The Hunted

by Matt De La Peña

Carmen picked up a small stick and rolled it between her fingers. “When we drove past the Skylark,” she said to Shy, “did you by any chance…?”

  “Look inside?” he said.

  She nodded.

  “I did.”

  It was dark, but Shy had seen enough. Four small shot-up bodies lying all over the seats. Blood dripping off what little glass was left in the windshield. He remembered thinking how this wasn’t some video game where you could just hit Pause and go grub out on your mom’s empanadas. This was real. This was permanent. These kids who were mouthing off only minutes ago were now dead.

  But Shy had seen something else before Shoeshine drove them away from the gas station, something he didn’t mention to Carmen.

  The tweaked body of the man he’d shot and killed.

  Back when their sailboat had first landed in California, Shy wouldn’t have been capable of shooting anything, much less a person. Didn’t matter what the situation was. But something inside him had changed. When he’d pulled the trigger at the station, and saw the man drop, he realized something terrifying.

  Killing was easy.

  People thought there was this huge chasm between life and death, but really there was nothing. Not when you had a gun. You could end someone in the blink of an eye. With the twitch of a finger. Before you even knew what happened. And the world didn’t stop like everyone probably thought it did. It just kept right on spinning. It didn’t give a shit about your karma or your act of violence. That part was all in your head.

  Shy was yanked out of his thoughts when he heard more rustling in the bushes. He turned and saw that it was the young Mexican boy again. This time he was with a slightly younger girl who looked just like him. His sister, probably.

  Shy and Carmen stood up.

  The girl rattled off something in Spanish, but it was too fast for Shy. In order for him to understand Spanish, he needed it to be spoken slowly.

  “She wants to know where we came from and if we’re sick,” Carmen told him.

  “I know what she said,” Shy lied.

  Carmen turned back to the kids, but before she could answer, Shoeshine called out: “Perdónanos, amigos. Sólo estamos pasando de camino a Arizona. Le aseguramos que ninguno de nosotros está enfermo.”

  Shy stared at Shoeshine.

  So did Carmen.

  How was it possible that some old black Buddha dude spoke better Spanish than Shy? It made him feel ashamed. Like some kind of fake Mexican. No wonder his old man nicknamed him Shinola back in the day.

  The boy stepped forward. “If you are not sick,” he said in a stiff version of English, “my grandma has an offer to feed you back at our camp.”

  “That’s very generous,” Shoeshine said.

  When Shy caught the boy staring directly at him, a weird butterfly feeling flooded his stomach. It was creepy how much the kid reminded him of his nephew.

  —

  The brother and sister led Shy, Carmen and Shoeshine down the river, about a hundred yards from where they’d parked the truck. They moved into a dense patch of tall bushes, away from the water, and when they emerged, Shy stopped in his tracks and stared at the surreal sight. A couple dozen tents were set up in and around half-decayed old housing foundations and rusted-out vintage cars that sat on busted axles. Tagged cement walls, positioned randomly throughout the mostly flat desert landscape, seemed to sag and crumble with age. To the right of Shy was what looked to be an old, dilapidated baseball field, the dugouts no more than a few scattered cement blocks covered in weeds.

  “What is this place?” Carmen asked.

  “No idea,” Shy said. The people he saw milling around, he realized, were all Mexican. Like Mexican Mexican. Like maybe some of them didn’t have their papers.

  Shoeshine wiped his sweat-drenched face with the arm of his short-sleeved shirt. “Welcome to Midland, California,” he said. “Sixty, seventy years ago, this place looked a lot different from what you see now.”

  The boy that had led them there turned around. “Please come!” he called out, waving them toward a small pocket of tents near the overgrown baseball field.

  As they started walking again, Carmen said to Shoeshine: “You sure you’re okay to walk?”

  “Of course I’m okay to walk.” Shoeshine stepped slowly and deliberately now, putting a ton of weight on his walking stick. If they didn’t have a gassed-up truck, Shy knew there was no way the man would be able to take even one night of walking.

  “Maybe there’s someone here who could look at your stitches,” Carmen said.

  “Not interested.” Shoeshine stopped and pulled the duffel off his shoulder. He handed it to Shy, saying: “But I will ask that you carry this from now on, young fella.”

  “No problem.” Shy took the bag and slung it over his shoulder, happy to help however he could.

  “This used to be a company town owned by U.S. Gypsum,” Shoeshine continued. “Folks from all over came to mine the gypsum in these parts. The company sold the stuff to Hollywood, where it was used as fake snow. There’s a little history lesson for you. There were over a thousand people living here at its peak, but when Hollywood found a cheaper alternative, this place dried up almost overnight, became the ghost town you see today.”

  “How do you know so much about this place?” Shy asked.

  Shoeshine grinned. “I mined the gypsum here briefly in my youth.” He wiped his brow again and let out a chuckle. “I was just a kid back then. Not even eighteen.”

  They walked a long stretch in silence.

  Shy did the math in his head. Sixty years back, and the guy was probably in his teens. Wouldn’t that put Shoeshine in his midseventies now? He’d known the guy was old, but not that old. Which made all the stuff he’d done since the ship went down even more insane.

  Shy remembered what Mario told him and Carmen back at the Bright House. That Shoeshine had been born rich and then left home without even saying goodbye to his family. One day, Shy vowed, after all this was over, he and Shoeshine were going to sit down and have an actual conversation. And he wouldn’t settle for Shoeshine’s usual cryptic answers. He’d get the whole story out of the guy.

  There were cactus shrubs all over the place. Rolling tumbleweeds. Faceless plastic shopping bags that were lifted into the air by the wind, then dropped back down to the gravelly sand. The air was so hot and dry Shy couldn’t stop wiping sweat from his brow.

  Shoeshine pointed his stick to the left of where they stood. “About a half-mile that way are the Blythe Intaglios. Every day after work I used to go hang out by the biggest of them and walk the perimeter.”

  “The Blythe what?” Carmen asked.

  “Intaglios,” Shoeshine said. “A group of giant figures scraped into the earth by ancient people. The largest is one hundred and seventy-one feet long and was created thousands of years ago. I used to stare through the fence at it for hours, trying to imagine the lives of the people who’d created it.”

  Carmen shot Shy a look.

  He shrugged subtly, watching the man stare off in the direction of his ancient artifact. It was the most he’d ever heard Shoeshine say about himself at any one time. And he’d never seen him look so nostalgic. It made Shy wonder if the man felt closer to him and Carmen now. Like they were actual friends.

  The two kids eventually led them to a large, weathered tent with a gaping hole near the front flap. There were several tiny old Mexican ladies sitting on overturned crates, talking while they sewed and folded laundry. A small fire crackled inside a circle of uneven rocks.

  One of the old ladies pushed off her crate when she saw the boy and girl coming. She gave a big smile and hugged them both, glancing at Shy and his crew. She said something to the boy and girl, and the boy spun around and called out: “My grandma says to sit. She will make food so you’re not hungry from your travels.”

  The woman shuffled toward the fire and lifted a pan off the ground. She placed it directly onto the open flame and used a pair of tongs to lift some typ
e of shapeless dough out of a plastic container another lady held out to her. The dough hit the pan with a sizzle, and the rich corn smell immediately wafted into the air, making Shy’s stomach buzz in anticipation.

  Carmen tapped Shy’s elbow. “Dude, where the hell are we? And how come they’re not worried about us having the disease?”

  “I don’t even know,” Shy told her. “But I’m gonna eat first and ask questions later.”

  “Good plan.”

  Shy watched Shoeshine lower himself slowly onto the crate the old woman who was cooking had just vacated. The man then turned to the Mexican ladies and spoke to them in perfect Spanish. In a few seconds they were all laughing together like old friends.

  53

  A Quiet Swim in the River

  After killing a plate of beans, some kind of mystery meat, and thick corn tortillas—and thanking the grandma profusely—Shy and Carmen followed the boy and girl back to the river, leaving Shoeshine behind with the old Mexican ladies. The boy pointed to the water. “Every day we swim here. You can swim, too, with us?”

  Shy glanced at Carmen.

  She shrugged. “We’re not leaving till the sun goes down anyway, right?”

  Shy turned and saw the boy and girl already stripping down to their chones, their skinny little brown bodies slick with sweat. “Let me ask you a question,” he said to the boy. “Why are you guys being so nice to us?”

  A confused look settled over the boy’s face.

  “Nadie viene aquí,” the girl said.

  The boy nodded. “It gets boring with just old people.” He grabbed his sister by the wrist and the two of them took off toward the water, laughing. They dove in, one after the other, and splashed their way out to where they could no longer touch.

  “Screw it,” Shy said, stashing the duffel bag behind a boulder and turning to Carmen. “My ass is going in. It’s hot.” He pulled off his shirt, tossed it onto the duffel.

  Carmen pulled off her shirt, too, leaving only her bra and panties. “Just try and keep your hands to yourself this time, all right, Sancho?”

  “I was about to tell you the same thing.” Shy cracked up a little when he saw her Kermit tattoo again. But he realized something. He liked Carmen even more for being so into the damn Muppets. If they ever made it across the wall in Avondale, he decided he’d watch more episodes so he could see what it was all about.

  They waded in slowly, and the cold water brought Shy’s exhausted body back to life. It was such amazing relief from the hot sun, which was now directly overhead.

  The boy splashed Shy in the face, laughing wildly.

  Shy wiped his eyes and spit into the water. Before he could splash back, the boy lunged forward and got Shy into a weak, playful headlock, shouting: “I am WWE champion of the world!”

  “¡Ya!” the girl shouted at her brother. “¡Deja a mi novio!”

  Shy easily tossed the boy aside. “What’d she say?” he asked.

  The boy shook his head. “My sister sometimes is like a crazy person.”

  Carmen waded closer to them. “You need to talk some sense into that girl, dude. You’re her big brother.”

  The boy turned and splashed Carmen, too.

  Shy and Carmen splashed the boy back, and Shy wiped the water out of his eyes again, cracking up, because the whole thing reminded him of going to the pool at the Y back when he was little. He watched Carmen and the boy go at it for a few seconds, then he went all the way under, letting the crisp, clean river water run into his mouth before spitting it out.

  After a few minutes of playing with the kids, Shy drifted off by himself. So did Carmen. They looked at each other every once in a while and smiled, but mostly they just treaded water in their own little worlds.

  Shy remembered beating his hands through the water just like this in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, watching his Paradise Cruise liner slowly sink in the distance. And he remembered swimming toward the broken lifeboat where he and Addie were stranded for several days.

  Addie.

  He hadn’t thought of her since he heard the recording of her distorted voice on the radio. So much had happened since then. Him and Carmen in the sulfur pool. And the Skylark. And the kids from the gas station.

  After a while Shy decided it was best to stop remembering and just float. He concentrated on the water lapping all around him. And he listened to the boy and girl laugh and splash in the distance, shouting things at each other in Spanish. Beyond them he heard the cries of far-off birds. Hawks, he was pretty sure. He knew because when he was little his old man used to stop him whenever he spotted a hawk circling the sky. Didn’t matter where. In the liquor-store parking lot. Or leaving school. And they’d just stand there watching it together. In silence.

  Shy realized something as he breathed in the desert air and continued floating. He was happy. At least, in this very moment. His stomach was full. The river water was cool. There were no helicopters above them. No clouds. Just the bright blue sky. And he was with Carmen. They weren’t flirting this time. They weren’t even talking. But just having her close by made everything better. He didn’t even care that their time together was only temporary.

  After a couple hours or so of just floating around, Shy saw that the boy and girl were slowly wading back toward shore. “You guys done already?” Shy called to them. “I could stay in here all day.”

  “I can show you something,” the boy called back.

  The girl didn’t seem too excited about this. Shy could tell by the look on her face. “What is it?” he asked the boy.

  “Just please. Come.”

  54

  The Other Side of the Hill

  Shy followed the boy back toward the ghost town, only this time they veered toward the hilly stretch a few hundred yards behind all the tents. It was just the two of them now. When the girl refused to go with her brother, Carmen walked with her back to camp.

  The sun was already beginning its slow descent, but it was still scorching hot. An awful smell had materialized, and it seemed to grow stronger the farther they hiked. Like rotting manure. Shy covered his mouth as he followed the boy up the small, rocky hill.

  He decided he liked this kid. Maybe it was his resemblance to Miguel. Or the fact that his family had been so nice. Shy felt like he needed to do something for him. And the one thing he could do was protect him from Romero Disease. Anyway, what was the point of having a lifesaving vaccine if you never actually saved a life? Shy began using his diamond ring to rip open the second extra compartment Shoeshine had sewn into the gut of the duffel.

  The boy stopped at the edge of a steep drop-off and stared at the valley below.

  Shy fumbled with the duffel, opening up the tear he’d just made while at the same time trying to cover his nose and mouth with his arm to block the overwhelming stench. It wasn’t working. He looked up from the duffel to see why they’d stopped and found himself staring down at a field of rotting corpses. The valley was a giant graveyard.

  Some of the bodies looked like they’d been dumped weeks ago, and a pack of vultures picked the meat off their bones and tore through their clothing. But what made Shy even sicker was the fact that at least two of the bodies were still moving.

  They were alive.

  “What the hell is this place?” Shy asked.

  “If you are diseased,” the boy said, “you have to come here to die so no one else is sick.”

  Shy stared at one of the moving bodies—he could tell it was a man by his clothes—who was furiously scratching at both legs. “They come here on their own?” Shy asked.

  The boy nodded. “If their eyes become red.”

  “Jesus.” Shy crouched down and studied the rest of the bodies. There were at least twenty of them scattered among the tumbleweed. He thought of Addie and her dad. And everyone else associated with LasoTech. The supposed “heroes” who’d created a supposed “cure” for Romero Disease. It disgusted Shy. In reality they’d murdered each and every person who’d had to die in th
is kind of agony.

  Like Shy’s grandma and his nephew.

  And Rodney.

  And Carmen’s dad.

  Shy turned to the boy, who was still staring down into the valley. He had to use one of the precious vaccines, not just for the boy but for Miguel, too. For his whole family. When he finally loosened the extra pouch inside the duffel, he slipped out one of the syringes and held it behind his back. He just needed to figure out a way to vaccinate the boy without him knowing.

  A few seconds later it came to him.

  WWE.

  “My sister never will come here with me,” the boy said. “But I have to. Every day.”

  “I get it,” Shy told him. “Out of respect, right?”

  The boy grew fidgety. He shoved his hands in his pockets, then pulled them out and crossed his arms and looked up at Shy. “I come,” he said, “because my mom is down there, too.”

  “Your mom?”

  The boy nodded, his eyes glassy.

  “Shit, man. I’m sorry.” Shy turned back to the valley. He couldn’t imagine the heartbreak the boy must feel every time he looked down into the valley. All those bodies. And the vultures. And the smell. His mom.

  Shy took the kid by the arm and told him: “Come on, man. Let’s get out of here. They’re probably waiting on us.”

  As they started back down the hill, Shy occasionally glanced at the boy. He seemed like such a good kid. Tough, too. No kid should have to be this tough. Shy cleared his throat after a few minutes. “You know, me and you are actually a lot alike.”

  The boy looked up at him, his eyes no longer glassy.

  “For real,” Shy said. “We both got sisters. And grandmas who can cook. And we both lost people to this bullshit disease.”

  The boy nodded and looked straight ahead.

  “And you know what else?” Shy said.

  “What?”

  Shy nudged the boy’s arm. “We’re both WWE fans.”

  He gave Shy a little smile.

  “But lemme ask you this, little bro. You ever heard of a move called the Triple Shinola Throw-Down Deluxe?”