The asphalt on Highway 188 was in an advanced state of disrepair; tough to traverse for the camels. Once off the higher plateau, they were also wide open and too visible to whatever noxious groups, including the Redboyz, that occupied Tonto Basin. They moved off the road and diverted into the desert again.
This part of the desert had been junked, left to decay. What used to be quaint and kitschy was now like a rotting museum. They passed falling over Burma Shave signs, and at one point, a torched, blackened junkyard containing acres of discarded bikes and motorcycles. They passed behind a falling-down roadside diner that had a toppled neon sign that reminded him of Denver and Union Station. They saw nothing useful in the rubble, and moved on. The priority was water now.
At one point in mid-morning, they were forced to hide in a hollow about a half mile from the road, as a group of motorcycles and a single car–an old Buick or Oldsmobile missing three of its fenders, rumbled past. Finally, they saw Tonto Creek, barely flowing through rocks and bone-dry desert. They led the camels to it. Ironcloud stood by the road with the rifle and kept watch.
They'd eaten all of the camel meat, and now they were down to nothing but a few crackers and cans of beans. It had been all about calories and calculations, Wade thought, remembering Tucker and his camel ranch. They each needed more than 2,000 calories per day, at a minimum, and much more than that to deal with the intermittent violence and stress of the voyage, all the days that raised a question about whether they would survive them. Ironcloud wanted to go hunting with the rifle, but Wade preferred saving the ammo for self defense. He'd hunt later that day with his crossbow.
His mind was suffused with worry and dark images of his daughter's plight, which he tried to banish from his head. He swore he could sense her presence, smell her from a far distance, like a horse or a wolf. It was all intuition, which at this point, along with hearsay evidence of the wanton selling of women, was most of what he could go by.
He remembered the other thing that Ironcloud told him about the dying, crucified men. One was a Redboyz member, barely alive; he'd been caught in an affair with a gang leader's woman. They'd made him pay the price. He'd told Ironcloud that women were being sold from a building next to a circus, then the Indian had taken pity on him and shot him.
With the camels watered and several of their own gallon containers filled from Tonto Creek, they headed back up into the hills for the afternoon.
It was slow-going, with a steep, gravelly minefield of chollo, prickly pear, and saguaro they had to steer the camels around. The animals issued bitter complaints that were harsh on the ear, and Wade couldn't do anything to quiet them. Maybe they'd let the camels go and walk from there, he thought; perhaps shoot one for food.
Farther up they found a cliff dwelling in a hollowed out part of a hill. It had two stories, dated from centuries ago, and seemingly was not occupied full-time. Wade thought it was possibly from the lack of nearby water, but still they considered it a windfall for the night. Wade fetched his crossbow from where he'd stored it on Moe; he slung the quiver of arrows over his shoulder. Ironcloud stood nearby, unloading a bedroll onto a red sandstone floor.
"I appreciate you staying with me all these days, you know," Wade said. "I'm going into the town tomorrow. You don't have to come, because you know it's going to be rough."
Ironcloud held up his hand. "I will help you find your daughter, then we'll steal horses or a car," he said. "You saved my ass in the desert."
"You don't owe me…" Still, Wade depended, to no small extent, on having Ironcloud at his side. For this final push.
"I want you to get your daughter back. I do. Then I have to go back north to Marina. I want to make sure she's safe. I want to start up our life again."
"You don't owe me a thing. And I hope you reunite with your lady."
Ironcloud looked down at the ground, where he tossed mesquite sticks and other scrub into the fire. "Maybe I have no luck anymore, because of what happened back on the highway. Maybe Marina is with someone else now."
He was still vexed by the mercy killings, which weighed on his soul.
"That had nothing to do with you, back on 87. You did a good thing, the humane thing. It was the Redboyz–it was all their doing. You ended those mens' suffering. It was the saintly thing to do." Wade wouldn't have had the guts to do it, he thought to himself. "And we wouldn't have gotten as far as we did, without you. I'll never forget it, Johnny."
Wade hiked into the nearby hills. He made sure to fix various landmarks in his memory, because it was easy to walk endlessly and lose your bearings; the desert landscape had a sameness to it. But he got lucky, and within an hour he had shot a jacaranda with an arrow. They skinned it and cooked it over the fire, then they put the fire out when they'd finished eating, and went to sleep.
CHAPTER 46
They left the camels at the cliff dwelling in the morning.
Wade disguised himself as a beggar, which wasn't difficult to do. He had scraggly hair, an unkempt beard, and already looked the part of a haggard drifter. He draped the shawl over his shoulders, pulled the wet hat down over his eyes, and when he walked down into the town or settlement, he assumed a bent-over posture. He'd rubbed more dust into his face; he didn't make any eye contact with people on the street. Around his belt, beneath the shawl, he carried a Swiss army knife stored in its sheath, the almost-empty pistol, and the crossbow and quiver.
Ironcloud followed closely behind him. He planned to steal two horses. He carried the rifle and pistol, with only a few bullets left in each.
Wade walked down the barren, empty road. He thought he must appear like death warmed over, possessing nothing worth stealing. He entered the shanty town, which was crowded with bereft-looking families, men of all ages carrying tools, and groups of loitering, predatory young men. The buildings were all patchwork structures made from plundered metal or plywood, and even scrappy pine logs, or tents. The "town" was not put together nearly to the level of old Page, Arizona, or especially Grand Junction, he thought. It looked like a monsoon or a habib, the giant sandstorms that now plagued the southwest, would come through and sweep it away, and that the occurrence might be a blessing.
He heard loud voices and music coming from some of these shanty bungalows, and occasionally a man, drunk or zonked out of his mind on some cheap controlled substance, would stagger out the front door to fall face down, as one did in front of him, in the dusty, pot-holed street.
At times, on a street corner, stood a man in a dark uniform, looking bored and uninvolved, one hand resting on a holstered sidearm. He figured they were part of a regime cadre, but they didn't seem to be enforcing anything. If the settlement was governed at all, it was by malign neglect. At any rate, he was glad they weren't randomly checking his papers, so he never was forced to lift his shawl. His outfit otherwise made him stifling hot under the cloudless sky, which felt like an oven on high.
He kept shuffling along, paying nobody any mind. He read every poster he saw, as many things were posted for sale: dogs, horse and camel meat and desert game, shabby rooms for rent, and many kinds of useless detritus. The settlement apparently had no running water or electricity, except for the occasional generator. He remembered the circus; there was no mention of one on the posters.
He found what seemed the central strip, the "Main Street," and he walked to the side of that. He could see the lake, pale blue and like a mirage, so out of place, through the ramshackle buildings. One time, three beefy louts with Mohawk haircuts sauntered up to him; one gave him a shove, and he fell back onto the ground pathetically.
"This one's a true weakling," one of them said, with a malicious gleam in his eye, like he wanted to deliver another pleasurable blow; a swift kick. Wade was aware that a confrontation now could blow everything. Luckily, a regime person stood kitty-corner from him on the street.
Another of the toughs gave him a nudge with his boot. "He's half-dead drunk–let's move on." Wade didn't get up until they were gone around the corner.
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Finally, he ventured to speak with someone. He chose an innocent person, a woman who was selling potatoes on the corner.
"Where's the circus?" he said.
"The circus?" she ran a hand through her graying, but long-flowing hair. She seemed nice, dressed in jeans and a buttoned-up shirt. "You might mean the boarding house, down two blocks and around the corner. To the right. They have an old circus sign, but it's not a real one. I don't know of any other circus."
"Thank you." He kept going, following her directions. Once in a while a man would come swaggering down the road with a woman on his arm, who looked anything but compatible and happy. He was drunk; her mouth was a straight line, and her overall countenance suggested she was counting off the minutes, until she could go on her own way.
Before he turned the corner, he looked around for Ironcloud. He didn't expect to see him, because his companion had to keep the lowest profile and not draw any attention. He figured Ironcloud would keep him in sight; at least, he hoped so, as he turned the corner off the main street.
An intact wooden building stood on the side, and sure enough, someone had placed an old pealing circus sign near what looked like the front door. For decoration or to appeal to a passerby's fondness for antiquity, he didn't know. Wade looked around for a tent or "tent city," but he didn't see one. A man who might have been forty, but looked as grizzled and used up as someone twice his age, loitered near the circus sign. Wade shuffled over to him.
"Say friend, where might one find a woman, for rent?"
"For you?" the man scoffed in a gravelly way with his throat. "That'd be a laugh."
"No, it's for another fella. You see, he pays me to find a woman for him, once in a while. When I'm lucky."
"Got any of that money now?"
"Nah. He doesn't pay until the goods are delivered. Money, me? I couldn't pay for a pot to piss in, sorry to say."
"And sorry you do look," the man laughed. Then he looked around, with a pitiable attempt to seem in charge and authoritative. "What kind of woman is your man boss looking for? White lady, black, Latino, Indian? A younger one; an older one with experience…" The word "older" rolled off his tongue, as if he was just getting started with a sales pitch.
"A child?" That one made Wade want to wring his wrinkled chicken neck right then and there, but he had to keep his cool.
"Young one, I'd guess. About twenty. Pretty…"
"Of course! They have to be pretty! They only have pretty ones! Now, I'll point you in the right direction, and once you get your payment, you be sure to give me my cut for doing the favor, say fifty percent? I'll be holding you to that one." And he put his finger on his right cheek and pulled down the lower lid of his bloodshot eye, as if to suggest he was the all-seeing one.
Crouched in his hunchback, Wade answered, "I'll be sure to drop by…"
"Come along," the man said.
He brought Wade about three-quarters of a block to the only brick building he'd seen on this whole journey; it looked like a former bank branch.
"They say this place," the grizzled guy said, "has a woman you can buy, and if the price is right, she's yours' for the taking, forever, in a manner of speaking…for the correct price."
Wade's heart was beating faster; his blood was rising. "Thank you," he said, and he shuffled up to the front door. He went up the stairs, opened the door, and walked into the darkness.
CHAPTER 47
"Now, who do we have here?" a man said. He got up from a rocking chair; he wore one of those strange, out-of-place bowler hats, with a dusty black coat and skinny tie of the same color.
"We don't take beggars here, old feller. Now why not move along…before I throw you out."
"I'm inquiring about a lady…"
"I'll bet you are," the man laughed. He came forward gruffly. "Don't waste my time–I told you to leave."
"…For another man…he has money. He's interested in her." Here, Wade handed him the picture of Kara, the one he had with the serial number along the bottom.
"Ah yes," the man said, looking at it. "We do have this one." This one, Wade thought, with menace in his mind. "Where is your good man?" the man crowed, with a fake, proprietary flourish. "Maybe he'd like to come in and meet her?"
"He's just outside, with his horse. I'll go get him."
"And I'll fetch the girl," the man said. "Any message I can give her?"
"Yes. Daddy's home…" Wade said, and out from beneath his cloak came the army knife, which he jammed up to its hilt into the man's thorax, which instantly spouted black blood onto Wade's shawl. The man let out a sigh like it was coming from a bag, Wade withdrew the knife, and the body crumpled to the floor in a heap, the bowler hat coming loose and rolling part-way across the wood. Wade dragged the body into the shadows on the side of the room, sheathed the knife, and readied his crossbow with an arrow.
The first man he met, emerging from the hallway nearby the staircase, wearing a Redboyz headband, got an arrow point-blank in the forehead. It gave him a sudden shocked look, the feathers protruding just above the wide eyes, before he fell heavily backwards, dead. Wade left him there; he had a whole quiver left.
He went up the dark stairs with its stale odor and pealing wallpaper, calling out, "Kara! Are you there? Kara! It's Dad!"
Instantly a man turned the corner on the second floor and came down the stairs at him, and he received one of the steel projectiles center chest, which knocked him more than half dead onto his back. Since it was easy, from this angle, Wade put a foot on him and yanked the bright red arrow out, rearming his bow with it. The recipient gurgled and died at his feet.
Another man appeared at the landing on the top of the stairs, this time with a pistol drawn. He fired twice; the bullets went astray, one grazing Wade's shoulder, and seconds after an arrow pierced the shooter's neck, appearing out the other side with a small portion of bloody flesh dangling from the tip. The shooter pitched violently sideways over the railing and landed dead on the first floor.
"Kara!" Wade cried out. "Where are you! It's me!" he added, somehow knowing she'd recognize his voice.
Then he heard, it was unmistakable from the other side of a door, at the end of a hallway. "Dad! Dad! It's me, Kara!"
The building had a third floor, and a staircase. An armed, bulky man came down the stairs, with a red, sweaty, angry face and wearing the Redboyz headband, all the buttons of his coat unbuttoned and his belt loosened and hanging free, and he leveled both barrels of a shotgun at Wade. Before he could squeeze the trigger though, an arrow struck with an audible thud just below his ribcage and all but disappeared into the ample, torn-up abdomen. He smashed down onto the stairs issuing his final guttural cry, just as Wade, mechanically and with a steady hand, loaded another arrow into the crossbow.
He turned toward the front of the building beneath, as three more armed men came through the front door. There was a shot from outside; the third one fell onto the floor of the front hallway, as the other two turned and returned fire.
Ironcloud, Wade thought. As he was looking down there, a door, near where he had heard his daughter's voice, burst open, followed by a man in suspenders who fired a pistol, at will. Bullets flew all about the hallway; Wade ducked completely to the floor, but one of them passed thoroughly through his left shoulder, partially shattering the shoulder blade. It felt like someone had whacked the arm half off with a sword, but with a primal force of blind vengeance, he stood up out of a crouch and fired at close range; the projectile passed into the man's mouth and took part of the back of his head off. He slumped into the door jamb with eyes still wide, expressing nothing, for his efforts, than vacuity and emptiness.
Wade ran over the man's body, and found his daughter cringing and crying by an open window. She put her arms out for him.
CHAPTER 48
He hugged her with one arm; her tears felt wet on his neck, mingled with his own.
"We're getting out of here!" he yelled. He wasn't able to rearm the crossbow, but right outside t
he open window, he noticed the shingled roof of the lower floor. He still had the pistol with one or two bullets left, the crossbow slung over the shoulder. Both of them climbed outside the window and dropped about five feet onto the roof. Wade could hear commotion in the room they'd just left.
Beneath him was an empty street with trash, dust, and disheveled shanty structures along it. He wondered whether he and Kara would have to drop all the way to the road, when around the corner came Ironcloud on a horse. He led another horse by the reins, looked up, and caught their eye. Although ten feet separated them from the ground, Ironcloud rode to just beneath where Wade held Kara. She lowered herself limberly onto the bare back of the horse behind Ironcloud. "Come on!" he yelled to Wade, steadying the other bareback horse in the air clouded with dust.
Wade lay on the roof bloody and wounded. "Go!" he yelled; "Take Kara and the horse!" A man pushed the muzzle of a rifle through the window, and Wade turned and emptied the last of his pistol ammo into it. A shower of broken glass spilled onto the roof, amidst the smoke of burnt cordite.
A small crowd had gathered, not far away on the dirt road; women in jeans and country skirts, groups of grimy kids, and dust-covered men holding their hats, watching.
"We have time!" Ironcloud yelled. "Take the other horse!"
"Dad!" Kara cried, muddy tears streaking down her face as she held onto Ironcloud from behind.
"Go! I'll be right behind you!" Wade said, unsteadily using one arm to get to his feet.
Men approached from about 100 meters down the dirt road; a shot was fired in the air. Many in the crowd turned to look at them, but only a few in the gathering parted to open the view for them. The dust was almost blinding, as the horses galloped in place and whinnied, Ironcloud turning the reins on them. He and Kara galloped in the opposite direction, as Wade dropped perfunctorily, rolled, and lay in a blood-stained heap on the ground. He looked up and he could see the two people and the horses disappearing around a bend.
Journey By Fire, Part 2: Escape From Tonto Basin Page 7