enough to let Sofia break his wrist, and all at once they were backing away, changing their minds, no fresh pussy was worth this.

  He’d have to sleep light from now on, but was probably going to anyway, if last night was any indication.

  Awhile later, Olaf and Morgan were brought back, neither of them worse off than before. The cartel guys, Olaf said, had only sat them down and grilled them about who they were, what they did, where they came from, who did they know with money. Mainly it was about the money.

  Nobody was more relieved to hear this than Sebastián. He turned giddy, going on how it was only a matter of time before somebody came through, somebody had to—they made other people money, didn’t they? They were an investment somebody would want to protect. Bas couldn’t wait to help their captors out, give them names. Manager, label people, promoters. They had fans, so maybe a Kickstarter, bring the whole world in on getting them home safely.

  Sebastián was everything hope looked like when it came unhinged.

  The longer the day went on with nobody asking them anything, the farther Bas fell again. By dusk, he was making such a fuss at the barred windows, shouting to anyone who’d listen how ready he was to talk, that Enrique dragged him back before someone decided they were sick of listening to him squall.

  It wasn’t happening.

  Whatever they were here for, it was something other than money.

  * * *

  Later that night they got their first look at how things ultimately went here. It was just late enough for people to start getting drowsy, this holy prison filling with the sounds of people dropping off and snoring, one of them muttering from someplace deep inside a bad dream. Then reality intruded, as bad or worse, everybody rousted by the extraction team as they burst in and went straight for one of the Sinaloa guys he’d scrapped with earlier and dragged him away screaming.

  Straight to Santa Muerte.

  Maybe they’d picked him because he’d outlived his usefulness. Or because it was a good time to grab him, since he was fucked up from earlier and couldn’t struggle as well. Or because he’d lost a fight with a big chubby guy and this left him looking weak. Maybe it was random and there was no reasoning behind it at all.

  Enrique’s nerves were too shredded to settle on how he was supposed to feel about this. Relieved? One less enemy to worry about, after all. Hours earlier he could’ve killed the
guy himself. He’d wanted him dead, wanted him humbled and suffering.

  Just not like this.

  Enrique was the only one at the window—everybody else must have seen it all before—until Sebastián joined him like it was the last place he wanted to be except for everyplace else here.

  “Don’t watch, boys,” Padre Thiago called out to them. “Why would you watch?”

  Good question. With that cartel snuff footage he’d combed through online, at least Sebastián was better equipped to handle it. As for himself? Could be he needed an unfiltered look at where this could end for them. All the motivation he would need to push the schedule and make it quicker, when the time came.

  The crew had enough stark white lights burning out front that it wasn’t hard to see. It took eight or nine guys to handle things—three to get the victim into place, the rest standing guard to enforce compliance if needed, then one more coming into view when the others parted and the light caught him.

  “Oh shit,” Sebastián breathed. “I know that one, I’ve seen him … seen him in pictures, I think.”

  This newest guy didn’t need the machete in his hand to look like walking death. He had the part down already. Tall, thin as a broomstick and without a shirt, bone and ropy muscle standing out in equally sharp relief across his tattooed skin. They covered him, maybe 20% of his hide left uninked for contrast. The rest was monochrome designs in black and dark green, cheap ink. Or maybe he hated color.

  “How can you be sure?” Enrique said.

  “The ones on his face. I only ever saw one of them looking like that.”

  The skin around his eyes had been shaded into dark ovals. The sides of his nose were blacked out too, along with his lower cheeks and parts of his chin. His head was shaved. From a distance, and probably close-up, too, the effect was like a living, decorated skull.

  “I think he’s MS-13,” Sebastián said. “They don’t even try to blend.”

  Funny thing—he thought he was at rock bottom already. No more room left to feel worse about their chances. But hearing this was a reminder: There was always room to go lower.