When the Deville slid sideways across the pavement, up onto the sidewalk and into the brick wall of the adjacent building, Reyes could hear and see nothing. Shattered glass and crunching metal went unheeded until finally the Deville came to a stop. Reyes was pinned beneath the steering wheel and blood was running quickly down his face and off his chin. His breathing came erratically and for a few panicked moments, he thought he had been stricken blind. But he put his right hand to his face and pulled away the felt liner that had torn away from the ceiling. When he tore it away and he could see again, he looked out the empty space where the windshield had been only a moment before and saw a man—a boy, really, but Reyes was so panicked that everything looked overwhelming and frightening—standing shirtless in front of the car.
Reyes had not heard or felt the tow truck back away from the side of the Deville, but it was now idling about twenty yards away, its grille barely scratched from the impact. He looked back to the shirtless boy standing in front of the Deville, a boy who was wearing glasses, Reyes could now make out, and who was pointing a hand gun straight at Reyes.
“Who are you?” the boy shouted. He was dark-skinned, Reyes could see that even in the failing light of day. He had buckteeth, but not comically so; in fact, his face looked menacing, if not a bit playful. His arms were long, strangely long, Reyes thought, and his pants were sagged down, revealing dingy white boxer shorts beneath. The boy reminded him of so many of the thug punks who lived in his neighborhood growing up in Oakland. “Who the fuck are you?” the boy repeated.
“No one,” Reyes shouted, and his voice came out garbled. His upper lip and left cheek were swelling. “I was just… looking for gas.”
The boy fired two shots at the Deville and Reyes ducked down as far as he could beneath the dash.
“You lyin’?” the boy asked. Reyes could not place his accent. He had never heard such an odd cadence before.
“No, just gas and cigarettes. I’m heading to Texas.”
“Texas? Why?”
Reyes raised his head just a bit. “Don’t shoot me. I’ll talk, but don’t shoot me.”
“Why Texas?” the boy said again.
“My sister lives in Amarillo. I want to go see if she’s…”
“Dead?” the boy finished for Reyes.
“Still alive,” he said for himself.
The boy lowered the gun and tucked it into his belt. “Get out o’ that car,” he said, walking off toward the tow truck.
“I can’t,” Reyes yelled. “I’m stuck.”
“Get yourself unstuck,” the boy shouted back. He leaned against the massive reinforced bumper of the tow truck, lighting a cigarette. Little fucker’s enjoying this, Reyes thought. His stupid goddamn game of the day.
Reyes did manage to unpin himself from beneath the steering wheel. He crawled through the opening where the windshield had been and stood on solid ground. His legs felt heavy and bruised, but not broken. He was, generally speaking, okay.
The boy watched from the bumper, smoking his cigarette. He had a smile on his face that revealed the extent of his buckteeth, and looking at the kid, Reyes wanted to punch him. Wanted to beat the pulp out of the skinny little shit. But one of the lessons he had learned over the past week—had known it all his life, really—was that the man with the gun was the man with the power.
“You got any food in there?” the boy asked, nodding toward the Deville.
“Couple days’ worth,” Reyes said.
“Bring it with you.”
“Bring it where?” Reyes said, his legs feeling a little more stable now.
“With me. Ain’t gonna sleep in that mess, are ya?”
The boy threw his cigarette to the ground, still half-unsmoked. Reyes watched him waste the good cigarette and craved one more than he had all day long. He had wanted one hours ago; now he needed one. But he did as he was told. He grabbed the two bags of food in the back seat of the Deville and walked toward the tow truck. When he got within twenty feet of the boy, he stopped.
The boy laughed. “I ain’t gonna shoot you, bro. Get in.” To demonstrate his disinterest in actually shooting Reyes, the boy climbed into the cab of the tow truck and placed the gun on the dashboard. Reyes watched for a moment until the boy gunned the engine, startling Reyes into movement. He climbed into the passenger side of the truck.
“You Mexican?” the boy asked as soon as he had put the truck into gear.
Reyes shook his head. “Puerto Rican. You Indian?”
“Not Indian, bro. Native American. Navajo. Watch it with that Indian stuff.” The boy seemed genuinely peeved about Reyes’s slip, so Reyes thought it best to let it go. They rode on in silence until they turned off onto a dirt road that seemingly went nowhere. The boy asked, “So did you see it?”
“See what?”
The boy made a raspberry sound through his lips. “’See what?’ What do you think, bro? You think all them buildings just fell down on their own?”
Reyes knew perfectly well what the boy had been talking about, but he had no interest in talking about it. He had seen things he would just as soon forget as soon as possible; talking about them would just refresh the memories, make them new again. “Yeah, I saw it,” Reyes said. “Got a good close look at it and I never want to think about it again.”
Inexplicably, the boy laughed for a long time. Reyes could not figure out what was funny, but he said nothing. He just watched the desert zip by and bounced up and down in his seat as the truck undulated toward wherever the boy was taking him. The sun had all but gone down now, and the two pinstripes of light from the truck’s headlights shone on dirt and dust, and nothing else. There were no houses out here, no buildings, and just like everywhere else, no people.
Until, all of a sudden, there were.
The truck dipped down into a small ravine, perhaps ten feet deep at its bottom, and the boy swung the truck hard left. All of a sudden, in the middle of this wash, was a building, perhaps the size of a fast food restaurant. People bustled in and out of its makeshift doors, and its wooden walls had words spray-painted all over it. Some words Reyes understood: Navajo Nation; Southside, which was crossed out, and beneath it was written NO GANG SHIT; then there were other words written in a language Reyes presumed was Navajo.
“We been hidin’ out,” the boy said. “That thing came through the town, but we were already down here. We heard what happened in Kingman and Flagstaff. We came out here.”
“There’s so many people,” Reyes said. “I haven’t seen more than ten people since I left California. Living ones, at least.”
The boy laughed again. “People in Winslow survive. Even when we ain’t supposed to.”
“You sure that thing came through here?”
“Probably thought Winslow was already fucked up,” the boy said, still laughing. “Looked like shit before it got here.” He stopped the truck and killed the engine. “No more of that Indian shit, ’kay, bro?”
Reyes nodded. The boy got out of the truck, but not before grabbing his gun off the dashboard.
“Aren’t you afraid of flooding in this wash?” Reyes asked, looking up at the walls of the ravine.
“Ain’t a wash,” the boy said, stuffing the gun in the back of his pants. “We dug it.”
“Dug it?”
“About a year ago.”
“Why?” Reyes asked. The boy just shrugged his shoulders. They entered the building, which was little more than an oversized shack. The walls were thin and the place smelled like wet socks. People sat on beach chairs and buckets in just about every corner of the building, but few people were talking. Some were playing cards. Others were standing, playing hacky sack. Two women were working a grill in the far corner of the building, the smoke billowing upward to a small vent hole in the roof. It smelled like meat, but Reyes couldn’t tell what kind. His stomach gurgled as the smells wafted toward him. The bags of groceries he had taken from the Deville felt suddenly heavy, so he walked instinctively toward the women and put th
e bags down at their feet. They looked only briefly at Reyes, then rifled through the bags to see what they had to work with. One of the women handed Reyes a plate of something he could not recognize. He ate it eagerly as the boy sat on a bucket and watched.
Hours passed. Reyes shook hands with a hundred men, women, little children, a few dogs without leashes. He could not remember the names, but the boy—whose name turned out to be Kenny—tried to help Reyes with them anyway. Eventually, Kenny led Reyes to a corner of the building where two blankets lay heaped. Kenny pointed to the blankets, and Reyes did not need to be told what to do. He fell asleep fast, curled beneath the blankets, his head resting on a rock and a bit of earth, as a tiny black ant ran silently up his left arm.
***
He knew something was wrong even before he opened his eyes. The building had been quiet before, but this quiet felt different. Heavier. Rancid, almost. Reyes opened his eyes and was struck with the unpleasant sensation of seeing exactly what he had seen with his eyes closed: thick darkness. He sat up, and when he did, a hand reached out and pressed against his mouth. Kenny leaned in close to Reyes’s ear and whispered, “It’s here.”
Yes, Reyes knew it now. He had felt this way before, and the complete darkness was not just a coincidental moonless night. It was here; it brought the dark with it. Reyes’s heart quickened in his chest, and he made every effort to slow his breathing as Kenny removed his hand. He could not see if anyone else was near him—hell, the place was probably still packed with people, but if it was, no one was so much as breathing. Reyes suddenly heard his breath as though it were a foghorn, and once again, he tried to slow it down, quiet it.
Minutes passed, and Reyes started to convince himself that, no, this was just a false alarm. It wasn’t here at all. That thick darkness, well, it can fool you when you’re scared. Just darkness, after all. He had almost convinced himself, had almost calmed himself down enough to just go back to sleep and wait until morning. But then he heard a familiar sound, like a dog’s mouth noises, like a toothless grandfather gumming on his dinner. The sound of it. And in case he needed any more convincing, he felt a tickle up his leg, and one up his neck… ants. The ants seemed to come first every time. Reyes could not help himself; he got to his feet and pressed his back against the wall. If anyone was around him, no one said a word, no one protested. But Reyes knew hiding would not work. He knew sitting still would not work. It would come for them, and if they didn’t run, they wouldn’t live.
But he did not know which way to go. He knew he had fallen asleep in the far corner of the building, but how far was it to the door? And where, exactly, on the far wall was the door? And how many people were lying on the ground in between him and the door? Reyes wanted to run, but he could not. He was trapped, just like everyone else in the building.
He heard the mouth noises again, then a subtle whine. He had heard that whine before, too, just before it grew. Right now it would still be small, smaller than a grown man, maybe the size of a ten-year-old boy. Unassuming. That was how it got you. Reyes had thought so back in Malibu. He thought, Hell yeah, I can take it. It’s just a little shit. Reyes didn’t know its trick then. The little fucker could grow, and grow fast. Reyes knew to run this time if he saw that little shit with its white smile spewing brackish saliva, its shiny black skin that looked like a million little ants at work.
Reyes had all but decided to make a run for it when he felt a tug at his ankle. He had resisted brushing away the tickle on his neck and leg that he knew was caused by ants crawling all over him, and probably over the rest of the people if there were people left here at all, but once the hand gripped his ankle, Reyes reached down and slapped at it, could not help himself. And all at once, as he realized he had blown it, had given it something to go on, something to work off of, something to attack, licking flames erupted all around him. The building was on fire, great big shoots of flame, as though it had been rigged to blow. The hand around his ankle tugged harder and Reyes fell to the floor, found himself being pulled backward, then down, and as he reached out to brace himself, he realized he was in a tunnel, and his fingers grasped rungs of an iron ladder. The hand around his ankle finally released him and Reyes climbed down with the others, deep into the darkness, as the licking flames above him suddenly disappeared into thick black, more of the same.
The bottom of the tunnel seemed miles away, and he could not believe he was done descending even when his feet touched ground. “Don’t stop,” Kenny’s voice said through the darkness, and a hand reached out and grabbed Reyes’s wrist, pulled him onward. For minutes they ran, and it wasn’t until after his legs started to tire and his lungs burned that Reyes realized there were others running behind him, ahead of him, far ahead of him. They ran in almost complete silence, their feet making no noise at all. His own feet sounded like garbage can lids hitting pavement, like trains passing through intersections, like waves crashing. He felt awkward, slow. But he went on, running full speed in the darkness. The tickle on his neck was gone, but he expected more. Much more.
When the running finally ended, Reyes found himself back in the desert, looking up at a starry sky and the moon low on the horizon. How long could it be until morning? Kenny stood not far from Reyes, his hands on his knees and his chest heaving.
“Where are we?” Reyes said.
“Away from it,” Kenny replied.
The comfort that washed over Reyes then was complete; these people had prepared for this, had gotten good at eluding the thing. He would be safe with them. Men and women around him, still silent, still uncertain, patted each other on the back, kissed and hugged, high-fived. Smiles. Reyes had not seen smiles in so long. He wanted to cry. He wanted to lie down and rub cool sand all over himself, douse himself in water, feel wind on his face.
An hour passed. Reyes was tired, but he sat up with Kenny and two other men. They spoke quietly, and Reyes could not understand everything they said. Their cadence was strange, their dialect muddled. As one of the men spoke to Kenny, Reyes drifted, looking up at the sky again, which had become darker since the moon dipped below the horizon. And as Reyes examined that darkness, he became disoriented; something felt strange. The stars disappeared. The air stilled. The men had stopped talking, but Reyes had not noticed until he heard that drone again, felt the tickle crawl up his legs and spine. This time he did swat at the ants crawling up his body, and he knew immediately it was too late.
A black wave of ants rushed over the desert landscape. The men and women, out of options, ran in all directions. None made a sound. They disappeared just as quickly as the ants had come, but Reyes stood still, his hands still swatting his arms and chest. The ants came fast, but he was not worried about them. They would swarm around him, or over him, but they would not harm him. Reyes stood like a rock in an eddy, the ants streaming past with their high hiss and their steady thrum, and Reyes saw beyond what he had known all along he would see again. This time he would not escape it, would not even try. It rose above the sea of ants so quickly Reyes’s mind could not register its movement at first. But then it was there, high into the sky, thirty or forty feet up there, blacker than the night sky around it, that stink, that sound, that goddamn itch.
The bastard works quick, Reyes thought. His final thought. His last impulse. He fell to the ground, one part of him to the left, the other to the right. As the ants swarmed around him, Reyes’s eyes flickered once, twice, and his brain never actually registered that he was staring at the bottom of his own shoes, his torso no longer on top of his legs but instead beside them. The bastard works quick. The ants swam on through the desert, seeking out more, venturing further, warning those who had simply bought borrowed time.
THE HEART OF THE MATTER
Paul L. Bates
Kamé hands me my journal.
“Write,” she says, using the word from my language I have taught her, as hers lacks the concept. “Remembering will help you forget.”
Is it a trick of the dappled forest light, or is s
he still growing younger?
She sees me studying her refined face, blushes, makes another of her ever-cryptic observations.
“Beware, a young man’s eye is too soon his grandfather’s squint.”
She has said that before. This time I understand. It is a much more romantic version of the adage The child is father to the man. Is my fascination with her that obvious?
She leaves me alone and, as always, continuity vanishes with her. Not only am I forgetting, I can barely reconstruct the events that bestowed this fate upon me. I review my earlier notes, knowing I must soon destroy them. Her nephew, Chaat, wants only a single clear account of my arrival, one I will keep in the unlikely event I want to remember them. The shaman is above all else a practical man.
“A debt to your friends,” he says, waving at the journal. “All debts must be paid before advancing.”
“Yes,” I agree.
Chaat stands up, admires The Heart glistening behind me, ducks into the shadow of the trees leaving me wondering what he sees.
Not long ago—perhaps even yesterday—I would not have understood Chaat’s notion of debt. It isn’t that I actually owe Knoll, Horton or Mossford anything. It’s simply best, as Kamé says, to pay one’s final respect to one’s recollections and release them, for only the history of the Children need endure. Knoll, Horton and Mossford have, if merely through their cupidity, earned a dubious honor in that respect. Drugged, then impaled alive high above the ground, they ornament the path immediately before the gateway. They serve as a warning to other potential intruders. And for that, we all owe them a debt which I will pay by finding a place for them in Kamé’s history of the Children.
According to my notes, our utterly decrepit and singularly unreliable riverboat had just broken down for the fifth time in half as many weeks since we set out upon this ill-advised journey. Rather than bake beneath the merciless sun without the benefit of breeze indoors or else feed the persistent hoards of gnats that swarm in great churning clouds above the surface of that sleek black snake of a river, four of us opted to trek inland beneath the canopy of the great trees until the boat was seaworthy again.
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