SEVEN
Gloria is parked inside an underground parking complex that looks more like a whale’s skeleton. Signs point the way to escalators, while others direct whoever’s reading them toward a guard booth...one that’s currently housing a bloated corpse and a very lively family of rats.
Diana lies on a bench next to an elevator door, holding her leg and staring off into space. Her eyes are wide with fear, but beady and bloated with burnout at the same time. Gabo wraps a bandage around her knee, his hands shaky and unsure, unfamiliar with both the gauze and the wound underneath.
Gerardo leans against a concrete pillar with his eyes closed, a surprisingly serene look on his face. Suddenly, he turns and punches the concrete until his hand’s red and raw. Then he slides down the pillar into a sitting position on the ground, panting. Doors are closing, guards mocking that death row inmate in his head, the execution is still set, drawing closer and closer with each second he remains inside the Insomnia’s cold, impossibly strong hands.
“Are you alright?” Anita asks, walking up to him as slowly as if he’s got a gun drawn on her.
“What’d I say? Go back to Diana, she’s your babysitter,” Gerardo says.
“Ugh! But I can help you!” Anita says.
“You can help me? That’s rich.”
“You need money, right? That’s why you’re driving around whining to everyone? I’ll pay you.”
Gerardo laughs, a lunatic’s laugh, a gallows laugh. “With what? The money in your piggy bank?”
“Look, take me to Los Pilares. It’s on the way. My grandma lives there. Just drop me off with her! It’d be better than listening to you bitch all the time…”
Gerardo’s eyes light up as if magic words have been spoken. In a way, they have. Names, places, these things stick, even if your brain’s squirming like a worm caught in the Insomnia’s black beak. In this new world, in this forever-waking world, places are like people. They have histories, personalities, and some of them are more important than others. Some of them might save you, others will kill you the second you enter them. But not Los Pilares. That place, that name, is like sweet wine, like a celebrity known for its wealth and the exclusivity of its company.
“Your grandma lives in Los Pilares?” Gerardo asks, “why’re you slumming it in churches if you’re loaded?”
“I ran away,” Anita mutters, looking down, the ground suddenly becoming the most fascinating thing in the world, even if it’s getting blurry under the tears that are already forming in her eyes.
“Gotta hand it to you, you’re a piece of work. Think your grandma will give us a reward for getting you back safely?”
“Yes. That’s what I’ve been saying. I’ve got the money,” Anita says, but quietly, like she’s not proud of this, as if the word ‘money’ is a sharp thing that cuts her tongue as it forms it and her lips on its way out.
Gerardo smiles. He ruffles Anita’s hair awkwardly as if she were a good dog instead of a child. “Get in the trailer, kid. Edu! We’re going to Los Pilares!”
Gerardo hops into the driver’s seat. He starts the truck. Something under the hood pops. Gloria’s engine whines strangely, but it’s still running. For how long, though, is anyone’s guess. “Fuck,” he mutters.
◆◆◆
Gloria crawls down an empty avenue. Busted storefronts and gutted buildings surround the truck like open, monstrous mouths. The semi chugs to a halt in front of a storefront labeled, ‘GARAGE,’ the engine crackling and sputtering out the second the semi stops again.
Anita sits inside Gloria’s driver’s cabin, arms folded around her chest, eyes scanning the world through the tiny patch of dirty windshield she can see while sitting down. Gabo and Edu hang off the open trailer aiming rifles in opposite directions.
Gerardo walks out of the garage, hugging tools and tubes against his chest. He drops them in front of Gloria’s open hood, then gets to work. Tools make sense, even now, pieces to a puzzle that’ll never become unrecognizable, even under the combined strain of all those sleepless hours. “This should be good. Get the duct tape, Glove compartment,” he says to Diana.
Before she can even turn around, a roll of silver duct tape glints in front of Gerardo’s face. Anita’s holing it, looking proud. “Need help?” she asks.
“What’re you doing? Get back inside. It’s too dangerous out here!” Gerardo shouts.
“He’s right. Come on, I’ll get you—” Diana starts.
“It’s fine! There’s no one even around. Look!” Anita says, waving her arms around her. Everything surrounding them is dead. Their surroundings are a repetitive remix of gray rubble and broken windows…a landscape as barren and broken as their minds feel. Diana gives Gerardo a pleading look. Gerardo rolls his eyes.
“Fine, but stay low and in front of Gloria’s hood, alright? Right next to me, here.”
Anita stands next to Gerardo. She runs her hand over Gloria’s massive, reinforced wheels. She peeks over the grill and into the hood, fascinated at the size and breadth of the tank-like machine. It's a titan of a vehicle, an ark fit to wander the boiling, bloody waters of the end times. Then that fascination turns into concern.
“How bad is it?” she asks.
“I thought I told you to stay low,” Gerardo mutters.
“Is she still drivable or are we going to have to walk?” Anita asks, her impatience so sharp it can slice right through Gerardo where he stands.
Gerardo sighs. He cuts and pinches a leaking tube sticking out of Gloria’s engine. “She should be fine,” he says, “she’s a tough gal. Hand me that piece of tube.”
Anita grabs it and hands it to Gerardo. She peeks over his shoulder as he bends into the hood. Anita points at the dripping tube.
“That’s transmission fluid, right?”
“How’d you—”
Anita gives him an exasperated look. Gerardo sighs. He yawns, rubs his eyes, then leans back in. “Alright,” he says, “whatever. So you just gotta do this.”
Gerardo grabs the piece of tube Anita handed him. He plops it over the engine’s severed tube. It fits perfectly. Gerardo winds duct tape around the junctions just to make sure.
“That’s smart,” Anita says.
Gerardo can’t help but smile, “I know,” he says.
“Hey, can I ask you a question?” Anita asks.
“Alright, shoot.”
“What do the Red Eyes even want? Nobody ever talks about them.”
“They’re a lot like the Faithful, in a way.”
“Wow, you really are an asshole,” Anita says.
“The Faithful believe the Sleepers are chosen, spared of the Insomnia by God because they’re worthy, right? The Red Eyes believe that the Great Insomnia is God’s, or whoever the hell’s, ultimate punishment. As in, nobody can or should ever sleep again. Sleeping pills are for the weak, for those unworthy to live. They think that this is a test, and only those strong enough to stay awake and survive will pass it.”
“That’s super effed up,” Anita whispers. Then her eyes widen. “Does that mean they haven’t slept. At all? In ninety days?”
“Supposedly.”
“That’s impossible.”
Gerardo shrugs. “Maybe. It’s like you Sleepers, nobody knows how you sleep. And nobody knows how the Red Eyes are still alive. Mysteries of the universe, if you believe that you’re all telling the truth.”
“I believe them,” Anita says, “I think they’re still awake and still alive because they’re just fucking bonkers.”
“On that, we agree. Now, get back inside Gloria, I’m almost done here.”
◆◆◆
Gerardo sits behind Gloria’s wheel, as comfortable as a baby in the womb, but as ready for battle as a fighter pilot in his cockpit. The windshield in front of him shows an unmoving landscape, but it might as well show a world speeding at a million miles per hour, with Gerardo staring right into the center of the speeding, blurry tunnel. Next to him, Edu sticks his gun out of his window, on watch
, ready and willing to kill to stay alive. Fuck, Edu’s killed so many people he’s lost count, so many he’s become convinced that none of them really count at all. All that matters is him and everyone else in this truck. The second you’re outside it, you’re expendable. You can drift into his gunsights and he’ll fucking blast you away. Anita sits in between them, caught between two cannons ready to fire. Good thing they’re not pointed at her.
“When we get up to the entrance, be ready to run out with me, okay?” Gerardo asks, turning to look at Anita. She nods. “Tuck those rifles in! Be ready to pull them back! They’re gonna try to grab them.”
“Things were fine when I left,” Anita says, “why are you making such a fuss—”
Gerardo looks out through the windshield. One of his hands goes for the gun on his belt. “See for yourself,” he says.
Screaming, desperate people cling to a set of metal double-gates. Over the bars, a sign reads, ‘LOS PILARES CONDOMINIUM.’
“Lets us in!” a man shouts, banging bloody fists on the metal bars of the gates.
“You can’t hide those pills in there forever!” a woman next to him screams.
On the other side, two guards rush the bars. Both hold clunky, dirty shotguns. Exhausted faces ram the gate, as exhausted as the guards’ on the other side. One of the guards looks at something behind the frantic mob.
Gloria’s trailer faces the crowd. Rifle barrels stick out of the slits. The guards watch in awe. A man breaks away from the mob and lunges for Gloria. “They’ve got a truck!” he shouts.
Gerardo grips the steering wheel. “Here they come!”
Gabo swivels one of the rifles closer to him. On the other side of the trailer, Diana does the same. “Remember: at the sky, or at the ground,” she says.
“What about the climbers?” Gabo asks.
“Hopefully it won’t come to that.”
The mob charges at Gloria’s trailer. Inside the slits, the rifles move toward them. Diana and Gabo fire, bullets smack against the asphalt, whiz over the charging mob’s heads.
Gerardo eyes his driver’s side mirror. He watches the crowd swarm closer and closer, angry faces becoming clearer, drawing into focus until they’re around the trailer.
Gabo aims above the head of a man in the crowd. He fires. The man yelps, then falls over, dead. “Fuck!” Gabo shouts, rubbing his eyes, “I aimed too low! Fuck!”
Diana glares at Gabo, then turns back to her rifle hole. Just as she does, a hand slaps through the slit, smacking up and down, grabbing her barrel.
“Stop!” Diana pleads. She yanks her rifle out of the hand’s grasp. Another hand appears. Then a pair of bloodshot eyes. “God!” she shouts, then aims at one of the hands. Blam. Someone wails. The hands fall off the slit, crawling away like wounded, fleeing insects.
The mob buzzes, surrounding the semi’s trailer. A few stragglers go around it, ducking away from the rifles and rushing toward the driver’s cabin.
Gabo fires at a grasping hand. He rips his gun loose, moving to another slit, and sticking it onto another moving swivel. A pair of hands suddenly grab his barrel, pulling it back. A pair of eyes appears in the slit. Gabo’s own eyes narrow. He presses the trigger. Bang. The now bloody hands slip off his rifle. The eyes are closed.
“They’re coming your way!” Gabo shouts toward the driver’s seat.
The mass rushes from the trailer toward the driver’s cabin. One of them grabs the driver’s side door. Gerardo fires his handgun out of the window. Someone yelps just outside. A man in the crowd clutches his stomach.
“Why are you…stop!” Anita shouts, “you’re killing them!”
Gerardo’s eyes are narrow, indignant. He grinds his hands around the steering wheel. He shakes his head. “Close your eyes!” he shouts to Anita, then floors it.
“You won’t, so I won’t!” Anita yells back.
“Suit yourself. Hope you don’t get nightmares.”
Gerardo freezes. Ahead of him, the Pale Man stands in the middle of the charging crowd. Gerardo takes a deep breath. “Toluca Street, Pan-American Highway, Mixco Overpass. The Pill Haven.”
Anita looks at him, curious. Gerardo blinks exhaustion out of his eyes and twists the wheel all the way to one side.
Tires screech. Asphalt spits. Gloria shoots forward, then swerves. She zooms, sweeping in a circle. Gloria rams the crowd. Bodies fly up. Arms and necks bend in ways they shouldn’t. Shrieks fill the air. The trailer turns in the same direction, swooping along with the cabin and clobbering the crowd around it like a wrecking ball.
Gerardo grits his teeth. He’s gripping the steering wheel with white-knuckled hands. His foot’s fused to the gas pedal.
Gloria continues to spiral. The semi clangs, rocking slightly as bodies are thrown away from it. The truck has turned in a full circle. The trailer sways back to face the gate. Around it is a mass of broken, twisted bodies. The remaining members of the mob stare at Gloria in shock. Some flee. Others collapse from pain and fatigue. The crowd has scattered. The gate is clear.
“Holy shit…” Anita mutters, inspecting the carnage.
“Told you to close your eyes,” Gerardo grunts.
“You didn’t have to—”
“Did you see their eyes? How their hands were clawing and prying? They’re not people anymore. They’re something worse. They would have ripped us apart for this truck and taken everything we have, and they would have done the same thing in there,” Edu says, pointing at the condominium beyond the gates.
Gerardo nods. He lets go of the steering wheel. He grabs his handgun and Anita’s arm. “We’re gonna have to run,” he says. Anita nods. As she and Gerardo slide out of the open door, Edu moves into the driver’s seat.
◆◆◆
Gerardo runs, holding Anita’s hand, dodging the grasping hands of wounded stragglers. He limps slightly like his leg has fallen asleep. He yawns every time he exhales, moving a body that’s fighting him more every passing moment.
“You okay?” Anita asks.
“Just tired,” he says. “C’mon. Gabo, you’re with me! Diana, stay with the truck!”
Gabo opens the trailer door. Diana starts to protest, but Gabo hops out first. “I got it! You help Edu!” he shouts at her.
Before Diana can react, Gabo joins Gerardo and Anita as they stagger toward the gate. She closes the trailer door reluctantly.
Gerardo grabs Anita’s hand automatically as if it’s a hardwired reaction to seeing a child running to catch up to him. Anita pulls her hand back in disgust. “Behind you!” she says suddenly. A pair of bloody hands wrap themselves around Gerardo’s throat, the feral man attached to them threatening to pull him to the ground with him. Gerardo turns, elbowing the man’s stomach, then sticking his handgun’s barrel in the same spot and plugging a bullet into it.
Gerardo wipes the still-hot blood off his face and shirt. “Thanks,” he says, smiling at Anita.
◆◆◆
Edu drives Gloria up to the gate. Gerardo, Anita, and Gabo run up in front of it. A guard stands behind the bars, his hands rattle the shotgun he’s holding. “Thanks for the help!” the guard shouts at the approaching group, “one fucking rumor spreads that we had pills in here—”
“Let us in,” Gerardo says, like a man who’s got a VIP ticket to a club with a line around the block. He’s confident, because he knows his entry’s secured, or should be, and he’s indignant because he just had to push his way past a hundred or so furious hopefuls.
“I can’t—” the guard begins, then his eyes fall on Anita. “Anita?” he asks, in surprise, “get her in here, quick!”
The guard sticks a key in the padlock on a bundle of chains. He clanks them off the gate, pushing it open and letting Anita, Gerardo, and Gabo pass through. Then the two guards hold the gate open for Gloria as Edu drives her in.
Across the street, on the rooftop of a nearby house, the double-glint of binoculars twinkles in the sun.
EIGHT
Gerardo, Anita, and Gabo run
deeper into the condominium, jogging past lofty mansions and rolling green hills…a pocket of suburbia untouched by the madness outside.
Edu parks Gloria in the driveway of a vacant house. Seeing a semi truck parked there is ridiculous, especially one covered in blood and mud. Diana moves to open the door and follow Gerardo and Anita, but Edu grabs her arm and pulls her back.
“You’re supposed to be on lookout with me, remember?” Edu asks with a smug expression on his face. Diana slumps into her seat.
“Where’s your grandma’s house?” Gerardo asks, winded from jogging. He slows to a stroll instead. It’s safer. He’s infinitely more aware of his body’s limits now, like a pilot watching the dials in his cockpit.
Anita points to one of the mansions. It’s the biggest one. “That one,” she says, almost ashamed, conscious of the way Gerardo and Gabo are looking around like they’re walking through a storybook.
“You lived here and you ran away?” Gerardo asks, “you had guards and picket fucking fences?”
“Yeah, so? Look, I had to run because I have a purpose. The Sleeping Place calls to me. I’m not just trying to survive day to day like you idiots,” Anita grumbles.
“Geez, Gerry, where’d this kid come from?” Gabo asks, chuckling.
“This neighborhood, supposedly. Alright, how about you lead these two idiots to your front door?”
Gerardo and Anita rush toward the house’s massive double doors. Anita rings the doorbell. The sound is deafening in the still, near-silent air. The wind rolls over empty lawns, around deserted houses that are straight out of magazines.
‘Most of these rich assholes are probably long gone,’ Gerardo thinks. Planes still flew in the first few days, borders were still manned, cops still patrolled the streets. People still believed this would end, that this was mass hysteria or a virus, something that they could cure or treat. Nobody would have believed, in those first few days of talking heads theorizing endlessly and doctors spouting bullshit, that there was no way back. That the Insomnia was permanent, that it was a death sentence…unless you had sleeping pills.
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