I must stand and wait.
My memories are a jumble of fresh and incredibly stale.
One memory is of movement, awkward, stiff. I’m a knight in a ponderous suit of armor made of plaster and plastic wood. Another memory is of dancing, as light as air, wearing only scarves of silk chiffon. Blue chiffon. Like a Blue Angel.
I’m an idealistic girl stung by social injustice. Haunted children look to me for salvation as to a mother. Now I’m a powerful and seductive goddess or a cabaret chanteuse . . . maybe even, someday, a monstrous bride of a famous monster.
I can be anything anyone would care to make of me.
For a moment the dancing angel’s free, soaring movements make my prison a smothering coffin again. I feel the plaster, wet and heavy, wrapped around my face and body like a mummy’s bindings. No! I am not a mummy! I am young, young. I need to move, breathe.
Oh, but I am old, old too, shrinking like that girl, Alice, my body the walls that are collapsing around me.
The biblical Tower of Babel flashes through my mind, and a shining city where trains fly alongside aeroplanes, an entire towering futuristic city made from hubris and light, like Lucifer, the fallen angel. I see screaming thousands rioting and drowning. I see a woman in a green gown and a man all in white, like a ghost. I see world war and world peace.
Perhaps . . . I am eternal.
Who am I? What am I? Who will tell me? Who will shape me, free me, use me, destroy me?
I glimpse again the man with the searching eye of a camera . . . the one with a silver eye that sees past the plastic and wood of my coffin to my hidden human heart beating inside.
WHAT A NIGHTMARE! Buried alive.
I blinked awake, trying to figure out if I was dreaming or hallucinating. In the dim light, I searched for the vague bulk of Quicksilver sleeping in front of the door. No, he’d stayed with Tallgrass tonight.
As my eyes grew accustomed to the night lights of Juarez leaking around the skimpy curtains over the window, I made out Ric’s sleeping form next to me. One way or another, I had my nightly guard.
I was surprised to see a supple silver chain linking us, my familiar reaching out to Ric in the night. Was that why I’d dreamed of the mechanical woman from Metropolis? That idle thought made my dream seem more like being in a comic book rather than a movie. Maybe I’d snagged a small part in Superman’s Depression-era Art Deco “Metropolis” that was inspired by Fritz Lang’s Metropolis film.
By now Ric’s profile was as clear as if outlined by a thin wire of neon, every feature sharp. I could see his eyelids vibrating with the hyperactivity of REM sleep, the dreaming stage I’d just left. I wondered what dreams, or nightmares, he was having tonight. Me in his arms? Or has the Silver Zombie seized his subconscious, the way she’d mastered mine?
HE’S A BOY again, in his seventh year of captivity to the human and zombie trafficker named Torbellino and his gang of coyotes.
Our Lady of Guadalupe has come to his dreams for years, perhaps even to his waking moments, her face melting with compassion for his loneliness, her pressed-together palms praying for him.
Now he’s mesmerized by the woman’s tantalizing image behind the smoke of a dirty magazine’s cigar ad. Now she’s come to life, dancing for him in her sheer skirt with her bare breasts gleaming at the tips. He’s mesmerized, never having imagined anything like this.
But he likes it. He likes it even when he feels the needle fangs of a vampire bat he hesitates to tear away for fear the almost-naked woman gyrating in the cloud of smoke will vanish if he wakes from his dream trance and moves.
Pleasure seeps from him like smoke, and then he wakes up, pulling the soft bat body from his neck with a sharp spasm of pain. It flies away, but the woman has vanished, as he feared. Maybe he should feel shame. He’s seen the women dragged into the cabin of Torbellino and his men and has clenched his fists and squeezed his eyes shut, but this woman is different.
She likes him. She likes what she does for him, likes to ease his pain and fear.
He doubts the Virgin of Guadalupe will ever appear to him again.
But this vision will.
Chapter Thirty-three
A KNOCK ON the door caught me slapping on some lip gloss late the next morning just as my stomach was growling up a storm.
So was the other side of the door.
I opened it pronto to find Quicksilver on perk-eared, lifted-lip alert next to Leonard Tallgrass. He and Tallgrass managed to look both worried and sheepish.
“So . . . how are you guys?” Tallgrass asked, not examining the room behind me with his usual law-enforcement sweep.
“Starving,” I said. “Ric will be out of what passes for a shower in a minute. What brought you two here?”
“The need to kill time,” Tallgrass said. “If your stomach is growling, we know how to feed it. The sun is shining. It’ll be a fine day. We could do the town until the heat of early afternoon, then take a siesta until it’s time to go back to the desert and kick butt.”
“Sounds great,” Ric said from behind me. “I worked up quite an appetite last night.”
“Scouting on the desert,” I added quickly.
“Peace at any cost,” Tallgrass murmured. “You two ready to do the Ciudad Juarez tourist shuffle?”
BREAKFAST WAS A very late brunch in the open patio section of a giant restaurant complex off the Plaza del Sol called Mariachiville.
More English than Spanish echoed off the colorfully tiled fountains, while parrots chattered in the surrounding jacaranda trees. Those gorgeous lilac-blur trumpet flowers were blowing in the wind with mariachi band fervor. Scents of hot peppers and cilantro mingled with the perfume of tropical blooms. The waitstaff was young, vibrant, and bilingual. I was ready to book a return trip to Juarez for a romantic getaway with Ric at a five-star hotel.
Dream on, Irma advised.
Over glasses of Negra Modelo beer Ric and Tallgrass were muttering about “rendezvousing” with military “big shots” and “borrowing” some firepower bearing numbers and alphabet letters instead of names.
“Quick and I go along tonight, no matter what?” I inserted into their intense, whispering dialogue.
Tallgrass looked at Ric, who nodded impatiently. “Of course. You and the dog have your built-in defense systems. You’ve proven that time and again. I get to solo head-to-head with El Demonio, though.” His expression relaxed into a grin. “Unless my ass is being whupped. Then, I expect all of you to play some really killer backup.”
The technical talk ended when the waiter wafted platter-size dishes of heavy pottery holding the kind of ammunition I dig—nachos, fresh guacamole, fiery salsa, tomatillos and chipotle sauce, enchiladas, tacos, jalapeño and habanero peppers.
This menu could melt down zombies, not to mention start a hot border war with the digestive system. We finished with smooth, sweetly bland crème caramel all around.
“I can see why tourists won’t give up on this border city.” Ric’s smile lit up the entire area and even the big blue sky above it. “I won’t give it over to the gangs and cartels either,” he added, his glance darkening.
“Softly,” Tallgrass cautioned him. “Enjoy the day, amigo, with great simple cuisine, an old friend, a beautiful woman, and a loyal dog. What more could a man ask? The night will bring the closure you seek.”
“You? Talking about closure?” Ric teased Tallgrass. “Sounds like you’ve been powwowing with my foster mother.”
“Wouldn’t mind if I did.” Tallgrass winked at me as I lifted my bubble of a margarita glass in a toast to Ric. “Is her husband involved in the US side of tonight’s action?”
Ric shook his head. “Burnside is really and truly retired. It’s better that way. He never knew why I was enslaved by Torbellino. Discovering my dead-dowsing abilities—or even my civilian efforts to bring down the Torbellino cartel—would bring out the army mule in him.”
“Do you regret he never really knew you?” I asked Ric.
Now that
I was starting to wonder who had sired me, I was realizing I needed to find that out as badly as Ric needed to stop his lifelong lethal enemy. My father might be someone I knew and would never suspect, or ever respect. He might already know me and not be willing to admit it.
Ric shook his head. “Why regret it? My foster dad’s a suck-it-up kind of guy. He wouldn’t have wanted any whining.”
I exchanged a glance with Tallgrass. This man was Ric’s soul-father. I could only hope to find one as wise and supportive as he was. I again recalled my brushes with the Perry Mason CinSim, and smiled. Couldn’t ever be for real, but I could always rely on Perry as paternal backup if my freewheeling investigation work got me into any tangles with the law.
I realized that Ric’s resting hand was warm over mine, the hot dappled sunshine sealing our mutual thoughts with the kiss of contact.
“I’ve had way more in the way of parents than you have, Del.” His smile was as healing as my lips and Quicksilver’s tongue could be at times. “Sometimes great, sometimes not so. Remember that.”
What struck me then, with surprise, was that Quick and I shared that oral healing thing. I’d never quite focused on that before. Poison dog lips? And mine? I stared into my dog’s blue eyes, blander and paler than my own.
He laid his snout on my knee and gave me his clearest mountain-lake gaze.
This tableside love fest was getting sweeter than tooth decay. I shook off my mood with Quick’s snout and Ric’s hand.
“What do we do next?” I asked.
“Shopping,” Ric said.
I didn’t think he and Tallgrass had silver and sombreros in mind. Besides drugs heading north and dead bodies, Juarez was most noted for being the busiest illegal weapons purveyor on the south banks of the Rio Grande.
“THIS PLACE IS called the Valle de Guadalupe?” I repeated to Tallgrass, stunned.
Night had returned to Juarez, eclipsing its sunny side.
I was back in Tallgrass’s loaned camos and we were back on the ridge where Quicksilver and I had intercepted him and Ric the previous night, smelling creosote bushes and tented by small cold stars and a moon so big it seemed blurry.
“You asked me where our party was gonna make our stand,” Tallgrass said. “All the military intelligence targeted this place southeast of Juarez as the most violent drug-war zone. You have something against the name Guadalupe?”
“No. I just hope that means we have the Virgin of Guadalupe on our side.”
“We all met up last night a bit farther north, but this is that same long ridge where Ric is sure Torbellino’s soldiers will hunker down, ready to mow down escapees from the Juarez and Sinaloa cartels clash up there.”
“And the Mexican-US forces will stay north to capture whoever survives the cartel war too, entirely unaware of this side of the contest farther south?” I wanted to get the combatants and the geography straight.
“Yup. Torbellino will form an unsuspected trap south of the action, offing any rival cartel men who escape the government trap. That’ll make him chief dog in the border smuggling trade.”
“So two guys, a gal, and a dog are going to take out Torbellino’s army?” I asked.
“It was supposed to have been just two guys,” Tallgrass reminded me sternly. “And Ric only wanted me along as backup.”
“Talk about a Lone Ranger. Maybe he has some secret weapon.”
“Maybe you.” Tallgrass chuckled.” I suppose you were too busy using your feminine wiles last night to get all the logistical details out of him.”
“Wiles take time. I prefer truth. I never thought Ric could or would keep something this big secret from me.”
Tallgrass shook his head at Ric’s solo act. “The gal and dog weren’t in our original plans, but we four did pretty well against Torbellino’s Wichita posse. All I know is Ric wanted to wait and take El Demonio down on their common ground where he’d once been a helpless child.”
“Ric’s personal crusade is the source of his greatest personal danger,” I told Tallgrass. “He’ll never allow anyone else to be enslaved as he was, and he’s absolutely fierce and fearless in going after the exploiters. That’s why I had to follow him here. By the way, I love the new accessory you guys got me during your spending spree in town. It really looks cool with my camouflage jammies.”
I saluted the night vision goggles casually stationed atop my head where California women wore sunglasses 24/7.
Then I lowered the goggles to focus first on the heat lightning doing a war dance on the night horizon, then far closer and below, on Ric and Quicksilver. Funny, Ric hadn’t been upset about the dog’s presence here, in the heart of battle, I couldn’t help grumbling mentally.
Together the hunting pair had reassembled the panicking desert reptile and insect life of last night into a thin silver line down in the sand canyon’s crease. Together, they were belly-crawling up the next ridge, which was the only cover between here and the Valley of Guadalupe.
There the sagebrush stations of hidden weaponry were now shaking with the emergence of a low-profile army of drug-and-zombie smuggling gangs and hitmen.
The silent night was abruptly interrupted by distant automatic gunfire chattering amid the spectacular fireworks of exploding grenades and shoulder-launched missiles. Out of sight to the north the warring cartels were fully engaged and clashing like an electric storm, harried into mowing each other down to escape a pincer operation of combined government forces.
The rumbling north of this valley obscured the vibrating chirrs and humming and scale-scrapings of the agitated and silver-armed insect and reptile foot soldiers Ric and Quick had gathered until they were poised like the top curl of a gigantic surfing wave about to wash over El Demonio’s forces.
“Let’s bring up the rear here and put Torbellino’s ass in a silver sling,” Tallgrass hissed in my ear.
A rear in a silver sling. Nicely put.
Tallgrass grinned up at the fading northern fireworks in the sky above one last time.
Then we turned sideways to crest the ridge behind the one Ric held now and maneuver down the steep sides of the earthen gash, our booted feet moving fast to catch up to the advance party of two. We knew that Ric’s showdown with his childhood enslaver had to put him first and foremost in the confrontation and that Quicksilver was the best scout in the party.
Soon we were approaching the quivering and broadening silver band making a do-or-die border like the Rio Grande. The maraca racket of all those metal scales and wings, feelers and legs, quieted and stopped. Like an ice-frozen river, the living shimmer of creatures stopped.
Tallgrass and I hastened to reach Ric’s back, Quicksilver sitting beside him.
The lightning on the horizon ahead of us grew bigger and snapped like a chupacabra twitching its tail. Yet we faced a vastly different scene from last night.
Across the wide valley massed the forces of hell.
Talk about a rag and a bone and a hank of hair. Row upon row of feral zombies, a standing army, twitched and writhed like giant maggots, all white bone and bared red muscle in the moonlight. Only then did I see the black iron shackles that made them into chain gangs.
Any remaining flesh gleamed in the moonlight, reflecting the actual maggots burrowing through what was left, ready to drop off on living prey.
“They’re . . . dancing?” I wondered aloud. Then I got it.
We were confronting an entire army of the new-generation zombies El Demonio Torbellino had created, hop-heads jived on crystal meth, a perfect meshing of the drug and the zombie trades.
“I’m going down,” Ric announced, turning so I could see the lightning flashes reflected in his exposed silver iris. “You two hold the high ground here until I get something going down there. Proceed at your own discretion. Be advised I don’t intend to be heavily into discretion tonight.”
He started down the incline to the Valley of Guadalupe, his every step pushing the silver wave of desert vermin at his feet ahead of him.
I
lowered the high-tech binos that read bones, not heat, to my eyes for an ugly, close-up view.
“That’s it?” I asked Tallgrass. “Those are our only marching orders?”
“It’s mano-a-mano now. Our boys are both in the ring.”
Now I could see El Demonio had arrived at the jitterbugging zombies’ forefront. He sat on his traveling throne, the trunk of a black sixties Lincoln Continental convertible, his feet planted on the backseat. He was riding the stalled car like the grand marshal in a grisly parade of death, greed, and utter evil. He also was committing vintage car abuse.
I’d never forget his face as I first saw it in Wichita. At this safe distance I could study it longer. The brim of his flat-crowned black leather hat cut across the satanically arched eyebrows overhanging his hooded gaze. Thin high-flared nostrils made his nose as flat as a snake’s, his lipless mouth a raw slash like deli-sliced rare beef.
Why hadn’t I recognized who Torbellino looked like before? He was the spitting image of the sinister corporate muscleman in Metropolis who was only known as The Thin Man. That reminded me of the film title that had introduced my CinSim friends, Nick and Nora Charles, to an adoring public. Weird that something so innocent and light echoed something so evil.
Two chupacabras flanked the car, their eyes gleaming red with smoke steaming from their scaly hides like a visible stink. This multibreed creature resembled a small dinosaur with leathery gray-green skin and sharp quills down its spine and tail.
Despite the lizardlike quality, its fanged face, smoldering red eyes, and black forked tongue gave it demonic cast. To underline that, I can speak from experience that a chupacabra’s every exhalation broadcast the hellish and overcoming reek of sulfur.
I had reason to know chupacabras weren’t the biggest and brightest monster at the matinee, but they sure were among the ugliest.
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