Diana glares at Gerardo, then ruffles Anita’s hair before walking away. She hops into the trailer behind Gabo and shuts the door, closing off something, someone she believes might be a lifeline.
The power struggle over with him still on top, Gerardo closes the driver’s side door assertively and pulls the transmission back into ‘drive.’
Anita walks up to the side of the truck. She looks into Gerardo’s eyes. Her gaze is teary and conflicted, somewhere between a reproach and a plea for help.
Gerardo hits the gas.
Gloria’s exhaust blasts black smoke into the air. As she chugs forward, Anita drags her hand over the semi’s side. There’s a latch to a small compartment right in front of her.
FOUR
Gloria skids to a halt in front of a four-way intersection. A traffic light looms overhead. Something like a scarecrow sways, hanging from it: skin so tanned and hardened by the sun that it’s now leather, knees worn so thin they peel away to reveal red strips of muscle like frayed rope, white bone poking through desiccated flesh like fangs stabbing through beef jerky.
Behind it, three out of the four of the streets making up the intersection have been blocked off, clogged with wrecked cars. The only remaining street is a dizzying rash of red. It isn’t a mirage or a trick of the light: every building, every tree, even the asphalt itself is coated with red paint.
Gerardo leans forward onto the dashboard, looking at the corpse as it swings from the street light lazily this way and that, scattering a cloud of buzzing flies as it moves. “Yeah,” he says, “Red Eye country.” Then he steps on the gas.
Gloria’s wheels creak forward. As the truck passes beneath the traffic light, the woman hung with an extension chord turns, revealing a torso so dry it resembles burnt, cracked bread. There’s something wrong with her eyes. The skin around them is jagged, missing…her eyelids have been cut off.
A howl echoes from one of the buildings next to the truck. Gloria charges forward in response.
Through the windshield, the road stretches ahead between a row of darkened buildings, the clouds so heavy overhead they’re practically curtains drawing across the horizon, bringing that darkness closer and closer.
“Look out!” Edu shouts.
A silhouette suddenly runs out onto the road and stands right in front of Gloria.
Gloria’s breaks scream. The truck shudders to a stop, convulsing against her monstrous tires.
“Again?” Edu asks, “but how?”
“That’s not her,” Gerardo says.
Gloria’s headlights blast someone standing right in front of them: it’s an emaciated boy, naked except for a pair of cartoon-themed tidy-whites that are starched with scarlet/brown stains. He’s holding a metal pole sharpened on one end: a modern spear.
Edu turns his neck. There’s nothing behind the truck except for clear road as clean as a glass of water in the summer sun. “Back up!” he shouts.
“You think he’s the only one?” Gerardo says.
A whoop echoes through the intersection. A group of half-dressed, feral men scurries out from behind a parked car. Some of them are naked, some wear tattered rags, but all of them are wearing red war paint. Some carry spears, others high-end hunting bows stolen from sporting goods stores.
A spear flies through the air, cracking as it bounces clean off the asphalt a few feet from one of Gloria’s tires. It wobbles with the momentum.
Gerardo cuts Gloria’s engine. He sticks his hands out of the driver’s window and clacks the door open.
“Alright!” He shouts, not at the men around him, but at the rooftops. He knows there are more of them there, knows all too well what the bodies dropped by their rifles look like. “We’ve stopped. We’ve passed through here bef—”
“Mister Tank!” A deep, booming voice sounds off from behind Gerardo. He stiffens. He knows that voice, and who it belongs to, and he’s scared shitless.
A young, burly man walks up to Gloria. He’s naked except for a SWAT vest fitted with a police radio. Blood’s dried on his feral face like a tribal mask. His handsome, boyish features have turned grotesque, twisted and deformed by fatigue. This is Chief. Two Red Eye hunters appear behind him, each with police radios of their own over their tattered police uniforms. One of them carries a machete, the other a shotgun. Their eyes are the same, crazy red as Chief’s.
“What’d we say last?” Chief mumbles. His voice is grave, worn from lack of use and slurred like he’s worse than drunk. His body sways this way and that in something like a drunk ballet, one so graceful and reckless it could only come from someone who’s sleepwalking…but his eyes are lucid, two piercing, almost glowing, red storms with black holes in the middle. They’re as focused and burning as laser sights.
“Well…” Gerardo says. Careful, like he’s dealing with a gunman in a hostage situation. Except, he’s the hostage, he and everyone else in the truck.
“I forgot. What’d we say?” Chief’s voice is calm, just a few notes shy of cheerful. This is his playground. He has all the time in the world.
“About the tribute?”
“Yesss. Tribute. Only now, I’m not so sure.”
“Oh?” Gerardo says, nervous eyes shooting to the two hunters behind Chief, to the weapons in their sluggish, but impossibly strong hands.
Chief walks forward and taps Gerardo’s sunglasses. Gerardo slips them off slowly, reluctantly allowing Chief access. Chief stares into his eyes. Studying them, digging into them with his own blazing pair.
“It’s the eyes,” Chief says, “yours aren’t like ours. Where you getting them, huh? How many does it take you to sleep at night? What do you dream about?” Chief’s smiling. He loves this. But, at the same time, his words are biting, poisonous, marinated with hate for Gerardo and the others.
“I haven’t taken any sleeping pills,” Gerardo says, his voice as steady and reliable as Gloria’s engine, “I’m out. We all are. We’ve been awake, just like you, just like everyone else. It’s the sunglasses. We wear them so our eyes don’t get irritated with the light.”
Chief’s still smiling. One of his teeth is missing, recently ripped out, from the look of the thin trail of maroon dripping over his parched lips. Gerardo avoids looking at anything other than Chief’s eyes. Edu makes the mistake of leaning out of the window and getting a glance at Chief’s naked bottom half.
“You here to get pills?” Chief asks.
“No,” Gerardo says. Confident. Unflinching. Bullshitting flawlessly.
“Good. There aren’t any.”
“We’re here to get a friend. Get him back over to Santa Tec—”
“Tribute,” Chief spits. Gerardo nods, motioning to Edu, who’s regarding Chief with narrow, cautious eyes.
Edu pops the glove box open. There’s a small plastic bag inside, filled with white, thin, perfect, baby powder cocaine. Edu grabs it and tosses it out the window to Gerardo.
Gerardo catches the bag and dangles it onto Chief’s open hand, a palm that’s really like an alligator’s waiting mouth.
Chief rips the bag open, licks a finger, sticks it inside. He licks again and smiles. “That’s why I like you, Mister Tank,” he says, “best tributes.”
“Well, when your eyelids depend on it,” Gerardo chuckles miserably. Chief grins, the sight of it causes Gerardo’s chuckling to die in his throat like it’s been cut out by the sharp edges of Chief’s remaining teeth.
Chief whistles sharply. The hunters behind him walk toward the trailer with their spears raised. “But…” he says.
“But?” Gerardo asks, glancing at the hunters as they walk forward, each step of their blistered, naked feet stabbing through the space between the empty asphalt and Gloria.
Through the trailer’s slit, Gabo’s rifle twitches toward one of the hunters. The hunter’s wild eyes shoot to Chief. He grunts. Chief nods.
Thwack! Gabo shrieks. The rifle clacks, falling to the floor. There’s a gash on Gabo’s hand. The hunter jabs the spear into the trailer’s doo
r.
“Let him in,” Chief says.
Gerardo starts to move toward the trailer.
“Easy now. Eyes everywhere,” Chief says.
A metallic click sounds off from one of the windows above Gerardo. A sniper scope twinkles in the darkness.
Gerardo nods to the trailer. The trailer’s door swings open. Gabo and Diana push it out of the way, allowing the hunter to step inside.
“What are you looking for?” Gerardo asks, turning to Chief.
“After you came last, junkies put up a fight. Newfound energy for fists and kicks and bites. Where’d they get it? One told me. For his lids,” Chief chuckles, picking at a scab out of his ample collection of them on his bare feet.
The other Red Eye hunter rams a machete thick with crimson through Edu’s open window. Edu’s hands are up in a futile, ‘don’t shoot’ gesture, as if the hunter’s got a gun instead of something sharp and close that could gut him in seconds. In a Red’s hands, a spear or a machete is as good as a gun. Maybe better.
The intruder hops over Edu, climbing through and toward the passenger’s side. Now that the Red Eye’s in the driver’s cabin, Edu realizes that he’ll be able to smell him and immediately holds his breath to avoid it. But he’s too late. The stench is so strong it fills every square centimeter of enclosed airspace in a microsecond. ‘There’s nothing in the world that smells worse than a Red Eye,’ Edu thinks. It’s not just sweat, that’s bad enough, like onions and garlic and sweet, quick adrenaline. It’s also rust, so sharp it practically cuts Edu’s nostrils going in and burns his throat on the way out.
“You can’t trust every—” Gerardo starts.
“He said it was the guy at the pharmacy. You buy pills off him? You trying to get him out?”
The hunter skitters over the driver’s seat, his movements somewhere between the sluggish, drunken dance that only fatigue can cause, and the insect-like jittering of pure energy, synthetic and natural alike. His machete drags against the floor rug, the blade snagging on the rubber and the bristles of artificial hair. He jostles it free, carving out a large, long, straight swath of rug and slumps onto the cabin floor. There, in front of him, is Gerardo’s backpack.
Chief stares into the pores in Gerardo’s face, as dry as desert sand, and as still as a sheet of rock.
“We only buy and sell coke,” Gerardo says, voice as steady as his hands. “We know your rules. No sleeping pills. In or out.”
A whoop sounds off from the cabin, it’s as loud and as sudden as a car bomb, but Gerardo doesn’t move, doesn’t flinch or react. He just keeps his eyes locked on Chief’s until Chief turns to source of the sound. Gerardo’s backpack zips through the air. Chief catches it easily, his reflexes not dulled in the slightest by being awake for God knows how long. He shakes the backpack. Something moves inside. “What’s in here?” he asks, a knowing smile on his face.
“Supplies,” Gerardo spits.
Chief begins unzipping the backpack, dangling it in front of his face like a cat who’s just caught its bloody supper. He peeks inside, spotting something he likes.
“Aha!” Chief shouts, “strip the truck!”
The group of huddled Red Eyes begins lumbering toward the truck, wandering eyes and roaming hands exploring every inch and crevice of Gloria’s exterior like it’s a feast in a famine. One of them finds the side hatch, his rough hands digging into the latch, what’s left of his chipped fingernails popping it open.
Someone spills out of the tiny compartment, landing on her butt in the middle of the street. The Red Eyes around her freeze in surprise.
“Ouch…” Anita says.
FIVE
Every face around Anita is one of frozen disbelief. Then Gerardo recovers, closing his gaping mouth shut and shooting Diana a look of pure rage. Diana recoils as if she’s been hit, true fear bubbling up on her pale face.
Chief grins, revealing his nightmare mouth in all its grotesque glory, teeth a chipped, yellowed mess, gums ripped open in several spots. “Smuggling Sleepers? Oh, Mister Tank, you’ve been holding out on me,” he says.
“She’s not a Sleeper,” Gerardo says, but his voice wavers. The lie is obvious, the stoic facade not just slipping, but crumbling away entirely.
“Boy!” Chief shouts. The Red Eye boy who stood in front of Gloria rushes to Chief’s side like an obedient dog.
“Show him why you’re still alive,” Chief says.
The Red Eye boy opens his mouth wide. His gums, cheeks, and tongue are clotted with a white, powdery gunk. He’s hopped up on enough drugs to kill him, but he’s somehow still alive. Gerardo curses under his breath. That’s the Red Eyes, alright, anomalies, a terrifying mystery that no one will ever solve. Still alive, still awake, against all odds, spitting in the face of science and God and everything else in between.
“Your kid isn’t drugged up. So how’s it still alive? Can talk too. Drove a lot, seen many kids? Many like her? Grab her,” Chief says, motioning to one of the hunters.
Gerardo looks around, the world that was once wobbly suddenly becoming clear and hyper-focused. Adrenaline shoots through his system like a feverish virus and he’s suddenly much more lucid, much more awake. His eyes find Gabo still standing at one of the rifle slits, gun in hand. He nods at Gabo. Gabo’s eyes widen with sudden understanding. Then they narrow. Chief’s still holding Gerardo’s backpack.
Boom!
An explosion of white smoke billows around Chief. He coughs, dropping the smoldering backpack. There’s a bullet hole in its center. Large clouds of thick, white particles billow out of it.
Gabo lowers his rifle, his eyes alive with shock. “Good shot!” he shouts, “I pulled off a good shot!”
In the driver’s cabin, Edu’s hand wraps around the handle of the hunter’s machete. The Red Eye turns to look at him, dumbfounded, mind broken with fatigue and sleep deprivation. Edu rams the machete blade into the Red Eye’s forehead. He shrieks, falling backward out of the open door.
Improvised spears and arrows whizz from the shattered windows surrounding the truck. They’re made from traffic signs, rebar from construction sites, anything metal that can be sharpened and tossed so that it rips through human flesh.
Anita lunges for the semi’s side. She drops and rolls to a crouch behind one of Gloria’s massive tires. It takes her half a second. Gerardo’s slack-jawed.
“You’re gonna get speared standing there!” Anita shouts at him.
Gerardo drops, rolls, crouches behind the tire…a perfect, but much slower imitation of Anita’s move. The exhaustion’s like a cloud hanging around him, one that seeps into every muscle and every tendon and every bone, slowly turning everything to stone.
“Please tell me you’ve got a gun!” Anita shouts. The spears don’t make much noise as they rain around them, but she’s shouting as if they’re coming from cannons all the same.
Gerardo pulls out his handgun. Anita smiles at the sight of it. He scowls at her.
Chief backs away, swatting at the white cloud that still envelops him.
A hunter stabs a spear underneath Gloria, fishing for Anita. Gerardo pushes her out of the way just in time as SNIKT! the spear sticks into Gerardo’s shoulder. Anita curses. Gerardo wheezes. He drops his handgun.
Spears continue to shower Gloria. With several thunks, they bounce off the truck’s roof. Several land just right, and with just enough force, piercing through and sticking up like massive, metal splinters.
The hunter in the trailer jumps Gabo. His gnarled hands wrap around his rifle. Gabo tries to pull it back, but the hunter slams it forward, cracking him across the nose with it.
“Diana! Help!” Gabo shouts, blood pouring into his mouth from his already swelling nose.
Diana fires her rifle out of the slit next to her, then turns. On the trailer floor, rolling from side to side as the spears rock it...is a sledgehammer. The hunter rips Gabo’s rifle out of his hands, holding it like a long lost lover, his face filled with nostalgic recognition, hands wrapping arou
nd the barrel.
“Damnit!” Diana mutters. She ducks, scooping the sledgehammer off the floor.
The hunter smacks the butt of the rifle into Gabo’s chest. He gasps. The hunter smiles, flipping the rifle around so it’s aimed right at Gabo’s bloody nose. His hands find all the right places, palms rubbing against the curves of the stock, finger caressing the trigger like a lover’s cheek.
A purple bulge pops the hunter’s eye out of its socket. A scarlet mist sprays around his head. Flakes of bone and bits of flesh splatter Gabo. The hunter collapses. Diana rips the sledgehammer out of the hunter’s dented head. Gabo turns and vomits, spewing coalesced food that smacks against the side of the metal trailer, banging it like the world’s largest drum with the world’s most disgusting drum stick.
Spears whizz through the open trailer door. Diana rolls to take cover behind the doorway and sticks an arm out. A spear stabs into the door right next to her hand. Diana lunges anyway and pulls the door shut, the other side of the door’s suddenly as quilled as a hedgehog’s back.
Bangs echo through the intersection as Gerardo fires the handgun in Chief’s general direction. Chief ducks, crawling behind a car wreck, chuckling the whole way like he’s in on some private, familiar joke he’s glad to hear again.
Gerardo pulls Anita up by her shirt collar and slides for Gloria’s driver's side. Anita yelps, arms and legs shooting in every direction in a fruitless protest at being carried around like a monkey by its mother. Gerardo gets to the driver’s side door, pulls it open, and tosses Anita inside.
Chief pats the last of the cocaine off himself, then sticks two fingers into his mouth. A shrill whistle shoots past them. “Kill!” he shouts.
Gerardo slams the driver’s door shut. He turns the key. Floors the gas. Gloria rumbles, jerking forward slowly as if waking from a long slumber.
“Come on-come on-come on!” Gerardo whispers.
Anita eyes him nervously. “You got this, man!” she yells, smiling and giving him an awkward thumbs up.
Awake Page 4