I pulled free of him. “What did she say?”
He drew a deep breath, let it out slowly. “Cleanse him with blood. He can only be cleansed in blood. Save him. Save us.”
“Who?” I asked, though I already knew the answer.
“You tell me, boss, I’m just the hired help.”
“Do they know about Papá?”
“I’m sure they’ve heard the whispers.”
“You a religious man?”
“I’m smart enough to know there’s more to all this than a dirt nap at the end.”
I motioned to the cross on the orphanage roof. “Do you believe all this?”
“It’s about the only thing I do believe. These are decent women. They do good work with little to no help. So I do what I can when I can. It’s always been a place I can come to and feel safe, a break in the action where maybe all the bad out there and in me goes away for awhile. I should’ve never brought you here. You don’t belong in a place like this.”
“And you do?”
He glared at me, his dark eyes smoldering.
“Just get me to the Corridor,” I said.
“What are you really doing out here?”
I peeled my shirt from my chest. “I told you before.”
“You’re gonna bring that freak home? You really believe that?
“That’s my business.”
“You could get us all killed. I’d say it’s my business too.”
I wanted a drink so bad I could feel the back of my throat constricting. “Just do the fucking job I hired you for. Get me there.”
Rudy stepped so close to me I could make out the tiny red veins in his eyes. He was doing his best to come off unaffected, but I could smell his fear. “I don’t buy any of the crap most believe about your boy, all right? But I been around a long time, seen a lot of things. End of the day, we’re all bad motherfuckers. Me, Party Boy and Quid, we’ve done things that put us on a fast track to Hell. It’s who we are, it’s what we do. People get hurt in our line of work, sometimes they die. We all deal with our sins in our own ways, and I got plenty, so I’m not preaching at you. But you’re one creepy sonofabitch, Moretti. There’s something about you, something bad. You got a dark aura, this bad-luck cloud that brings everybody and anybody down that’s anywhere near you. I’ve seen it a million times in a million different guys, but there’s more to it with you, something deeper. I may not know what it is yet, but I know what it’s not. Poor old Sister Theresa may think you’re a savior from her dreams, but far as I can tell you can’t even save yourself. You got the Devil on your back, and once that boy digs in he don’t shake off easy.”
“You have no idea,” I replied evenly.
Bosco tramped back across the dirt lot toward the Land Rover. I stayed out there in the open awhile, under the hot and blinding sun, and watched him go. Nothing moved but the rippling heat, rising up out of the dirt in fluid blurry curtains like legions of souls fleeing Earth.
He’s watching us you know.
All was quiet.
The children were gone.
* * *
No one spoke as we hooked back onto the road and traveled another five miles or so, passing through another poor and desolate village. I watched a hefty barefoot woman, her skin darkened and leathery from the sun, walk along the side of the road, a baby in one arm and her free hand holding tight to another child walking beside her. They disappeared in a cloud of dust as Quid turned onto a side road that was just barely visible amidst the barren landscape. We followed it for several minutes then turned onto another stretch of dirt road, this one worn and more obvious, but quite barren.
Almost immediately, Quid pulled over and all three men got out. I had no idea what was happening but joined them without question. They met at the rear of the Land Rover, where Rudy popped open the back door and pulled free the large black canvas bag. After placing it on the ground he peeled back the zipper to reveal a cache of weapons. He removed a double shoulder holster and two Glock-20 10mm handguns, checked the clips then put them aside and handed a 12 gauge pump shotgun to Quid. The barrel had been modified and sawed-off, and a strap had been attached. Quid deftly inspected the weapon then slung it over his shoulder. As Rudy pulled on the holsters, Party Boy selected a large Marine Combat Knife and sheath with tie-down cords, fastened the weapon to his leg then grabbed a Smith & Wesson revolver. He popped the cylinder, checked and spun it, then flipped it closed and nonchalantly slipped the gun into the back of his jeans.
I took the opportunity to open my bag and pull out a bottle. I knew Rudy and his crew carried weapons, but I hadn’t expected them to be quite so heavily armed. Seeing such a stash made everything stark and literal. The dangers out here weren’t pretend or exaggerated, they were real, and these weapons were there for one reason and one reason only: to kill other human beings. Despite Rudy’s disapproving stare I threw back a few gulps of whiskey and let it flow through me. Within seconds it calmed and evened me out.
“Time and a place for drinking,” Bosco grumbled. “And this ain’t it.”
“Don’t worry about it.” I took another pull, capped the bottle and returned it to my bag in exchange for some of the paperwork Janine had given me.
Quid and Party Boy returned to the vehicle without response. Rudy remained kneeling by the weapons cache. “Do you know how to use a firearm?”
I’d never been a big fan of guns, and the only thing I’d ever shot was a paper target, but I’d done a good deal of research on them for my writing. Over the years I’d fired several handguns, rifles and shotguns. “Yeah,” I answered. “But I don’t think I need to carry anything at this point. You guys can already outgun the Mexican Army.”
“Up to you,” he said, zippering shut the bag and regaining his feet. He moved past me, tossed the bag into the back and closed the rear door. “From here on out you never know what we might run into.”
I followed his gaze to the seemingly endless dirt road before us. It merged with the distant horizon and stretched for far as the eye could see.
“Welcome to the Corridor of Demons.”
THIRTEEN
As we traveled the Corridor, I could now and then hear Quid and Rudy speaking quietly up front. Party Boy mostly slept, and I passed the time going over the reports from the detectives on Martin again, stopping now and then to look out the window or windshield at the dirt track before us. Mile after mile, it all looked the same, totally interchangeable, like we might as well have been going round and round in one big circle. The only thing that broke the tedium was the occasional animal carcass or an abandoned car or truck left along the side of the road or farther off into the wild terrain. It seemed impossible not to lose your way here, if not your mind, and I wondered how many people had died along this stretch. Who were the souls that had once been in those now rotting cars and skeletal pickup bodies? I thought I understood then, though I’d only scratched the surface, because there really was something irrefutably bewitching and ominous about this road. Either the legends and stories behind it were unfairly influencing me, or it was just that being so profoundly separated from everything familiar and comfortable had left me off balance. All the things I’d known before had been assigned to another life in another place. None of it applied or even existed here, and when I looked out at that rugged, harsh and treacherous landscape, the dirt and dust and desert vegetation, I could feel the predatory nature of this land in my bones. There was something primal and implausibly seductive about it, this hidden and organic evil lurking beneath limitless gunmetal skies, beckoning us toward the lairs of ghosts and the blackened doorways of our own disillusioned spirits. Even then I knew the Corridor was haunted. And so were we. But the further we trespassed across this ancient and desperate land, the less difference there seemed to be between the two.
Not long before nightfall, we pulled off the road and made camp on a small patch of relatively flat desert floor. In the distance, a brilliant red sun made its leisurely descent behind a craggy
knoll. Sagebrush dotted the landscape, and the dry desert dirt gave the entire area the look and feel of an alien planet. As I gazed out across the desert, I noticed it stared back at me with uncanny and vengeful intent. A brooding stillness fell along with the darkness, yet even a novice to this place like me could tell it was little more than a trick of misdirection. Things were coming alive all around us, night creatures scurrying and watching and assessing our intrusion into a world formerly their own. I saw nothing, but felt them as sure as if they were burrowing into my bare flesh even then.
The crew went to work preparing camp. Quid pulled supplies and two pop-up style self-erecting dome tents from the Land Rover while Rudy set to topping off the tank with one of the large rectangular metal gas cans they’d brought. Party Boy worked at getting a fire going while I stood around like the clueless observer I was, mostly trying to stay out of everyone’s way.
At dusk, the temperature had already dropped considerably, and the fire was going strong. I’d taken up position near it with Quid and Rudy, who’d broken out a package of hotdogs, some buns, and a case of beer. Party Boy stood on the opposite side staring at the hill in the distance as if mesmerized.
“What’s he doing?” I finally asked.
Rudy stabbed a hotdog with a long cooking fork and held it over the flame. “We’re not alone.”
My gut clenched. “What are you talking about?”
“There’s been somebody watching since right before we pulled over.”
It had been at least half an hour since we’d stopped, and though they’d all apparently been aware of this no one had said anything or in any way acted as if something might be wrong. Even now Rudy nonchalantly cooked his hotdog while Quid sat Indian-style before the fire reading a dog-eared paperback copy of Hunter S. Thompson’s The Rum Diary. Heart racing, I looked out across the desert: nothing but gathering darkness and a rocky, rather severely sloping hill in the distance. “Are we going to have trouble?”
Rudy ignored my question and asked Party Boy, “How many?”
Still staring at the hill, he held a hand behind his back and extended three fingers.
“Doesn’t he ever talk?” I asked.
Rudy pulled the hotdog free of the fire and took a bite. “Only when he’s got something to say.”
“So what do we do?”
He handed me the package of hotdogs. “Have something to eat and stay here with Quid, we got it.”
Quid glanced up from his novel long enough to flash me a quick smile.
When I looked beyond the fire again, Party Boy was gone.
Rudy ate the rest of his hotdog, powered down a beer in a few long pulls then let out a loud belch, scrambled to his feet and strode over to the Land Rover. He stayed by the rear of the vehicle long enough to pull the guns from each holster, then he slipped away and disappeared on the far side of it.
“Look,” I said, nervously elbowing Quid.
A battered four wheel drive pickup with all-terrain tires appeared atop the hill, a bright row of cab lights shining from its roof, and its headlights cutting the near-dark, shooting beams that fell just short of our camp.
“Stay by the fire,” Quid told me, “and act like you don’t see them.”
Nothing moved but the flames. “Who are they?”
“Road pirates, they’re all over these parts. They cruise the Corridor and other back roads looking for anybody they can rob or fuck with. They were tailing us for awhile off-road before we pulled over. Since then they’ve been on the other side of that ridge watching and deciding the best way to come at us.”
“Why didn’t you guys tell me any of this before?”
“No need, we knew they were there.” He closed the novel, put it aside and took up his shotgun. “These are real lowlife scumbags we’re talking about, man, type that’ll slit your throat for loose change. If they weren’t such total loser bottom-feeders I’d actually feel sorry for them. This ain’t their night.”
I was about to ask another question when the truck headlights switched off, turned back on and then shut off again. “They’re signaling,” I said. “What’s it mean?”
With a yawn, Quid slung the shotgun over his shoulder, put his Boonie hat on and slowly started for the hill. “Means they’re dead.”
I hurried along behind him as he strolled across the open space and up the rough trail leading to the ridge, my mind a jumble. I wasn’t even sure I’d heard him correctly.
By the time we reached the summit, any doubts I had were gone.
Night was coming fast, but the cab lights illuminated enough of the area for me to see two men lying on the ground on either side of the truck. Both were Mexican, and both were dead, heads back and throats cut so deep I could see their windpipes. The blood from their wounds formed thick and still trickling crimson halo-like puddles in the dirt. One man was clutching a pistol, the other, who had fallen onto his side, had a rifle beneath him, the barrel protruding from under his shoulder.
“Jesus.” I slapped a hand to my mouth as bile bubbled up into my throat. Memories of the last murder I’d seen came to me, throttling my senses with fire-burst flashes of the scarred man lying facedown in the mud, his blood smeared across my knuckles.
Rudy had just finished rummaging through the truck, and Party Boy had taken a third man a few feet away to the other side of the ridge. The survivor was bloodied from a beating but alive and on his knees, pleading with Party Boy in Spanish. The man was young—probably no more than nineteen or twenty—his stringy and sweaty black hair pasted to his head, dark eyes wide with shock, his clothes worn and filthy. Rudy had apparently found a shovel in the truck, and he threw it at the man as Party Boy casually pulled a blue bandana from his back pocket and wiped the blood from his knife, his face expressionless, eyes void of anything even resembling pity. He looked disturbing in the half-light, this small but deadly and precise little man, with his dark, pockmarked skin, prison tattoos, slicked back hair braided and hanging to the middle of his back, and the blood of two dead men soaking his weapon and the earth at our feet.
“Consiga de excavación, muchacho,” Rudy growled, motioning to the shovel. “Tres sepulcros. Dos para ellos, uno para usted.”
I didn’t need any translation to know he’d told the boy to start digging. Three graves. Two for his friends and one for him.
Replying frantically in Spanish, the man raised his hands in surrender, and then, looking over at Quid and me, he tried pleading his case in English. “I go! I go away! Please, I go, I go!”
Choking on vomit, I turned away, unable to look at him.
“Get to digging, bitch.” Rudy leveled a 10mm at him. “Got us three real desert rats here—shit—they don’t even have anything worth taking.”
Quid slapped me on the back. “Go on back down to camp if you want,” he said quietly. “Not everybody’s got the stomach for this stuff.”
I stayed where I was, the sun continued to set, and the young man began digging graves. He stopped more than once, feigning exhaustion, and Party Boy kicked at him or slashed him with his blade, showing no mercy or compassion even when the man started to cry and pray aloud. It seemed to go on forever, and the longer he begged for his life, the colder the desert became, the darker it got, and the more my stomach turned.
“Before you go feeling sorry for this hunk of dog shit,” Bosco said, “remember what he and his amigos had planned for us. What do you think they were doing with this shovel? If we hadn’t gotten them first you’d be digging our graves right now.”
I nodded but said nothing, tensely smoking cigarette after cigarette until the man had finished. And then, at gunpoint, the man dragged his dead partners across the dirt and dumped their lifeless bodies into the graves. Quid gathered the weapons the men had and tossed them in as well.
Party Boy motioned again to the shovel, and the man complied, taking it up and burying the men, covering the graves with quick and efficient motions. He’d obviously dug several graves in his time.
&nb
sp; Once he’d completed the task he smiled hopelessly and sank back to his knees at the head of the third grave. He dropped the shovel as if to show he meant none of us any harm then clasped his hands together in prayer.
It seemed as if hours had come and gone, and the sun had all but vanished over the edge of the horizon. My heart was smashing my chest, and despite the drop in temperature I’d broken out in a sweat. Nothing felt real.
As the man resumed his crying and pleading, Party Boy looked to Rudy for a decision.
He put his gun back in its holster and scratched absently at one of his well-muscled arms. “Wrap it up.”
“Wait,” I said, moving toward them. “Hold it a minute.”
Party Boy pulled the revolver from the back of his jeans, and before I could say another word, took a single step forward, placed the barrel against the man’s forehead and fired.
I jumped as the flash cut the darkness and a loud boom echoed out across the plain and along the distant road. The back of the man’s skull exploded in a soupy mist of bone, blood and brain matter. His body collapsed back, flopping like a boneless rag doll into the grave and landing with a sickening thud. He’d been screaming for mercy when the shot was fired.
Until that exact moment I hadn’t been sure they were really going to kill him. “Christ Almighty,” I gasped, staggering away down the ridge. “Jesus, God.”
By the time I reached camp I realized Rudy had followed me. He’d left the others on the ridge to finish the burial.
“You all right, boss?” he asked tentatively.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I dropped next to the fire, rummaged through my bag until I’d found a bottle and took a long swig. “That was murder.”
“You’re goddamn right it was.” He spat into the dirt. “You let a guy like that go and he comes back with more just like him every time. Every time. Just remember, he would’ve cut your heart out without thinking twice about it.”
Children of Chaos Page 17