Before them, in the air, came a hideous and rotten stench.
Confusion turned to fear, then panic.
“What the hell are those things?”
“Must be some sort of band of marauders that live out here,” Rudy said, though even he didn’t seem to buy it.
They were getting closer, and it was getting dark.
“What’s it gonna be?” Quid racked the shotgun. “Fight or flight?”
A peculiar whistling sound cut the air.
Rudy let out a grunt, quick and deep, like someone had punched him in the center of his back and knocked the wind from him. He staggered forward, mouth open in shock, and it was then that I saw something protruding from the center of his chest.
No one moved. We just stood there, dazed and trying to figure out exactly what had just happened and what the hell it was we were looking at.
He’d been impaled by a makeshift spear.
Rudy narrowed his eyes and tried to speak, but could only manage a disturbing gurgling noise. Dropping his guns, he took hold of the shaft with both hands, like it was a minor annoyance he intended to remove himself.
“Behind us!” Quid spun and fired.
On the far side of the road a single attacker was closing in.
Beginning a slow and deliberate walk toward the Land Rover, Quid continued pumping and firing again and again without breaking stride, releasing a primal scream as he went.
Still clutching the bloody spear, his hands now slick with crimson, Rudy finally collapsed, falling sideways and into Party Boy’s arms.
I stooped down, grabbed his 10mms and came up firing, but the marauder was already down and lying in the road. Quid had taken him out and his focus had returned to the first group.
They were closing fast.
“Motherfuckers. Motherfuckers!” Quid reloaded, watching as Party Boy slowly brought Rudy to the ground, laying him carefully on his back. He steadied the shaft as the weight pushed the spear through his chest. Rudy wheezed and gagged as blood ran across the shaft, his shirt, and drooled out over his bottom lip. In seconds most of his torso was soaked in gore. He looked up at his partner with an expression of total disbelief, and then he coughed out a spray of blood, his eyes rolled to white and he was gone.
Party Boy pulled the spear the rest of the way through then tossed it aside and delicately lifted Rudy in his arms. Though he was much smaller, he carried him effortlessly to the backseat of the Land Rover without concern for anything else taking place around us.
Quid reached the Land Rover first, but rather than get in, he fired on those approaching from across the desert. “Move, let’s go, let’s go!”
I threw open the back door so Party Boy could get Rudy and himself into the backseat, then I turned and opened fire on the marauders as well.
They had reached the outbuildings.
Quid jumped behind the wheel. I ran around to the front passenger seat and leapt in just as we tore back out onto the road.
I pulled myself into a sitting position, managed to get the door closed and looked out the rear window. The dust clouds the tires had kicked up made it impossible to see much of anything, but just as we pulled onto the Corridor a series of loud thuds and clangs began pinging the doors and windows, and a heavy thud pounded the roof. We were being bombarded with rocks, spears and other weapons, and though I could no longer see the things, I could hear their unearthly growls and sense their presence, close now, running beside the Land Rover and diving at it in an attempt to get a foothold.
Quid held the wheel with a white-knuckle grip, maneuvering the vehicle along the road at breakneck speed. “They’re all around us!”
We swerved wildly then smashed into and through a gray blur with a sickening thud, bounced over it and kept going. I had just braced myself against the dash when we hit another. This time the body flew up into the windshield, smashing and caving it in.
Instinctively I ducked and covered my eyes, but the glass, though shattered, remained intact. The Land Rover swerved again and the body tumbled away, disappearing behind us.
“I can’t see!” Quid said, struggling to straighten us back out. “Clear it! I need a line of sight! They’re in the road!”
I pushed and kicked at the remains of the windshield until it completely dislodged. The mangled sheet slid away, off along the hood, but it was too late. We’d already bounded off-road.
Suddenly it felt like we were weightless, airborne and sailing out of control. For a second or two there was that strange and horrible silence that precedes an accident or collision. And then we landed and bounced with raucous and violent impact before skidding along the rough terrain and lurching to a stop.
Quid had managed to bring us up just short of careening down into a fairly deep gulley, and it wasn’t until I looked through the now open space where the windshield had been that I realized we’d gone much farther from the road than I’d originally thought. We’d jumped a small ridge and landed completely turned in the opposite direction from which we’d been heading.
The engine had also cut out.
Dusk had arrived and night was coming fast, better concealing the marauders, but I assumed they were still coming, ambling across the desert with their unnatural gait.
Quid tried the engine again. It wouldn’t catch. “Fuck this.” He reached for a box of shells on the seat next to him, reloaded then jumped out.
Party Boy and I joined him. The ground was rocky and uneven, the dirt loose. Staying low, I held the 10mms ready, but the surrounding desert and stretch of road we could still see appeared empty.
“Where are they?”
“Come on!” Quid screamed, his voice echoing through the desert.
“Try to get that thing started again,” I told him. “We don’t know how many there are. We need to get out of here.”
To my surprise, he returned to the Land Rover without objection.
I looked to Party Boy. His chest, arms and lap were covered in Rudy’s blood. He motioned with his chin.
In the distant darkness, I could see vague shadows hurrying along the road. They were either retreating or regrouping.
As Quid kept trying the engine, swearing and smashing the dash with his fist, something moved at the very edge of my peripheral vision. I faced it, guns raised, but Party Boy was faster and had made the crouched figure perched on the roof of the Land Rover before I had.
The marauder leapt onto him and they fell to the ground, locked together and rolling several feet away before the wiry Mexican came up on top, the combat knife cocked high in the air. He slammed it down again and again, burying the blade with such force his hand sunk into its torso up to his forearm, and I could hear bones snap under the onslaught, accompanied by horrible squishing and ripping sounds and Party Boy’s furiously labored breath. Finally, he fell off the body and looked to the dark, ready for more.
But the desert had again grown quiet.
“We’re good!” Quid said, as the engine finally caught. “Let’s roll!”
Determined to figure out what we were dealing with, I approached the body. Between the growing darkness and the frenzied confusion of the melee, I hadn’t yet gotten a close look at one of these things.
Amazingly, there was no blood, and in addition to the savage kill wounds it had sustained, its face and skin looked like they’d been badly damaged long before that. Beneath the filthy strips of rag and bandage-like material covering it from head-to-toe was raw, horribly decayed flesh. Its eyes were dull and covered in a milky film, and its hands had decayed as well, the nails brittle, long and discolored. Repulsed and awestruck all at once, I couldn’t take my eyes from it.
There was no question it was definitely a human being.
But this man had been dead for months.
The thing suddenly lunged for me, hissing and vaulting up as if in spasm.
I shot it in the face.
It fell back and lay still.
Somewhere not so very far away, bound by violence, the s
pilling of his hallowed blood and the ancient shackles of hexes never intended for this world, the scarred man watched, the beauty of his ice-blue eyes gone, replaced instead with endless suffering.
“Let’s go,” Quid said again, this time in a more controlled voice.
Silently, and in a trance of sorts, I took the passenger seat up front and Party Boy slid in back.
Quid punched the gas and we rocketed back over the ridge, down the other side and onto the Corridor. The road was empty but I knew those things were out there somewhere, waiting in the dark.
We drove on without incident, dry desert air blowing in through the open windshield frame and over our faces, becoming milder the deeper into night we went. Amidst all the blood, bodily fluids and growing stink, Party Boy held Rudy’s corpse in his arms the way one might lovingly hold a sleeping child, his stoic face turned to stone. He was really gone. Another body thrown on the pile I’d created, another life snuffed out because of me. More blood, more death, more sin, more guilt, more horror. Christ Almighty, I was drowning in it.
No one spoke. There was nothing to say.
We listened instead to the night and the thoughts in our troubled heads.
I’d have given anything to believe I was mistaken about what I’d seen back there. I wanted to believe that in the heat of the moment, in all the violence and adrenaline and terror my eyes had deceived me. But I knew what I’d seen. We’d been deceived by the restless spirits of those murdered and tortured at the commune ruins, and that thing posing as a man had been dead long before Party Boy killed it.
Maybe Martin was a god after all. Maybe he really had raised the dead.
SIXTEEN
The moon was full, brilliant, and low in the sky, looming over us like a god and leaving the desert looking like a lunar surface as well, barren and dry and mysteriously beautiful. It was so perfect it looked forged, an embellished version from some cheesy horror movie, but made for a brighter night than those that had preceded it.
Beneath that dreamlike desert moon, Party Boy stood with Rudy’s body draped across his arms. He carried him awhile, stumbling once or twice but never wavering, until he’d finally decided he’d gone far enough. With great care, he lay the body down in the dirt, then returned to the Land Rover for a container of gasoline, and headed back.
Swigging whiskey from the last bottle I’d brought with me, I sat on the rear bumper of the Land Rover and watched him. I don’t know how far or long we drove, just that it was quite awhile before we stopped and made camp a ways off-road. Due to the intense moonlight, we could see clearly for several feet in all directions but we made a fire anyway.
Everyone was fatigued, filthy and battle scarred. Even the Land Rover was wounded, scraped, dented and scratched, the windshield blown out, one window badly cracked and small pieces of gray rags and what appeared to be scraps of human skin matted to the grill.
“A spear,” Quid muttered. It was the first words anyone had spoken since we stopped. “A spear. Are you fucking kidding me?”
All I knew for sure was that I’d never forget the look of astonishment on Rudy Bosco’s face just before he died.
“Can’t believe he went out like that,” he sighed. “Not him.”
“I’m not sure he ever knew what hit him.”
We watched as Party Boy reached the body. He removed his leather vest, revealing more tattoos across his back and shoulders, and then sank to his knees and pressed his fingers deep into Rudy’s chest wound. They came back slick with blood, which he smeared across his cheeks, forehead and chin, not stopping until his entire face and neck were coated. He blessed himself and looked up at the moon, the whites of his eyes exaggerated against the gruesome red backdrop of his painted face.
“What the hell’s he doing?”
“Saying goodbye.” Quid sat next to me on the bumper, the shotgun rested between his legs. “Wearing the blood’s like taking part of Rudy’s soul with him. He’s half Yaqui Indian. The Yaqui were badass back in the day, real hardcore. Great warrior tradition, wouldn’t lay down for anybody. Even the Conquistadors couldn’t conquer them, they just kept fighting. The Jesuits finally converted them though, that’s why they got these beliefs that are part Catholicism and part old Indian ways all kind of mashed together.”
I could tell from his body language that Party Boy had begun to pray.
“Way he explained it to me,” Quid went on, “they believe in four separate worlds: the world of people, the world of animals, the world of death, and the world of flowers.”
“Flowers?” Somehow a world of flowers and Party Boy didn’t quite fit.
“The Yaqui believe the drops of blood that fell from Christ’s body while he was on the cross turned into flowers. To them, flowers represent the soul. To keep all the worlds in balance they have to purge the wrongs and fix the damage done to them by people.”
I offered Quid the bottle. He took a long drink as Party Boy poured gasoline over the body, sparked a Zippo and walked away. Once he’d taken a few steps he tossed the lighter over his shoulder without looking back.
The body burst into flames. A second fire shred the night.
I thought Quid might cry. For a moment it looked like he wanted to. But he didn’t. His face turned cold, harder and then strangely calm. He was still a soldier, and he’d been here before. He knew pain and loss well, they were old adversaries, and though they wounded him as deeply as any other—perhaps even more so—he’d learned to survive their attacks.
In the middle of an ancient desert, he was cold as ice.
When Party Boy returned to camp, I approached him. “I know how close you two were,” I said. “And I’m sorry.”
He moved so quickly and with such efficiency that by the time I realized what was happening, he already had the combat knife to my throat. When I felt the pressure of the blade increase and saw the intensity in his eyes, I thought for sure he was going to kill me.
But after a moment he released me and walked away.
Quid offered nothing, just swallowed more whiskey. He never moved, and I couldn’t be sure if it was because he knew Party Boy had only planned to make a point, or because he didn’t care if he killed me or not.
I took my bottle back, killed it then threw it against a cluster of large rocks a few feet away just to see it shatter. The booze helped feed my addiction and center me somewhat, but my nerves were shot and I was emotionally spent. It felt like I needed to sleep for a week, though I was so wired I couldn’t have gotten even a moment’s rest had I wanted to. I fumbled my cigarettes from my pocket and lit one. The smoke did little to counter the revolting sweet stench of burned human flesh, but I didn’t know which was worse, the fact that the dead body of a man I’d known was engulfed in flames less than half a football field away, or the fact that I’d become desensitized to all the bedlam, weary to the point where nothing much mattered anymore.
Martin was all that remained.
By the time I’d finished my cigarette Party Boy had reappeared. I knew in a fair fight I’d never be able to take him, but I wasn’t about to let him threaten my life again either. I’d had enough. If he pushed me again I planned on pushing back. I squared my shoulders, ready to throw if need be but hoping it wouldn’t come to that. This time, the knife was sheathed. He looked like a demonic clown with his blood-covered face, but his eyes told me what I needed to know. There would be no more incidents between us. We were good. With his free hand he gripped my shoulder, gave it a firm squeeze and slowly nodded his head. I returned the gesture.
He moved to the Land Rover and rummaged around in back until he’d found a canteen, a bottle of water and a plastic baggie filled with what looked like dried and crushed leaves of some kind. Without explanation he knelt before the campfire several feet away and arranged the items out before him, but he had his back to me and I couldn’t see exactly what he was up to.
Before I could ask, Quid told me he was preparing a tea from the seeds, roots and leaves of a Datura, a nightsha
de flowering plant. “It’s called Toloatzin,” he explained. “Goes way back. The Aztecs used it in a lot of their rituals.”
“What kind of rituals?”
“You’ll have to ask him, I’m no expert on its history. He’ll offer you some when it’s done. My advice is to take it.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because we’re both drinking it and you don’t want to be the odd-man-out at this party, trust me.”
“What’s it gonna do to me, Quid?”
“Expand your mind, open doors and take you where you need to go.”
“It’s a fucking hallucinogen? We’ve got no idea what’s out here. I need you guys straight.”
“Fuck it. You need to end this.”
“Are you insane? Isn’t The Corridor hallucinogenic enough for you?”
He never answered. Quiet returned. The fire in the distance had nearly burned out, but the fire at camp was going strong. It seemed a bad idea to me, all this fire, as it gave away our location to whatever else might be out there. But the others were unfazed, and I had no choice but to trust their judgment.
Party Boy prepared the tea and let it steep for a long while before transferring it to the canteen. Back on his feet, he stopped just shy of us and looked up at the moon as if he was conversing with it. For all I knew, that’s exactly what he was doing. After a moment, he passed the canteen to Quid, who drank from it then handed it back.
Watching me now, Party brought it to his lips, had several swallows then held the canteen out for me. I hadn’t tripped since I took blotter in high school, and was beyond confused by what was taking place. A desire or even need to escape everything that had happened in the last few hours was completely understandable—I’d started drinking the moment we pulled over—but alcohol was a far cry from some psychedelic plant. I had no idea the kind of reaction I’d have to this brew, and certainly they knew a lot better than I how dangerously vulnerable ingesting this could leave us. So why do it, and why now?
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