The Hunted

by Matt De La Peña

  “There is no move like this,” the boy argued. “I know all moves they say on TV. This is fake.”

  “Fake my ass. It’s only the best wrestling move ever invented.” Shy stopped in the middle of the overgrown baseball field. “Here, I’ll show you.”

  The boy stopped, too. A big smile on his face.

  Shy set down the duffel bag and got into a wrestling position, the syringe now unwrapped and sticking out of his back pocket. “First, you pop ’em one in the throat with the heel of your hand.” Shy faked hitting the kid in the Adam’s apple. “Then, when he’s pissed off, you use his weight against him. Charge me.”

  The boy moved forward, and Shy grabbed him by the shoulders, while at the same time crouching so that he was able to flip the boy over his shoulders, onto his back. Just as the boy hit the ground, Shy reached for the syringe and stuck him in the leg.

  “¡Ay!” the kid exclaimed.

  “Jesus, man!” Shy shouted, tossing away the empty syringe and scrambling to his feet.

  The boy got up, too. He reached for his leg, looking at the ground, and Shy made a big production of grabbing for his right arm. “Yo, you got mad spiders around here or some shit?” he asked, frowning. “I think I just got bit by a spider.”

  The kid attempted to look around at the back of his own leg, but he couldn’t quite manage it.

  “Damn, man,” Shy went on. “Guess I shouldn’t be horsing around out here in tarantula territory.”

  “You saw a spider?” the boy asked innocently.

  Shy nodded. “I can’t stand those bastards, man.” He was still rubbing his arm. “Anyway, now you know what the Triple Shinola Throw-Down Deluxe is.”

  The kid’s smile came back. He gave Shy a little shove, saying: “I don’t believe you.”

  As they continued walking, a bright spot opened in Shy’s chest. Nothing he could do would help bring back the boy’s mom, but at least now he was safe from Romero Disease.

  In the distance Shy spotted Carmen walking toward them from the tent community. As she got closer, he could tell she was upset. “What’s the matter?” he called out.

  Carmen held out a set of keys on her finger. “Shoeshine says it’s time to leave,” she told him.

  “The sun hasn’t even set yet.”

  “And he also says…” She covered her mouth, like she was trying not to cry.

  “What?” Shy asked, worried. “Is he okay?”

  Carmen dropped her hand and took a deep breath to compose herself. “He’s not coming with us, Shy. He says we’re on our own now.”

  55

  Blythe Intaglios

  “Come on, man,” Shy pleaded, as he inched the truck alongside Shoeshine, who was limping down a long dirt path. “Just get in. We need you.”

  Shoeshine wiped his brow on his shirt and waved Shy off. “It’s your time now, young fella.”

  “You’re wasting your breath,” Carmen told Shy. She was in the passenger seat, turning the flashlight they’d found in the glove compartment on and off. “I tried everything I could think of before you came back.”

  Shy was sweating his ass off. Even though the sun was starting to set, the heat was stifling. And it wasn’t like the truck had working AC. “I’m just gonna keep following you then,” Shy told Shoeshine. “Guess now we’ll never get this vaccine across the border.”

  The man coughed and kept limping along.

  Shy and Carmen had left camp in a rush. They didn’t even get to say a proper goodbye to the boy or his sister or the old ladies. When Shy showed up with the boy, Carmen told him Shoeshine had already set off down the road. And he wouldn’t tell her where he was going. Shy took off immediately to fetch the truck.

  Now here they were. Barely traveling two miles an hour. Wasting precious gas.

  Something had to give.

  “For real, Shoe,” Shy tried again. “Don’t you wanna see what this border’s all about? Don’t you wanna see the looks on those LasoTech guys’ faces when their asses get cuffed by the FBI?”

  The man just kept creeping along with his walking stick, mopping his brow every few seconds with his shirtsleeve. Coughing. He looked bad now. Really bad. His limp was more exaggerated, and his clothes were soaked through with sweat. For the first time since Shy had known him, his braided chin beard had even come undone.

  They went on like this for another fifteen, twenty minutes, until Shoeshine suddenly stopped in front of a rusty chain-link fence that looked out of place in the middle of the desert. Shy put the truck in park and grabbed the duffel and got out with Carmen, the two of them walking right up to the man. “See, you can’t get rid of us that easily,” Shy said.

  Shoeshine pulled the bottom of his shirt up to mop his drenched forehead. He coughed into his hand. “There’s no pretty way to say it,” he told them. “But this is where it ends for me.”

  “What are you even talking about?” Carmen barked. She turned to Shy, disgusted. “You know what? I’m not trying to listen to this shit no more. He needs a doctor, Shy. I said we’d take him to one, but he still doesn’t wanna come. It’s just stupid.” She threw her hands in the air and stormed off.

  “Carm!” Shy called to her. “Hang on!”

  She didn’t turn around, though. Just kept marching away from them, out into the desert.

  Shy looked at Shoeshine. “Fine, you don’t give a shit about yourself. But what about us, man? We’ll never make it without you, Shoe. You’re the one who’s been leading us this whole time.”

  “Am I?” Shoeshine asked.

  Shy frowned. “Hell yeah, you are.”

  “Or have we all been following you, young fella? Think back to your time on the ship. The man in the black suit. Addie and her father. Carmen. Myself. What if I told you we’re all reacting to your actions?”

  “There’s no way,” Shy said.

  “And now out here in the desert,” Shoeshine told him. “You can’t even see it, can you? You have no idea who else you’re leading.”

  Shy shook his head, beyond frustrated. Shoeshine was doing his stupid riddle thing again. And Shy didn’t have time for riddles right now.

  Shoeshine gripped the chain-link fence in front of him. Shy stared at the back of the man’s singed gray hair for a while. And then it dawned on him where they were. The ancient figures scraped into the earth. The ones Shoeshine said he was obsessed with back when he was young and mining gypsum for Hollywood.

  Shy cleared his throat, said: “This is one of those intaglios, isn’t it?”

  “This here’s the largest,” Shoeshine said, pointing through the fence. “It’s hard to see from the ground like this, but like I said earlier, it’s a hundred and seventeen feet long.”

  Shy stared through the fence, but he couldn’t really make it out. “Why’s this thing so important to you anyway?”

  “It marks a different time,” Shoeshine said, without turning away from it. “Back when humans moved freely across the land, like animals. Before capitalism set its invisible trap.”

  “Some people still live free,” Shy said. “You do.”

  Shoeshine chuckled and looked back at Shy. “It’s not the same, I’m afraid.” He coughed and mopped his brow again, then pointed at the duffel hanging over Shy’s shoulder. “Do me a favor. Make sure my notebook ends up in the Hassayampa River. It’s on the way to Avondale. You’ll see the signs.”

  “What do you mean?” Shy asked, confused.

  “I need you to chuck it in the river for me.”

  Shy studied the black key hanging around Shoeshine’s neck, the one that unlocked the man’s journal. “Why do you spend so much time writing in there if you’re just gonna throw your words in a river?”

  “For me the power is in the writing itself,” Shoeshine said. “Not the record of it. Once the word is on the page its energy is lost. Once a journal is full, it’s no different than dead skin to be shed.”

  “Okay, fine,” Shy said, sensing this might be his last conversation with the man. The
re was still so much he wanted to know. “But why that particular river, then? Why not throw it in the one here?”

  “According to legend,” Shoeshine told him, “when a man drinks from the Hassayampa River, he will never again be able to tell the truth. I’m afraid that’s where my thoughts belong. Much as we try, young fella, no one man can ever own the truth. Not even a small sliver of it. Truth is not a fixed thing. It evolves and morphs and inverts. What is true today may not be true tomorrow.” Shoeshine coughed and glanced at the fence again. He was eager to be on his way. “But you’ll do that for me, won’t you?”

  Shy shrugged. “I’ll do it.” Deep down, though, he knew he’d never be able to throw out any part of Shoeshine.

  Shoeshine tossed aside his walking stick. “I have one other favor to ask, and then you should be on your way. Can you give an old man a boost?”

  “Over the fence?” Shy said, surprised. “You’re going inside?”

  “It’s time.”

  Shy stared at the man, searching his head for ways to stall him. “Can I ask you something first?”

  The man nodded.

  Shy glanced through the rusted fence, trying to come up with some kind of worthy question. “I know you were in the military,” he started. “And Mario told us you left home when you were young. And you never went back. And you obviously worked a bunch of different jobs. But that’s all I really know. Which is nothing. You’ve always been this huge mystery to me. Ever since I met you.”

  Shoeshine looked disappointed. “Don’t do that, young fella.”

  “Do what?”

  “Try and label everyone you meet.” The man coughed again. “It’s lazy.”

  “I’m not trying to label—”

  Shoeshine covered Shy’s mouth with one of his big leathery hands. “I’m exactly what you see, young fella. Nothing more. Nothing less.”

  Shy jerked away from the man’s grip and stared.

  He realized he’d never get a straight answer out of Shoeshine. Not even at the very end.

  “So am I gonna have to climb this myself?” Shoeshine asked.

  Shy had stalled enough.

  He linked his fingers and held them low enough for Shoeshine to use as a step. When the man’s shoe was securely in his hands, he hoisted him up over the chain-link fence, watched him land in the dirt on the other side with a thud.

  Shoeshine struggled to his feet and brushed himself off. He didn’t say goodbye or even turn around. He just set off slowly toward the ancient figure, limping worse now that he was without his stick.

  Shy could see the figure more clearly now. He made out one of the giant hands. And then the head. And he realized Shoeshine was limping to where the heart of the figure might be. And that’s where he sat down, facing away from Shy, craning his neck so he could look up into the colorful sunset sky. He remained in that position for several minutes before slowly lowering himself onto his back, where he became still.

  Shy stood there for a long time, staring at Shoeshine.

  He didn’t know how to feel, because he never knew the man. Not really. He only knew that some powerful presence, or energy, had left him. And he knew he’d never encounter anything like it again for as long as he lived.

  Eventually Shy turned and started back toward the truck, where he found Carmen already sitting in the passenger seat. He climbed in the driver’s side and closed the door and started the engine. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Carmen reaching across the cab toward him, and inside he cringed. He thought she was going to wipe away one of the tears that had managed to sneak down his cheek.

  But she didn’t.

  She pinched something near his chest and lifted it for him to see.

  Shy froze.

  The thin rope Shoeshine had always worn around his neck was now around Shy’s neck. And at the end of it was the black key that unlocked the man’s journal.

  56

  The Living

  Shy drove in silence as Carmen slept in the seat beside him. He watched the sun slowly disappear in the rearview mirror, listening to hour after hour of DJ Dan on the radio. The man reported about the slew of new crusader groups flooding into California now that a cure for the disease had been found. One group offered food and water to the hungry just west of the border. Another offered religious services. A bus caravan had been established in the desert, taking passengers east every few hours, toward the border. A group of Catholic nuns had begun searching for orphans in downtown Los Angeles.

  Just before ten at night, the DJ stopped the classical music he’d been playing and said, in an excited voice, that he had his most significant announcement since the earthquakes hit California.

  Shy turned up the volume.

  LasoTech, which had already produced a pill that was said to cure Romero Disease, had once again beaten out all other pharmaceutical companies. They’d now developed the first-ever vaccine against the disease. The president had just made the announcement in Washington. The press secretary was expecting a statement from LasoTech founder Jim Miller as soon as he returned from a crusader mission in the desert. If this vaccine proved effective, the DJ explained, the disaster would essentially be over and the country could finally begin picking up the pieces.

  “Sweet,” Shy mumbled sarcastically. “Now they’re vaccinating everyone, too. Who the fuck needs us?”

  Shy turned off the radio.

  He glanced at Carmen, but she was still asleep.

  It hit him how truly exhausted he was, too. He rolled down his window and let the cool air beat against his face as he thought about their trip to Avondale. It was all but meaningless now. LasoTech had won. Shy and Carmen could still turn over the letter that connected LasoTech with the start of Romero Disease. But who were authorities more likely to believe, two Mexican kids trying to sneak across the Avondale border, or a company that had just saved the country?

  And would anyone even care now?

  When he got tired of the wind, Shy rolled up his window and listened to Carmen’s quiet snoring. He crept them along the freeway in the dark, picturing Shoeshine laying himself onto the ancient figure scraped into the earth. And the kids lying dead inside the Skylark. And the corpses rotting in the valley. And Marcus and his mom and sis and nephew.

  So many people lost.

  And for what?

  —

  It was just after midnight when Shy finally came across a sign for the Hassayampa River—the one Shoeshine had told him to look for. He took the off-ramp and maneuvered the truck down to the mouth of the river and cut the engine. He grabbed the flashlight out of the center console and turned to Carmen. She was still asleep, though, so he opened the door quietly and walked to the edge of the river, where he peered down into the water. A blurry full moon danced across the surface.

  The river itself was disappointing—if you could even call it a river. It was more like a creek. Or a glorified puddle. Shy figured if he got a running start he could probably leap right over the whole damn thing.

  He took Shoeshine’s journal out of the duffel and aimed his light on the beat-up leather cover, the metal lock. He stood there for several minutes, debating whether or not he should just toss it in the water. It was what Shoeshine wanted. And it was the right thing to do. But deep down Shy had always known he wouldn’t be able to do it. Now that he had Shoeshine’s key, he had access to the man’s secrets. And how was Shy supposed to pass that up?

  He glanced back at the truck, making sure Carmen was still asleep, then he sat down on a flat rock near the river’s edge and brought the journal up to the black key Shoeshine had somehow transferred onto his neck.

  To Shy’s surprise, the lock was a fake.

  The journal didn’t need a key. All you had to do was open the thing like you’d open any other journal. Weird. Shy distinctly remembered Shoeshine reaching the journal up to his key every time he pulled it out of the duffel. Was he just messing with them? And if the heavy black key didn’t open the journal, what did it open?
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  Shy shook his head.

  Shoeshine seemed even stranger now that he was gone.

  Shy flipped to the first page and shined his light on the simple two-word title. It seemed kind of odd for someone to title a journal. But then again, Shy had never kept a journal. What did he know about these things?

  On the next page he found a loose map that showed their path to Arizona. He pulled it out and looked at it more closely. The double line drawn from Venice Beach, heading east, ended just outside of Blythe, exactly where Shoeshine had ended.

  Shy then paged forward and read the first bit of actual text. His entire body went cold when he saw his own name in Shoeshine’s neat handwriting.

  It was a description of Shy standing on the Honeymoon Deck back on the cruise ship. He was handing out bottles of water to passengers taking a break from some party going on inside. Shoeshine described a man who walked outside wearing a suit that was too small. And he described Shy walking up to that man, holding out a water bottle. And the two of them talking about vacation homes.

  The comb-over man.

  Shy slammed the journal closed.

  It was too weird.

  Just thinking about it messed up his stomach, like he was about to get sick. How could Shoeshine know what Shy and the comb-over man said that night?

  Shy stood and opened the journal back up and reread the two-word title. He pulled out the loose map, folded it up and shoved it in his pocket. And then he did something that surprised even him. He chucked Shoeshine’s journal right into the water.

  He aimed his light so he could watch the thing sink out of sight, but what he saw instead was some kind of crazy witchcraft spectacle. The whole river lit up bright red and began furiously bubbling where the journal had sunk. And he heard human screams all around him, coming from every part of the desert. Or maybe it was the cry of animals. And the sand around his feet began to swirl furiously, pulling him down into the earth.

  When he crouched and put his hands on the ground, it stopped.

  The whole thing only lasted a few seconds, but it freaked him out so much he was left sucking in breaths and holding himself.