12.21: A Novel

by Dustin Thomason

  She whipped around. “Who are you?”

  The stranger didn’t answer. He was tall. He wore a hooded sweatshirt with a rust-colored stain splashed across it. And he wasn’t Maya.

  “Qué está haciendo aquí?” she said in Spanish.

  How or why a ladino was here now, Chel didn’t know. Her mother’s words of warning echoed in her ears. Her heart pounded as she backed away. “Estoy aquí con un médico. Gabe! Gabe!” She screamed, but her voice felt so weak. She couldn’t breathe.

  The ladino lunged at her and pulled her down. He ripped off her eye shield and jammed his hand over her mouth. She tried to scream again, but she couldn’t. Chel pawed at his face, but he bore down, wrapping his other hand around her throat. She knew what could be on his hands and squeezed her eyes shut as tightly as she could. Only it was no use: She’d be dead long before she was sick.

  I am Chel Manu, daughter of Alvar. Kill me like you killed my father.

  That was her last thought before the gun went off.

  THIRTY-TWO

  STANTON’S HANDS SHOOK AS HE TURNED THE KEY IN THE IGNITION and started the jeep. He’d killed a man. The gun he’d used was on his lap, ready to be used again. There had to be others infected out there in the darkness ahead. But it seemed better to start moving again than to stay here.

  Chel slumped in the passenger seat next to him, numb. It would be some time before they would know if her attacker had managed to infect her before Stanton killed him. Even the rapid blood assay wouldn’t tell them anything for a few more hours.

  Tiny clouds of mosquitoes swarmed the headlights as they drove down the road leading on to the village proper. But as they made their way closer, Stanton could see in the high beams what must’ve been the source of the black smoke they’d seen at the landing strip. It was a smoldering building about the size of the medical facility. The walls had collapsed; limestone had shattered. There was no roof.

  “That’s the school,” Chel said, all emotion gone from her voice.

  They kept going. The remains of single-room houses cropped up on both sides. Four or six stood in clusters every several hundred feet, each with its single door and no windows. Adobe-covered wooden walls had been knocked down; palm fronds that once covered roofs, pulled off. In the middle of the road were dozens of hammocks that looked as if they had been dragged from one of the houses and abandoned. Red and yellow and green and purple cloths were cast aside and covered in mud, and the jeep’s tires ran unsteadily over the graveyard of color.

  Part of Stanton wanted to drive the car out of town and stay the night in a field. They were done looking for others; now they were trying to avoid them. But he also thought the jeep might draw more attention to them than they’d elicit if they hid it and sheltered themselves in one of the abandoned buildings.

  He pointed at one house they drove by that still appeared untouched. “Do you know the people who live there?”

  Chel didn’t seem to hear him. She was somewhere else entirely.

  Stanton decided it looked as good a place as any. He parked the jeep and led Chel toward the house, holding the gun with his free hand. He knocked at the door, and, when there was no answer, he kicked it open.

  The first things his flashlight caught were two bodies in a hammock. A young woman and a toddler. It looked as if they’d been dead for at least a week.

  Stanton tried to stop Chel from getting any closer, but she was already in the doorway, staring at the bodies.

  The sound of her voice surprised him. “We need to bury them. I need incense.” She obviously wasn’t thinking clearly.

  “We can’t stay in here,” he told her.

  He grabbed her hand again, and they kept going. In the next dwelling, there were no corpses, just clothing strewn on the ground, a broken hoe, and ceramic bowls. Stanton cleared everything out.

  “You think it’s safe?” Chel managed.

  He had no proof, but it was the best they had. “We need to keep our eye shields on.”

  They collapsed against a wall, huddling together, exhausted. Stanton pulled granola bars from the supply pack and forced Chel to swallow several bites. Finally he turned off the flashlight, hoping she might be able to sleep. He would try to stay awake, on guard.

  “Do you know why we burn incense for the dead?” she whispered.

  “Why?”

  “When a soul is taken, it needs the incense smoke in order to pass from the middleworld to the underworld. Everyone here is stuck between worlds.”

  Over the last couple of days, Stanton had heard her talk quite a lot about her people’s traditions, but not this way. He wanted to reassure her but didn’t know how; only the faithful had the right words for times like these. Instead, he turned to what he knew. She was still convinced that something had protected the king and his men from VFI before the outbreak of disease in Kanuataba. Tomorrow they would find it. “We have the map and the coordinates for Lake Izabal,” he told Chel, “and as soon as it’s light, we’ll start searching.”

  She nestled her head in the crook of his arm. Stanton felt the weight of her on him and the touch of her skin on his.

  “Maybe Victor was right,” she said. “Maybe all we can do now is run.”

  STANTON WOKE WITH A START and pulled out the gun. Something was trampling wet leaves just on the other side of the wall. Chel was already crouched by the back wall, listening. There was a high-pitched noise, something squeaking in the rain.

  Chel made out a voice speaking in Qu’iche. “Let the evil winds out, Hunab Ku.”

  “What’s going on?” Stanton asked.

  “My name is Chel Manu,” she called back in Qu’iche. “I am from Kiaqix. My father was Alvar. I have a doctor here. He can help if you are sick.”

  A tiny old woman with hair to her waist appeared in the doorway. She wore thick eyeglasses over her wide nose.

  Stanton lowered the gun. Thunder groaned in the distance, and the woman stepped toward them, looking like she might tip over.

  “Are evil winds in this house?” she called out in Qu’iche.

  “We are not sick. We are here to find where the sickness has come from. I’m Chel Manu, daughter of Alvar. Are you sick?”

  “You came by the sky?” the woman asked.

  “Yes. Are your people sick?” Chel repeated. “I am not cursed.”

  Chel glanced at Stanton, who pointed at his own eyes. Her glasses must have saved her. The same thing that might have saved both of their lives back in L.A. a week ago.

  “When did you come here?” the woman asked.

  Chel told her they’d arrived in Kiaqix about five hours ago.

  “Ask her if there’s anyone else alive in the village,” said Stanton.

  “Fifteen or twenty are in the houses still standing,” the woman replied. “Mostly on the outskirts. There are more hiding in the jungle, waiting for the evil winds to blow away.”

  “When did this begin?” Chel asked the old woman.

  “Twenty suns ago. You are really Chel Manu?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was your mother’s name?”

  “My mother is Ha’ana,” Chel said. “You know her?”

  “Of course,” she said. “I am Yanala. You and I met many years ago.”

  “Yanala Nenam?” Chel said. “Daughter of Muram the great weaver.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is there anyone from my family who is alive?”

  “One of your aunts is among the few survivors,” Yanala said. “Initia the elder. She might have come and found you herself, but she does not walk easily. Come.”

  THEY TRAILED THE old woman down a series of side roads and across milpas. When they turned in to a clearing toward a set of houses nestled on a hillock, Chel was struck by her one and only childhood memory of this place. For a moment, she was a little girl again, bouncing on her father’s shoulders as he carried her down the causeway.

  But now there was no one trading cornmeal, no music coming from the houses. There was
only silence.

  They approached the entrance to a small log-built house with a strong thatch roof, still intact. The woman led them into a room stuffed with aging wooden furniture, hammocks, and an indoor clothesline. Tortillas were cooking on top of a hearth with large stones, filling the room with the smell of corn.

  Yanala disappeared into a back area of the house. A minute later a door swung open, and an even older woman emerged. She had long silver hair braided into a crown above her head, and she wore a purple and green huipil draped with a dozen strands of colored beads. Chel recognized Initia immediately.

  Without a word, the woman walked slowly toward them, leaning on the furniture. “Chel?”

  “Yes, Aunt,” she said in Qu’iche. “And I’ve brought a doctor from America.”

  Initia stepped into the light, and her eyes became visible. Both her irises were covered in a milky white film. Cataracts, Chel realized. They’d probably saved her from VFI.

  “I can’t believe you are here, child.”

  “You’re not sick, Aunt?” Chel asked as they embraced. “You can sleep?”

  “Much as one can at my age,” Initia said. She motioned for them to sit around a small wooden table. “It has been so long since you have come, and here you are, of all times. How is this possible?”

  Initia listened in disbelief as Chel described the events in L.A., from Volcy’s arrival on.

  “You’ve been in the causeways, you’ve seen the village center, so surely you understand what the evil winds have brought to us too,” Initia said when Chel had finished.

  “Ask her who was the first person here to get sick,” Stanton said.

  “Malcin Hanoma,” Initia said after Chel translated.

  “Who is that?” Chel asked.

  “Volcy had no blood brothers, so Malcin Hanoma, son of Malam and Chela’a, was his planting partner. They went off in search of these treasures from the lost city together. Volcy never returned, but Malcin did. He was injured, and with him he brought the curse upon us, the wrath of the ancestors.”

  “How quickly did it spread?”

  “Malcin’s family was the first to be taken. Their children became sleepless, as did the entire family who shared a home with him. Punishment came from the gods, and within only days the winds spread faster and faster.”

  Chel closed her eyes, envisioning the destruction that followed. How quickly had her people turned on one another? How long had it taken for the people of Kiaqix to devolve? To tear down the church, burn the school, and loot the hospital?

  “So many terrible things have happened here, Aunt.”

  Initia pushed herself up and motioned for them to follow her out a back entrance. “But not only terrible things. Come.”

  THEY TRAILED HER to a dwelling directly behind the house, the door of which was covered with stacks of palm leaves. Together they pulled away the fronds and created an opening.

  “Do not let the winds in,” Initia called behind her.

  Chel stared in disbelief as they stepped inside. Swaddled in colored hammocks draped from the ceiling, were at least a dozen babies. Some were crying softly. Others lay still with their eyes open, silent. Some slept, their tiny chests rising and falling.

  Yanala attended to several at a time; Initia joined her, coddling a little girl who wouldn’t stop crying while spooning liquid corn into another’s mouth. Initia placed a baby boy in Stanton’s arms, then handed a little girl to Chel. The girl was small, with patches of hair across the crown of her head, a wide nose, and dark-brown eyes that darted around the room, never quite catching Chel in her sights.

  “A baby must be shown closeness with its mother, sleep in the hammock with her, and take from her breast when it’s hungry,” Initia said. “They have grown disconnected because they have been denied their mothers.”

  “Where did you find them, Aunt?”

  “I knew which houses recently had births, for everyone comes together to celebrate a new life. Yanala and I went in search of survivors. Some were hidden beneath palm fronds, and others were left in the open.”

  Chel glanced at Stanton. “How long will they be immune?”

  “Six months or so,” he said, cradling the boy. “Until their optic nerves mature.”

  “That is Sama,” Yanala said as Chel rocked her little girl back and forth.

  The name was somehow familiar. “Sama?”

  “Daughter of Volcy and Janotha.”

  “She’s their daughter? Volcy’s daughter?”

  “The only one of the family to survive.”

  Astonished, Chel looked at the child. Her eyes were open and wet. This was the daughter Volcy had desperately longed to see as he lay dying in a strange land.

  “Do you see what this is, child?” Initia asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The end of the Long Count cycle is but one rise and fall of the sun from now,” Initia said. “And when it comes, we will witness the end of all we’ve known. Perhaps we already have. But our youngest survived by the grace of Itzamnaaj, most merciful, and they will be our future. It is said in the Popol Vuh that, with each cycle’s end, a new breed of men inherits the earth. These children are the fifth race.”

  12.19.19.17.19

  DECEMBER 20, 2012

  THIRTY-THREE

  JUST AFTER MIDNIGHT, CHEL CRADLED SAMA IN HER ARMS AND watching as Initia pressed dough onto the hearthstone in the main house. In the other dwelling, Stanton checked the babies one by one to make sure none showed early symptoms. When Yanala came to get Sama for her exam, Chel found herself surrendering the baby reluctantly.

  When they were alone again, Chel told Initia about their arrival. “A ladino attacked me, and I think he was infected. My mother warned me that they could be here, and I didn’t believe her. But she was right.”

  “No, that man came here to help, Chel.”

  “What?”

  “A ladino church group got word that people here were sick, and they came to bring food and supplies,” Initia explained. “Even a doctor. These ladinos wanted to help us. There is no one to blame. Not the ladinos or the indígenas who were cursed. When a man can’t commune with the gods in sleep, he loses himself, no matter who he once was. It would happen to any of us. I am sorry this man was driven to attack you by the curse. But I know his intentions for coming here were good.”

  Chel thought of Rolando, and she was struck by another wave of sadness.

  “I do not blame you or your mother for feeling this way about the ladinos,” said Initia. “She suffered so much at their hands, and it is impossible to forget these things.”

  Chel pictured her mother’s disapproving face. “She’s been trying to forget everything else about Kiaqix for a long time,” she told Initia. “She didn’t want me to come back. And she certainly doesn’t believe we’ll ever find the lost city. She’s convinced my father’s cousin Chiam never found it, and she doesn’t believe it exists.”

  Initia sighed. “I have not thought of Chiam in many years now.”

  Chel wondered what, of her childhood, Initia did remember. “Did you hear Chiam read my father’s letters to the village?”

  “Your father’s letters?”

  “The letters he wrote when he was in prison,” Chel reminded her.

  “Of course,” Initia said. “Yes. I listened to them being read.”

  Chel heard a hesitation in her aunt’s voice. “What is it?”

  “Nothing,” Initia said. “I am old and I do not remember so well.”

  “You remember fine,” Chel said, putting a hand on her arm. “What is it?”

  “I’m sure there is a reason,” Initia said, almost to herself.

  “A reason for what?”

  “It has sustained you,” Initia said. “The story of your father’s letters sustained you. This is what she wanted.”

  “The letters aren’t just a story,” Chel said. “There are records of them. I’ve spoken to others who heard them, who said they stirred the people t
o action and inspired them to fight.”

  “Yes, that is what the letters did, child.”

  “Then what are you saying?”

  Her aunt clasped her hands together as if in penitence. “I do not know the reasons your mother has not told you this before, child. Ha’ana is a wise woman, Ati’t par Nim, the cunning gray fox, her spirit animal. But you have a right to know.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Chel.

  “Your father was a wonderful man, a loving man,” Initia said. “He was dedicated to you and to your mother and to his family, and he wanted to protect them. But his wayob was the tapir, who, like the horse, is strong, not clever. He was a simple man, without the words to put into those letters.”

  “My father went to prison for leading the people.” Chel tried not to sound condescending. “When he was imprisoned, he wrote those letters in secret and was killed for them. My mother told me everything that happened to him. Everything he did to fight for Kiaqix.”

  “But now ask yourself who told you these stories,” said Initia.

  “You’re saying someone else wrote those letters and my mother wanted me to believe that he did?”

  “Not just you,” Initia said. “Everyone believed your father wrote them. But my husband was his brother, child. He knew the truth.”

  “So who wrote them?” Chel asked. “Someone with him in prison?”

  Sticks crackled beneath the hearthstones. “From the time your mother was a young girl, she was never afraid,” Initia said. “Not of the landowners or the army. She would walk up to them in the market when she was only ten years old and spit on their shoes. She rejected their calls to modernize us, to change our ways. She helped stop the ladinos when they wanted to change what was taught in our schools, when they wanted our children to learn their history.”

  Chel froze. “My mother?”

  “By the time Ha’ana was twenty,” Initia continued, “she was sneaking into the meetings of the elders. When the army hanged a young man from the balcony of the town hall, many became afraid. But your mother tried to convince the men to fight in case the army or guerrillas returned. She said we must arm ourselves. But no one listened to a woman. When your father went to prison, that’s when the letters began.”