As I scrambled to my feet in a cloud of dust, Rudy and Quid dropped from the Land Rover, guns at the ready. Party Boy stayed in the passenger seat with his usual unaffected air.
I ran my hands over my head to the back of my neck where the tension had settled. “I saw a man. There, standing near the road.” I took several steps back in the direction from which we’d come. The man was gone. As impossibly as he’d appeared, he’d vanished. But he’d been there. I’d seen him, and I’d never forget the sorrow on his ghostly pale face, the look of abject misery that seemed to be pleading with me to turn back while I still could. “He was older,” I mumbled. “That’s why it took me a minute to realize it was him, I—I haven’t seen him in years.”
“What’s the deal, boss?” Rudy asked. “Haven’t seen who?”
“My father.” The face slowly drifted through my head. “It was my father.”
Rudy and Quid traded troubled looks but said nothing.
I cracked my knuckles and tried to find some use for my hands, which had begun to shake and tingle as if asleep. I looked out across the empty desert. “My father’s dead.”
“It’s just your dreams,” Rudy said.
“I was awake.”
“You’re in the Corridor now. Fucks with you. You’ll see all kinds of shit, some of it real, some of it in your head. Out here there isn’t a hell of a lot of difference between the two.”
“Desert’s coming alive,” Quid said, heading back toward the Land Rover. “Just like I told you it would.”
I shut my eyes, concentrated on the warmth of the sun on my face and tried to even out my nerves. It felt like I was right back in that rainstorm in New Bethany, watching the man’s scars glide along his devastated skin. The impossible come to life right before my eyes, this time in the guise of my father, undeniably rattling the foundation of everything I’d come to accept and understand as real. But these flickering images of bloodied angels and the wandering dead weren’t my dreams of cruelty and despair, they were Martin’s. He hadn’t infiltrated my nightmares, he’d brought me to his, and I knew then that if I had any chance to make it to him sane and alive, I could no longer allow him to lure me toward the darkness. I’d have to draw him into the light.
When I opened my eyes Rudy was standing before me. In his jeans, sleeveless sweat-stained shirt, dust-covered boots, scruffy five o’clock shadow and worn cowboy hat, he looked like a leading man from an old Spaghetti Western. The gold cross dangling from his ear caught the sun and sparkled back at me. “If you want to call this and head back right now it won’t be a problem,” he said. “It’s only gonna get worse, and even I don’t know how much farther we’ll have to go before we find this place.”
The Corridor and its demons watched, awaiting my decision.
“No,” I said. “We keep moving.”
And we did, driving on while the image of my dead father’s mournful eyes seared its way into my memory. I wondered why it had been him. Was he paying for my sins now as well as his own, trapped in a land of shadows, false messiahs and bloody violence? Or was it just another demented show of power, carved not into my flesh by Martin’s followers, but into my mind by ghosts he knew would not only frighten, but cripple me? He knew which wounds never quite healed, and understood that once those things had crawled inside me I’d never get them out.
I could feel him…in my head...moving in my blood.
We didn’t stop again for more than an hour. When we finally did it was Rudy who instructed Quid to pull over. Once we stopped he got out and stood in the road awhile. Soon afterward, Party Boy joined him.
“What is it?” I asked Quid. “What’s going on, what’s wrong?”
He casually pointed out his window. “See that?”
I followed his finger to a sloped hill with a cluster of boulders at its base.
“It’s kind of a marker for us,” he explained. “It’s the farthest we’ve ever been. We’ve never gone past this part of the Corridor.”
I ignored the desire to take a drink. If a man like Rudy Bosco was worried, how could I be anything but frantic? “What’re they doing?”
“Rudy’s getting his game on, pulling it together. The way he sees it, he’s responsible for all our lives. Party Boy’s doing his drawing-on-the-spirits-for-guidance thing, listening to the desert and sniffing the air the way he does like some kind of damn wolf. Not sure how he does it, but the shit usually works. He picks up on things the rest of us don’t even notice.” Quid cracked the window and lit one of his thin cigars. “It’s like back home. Everybody always asks me about voodoo and all that. They want to know if it’s real. I always tell them it don’t matter. Long as the ones practicing it believe, that’s enough. But that shit’s all about fear, for guys like Rudy, it’s more about control, survival. The desert’s an alpha male, but so is he.”
“And you?”
“I keep my mouth shut, follow orders and soldier the best I can.”
I’d grown to like Quid, and was sorry he’d become involved in this.
“We’ll get you where you’re going one way or another. That’s the way Rudy does business.” He found me in the rearview. “I just hope it’s worth it.”
So did I.
* * *
Disguised as pitiless sun and scorched earth, danger and tension bore down on us like the tangible things they were. Undeterred, we pushed on. But for the apparition, we hadn’t seen anyone or anything the entire day. Somehow, that was worse, because it left me with a horrible sense of dread. We were so far away now, so removed from anything even close to civilization that nothing seemed impossible. It was as if we’d crossed into an apocalyptic future where nothing was certain and rules no longer applied.
Late in the afternoon, we rolled to a stop.
In a small gulley perhaps fifty yards off-road stood the remains of a shack and the burned-out frame of a long, flat-roofed building. Not far from them were two modest outbuildings, both of which looked reasonably intact but quite old and badly weathered. To the side of the buildings was the rotted shell of what had once been a school bus. A battered Ford Bronco that looked like it had only been there a matter of days was parked closer to the road. The doors and hood were badly dented, two of the windows had been blown out, the windshield was decorated with an enormous spider-web crack, and in several spots on the vehicle the paint had been scratched clean off. It looked as if it had been attacked with baseball bats and a crowbar.
“I’ll be a sonofabitch,” Rudy said. “You think that’s the commune?”
Party Boy nodded stoically.
“Quid?”
“Must be, check the bus. Story said they came in a bus.”
Rudy dug his wallet from his back pocket, fished out some paper money and handed it to his partner. “You were right, amigo, it really is true.”
“What’s with the Bronco?” Quid asked.
“Hang tight, we’ll check it out.”
Rudy and Party Boy left the vehicle, weapons drawn, and slowly approached the remains of the small compound.
“It’s all that’s left of an old hippie commune,” Quid told me, his eyes trained on the others. He adjusted in his seat enough so that he could pull the shotgun free and lay it in his lap. “Rudy always said it was a bullshit legend, but Party Boy swore it was true. They’ve had a bet going for years. Story goes a bunch of hippies came out here back in the ’70s on some sort of a spiritual quest looking for peace and God and all that.”
“What the hell happened?”
“They found something else. Or something found them. Nobody knows for sure, but they all disappeared.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that, twenty-six people, gone without a trace. Supposedly the federales found some clothes, but that’s it. It’s still a mystery to this day, and one of the more famous horror stories from the Corridor.”
We watched Rudy and Party Boy circle and then inspect the Bronco. Once satisfied it was empty, Rudy signaled Quid to join them.
I tagged along, st
aying near the back as the other three approached the two outbuildings. Though it was still hot, it was milder here, and now and then a soft wind blew past, rattling some old chimes hanging from the buildings.
It wasn’t until I got closer that I realized they’d been made from the bones of small animals.
To the rear of the building were some old pens that might’ve been used to house chickens. Scattered about as well were piles of debris, junk, remnants of furniture, and what looked like an old car engine. I stepped over a pair of decaying antlers and a piece of canvas half-buried in the earth, and saw three chicken carcasses near the first outbuilding. They were fresh. The blood from their severed heads had sprayed the dirt and along the door to one of the buildings. I froze and looked to the others. They’d seen it before I had.
But for the intermittent clacking of tiny bones, the desert was quiet.
Party Boy had just begun to slip around back when Rudy yanked the door to the first building open with a loud squeak. He immediately leveled his 10mms.
“Let me see your hands! Now! Do it now!”
A chubby man in jeans, flip-flops and a faded Hawaiian shirt stumbled out through the doorway, squinting in the sunlight, drawn and disoriented, his hands raised. He looked to be perhaps thirty. “Thank God! Don’t shoot, bro, it’s cool, it’s cool—chill—it’s all good!” His badly chapped lips split when he spoke. “Guns are totally unnecessary, man, I’m an artist, a filmmaker, I—”
“Don’t move,” Rudy ordered.
Party Boy closed on him and patted him down. Once satisfied he was unarmed, he pushed the man closer to us.
“We need help, please, we—we’re so fucking lost, dude, and—”
“How many are you?”
“Just four, I—well, no, three—three now. Me, Herm and Layla.”
“Which is it, motherfucker, three or four?”
“Three,” the man said, grimacing. “Three. Christ. Three.”
Quid and Party Boy sprung into action, stormed the building and disappeared inside.
The man wiped sweat from his greasy face, breathing heavily through his mouth as his eyes darted between Rudy and me. “You’re Americans right? Us too.”
“What are you doing out here?”
“We’re in Mexico making a film. I make adult features. We wanted to do some cool shit in the desert, some nice girl-on-girl action in the sand and heat and all that. But we got lost and—all these fucking roads look alike—we drove around for two days and couldn’t figure out how to get back and then we ran out of gas and wound up here and—”
“Easy,” Rudy told him. “Take a breath.”
“We gotta get out of here,” the man insisted, clearly terrified. “We need gas. Can you give us some gas? I’ll buy it off you, broheim, but we need to go.”
Quid and Party Boy strolled out of the building grinning. Between them was a strawberry blonde in skimpy short-shorts and a red and white checkerboard shirt tied in a knot above her navel. Sweaty and disheveled, her shoulder-length hair needed brushing and her makeup had smeared and worn in places, but she possessed an exotic beauty that was evident even in her present condition. Unfortunately she appeared dazed to the point of being in shock.
“That’s Layla,” the man said. “I’m Reggie. OK, now everybody knows everybody, let’s jet.”
“You said there’s three of you,” Rudy reminded him. “Where’s the third?”
The man pointed wearily to the other outbuilding. “Herm’s holed up in there. He’s our cinematographer. He won’t come out.”
Rudy motioned to Quid. “Go get him.”
“He won’t come out,” Reggie said again. “He won’t answer.”
“Were there originally four of you?” Rudy asked.
With a pained expression, the man nodded. “Jasmine’s gone. They took her. They got her last night.”
A shiver pierced the heat. “Who did?”
“I don’t know, fucking crazies.” He shook his head and began to cry. “Never got a real good look at them, it was dark but…at first we could just feel them watching us, we knew something was out there and then last night they tried to get in. We barricaded ourselves inside but they kept trying to get in. Jasmine didn’t make it. When we ran inside she went the wrong way. I kept screaming to her it was the wrong way but she was so fucking scared she kept going out into the desert and—I don’t know what they are or what they want but they’ll be back—they come from there.” He pointed to the area of desert behind the buildings. “And they come at night.”
He sent them for me at night.
“How long have you been here?” I asked.
“Two days,” Layla answered for him, her voice distant and flat.
“Rudy,” Quid called from the doorway of the second building. “You better take a look at this.”
Party Boy and I followed him across a small patch of dirt to the doorway. There was no need to go in, we could see from outside what he’d found in the otherwise empty building.
A young man with numerous tattoos and piercings had hanged himself from the rafters with his belt. Just below his dangling feet, a large camcorder lay in the dirt. His jeans were stained with urine and the air was rife with a horrible stench. The interior of the building swarmed with flies.
“My God,” I sighed.
“Cut him down,” Rudy said softly.
Quid and Party Boy attended to it while Rudy and I returned to the others. I looked into Layla’s eyes but couldn’t be sure anyone was home. Whatever these people had experienced, it had broken them all.
“Is he dead?” Reggie wrung his pudgy hands as tears streamed his face. “He’s dead, right? I knew it, I—know it—he’s dead. We’re all dead, all of us.”
“What the hell happened here?” Rudy asked.
Layla blinked slowly a few times, as if his question was far too complex for her to fathom. She brought a hand to her face and traced the outline of her mouth. Her painted nails were chipped and cracked, and her lips were in even worse shape than Reggie’s. “Do you have any food? Or water?”
Rudy cocked his head toward the Land Rover. I took the signal and returned a moment later with a bottle. “It’s not that cold,” I said. “But it’s wet.”
As I tossed the cap aside and handed her the plastic bottle, she reached for it like I’d offered her a bar of solid gold. Holding it carefully in both trembling hands, she raised it to her mouth and took a long drink.
“Leave some for me, babe,” Reggie said, gazing at the water longingly.
Quid and Party Boy emerged from the building, having apparently gotten the body down, and I noticed Party Boy walk to the rear of the buildings and stare out at the desert like he so often did. I joined him, negotiating around the scattered piles of trash and debris. Beyond the buildings lay a vast stretch of open land, endless sky and a range of small mountainous slopes that looked as if they’d been carved directly into the horizon. I’d never felt so insignificant, but there was more at work here than the awesome power and majesty of nature. This place was so ominous and foreboding I could feel it moving under my skin. Something awful was on its way here, I was sure of it, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something more to it, something not yet evident. I ran my forearm over my face, wiping sweat from my eyes. “You feel it too,” I said. “Don’t you?”
Party Boy nodded.
I turned to head back, and that’s when I saw them.
Fear tightened its grip, but I forced in a breath of hot desert air and let it out slowly, my eyes locked on two symbols painted on the buildings before me. An eight-pointed sun, its rays made of human bones.
The sign of the Traveler. Painted in blood.
Visions of Connie Joseph’s mutilated abdomen flashed before me.
Martin was all around us.
I ran back to where the others were gathered. “It’s them,” I said. Rudy and Quid stared at me. “Look, I don’t know what happened here thirty years ago to a bunch of hippies, but it was Ma
rtin’s people who were here last night. Their symbol, their mark, it’s painted on the buildings in blood.”
“That accounts for all these dead chickens,” Rudy said. “More black magic bullshit.”
Reggie and Layla kept taking turns sipping the water, their concentration solely focused on the bottle. “Ask them if it’s bullshit.”
“Don’t fucking start with me, it ain’t about that.” He kicked a stone out of the dirt with the tip of his boot. It flew across the lot. “The bastards terrorized these people so bad two are zombies, one decided to off himself instead of having to deal with them again, and another one’s dead sure as shit. It’s probably her blood they used to paint their mark. And you want us to take you right into the heart of where these crazy mothers live?”
I knew then I’d probably die in that desert, but I wasn’t turning back. Not now, not after everything we’d been through. They could’ve abandoned me and I’d have gone on alone, on foot if need be. Fuck fear. Fuck Martin.
“That’s the job,” I answered.
“Yeah, I know what the job is, boss, I don’t need you to tell me what it is.”
“Besides, they’re amateurs, remember?”
Rudy removed his hat, ran his hand through his sweaty hair then slapped the hat back in place. “All right, wiseass, we got two options, so listen up. It’ll be dark in a couple hours. We can stay here and defend this position until morning, or we can keep moving and take our chances out on the Corridor after sundown. If we have to deal with these pricks, strategically this is a better place to do it, because even though we’re sitting ducks here, we have a clear line of sight in every direction, and we got a building we can reasonably secure and defend with the firepower we’ve got. On the other hand, if we leave before dark, maybe we can avoid these lame fucks altogether. At least until we get to where we’re going, when maybe we can do it on our terms.”
“We’re close,” I said. “We’ve got to be.”
“We can’t stay here,” Reggie said, tossing the now empty water bottle into the dirt. “They’re coming back and they’re not—I don’t think they’re people.”
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