by Sharon Sala
Layla was grateful for the sunglasses, but she wouldn’t look back. Her focus had to be on where they were going, not where they’d been.
But for the People, the expressions on their faces said it all. They were not only leaving behind everything they knew, but people they would never see again. Their spirits were nearly broken and there was nothing she could say to make it better.
They drove for four hours without stopping, and when she finally stopped, it was for fifteen minutes only. Layla dropped the kickstand and squatted down behind the bike without shame. It was a bodily function that must be obeyed. When she stood, she drank another mouthful of water, tore off another piece of the meat the old man had given her, and went to find her grandfather.
He looked old. It startled her. She’d never really seen that before, and then realized she was seeing sadness, more than age.
“Are you okay?” she asked.f
“I am okay,” George said.
She handed him a piece of meat and bread, and moved back to the bike, chewing as she went. She washed it down with another quick drink, packed the bottle, and threw her leg over the bike. People climbed hastily back in their vehicles, anxious not to be left behind. When she put the bike in gear and rode off, they eased back into line behind her.
Do not stop for dark.
Layla frowned. It will be more dangerous.
No. The danger is if you do.
She accelerated, and so did the others. The dust cloud rose until the only car any driver could see was the one directly in front. Then cars began dropping out of line from overheating or flat tires. Some ran out of gas. Some just quit.
The tribal police kept moving people from one vehicle to another—even discarding personal belongings to make room for live bodies; telling them to keep only the tools and the knives.
The second time they stopped was just before dark, and she knew they were all expecting to make camp. But when she got back on the bike and started it up, they reacted in kind. They drove down into the canyon following the tourist trails, and then onto the more narrow trails the locals drove.
Because of the dark, they were moving slower, which lessened the dust, but now they only saw the red taillights of the cars in front of them.
The fireball was a big bloody moon.
The stars were gone.
The night was at half-light.
They drove in silence. Children had fallen asleep, but the others could not—too afraid of what was above them.
The elders rode in silence, thinking back to the stories of their ancestors, remembering how time and again they had been hunted down like animals and moved from their own lands, and wondering if the ancestors had been as scared as the marchers were now. Their ancestors’ world came to an end with the arrival of the white man, and now the world was truly coming to an end, and as before, the white man was on their trail.
***
Layla was so tired she felt drunk. She ate a little more of the chicken and bread as she rode, then drank water, thinking if she fed her body it might revive it, but it only made it worse. It was like wanting to sleep after a big family dinner.
She screamed just to hear something beside the rumble of engines, knowing no one would hear it but her, then began reciting some of the stories she used to read to her students, but it made her sad because that life was gone.
When she started to cry it didn’t matter, because there was no one ahead of her to see the tears. And when she began talking to the Windwalker, it was because he also knew her pain.
She cried aloud, angry that she was facing this alone.
“I ache for the sound of your voice.”
I said that you would love me.
“You should have just taught me how to kill and not bothered my heart.”
You chose me just as I chose you, long before you ever set foot in this life.
Tears were running down both cheeks, leaving tracks in the dust on her face. The pain in her chest was so strong that it felt like she was dying. She couldn’t stop sobbing.
“But you left me behind.”
You are a red feather warrior, Singing Bird. It is your path to walk. It is your time.
Physical and mental exhaustion was taking its toll.
“I don’t know how much farther I can keep moving.”
The Firewalker comes no matter how tired you are. When you begin hearing the drums, they will pull you, like a magnet. Then you must run.
The warning sent chills up Layla’s spine, wondering what unknown dangers they had yet to face.
Chapter Eleven
Daylight came before the sun came up, and with it a heat like they’d never endured. It was with shock that Layla realized it was Firewalker and not the sun that lit the earth. The only good thing about morning was realizing they had already passed through the Canyon del Muerto. She was farther along than she’d thought.
But as soon as the heat really set in, more cars began to quit—some due to heat, but more often from lack of fuel. They were losing cars faster than they could redistribute the people, and the roads were becoming impassable to anything but motorcycles or ATVs.
At that point, Layla was forced to stop again, and that’s when she began hearing drums, which exacerbated the need to hurry.
She dug a long sleeve shirt out of her pack and put it on, then tied the tail of it around her waist for some protection from the sun. As others began climbing out of their vehicles, they followed suit, putting on hats and sunglasses, changing t-shirts for those with long sleeves and changing shorts for long pants, knowing they would now be walking without shelter from the sun.
She began issuing orders.
“Everyone walks but the elders. Find people with motorcycles and ATVS, and load them up any way you can. Pass the message down and follow as soon as you can. Time is short.”
As she turned to walk away, she glanced down and saw that she was standing on scorpions. Two were trying to crawl up her pant legs and the others were writhing on the ground, dying from the excessive heat of the earth on which they moved.
“Oooh, dang it, I hate these things,” she muttered, and knocked them off, then stomped the others until they were dead.
“Watch where you walk!” she yelled. “We aren’t the only ones trying to find a place to hide.”
It was another addition to the horror of what they were facing, but there was nothing she could do. She looked around for Leland Benally’s truck, then ran to it and pulled her grandfather out. The gas was gone and there was steam coming out from under the hood. It had gone its last mile.
“Granddaughter, I hear drums,” George said.
“It’s the Old Ones, Grandfather. They are guiding us.
You will ride with me. Leland and his children will walk.”
George didn’t argue, which said a lot for his state of being, and even staggered a little as they moved back to her bike. She gave him a quick drink of water, handed him the last of her bread and then got him seated on the back of the bike as the drumbeat echoed in her ears.
“Chew and swallow, Grandfather. I need you to hold onto me with both hands.”
When his arms went around her waist, she started the engine, and they were once again, on the move. The line was less orderly with people on foot, but they moved as quickly as they could, while giving way for the transports carrying their elders.
As they rode, Layla was ever conscious of her grandfather’s health and safety. The heat had become a blast furnace. Her lips were cracked, and every time she licked them, she tasted blood. Everyone was suffering. There was no way around it.
The small ribbon of water that had run through the gorge was gone, evaporated from the all-consuming heat. The only water left was what they carried.
The groves of small trees that had been so green only a week or so earlier were completely devoid of
leaves. And now that they were on foot, the odor of decomposing animals was more evident. The only sheep she saw now were bloated carcasses.
They rode past a grove of trees where she and Niyol had once stopped for water, and it made her ache all over again for the sight of his face—for the sound of his voice.
She was still thinking of Niyol when she became conscious of two things. Her grandfather’s arms were suddenly tightening around her waist, and she could hear a woman’s scream. She hit the brakes as she put the bike in a one-eighty turn. She was off the bike and running with the bow and arrows before her grandfather could dismount.
Layla had seen the cougar come out from behind rocky ledge even before she’d dismounted. By the time she was armed and running, it was in a full-out dash toward a half-grown boy who’d stopped to shake the sand out of his shoe. He saw the cougar too late to get away.
Men closest to the boy were reacting, as well. One was already pulling his knife as he ran, but they would be too late.
Layla let the arrow fly just as the cat was leaping. In those few brief seconds, everything seemed to happen in slow motion.
She saw the cat in mid-air.
The arrow slicing through blood and muscle.
The cat’s scream, only an octave higher than the child’s mother.
Then it dropped.
Shot through the heart; dead before it hit the ground.
The silence that came afterward was broken by the mother’s sobs as she gathered the boy into her arms.
Layla’s heart was pounding as she scanned the area, wondering what would cause an animal naturally reluctant to be around humans, to attack them in such number. Then she saw another cougar lying dead a short distance away, and one more unable to walk without staggering. Whether it was the heat or something poisonous they’d ingested trying to find water, it was obvious the animal population was as desperate as the humans.
She jogged over to the boy. His face was ashen, his eyes burned red from the wind and heat. His skin was dotted with raising blisters and he was still shaking from the shock.
“Are you okay?” Layla asked.
He nodded as he buried his face against his mother’s breast.
“Thank you, Layla Birdsong, thank you,” the woman said.
Layla touched the child lightly, admonishing him as she might have a student—with a gentle voice, but a stern message.
“Stay closer to your family, okay?”
He nodded.
The People gathered around her, murmuring their gratitude, looking at her with awe. Somehow, the Windwalker had turned her into a superwoman. Even though she was still riding, she had strength and speed that the others did not.
“I said that I would protect you. Have faith that we can do this together,” she said, then waved down the line, signaling they were ready to move.
***
Originally, it was Beamer Paulson’s idea to go find the Indians to keep from dying. He got the notion after his sixth beer at the Roadrunner Bar in Farmington, New Mexico.
The men who frequented the bar were mostly loners. No family ties. No responsibilities; the kind of men who often picked up and moved from one place to another with little more than the clothes on their backs.
They considered themselves tough and didn’t think much about crossing into the Navajo reservation. It wasn’t far from Farmington to the Northern-most corner of Arizona, and they weren’t ready to go toes up to the meteor without a fight.
Two of the men in the bar were too drunk to notice what was going on, but once Beamer voiced the idea, it didn’t take long for the notion to spread.
Sometime before midnight, the bartender and fourteen others walked out with several cases of beer and a drunken plan to escape. With no way to pump new gas, they siphoned off the gas from the other cars in the parking lot, divided it equally between the three newest pickup trucks, and started driving due West.
Even at night, riding in the back of the truck beds and with beer to drink, the heat was oppressing. Every time they opened their mouths to take another swig, it felt as if the wind was sucking oxygen from their lungs. Within an hour they’d crossed the Arizona border, straight onto reservation land.
Their bravado was fueled by the beer, but the lack of real roads and rough landscape began to take the starch out of their half-assed plan. It quickly dawned on the drivers that they didn’t know where to go. The reservation was huge. The Indians could be anywhere. They stopped the trucks, had a little meeting and a lot more beer, and decided to sit it out until morning so they could see where they were going.
Most of them were sound asleep or passed out when a man named Darryl got out of the truck to take a crap. He got the job over with, but passed out behind some brush and never made it back to the truck. He was still there when it got light enough to see, and no one knew he was missing. They drove off without him.
One down, fourteen to go.
Once the vehicles started moving, the motion of the vehicles only added to the misery of their hangovers. Men were hanging over the sides of the truck beds throwing up, and just when they thought it was over, another surge would boil up their throat and they’d throw up again.
One man leaned too far out of the pickup bed and fell out on his head, splattering brain matter and blood on the scorching ground, but no one told the driver to stop. There was no need.
Two down, thirteen to go.
When the first truck ran out of gas, they stopped and re-distributed their load between two trucks instead of three.
The elation of the trip had disappeared with the beer. With no shade, no water, and still no direction in which to go, their brains were cooking on high heat.
When the second truck ran out of gas, the other truck kept rolling. There was no room for six more passengers. It had become an ‘every man for himself ride.’
Eight down, seven to go.
It was the driver who first noticed the giant dust trail due southwest from their location.
“Hey ya’ll look at the size of that dust cloud! That’s got to be them Indians on the move. Hang on.”
He turned the wheel sharply to the left, and as he did, the bartender, who was standing up in the back of the truck bed taking a piss fell out.
He was holding onto his dick when he fell and had not braced for the fall. He went face first into the rocky ground and died from a broken neck.
Nine down, six to go.
The fireball rolled closer as the sun moved higher, and just when they thought things couldn’t get worse, they ran out of gas, stranding the men who were left. Now they were lost and afoot without water or food.
The group was silent as they struck out, keeping an eye on the dust cloud. Within a few minutes, the heat and the hangovers began to take a toll.
Roscoe Aldridge watched his drinking buddy stagger, then grab his chest and fall to his knees. Roscoe stopped to help him up, but Fred was beyond help. His face was turning purple and when his eyes rolled back in his head, just like that, old Fred was gone.
Roscoe jumped back, his eyes wide with shock. They’d started out fifteen in number and had been dropping like flies ever since the sun came up. He was scared. He didn’t want to die.
The others never slowed down or looked back. Roscoe took Fred’s pistol, stuffed it in the waistband of his pants and ran to catch up, wiping snot and tears from his face.
Ten down, five to go.
The fireball was like the bad relative who wouldn’t leave. Their skin was on fire. Blisters were popping and breaking on their arms, and without sunglasses, they were slowly going blind from the glare.
A man named Stan stumbled over an uneven patch of ground and reached out toward a rocky ledge to keep from falling.
The rattlesnake lying in the shade on that ledge was barely moving, but not so close to death that its instincts were gone.
It struck Stan’s arm just above the wrist, sinking fangs so deep it was still hanging on when Stan began to flail.
“Oh Jesus! Oh no! Somebody help me!” he screamed.
He finally managed to yank the snake from his wrist and beat it to a bloody pulp against the rocks.
His hands were shaking as he dropped to his knees, pulled out his knife and quickly slashed the puncture marks where the fangs had gone in. He began sucking blood and spitting it as fast as he could, hoping he could suck out enough poison to stay alive.
The men stared for a few moments.
Roscoe even empathized. He’d just lost old Fred, but this man was a goner too, and there was nothing to be done. He shook his head in commiseration.
“That’s damn hard luck, Stan.”
He aimed for the dust cloud and kept moving.
The others followed, unwilling to watch what would be a slow, painful death, walking faster than they wanted to, just so they wouldn’t have to hear Stan’s cries for help as he fell farther and farther behind.
Eleven down, four to go.
There was a long line of mountains between them and the dust cloud, and no way to judge the distance between. The canyon ahead gave them a hope of shade and water and they kept moving toward it.
Beamer Paulson was a relative newcomer to Farmington, and was cursing himself for ever opening his mouth about going to look for Indians, but it was far too late for regrets. He focused on the dust in the sky, and kept putting one foot in front of the other.
Chuy Garza had been born and raised in Guadalajara, and wished to God and the Holy Mother that he’d gone home to Mexico die, instead being here in the fucking desert with a bunch of men that he barely knew.
The man beside him was struggling. He didn’t even know his name and felt guilty that he wanted the bastard to hurry up and die so he wouldn’t have to listen to him cry anymore.
Suddenly, the man stopped.
The other three paused and looked back. The man was just standing there with his shoulders slumped, staring blankly at the ground.
“Hey, Walter,” Roscoe yelled. “Aren’t you coming?”