Journey By Fire

by Bruce W. Perry

  "Hank…" the man muttered, unfastening his belt.

  "Hank is our man of the hour. He's going to lead us out of here."

  When he'd taken his belt off, his pants slipped to halfway down his buttocks. Wade made him cross his wrists behind him. "Javi, I want you to do me a favor. Hold this gun to his head."

  "Don't," Carmen said. She made Wade feel guilty for introducing this conflict and roughly taking a man captive, but Javi surprised him. Without saying anything, he took the gun and held it with two hands, aiming at the man's cheekbone.

  "Don't move, clown," he said. Wade wore a half smile and bound the man's wrists with his leather belt. Maybe Javi understood better than his wife where they were; that they were amongst the animals.

  "Are you packing, by the way?" Wade said. Hank grunted. Wade felt down his pants, reaching into his left pocket and removing a handgun. "I thought so. We can use this." He handed the weapon to Javi and took back his own pistol.

  "Stuff that in your backpack for now," he told Javi. "Let's go. Walk ahead of me," he said, pushing the man forward. Hank shuffled along toward the stairs, just as Jonesy emerged from the tunnel, with a duffel strung over his back and Pequeno on a leash.

  "Who the hell is this?" he whispered in a strained pitch.

  "Just keep the dog quiet, if you can. In fact, you can go ahead first. Take the stairs. They lead to the desert, and Hank here is going to show us the way, aren't you pal?"

  Hank looked back at Wade and scowled, which prompted Wade to poke the back of his head with the pistol barrel. The stairs led down, switch backing a few flights. The dog walked quickly ahead of Jonesy, sniffing. Then Hank, thumping over each step and holding onto a railing, with Wade and the others close behind. The sun still hadn't come up yet, but it would soon.

  "You're not gonna get far you know," Hank mumbled gruffly. "They're gonna see I'm gone and they know I wouldn't go wandering off into the tunnel so they're going to look here…"

  "Didn't I tell you to shut up, unless I tell you to talk?" Wade had no real patience left. They had a long way to go that day, even though he didn't exactly know the direction they'd be headed in.

  "They ain't friendly either when someone messes with 'em and…" Wade clubbed him, gently he thought, on the back of his head, and Hank yelped in pain and leaned against the railing with Wade digging the metal handgrip into a soft spot on his lower back.

  "Dios mio!" Carmen said. She hadn't seen this side of Wade. It had just come out, since Chicago.

  Wade hissed into Hank's ear, "You're going to be the silent type and just show us where the road is, and we're going to take you and just let you go at a certain point. Got it?"

  "Yeah!" The others went ahead until they got to the bottom of the stairs. Wade looked behind him; nothing. It was still quiet. Not yet five in the morning. He thought he saw a brightening on the edge of the dam and the canyon. They were lucky to get another hour on the road before Hank's absence would be discovered.

  Soon they were on a dirt road that skirted the edge of the deep canyon. It proffered a long, dim view of the dark green river releasing from the bottom of the dam below. They shuffled along quietly, slowed by the things they carried, and Hank. Wade could hear Jonesy quietly cursing to himself. They would need water soon, especially Pepe. They'd only been able to carry so much, several liters worth, which wouldn't last long in the desert.

  "What's the matter with you?" Wade asked. He already knew; Jonesy regretted leaving the raft and the slot canyon tribe.

  "As soon as I spot a road goin' the other way, back to the river and Arizona and the Escalante, I'm taking it. 'Specially if I can get a ride in a pickup. I didn't sign on for this friggin' death march."

  "How much transportation they have on this road?" Wade asked Hank.

  "Not much…a few ATVs."

  "Any pickup trucks? Any horses?"

  "A few come through. The Reds have Jeeps; a couple of technicals."

  "The who?"

  "The Redboyz; the group I'm employed with."

  "Employed? Are you kidding me? They're a gang, and you're one of the peons."

  "It's like a job, like any other." Now Hank actually sounded like Wade had hurt his feelings, his tender side.

  "That's a stretch. Keep walking."

  "It's hot–when are you gonna take this belt off my wrists? When are you giving me some water?"

  "When you show me all the way out of here. And tell me where these Redboyz came from. How far do they stretch?"

  "To Vegas. That's where we came from."

  "What are they doing at the dam?"

  "Less competition. Fewer turf wars…"

  "Competition for what?"

  "For what we sell–water, weed, food, mushrooms…"

  "Anything you can steal, right?"

  "Something like that."

  "Are you selling women? Making slaves of them?"

  "That's a lie. That's a crock. Where did you hear that? They have wives and girlfriends, like anyone else."

  "They? Not you?"

  "I don't have a girlfriend. You find that information shocking?"

  "Not really. But don't let it get you down. There's someone for everyone out there."

  "Listen, this road, it'll take you right to the main highway. Just stay on the dirt road. I won't say a fuckin' thing–you've already totally screwed me by doing this. Now I don't have any excuses–you're going to have to hit me over the head and make it bleed. Then I can tell them you knocked me out–so maybe they won't throw me off the dam, or crucify me." Hank was now shuffling along the path with his giant head lolling, like he'd pitch forward onto his face at any moment. He was slowing them down. The sun was coming up over the desert flats; the horizon smeared red and bringing out the sandstones own redness. No one noticed its beauty though.

  "Where does the highway go?"

  "South…"

  "To Northern Arizona?"

  "Yes."

  They needed to go faster. The whole crew was strung out ahead of Wade and Hank. The time had come to part company.

  "I'll catch up with you," Wade said to the others. Pequeno was now loose and running along the side of the path, frantically picking up smells.

  Then Wade turned to Hank, whose slack posture expressed total exasperation. His mouth fell.

  "Don't do it–I mean it! I didn't do anything to you. I showed you the way out of here. I did everything you wanted me to. Don't kill me!"

  "Don't piss your pants. I'm going to do what you asked me to do–give you a little bruise to remember us by. Then you're going to cool your heels for a couple of hours while we catch a ride up there. This is going to hurt me more than it's going to hurt you."

  "Alright alright, just don't cripple me okay?"

  "Turn around and count to ten…" Wade was actually reluctant to do it. Hank was right; he hadn't done anything and seemed like a rather harmless dolt. But he'd probably lied about the women. Unfortunately, he turned his head just when Wade was bringing the butt of his pistol down, and the blow mostly glanced off his ear. Hank collapsed into the dust with a howl.

  "What the fuck was that?!" He held onto the side of his head and his ear, sitting in the middle of the trail, a huge man that Wade thought was going to cry. For sure, it must have smarted like hell.

  "Shshsh, quiet! I'd do it again, but you look bad enough." A wad of stuff had fallen out of his pockets, and he crawled around the trail collecting it. Wade looked back toward the dam and saw no one in pursuit, just a bone-dry sky and a blazing sun that seemed to have burnt away all the clouds. His own mouth was parched, but the others had the water.

  A number of Polaroids were strewn around the ground. Wade picked a few of them up and looked at them. Hank looked at him sheepishly.

  "What the hell are these?"

  "They gave them to me to…," Hank struggled to his feet, out of breath. "Show people…because these are missing girls. Who other people like their relatives are trying to find."

  The pictures showed a
number of unsmiling women standing in front of a gray wall. Their expressions were impassive and forced, like those in a mug shot.

  "You're lying! These are women you're trying to sell." Wade started to leaf through them, mostly young women with long blond or brown hair, or Latino and African-American women. They were attractive but sullen, having been lined up and photographed at gunpoint.

  He was appalled, as he looked from one to the other. Along the bottoms of each photo were four-digit numbers and names like ham radio handles or shoddy web usernames, like filly 0091. It was nauseating; it reminded him of the Holocaust. The people with numbers stenciled on their wrists.

  "You have anymore of these?" He looked ahead where the others were waiting for him.

  "I didn't have anything to do with this. I'd let 'em go if I could." Hank still sat on the ground with his hand on his wound; he pulled it away and looked at it.

  "Just give me the rest of them." Wade took the whole pile of them, like a deck of cards, and shoved them in his pocket.

  "Where are these women kept?" The open road pulled at him, but he just had to know.

  "They're down by the river where they got a pier. Then they ship 'em to wherever…sometimes back to Vegas."

  "Ship 'em," Wade whispered to himself. That sounded like bags of coffee, or UPS boxes full of imported junk from China.

  "I'm going to leave you now," he said to Hank, righting the backpack on his shoulders. He still had the pistol displayed. "It's been special knowin' yah."

  "Your gonna untie me, right?"

  Wade had already started walking. "Nah. That wouldn't be a good idea."

  "You're not gonna just leave me here like this? The coyotes will get me! The mountain lions!"

  "Now that I think of it," Wade said. He walked over, snatched Hank's red kerchief from his head, pushed his head down onto the ground, and stuffed about two thirds of it into his mouth, around Hank's muffled protests. "I don't want you screaming like a banshee for the next half hour."

  Then he turned and walked away quickly.