The Post-Apocalyptic Tourist's Guide to the Mojave Desert: A Novella

by Sean Hazlett

  Tony desperately wanted to ask Milkshake about the contents of the box, but Joey had set up his position next to them. When Tony looked out at Drummond’s platoon, there was so much dust and chaos, he couldn’t tell which side was winning.

  But a hail of spears left no doubt who had the upper hand.

  “How do they come in so fast?” Milkshake asked in awe. “Back home, spears don’t fly that fast.”

  Tony smiled. “Atlatls.”

  “What?”

  “Atlatls. The People of the Sun use them as levers on the end of their spears to increase their speed.”

  The ground quaked as the raiders galloped toward the wagon train.

  “Steady. Steady,” said Tony.

  Many of the men shook as the horsemen drew closer.

  Once the raiders were within a hundred yards, Tony gave the order. “Loose!”

  A volley of bolts decimated the first rank.

  “Reload!” Tony yelled as he frantically cranked back his crossbow.

  Alfonzo’s head rolled past him. The men were screaming. Marauders surrounded the wagons and dismounted. They decapitated anyone who resisted. Joey sliced at the raiders with his machete, cutting down two of them half a second before they reached Tony.

  But it was obvious that Tony’s crew was hopelessly outnumbered. He had to act fast or no one would ever be going home. He summoned all his courage and stood up, raising his hands in surrender. He motioned for Milkshake and Joey to do the same.

  A mountain of a man wearing a coyote headdress approached. He carried a flat club with razor-sharp edges that looked a lot like an Aztec weapon Tony had seen in Father Serra’s books called a macuahuitl. The brute backhanded Tony, slamming him into the dirt. Tony stumbled back up, his hands still raised. The man smacked him again with the club’s flat surface. Tony’s vision faded to black.

  III. Ritual

  Tony woke in a cave, his back set against a rocky wall. It was dark and cool. His hands and feet were bound in hemp; his sunglasses, crucifix, and gold rings missing. Milkshake and Joey sat to his left and right, similarly bound. A faint light flickered in the distant dark. The walls were chiseled with crude pictures of longhorn sheep and bowmen. Father Serra had called them petroglyphs, images prehistoric people had carved in stone thousands of years ago.

  “Where are we?” said Tony.

  Milkshake shook Joey. “Tony’s awake.” Turning his head toward Tony, Milkshake said, “They took seven of us to this cave. They butchered everyone else.”

  Tony looked around him. “Where are the other four?”

  Milkshake pointed farther into the cave. “They took them deeper into that tunnel.”

  Footsteps brushed against the sandy cavern floor. Three warriors wearing coyote headdresses and pelts, and wielding macuahuitls marched toward the captives.

  A tall, muscular man with a jagged scar running from his right eye to his lower left jaw grabbed Tony by the arm and yanked him to his feet. A small, swarthy man cut the rope around Tony’s legs. The two warriors then freed Milkshake and Joey from their bonds. Then the scarred warrior said, “¡Vámonos!” and shoved Tony forward.

  “Easy!” Tony yelled.

  The scarred man cuffed Tony in the face. Tony stumbled forward, trying to keep his balance.

  They made their way through a tunnel dimly lit by torchlight. Tony couldn’t help but stare at the men’s macuahuitls. Fashioned from old utility posts, the weapons were a work of art. Detailed carvings of scorpions, black widows, rattlesnakes, and sun spiders decorated each macuahuitl, which was fringed with razor-sharp obsidian blades.

  After the group had walked about three hundred yards, the tunnel opened into a larger cavern with a high, vaulted ceiling. Multi-tiered stadium seating extended from the rock faces on all sides. Dozens of men and women clad in coyote and mountain lion pelts gazed down upon an oval-shaped arena. Pikes capped with freshly severed heads lined the arena’s perimeter.

  Tony shuddered as he began to recognize those faces—faces of the young men who hours before had been his associates; faces that now stared blankly at him from beyond death’s veil. He whispered a prayer to God to save him from this horror.

  From the far right and running counterclockwise, blood-red sandstone, obsidian, turquoise, and marble slab altars occupied each corner of the arena. In the center, a high priest in a jet-black raven-feather coat presided over the strange ritual. He wore a black-feathered headpiece with four ravens’ skulls arrayed in a diamond-shape just above his forehead. Two sweptback raven’s wings extended from the headdress’s flanks.

  More raven priests stood before each altar, and on every altar laid a cavalryman, bound and gagged.

  The warriors forced the trio onto their knees and to face the arena. The swarthy warrior tied hemp around the trio’s calves. Then the captors stepped back several feet toward the tunnel entrance, where they stood watch.

  A slow drumbeat steadily grew louder and its pace quickened. The worshippers stomped their feet with an increasing intensity and fanaticism that unnerved Tony. The peculiar congregation swayed and chanted in a language Father Serra hadn’t taught him. He angled his head toward Joey and whispered, “That’s not Spanish. What language is that?” Tony immediately wanted to kick himself for asking a tongueless man a question.

  Joey grimaced at Tony.

  Without skipping a beat, Tony said, “What? Tongue-tied?” then chuckled, pleased with himself for lightening a mood that was otherwise in a death spiral. The scarred warrior backhanded Tony so hard he bit his tongue, tasting his salty blood.

  The drumbeats settled into a steady rhythm. Four raven-feather clad women shuffled in, supporting wicker baskets on their heads. Each woman placed her basket on the floor at the foot of every altar.

  The high priest raised his hands and then lowered them in an abrupt scything motion. The drumbeat ceased. Then he addressed the crowd in Spanish, “Let it be soon, oh Great One, who glides upon the five winds. Your hunger and thirst are as bottomless as the void. In this world of the Fifth Sun, accept these meager offerings of blood and heart from your humble and ever vigilant servants.”

  Tony flinched. “I hope that wasn’t literal,” he whispered.

  Milkshake seemed confused, no doubt because he couldn’t speak Spanish.

  Tony murmured, “Never mind.”

  The high priest pointed to the sandstone altar in the upper right corner. “To the east, we honor the sun god, Tonatiuh.”

  The raven priest at that altar began chanting in earnest. The priestess beside him opened the wicker basket’s lid, then lifted the basket off the ground, raising it to chest height. At the same time, the priest pulled out an obsidian blade and lowered it toward the cavalry trooper. The poor man screamed and flailed for his life.

  But to Tony’s surprise, the priest didn’t stab or cut his victim. He merely slashed off the man’s clothing.

  It didn’t take Tony long to figure out why.

  The priestess overturned the basket, dumping scores of starving sand-colored sun spiders on the poor man. He screamed his guts out as the hand-sized arachnids ripped into his flesh with their three-inch-long jaws, eating him alive.

  Suddenly, the stench of urine hit Tony’s nostrils. He turned to find Milkshake quaking after having just pissed himself. The kid’s eyes were wide as saucers. Normally, Tony would crack wise, but now wasn’t the time. Milkshake probably hadn’t seen anything like a sun spider in his life. He sure as hell had never seen a swarm of ‘em ever devouring a human being.

  Tony inclined his head toward Milkshake. “Don’t worry, kid. They’re just sun spiders. They’re usually pretty harmless. They just haven’t been fed in a while, that’s all.”

  The high priest spun counterclockwise toward the next altar, a shiny slab of pure obsidian. “To the north, we honor Tezcatlipoca, the god of night and earth. The god of mirrors and the god of death.”

  The priestess at the obsidian altar prepared her basket, and the priest removed the trooper�
��s clothing. As he did so, the trooper pleaded with him, “Please. Don’t do it. I just defended myself. Please don’t!” His face was slick with tears. He quivered.

  The priestess unloaded the her basket’s contents onto his body. A clump of thumb-sized black spheres tumbled onto his chest, then crawled. Tony cringed when he saw the telltale red hourglass stamped on their abdomens: black widows.

  “Stay still. Don’t move a muscle,” Tony whispered to himself.

  But the man wouldn’t stay still; he tensed up and screamed. As he thrashed, the sharp bites of hundreds of black widows flooded his system with a crippling neurotoxin. The trooper sputtered and screeched. His body began to swell until it resembled a bloated flesh bag burnt red by the desert sun.

  The scene horrified Tony, but he found it impossible to look away. Normally, it took hours for a single black widow bite to kick in. But with that much spider venom coursing through the man’s veins, Tony knew the trooper couldn’t last that much longer.

  The trooper vomited all over himself. Then he started to wheeze. His breathing became increasingly shallow until it abruptly stopped.

  And again, the high priest turned counterclockwise, this time facing the nearest altar to Tony, a marble slab, on his near left. The high priest raised his hands. “To the west, we honor Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent god of wind and knowledge.”

  The priestess at the marble altar emptied her basket onto yet another shrieking and naked trooper. A pile of rattlesnakes lunged at the quavering soldier, sinking their fangs into his soft flesh. The man’s arms and legs began to swell as the deadly hemotoxin flooded into his bloodstream. He guttered and flailed in what appeared to be an agonizing death.

  The high priest spun once more, facing the turquoise altar on Tony’s near right. The man on that slab was Lieutenant Drummond. Unlike his troopers, Drummond seemed calm and resigned to his fate. He lay composed as the high priest chanted from the center of the arena. “To the south, we honor Huitzilopochtli, the god of war and human sacrifice.”

  Drummond held firm while the priest stripped off his uniform with an obsidian blade. And the lieutenant continued to hold steady when the priestess dropped hundreds of scorpions onto his naked body.

  Tony could imagine Drummond willing himself not to squirm. But it didn’t matter. The scorpions’ own movement triggered them to lash out with their tails, stinging Drummond over and over. The stings jolted him out of his composure, leading to further strikes until his body was so full of venom that he shook violently. He died several minutes later.

  Tony really started to worry. Now that the four troopers were dead, what did this maniacal death cult have in mind for him and his companions? After all, the People of the Sun must’ve brought them here for a reason.

  The high priest raised his hands again. A steady drumbeat followed. Milkshake rocked back and forth. “They’re gonna kill us. They’re gonna fucking kill us!”

  The raven priests raised their obsidian daggers above the dead troopers and cut into their chests. Thrusting their hands inside the bloody chest cavities, the priests wrenched out the dead men’s hearts and held them up to the congregation.

  The drumbeat quickened and grew louder. The cavern walls began to vibrate. Tony’s heart threatened to burst from his chest.

  Without thinking, Tony stood up. “Fuck this!” he yelled. He spun toward the guard standing behind him. “You can fucking suck my dick, you savage piece of shit.” Then he spat on the man.

  The scarred warrior calmly strode toward Tony with an air of supreme confidence and control. Tony lunged at him and bit a chunk out of his neck. The scarred man dropped his macuahuitl. Blood sprouted from his neck like a fountain. Not wasting a second, Tony crouched and frantically rubbed the hemp binding his hands against the fallen macuahuitl until they broke loose.

  The drumbeat stopped.

  The cultist guarding Milkshake rushed to his comrade’s aid. Joey stumbled to his feet and spun behind the warrior. He swung his bound hands from his back over his head and around the cultist’s neck, strangling the swarthy warrior in the most impressive and only display of double-jointedness Tony had ever witnessed.

  Tony picked up the macuahuitl and slashed the hemp around his ankles. He stood up half a second before the third warrior guarding the cavern entrance nearly decapitated him.

  Stumbling like a blind walrus swimming in motor oil, Tony struggled to regain his balance. The cultist swung at him again, ripping a chunk out of Tony’s shoulder.

  Furious, Tony flew at the man in a blind rage. He hacked at the cultist until the man was a bleeding puddle of meat.

  Tony then sliced Joey and Milkshake’s binds. The warriors in the stands flooded into the arena and closed in on the trio.

  From a dark recess of the cavern, something stirred. In Spanish, the high priest shouted, “Stop! Stay away!”

  Many of the cultists heeded the high priest’s call. Yet a few ignored it, hurling themselves at the three men.

  Tony ran to the exit tunnel and yelled, “Follow me!”

  Tony, Milkshake, and Joey formed a human wall to block the exit. Constrained by the narrow tunnel, the cultists attacked in twos and threes. Joey fought like a beast, cutting down anyone within five feet. Milkshake also held his own against the rampaging horde.

  As Tony fought for his life, he kept watching for a break in the human flood, a chance to turn his back and run. His arms were already getting tired. He didn’t know how much longer he’d have the strength to hold the cultists off.

  The high priest kept urging his people to clear the arena, but few listened. The rest continued their attacks.

  Seconds later, Tony learned why the high priest had been so eager to get his people out. A rattle echoed throughout the cavern as a snake as thick as four men slithered into the arena. Its scales had an odd blue hue. The serpent lashed out at the crowd.

  A scorpion and a sun spider as big as horses skittered out of the darkness. Similar to the rattlesnake, their exoskeletons had a strange light blue glow. The arachnids indiscriminately struck everything in their paths.

  “What the hell are those?” said Milkshake.

  “The fuck if I know,” Tony replied, “but this is our one chance to get the hell outta here. Let’s go!”

  The trio turned only to come face-to-face with the eight-eyed head of a Volkswagen-sized black widow spider. Tony extended his left arm to prevent his companions from stumbling into the behemoth. He glanced over his shoulder. At the sight of the black widow, the cultists chasing him had broken off and were running back toward the arena.

  Tony shouted, “Hack the legs!”

  The giant arachnid surged toward them. Tony swung with all his strength, lodging his macuahuitl into its foreleg. Joey piled on, chopping the seven-segmented leg in half. The spider squealed, but continued its attack, anchoring itself into the center of the tunnel with its seven remaining legs. Suspended from the low ceiling, it curled its abdomen beneath it and shot a thick strand of webbing at Milkshake. Then it yanked the kid toward it.

  Tony watched slack-jawed as the giant spider spun a screaming Milkshake in circles, roping him in dense white spider silk. Tony noted the dark-blue hourglass on the underside of the spider’s huge round abdomen. While it was playing with its food, Tony and Joey ran beneath it and hacked at its legs.

  The spider shrieked again, nearly crushing Joey after he’d severed another leg. It dropped a sticky Milkshake to snap at Joey with its retractable fangs. Milkshake hit the ground hard. Unshaken by the fall, he struggled to break lose.

  Tony raced behind the creature. Then he bashed open its swollen abdomen with his macuahuitl. The thing immediately swung around and charged at him on its broken legs. Joey hacked at the spider’s abdomen from behind. Milkshake continued to flounder in the sticky webbing.

  The spider’s jaws snapped at Tony. Tony ducked, narrowly avoiding decapitation. He swung his macuahuitl, smashing the spider’s head open in a riot of blue pulp. The creature’s broke
n body flailed and shuddered for several seconds before collapsing into a lifeless hulk.

  “Milkshake!” Tony yelled to Joey.

  Joey sawed through the spider silk with his macuahuitl. Then he stripped off enough of the webbing so Milkshake could get back on his feet.

  Tony yelled, “Run!”

  The trio sprinted through a maze of tunnels. Tony followed Joey and Milkshake since he’d been unconscious when they’d been taken to the cavern.

  At one point, they passed a side tunnel filled with blocks of ice. Tony was curious about how the ice had gotten there, but there wasn’t any time to investigate. The People of the Sun would likely be in hot pursuit, so he pressed onward. By the time he saw a glimmer of sunlight, he was so exhausted he nearly coughed up a lung.

  The three stumbled out into the Mojave Desert’s searing furnace. The sun blazed in the afternoon sky. Tony surveyed the vast desert, briefly taking in its beauty before considering a more grim reality. There were no signs of human habitation for miles. He looked with hope to his companions. “You guys know how to get back to our wagon train, right?”

  Joey lowered his head.

  Milkshake shrugged. “They blindfolded us before they brought us here.”

  “Fuck,” Tony muttered. Normally, he’d have waited until dark to move, but he worried once his former captors got their freaks of nature under control, they’d aim to settle the score. “C’mon. We need to get moving.”

  “Where?” said Milkshake.

  Tony looked up at the sun. “West. If we’re lucky, we’ll stumble into Fitzhugh.”

  “And if we don’t?”

  Tony shrugged. “We’ll know either way in about two days.”

  The men ventured out into the oppressive heat to search for the Regiment before dehydration and death found them.

  IV. Desert Devils

  The scorching heat was taking its toll on the crew. Tony was thirsty as hell. He had a throbbing headache, a telltale symptom of dehydration. Milkshake was already beet red and fading. To his credit, Joey seemed to be the only mook with enough juice to last another day.