The display pissed him off and Charlie jammed his hands under Kali’s arms, lifted her up, this little thing that weighed practically nothing at all, and hurled her out of the chair. Leo caught her before she slammed into the wall and quickly set her down on the compartment floor. “Jesus, Charlie, what the fuck’s wrong with you?” Leo shouted.
“She…”—he stabbed his hand at the brunette, whoever the hell she was—“is one of them, Leo. Just as corrupt as Maria and her gang. Don’t you see? It’s their final extravaganza. They create the black sludge that swallows bits of the city. They create the blinding whiteness that covers the disappeared area. They create total chaos. Then they provide the solution. All hail the corrupt members of the council.”
Kali got to her feet and pointed at the console. The train started to slow down. “You were always a wild card, Charlie. A gringo, through and through. But you had support from some of the council members, so I thought, Hey, why not? It’s an experiment, right? Your problem is that you never fully left your life as Charlie Livingston, Tess’s father, Lauren’s husband, Maddie’s grandfather. And because you were so young compared to the rest of the council, you were an anomaly, the white crow.”
“None of what you just said convinces me you’re anything but part of Maria’s group,” Charlie spat. “Or just another hungry ghost.”
“And it’s not my place to convince you otherwise.” She looked at Leo. “Thanks for catching me.” Then she hurled her left hand into the air, and said, “I’m curious about this, Charlie.”
The scenes flashed by: Charlie in the posada where Tess and Ian had stayed as transitionals, and Kali the parrot greeting him hello as he tossed her peanuts; Charlie and Kali the night he’d gone to Wayra’s home, their obvious camaraderie; Charlie and Kali at that first council meeting at the Última Café. The prosaic scenes suggested that Charlie had known she wasn’t a hungry ghost or a corrupt council member and made him look like a liar or a fool.
Or both.
“So this is, what, a life review?” Illary asked.
“Up until Newton’s outburst and Charlie’s tantrum, it was supposed to be a rescue mission.”
“We’re wasting time,” Sanchez said. “Let’s get to El Bosque.”
The others nodded and Kali pointed at the console again and the train picked up speed once more. It charged along the tracks, now covered in sand that sparkled in the moonlight. To either side of them, heaps of sand, dunes of sand, lay everywhere, a glinting blanket that lay across roads, drifted up against the sides of buildings, stranded cars. Here and there, Charlie saw people emerging from wherever they had hidden during the storm’s fury.
“What about them?” Pedro asked, motioning at the people outside.
“They’ll be picked up by one of the other trains,” Kali said. “All of you should go back into the first car. It’s going to get rough and wild.”
Charlie lingered as the others hurried out of the engine compartment. “I apologize for throwing you,” he said. “But not for my suspicions.”
“Your suspicions are healthy, Charlie. And just so you know I’m not the monster you’re thinking I am, the conductor didn’t die. Esteban is sitting back there in the first car, enjoying Sanchez’s dog. He has been with me too long to be allowed to die beneath the wheels of the train he has ridden faithfully for decades.”
Charlie leaned back and peered into the first car. Sure enough, Esteban the conductor was sitting beside Jessie, his arm thrown across her back as he talked with Maddie and Sanchez.
“But his blood spattered my face and clothes.”
“Illusion, just as Esteban said.”
He looked down at his clothes and watched the bloodstains fading away. “What will happen to Esteban when Esperanza is removed?”
“I suspect he’ll reincarnate.”
“And what will happen to chasers who choose to stay behind in whatever replaces the city, Kali?”
“You mean, what will happen to you and Karina?”
Yes, he supposed that was exactly what he was asking. He nodded.
“You’ve already gotten a taste of that. Communication between the living and the dead won’t be possible anymore. The living won’t see the dead. You won’t be able to assume virtual forms. There won’t be any council, no brujos. But you’ll still have all the splendor of the afterlife at your disposal.”
Charlie tried to envision it but couldn’t. “What will happen to you?”
“I’ve spent most of my afterlife period as a parrot and find I’m very comfortable in that world. Perhaps I’ll reincarnate as a parrot in the Amazon. I haven’t decided yet. It depends on Ricardo, on what he does.”
“Why?”
“Because if the consciousness of one brujo can evolve, then there’s hope. It’s what I recently said to Lauren.”
Before Charlie had a chance to ask her about that remark, she suddenly leaned forward, peering intently ahead. “What the hell. Do you see that, Charlie?”
Just ahead, a jungle of tremendous trees consumed the track and spread to either side of it so fast that within seconds, only the tips of the surrounding mountains were visible in the moonlight. “If you’re the essence of Esperanza, then you’re doing this, right? You’re creating the jungle?”
“My consciousness is creating it but not from the part of me that is conscious. Do you understand what I’m saying? It’s like when you and Karina created your beautiful home, Charlie, with that jungle in your backyard. Everything that chasers and brujos create here in Esperanza is created from the raw materials of my memories, my consciousness, and your own.”
“Then if we created the jungle, we can get through it,” Charlie said, and desperately wanted it to be true.
“I hope so. Better buckle up, Charlie.”
I hope so? That was the best she could do?
Charlie quickly ducked into the first car with the others. Esteban, the conductor, nodded at Charlie and touched two fingers to his temple, as if tipping his hat. “Amigo, thanks for trying to pull me onboard.”
“Thank you for helping us out.”
Esteban opened his arms, an odd smile reshaping his mouth. “And here we are.”
The train picked up speed and Newton pressed his face up to the window. “Jungle? Did you see that jungle out there? What’s this crazy bitch doing now?” he demanded.
Jessie started howling and crawled under Sanchez’s seat.
The priest blessed himself.
Leo knuckled his eyes.
Maddie reached for Sanchez’s hand.
Sanchez raised her hand to his mouth and kissed the back of it.
Illary pressed her hands to her thighs.
Karina bit at her lower lip and Charlie threaded his fingers through hers.
Then the ghost train, Esperanza 14, charged into the jungle, into a tunnel of glistening green.
Twenty
The City’s Memories
1.
The moon sped across the sky, night collapsed into dawn, the sun punched a hole in the sky and waves of heat shimmered in the air. Wayra’s internal clock screamed it was all wrong, that night and day were too short or too long, that the position of the rising sun was no more accurate than the moon’s position had been. Even though he understood they were traipsing through Esperanza’s memories of her own history, he didn’t have any idea what it meant for him, for any of them. He longed to find Illary, to return to their home in the foothills of Mariposa, to resume their lives. But he knew the last part wasn’t going to happen, not now, not ever.
Reality had been turned inside out like a dirty sock.
The trees grew more profuse but didn’t provide any relief from the heat. Instead, the canopy trapped the heat and humidity inside of it and turned the jungle into a sweat lodge. His perspiration-soaked clothes clung to him, sweat dripped into his eyes. Monkeys kept screeching and swinging through the trees, insects swarmed and chirred, and beetles the size of his hand scurried across the ground, up the trunks, and in
to the branches.
He had no idea how far they had traveled or how long. When they had first left the church, the depot had lain a mile or two north. The screaming muscles in his legs, his fatigue, told him they had gone fifteen or twenty miles or even farther. As the geography changed, so did distance, time, space.
Even though they tried to stick together, Tess had trouble keeping up and they finally stopped to rest in an area that looked as if a machete had been taken to the abundant growth. Remnants of a campfire were evident within a circle of stones, the ashes cold, physical evidence that they weren’t alone in the jungle, that other groups of refugees were also headed for the depot. He didn’t find any comfort in the thought. Suppose the other groups were hostile?
Wayra sank to the ground and dug his last bottle of water from his pack. The others did the same. No one spoke. He knew they were all thinking the same thing. What would happen when they ran out of water, when the geography shifted again?
He dropped his head back and peered upward and glimpsed the sun directly overhead now. High noon. Night to dawn to high noon in—what? Minutes? An hour?
Ricardo, seated beside him, suddenly sniffed the air and whispered, “People. Close.”
Wayra cocked his head, listening. He sensed them before he heard or saw them, small groups converging, their collective bewilderment and terror infusing the air he breathed. A terrible urgency seized him. He glanced around at his group—Lauren with her legs drawn up against her chest, her forehead resting on her knees; Tess and Ian sitting back to back, propping each other up, her face pink and sweaty, her belly larger than it should be. Never mind that she now looked three months pregnant, an impossibility. The facts were simple: they wouldn’t survive another attack and might not even survive another abrupt shift in the environment.
“There are brujos among them,” Ricardo said. “And they’re stuck, like me, in their virtual forms.”
“So they don’t present any threat to us.”
“How could they?” He wiped his massive arm across his sweating forehead. “They can’t seize anyone. They’re as confused as the living.”
Here and there through the trees, Wayra could see them now, bedraggled groups, loners, families, couples. Then a man broke away from a small group and loped toward them, waving his arms. “Wayra! Ian!”
“Javier,” Ian shouted, and he and Wayra hurried forward.
In the blade of midday light that sliced through the trees, Javier looked as though he had been dragged through mud. His baseball cap, jeans, and shirt were caked with dirt, bits of gravel and earth clung to his hairline and unshaven jaw, his hair probably hadn’t seen a comb for weeks.
Yet, in real time, Wayra knew Javier had been swallowed by the black tide at the Taquina on December 14. Three days later, when Wayra had gotten into the disappeared El Bosque, with Ricardo hitching a ride, he had spoken to an amnesic Javier. Wayra didn’t have any idea how much time had elapsed since then. Hours, days, weeks? But when Javier flung his arms around Wayra and Ian, the lapsed time no longer mattered.
A visit to Javier’s bakery had been a part of Wayra’s daily life, of his rituals with Illary and, sometimes, with Diego and his shifter family, the humans he had turned on Cedar Key. He hoped they were still in Quito with Sanchez’s father. He hoped they weren’t en route back to Esperanza because he didn’t have any idea what—if anything—they would find. He doubted Javier’s bakery would be there.
The incredible coffee and baked goods, the lively conversation, the sense of belonging to a community: Javier represented all that. And Wayra suddenly felt that if they could hold on to these memories of how they fit into each other’s lives, then regardless of what happened here in Esperanza, there would always be some similar or parallel bakery in whatever this place was becoming.
“Dios mío,” Javier murmured breathlessly. “It is so good to see you both.” His huge dark eyes brimmed with emotions—terror and love, confusion and acceptance, panic and resignation, doubt and faith, so many stark contrasts. “I … I…” Then his head dropped, chin nearly touching his chest, and he started sobbing.
“Hey, amigo.” Wayra slung an arm around the other man’s shoulders. “It’s okay. You’re with friends now.” He urged him forward toward Tess, Ricardo, and Lauren.
“It’s a miracle, Javier,” said Ian. “The last time I saw you, the black sludge was swallowing you.”
“Now we’re … in a jungle. How’d … we get into a fucking jungle?”
“The city is awake and conscious,” Wayra replied.
Javier shook his head, a small, desperate shake. “I … I don’t know what that means. I was sitting in my house in El Bosque and suddenly … suddenly these memories crashed into me and I ran … out into my front yard and saw the moon. Saw it for the first time since I don’t know when. And … and then I ran.”
Ian urged him to sit down and handed Javier his bottle of water. He gulped down what was left, wiped his arm across his mouth, and looked at each of them as if really seeing them for the first time since he’d joined them. “Tess? You’re … pregnant? But how, I mean, Dios mío, was El Bosque locked in that twilight for months?”
“I think my pregnancy was fast-tracked because I got trapped in El Bosque, too. I figure I’m about three months along now.”
Javier’s eyes widened with a sudden comprehension. “It makes sense. The spinning clocks, the elevated EM readings, the weirdness. Time is accelerating, right? That’s how it feels to me, everything flitting past like a dream, yeah, yeah, I get it.” He paused, pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. “Wow. Fuck.” Javier took several deep breaths, his hands dropped to his thighs. “This is it, isn’t it, Wayra, the choice we used to talk about in the bakery?”
“I think so. Why did you feel you should go to the depot?”
Javier rolled the bottle of water across the back of his neck. “After my memories started returning, when I ran out into the road and saw all these panicked people, I just knew I was supposed to go to the depot. Others knew it, too. There are dozens of small groups, probably more than a hundred people headed to the depot.”
“Then let’s get going.” Ian grasped Tess’s hand, pulling her to her feet. “It shouldn’t be much farther.”
They set their pace to Tess’s and moved through the steaming heat. The jungle began to thin, and although Wayra could still hear the monkeys screeching, the sounds remained distant, like background noises in a dream. Towering thunderheads darkened the sky and crackled with luminous blue lightning. Thunder rumbled menacingly and echoed so loudly through the jungle that it was as if its source were the jungle itself. Then the lightning leaped from the clouds and tore across the sky, unzipping it, and torrential rains poured out.
A fierce and violent wind howled through the trees, hurling the lashing rain into their faces, making it almost impossible to see, much less move. They made their way to where the canopy was thickest. But rain streamed down through the branches and leaves, and water rose so quickly around them that within minutes, it was two feet high, washing around Wayra’s knees.
“We need to get to higher ground,” Wayra shouted.
His hands created a shield above his eyes so that he could keep the rain out of them long enough to spot a better location. But the rain fell too furiously for him to see farther than six inches in front of him. The river, a rushing tide of fallen vegetation, rose so swiftly that the dozens of people around them surged forward, trying to outrun it. Some were trampled, others were swept away, their screams and shouts swallowed by the pounding rain, the shriek of the wind.
Ricardo caught up to Wayra and gestured wildly to the right, where the ground appeared to slope upward. They linked arms and moved rapidly through the trees, a conga line that grew longer as others joined them.
The ground rose steadily and steeply, the rain burst erratically, like hiccups, the wind gusted and shrieked through the trees. Then the jungle began to fall away behind them and tall, slender pines rose on ei
ther side of them, bending like straws in the wet wind. The pines and tremendous boulders defined the boundaries of the path they followed, a soggy, unpaved road that climbed into high mountains.
Herds of sheep interspersed with goats emerged from the trees on Wayra’s left, all of them bleating and scared, and scampered across the road, the little bells around their necks singing. When the road started to even out, the conga line broke apart and people wandered over to the trees to rest and find shelter from the rain and wind. Wayra hurried to one of the boulders and climbed on top of it, hoping he would be able to see something familiar, to get his bearings. But when he looked out, his heart seized up. The only thing he saw was a vast plateau of water that rain and wind whipped into a churning froth. The jungle was gone, El Bosque was gone, Esperanza as he knew it was certainly gone.
Wayra felt as if some unimaginable weight had fallen from his shoulders. He hadn’t known that he’d carried that weight until just now and the sensation of its absence felt strange and unnatural to him.
If the endless water was another one of the city’s memories, was it an early memory? Somewhere back at the edge of time? Perhaps it paralleled the sinking of Atlantis or of Lemuria. Maybe it went back even farther than that. And what would happen when this memory finished playing out? Back to the Big Bang? Would they all be reduced to cosmic dust?
He didn’t see any point in venturing farther. For the first time since that black tide had swallowed part of the Café Taquina, Wayra despaired that any of them would survive to see whatever Esperanza was becoming. But maybe that was the plan, the bigger plan. Then again, maybe there had never been any goddamn plan and it was all just random chaos.
He made his way back to the others. He didn’t see Ricardo. Javier was talking to a group of men and women and children, Ian and Lauren were sitting under the pines and Tess was stretched out nearby, her pack under her head.
Ian stood, his dripping clothes clinging to his body like a wet suit, and hurried over to Wayra. “Any idea where we are?”
Apparition (The Hungry Ghosts) Page 32
