by Brian Hodge
His last steady job out by Grants had ended two months ago and he'd spent the rest of the time taking part-time jobs where he could find them. Finally, he realized he wanted to see Albuquerque again—had to. And, he thought, if he were there, he might as well look for a job. He'd arranged an interview, packed and left for the city.
Was he trying to recapture the past by coming back here? He didn't think so.
A horn honked behind him and broke him out of his reverie. He put the truck in gear, slipped into the parking lot by Mitchell Hall and waited while the white sports coupe swept past him; then he backed out and headed once more down the street.
He glanced at his watch. He wasn't due for the interview for the job until five, and it was only a little after one. He had time to drive around. He left the campus and headed east, past the head shops and record stores and the metaphysical bookstore. He kept driving, not really noticing where he was. Forty minutes later he was on East Central, almost out of the city, driving toward the mountains. Which seemed like a good idea. After all, it'd been a long time since he'd seen the Sandias, and it was the season of changing leaves.
Still in Tijeras Canyon, he took State Road 14 and drove past Cedar Crest to Sandia Park, where he took a left onto 44. He passed Harm's Ranch, site of a sawmill at the turn of the century, and then a little over a mile later he was entering the Cibola National Forest. He drove slowly by the Tejano Canyon Overlook, past the Sandia Peak Ski Area, then turned up Highway 536 and proceeded past Capulin Picnic Area, past the Crest, to a spot close to-the Lookout, which commanded a magnificent view not only of the desert floor below, but of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains forty-four miles to the northeast, the Jemez Mountains to the northwest and Mt. Taylor some sixty-six miles away.
He was far enough away now from the popular tramway and from the restaurant at the top of the mountain and the people who would be there, even at this time of day, that he didn't think he'd see anyone else. He just wanted to get out and walk around by himself, and think. That was part of his problem, he thought. He was a loner. At the University he couldn't be one—not and survive. Out on the ranges, though, it was different. There solitude flourished, was encouraged.
He found a narrow road overgrown with brush, and he parked there. It would be quiet here. No one around that he could see.
He jumped out of the cab and inhaled deeply. The air was so fresh, crisp and a little on the cool side, and filled, too, with the aroma of spruce. He glanced up at the blue sky. A grey cloud straddled the sun momentarily; the brightness faded. Then the cloud was gone, and once more it was sunny.
He smiled to himself. Typical New Mexico weather. It could be hot as hell one moment, then cold the next as the temperature dropped thirty degrees. But today the predicted high was in the seventies, or so the man on the radio had said. A pleasant day, though a little on the warm side for this time of year. Good for September, but he wasn't so sure about October.
He stepped away from the truck, stopped momentarily as a sandy-colored lizard darted across a flat, broad rock to disappear into a clump of asters. Briefly the tip of the long, thin tail flicked against the purple petals, then was gone.
Lizard … the helper of the Child of the Water. He shook his head. That was a long time ago, in a different world with a different Chato—a Chato who still willingly believed in the old ways, a Chato who had believed an old man and thought he was different. Now he wasn't so sure about the Indian way or, for that matter, the white way. But as he watched a trail of red ants march toward a field of dandelions, he knew he wouldn't totally discount the Indian way. Not yet. Because … he still dreamed, and he could not ignore that.
He stooped to pick up a resin-coated cone that had fallen from a spruce and, drawing his arm back, pitched it as far as he could. He squinted to see where it landed, but couldn't, and wiped his sticky fingers on his jeans. All he heard was a faint tap as it hit some rock out of sight. He turned and realized, as the wind ruffled the hairs across the back of his neck, that the area was strangely silent. Since the cone had landed, he hadn't heard a single bird. Maybe he'd scared them all away. They never went completely away though. Above him, in the tall firs, he heard the whisper of the wind rustling the needles.
He looked around for the lizard he'd seen earlier, but there was no sign of the reptile … nor of the fire ants he'd seen a moment before. Nothing moved except the wind high in the trees. His skin prickled.
Something was wrong. Very wrong.
He whirled. Had he heard something? A voice almost. It was strange, but he hadn't heard any traffic for close to half an hour now. It was almost as if the highway didn't exist, as if he'd stepped into another world or time altogether. He walked forward, past the pebbles and clumps of grass, past the dandelions and faded asters. He peered up into the dark boughs of the trees and thought he saw something up there. Only a wren.
He broke into a trot, nerves overtaking his casualness, and skidded to a stop as he saw something lying half under some leaves by the base of a white fir and grinned. There was wildlife here after all.
He walked toward the chipmunk, but it didn't move. He narrowed his eyes as he got closer. No. It wasn't a chipmunk. No. It was … a hand. A human hand, its fingers stiff claws.
He frowned at the hand, bloody above the wrist, and thought it must be some sort of joke. He stepped past it and into a clearing.
Gaudy vans and cars had been parked in no particular pattern. A picnic. But where were the people?
Then he saw it.
The blood. Everywhere. On the cars, the vans, the ground, the flowers, the blankets … the corpses. Everywhere he looked he saw the bodies. Bodies leaning against the cars; bodies half under the chassis, as if dragged there by some force. Bodies sprawling in the clearing as though they'd been in flight.
Bodies everywhere.
A black-haired girl, lying not a dozen feet from him, stared without eyes.
Another had only one breast, a ragged wound where the second had been.
A thin Chicano boy smiled, blood on his lips, blood on the raw meat that had been his throat.
Bodies.
And blood.
And silence.
Complete.
He whirled, convinced he'd heard a step behind him. He scanned the trees again.
He was being watched. Watching by something … not someone.
Something. Off in a bush he saw something and stared without blinking, his eyes watering from the effort.
Eyes.
From the shadows.
Eyes that stared with malice. Hate. Evil.
He had seen eyes that hated before … eyes that watched as his army patrol walked on top of the buried land mine and was blown into disjointed arms and legs and halves of buttocks, eyes that watched as their comrades ambushed the patrols by jumping out of low-hanging trees, eyes that watched, and hated—and all around, gagging them until they could hardly breath, were effluvia of rotting vegetation, of sour, days-old sweat, of gun-metal grease, of dried blood, of fear itself.
The memories were still strong after so long, and they made him afraid.
Not wanting to find out what the eyes belonged to, he ran for the thick.
That was when he heard the sound … the sound that he couldn't place, not even from the jungles of Southeast Asia, the sound that now pursued him. He heard the voices—soft, sibilant, seductive—voices bidding to him to stop, calling to him by name to stand where he was, to let them come to him. Voices that made the hair on his arms prickle, voices that made him lick his lips, voices that made him sweat.
NO!
His chest heaving, he flung himself in one final burst of speed into the cab and rolled up the window in spurts. God, don't let it stick on me now, he prayed. God, please, not now. Not daring to look outside, not wanting to see how close his pursuers were, he reached across the seat and rolled up the other window and locked the door just as the first creature flung itself at the glass.
He didn't look. Something
dropped onto the roof of the truck and he heard scrambling outside the cab. His breath coming in short gasps, he threw the pickup into gear and roared, jerked backward. The pickup bucked as it ran over something, something that hissed in his mind. His hands trembled as he gripped the wheel.
He glanced back into the truck's bed. Clear. He slammed into first, the gears grinding their protest, and the truck almost spun completely around with the frantic effort.
He heard the voices again, soft, and knew he wasn't rid of the creatures. He spotted a low branch ahead and gunned the engine; the truck raced for it. The needles and limb scraped across the cab. He glanced in the rearview mirror in time to see darkness drop to the ground.
His mind refused to give the darkness a name, refused to think about it … He had to concentrate on the murders. He had to get to the sheriff, had to tell him about the bodies, had to tell him about the things.
My God. He shuddered, licked his dry lips, felt the sweat running down his face, his spine. He was frying in the pickup. It didn't have air conditioning, but he wasn't about to open one of the windows. Not until he was in the city. Not until he was safe.
Something scrambled across the roof of the cab. Once more he threw the truck into gear, roared backward. Slipped it into first. Hoped that the thing was gone; hoped, but didn't dare to look.
He was on the road leading away from the Crest now, on the road down to the main highway in the canyon, and he swung around a curve, taking it wide, in the outside lane. He flicked a look to his immediate left. Beyond the side of the road was space ending hundreds of feet below in a tumble of sharp boulders and a dried river bed. He looked up to see a gold and white camper barreling straight toward him in the lane. He caught a slight glimpse of a plump face, its mouth opened in mute terror; then the camper's horn blasted, and he hauled to the right on the wheel—the two vehicles missed colliding with each other by mere inches, and he barely avoided sending the camper spinning off the road and over the edge and himself against the mountain face.
Calm, gotta get calm, he told himself, wiping the palm of his hand across his forehead. Sweat and dirt came away and he brushed his hand on his jean leg. His hand was trembling.
Calm. He breathed deeply. He had seen worse, heard worse. But far away, in another time. When he had expected it. Not here. Not in the mountains. Not to see ... those … things.
He shuddered and heard in his mind, or so he thought, the cackle of the old man he'd given the ride.
CHAPTER FOUR
"Sheriff's Department" read the weathered sign. He wheeled the pickup into the parking lot and, raising a plume of dust behind, skidded to a stop, then looked around as he caught his breath.
This office of the Sheriff's Department was located in Cedar Crest on State Road 14, not many miles from the picnic grounds where he'd found the bodies. It hadn't taken him too long to get there either. Heading toward town, he had whizzed past the office, made a U-turn in a bank's parking lot down the way, and then driven back.
The office was a white mobile trailer set on blocks. Nothing special to look at. And even though he was still in the mountains, it was hot, hotter than it had been on the Crest. Too damned hot for the season, too damned hot for the location. He rolled a window down and breathed deeply, still shaken from his near-miss with the camper.
The aluminum screen door swung open and a man came out to stand on the top cinder-block step.
"Yeah?" the man asked.
Chato shaded his eyes with one hand against the glare of the sun and stared at the white man. He was large, and mirrored sunglasses perched on his sunburned nose. He didn't have to see the man's eyes to know the expression. He could sense the man's prejudice. He would have to carefully walk that thin line. Again, he thought wearily, again. And remembered for a moment how free the academic world had been of that singular prejudice. It had possessed others unique to the university, but this he found he hadn't missed.
"I need to report a crime." That's all he could say about the slaughter. It was a crime. Yeah. But not a crime like any other, no crime of passion. It was a crime of … what? Again uneasiness prickled along his spine, and he wished he'd delayed in coming to the city.
"C'mon in."
Boy. The word hung between them, unspoken, and he felt the anger boiling inside, then pushed it away for the moment.
The sheriff had already gone back inside, the door slamming shut. He walked up the five steps, opened the door and stepped into a blast of refrigerated air that made the hairs on his forearms stand up after the blast-oven heat outside. Inside, two Chicanos, one obviously a dispatcher, sat behind scarred, government-surplus metal desks and stared at him without expression. A large map of Bernalillo country, straight pins with colored heads stuck into it in a random design, hung on the wall behind them. The single room was cluttered with papers and coffee cups, a broken-open shotgun, and in the corner, by one of the Chicanos, a radio intermittently cackled to itself. The large man had settled behind a third desk, larger than the other two, and had stuck his legs, crossed at the ankles, up on the desk. He stared at Chato without speaking.
"Do I have to fill out forms?" he asked finally, irritated at the lengthy silence.
"Why don't you just tell us about the crime you're reporting," the white man said.
Boy again.
One of the Chicanos giggled and Chato refused to look at him.
"I took a drive up into the Sandias and stopped at one of the picnic grounds. I got out to walk around and found … found some dead people."
"Dead people?" echoed the man. "What kind?"
"They looked like low-riders to me. They had vans, you know, that sort of thing." He made a vague motion with his hands. He wanted them to find out for themselves, to be as horrified as he had been; he wanted to prove to the man that he had seen the bodies.
"'Bout what time you see these bodies?"
"Not over an hour ago." he frowned. "Don't you believe me?" He hadn't considered that possibility, hadn't thought there would be any problem.
"Sure do." Boy. The white man slowly brought his feet down and stood and hitched up his pants. He stuffed a pair of handcuffs into his back pocket, then scratched his stomach where the stained shirt had gaped open. "Manny, you stay here. Look after things… Lennie, you come with me and the—" Indian. "With this guy and me. We'll go in my car."
Outside, they piled into the sheriff's white car, and Chato, sitting in the backseat, was painfully aware of the mesh screen separating him from the others.
"My name is Chato Del-Klinne," he said as they pulled out onto the highway. This cop was pretty damned lax. Didn't question him; didn't want him to fill out forms. Didn't really believe him, one part of him said.
"What tribe you from?"
"I'm a Chiricahua Apache. From the Mescalero Reservation by Ruidoso. " When the sheriff said nothing, he added, "Down south."
"What're you doing up here in Albuquerque?" The sheriff, who still hadn't introduced himself, glanced briefly into the rearview mirror where he could get a good look at him. Chato met his eyes steadily.
"Looking for a job."
"Looks like you found more than that."
No one spoke as they drove. The window on Lennie's Side was down and the wind blasted into the backseat, blowing tendrils of Chato's hair across his face, but the slight coolness of the air felt good. He could feel the sweat staining under his arms, trickling down his back. Not all of it was from the heat. The sheriff drove without great speed, cutting in front of station wagons and semi-trailer rigs, and cursing under his breath from time to time when someone darted in front of him. They were soon at the cutoff to Sandia Crest.
He directed the sheriff to the spot where he'd parked earlier, and as they got out of the car, the back of his neck prickled. They were being watched, as he had been earlier.
"Over here," he said, walking away from the sheriff and deputy when neither man seemed inclined to do anything. He led the way through the low bushes, and then they were s
tanding in the clearing. With the blood. The bodies. The carnage.
"Oh my God," the sheriff said. He slowly took off his sunglasses, as if believing he could see more clearly. The deputy, apparently made of less stern stuff than his superior, bent to vomit in a bush. Chato drew away from the Chicano.
In the short time he'd been gone animals had already been at the bodies, and he licked his dry lips. The sheriff stepped carefully across the picnic' area and stared, without saying a word, at the destruction. He bent at one point to examine the remains of a girl by a green car, then stood and turned away for a moment. When he turned back, he walked well around her.
Lennie had recovered and was rubbing his mouth on a red bandana. Sweat stood out on his face and his brown skin held a sickly pallor under it. He glanced at Chato, then away, never once looking back at the bodies.
The sheriff wiped his boots on a flat rock a few feet away. Each stroke of a foot left red traces. Chato waited while the man finished his business.
Finally the white man put his sunglasses back on and stared at him.
"Well, Sheriff?" he demanded impatiently. "What do we do now?"
"I believe, Del-Klinne," the man said, "I believe that what we do next is return to my office. I'm gonna hold you for questioning in the murder of these folks." He took the handcuffs from his hip pocket and reached for Chato's wrists.
"Now, as you know, the Party's rally and annual fundraising barbecue have been planned for this Friday, right before the International Hot-Air Balloon Fiesta. At that time I will give Senator Kent, who arrives the day before, the Indian statue, which he, in turn, will present to the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., as a gift from the peoples of New Mexico." Mayor Douglas Griffen paused, his hands placed on either side of the podium, and smiled, the plump skin on his face wrinkling with the effort, at his audience, who remained for the most part impassive.
The small room Griffen used for press conferences was filled with wire-service reporters, camera people from television stations, and a sprinkling of radio news directors. The air was heavy with smoke, hot because the air conditioning had once more broken down, and no one much wanted to be there on a glorious autumn day listening to a politician. Griffen, aware that he was dangerously close to losing the attention of his already bored audience, dabbed his white handkerchief across his sweat-streaked forehead, sipped at the glass of tepid water laced with bourbon by his elbow and smiled once more.