by The Behrg
“Leave her,” Faye said.
“Oh, god, it’s like a bad dream …” He bent over, peeling her fingers off and lifting her back to the ground. “I can’t help you. I can’t even help myself.”
Faye wasn’t sure she was meant to hear that last part.
The girl sat on the dirt ground, fresh tears running down her cheeks. Faye waited for Grey to compose himself before realizing it was going to take him some time.
She said, “You ever hear the story of the man walking along a beach where hundreds of starfish had been swept up onto the shore? This couple passes, watching as he bends down and picks one up, tossing it back into the sea. So the couple asks, ‘Why bother? What you’re doing won’t make a difference.’ And he answers, ‘It made a difference to that one.’”
“Yeah, I’ve heard that,” Grey said.
“I always hated that story. Partly because the couple didn’t join him in helping after his answer, but mostly … mostly because what that couple said was true. It didn’t matter. Helping one person, one starfish, at a time? There’s no lasting effects; no change. The only way to fix something is to go to the source. Stop it from ever happening in the first place. It’s the only way to make a difference.” She tugged at Grey’s sleeve. “Come on.”
They left the child there, moving to the church’s entrance. The doorway was blocked by a handful of men, one of them shouting so fast even Faye couldn’t understand his Spanish. Spit flew from the dark skinned Venezuelan, his hands moving almost as quickly as his mouth. Wooden pews were stacked alongside the church’s exterior, two children no older than three climbing atop them, one dangling off. A few of the men gathered at the entrance noticed Grey approach. They turned their backs to him without a second glance.
“Excuse us,” Grey said, patting one lighter-skinned Venezuelan on the shoulder. “We need to get through.”
The man shook Grey’s hand from his shoulder, shoving him back. Grey was caught so off guard he lost his footing, colliding into one of the plastered pillars out front.
Before Faye realized it, she had removed the pistol from the pocket of her sweatshirt and raised it in the air. The POP of the hammer striking ammunition wasn’t nearly as impressive as she had hoped, but it got the crowd’s attention.
A scream sounded from inside the church, someone imagining the worst.
“Let us through,” she said in Spanish.
The men by the door immediately backed away, several with hands raised. A few others filed out from just inside the building, ducking their heads, children with them. Faye wasn’t sure what was going on inside the chapel but it sure as hell wasn’t a religious service.
Grey followed her inside, watching her as carefully as the men who had made way for their passage. Once inside it didn’t take long to realize a gun would be pointless, especially a gun with a maximum capacity of two rounds. She had never seen a room this size with more people crowded into it – no club or concert or sporting event even came close.
Grey looked back toward the door. “I get … claustrophobic.”
“You’re staying here,” Faye said.
The smell of so many bodies crowded together was overpowering. Faye tried to squeeze past a woman in front of her. A stout Venezuelan with curly black hair and a face like a troll, she toppled into the man standing next to her with Faye’s movement, that man leaning into the body next to him. It was like a line of dominos. Shouts and curses, arms jabbing; no one was getting through this crowd. It might as well have been a living wall.
Faye rested one hand on Grey’s shoulder, asking the man in front of her if she could use him for support. His deer-in-headlights look convinced her to act and apologize later.
She boosted herself up above the crowd, her arms locked on their shoulders, ignoring the grunt of the Venezuelan man. At least Grey had the courtesy to pretend she weighed nothing.
A head or two above the milling crowd, Faye was able to see the entire room. Doors had been broken off an adjoining room, cots or tables set up inside. Partially covered bodies lay on them, more lying on the floor.
A sick room, maybe? Now that she thought about it, she hadn’t seen a hospital in town. There had to be doctors here, didn’t there?
Near the entrance to the sick room, two boys were managing the crowd. They handed a package to a woman in line, ignoring her shouts and gestures. One of the boys with a deformity on his face took her by the arm, ushering her and her three children into the sick room. It must lead to an exit.
Before the woman disappeared around the corner, Faye caught a better glimpse of what she carried – the object the boys had delivered. It was the emergency supplies Faye and her team had brought down. Freeze-dried food, blankets, and clothing, wrapped together in a tight bundle. Because nothing tasted better in an emergency than space food.
The man whose shoulder she was balancing on buckled beneath her and Faye came down hard crashing into Grey who made an attempt to catch her. They both ended up on the floor.
More bodies shuffled in from outside, the gunshot already forgotten.
“This is pointless,” Faye said.
“Did you see a pastor?”
“No, just a couple kids. Let’s go.”
Grey cupped his hands together. “I need everyone’s attention! We need to speak with the pastor or priest here! It’s a matter of life and death.”
Dirty faces stared back at them with blank stares.
“It’s not going to work,” Faye said.
“We need to speak with the head of the church!”
A soft voice rose from the back of the room. “You can wait in line like everyone else.” The English was good, but it wasn’t a man’s voice; it was the voice of a child.
“Lift me up again,” Faye said. “On your shoulders.”
Grey ducked down for her to climb on top. He stood, a little shaky at first, before getting his feet beneath him.
Faye looked out over the sea of heads, the two boys continuing to deliver their goods while pointedly ignoring her. “Hey! What you’re handing out? I brought that! Those are my goods,” she shouted.
A boy with a face that was half black, almost as if he were wearing a mask, glanced at her briefly.
“We only want a minute of his time,” Faye continued. “Please?”
Not even a glance this time.
“Crowd surf,” Grey said beneath her. “Just ride on top of them.” His sentences were getting shorter, his breathing shallow. He hadn’t been joking about the claustrophobia.
Bodies so tightly packed together with barely enough space to shuffle a half-step at a time. It just might work.
“I always wanted to be a rock star,” Faye said, before shouting for the group to raise their hands. “Levantense las manos!” she repeated.
The men and women directly in front of her must have thought she was about to bring out her gun again as their hands shot upward.
“Please, help me,” she said in Spanish as she stretched her upper body over the first group of people, her legs still wrapped around Grey’s head.
They caught her. Grey shifted his body, grabbing and pushing her butt as he lifted her from his head, helping her glide forward.
Faye smiled inwardly.
Slick, Grey, slick.
Her body rolled – shifting, falling, rising as the hands beneath her kept her afloat. Her smile only grew wider. What a rush. She slipped between two individuals, her head landing against someone’s shoulder and then she was back up, riding the crowd until she came to the far end of the room.
The landing wasn’t nearly as graceful as the voyage, and even that had been wobbly, but Faye picked herself up, standing before the two young boys. They gazed at her as if she had appeared out of thin air.
“Take me to the priest.”
This time she got a nod.
Verse IX.
Zephyr finished tying off a rope wound around the trunk of a huge kapok tree, at least two-meters in diameter. Its grey bark protruded in
gnarled spikes. A second rope had been secured around a fallen boulder the size of a small house. He pulled against the rope, rippled muscles on his arms and shoulders revealing thick veins beneath.
“We’re good,” he called back.
Dugan spun an outstretched finger in a circular motion. Let’s get on with it, boys.
Zephyr snapped a carabiner onto the rope, attaching it to the webbing he had stepped into, then tossed the rope’s end to the men standing at the edge of the fog. “This ain’t spelunking cable; three to a line. No more.”
Leech picked up the fallen rope, attaching his webbing to the knotted loop. “Should we hold hands too?”
“Kumbaya my Lord, kumbaya,” Rojo sang, his grainy voice barely keeping to the melody. A few of the others snickered as he took the rope from Leech.
Cy snapped his own carabiner into the second rope, handing it off to Dugan. Dugan let the rope fall, without hooking in.
“You staying?” Kendall asked, replacing a canteen onto his belt and picking up the fallen line.
“I’ll take my chances without stumbling over all of you,” Dugan said.
“You’re a real boy scout.”
Rojo stood at the edge of the fog, raising the FLIR monocular again from his eyes. “You sure it’s not the batteries?”
“They’re lithium-iodide, not Duracell,” Cy said.
Night vision goggles were useless when it came to seeing through fog; their sole design was built around the magnification of light. The problem was that the tiny particles in smoke or fog reflected light, so all you ended up doing was trading a grey cloud for a green one.
Thermal imaging however was different. Because fog gave off no resident heat, one could simply see through it as if it weren’t there, the intense heat signatures of anything living lighting up with no obfuscation.
At least that was how it was supposed to work.
Dugan still saw a flash of white behind his eyelids every time he blinked. The wall of fog had been one massive towering entity of heat, breathing in and out with every tendril’s swirl. A searing white light had blasted from the FLIR’s view, blinding Dugan and each of the others who had looked through it. What they were seeing, according to the laws of physics and nature, simply couldn’t be. Then again they were dealing with a people who were skimming the edges of immortality and a prophet who could summon the earth and sky at his command.
“You think it’s alive? The fog?” Rojo asked.
“If it is, then there’s a way to kill it,” Zephyr said.
“No guns,” Dugan said. “Be too easy to get turned around in there and start shooting each other. Keep ‘em holstered. And if you see a Makuxi, you damn well make sure it’s not Oso before you bring him down or don’t bother coming back out. Understood?”
He could see the apprehension in a few of their faces. In truth, he could understand. They were facing something that had no explanation. And by the time they made out more than the form of a person within that dense fog, it might be too late.
He continued, “I don’t care how deep this goes, or what it does to us. We press through till we find the other side. Once you’re through, wait for the others. We move on as a team.”
“Dugan?” Cy came over and slapped a hard cylinder into his hand. It was a handheld signal flare, its tube casing protecting the signal carrier that would launch with an initiated charge. “In case we get separated.”
He handed a flare to each of the other men.
“I’d feel better knowing whether Oso had screamed,” Kendall said.
“Gah, gah, gah,” Chupa said, imitating Oso’s growl.
“Enough!” Dugan unlatched his hunting knife, its ivory handle expertly molded to the shape of his hand. The blade curved like a wave, serrated teeth grinning darkly. “I can guarantee the Shaman’s more frightened of us than we are of this. Stay grounded.”
He stepped into the fog.
Immediately his senses felt heightened. A blizzard of ash enveloped him, shapes and shadows swirling with a hypnotic, dizzying effect. He had seen shapes within the fog while they waited for Cy and Leech to return, but dismissed them for the imaginings he knew they were. Now he wasn’t so sure.
His eyes stung and began to water. He held a hand directly in front of his face, the fog so thick he saw only a shadowed outline. Vapors crawled through his nostrils, reaching down his throat. He wondered if those wispy tendrils would suddenly solidify, smoke becoming substance, killing him where he stood. He should have at least lit a cigarette before stepping into this madness.
“Stay grounded!” he shouted.
His words were hollow, dissipating before they had a chance to carry, as if the fog itself had clamped an invisible hand over his mouth. He glanced behind to see if anyone had followed. If they had he would never know.
Turning back around he realized he was no longer certain which way was forward. He stumbled, one foot kicking against some inanimate object he couldn’t see. Distorted faces slunk just within grasp before disappearing back into the fog. A tree trunk appeared, causing his heart to leap. If there was a coordinated attack in this fog, his men wouldn’t stand a chance.
Something suddenly pressed into the small of his back.
Dugan froze. This was no hallucination.
A man’s face slid within inches of his own. Dark skin, pale colorless eyes.
“Doog.”
Zephyr raised his shotgun between them, rotating its barrel with a clack that should have been much louder before continuing past. He was instantly lost in grey shadow.
So much for Dugan’s charge regarding the guns.
He stepped on the rope trailing behind Zephyr, almost tripping over it. Brambles of brush tore at his feet, an invisible branch scraping the top of his head.
How far had they come? And what were they being led to?
Dugan pressed one hand to his vest, feeling the weight of his notebook within. The tickle in his throat was becoming an itch he couldn’t scratch; he cleared his throat in an attempt to keep it at bay.
A high-pitched screech broke through the fog, directionless. Not a scream of agony or pain, but one of surprise.
And fear.
Dugan turned about, trying to pinpoint where it was coming from. The scream seemed to pull back, whisked away like the noise of a passing train.
“Watch for sinkholes!”
He realized, with the words, they couldn’t see their own feet let alone the ground before them. He wasn’t sure anyone could hear him anyway.
A slight buzzing sound vibrated up from the ground around him. Something moving. Quickly.
Dugan gripped his knife tighter, ignoring his sweaty palm. Without being able to see the flare he held in his other hand, he flipped open the firing cap. Now he’d only need to apply pressure to its end to send the flare soaring.
That and cover his eyes.
“Dugan?”
Zephyr’s voice, close. Or far. He had no way to gauge.
“Here!”
“I’m gonna –” Thwoomp.
Zephyr’s voice cut off as if something had hit him hard. He cried out, his voice trailing off as if he were being dragged away at unimaginable speeds.
The buzzing noise amplified all around Dugan, vibrating. He crouched down, prepared to slam the flare’s end into the ground when something pulled taut beneath him, sweeping him from his feet. Dugan fell, one leg caught in the contraption that now yanked him forward, his back sliding against the hardened earth.
A trap.
His head hit into a rock or tree trunk as his body was propelled along, dragged across the down-sloped terrain. He rolled in the dirt, coming loose from the winding rope only to be snagged by it again. It shot him forward as if wound by an electric crank. A shark on a line.
Dugan flailed, his knife lost, hand battering at the ground, trying to keep with the speed he was being pulled. Just ahead he heard Zephyr’s cry go from anger to a tremulous yelp.
Dugan slammed the butt of the flare int
o the ground, light bursting around him, then behind him as he was pulled forward.
It was enough to see what was coming.
Enough to see what wasn’t.
Dugan grasped at the rope biting into his leg but too late – he was launched into the air, the ground dropping out from beneath him, propelled off the edge of a precipice that should not have been there.
Verse X.
The child with the growth on his face led Faye not through the sick room, but past a hanging sheet on the other side of the wall. It opened up into a short hall. He had to be no older than nine or ten, his arms so thin Faye wondered if there was any muscle attached to the bone. He had an innocent look to his face despite the deformity which was impossible not to stare at. By not looking at it, Faye felt she was drawing even more attention to it.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Josue.”
“Do people treat you differently, Josue? Because of your face?”
“Some.”
“Don’t let them. You see this?” She pointed to the side of her head, the tattooed claw raking against her whiskered skull. “It’s to remind me. That our pains? The abuses people inflict upon us? They can be used to make us stronger.”
The boy turned away from her, continuing down the hall. “God is my reminder,” he said.
“You speak English very well.”
He didn’t answer her.
Josue stopped before a curved wooden door. A thick woven rug hung from the adjacent wall depicting a bald man with a light shining from the back of his head in an arc. He held a dove in one hand and what Faye assumed was the Bible in his other. She had always hated churches that glorified ordinary men, creating an air of impossible righteousness even the most pious of churchgoers could never attain.
No matter what you ordered when you walked into a church, it always came with an extra helping of guilt when what most people really needed was just to know they were okay. Their faults, their failures, their mistakes? They had all been made before.
And they would be made again.
