CHAPTER
37
They ran for five blocks before a car came rolling down the street. Atl jumped onto its hood and the driver pressed hard on the brakes. She quickly jumped down, opened the door, pulled the driver out, tossing him onto the ground and taking the driver’s place.
Bernardino took the front seat, while Domingo sat in the back with the dog.
“You tell me where to go,” Atl said, taking off the backpack and tossing it to Domingo.
* * *
Bordo Blanco was a great valley of darkness. No streets here, no lampposts, just a vast swath of gray and black interrupted only by the faint light emanating from the shacks of the trash pickers who lived there, rummaging through the mountains of garbage and selecting items suitable for recycling. Broken computers, diapers, soda cans, plastic bags, orange peels, the corpses of dead dogs, they formed hills of different sizes, some tiny and others monumental. One day, maybe, they’d turn this landfill into a luxury suburb like Santa Fe, “American-style,” and everyone would be kicked out and everything would change. It was hard to imagine such a thing now. A foul smell permeated the land, and flies, terrifying in their size, buzzed around during the day. Also during the day came the trucks, and there was the rumble of the tractors with their great rubber wheels, maneuvering through the garbage, squashing it.
At night, there was only the full moon leaning down, caressing the bitter earth. The people who made their home there, out of the same garbage they collected, were asleep or preparing for bed. Bordo Blanco was quiet, eerie, and Domingo wished he could listen to his music, he was so nervous.
“Come,” Domingo said.
He led them into the landfill, through what amounted to a semidecent path, but they had barely walked more than a few meters when a shot rang in the dark. The bullet hit Bernardino and he grunted, pausing in his steps. Laughter, behind them.
“Shit,” whispered Atl.
“Come on, hurry. Over there,” said Domingo, pointing at the separation plant, a vast shed where workers could sift through the garbage. It had been a gift from a charitable foundation, supposed to ease the life of the garbage collectors, though Domingo could see no rhyme or reason for it. Perhaps it was nicer to go through the garbage under a shed during the rainy season, but it was faster to simply drag the big collection bags through the landfill. He’d heard that they had a real separation plant at another landfill, one that had a conveyor belt fed by the hands of hundreds of garbage workers, but Bordo Blanco was smaller, more modest in its intent.
At least now it had a practical use: they could shield themselves, because Domingo doubted they’d last very long out in the open with people shooting at them.
As they approached the shed Domingo saw the shacks that were set near it, tiny abodes of cardboard and tin.
“We need to go into the shed,” he told Atl, pointing at it.
“You go,” she said.
“What?”
“Go and hide,” she told him. “Take the dog with you. Bernardino and I can fight them. You can’t.”
Domingo glanced at Bernardino, who was moving swiftly for a man who had been shot twice. The older vampire nodded at him.
“Better get in there,” Bernardino told him, and when Domingo did not move he added, “I can’t protect two people at the same time.”
He didn’t want to leave their side, but recognized the wisdom of the suggestion. Domingo rushed past the shacks and into the gloom of the shed, Cualli right behind him. He veered away from a collection of rusty shopping carts, entangled together. He almost stumbled into a large container full of plastic dolls that had their faces sliced off, limbs and torsos missing. More containers, with similar bounties, were arranged against the walls. He crouched behind one of them. The dog hid next to him.
He heard gunfire outside.
Domingo clutched the knife Atl had given him in his sweaty hands. He was trembling and doubted very much he’d be able to use it, but he didn’t know what else to do.
“Hey, I know you’re in here!” yelled someone.
Domingo did not move. He could hear someone walking into the shed. A flashlight bounced around the walls. He pressed himself closer to the wall.
The flashlight passed by and he sighed with relief.
… And then the flashlight returned, aimed straight at his face.
“I see you, kid. Stand up slowly,” said a voice.
Domingo did as he was told, but as he rose the dog growled and jumped onto the man. The man let out a loud scream and tried to pry the dog off his leg. He was a huge meaty guy, towering above Domingo, but he seemed unable to deal with the dog, which was firmly biting into his flesh. The man pulled out a gun.
The dog.
Domingo did not think. He simply pressed forward, plunging the knife into the man’s back with all his strength. The man didn’t collapse, he didn’t even seem to be badly hurt, he just spun around, gun in hand. The dog jumped up and bit his hand. The man screamed again, stepped back, lost his footing, and fell heavily. The dog now went for his throat, tearing it with powerful jaws.
The man gurgled, unable to yell a third time.
Domingo stood there, staring at the spectacle, watching as the man twitched, then went suddenly still. The dog kept biting him and he could hear it chewing.
“Cualli, enough,” he said.
The dog stopped and withdrew from the dead man. Domingo knelt down, looking at the man’s face. He didn’t panic, but there was a knot inside him, weighing him down. Domingo closed his eyes but it didn’t help, so he snapped them open again.
He swallowed and rolled the corpse over. Domingo pulled out the knife and slipped it back in his pocket. A sudden wave of disgust hit him. He thought about the old man in La Merced and his dolls, which he kept to ward off the ghosts of the people he’d killed. But there was no time for disgust or stupid thoughts. No time now.
He looked again at the corpse at his feet and Cualli raised his head and growled.
A bullet hit the dog. Cualli whimpered and moved away.
Domingo hardly had a chance to take a breath before he felt the barrel of a gun nestled against his back.
“Tell your dog to stay. You’re needed outside,” said a woman. “Let’s go.”
CHAPTER
38
Nick ripped the bandage from his cheek, irritated by the way it itched, and scratched the new skin as he walked around the shacks. Scared humans peered through makeshift doors and windows, and hid quickly as he passed by.
He saw a figure running with a dog. Atl’s human friend. No one was getting out of this place, not the dog and not that boy and not Atl.
“Get him back here. Alive,” he told La Bola, and La Bola nodded, running clumsily toward a shed. He looked at Ana. “Go with him.”
He had never trusted the efficacy of Rodrigo’s friends, and he wasn’t going to start now. Ana was only a meat puppet, but she was his meat puppet, under his control.
“All four of you, I want that girl alive, too,” he told the others.
“Might be easier to finish her off here,” Rodrigo replied dryly.
“That’s not what my father wants, is it? It’s definitely not what I want.”
No. He wanted her dead real slow. He wanted Atl to enjoy the same pain that afflicted him as his muscles stretched and tried to achieve their proper form.
“As you wish,” Rodrigo said.
He snorted. They split up, Nick and two of the men heading in one direction, Rodrigo taking the others.
They stomped through the landfill, the men raising their flashlights while Nick scanned the darkness for the girl. Broken glass crunched under his shoes. The overwhelming scent of rotten food filled his nostrils and Nick wished he had a damn handkerchief. And his clothes … his clothes and shoes would no doubt be ruined. He could never wear this again, not after walking through such a shithole.
That was another item to add to Atl’s list of sins. She’d dragged him from his home, across the countr
y, all the way to Mexico City and into a fucking landfill. She had insulted him, she had kicked him, she had tried to blow his head off. That bitch had a tab a mile long and Nick was going to collect.
Suddenly he heard three shots in rapid succession, followed by Rodrigo’s piercing scream.
Nick spun around and ran to the place where the screams and shots had come from, the two men rushing after him. They arrived in time to see a vampire draped over what had once been Rodrigo and was now a sack of flaccid flesh and bones.
It was feeding.
Nick recoiled in horror and then stood still. He had a stun baton with him but he had forgotten how to wield the weapon, too disgusted to process what was happening. His men seemed equally shocked, their hands trembling.
He took a deep breath. “Kill him,” he told the men.
They stared at him, utterly horrified.
Nick bared his fangs at them. “Go, now, or I’ll gouge your eyes out,” Nick ordered.
The men still looked terrified, but they obeyed. They carried short-barreled, pump-action shotguns and the bullets were silver-coated, but even though they peppered him with bullets, the Revenant didn’t seem too concerned, darting forward and pressing his hand against the face of one of them. The man began to convulse and Nick watched with sick fascination as the victim’s whole body quickly shrank, the skin turning yellow and wrinkled as life was drained out of him.
The other man had lost his composure and now began shooting without any finesse, shooting both his twitching friend and the vampire. The vampire let go of the man he was clutching and jumped onto the fool with the rifle, ripping it from his hands, then shoving him against the floor and squatting over him.
Nick, who had been holding back, pressed against the wall of a sad shack, crouched on the ground, and grasped a long, rusty piece of metal—perhaps once part of a fence—that was being used to support a clothesline. He pulled it out and walked behind the vampire. The creature was too busy feeding to notice him coming. He jammed the piece of metal down, into the vampire’s back, pinning him down as though he were a butterfly, on top of the dead goon.
“Stake through your damn heart,” Nick said, feeling terribly accomplished as he did this.
A muffled groan made Nick turn around. Rodrigo, now closer to a mummy from Guanajuato than a real person, was still alive. He opened and closed his mouth, his hands scrabbled the dirt.
“Ha,” Nick said, glancing down at the old man who had pestered him for years and years. “Look at you.”
Rodrigo moaned. Nick raised his foot and brought it crashing down into Rodrigo’s head. The skull cracked like a porcelain teacup, bits of bone spilling and jumping through the air.
“Idiot,” he whispered.
The night air felt good against Nick’s face and he grinned.
Ana came then. She was not alone. The teenage boy was with her, his eyes wide with fear.
“Good work,” Nick said, clapping his hands. “Bola?”
“Dead.”
“So much for that,” Nick said. His father might regret the loss of Rodrigo and La Bola, but Nick considered this a great victory for himself. Father would look at him with a newfound respect after this. After he brought him the girl.
“You’re her Renfield or what?” he asked the boy.
The boy did not answer, but the way his eyes darted away told him he was right. Why else would Atl be dragging a human around with her?
He threw his head back and yelled. “Atl! Come out, you bitch. I have your buddy!”
Nick squeezed the young man’s face between his hands and tilted it, looking at it thoughtfully.
“Say something to the lady,” Nick ordered.
When the boy did not reply, Nick sighed, grabbed the electric prod that was strapped to his back, and pulled it out, lowering the voltage and pressing it against the human’s chest. The kid squealed, like a pig.
“Oink, oink! I’m going to fry him and squeeze his brains out if you don’t show yourself, Atl! You’ve got three!”
CHAPTER
39
Atl had no idea where she was headed, only that she had to run. Hide, Atl. Hide. This mantra, which she’d been following for weeks, comforted her. She was good at running.
And then she heard the loud voice, clear across the field of garbage.
“Atl! Come out, you bitch. I have your buddy!”
She paused, looking back. A ruse? Domingo had the dog and there was Bernardino back there.
Then she heard Domingo scream, a shriek that ripped through the darkness.
“Oink, oink! I’m going to fry him and squeeze his brains out if you don’t show yourself, Atl! You’ve got three!”
“You moron,” she whispered.
She couldn’t head back. She remembered the night Izel had died, the wait inside the refrigerator, her desperate efforts to evade Godoy’s men after that. She’d come too far to let herself be captured.
“One.”
She hadn’t saved Izel. Domingo was nothing. A child from the slums with only the most tenuous connection to her. He could be easily replaced.
“Two.”
She was not a warrior. She was not brave. She was none of the things they said about her ancestors. She wasn’t even anything like the fantasies of vampires Domingo spouted, picturing powerful creatures who roamed the night.
“Three.”
She was not …
“I’m here!” she yelled. “Wait!”
… leaving him behind.
She walked back the way she’d come, back toward the shacks. Fear made her stumble but fuck it, fuck it.
Oh, don’t be stupid, Izel said in her head.
You’re dead, she replied.
You too. Soon. Let him die, him better than you.
We are warriors, remember? Let’s fight for something worth a damn for once, she told Izel.
And the murmur of Izel, of doubt, cleared from her head just as she stepped behind the shacks.
Nick had a hand on Domingo’s shoulder, locking him in place. In his other hand he was holding an electric prod. A woman accompanied them.
A couple of meters behind the trio were corpses, splayed on the ground. Two humans but also Bernardino, impaled on a long metal pipe.
“Thank you,” Nick said. “I was thinking I’d have to chase you. It’s getting very boring.”
“No need for that.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“You can let him go,” she told Nick.
“I can?” Nick said. His face was a parody of a human face and his smile was full of savage mirth. “Maybe it would be more fun to torture you both.”
“Let him go.”
“I think not,” the vampire said.
There was a flash of metal and Domingo rammed the switchblade knife into Nick’s stomach. Nick’s grip on Domingo relaxed and he looked down, more shocked than angry. He didn’t seem able to process the thought that a human boy had just plunged a knife into his belly. Atl didn’t quite believe it either, but then Nick roared and there was no time to think and she pounced on him, pulling the knife out and plunging it into Nick’s left eye.
She was hauled back by the woman. Atl felt the pressure of the gun at her side and then she heard the shot, felt the pain as the bullet—silver, damn it—lodged in her body. She slammed her elbow against the woman’s rib cage with such force she was sure she had broken a couple of bones.
Good, she thought. She brushed her fingers against her side, jamming them into the wound, her nails tearing and enlarging the hole until she was able to pull out the bullet and toss it away, heaving, staring at the ground.
She raised her head just in time to receive a full, swift kick in the face courtesy of Nick.
“You bitch!” he yelled. He stood above her, blood pouring down his face. He kicked her again and she fell back, pushing herself up on her elbows.
He struck her with the electric prod. The charge made her convulse, her legs flailing in the air. He hit her again
, this time in her stomach, and she spat out blood.
“Bet you didn’t like that, huh?” he said. “Hey, how about we try this with you.”
He pulled the knife out of his eye, twisting his head as he did, his teeth showing. When he dislodged the knife he slammed it down, into her stomach, then pulled it out again.
“Bet you wish it was over, little girl,” he snarled. “That is not happening.”
She rolled over herself, scrambling up, her hand pressed against her stomach. It felt warm, where the knife had cut it.
“Are you giving up?”
Atl squinted as he spoke. She thought of Izel, the turtle, the scent of corpses burning, and raised her head. Nick was coming toward her and she could not summon the strength to fight back.
“No,” she said.
Nick tried to hit her with the electric prod. Atl managed to dodge the blow more by instinct than actual thought, but the exertion caused her to gasp. The pain in her stomach was very bad. She couldn’t stand straight. Nick tried to hit her again and when she stepped back she lost her footing.
And then she saw Domingo hurrying toward them, carrying the long rusty piece of metal that had been impaling Bernardino. Domingo swung it with all his strength, like a bat. It hit Nick in the head. The crunch of bone made her blink.
Domingo let go of the metal bar and stared at her.
Nick rose. There was so much blood pouring from his head. He opened his mouth, showing her his teeth, and turned toward Domingo with a shriek that left no doubt of his intention.
He was going to kill Domingo.
She jumped up in the air, unfurling her wings, tearing her jacket in the process. She pounced on Nick, landing on his back. He tried to shake her off but she dug her nails into his face and flapped her wings, pulling him up into the air. Just a few meters—a few meters was all she could manage—but it bought Domingo enough time to scuttle away.
Nick tried to bite her, his mouth chomping at the air. She released him and he fell down, sprawled upon the floor like a marionette. Atl landed next to him, resting a hand against the ground and wincing, the pain in her body a blinding hot coal.
Certain Dark Things Page 27