by Tom Abrahams
“A willing suspension of disbelief leads to a great deal of enjoyment in a barren word devoid of joy,” said Baadal. “I often find myself daydreaming to escape the reality of what is plausible and what is not.”
“Let me know how it ends,” said Battle.
Baadal turned to face the front. He unbuckled his seat belt and shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
Battle looked out his window at a boy urinating on a fence post. A man who Battle presumed to be the boy’s father stood beside him, doing the same until a guard poked the man in the back with his rifle. They both stopped midstream and shuffled off to join their group.
His attention shifted to a young woman with a six-shooter stuffed into the front of her rope-cinched pants. She couldn’t have been more than seventeen. A boy, maybe the same age or a little younger, stood next to her. His pants stopped at his calves. His ankles and feet were black as soot. They were leaning against a hearse. Their faces were drawn with frowns. Neither of them appeared to have much hope.
The bald woman with their golden ticket started walking back to the SUV, the piece of paper flapping against her outstretched hand. She stopped at the hearse and spoke to the driver. The teenagers perked up. The doors to the hearse swung open. The seventeen-year-old girl pulled the back hatch ajar, and a young woman carrying a baby emerged from inside the hearse.
Battle counted six people, including the baby, standing next to the death wagon. They had packs and weapons. The young mother was holding the child over her shoulder, swaying as she stood there at the rear of the vehicle. The woman looked haggard, as if she’d experienced something beyond the pale, something far outside her narrowly defined comfort zone.
Battle’d seen the look before, on the faces of war-weary Syrians and Iranians whose homes and schools and businesses were smoldering piles of rubble and rebar. They walked aimlessly through their streets with no place to go and nothing else to do. They were ghosts, shells of what once had been whole people.
The young mother had that look as she vacantly rocked from side to side, her eyes fixed on some imaginary distant place.
The priestess arrived at the SUV’s window. “You’re with them,” she said and pointed to the hearse. “Time to go.”
***
Ana looked back at the pair of SUVs with the gasoline cans strapped to their roofs. She didn’t like the idea of more strangers joining them on their already dangerous trip.
She stepped to Taskar. “Tell me why we have to leave your car. I thought you always drove your clients the length of their trips.”
He nodded, his eyes glued to the shaven-headed woman. “I do,” he said. “Things have changed. They’re not letting vehicles cross. Only people on foot.”
“So you’re staying here?”
“I’m staying with my transportation. They’ll open it up soon.”
“How long can you hold out?”
Taskar pursed his lips in thought. “A few days,” he said. A sly grin grew across his face. “I’ve half your rations now.”
Ana thanked him and watched five people step from the first SUV. There was a thin red-haired woman, a boy who had to be her son, two men who were unmistakably Dwellers, and a tall, lean man with sad eyes. His unkempt hair was tousled atop his head. His face was tanned from the sun, save the feathered white lines that revealed the wrinkles in his forehead and at his temples.
He carried himself like a soldier, she thought. He had that confidence, despite his evident sorrow. He also carried an assault rifle.
All five of them slowly walked toward Ana and her group of disaffected teens and twenty-somethings. The man with the sad eyes spoke first.
“I’m Marcus Battle,” he said and nodded at the woman at his side. “This is Lola, her son, Sawyer, and these are our escorts.”
“I’m Baadal,” offered the Dweller. The driver, however, said nothing.
Taskar spoke for the group, directing himself to Baadal. “I’m a fellow Dweller,” he said. “But I am not making the journey. This is Ana and her daughter, Penny.” He then introduced the rest of the party before excusing himself.
Ana took control. “We don’t know you,” she said. “You don’t know us. For whatever reason, they want us crossing the wall together. We’ll help you; you help us. Once we cross, do what you gotta do.”
Battle nodded. “Fine,” he said. “Whatever we find once we move past that gate, we’re bound to be stronger as a group of ten.”
Ana agreed. “Let’s go.”
***
The gate slid on ungreased wheels. They screeched and squealed their resistance along the track as the guard pushed the chain-link open. Battle took a deep breath and crossed the threshold.
He was side by side with the driver, the only one of the party to have crossed before. He’d told Battle his job was to get them into the sneak-through before turning around and heading back to the canyon. The other SUV pulled out of the lot and started back along the highway, retracing its route to the canyon.
Inside the gate was a row of six-foot-tall evergreen hedges. Even before they’d cut through a gap in the growth, Battle heard the chaos beyond it.
He picked through the hedge, helped Lola and Sawyer negotiate their way, and stepped into no-man’s-land. One hundred yards in the distance beyond, he saw the wall for the first time.
It was thirty feet in height, maybe taller in spots, and stretched from east to west as far as he could see. It was made of Texas limestone, a mix of alabaster white and shades of rust.
From where he stood, he couldn’t see a sneak-through. He did, however, see a large blackbird fly past him, using the wind to glide toward the towering wall until it drifted low enough to land atop it. The bird, Battle thought, was taunting him.
“Marcus”—Lola snapped Battle from his trance—“what now?”
“I don’t know,” Battle said and pointed at the driver. “We follow his lead.”
Battle refocused on the world directly in front of him. He was standing in the middle of a sea of people. It was a mixture of a flea market, circus, and red-light district. Tents and corrugated aluminum structures crowded the dry grass prairie that constituted no-man’s-land.
The wind carried with it the odor of burnt popcorn, ammonia, and grilled meat. It was immediately intoxicating, then quickly became nauseating. The odor was overwhelming and stung Battle’s nostrils.
There was music, there were barkers selling their wares, and buried in the mix of sounds was screaming. Battle stepped over the stiffened body of a dead man nobody else seemed to notice. The man was on his side, one arm frozen awkwardly behind him. His neck appeared broken. His eyes were open, his swollen tongue hanging from his mouth. The crowd walked around the body, stepped over it, or on it as if it were part of the prairie.
Battle looked away from the body and spied a wiry, mangy woman working a group of men ahead of them. “Hold your packs in front of you,” Battle suggested to his group. “Wrap your arms around it if you can. Hold your weapons in your hands.”
The mangy woman snuck her bony fingers into an unsuspecting man’s pockets and fished a knife from it. It was in one hand, the other, and then gone. She swiped a package of jerky from another man who seemed enamored with her endowments. He got too handsy with her and she stuck him in the side with the knife, jabbing it repeatedly in and out until the man dropped to his knees and she moved along.
In the distance, there was the rumble of motorcycle engines revving and accelerating. Battle couldn’t see past the humanity pushing him westward.
The driver pointed to their right. “We need to make it north,” he said. “Push this way.”
Lola and Sawyer had their packs on their chests instead of their backs. They’d listened to Battle. He took Lola’s hand, instructed her to take Sawyer’s, and began forging his own path through the crowds.
He kept his eyes above the undulating crowd and focused on the driver. Baadal, he knew, was behind Sawyer. The others, the group from the hearse, were pushin
g their way northward in a path parallel to Battle. They were a step or two behind, but the young mother with a child in a pack on her chest wouldn’t be denied. She shoved and pushed and shouldered her way past the people in her way.
***
Ana cursed her height. It wasn’t a problem until she was mired in a mud pit of humanity that reeked of sweat and sauerkraut. Ana had never eaten the German delicacy, but had a good idea of its fermented odor from the people she elbowed past on her way north toward the wall.
She was trying to keep pace with the SUV driver and the man named Battle. They were bigger and stronger than she, but she imagined wrongly they hadn’t killed as many people as she had in the previous twenty-four hours. Ana believed she was as tough as they were and could stay with them on a parallel line.
With Penny bouncing in the modified baby carrier, the teenage girl held on to Ana’s rear waistband. Together, they and the three others formed an elephant chain that stayed together despite the torrent rushing around them on all sides.
“Over here,” Battle called out. “This way.”
She stopped moving and stood on her tiptoes. Through the heads and shoulders of others, she could see Battle pointing to what looked like a brick and stone outhouse.
Ana forged ahead, cutting a line across to an alleyway between a row of plywood stands. One of them proudly sold a variety of THC-laced products. The other was a gunsmith. The smith called after Ana.
“Give you a Colt with a handmade pearl handle for two minutes with you,” he snarled. “You can have two if you bring the whole gang.” He burst into laughter as Ana moved without acknowledging him.
Beyond the stands, she found the outhouse, flies swarming above it. Battle and the others were standing around it. They were in a small, almost hidden area behind the busiest parts of no-man’s-land. They were away from the view of the swarm beyond the bazaar of stands and shanties.
Ana pointed at it and looked at the SUV driver. “What’s this?”
“It’s a sneak-through,” he said. “You ready?”
Ana turned up her nose. “We’re going in there?”
The SUV driver nodded and opened the door. Ana gagged from the putrid waft of stale air that spilled from the space.
The driver climbed into the outhouse, his feet pressed against the bottom of the interior walls while he moved past the hole in the center of a slimy limestone bench. Behind the seat, the driver lifted a leg and kicked the back wall with his heel.
A panel gave way, slamming into a space between the interior and exterior rear walls. He grabbed the top of the opening and then slid himself carefully into the hole.
He gagged and cleared his throat. “There’s a ladder here,” he said. “If you can make it past the stench, you’ll be okay. Last one in closes the door behind them.
The driver disappeared down the hole. One by one, they skipped over the pot and positioned themselves on the ladder.
Ana let everyone go ahead of her. She switched Penny onto her back. It was her turn to make the descent. She took sips of air to avoid inhaling the abhorrence of the outhouse and found her footing. Penny put her tiny hands on Ana’s ears, gently tugging on the lobes, as Ana stepped lower and lower into the abyss.
The worn grip of the vented, flat iron ladder rungs caught in the soles of her shoes with every downward step. She held the rails tightly with both hands and slowly loosened them when she slid lower.
With the child on her back, Ana moved deliberately. With each extension of her legs, she could feel the temperature dropping. It was dank and cold. The spring of goose bumps populating on her arms and legs sent a shudder throughout her body.
Ana looked up toward the shrinking sliver of light leaking through the gap between the access panel and the false wall. She guessed she had to be twenty feet below ground.
***
The dirt floor at the bottom of the ladder was soft, almost spongy in texture. It gave underneath Battle’s weight with each step.
The sneak-through was a more sophisticated tunnel than he’d imagined. The driver explained it was a relic from the days of the Los Zetas and Gulf Cartel. They’d ruled most of the eastern Mexican drug routes along the Gulf and the northern paths into Texas.
When the United States started building the wall to contain the Cartel, the generals employed former Zetas to construct tunnels for them. The generals hadn’t minded the wall. It kept the United States out of its business and prevented the vast majority of people under their rule from leaving.
They still needed smuggling routes beyond their territory. The tunnels were an easy way to make it happen.
The driver told them the tunnel would lead them past the wall and shy of the Red River. If they were lucky, there wouldn’t be a patrol in the area when they emerged.
The corridor was dark, but Ana had a hand-cranked flashlight, which illuminated enough of a path for the group to see where they were going. She walked next to the driver. The baby bounced on her back in the dark, her little feet kicking and flexing as her mother lit their way.
They walked maybe fifty yards when they reached the end of the tunnel. There was another ladder.
“Let Baadal open the trapdoor up top and make sure it’s all clear. Then the women and children go first,” said the driver to Battle. “You and me go last.”
Once Baadal had given them the okay, Battle helped the others, one by one, climb to the surface and disappear into a window of bright light some twenty-five feet above them.
Then the window disappeared. The tunnel went dark. Battle opened his mouth to ask the driver what had happened when he felt a thick punch to the back of his head.
***
Ana pulled herself from the tunnel and into the blinding light of the late afternoon. She closed her eyes and slowly reopened them as they adjusted. Before she could see, she heard the rush of water and a call for help. It was coming from the river. Ana recognized the voice.
As she neared the rain-swollen Red River, she saw the woman from the front seat. She was clinging to a large tree branch and fighting against the raging current.
For years, the river had run dry, a wide red clay berth on either side of its paltry trickle. In the years since the Scourge, it had found its moxie. Even a light rain would fill its banks. The repeated storms of the past week had turned it angry and vengeful.
Ana stepped to the southern bank and stopped. The woman was caught, only her neck and head were above the water.
The teenagers ran up behind Ana when they saw their sister struggling to survive. “You left us!” cried the girl. “You left us!”
The boy looked at the Dweller. “How did she even get there?”
The Dweller named Baadal joined Ana on the bank. “There are many sneak-throughs. She must have found one. You can’t save her,” he said, “and we can’t stay here. We need to move along the bank until we find a natural dam of rocks to cross. If we stay here, the patrol will find us.”
The red-haired woman was next to Ana. “I can go in after her,” she said. “I’m not a strong swimmer, but I could hold onto the branch.”
“Mom, no,” said Sawyer. “You’ll drown.”
“Help me!” the woman gurgled. She was losing her grip on the branch. “I can’t hold on much longer. Help me, please.”
Ana began removing her pack. “Take Penny,” she said to Lola. “Hold her for a minute. I can swim.”
After a moment of protest, Lola slid the pack over her shoulders and held Penny against her chest.
The teenage boy grabbed Ana’s arm. “She left us,” he said. “You don’t have to do this. She deserves whatever happens.”
Ana took the boy’s hand and gently moved it from her arm. “Nobody deserves any of this,” she said. “Nobody.” She took off her shoes, set them neatly on the bank, and stepped into the frigid, roiling water. She leaned on the branch with one hand and stepped deeper into the river. The icy rush took her breath away. It made her chest hurt the farther she moved from the bank. A few
feet from land, the riverbed dropped sharply. Ana lost her footing and slipped under for a moment.
She found her balance against the rush of water and pushed herself to the surface. Shivering, she inched her way along the branch, careful not to put too much reliance on her footing.
“I’m almost there,” she said to the woman. “You’re going to be fine.”
The woman wasn’t speaking. The water was at her chin. Her lips were puckered, her eyes bugged with fear. She held the branch with one hand while the other one flailed and splashed wildly against the water.
Ana moved to within reach of the woman and offered her hand. “Let go and grab.”
The woman shook her head. She was too afraid, too panicked. She dipped lower into the water until only her nose and eyes were visible. She was thoroughly entangled in the branch and had clearly lost her footing on the riverbed.
Ana inched closer. Still the woman wouldn’t reach for her. Ana, losing sensation in her limbs and unable to stop her teeth from chattering, lost her patience. She let go of her branch and let the current carry her next to the drowning woman. As Ana tried to reestablish her grip, the woman lunged at her and climbed onto her back, forcing Ana under the surface. She struggled to free herself from the woman’s grip, but she was facedown and couldn’t grab hold of anything but the silty bottom of the Red River. She tried flipping over, but couldn’t. Water rushed into her nose, choking her. She grasped at her back and neck, only managing to grasp water that rushed through her fingers.
Her lungs were empty and burned from lack of oxygen. Her eyes were losing focus. She fought the urge to take a breath.
The fire in her lungs radiated outward until suddenly it stopped. Her blurry vision faded into blackness. The weight atop her lifted. Her panic waned and became an overwhelming sense of calm.
Ana’s last thought was of Penny. Instead of fear for the future, however, Ana died knowing her child was safe in the arms of another mother who also sought a better life.