Mules:: A Novel

by Jarred Martin

  Three houses down she saw a young woman dressed in dirty coveralls walking out to her driveway, fumbling with a key chain. She stopped and stared as Neesha ran toward her.

  “Ayudame,” she screamed at the woman. “Ayudame, please, God, help me, please por favor. He’s coming. Please! Take me to the police. Policia.”

  The woman stood frozen before her. She looked down at her keys, turned and unlocked the driver side door of a dark pickup. “Policia?”

  “Si! Si! Policia. He kidnapped me. He took me. Muy peligroso, si?” Neesha pointed across the empty field, and the woman followed her gesture. Looked out at nothing. “I need you to take me to la policia. I can give you money. So much fucking money. Mucho deniro. Can you understand me. He took me. Gusano took me. Please, get me out of here.”

  The keys dropped from her hand. “Gusano?”

  “Si, Gusano. Es malo hombre, si? Muy peligroso. Muy trabajo,” she pleaded, exhausting the majority of her Spanish.

  The woman held the door of the truck open and looked, once again, across the empty field. She said something Neesha couldn't understand and gestured for her to climb inside.

  She did, and the woman got in after her.

  They were driving now, Neesha sobbing in the cab of the truck, endlessly repeating gracias. Gracias. The woman smiled calmly, reached over and patted Neesha’s thigh, said a string of incomprehensible Spanish.

  “Thank you,” Neesha said. “I thought I was fucking dead. You saved me. You’re taking me to the police now? La policia?”

  “Si,” the woman reassured her. “Policia.”

  It dawned on Neesha that they were driving along a dirt road, back the way she had run. Back toward Gusano’s little house. It crossed Neesha’s mind briefly that the woman was taking her back to him, but one look at her face told her that this could not be true. She was helping her. They neared his house.

  “I’m going to duck down in the floorboard, okay? I don’t want Gusano to see me if he’s out there. Just keep driving. Just keep driving while I hide.”

  The woman smiled again and nodded her head.

  Neesha crouched down in the floor. The truck smelled like dirt and some kind of industrial grease. The floorboard was covered in dust and there were pebbles stuck inside the grooves of the floormat. She stayed down there with her eyes shut tight, opening them now and again to glance up at the woman. Her savior.

  But had she really been saved? What would happen when she went to the police? She had seen movies. She thought about corruption, bribes, crooked cops working for the cartels. Maybe the woman would take her to some sort of federal law enforcement. Wouldn’t that be better than local cops? She didn’t know. She thought the woman would know. She had no choice but to trust her.

  The woman worked the gear shifter and smiled down at Neesha. In that same instant the driver side window shattered into confetti and the woman slumped forward onto the wheel, her hair a bloody tangle of skull fragments and gore.

  Neesha screamed though she couldn’t hear herself, while the woman, amazingly, raised her pulverized head, one remaining eye open, her face covered in hot blood, and looked around, stunned, as if she had been slapped hard by an unseen hand. She faltered, gripped the wheel in one hand and floored the truck. She wavered like a KO’d boxer still on his feet, but still managed to drive. Neesha braced herself in the floorboard. She could hear the shots now. The back glass exploded and rained down over the seat. There was another secession of gunshot, distant now as they continued to drive. Neesha had no idea how fast they were going, but she could hear the engine whine in high gear.

  The woman jerked once more like a drunk puppeteer’s marionette as a final slug slammed through her skull, finally ending her life.

  The truck was still moving, the interior awash in a detritus of blood and broken glass. Neesha, still hearing the blast of gunfire behind them did not dare to rise from the floorboard.

  Sudden bone-jarring bang and Neesha felt the world turn upside down, and then nothing as the truck stopped moving.

  Neesha, fading in and out of consciousness like a blinking light, struggling to breathe, was vaguely aware that they had somehow turned upside down. She was pinned between the seat and the dashboard, the front end of the truck had buckled and folded in like an aluminum accordion. Her chest was crushed, each attempt at breath felt like a cement mixer grinding inside of her. Blood trickled from her nose and mouth and flowed up her face, covering her eyes. She feebly wiped at the warm mask of her own life-force and looked up, or down, she couldn’t tell anymore, through the shattered black glass to see Gusano’s face peering through.

  “Game over,” he said, smiling.

  And in her last moments, before the blackness overtook her forever, she thought she could hear a ringing cell phone.

  FORTY THREE

  Myles Wade stank. It was a squalid smell of dust and sweat and the gin seeping through his pores that encircled him like a cloak. He was sitting on a couch that sagged in the middle, in an upstairs apartment in a two story complex in Victoria, Texas.

  He had been drunk since the day before when he and Leandro- one of Calisto’s men who had a penchant for wearing an over-sized Hawaiian shirt, although he had not brought it along on the trip- had ridden up from Colzorona to the border on the back of a flatbed truck with bad shocks. They crossed through a hole in the fence and walked nearly six miles to meet their ride to Victoria. Those six open miles had been a nightmare for Wade, walking through the flat scrubland where any redneck with a rifle could blow his brains out over the loam. Leandro didn’t seem worried about it. He told Wade that he made the trip to the US this way at least twice a year to see his grandmother in Temple, and hardly anyone ever gets shot. The most they do is put you on a bus back to Mexico and you have to go back and cross again. Wade doubted he would be put on a bus and taken back to Mexico, but it hardly seemed worth pointing out.

  He was in Victoria for two reasons: to remove the packages and secure another surgeon on this side to continue to do so for future carriers. This was an oversight in Calisto’s plan. These people he dealt with, the cartels, there are very few with a solid executive vision. It mostly never gets more complex than exchange drugs for money and kill anyone who gets in the way. So by those standards, this operation was a revolution.

  He took a slow drink and felt the heat spread out in his guts. He was dreading the crossing back into Mexico tomorrow.

  Out of the window he saw headlights in the parking lot below. It was Spears’ truck. Wade hoped Spears wasn’t coming up. That was one face he didn't need to see today, or ever, really.

  Leandro and the other one- he had told Wade his name, or maybe he hadn’t, but if he had the information had been consumed in a haze of gin fumes- saw the headlights too, and went down to get the girls.

  Wade had enough time to smoke half a cigarette before the door opened and Els walked in followed by Leandro and the other one carrying Eliana’s corpse through the threshold like a hefty piece of furniture.

  They dumped the dead woman down on the floor and Els, firmly behind bars of her own making, stood back motionless with her hands together.

  “What the fuck is this?” Wade asked, looking down at the body.

  “She died,” Leandro shrugged.

  Wade looked at the brown patch of dried blood on her shirt, just over the incision. He shut his eyes tight and turned his head. He wouldn’t have to examine the body to know that he had killed her.

  The package had torn somehow. How could he have been so careless? But what the hell did they expect? They give me Ziplock bags and duct tape to work with. They probably would have killed her anyway, he had just saved them the trouble.

  He couldn’t bring himself to look at her, another victim of his incompetence, his inept skill as a surgeon.

  Fuck it, he thought. Thats what the booze is for, right? You think you get to have a fucking conscience? This is your life now, Myles, so you better get fucking used to it. You think this girl’s lif
e matters? You think anyone’s in this room does? He looked over at Els. That’s not true though, is it? Calisto told you to keep her alive. He has something planned for her. You got lucky there, didn’t you, sawbones? If it had been her that you killed, you’d be in the shit right now. Up to your fucking ears In it. At least you killed the right one. Congratulations, you get to go on butchering girls against their will. It’s like you won some kind of fucked up lottery.

  Wade dropped the bottle he was holding onto the carpet and ran into the bathroom. He went to his knees before the toilet and heaved gin and stomach acid into the bowl. He hadn’t eaten since yesterday; the contents of his stomach were entirely liquid.

  With his eyes watering and vomit clinging to his lips, he sat back against the bathroom wall.

  There’s no line anymore. There’s nothing separating me from them. I can’t pretend there’s a difference anymore. I’m a killer.I kill women for drug money.

  As soon as he could admit that brutal truth to himself another realization dawned on him. I’m going to kill myself, he thought. Not today, but very soon. I’m going to take a scalpel and cut my wrists open. Maybe shoot myself. There’ll be time to iron out the details later.

  The thought of himself dying, blood leaking from his veins, his life draining away as his heart slowed and finally stopped, was comforting to Wade. It would be good to end it. To stop everything with just a few quick slices up his arms, or the pull of a trigger.

  You’re drunk. It’s easy to make promises to yourself when you’re drunk. You see everything so simply, so much clarity. And when you wake up with your head pounding and your guts churning, it’ll all seem like a thought from some strangers head that got whispered to you while you slept. If you remember anything, it’ll be less than a dream.

  I’ll have to be drunk when I do it. I’ll have to use that simplicity to my advantage.

  Wade stood up and turned on the faucet. He let the water run over his hands and he wiped his mouth.

  He looked at his reflection in the mirror above the sink: pale eyes ringed with black circles.

  He smiled at himself, “Don’t look so glum, chum, it’s very nearly over. You’ll be dead soon. You’ll be as dead as anyone who ever lived!”

  He laughed to himself without smiling, which in the mirror, he had to admit, looked fucking insane. He dried his hands on a hand towel, feeling like a great burden had been taken from him. None of this mattered. Nothing at all. What does it mean to a man who’s halfway out the door?

  As he left the bathroom, he had to stop himself from whistling. He wanted to tell someone. He wanted to tell the world he was going to kill himself.

  In the living room, Leandro and the other one had lain down a layer of bath towels beneath Eliana’s corpse. The one who wasn’t Leandro had a rather large pocket knife and was attempting to cut the package of heroin out of her. He had decided the best way to go about this was not to open up the stitches along the initial incision, but to crudely plunge in and cut around the package like he was carving out a slice of watermelon.

  Wade watched this curiously. The two men crouched over her body, the knife slicing into her like she was a deer carcass- but a hunter field dressing his kill would have approached the task with more deference. He plunged the knife in deep and worked it back toward him, creating a huge ugly gash.

  “God, it stinks,” said Leandro as the smell of shit filled the room.

  The other one had cut far too deep and punctured her intestines.

  They finished the job with their shirts pulled up over their mouths and noses, hacking away until the package was free and Eliana’s butchered corpse lay torn open, stinking and dripping cold blood onto the towels.

  Wade looked on. He saw into Eliana’s dead, half-open eyes, trying to find some sort of meaning in all of this. He knew there was blame, and it should be resting squarely on his shoulders, but he could no longer feel the weight of it. He looked at Els, still in her corner. On her face was an expression that perfectly reflected the way he felt at the moment: empty. Blank. Nothing. She watched the two men as if they were dismantling a tower of Legos instead of a person with whom she had spent the last few days. He supposed there was only so much emotion in people, you could only see so fucking much horror until it all becomes just another thing that happens.

  He could still find some pity for her. Pity that she seemed to have something essential sucked out of her by the experience.

  “Elizabeth,” he called, “you can come with me now.”

  She walked around Eliana’s corpse and he led her to a little room in the back with a make-shift operating table and surgery equipment.

  He shut the door behind them and Els climbed up on the table. She sat and stared at the wall with no discernible emotion at all.

  “I’m sorry you had to see that, I really am. It must have been horrible. I didn’t think-”

  “Where’s Neesha?” Els interrupted.

  Wade answered her, “She’s not here. I don’t know. I don’t think she ever left Mexico.”

  “I thought she’d be here. They said I’d get to see her again when this is all over.”

  “Well maybe you will,” said Wade, not believing it for a second. He very much doubted that her friend was alive, but he couldn’t bring himself to tell her that. It seemed like it would take away the last thing she had to hold on to. He couldn’t do it.

  “Well,” he began, “let’s see if we can get those packages out of you. You must have been pretty worried they would leak after what happened to Eliana. But there wasn’t really anything to worry about, she had to have fallen or taken a blow to cause the pack to rupture like it did.”

  Yes,” said Els. “She fell getting in the truck. She didn’t know it ripped because she was already high on the pills you gave her.”

  No. There was no way she didn’t know. She probably just realized that there was nothing to be done. Heroin overdose isn’t so bad a way to go, really. Might be kind of peaceful. Wade considered that peace. I’m going to die pretty soon, Elizabeth, did you know that? I’ll bet you are, too.

  “Well, no matter the circumstances, you must have lost a lot of faith in me as a surgeon. Probably rightly so.”

  “I never really had that much faith in you to begin with, Doctor. It might not sound nice, but it’s not like I chose your name out of a phone book.”

  “I wouldn’t want me as a surgeon either, kid.” Jesus, that’s the last thing I should say to somebody before I put them under. I’m sorry.”

  “It doesn’t matter what happens to me, Doctor. I just want my friend to be safe. You’ll call Calisto after you get those bags out of me? You’ll tell him everything is okay, I did everything he asked me to, and that he can let Neesha go?”

  “Sure kid, just lie back now, and this will all be over before you know it.”

  Will it be over? Is anything?

  Els lay back and he put the mask over her face.

  In the cage, she went back, deeper and deeper.

  FORTY FOUR

  Inside the once pink and vibrant world of the aster, everything had been reduced to ash. It resembled Pompeii in the days when the coal-black skies finally cleared over the charred remains of a burned world.

  The trees were blackened charcoal spires rising sharp from the ground. The wind blew swirls of ash around beneath a gray sky, and Els waded knee-deep in soot.

  At the top of a black mound that used to be a grassy hill she found Seve, Karlstad, and Neesha. Burnt figures, cinders, carbon statues preserved in their final cowering moments as death rained down from above. Seve was trying to protect Karlstad, kneeling down to cover him with his body. Neesha was frozen with her arms covering her face.

  She reached out to touch Neesha and her remains crumbled into black dust and blew away.

  Els looked down at her hand, dark smudges on her fingertips. She rubbed them together.

  Eliana appeared behind her, and Els turned to face her. There was a gaping hole in Eliana’s midsecti
on exposing the red hollow inside.

  “It’s hard to keep what we love,” she said, looking where Neesha’s ashes had stood. “A hateful wind will blow it away like dandelion seeds-”

  “And scatter it across the land,” Els finished. “There used to be dandelions here, but daddy made me burn them away. He wouldn’t like me being back here. But I had to come back, to see. I didn’t know where else to go.”

  “Where are you now?” asked Eliana.

  “I don’t know.”

  The wind picked up and whipped Els’ hair around her face. They stood in silence in the burned world, ashes in the air like black snowflakes.

  “You will find out soon, then what will you do?”

  “I’m going to find Neesha. I’m going to save her.”

  “You can’t do it from here.”

  “No,” said Els, “I have to go back.”

  “Then open you eyes.”

  FORTY FIVE

  “I said open your eyes.”

  She was moving. The bright Texas sun was muted behind heavily tinted windows as they drove past an apartment complex, kids outside playing in a shallow plastic pool.

  She was in a truck. It wasn’t Spears’ truck, he wasn’t driving. Someone else was. Someone she recognized from Colzorona. He had opened the gate wearing a Hawaiian shirt, she remembered. Where was he taking her?

  She felt that the packages had been removed from her breasts. They were screaming. She felt like someone had used her chest as a punching bag. She had different bandages, she didn’t know when they had last been changed. How long had she been away?

  Across from her, Leandro was talking into a cell phone. “Yeah, she’s awake now. . . Okay.”

  He held the phone out for her without turning his head. She looked at it for a long time before taking it.

  “Neesha?” she spoke into the receiver, her voice quivering with catious hope.