“He couldn’t have been more than twenty years old.”
“I don’t care if he was a toddler sucking on a binky. Shitty-diaper-wearing motherfucker crosses us he dies. Period. That’s how it works, boss, that’s the way it is. There’s no law out here, no rules except for staying alive, and that’s what you’re paying me to—”
“For Christ’s sake, I didn’t hire you to execute people in cold blood!”
“I told you the deal. Everybody out here knows the score. Ain’t any such thing as decent people on this road, not here. We play games and it’ll be our bodies under the sand. Get that through your skull and you just might live through this.” He folded his arms across his chest and smiled defiantly. “Who did you think we were, boss?”
Perhaps the more salient question was: who had I thought I was?
I tucked the whiskey back in the bag, feeling weak and disgusted with myself for having to run for a bottle. I pushed myself back to my feet and ran my hands over my head, wiping away the sweat. “I don’t know. I don’t even know what the hell I’m doing anymore. I’m not sure I ever did. I just know I don’t belong here. I don’t want to be out here.”
“Nobody wants to be out here.”
Martin did, I thought. This was exactly where he wanted to be, in the heart of madness. Whatever he’d seen in his travels the reports talked about, whoever he’d surrounded himself with to form his own personal Jonestown, and whatever memories and relics from the night of the scarred man he’d gathered to summon his alleged power, it was all woven together in a demented tapestry, a maze of mirrors he’d dragged me into along with him. And like a damn fool, I’d allowed it, just as he knew I would, a lamb led to slaughter, head bowed and shuffling obediently toward the poised, curiously exquisite blades awaiting me. And now I found myself amidst killers burying dead bodies in the sand. Had I never come here, those men would still be alive. They were desperados and criminals and would’ve eventually wound up buried under this desert sooner or later, but their deaths wouldn’t have been linked to me. Now I was bound to them forever, their dead faces, slashed throats and screams for mercy branded into my soul for as long as I lived. I knew all about murder and what it cost, how it haunted you and drained the life out of you like a disease slowly eating away your insides. There was no cure for it, no magic prayers or wishes to make it all clean again. It was a permanent stain. God damn Martin for being here, I thought, for orchestrating all this, and God damn me for allowing myself to enter into it in the first place. I needed to be home, worrying about my daughter and obsessing about my next novel, drinking my life away in upstate New York and dreaming up new and creative ways to torture Albert. This wasn’t me. This wasn’t my life or who I was. And yet I felt myself sinking deeper into it, like quicksand gradually pulling me down. It was as if on this very night, while complicit in the murders of three men, I’d come to the conclusion that there was no longer any use in fighting these demons. I was shocked and sickened—yes—but those feelings, powerful as they were, had faded as rapidly as they’d risen. So who was I, really? Was I genuinely disturbed and repulsed, or did I react that way because I believed it to be an appropriate response to such horrors? Once blood was spilled, and the true evil of this night and the days and nights to come was unleashed, I realized I wasn’t that uncomfortable with it after all. Maybe what really upset me was how much at home I felt in the violence, in the blood and destruction. I didn’t rejoice in it in the least, but I wanted it to bother me more than it did.
Rudy left me alone by the fire. After several minutes another fireball burst through the darkness near the ridge. Now that all the bodies had been buried, they were burning the truck. I watched the flames dance in the night, my head still spinning and replaying the memory of the man’s skull reduced to powder.
Later, when the others had returned to camp, Quid and Party Boy retired to one of the tents while Rudy took first watch. Rather than use the vacant tent, I threw a blanket on the ground and lay by the fire. The others took shifts in three-hour intervals. I was surprised how cold the desert got at night, and I’m not sure I slept much, but I must’ve nodded off now and then because I remembered dreams. Not the nightmares I was so sure would come for me, but nice, gentle dreams, memories of my mother, of Trish before it all went bad, of Gillian and even Janine. It struck me as obscene to dream of them in this dusty hell, but each time I drifted away, there they were to remind me of what waited on the other side of darkness. People worth living for, certainly, but were they worth killing for? Was anyone?
Near morning, Quid took the last watch. I saw him sitting on the front bumper of the Land Rover, shotgun leaned against his leg. My body was stiff and sore from having spent most of the night on the ground, so I got up, stretched a bit then joined him.
“You all right?” he asked. Quid had an easygoing Southern manner, a laidback appeal that seemed out of place here. He was the youngest of the group by far, but struck me as perhaps the brightest.
“Gotten about as much sleep as I’m likely to get.” My mouth was mucky and sour. I hawked a ball of spit into the darkness but it didn’t do much good. “All quiet?”
“We won’t have anymore problems for awhile.”
“Just awhile?”
His eyes continued scanning the still-dark desert. “It’s amazing, isn’t it?”
“What’s that?”
“How different the desert is at night. They’re all like that.”
“Been in a lot of them?”
“Did two tours in Iraq, was part of the first wave back when we went in.”
“I guess tonight must not be that big of a deal to you then.”
“It’s always a big deal when somebody dies. You don’t ever get used to it. But the first time you see it, that’s the hardest. It rattles everybody, unless there’s serious shit wrong with you.”
I almost confided in him that this hadn’t been my first experience either.
“Sometimes it’s necessary,” he went on, “but there’s never any pleasure in killing. At least there shouldn’t be.”
“Been discharged from the service long?” I asked.
“Few years, but I wasn’t discharged. I’m AWOL.”
I wasn’t sure what to say.
“Had enough,” he explained. “Was supposed to go back for a third tour and just walked away instead. They’re still looking for my ass. Ended up in Mexico, hooked up with Rudy and went to work with him. Figure if I’m gonna strap on a gun and get blood on my hands it’ll be on my terms.”
We were quiet awhile. The last dying embers of the fire crackled and popped. I motioned to his Saints shirt. “You just a fan or are you from New Orleans?”
“Both.”
“Went there once years ago,” I told him. “Quite a town.”
“Where I grew up is all but gone now. Floods took it.”
“You think you’ll ever go home?”
He stopped watching the desert and looked at me instead. “No.”
I wasn’t sure any of us would.
“What about you?” he asked. “What’s your story?”
“From New York. Upstate. I’m a writer.”
“What do you write?”
“Lies.”
He smiled and resumed his watch. “Got a nice life back there?”
“Nothing special, but it’s better than I thought it was.”
“Then what the hell you doing out here?”
“Good question.”
“All I know is we gotta get you to some crazy fucker way out on the Corridor who thinks he’s the Devil or some shit.”
“Maybe he thinks he’s God,” I said. “Far as I can tell lately, there may not be much difference.”
Quid thought that one over. “Kind of unfair to the big man, no?”
I couldn’t help but laugh a bit beneath my breath.
“What? Didn’t expect somebody like me to have religion?”
“Not really, no. Then again, maybe it makes perfect sense.”
/>
“I was raised a good Catholic boy,” he said with a smirk.
“Me too, but I’m not a boy anymore.”
Quid worked his head back and forth, loosening and stretching out his neck muscles. “Way I see it, the worse the world gets, the more God there is.”
“Sounds like you’ve got that backwards. There’s nothing but endless suffering in this world, boundless violence, pain and brutality. Where’s God in all that?”
“There’s joy too. There’s good.”
“Now and then.”
“Talk to anybody who’s seen combat, they’ll tell you. It’s Hell on Earth, yeah, and you see things you can’t ever get out of your head. But you see a lot of good too, you see bravery and sacrifice and brotherhood.”
“But those are the actions of Man, not God.”
After a moment he asked, “So you think God’s dead?”
“If He’s not He’s got some explaining to do.” I motioned to the ridge. “What about that kid buried up there? He was on his knees praying, asking God to save him. God never showed.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he was in mid-prayer when his brains were blown out through the back of his head.”
“Don’t mean God wasn’t there.”
“You’re right, it doesn’t. But if He was it just makes it even worse. What good is He if He just stands by and let’s things happen? Don’t get me wrong, I believe in God. I’m just not sure He believes in us anymore.”
“Might not be able to blame Him on that one, but the way I figure it, God don’t have to justify nothing. We do.”
“And how do you justify what you do?”
“How does anyone?”
Daylight broke in the distance, piercing night as the first hints of sunshine appeared along the horizon. To the left of the ridge, a charred and blackened wreck that had once been a pickup sat a good distance from the road. Another skeleton in the bone yard, I thought. And on the far side, though I couldn’t see them from my vantage point, three fresh graves had already begun digesting the fresh kills they concealed while we debated the existence of God and the nature of good and evil. Had it not been all so sordid, it might’ve been funny.
“Don’t much matter who this guy thinks he is anyway,” Quid finally said. “Long as I get back alive and paid, I’m good.”
I thought about getting back too, and remembered lying next to Janine in the dark motel room, feeling her heart pound against me, the sheets tangled around us and her eyes moving beneath barely closed lids as dreams crossed her face. And just like now, I didn’t know if God was watching, but Martin was. He’d been in that motel room too, his blood-soaked hands dripping crimson and his cheeks painted with inverted crosses, taunting me, making sure I knew our lives were little more than a house of cards.
I dream of fire.
I dug a crumpled pack of cigarettes from the hip pocket of my jeans, pulled a cigarette free for myself then offered Quid one. He shook his head no. “You think we’re close?” I asked.
“To what?”
“God…the Devil…Martin.”
“We’ll know soon as the Corridor starts acting up.”
I lit my cigarette, took a drag and coughed it out. “Acting up?”
“It comes alive,” Quid told me. “You’ll feel it.”
But the only thing I felt was death, gazing across the desert at me like the old friend it was, arrogant and infinite, a reaper of neither rhyme nor reason, sent to mock the condemned and frighten the weary.
FOURTEEN
Party Boy got a small fire going again—enough to boil water—and after some gut-wrenching coffee and a breakfast of freeze-dried scrambled eggs out of a can, I brushed my teeth with bottled water, changed my underwear and pulled on a fresh shirt. Over breakfast no one spoke about what had taken place the night before. In fact there was little conversation at all, and by midmorning we were back on the road.
This time Party Boy took the seat upfront with Quid and Rudy rode in back with me. I didn’t ask why but assumed this was because the dangers increased the farther along the road we went, and Party Boy was clearly the most in tune with this land and whatever it might throw at us.
As we continued on along the Corridor I let the others watch the road for more trouble and concentrated instead on finishing up the reports the detectives had filed. It was believed Martin had formed his group while still in the United States, and in the early days they’d been a nomadic cult, traveling the back roads and highways alike, appearing primarily in remote sections of Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, California and Nevada. As time and locales came and went, Martin gathered more disciples, and though there weren’t a lot of firsthand reports on exactly who his followers were, Thompson, the first P.I. hired, had managed to obtain enough information to know that most of those linked to Martin were American citizens, relatively young, displaced and damaged people searching for something to fill the voids in their empty lives. For whatever reason, they’d found what they’d gone looking for in him. Though the group had several brushes with the law, and was suspected in numerous crimes in various states, they were constantly on the move, and the majority of the criminal activity they were thought to be involved with were petty crimes and misdemeanors. It was believed their move to Mexico had taken place a couple years before, but there was no definitive proof of exact dates, and the reason seemed clear to Thompson even then.
Though no one has been able to provide me with the exact nature, purpose or specific doctrine of their alleged religion, there is no question that Martin is the ringleader and that he and his clan have a history of often violent and extreme behavior, Thompson wrote. It is my understanding from speaking to several eyewitnesses and people who came in contact with Martin that their goal was to cross the Mexican border and begin a base of operations deep in the desert. Martin apparently regularly preached about the end of the world and his role in bringing that about—a trait consistent among self-anointed doomsday prophets—and that he planned to lead his followers to a new home in a promised land where they could settle and conduct their religious beliefs and practices in anonymity. In regards to the makeup of the group, I am relatively sure the majority of his followers are American, but I’ve been told there are possibly also a few Canadians and Europeans. Since the cult spent time in several border towns before their move to the desert, it is believed numerous Mexican citizens have joined the fold as well. Although there are a handful of females, the majority of his disciples are male. I have had no indication that there are any children involved, and as for exact numbers, no one seems to know for sure. There could be as few as fifty, or as many as one hundred or more.
“I was wondering what kind of numbers we were looking at,” Rudy said.
I’d been holding the report on my lap and hadn’t realized he was reading it too. “Jury’s still out on that one.”
“It’s always helpful to know, but doesn’t matter, they’re a bunch of amateurs.” He shrugged. “What about firepower? These freaks armed?”
“It’s pure speculation,” I told him, referring to a section of the report I’d read the day before, “but Thompson had indications that they were in possession of basic weapons and dug into that old church pretty deep.”
“Yeah? Well Thompson was probably raven food a long time ago.”
I shuffled through my stack of papers until I’d found Connie Joseph’s report and the photograph of Thompson stapled to the back page. Pushing fifty, bald and chubby, he sported a shaggy mustache and deep-seated dark eyes that looked hard and cynical. I imagined birds picking at his bones, tearing slivers of bloody meat from his face and plucking free his eyes. Did he have family, I wondered, people who loved and missed him? “It’s hard to believe the Mexican authorities aren’t more interested in this group,” I said.
Rudy scoffed. “Fear does funny things to people. Shit, Dahmer was cooking and eating people in the middle of an apartment building. Imagine what you can get away with in a no man’s la
nd.”
Pushing aside a visual I really could’ve lived without, I put the reports away and looked out the window. A few hills in the distance rushed past, and the flatlands here were dotted with a bit of brush, mostly low shrubs. Ahead, the Corridor stretched on and on, torturous and endless.
Maybe it was the monotony, the fact that I hadn’t slept much the night before or just a simple means of escape, but I eventually nodded off.
I awakened awhile later, disoriented and groggy. The Rolling Stones were on the iPod, jamming their way through Jumpin’ Jack Flash, but the stereo was turned down low, and thankfully no one was dancing along this time. With a yawn, I rubbed my eyes and looked out at the same landscape that had been there earlier.
Only this time something stood out, something that didn’t belong.
Up ahead, on the side of the road, stood a man dressed in dark clothing. I quickly sat up in the seat for a better look, still not convinced I’d seen what I thought I had. But there he was. It was unmistakably a lone figure standing on the side of the road just a ways ahead. “What’s that guy doing out here alone and on foot?” I asked.
“What guy?” Rudy’s body snapped to attention as he looked from window to window. “Where?”
“I got nothing,” Quid said.
“There,” I said, pointing.
As the Land Rover sped past the man, our eyes locked. I might as well have been looking into a mirror that cast my reflection years into the future.
“Stop,” I said, my body shaking as if it were being throttled. Impossible as it was, I knew this man. It had taken several seconds for my mind to recognize and accept it, but once the truth registered it couldn’t be denied. “Pull over, I—just—pull over—stop!”
Quid jammed the brakes and the Land Rover came to an abrupt halt. It was still lurching when I opened my door and tumbled out into the heat. Much as I wanted to get away from what I’d seen, at the same time I felt like if I didn’t immediately get out of that vehicle I’d die. I hit the ground with my knees and rolled through the fall to the side of the road.
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