Layla muttered something incoherent and scratched absently at one of her cartoon-like breast implants.
“Reggie,” I said, “does the Bronco still run?”
“I don’t know, look what they did to it. If it’s OK we just need gas. I’ll buy it from you guys, I can pay you. Or Layla can take care of you. Right, baby? She can, you know, party with you guys and help you out. We’ll help each other out. Little ass for a little gas?”
“Jesus Christ, what a piece of work.” I turned to Rudy. “Just give them some, we have extra.”
“That’s for us, we need it.”
“Give them enough to get out of here, and some food and water too.”
“For free? Fuck that.”
“We can’t leave them here like this.”
“Well we’re not taking them with us.”
I looked to Quid, but realized he wasn’t about to rock the boat. Party Boy stood a few feet away, dark eyes trained on Layla. “There’ll be plenty of women later,” I said, “once this is over.”
Rudy shrugged. “We could all be dead once this is over.”
“She’s not exactly in the best state of mind to be making deals.”
“What do you care?” Rudy circled closer to her. “She’s a professional punchboard. They’re out here shooting porno flicks, for Christ’s sake.”
“Adult films,” Reggie corrected, raising a finger in the air as if he planned to gauge the direction of the wind. “I make adult films. I’m an artist.”
“You’re a pimp,” I snapped.
“Word!” He laughed hysterically, like a mental patient, and put a hand up for me to slap. “Five-up-high, dog!”
I pushed by him and stepped between Rudy and Layla. “Stop dicking around, man. Give them what they need and let’s get out of here.”
Rudy leveled his most intimidating stare and held it in place for what seemed forever. Every bit of violence and mayhem the man had ever perpetrated was evident in his dark eyes. “Quid,” he finally said. “You heard the boss. Go fetch our new special best friends some food, water and a little gas.”
As Quid hurried over to the Land Rover with Reggie and Layla in tow, I offered Rudy a nod of thanks. I meant it as a show of respect, but his expression remained the same.
“If we wind up even one drop of gasoline short of what we need to get home,” he said, “I’m gonna slow-bleed your ass and leave you for the coyotes.”
His threats didn’t concern me. Being here a moment longer than we needed to be did. I walked away.
“Fuck it,” he sighed, “time for a little break in the action anyway.”
Party Boy produced a silver cigarette case, flipped it open and pulled out a joint. He and Rudy wandered off to smoke it.
As the pungent odor wafted about, I watched the road, hopeful we’d be long gone by nightfall.
FIFTEEN
None of us are ever far from death. Try as we might to convince ourselves otherwise, our vulnerability is profound and intrinsic, our time on this Earth borrowed, fleeting. Out on the Corridor, in the heat and haunting isolation, that was more evident than ever. Like the recent tracks or fresh droppings of a wild animal, death’s mark—its scent—was everywhere.
We’d already been there too long. The sun was falling and it would be dark soon. Unconcerned, Rudy and Party Boy sat on the ground, their backs against the outer wall of the first outbuilding. Layla had joined them, and the three were getting quite cozy. Apparently she had drugs of her own on hand, as I saw her pass Party Boy a few pills from a small plastic bottle. Whatever they were, he dropped them into his cigarette case then passed her the joint in trade.
Meanwhile, Quid had put gas and some supplies in the Bronco and was fiddling around under the hood. Though he’d been working on it for some time, he’d not yet been able to get the engine to turn over.
I returned to the outbuilding where the cameraman had hanged himself.
Reggie stood over the body, which Quid had placed near the back wall. Beams of dying sunlight shone through the various holes and slashes in the structure, casting Reggie in a golden hue. I waved away some flies and stepped closer. “Come on,” I said, gently as I could. “You don’t want to be in here.”
He self-consciously wiped tears from his face. “He was my friend.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Do I just leave him here?”
“You can send the authorities for him once you get back.”
“What about Jasmine?” he blubbered. But before I could answer he grabbed the camcorder, wiped the tears away and lumbered back out the doorway. “I just want to go home, I—you need to let me go home.”
I followed him, somewhat confused by his phrasing but thankful to be back outside. Shielding my eyes from what remained of the sun, I saw Quid hop down out of the Bronco, shake his head in frustration then duck back under the hood. Reggie headed over toward him, looking sad and silly in his loud shirt and flimsy sandals, bald and unprotected dome sunburned pinkish-red and beginning to peel.
I flicked my cigarette away and went in the opposite direction, taking in the remains of the commune. As I walked the area I tried to remember that this had once been home to over twenty people. In some ways that seemed harder to believe than their alleged disappearance. Maybe the stories of their unexplained end were true, or maybe they’d been unable to make a go of it and like most other hippie communes, simply disbanded and deserted the place. Whichever the case, the sense of life and vibrancy this place might’ve once possessed was long gone. But who were they, these hippies and free spirits, and why had they come here in the hopes of finding their Utopia? Why did they choose a place so decidedly inhospitable? What had they sensed in this land that led them to believe it held such promise? How had they missed the horrors lying in wait here, whatever they may have been? How were they fooled into believing they were in no danger? How were any of us?
Crouching down, I picked up a handful of dirt and let it fall free through my fingers. The setting sun and darkening skies seemed deliberate tricks of misdirection, illusions designed to draw attention from the horrible pall that hung over these dead ruins. An unmistakable residue endured here, in the air, in the dirt and in the buildings, an echo of spirits, their lost souls like ghostly remnants floating in the wake of a camera’s flash. I could almost see them, such happy, gentle, hopeful people. And all of them doomed.
Had Martin and his disciples stopped here a few years ago as they made their blasphemous pilgrimage? Had he let the sand run between his fingers too, absorbing the malevolence in this haunted ground as he propped himself up as a deity?
As if in answer, the bone chimes rattled again, this time disturbed by a surge of impossibly cold wind and accompanied by a web of unintelligible whispers drifting across the open expanse of desert.
After what had happened with the vision of my father, I’d thought I was ready for anything. I was wrong.
Spoken in a hollow and deeply sinister voice, I heard my name.
I stood up and looked around. The voices, if I’d really heard them, had escaped, but there was no mistaking the wind. It continued, icy and sobering as any I’d experienced in the harshest New York winter. I moved back in an attempt to get away from it, my eyes stinging and watering, my face aching from the cold and my breath twisting before me in smoky strands.
Then just like the whispers, the wind was gone.
The others were as they’d been before, oblivious to what had happened. Rudy and Party Boy were sitting on the ground with Layla. Though they were too far away for me to hear, I could see Layla talking with that same vacant look on her face. Rudy nodded and pretended to be interested in whatever she was saying while nonchalantly untying her top. Quid was still working on the engine, and Reggie was leaning against the side of the Bronco holding a small radio, furiously turning dials and wagging the antenna back and forth.
Stunned and breathing heavily, I felt the desert heat coil around me. I strode toward the remains of the main build
ing. For some reason I needed to keep moving. Maybe because even then I knew something was chasing me. I’d mistakenly thought myself the hunter in all this, but the closer we got to Martin the more the tables turned. He was stalking me, and we both knew it.
I ran my hand over my forearm. Where goose bumps had risen seconds before, it was already slick with perspiration.
We’ve got to get out of here, I thought. Where we’re headed may be even worse, but if we stay here we’ll die.
Still shaken, I walked along the outer edges of the ruins in an attempt to clear my head. Though the sun was sinking in the sky and the heat was slowly dropping along with it, I began to sweat profusely. Within seconds it covered me like a second skin.
This was life on the edge of a razor, and I was losing my balance.
Something darted past the corner of my eye. Reeling, I spun round, trying to follow it, but it moved so rapidly it was already gone. My vision went fuzzy then back into focus, and I heard the ephemeral laughter of what sounded like a young child. Heart racing, I looked back at the others. They were unaware of any of this. Rudy was leading a now topless Layla into the first outbuilding while Party Boy stood guard at the doorway. Quid was still working on the Bronco and Reggie was pacing around in small circles trying to get reception on his radio.
I forced myself back to the skeletal main building, stepped through a space in the frame and onto what had been the floor. In the years since it had returned to dirt, sand and piles of more debris, clues that people had once been alive here. Inexplicably, I felt drawn to the far corner of the building, where an old wooden chair sat empty next to a pile of broken wooden planks, as if intentionally displayed there for metaphoric effect.
Flies buzzed, swarming around one pile of debris in particular.
Another eerie giggle drifted through the fallen beams of what had been the rear wall, followed by a jumble of voices—men, women, children—all talking at once, circling me then exploding in a single whirlwind of deafening screams and macabre groans of horror. Terror gnawed and scraped at my insides, and I spun, trying to gain my bearings and figure out where these hauntings were coming from and where they’d escaped to. But like those before them, they were gone before I could even hope to make sense of them.
The silence returned, uneasy and meaningful.
I ran my hands through my sweaty hair. Normally I’d have assured myself that like any nightmare none of this was real. But I knew better. This wasn’t a bad dream or even madness. The remains of these buildings, of this place, of the people who had once lived here, were trying to tell me something, drawing me here for a specific purpose. What I believed possible or not was irrelevant. I was no more than a passenger.
The empty chair sat before me. I moved closer to it, reached out and touched the back. The wood was faded and frayed. Beyond it, near my feet, the piles of old planks and pieces of scarred wood lay scattered about in what I first mistook for haphazard fashion. But when I looked closer, I saw that the pile where the flies had gathered looked to have been purposefully stacked in an effort to better conceal what lay beneath it.
An odd sliver protruded from between two of the old boards, long, thin and curled. A finger.
“I got something!” I called out, hoping the others had heard me. “In here!”
I moved closer. It was a human finger, the skin dry and cracked, the nail partially blackened as if burned but long, tapered and definitely female. Ignoring my instinctual desire to run, I carefully took hold of the boards surrounding it and pulled them loose.
The finger became a wrist and then an arm, flopping down lifelessly to the dirt as I kicked more of the debris and scraps of wood away, slowly revealing the puzzle within and releasing a god-awful stench.
A body lay before me, thrown atop two others. All three were nude and gruesomely decomposed, the frames bloated, the skin split and torn apart in areas, the open wounds thick with writhing white maggots. The bodies had also been tightly wrapped from head-to-toe in several feet of rusty barbed wire.
I brought a hand to my face, covering my nose and mouth, but the smell of death and rot was so thick I not only smelled it, I could taste and feel it along the roof of my mouth. I gagged back the bile as my stomach seized. “In here!” I yelled again. “In here!”
Though the bodies were mangled from decomposition and the barbed wire, they had also been horrendously battered as well. Unimaginable violence had been leveled against these people, their limbs snapped, bent and twisted at unnatural angles, their bodies bruised and littered with various wounds and lesions, caked and stained with dried black blood. The only face I could see was the woman on top, but hers had been bashed in, pummeled with some heavy blunt object until it was crushed and imploded. Had it not been for the breasts and hair I’d have been unable to identify the body as female, much less human.
Taking up the largest piece of wood I could find, with a grimace I pushed it beneath the woman’s body and used it to move her off the pile. She rolled over, held together by the razor wire, and flopped into the dirt, a strange jelly-like substance I think may have been her brain leaking from the head.
The two bodies beneath were revealed.
I dropped the plank, backed away, and for the first time in years found myself praying, asking God for strength and reason, for direction and comfort. It happened instinctually, a terrified child seeking the protection of a parent. And yet amidst all the carnage and lunacy, I’d never felt more alone, more abandoned and left to twist in the wind, a hangman’s noose secured tightly around my throat. A man condemned. It’s what I’d always been, and I’d never felt it so openly, because even in such a shocking and unspeakable state, I immediately recognized both bodies.
Lying side-by-side, wrapped in the same barbed wire, their bodies mangled but their faces intact, were Reggie and Layla.
I stumbled away, nearly falling as I ran for the others.
I’d not yet reached them when I heard the screams.
Staggering back out into the open, I saw Rudy backing his way out of the outbuilding, firing his 10mms as he went and screaming at the top of his lungs. Party Boy stood by his side, obviously confused but weapons at the ready. Quid was still by the Bronco, but no longer under the hood. Instead he stood mesmerized staring at the radio, which was now on the ground but broadcasting something I couldn’t quite make out. “It’s not them!” I screamed. “It’s not them!”
Rudy finally stopped firing and looked around, stunned, face pale.
Despite his warnings not to, I walked past him to the doorway of the outbuilding I’d seen him go into with Layla only moments before. Leaning against it wearily, I looked inside.
Though empty, the floor, the walls, what remained of the ceiling, every inch of it, was covered in a mass of large blank ants so deep had I stepped inside they’d have gone past my ankle.
“Sh-she was there and then she…” Rudy couldn’t seem to finish his thought. He kept looking between all of us as if hopeful one of us might have the answer. “Jesus Christ! Jesus-fucking-Christ!”
I turned my back on the outbuilding, knowing somewhere nearby Martin was laughing at me, using stories from my past against all of us. Not a red ant in the bunch, I thought, no crippled red ant being carried off this time. No need. The red ant was me.
“Nobody fucking moves!” Rudy screamed, guns still drawn, arms extended out on either side of him as he slowly spun in a circle, trying to keep us all in his sights. “Nobody moves until I—I know everybody’s who they are!”
I raised my hands. “Take it easy.” I cocked my head toward the main building. “Their bodies are in there. Reggie…Layla…and another woman.”
Party Boy blessed himself and began to scan the area visually.
The boom of a shotgun exploded nearby.
Quid had shot the radio, and now stood over the several pieces it had been reduced to. Slowly, he looked over at us, mouth open, eyes narrowed in confusion and fear. “Did you hear it?” he asked; voice fraught
with desperation. “Just now, on—on the radio, did you guys hear it?”
No one answered.
Rudy kept circling, guns aimed.
“The voice, did you hear it? Like prayers or something in this voice, this horrible voice.”
Rudy finally lowered his arms and ran for the main building. He returned with a slow, deliberate, defeated sort of walk. “What the fuck?” he mumbled. “Fucking Corridor, man, fucking Corridor, it’s—we need to go.” He was so frightened he was having trouble breathing. “Right now, we—it’s already sundown—we leave right now!”
“He was here,” Quid said as if he hadn’t heard him. “I was talking to him and he was trying to get something in on the radio. I was working under the hood and I heard the radio drop. I looked over and he was gone, just—Reggie was just gone and the radio started playing this voice, I—”
“Get it together and get back on the fucking clock,” Rudy said, moving toward the Land Rover. He turned to say something to Party Boy and realized he hadn’t moved. “You got something?”
The small man’s eyes were trained on the land behind the two buildings. He slowly reached to his leg and slid the combat knife free of its sheath.
Rudy removed his sunglasses, and by the expression on his face, I knew he’d seen something too. “Right there, is that—what is that?”
I watched the horizon for several seconds before I finally made it out.
In the distance, beneath the setting sun…a lone gray figure.
Initially I thought it was stationary, but quickly realized it was moving, running across the desert with a strange and awkward stride. Slightly hunched forward, it swayed with a peculiar hobble.
“Is that a man?”
“Whatever it is it’s coming this way.”
Suddenly, from behind the figure there emerged several others just like it, fanning out from what had been a single file to form a wave of ten or more headed right for us.
“Holy shit,” Quid whispered.
Though still quite a distance away, I could see they were all were dressed in filthy gray rags, and several appeared to be carrying crude weapons.
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