*
The sun is in full force when she is next aware, lying on her stomach, ankles and wrists bound behind her with the same rope. A pulse of pain radiates from a knot on the top of her head and she is gagged with her own scarf, but seems otherwise unmolested.
Using her ears, she searches for signs of her son. She hears her captors speaking behind her and smells their sweat and cigarettes. She can distinguish three voices, but knows there to be at least five in the company, the four she'd seen exiting one truck and the perimeter man she'd so cleverly discovered.
She turns her head finally, with no small difficulty, and squints into the glaring light. The conversation stops when they notice that she is awake. One of the men approaches and unfastens the gag in her mouth. Crouched beside, he lifts her to a kneeling position then signals one of his companions who brings a bottle of water, which he holds to her lips.
As she drinks, he uses his thumb to clean her cheeks and brushes the hair out of her face. When she's had enough he begins to ask her questions.
What is she doing?
She is lost.
Where is she going?
Just trying to get back home.
Why doesn't he believe her?
She can not say.
He looks in to her eyes, searching for the truth, takes her chin between his thumb and index finger, pinching slightly.
Who is she with?
No one.
He pinches harder now, tilting her face toward the sun. She desperately wants to ask after her son and what they would've found in the bag, but she can not take the chance. If they had been discovered already, she would know soon enough. If they had not, she would not betray them with questions.
He takes out a field knife and traces around her mouth and nose with the tip. He explores carefully her dry lips, and she feels a slight prick in the corner of her mouth. She winces. She tastes a single metallic drop of blood when she probes the spot with her tongue. He gently presses the blade underneath her jaw forcing her to point her chin at the sky and incline her ear toward him. He puts the side of his face against hers and smells her neck and hair. The knife keeps her still and she feels him nibble on her neck and put his tongue in her ear. She squirms for a silent moment, then he whispers.
Who would look for her if they kill her now?
Her pimp.
He stands up and considers her face. She meets his gaze with an impassive one of her own, then he leaves to consult with his companions. She hears them whispering, weighing her words and their options. Two come back and pick her up. The one she'd talked to cuts her binds from behind, and she rubs her wrists and ankles to stimulate circulation. They huddle expectantly in a circle around her.
She understands.
The rest of their party returns a few hours later and pack up the truck. She is placed in the bed of the vehicle up against the tailgate. As they drive, she tries to mark the distance in her mind, but can only guess as to speed and time elapsed. Every second carries her further from her son. They drive maybe an hour, once crossing over a desolate road and on again till they reach a camp placed against the foot of the mountains. The rest of their party meet them there. The way they look at her is troubling if not unfamiliar. She starts to mentally catalog them, but as the light fails, she is uncertain how many they are. She guesses ten, anyway.
After they eat, she confirms her count the hard way.
The men who killed her parents wanted to leave her behind, but her sister Lupe persuaded them to bring her with them. Lupe, at sixteen, had grown into an adult in a span of five minutes. She had accepted her fate and responsibility for her younger sibling in the time it had taken her to be robbed of her sleep, virginity and both parents.
The two of them had been taken to a compound on the outskirts of a nameless city a night's drive away and been kept in a small room where both were raped on the hour for days. Time slipped away beneath her, it could have been hours as easily as weeks and she lost count of the men who blended into a single faceless persona that smelled of urine and alcohol, gasoline and testosterone. In the moments of solitude between them, the sisters clutched each other and Lupe would stroke her hair and whisper, "It's going to be okay. It's going to be alright. Stay strong and you will see tomorrow differently."
When food came, Lupe would give most of hers to her charge, "Eat. You need your strength. Someday you will be glad you lived. It's going to be okay."
After a week, they were allowed to clean themselves, given medicine and new clothes. They were introduced to a woman who took them by van to their new home, a brothel inside an old warehouse and servicing a port and nearby industrial compound.
They were moved every few weeks. New brothel in a new town. A new madam, and new clientele. Sometimes they knew the other girls and boys. Occasionally, they went back to previous homes. They had each other and that was all. It had gone that way for three years until a rich gringo had taken a liking to Lupe and bought the two of them outright.
*
She sleeps wrists bound together and secured to the underside of the pickup truck. She curls up beneath the vehicle, which provides some shelter against the wind. Still an hour before dawn, she awakens to a man kicking her foot. The third-shift guard, well into a bottle, deciding the night is just too long to go without some entertainment. She crawls out from under the truck and gets on her knees. The man unfastens his trousers and produces his cock, which is filthy. The stink emanating from his crotch puts the rest of him to shame.
She gestures toward his tequila bottle with her head and implores him with her watering eyes. He shrugs and puts it to her lips. She takes in a mouthful, swishes it around and spits it into his lap. She uses her hand to clean him off which also produces an erection. He giggles at the trick and puts his head back to take another drink.
After a few moments he begins to lose his erection, but doesn't notice until it dangles limp and useless between them. He slaps at it and gives it a tug. When that has no effect, he slaps her instead. She knows that, given enough time, this may produce the desired result, but rather than find out, she curls up immediately and rolls under the truck to avoid further abuse.
He stoops down and grabs her ankle, but she kicks free easily. He swears at her and grabs again. Again she kicks free and he says that he will be coming back with his knife. His gun is a useless threat while they are surrounded by sleeping men. He struggles to rise and then staggers back to the tents. She watches his feet disappear into the darkness. If he comes back with a knife, she will have to make some noise and hope that one among her captors might object to him carving her up, but there is hope that he will merely pass out and forget about her. She keeps her eyes riveted to the spot she'd last seen his feet and concentrates on the sounds of the night.
She hears them before she sees them. There is a shuffling, a pause and then another. Feet moving quickly. Fabric rustling, and a hushed alertness in the air. There is a muted flurry of sounds and then a light comes on inside the nearest tent. The sounds stop. Everything goes still. She can feel her stomach shrinking and her heart expanding. She fears that her beating pulse can be heard ten feet away. A man inside the nearest tent sits up casting his shadow with a lantern. He listens to the emptiness of the night before beginning to dress and pull on his boots.
Then she makes out the fluttering shadows. They hover around the edges of the camp, robed and hooded. They seem not to move and never to be still. Illuminated by the moon and the light from the tent, the wind manipulates their robes like flame. Their faces are concealed in the dark void of their hoods and each holds a knife ready.
She presses herself flat against the ground and hides her eyes. There she sees her future and her past etched into the dirt. Her whole life is written. Already fact. Already history. Already forgotten. From dust she had come and soon she will return. The taste of the grit on her tongue makes her feel close to her son for he too is made of earth and can therefore make a home wherever he finds himself. She prays quic
kly and silently for him, for strength and for mercy. After an interminable ten seconds, she looks up again.
At an inaudible signal the shadows move as one. The camp is entered and the slaughter begins. Inside the lighted tent she sees one silhouette merge with another before arterial-spray paints the wall. The shadow divides and leaves one man flailing an arm about while the other clamps onto his neck. He spins round, each pass adding to the gore on the wall. Two, three times and he sinks to his knees and collapses forward, his killer long since moved on.
In the following minutes, the sounds made by the camp merge together to produce a single, sour note like a dropped accordion. The cries of the men, confused and angry, are short lived and deteriorate quickly into gurgling and silence. It’s over before she can believe it is happening. The hooded raiders are congregating again at the edge of the camp.
Silent in victory, they move as a collective, never needing to speak, but fulfilling a choreography that seems routine. They have two prisoners, stripped naked and bound with cord that they lead to the perimeter, near her.
The prisoners are forced to their knees. Too terrified to cry out, they watch bewildered, the turn of events. Behind her, she senses a new presence and turns over silently to watch a pair of heavy black boots approach. The raiders part to grant passage to the newcomer. Every heavy step, dragging one foot, produces a jangling sound like coins in a pocket, until he stands before the captives.
Two robed figures bring a large rock and place it on the ground in front of one prisoner. He stares at it dumbly. His captors force him to lay his head upon it like a pillow. The man struggles, but every twitch is answered with pain. His arms, bound behind him, are pushed higher until they are nearly at a right angle with his torso, and at the point of breaking. He lays his head down and whimpers. His breaths quicken. He is hyperventilating.
The man with the heavy stride turns. She sees his cloak fall about his boots followed by a satchel–the source of the heavy tinkling sound when it slaps against his thigh. The prisoner's eyes are riveted upon it and then upon the wooden club swinging slowly in front of him. The big man kneels before him and whispers something that she cannot make out. He places his hand on the man's face as if he were a frightened pet. He feels each feature carefully, tracing the fine structure of his bones, the delicate cartilage of his nose and ears. Gently, he parts the man's lips with his thumb and runs the digit through his denture, then he reaches into the bag and takes out what looks to be a handful of buttons.
They are teeth, smooth and polished, the enamel gleaming under the moon. He holds them in his palm and shakes them gently as if they are dice, and they fall clicking, back into the bag, slipping through his fingers one at a time.
Lying still, unable to move, the prisoner's eyes meet hers. This man who had used her without regard only hours earlier, now clings to the time they'd shared, the connection they'd had, like a last hope. What she broadcasts back with her gaze is terror mingled with satisfaction that she will watch him die.
The large man raises the club high overhead and the gaze of all the hooded follow it.
The doomed man casts about with his eyes for salvation, and when he finds none, catches sight of her beneath the truck, and he grabs once again at her gaze. His eyes plead with her not to let anything happen. They bulge wide and white and seem like they are about to burst from their sockets.
They are.
They pop like kernels of corn on the first blow to the temple.
The sound is blunt. No reverberation. Repeated seconds later. The skull collapses on the fourth blow and the captors, still holding his arms, drop the body in the sand. A sound like the buzz of locust begins to swell from inside the hoods. Involuntary moans of ascent, indistinguishable from pleasure or pain, build like layers of sediment upon each other until the hum is like silence.
The rock is moved in front of the second prisoner who begins to curse loudly. He fights, leaning back and digging his knees and feet into the ground. It takes three captors to position his head on the rock and the breaking of both his arms to subdue him. On the stone, his tears and mucous mix with the blood of his companion. Slowly the club is raised high above its target. The locust buzz and the man's screams climax and then are silenced with the crack of wood on bone. It takes six concussions to turn him inside out.
There is a moment of stillness before the man with the club lifts it high into the air, and the slick sheen of blood makes it glint in the last of the moonlight. The gesture is answered by the shouts of his companions who throw off their hoods and give release to their voices straight to the stars.
The woman stares at them from beneath the automobile and listens, transfixed and fascinated, at the realization that, except for the heavy booted executioner, all of them are women.
Their voices rise in the night, a choir of bestial wails and groans too deep for words. They are answered by the squeal of coyotes not far off, and their ghastly communication shakes her one bone at a time.
*
The looting is thorough. All the bodies are collected, and dragged to the place of execution. There they are stripped and turned on their backs, then opened from groin to chin. Teeth are extracted with hammer and chisel, and deposited into the satchel. She sees only the back of their leader and never hears him speak, a large man with long coarse hair whipping about in the wind. He stands watching satisfied, rolling the club around in his hands, which upon closer examination resembles a baseball bat.
The closest she comes to being discovered is when they siphon the gasoline from the truck. But most of the company has already moved on, and the remaining two seem to be in a hurry to catch up. Thankfully, it is not yet light and they don’t bother to set the vehicle on fire. The truck's cab has been stripped and the battery taken, but the truck itself is left, along with the bodies, for other scavengers. As the last of the women disappear into the mountains, the horizon turns from blue to orange.
*
Life with the gringo was better on some levels. He was rich and kept them in clean conditions. She was taken out of brothel living and given work doing housekeeping duties around the gringo's various homes. He took them to America. They saw Little Rock, Memphis and Chicago, but less of each other. Lupe was taken out of circulation. She was exclusively for the gringo.
A year passed in this fashion. Then one morning, men came for her as she dressed. She was taken by riverboat to New Orleans, then by another to Houston and finally by truck back to Mexico. She never heard from, or of, her sister again. She assumed Lupe was dead.
*
The first night she follows the coyotes, she isn't sure why. She has to find her son. She should head to the villages to look, but something she doesn't understand compels her to follow the dogs and find the women. Her son is capable. He was armed and has a commodity to trade now. He would probably be home before she could find him out here.
She takes shelter during the day and tracks them in the darkness. On the second night, she finds a trail that leads deeper into the mountains and she follows it. She watches for fires and on a ridge not far away, she spots them: a cluster of small caves with lights inside. She sees people moving about. She sees the executioner walking from cave to cave not making a jingle, but accompanied by another remarkable sound, children.
Perhaps she is delirious from the elements, but she swears Pablo’s voice is among them.
*
She was dropped off on the outskirts of a shantytown in the middle of the desert. There were maybe forty people living there, mostly women, whores like herself there for the pleasure of the guests, men who worked for the gringo, sent to avoid the authorities in America.
She lived in a tin hut, an oven during the day, a tea kettle in the windy nights. There was a single cantina that represented the only center for commerce and socialization. The cantina owner ran the town for the gringo, often beating the men with a baseball bat for offenses like killing a Maria—a name the men gave to all of the whores, stealing, or fighting
amongst themselves. More often he cracked skulls just out of boredom and because he could.
There were trucks sent weekly to bring fresh supplies or new residents. Occasionally, the gringo sent more men to make an example of particularly bad offenders there. These times, after a public display, the bodies were driven out into the desert and dumped. There was always a telltale circling of birds the next day and coyotes in the night.
One time only, she and two of the other Marias had taken a hike the day after a killing, following the scavengers in the sky, to find the body of a friend killed by one of the guests, and bury it. Let the mudlarks have his corpse. When the remains were found, each Maria felt they were looking into crystal balls, seeing what end surely awaited each of them. They decided not to bury the bodies after all believing that the quicker the bones were stripped by animals and bleached by the sun, the better.
Life expectancy was not long for anyone sent to live there.
*
They discover her waiting for them in the path. She is holding a torch and walking slowly up the trail toward them. She knew they would spot her long off if she held a flame and hopefully they would not kill her in surprise.
They surround her, pointing automatic weapons. She wonders why they had not used the guns in the raid she had witnessed. Maybe they valued stealth too much, maybe they didn't think them necessary or maybe they simply enjoyed using knives and clubs. She doesn't say anything except that she is alone. She follows their lead and they march her the rest of the way to the camp and sit her down beside a fire. She is given something to eat, and she tears into the plate of beans and flattened corn, but the guns leveled at her are never lowered.
The executioner is summoned and she hears his heavy and distinctive stride that drags one foot. No jingle, though. This is not a scheduled appearance. He approaches from behind her and passes by, letting her get a good look at him before sitting down. He is very large, nearly six foot and probably 250 lbs. Barrel-chested, with a bulging stomach that had been all muscle at one time. His long black hair has strains of gray she can see up close and it is worn in a loose braid down his back. He dresses only in jeans and boots. His back is covered in scars that come and go in the firelight. His arms are massive and dark with tattoos of simple black hashes starting at the shoulder and going all the way to both wrists. He uses the baseball bat like a cane as he walks, dragging his right leg just a bit.
Fierce Bitches (Crime Factory Single Shot) Page 3