"What are you talking about?"
Mark said. "Let's see if his friends really come to the rescue."
Oh, shit, Romero thought. He took a further step toward the door.
John pulled out Romero's pistol.
"No!" Mark said.
"Matthew, help Mark with the trapdoor."
"This has to stop!" Mark said. "Wasn't what happened to Matthew and Luke enough?"
Like a tightly wound spring that was suddenly released, John whirled and struck Mark with such force that he knocked him to the floor. "Since when do you run this family?"
Wiping blood from his mouth, Mark glared up at him. "I don't. You do."
"That's right. I'm the oldest. That's always been the rule. If you'd been meant to run this family, you'd have been the first-born."
Mark kept glaring.
"Do you want to turn against the rule?" John asked.
Mark lowered his eyes. "No."
"Then help Matthew with the trapdoor."
Romero's stomach fluttered. All the while John aimed the pistol at him, he watched Mark and Matthew go to the far left corner, where it took both of them to shift a barrel of grain out of the way. They lifted a trapdoor, and Romero couldn't help bleakly thinking that someone pushing from below wouldn't have a chance of moving it when the barrel was in place.
"Get down there," John said.
Romero felt dizzier. Fighting to repress the sensation, he knew that he had to do something before he felt any weaker.
If John wanted me dead, he'd have killed me by now.
Romero bolted for the outside door.
"Mark!"
Something whacked against Romero's legs, tripping him, slamming his face hard onto the floor.
Mark had thrown a club.
The three brothers grabbed him. Dazed, the most powerless he'd ever felt, he thrashed, unable to pull away from their hands, as they dragged him across the dusty floor and shoved him down the trapdoor. If he hadn't grasped the ladder, he'd have fallen.
"You don't want to be without water." John handed the jug down to him.
A chill breeze drifted from below. Terrified, Romero watched the trapdoor being closed over him and heard the scrape of the barrel being shifted back into place.
God help me, he thought.
* * *
But he wasn't in darkness. Peering down, he saw a faint light and warily descended the ladder, moving awkwardly because of the jug he held. At the bottom, he found a short tunnel and proceeded along it. An earthy musty smell made his nostrils contract. The light became brighter as he neared its source in a small plywood-walled room that he saw had a wooden chair and table. The floor was made from plywood, also. The light came from a bare bulb attached to one of the sturdy beams in the ceiling. Stepping all the way in, he saw a cot on the left. A clean pillow and blanket were on it. To the right, a toilet seat was attached to a wooden box positioned above a deep hole in the ground. I'm going to lose my mind, he thought.
The breeze, weak now that the trapdoor was closed, came from a vent in an upper part of the farthest wall. Romero guessed that the duct would be long and that there would be baffles at the end so that, if Romero screamed for help, no one who happened to come onto the property would hear him. The vent provided enough air that Romero wasn't worried about suffocating. There were plenty of other things to worry about, but at least not that.
The plywood of the floor and walls was discolored with age. Nonetheless, the pillow and the blanket had been stocked recently - when Romero raised them to his nose, there was a fresh laundry smell beneath the loamy odor that it had started absorbing.
The brothers couldn't have known I'd be here. They were expecting someone else.
Who?
Romero smelled something else. He told himself that it was only his imagination, but he couldn't help sensing that the walls were redolent with the sweaty stench of fear, as if many others had been imprisoned here.
His own fear made his mouth so dry that he took several deep swallows of water. Setting the jug on the table, he stared apprehensively at a door across from him. It was just a simple old wooden door, vertical planks held in place by horizontal boards nailed to the top, middle, and bottom, but it filled him with apprehension. He knew that he had to open it, that he had to learn if it gave him a way to escape, but he had a terrible premonition that something unspeakable waited on the other side. He told his legs to move. They refused. He told his right arm to reach for the doorknob. It, too, refused.
The spinning sensation in his mind was now aggravated by the short quick breaths he was taking. I'm hyperventilating, he realized, and struggled to return his breath rate to normal. Despite the coolness of the chamber, his face dripped sweat. In contrast, his mouth was drier than ever. He gulped more water.
Open the door.
His body reluctantly obeyed, his shaky legs taking him across the chamber, his trembling hand reaching for the doorknob. He pulled. Nothing happened, and for a moment he thought that the door was locked, but when he pulled harder, the door creaked slowly open, the loamy odor from inside reaching his nostrils before his eyes adjusted to the shadows in there.
For a terrible instant, he thought he was staring at bodies. He almost stumbled back, inwardly screaming, until a remnant of his sanity insisted that he stare harder, that what he was looking at were bulging burlap sacks.
And baskets.
And shelves of...
Vegetables.
Potatoes, beets, turnips, onions.
Jesus, this was the root cellar under the barn. Repelled by the musty odor, he searched for another door. He tapped the walls, hoping for a hollow sound that would tell him there was an open space, perhaps another room or even the outside, beyond it.
He found nothing to give him hope.
"Officer Romero?" The faint voice came from the direction of the trapdoor.
Romero stepped out of the root cellar and closed the door.
"Officer Romero?" The voice sounded like John's.
Romero left the chamber and stopped halfway along the corridor, not wanting to show himself. A beam of pale light came down through the open trapdoor. "What?"
"I've brought you something to eat."
A basket sat at the bottom of the ladder. Presumably John had lowered it by a rope and then pulled the rope back up before calling to Romero.
"I'm not hungry."
"If I were you, I'd eat. After all, you have no way of telling when I might bring you another meal."
Romero's empty stomach cramped.
"Also, you'll find a book in the basket, something for you to pass the time. D. H. Lawrence. Seems appropriate since he lived on a ranch a little to the north of us outside Taos. In fact, he's buried there."
"I don't give a shit. What do you intend to do with me?" Romero was startled by how shaky his voice sounded.
John didn't answer.
"If you let me go right now, I'll forget this happened. None of this has gone so far that it can't be undone."
The trapdoor was closed. The pale beam of light disappeared.
Above, there were scraping sounds as the barrel was put back into place.
Romero wanted to scream.
He picked up the basket and examined its contents. Bread, cheese, sliced carrots, two apples... and a book. It was a tattered blue hardback without a dustcover. The title on its spine read, D. H. Lawrence: Selected Stories. There was a bookmark at a story called "The Woman Who Rode Away." The pages in that section of the book had been so repeatedly turned that the upper corners were almost worn through.
The blows to Romero's head made him feel as if a spike had been driven into it. Breathing more rapidly, dizzier than ever, he went back to the chamber. He put the basket on the table, then sat on the cot and felt so weak that he wanted to lie down, but he told himself that he had to look at the story. One thing you could say for certain about John, he wasn't whimsical. The story was important.
Romero opened the book. For a harro
wing moment, his vision doubled. He strained to focus his eyes, and as quickly as the problem had occurred, it went away, his vision again clear. But he knew what was happening. I've got a concussion.
I need to get to a hospital.
Damn it, concentrate.
"The Woman Who Rode Away."
The story was set in Mexico. It was about a woman married to a wealthy industrialist who owned bountiful silver mines in the Sierra Madre. She had a healthy son and daughter. Her husband adored her. She had every comfort she could imagine. But she couldn't stop feeling smothered, as if she was another of her husband's possessions, as if he and her children owned her. Each day, she spent more and more time staring longingly at the mountains. What's up there? she wondered.
Surely it must be something wonderful. The secret villages. One day, she went out horseback riding and never came back.
Romero stopped reading. The shock of his injuries had drained him. He had trouble holding his throbbing head up. At the same time, his empty stomach cramped again. I have to keep up my strength, he thought. Forcing himself to stand, he went over to the basket of food, chewed on a carrot, and took a bite out of a freshly baked, thickly crusted chunk of bread. He swallowed more water and went back to the cot.
The break hadn't done any good. As exhausted as ever, he reopened the book.
The woman rode into the mountains. She had brought enough food for several days, and as she rode higher, she let her horse choose whatever trails it wanted. Higher and higher. Past pines and aspens and cottonwoods until, as the vegetation thinned and the altitude made her light-headed, Indians greeted her on the trail and asked where she was going. To the secret villages, she told them. To see their houses and to learn about their gods. The Indians escorted her into a lush valley that had trees, a river, and groups of low flat gleaming houses. There, the villagers welcomed her and promised to teach her.
Romero saw double again. Frightened, he struggled to control his vision. The concussion's getting worse, he thought. Fear made him weaker. He wanted to lie down, but he knew that, if he fell asleep, he might never wake up. Shout for help, he thought in a panic.
To whom? Nobody can hear me. Not even the brothers.
Rousing himself, he went over to the table, bit off another chunk of bread, ate a piece of apple, and sat down to finish the story. It was supposed to tell him something, he was sure, but so far he hadn't discovered what it was.
The woman had the sense of being in a dream. The villagers treated her well, bringing her flowers and clothes, food and drinks made of honey. She spent her days in a pleasant languor. She had never slept so long and deeply. Each evening, the pounding of drums was hypnotic. The seasons turned. Fall became winter. Snow fell. The sun was angry, the villagers said on the shortest day of the year. The moon must be given to the sun. They carried the woman to an altar, took off her clothes, and plunged a knife into her chest.
The shocking last page made Romero jerk his head up. The woman's death was all the more unnerving because she knew it was coming and she surrendered to it, didn't try to fight it, almost welcomed it. She seemed apart from herself, in a daze.
Romero shivered. As his eyelids drooped again, he thought about the honey drinks that the villagers had kept bringing her.
They must have been drugged.
Oh, shit, he thought. It took all of his will power to raise his sagging head and peer toward the basket and the jug on the table.
The food and water are drugged.
A tingle of fear swept through him, the only sensation he could still feel. His head was so numb that it had stopped aching. His hands and feet didn't seem to be a part of him. I'm going to pass out, he thought sickly.
He started to lie back.
No.
Can't.
Don't.
Get your lazy ass off this cot. If you fall asleep, you'll die.
Mind spinning, he wavered to his feet. Stumbled toward the table. Banged against it. Almost knocked it over. Straightened. Lurched toward the toilet seat. Bent over it. Stuck his finger down his throat. Vomited the food and water he'd consumed.
He wavered into the corridor, staggered to the ladder, gripped it, turned, staggered back, reached the door to the root cellar, turned, and stumbled back to the ladder.
He did it again.
You have to keep walking.
And again.
You've got to stay on your feet.
His knees buckled. He forced them to straighten.
His vision turned gray. He stumbled onward, using his arms to guide him.
It was the hardest thing he had ever done. It took more discipline and determination than he knew he possessed. I won't give up, he kept saying. It became a mantra. I won't give up.
Time became a blur, delirium a constant. Somewhere in his long ordeal, his vision cleared, his legs became stronger. When his headache returned, he allowed himself to hope the drug was wearing off. Instead of wavering, he walked.
And kept walking, pumping himself up. I have to be ready, he thought. As his mind became more alert, it was seized by confusion. Why had John wanted him to read the story? Wasn't it the same as a warning not to eat the food and drink the water?
Or maybe it was an explanation of what was happening. A choice that was offered. Spare yourself the agony of panic. Eat from the bounty of the earth and surrender as the woman had done.
Like hell.
Romero dumped most of the water into the latrine. It helped to dissipate his vomit down there, concealing what he had done. He left a small piece of bread and a few carrot sticks. He bit into the apples and spit out the pieces, leaving cores. He took everything else into the root cellar and hid it in the darkest corner behind baskets of potatoes.
He checked his watch. It had been eleven in the morning when they'd forced him down here. It was now almost midnight. Hearing the faint scrape of the barrel being moved, he lay down on the cot, closed his eyes, dangled an arm onto the floor, and tried to control his frantic breathing enough to look unconscious.
* * *
"Be careful. He might be bluffing."
"Most of the food's gone."
"Stay out of my line of fire."
Hands grabbed him, lifting. A dead weight, he felt himself being carried along the corridor. He murmured as if he didn't want to be wakened. After securing a harness around him, one brother went up the ladder and pulled on a rope while the other brothers lifted him. In the barn, as they took off the harness, he moved his head and murmured again.
"Let's see if he can stand," John said.
Romero allowed his eyelids to flicker.
"He's coming around," Mark said.
"Then he can help us."
They carried him into the open. He moved his head from side to side, as if aroused by the cold night air. They put him in the back of the pickup truck. Two brothers stayed with him while the other drove. The night was so cold that he allowed himself to shiver.
"Yeah, definitely coming around," John said.
The truck stopped. He was lifted out and carried into a field. Allowing his eyelids to open a little farther, Romero was amazed at how bright the moon was. He saw that the field was the same one that he had seen the brothers tilling and removing stones from the day before.
They set him on his feet.
He pretended to waver.
Heart pounding, he knew that he had to do something soon. Until now, he had felt helpless against the three of them. The barn had been too constricting a place in which to try to fight. He needed somewhere in the open, somewhere that allowed him to run. This field was going to have to be it. Because he knew without a doubt that this was where they intended to kill him.
"Put him on his knees," John said.
"It's still not too late to stop this," Mark said.
"Have you lost your faith?"
"I..."
"Answer me. Have you lost your faith?"
"...No."
"Then put him on his knees."
&nbs
p; Romero allowed himself to be lowered. His heart was beating so frantically that he feared it would burst against his ribs. A sharp stone hurt his knees. He couldn't allow himself to react.
They leaned him forward on his hands. Like an animal. His neck was exposed.
"Prove your faith, Mark."
Something scraped, a knife being pulled from a scabbard.
It glinted in the moonlight.
"Take it," John said.
"But-"
"Prove your faith."
A long tense pause.
"Yes," John said. "Lord, accept this sacrifice in thanks for the glory of your earth and the bounty that comes from it. The blood of-"
Feeling another sharp rock, this one beneath his palm, Romero gripped it, spun, and hurled it as strongly as he could at the head of the figure nearest him. The rock made a crunching noise, the figure groaning and dropping, as Romero charged to his feet and yanked the knife from Mark's hands. He drove it into Mark's stomach and stormed toward the remaining brother, whom he recognized as John because of the pistol in his hand. But before Romero could strike him with the knife, John stumbled back, aiming, and Romero had no choice except to hurl the knife. It hit John, but whether it injured him, Romero couldn't tell. At least, it made John stumble back farther, his aim wide, the shot ploughing into the earth, and by then Romero was racing past the pickup truck, into the lane, toward the house. John fired again. The bullet struck the pickup truck.
Running faster, propelled by fear, Romero saw the lights of the house ahead and veered to the left so he wouldn't be a silhouette. A third shot, a bullet buzzing past him, shattered a window in the house. He stretched his legs to the maximum. His chest heaved. As the house got larger before him, he heard the roar of the pickup truck behind him. I have to get off the lane, he thought. He veered farther to the left, scrambled over a rail fence, and raced across a field of chard, his panicked footsteps mashing the tender shoots.
Headlights gleamed behind him. The truck stopped. A fourth shot broke the silence. John obviously assumed that in this isolated area there was a good chance a neighbor wouldn't hear. Or care. Trouble with coyotes.
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