After the second day, all of that was gone. No more ambulances, no more cops. People were scrambling to get sleeping pills and looking out for themselves. Everyone was now fully aware of the gun they were all now living under.
Gloria moves around a pile of charred corpses with interlocking arms. The movement rocks Anita slightly. She rubs her eyes, sleep evaporating out of her like the world’s rarest holy water. Diana stands at the rifle slit next to her. “Did you see the Sleeping Place?” she asks.
“Yeah. It’s raining up there,” Anita mumbles, half-asleep.
Tears well up in Diana’s eyes. ‘Miracle,’ she thinks again, ‘I’m looking after a living miracle.’
“We’re getting close!” Gerardo shouts back from the driver’s cabin. “Wake her up!”
“I’m sorry about him, he doesn’t see what you’re worth. He’s an idiot,” Diana says.
Gabo stares at Diana like a kid who’s just heard his sister insult their dad. “You should be grateful to him. We’re all alive because of him,” he says.
“No, we’re alive because we all chipped in on this truck and he and Diego got guns. None of you know how valuable she is!”
Anita’s uneasy. She opens the hatch to the cabin and crouches into it. The cabin’s hot, even with the driver’s side door gone. It’s a pressure cooker of heat and the sharp perfume of sweat and alcohol. Anita spots something in the world that rolls ahead through Gloria’s dirt-streaked windshield. “Hey! Stop! That’s it, over there!” she shouts.
Gerardo hits the brakes.
Gloria stops in front of an abandoned storefront. Colored pillars frame boarded-up windows. There are several tables and chairs set up outside, most knocked over or dented beyond recognition. There are cartoon ice cream people painted on the walls outside, smiling and eating ice cream themselves, a disturbing hint of self cannibalism that somehow slipped whoever commissioned the drawings. What remains of a sign reads, ‘FROSTY'S ICE CREAM.’ Well, it used to read that, someone’s covered most of it in profanity and drawn genitalia over the rest.
Gerardo hops out of the driver’s door. Anita slides out behind him. “All this time, the Faithful were hiding in an ice cream shop?” he asks.
“I mean, all the ice cream melted. It’s not like they’re gorging on it everyday, if that’s what you’re thinking. Good a place as any, right?” Anita says, clearly cheerful now. She walks up to one of the windows. A shadow moves behind the boards.
Gerardo takes a step forward. Above him, a gun clicks. He knows that sound better than any other, even his own voice or his own breathing. He’s trained himself to recognize it, to automatically understand where it’s coming from and roughly what kind of gun’s making it.
A scrawny Faithful guard in pajamas sits on the shop’s roof. He aims his rifle at Gerardo. “Anita, get away from him!” the guard shouts.
Gabo sets his gunsights on the guard. “Please lower your gun, man!” he shouts nervously.
“Hey, we’re—” Gerardo starts.
“I’m about three seconds from shooting you right between the fucking eyes! Give me a good reason why I shouldn’t,” the guard says. There’s something about his voice that Gerardo recognizes: frustration, anger boiling just beneath the surface. Not at him, not at this situation, not even at the fact that a group of armed people are escorting Anita…no. He’s exhausted, and he’s angry that he’s exhausted. Has he not been sleeping?
Edu moves to raise his shotgun, but the guard shoots at the ground in front of him, sending shards of concrete flying up like painful confetti.
“Fucking Faithful shits! I’ll kill you!” Edu shouts.
“Did they hurt you, Anita? Just say the word and I’ll blast these fuckers away!” the guard asks, his voice shaky. ‘He’s outnumbered,’ Gerardo thinks. ‘He might get one of us, maybe two, but he knows that if it gets to that, there’s no way he comes out of it alive.’
Anita raises her arms. Her face is calm, authoritative, and a little impatient. It’s like she’s dealing with a toddler throwing a tantrum. “No! Come on. Put your gun away, Santi. Okay?” she says.
The guard analyzes Anita’s face and decides she’s telling the truth. He lowers his gun. “Alright. Come in. But park that beast out back,” he says, “it’s like a fucking neon sign.”
◆◆◆
Anita, Gerardo, Gabo and Edu step into a vintage ice cream parlor. They walk past posters advertising countless colorful flavors. Empty booths line the walls. Life-sized plastic statues depicting anthropomorphic ice cream men and women dot the line to the checkout counter.
Anita darts past them and toward a door in the back. Gerardo and the others follow her. They’re still holding on to their guns, eyeing their surroundings uneasily. They’d be stupid not to.
“She’s always on the move, huh?” Diana asks Gerardo, laughing almost nervously. She’s excited, smiling, like they’re actually walking in here to get a nice cool snack on a hot summer’s day. ‘Of course she's happy,’ Gerardo thinks, ‘these are her people. The people she would have gone with if she weren’t so smart.’
Gerardo grunts in response. He’s not smiling, will never smile as he walks into an enemy camp.
Anita walks down a hallway lined with several open walk-in freezers. Inside are crates of food, but there are only nonperishables in sight. These aren’t freezers, not anymore, they’re just pantries now. Either the Faithful decided that running the freezers would be a waste of juice, or they don’t have a running generator anymore. Gerardo and his crew follow Anita cautiously, ready for an ambush.
◆◆◆
A storage space is covered in sleeping bags. A young man and woman in pajamas sit on top of them holding hands. They are Marco, with a weathered yet handsome face, and Pilar, a young woman with a tough demeanor.
In front of them is Marta, an older woman lying on a mattress. She's wearing a bathrobe and hospital scrubs. Her wrinkled face is as calm as a doll’s. Her eyes are closed and her breathing’s regular, rhythmic, and completely relaxed…she’s asleep. Upon seeing her, Diana gasps audibly, like a child walking into Disneyland. Gerardo shakes his head.
Lorena, a stern woman with slicked hair wearing a faded and ripped pair of silk pajamas, sits next to Marta. There’s a handgun in her hands. In another life, she could have been a ruthless lawyer or an unforgiving businesswoman. It’s impossible to imagine her being anything else. Yet, here she is, holding a gun in a run-down ice cream shop. Gerardo looks her up and down, recognizing the posture, the confidence, the way she holds the gun and the way she's looking at them. She’s their leader.
Anita drags her feet as she walks toward Lorena. Gerardo and his crew stop at the doorway, automatically adopting the posture of a group of friends over at their friend’s house just as her parents are about to shout at her.
Lorena rushes to Anita. She holds Anita close, turning her head this way and that, examining her. She spots a cut on Anita’s cheek where a few dollops of dried blood hang like beads of sap. Lorena licks a finger and wipes the blood away. “Where were you?” she asks, still scrubbing at the cut. Gabo cringes, hoping Anita has the foresight to go wash that cut with rubbing alcohol the second she’s out of this room.
“The Heart,” Anita says.
“It’s not safe there,” Lorena says, finishing with the cut and turning Anita’s head the other way. She finds several chips of concrete stuck inside her hair and begins pulling them out one by one.
“Someone had to find a way for us to get to the Sleeping Place, right?” Anita asks.
“We had a plan. I was gonna take you on a bike—”
“That’s not gonna work. He has a huge truck. He just needs some money—”
Lorena turns to look at Gerardo, scrutinizing his face, his boots, his handgun. “How big is it?” she asks.
Gerardo walks into the room and holds up his hands. “Hold up a second, my truck’s not a goddamn bus,” he says.
Lorena frowns, but her eyes are still wild with beautiful
, new possibilities. “Listen, why don’t you guys stay a while and take a load off? We’ve got plenty of provisions.”
“Do you have any pills?” Gerardo asks, like a thirsty man asking for water.
“No…not for a long while.” Lorena says sadly.
◆◆◆
Gerardo and Lorena sit in one of the empty booths. The place is pristine, covered only by a fine sheet of dust. There are no obscenities written on the inside, no stench of urine, no busted windows or charred walls. Lorena hands Gerardo a glass of whiskey as thick as dirty sap. “Where are you going?” she asks.
“Pill Haven in Guatemala. They offer pill rations for work,” Gerardo says, mostly speaking into his glass. The whiskey’s shit, but it’s a peace offering, and it takes some of the edge off, untangles the knot behind his eyes, if only a little.
“What kind of work?”
“Not sure.”
“So, let me get this straight. You’re gonna risk your lives to cross the border to Guatemala, only to do God knows what for pill rations? You know they lose their potency, right?”
“Sleep is sleep.”
“Anita’s telling the truth, Gerardo. She can sleep. Real sleep, not the type that comes in a pill, fades a little every night, and gives you terrible nightmares.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. But you can’t prove the Place exists anyway.”
“She drew a map,” Lorena says, leaning back in the booth with a smile on her face, as if her and Gerardo were playing chess instead of talking. And that? That was a check. Not a check mate, but she’s convinced she’s getting there. Gerardo shrugs.
◆◆◆
Anita sits with a now awake Marta on her mattress. They’re leaning over a sketchbook filled with dozens of drawings, ranging from crude charcoal sketches to photorealistic renderings done in marker and pen. Marta combs Anita’s hair with her hands, like a kinder version of Anita’s own grandmother.
Gerardo stands by a counter, polishing off the last of the whiskey. Edu looks at him with pure jealousy in his eyes, then he walks off, presumably back to Gloria and the bottle in his backpack. If there’s any left, that is.
'Anita's got a lot of mother figures,’ Gerardo thinks. ‘Too many.’ Andrea was probably killed by the Red Eyes. Lorena and Diana can’t sleep like Anita can, so they’re both as good as dead. Marta can sleep, but she’s at least eighty, so she hasn’t got much time left. It’s practically a given that Anita will end up alone. Still, Marta will probably outlive all of them, even him. Especially him, if they stay here.
Lorena walks over and hands Gerardo a rolled up poster. The kind you might buy in a gift shop for way too much. Gerardo sets his drink down and unrolls the poster on the table. It’s an annotated map of San Salvador. A blue line leads past a giant mass of red. On the edge of the city, a volcano is highlighted. Stuck to it is an actual GPS photo of it labeled, ‘SLEEPING PLACE.’
“She drew this from memory,” Lorena says, sounding like a proud mother. She places a rough, but recognizable drawing on top of the satellite photo. It lines up perfectly. Gerardo’s barely paying attention. He’s massaging his bloodshot eyes.
“May I see it?” Diana asks, leaning over the page. Lorena nods and places the drawing in Diana’s hands. Diana sets it on her notebook and begins copying it on an open page.
Finally, after blinking the world back into focus, Gerardo catches a glimpse of the map in front of him. “How’d you find it if she just saw it in a dream?” he asks.
“She saw landmarks. We were able to match them up with GPS photos.”
“Uh-huh. Maybe that’s just a place she saw in a book.”
“Both she and Marta saw the same place.”
“Yeah but you didn’t ask one alone and then the other, right?”
“They see the same place every night, right down to the trees and the rocks. Do you wanna keep going? I’ve got satellite images and about a hundred drawings for references. Of course, if you’re a cynical asshole, you can find stupid reasons to disprove them all.
“Fine. Whatever. But that map means you have to go through Red Eye turf. Couldn’t have dreamed of an easier place to reach?”
“We could make it through if we had your truck.”
“Why would you have my truck? What reason would I possibly have to drive back into Red Eye country for you?”
“We’ve got ten thousand dollars. You can have it if you take us there.”
Gerardo takes the morphine vial out of the pocket of his denim shirt and holds it up to Lorena. “If you’ve got ten grand and you’re making the trip up there, you might need this. Morphine. Invaluable these days.”
Lorena picks it up and holds it up to the light. Half of the liquid in the vial missing. “You want ten grand for this? Just one vial? We have a couple already, you know.”
“Could always use more. How much would you be willing to part with?”
“Wow, here you are, haggling with me for money while the cure for what’s killing you, killing all of us, is right there!” Lorena shouts, then sighs, composing herself. “Look, you want money? Fine. You're owed some for bringing Anita back anyway. I’ll give you five thousand for that and for the morphine. You want the rest? Take us up.”
Gerardo watches Anita talk with Marta. Anita’s happy, giggling with the older woman. They’re almost impossibly energetic. Everyone around them slumps forward, exhausted. There’s an aura around them. Something different. Something special. He scans the Faithful. Among them is the Pale Man, who smiles at him and pokes at the gunshot wound in his forehead.
Gerardo shuts his eyes. “Toluca Street, Pan-American Highway, El Salvador Highway, Mixco Overpass. The Pill Haven,” he mumbles to himself. Then he turns to look at Lorena. He speaks slowly, carefully, “I promised my crew a spot in the Haven. Can’t let ‘em down again.”
“You’ll let them down when they succumb to the Insomnia popping useless pills.”
This resonates with Gerardo, but he shrugs it off, comfortable as ever in his armor of cynicism. “We’ll see,” he says, “but Anita might be wrong too. Even if you find the place she’s dreaming about, sometimes dreams are just dreams.”
“Sometimes,” Lorena says, “and other times they’re worth dying for.”
◆◆◆
Anita sits in one of the ice cream shop’s booths, an old cellphone in her hands. The case is a bright teal, nicked and worn after years of use. The scuffs and scratches betray the fact that it’s something intimate, personal, like an internal organ laid bare for the world to see. It’s plugged into a socket underneath the table, the chord coiling from the phone to the wall in a set of lazy loops.
“Hey,” Diana says, setting her backpack down on the booth’s other cushioned seat.
“Hi,” Anita says, clicking the phone’s screen off.
Diana leans forward on the table, her rough hands closing over Anita’s tiny perfect ones. They’re from different worlds and they look it. Diana has tattoos of crosses on her swollen biceps and a buzzcut fade. Anita has unblemished skin, untouched by hard labor or a tattoo artist’s needle, and sports a short, but feminine haircut framing her innocent face.
“What were you looking at?” Diana asks.
Anita looks at the phone, something like shame dancing across her features. There’s debate there too, the weighing of something difficult but right with something easy but unfair. She wants to open up to Diana, feels she has to after all she’s done for her. Anita unlocks the phone with her fingerprint and slides it across the table.
Diana grabs it gently, as if she were holding something delicate that, if broken, would break Anita too. There’s a picture on the screen: a young, smiling couple standing behind an ecstatic Anita, who’s sitting in front of a birthday cake. Anita herself looks pretty much the same age she is now, but her eyes are much older, as if they’ve seen a lifetime of hurt and broken promises.
“Your parents?” Diana asks. Anita nods. “What happened to them?”
Anita closes her eyes a
nd grits her teeth, as if she’s seeing something sharp that cuts and stabs her as it materializes in her mind’s eye. “We were at the hospital,” she practically whispers, her voice pained and unsteady, “they thought that I should get looked at after the First Night. I thought it was because there was something wrong with me, at first. But then I realized it was because there was something wrong with them, and everyone else. My dad didn’t say much, just talked to the doctors, but he was scaring me. Like he was hungry, but not for food. He was hungry for something inside me. My mom said that I was special, that I could help people if the doctors ran tests on me…but I knew the truth. They didn’t care about other people. They had these scared, wide eyes, looking just at me. They thought I was the only one that could help them, with my blood, with x-rays of my brain, with whatever.”
Anita trails off for a moment, opening her eyes and looking at the phone in Diana’s hand cautiously, like it’s something that might come alive and skitter across the table to hurt her. Then she keeps talking. “There were a ton of people outside the hospital, in the tents, and they just…went crazy. They started running into the windows. There were guards by the doors, cops and soldiers mostly. Some of them started shooting but others turned around and opened the doors, just opened them and came inside. They got the doctors first. Then they went looking for the kids, cus we were supposed to be dead by now. Then my parents…I hid and waited almost two days, until I knew the guards were gonna be too tired to do anything. I went to my grandma’s after that.”
Diana gets up from her seat and walks over to Anita. She sits down next to her and wraps her arms around her. There are no tears in Anita’s eyes, as if they’ve long run out.
“You know what’s funny?” Anita asks, slinking out of Diana’s arms. “I promised myself that if I ever met people like the ones at the hospital, I’d kill them. But I didn’t. I wasn’t strong enough. You guys have all these guns and Gloria and you’re still alive. You went to the pharmacies, right? Stole sleeping pills? You’re like those guards, and I knew that right when I looked at you. But I was scared, I knew the Faithful couldn’t get through the Red Eyes by themselves. So we needed someone stronger to help. I went right for you guys. Even if I knew that if you had been outside the hospital, you’d have done the same thing everyone else did.”
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