by Chuck Wendig
The two of them don’t say much. Occasionally, she catches Ethan watching her. Smiling. Thumb drawing circles on the outside of the pistol.
He tells her to take a turn off the highway— a highway that’s increasingly lost to disrepair, a highway now where they haven’t seen another car in five, maybe ten minutes. At the turnoff, a sign. White sign, green text:
HIGH CLEARANCE VEHICLES ONLY
4-WHEEL DRIVE RECOMMENDED
ROAD NOT MAINTAINED
DO NOT CROSS FLOODED WASHES
SERVICES NOT AVAILABLE
LIMITED PATROL AREA
The sign’s got bullet holes in it.
“Down this way,” he says.
“I don’t think the van has four-wheel drive.”
He tilts his head in a half-ass shrug. “It’ll be fine. I’ve driven this road many a time. We’ll make it.”
Miriam turns the van onto the road— which is less of a road and more of a car-width dirt path carved through the desert. Ahead, the land rises up in berms and hills. A few trees here and there. Cholla catching the late-day light in silver cactus needles. “This road have a name?”
“Grave Gulch Road,” he says.
“You’re fucking kidding me.”
“I am not. Story goes that a century ago, a great gullywasher of a storm came down so hard, it dug up all the graves at the cemetery— what town, I don’t know— and washed all the bodies out of their graves and down into the gulch. Stories say a lot of things, but I’m inclined to believe this one.”
The van judders and groans on the uneven, unpaved road.
“Limited patrol area,” Miriam repeats from the sign. “What’s the deal?”
“Ahead is some of the most lawless land in America,” he says. “The Wild West but a whole lot worse. Might as well be the mountains of Afghanistan. Here in the Valley, the cartels send up drug smugglers, human traffickers, stone-cold killers— and nobody knows how to handle it. Not the government, not the people who actually live here. Then you get rip crews trying to hit the drugs, the money, the slaves. Then you get coyotes— other smugglers— trying to sneak through without being noticed, and then it’s a shooting war. Innocent people get hurt.”
Way he says that last thing is different from how he said all the things before it. Innocent people get hurt. A fire stoked in those words. Hot ash poked with an iron prod.
She senses a scab. In true Miriam fashion, she decides to pick it.
“Someone you know got hurt.”
He nods. The van bangs and bounces along. “My wife.”
“What happened to her?”
“You’ll see. At dinner tonight, you’ll see.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
CAMP LIBERTY TREE
The sky goes purple: spilled wine and black eyes. The rumbling road winds through a pair of hills, and then Miriam sees: two telephone poles, thrust up out of the desert ground. Wire strung between them, flags hanging upside down— Ethan advises her to drive underneath. One flag: tattered, washed-out, showing a green pine tree with the words APPEAL TO HEAVEN underneath. A second flag: yellow fabric, coiled rattlesnake, DON’T TREAD ON ME. A third flag, instantly recognizable (and Miriam’s middle twists like an earthworm when she sees it): lightning forking toward a dead tree, a tree with stars in its branches.
THE COMING STORM.
Ahead, a cattle gate. A husky man with a big round belly stuffed in camo fatigues stares ahead into the van’s windshield, then jogs over, the rifle at his back bouncing with each step. He unhooks the gate, lets it swing wide.
Ethan rolls down the window. The man comes up. Guy’s got an ogre’s nose and a thatchy golden beard that looks like the hay sticking out of a scarecrow’s sleeve. Each of his cheeks is a moonscape of pockmarks. He says, “ ’Sup, hoss.”
“Bill,” Ethan says. “We got a guest here.”
The man peers in and grins. “The girl.”
“Jesus Christ with the girl shit,” Miriam hisses.
Bill says: “Got some venom, this one. That’s good.”
“Everything quiet around here?”
“No louder than a lizard fart.”
“Let’s keep it that way. See you, Bill.”
Bill tips his cap.
Miriam pulls the van through.
The gate closes behind them with a squeak and a bang. Each sound makes her jump— just a little, she hopes, so Ethan didn’t see. But she knows: This is the point of no return.
What the hell is this place?
Ahead: buildings. A few little ramshackle houses. Maybe a half-dozen trailers and, beyond them, twice as many tents. Folks around, doing work: A man in a white T-shirt and jeans carries a case of what looks like Gatorade. Another woman in a long ponytail pulls a handtruck loaded with heavy square boxes, boxes marked with green and yellow bands and with a logo that reads REMINGTON. Ammunition? As if on cue, somewhere off in the distance, the pop-pop-pop of guns going off. She recoils.
“Relax,” Ethan says. “Just range practice.”
“So, this is some kind of what, cult? Militia? You’re Jonestown but with Gatorade instead of Flavor Aid?”
“I thought they drank Kool-Aid.”
“Nope. Flavor Aid. The Kool-Aid Man is a patsy.”
Ethan nods. “You’re a smart girl.”
“Smartest motherfucker in the room,” she lies, bold with false bravado.
“Good. We need more people like you.”
She sneers. “I appreciate your optimism, but I’m not really the joining type. I won’t even stand for the Pledge of Allegiance—I fade out in the middle. Shit, I just quit smoking— I’m so bad at commitments, I can’t even stay addicted to something. So, if it’s between you and me, I’ll just grab my friend and head back to some place where a bunch of fucking screw-loose crazy-brains aren’t marching around with automatic weapons in their little pretend army.”
Ethan’s smile drops. “Stay one night. I want you to meet my wife.”
“I don’t give a raccoon’s red cock about your wife. I just want to go.”
He tightens his grip on the pistol. She’d almost forgotten about that. He says, “The request is polite but firm. Less a question, more of a command, Miriam.”
“You like ordering people around, do you?”
“When it gets the job done.”
“You know who else liked ordering people around? Hitler. Probably.”
“You got the wrong idea about us. But you’ll see. Here—” He points ahead, toward a little avenue tucked between a trailer and a massive tent. “Pull back there and park. I’ll get someone to take you over to your girlfriend, maybe give you a quick tour. Then dinner with me and mine. How’s that sound?”
“Like a nightmare.”
He shrugs as she pulls forward, finds a patch of rough-but-even ground to park the van. “The nightmare is what’s outside these fences, not what’s inside of ’em. Go see Gabrielle— sorry, Gabby. And we’ll hook back up. Oh, one more thing—” And here, as they park, he grabs the keys out of the van. He gives a wink and a nod as he yanks his hand away before she can touch him. “Just making sure you’ll keep your dinner date, not skip out on us.”
TWENTY-NINE
THE VIEWER, THE DOER, THE WHOO-ER, AND THE TOO-ER
For a moment, Miriam feels unpinned— a lawn chair blowing around in a tornado. Ethan is gone. And she’s alone. In this strange little half-town, way out in the desert, in a state she doesn’t know, in a part of the country she doesn’t know. She wants to find Gabby, but suddenly, everything seems big and she feels small.
Then: a young woman stands there. Dusky, smooth skin, long black hair drawn back in a ponytail. All parts of her stand at a tilt: head cocked, arms crossed, upper torso tilted left, hip and left leg going right. A human zigzag.
The woman sucks air through her teeth.
“What?” Miriam asks.
“I’m your guide.”
“Guide. What is this, Disneyland? I want to see my—” And
here she catches herself because she’s about to say girlfriend but that’s not right. Is it? “I want to see Gabby. My friend. So, let’s hurry that along.”
“Yeah, yeah, but she’s at the far end, and we gotta walk it. So: a tour.”
In the distance, as the sky bleeds from purple to red like a gut shot, she hears those rifles and pistols going off not too far away now: pop pop pop.
Miriam feels unsettled. This place is— she doesn’t know how to describe it. Uneven, somehow. Sound crackling from a broken radio. In discomfort she seeks comfort, or at least her own sick and twisted version of it. And given her inability to see how Ethan Key was going to take a desert dirt nap, here’s a chance to satisfy the craving that lives in her tingling fingertips, in the hinge of her wrist.
She thrusts out her hand. “I’m Miriam.”
“I’m Ofelia.”
Ofelia takes the hand and—
A red crimson wash. A pulsebeat drumming. A breath, deep and gasping, in and out, in and out, inhale, exhale, all the world a throbbing heart, a palpitating lung, a great artery flush with blood . . .
Miriam gasps, pulls her hand away.
“You,” she says.
“Me?” Ofelia asks, cheeky. Because she knows.
“You’re . . . You have a power.”
Ofelia sticks out her tongue and she seems proud as the cat that not only caught the canary but ate its head clean off its body, too. “Maybe.”
“What can you do?”
“You’ll see. C’mon. Tour time.” And with that, she starts walking.
Here, Miriam’s stubbornness wants to rise up from the dirt like an iron beast and plant its immovable feet: she doesn’t want to move. She wants to pout, spit, hiss until she gets her way. I don’t follow people. She leads the way. Others trail after in the wake she leaves behind. But? Fine. Gabby is at the end of this yellow brick road, so with reluctance so strong it’s painful, she hurries after.
Because now she’s playing catch-up.
And she hates playing catch-up.
Ofelia, she’s already talking. “Mostly, the trailers are houses. People live there, sleep there, got kitchens. The trailers are for special people. Like me. Like you, if you decide to stay.” That last sentence doesn’t sound welcoming. Miriam detects a bitterness there— jealousy like battery acid burning. “Tents got more beds— cots one after the other, but that sucks because it gets pretty cold at night. There’s a few actual houses here too— and the ranch house at the end of the drive is Ethan and Karen’s place.”
“Karen. His wife?”
Ofelia gives a dismissive hand gesture as she walks, like yeah yeah whatever, bitch, I’m talking here. “You take that little road there, you get the greenhouse, the storage locker, the mess tent, the honey buckets—” Ofelia turns around, preemptively irritated, eyes narrowed. “Honey buckets are, like, Port-a-Johns. Where you do your business.”
“I’m road trash, bitch, I know what a honey bucket is.”
“I bet you do.”
There, a look that says— what, exactly? Somehow, this little twat thinks she’s better than Miriam? “Don’t sass me, hooker.”
And there: the girl’s face falls. Like she’s reeling, like somebody just slapped her. “Who said I was a hooker?”
“Uhh.” Miriam scrunches up her face. “This is seriously the easiest game of Clue you’ll ever play. It was Colonel Miriam. In the desert. With my mouth.”
“But who told you that?” And here she pokes Miriam right in the breastbone, prod, prod, prod. “Who said that’s what I did around here?”
Blink, blink.
“Jesus, don’t get hostile. Is that what you do around here?”
“I’m an escort.” More poking. Poke, poke, poke. “Not some hooker.”
“Hey, fuck off. I don’t care—” She catches Ofelia’s finger, holds it there. “I don’t care what you call yourself, hooker, ho, escort, courtesan, Scheherazade—”
“Schuh-hur-a-what?” And then Ofelia gives her a hard shove and comes at her. Miriam staggers back, looking around like Is anybody seeing this? Does anybody even care? Ofelia shoves her again. “What’s that mean? What’d you call me? You fuckin’—” She cocks a fist at Miriam’s head, and Miriam thinks: I’m gonna have to take this cuckoo cunt down, right here, right now. But then the fist just falls apart like a loose snowball and the girl shakes it off. “You’re not worth it. You wanna see your friend? Fine. Let’s go.”
She marches off. Arms stiff, swinging at her side. Petulant.
Miriam, again, catches up. “Hey, hold up—”
“Shooting range is over there. Ammo and gun closet nearby. Got a few general-use vehicles like Jeeps and shit in the back lot—”
She reaches out, catches Ofelia by the crook of her arm. The woman’s hand curls back into a fist. Miriam, in a rare moment, holds up the flats of her surrendering hands.
“I get it,” Miriam says. “You’re a psycho psychic with a chip on her shoulder the size of a perching pterodactyl. We’re practically sisters.”
Ofelia looks her up and down. The distrust and disdain come off her in waves. If this were a cartoon, she’d be giving off stink lines of the stuff.
“We both have powers,” Miriam says. “What can you see?”
“See?” Ofelia asks with a hollow laugh. “I don’t see a thing. You’re a viewer. But I’m a doer. I don’t see shit. I do shit.”
“Like what?”
Ofelia grabs Miriam’s chin. Tilts her head straightaway. She meets Miriam’s stare— a hard stare returned, two eyes like iron pokers gone hot cherry orange. And Miriam feels a twinge—something deep inside her, some hunger, some lust, some whipping and lashing thing like an eel caught on a fishing line, and something between her legs coils tight. Even in the dry desert, she feels wet— wet there, wet under her tongue, wet under her armpits—
Miriam pulls away.
Then she shoves Ofelia.
Ofelia laughs. “That’s what I do. I make people want me. Can’t do it to women too much— works a little better if they like chicks.” She holds up her two fingers in a V and waggles her tongue between the valley of digits.
“I didn’t say you could do that.” Her jaw locks. Hit her. Just hit her.
“You didn’t say I could do a lot of things. I don’t need your permission.”
“This is what you do, isn’t it? You make men want you. Then they pay you for the privilege. That’s about a hundred miles away from hooker.”
“You just mad because some little Taw-haw-naw bitch took control away from you. Maybe you need to be a little out of control.”
Miriam narrows her eyes. “Trust me. If I’m any more out of control, I’d be a fucking F5 tornado. You don’t get to tell me who I am or what I do. Now— point your finger to where they’re keeping my friend.”
“Your lezzie girlfriend?”
“Point your finger.”
Ofelia licks her lips. She looks half-mad, half-embarrassed. After a few moments of moping, she sticks up her hand and extends a finger. “That tent over there— the red box tent. She’s in there.”
“Good.”
Miriam pops Ofelia in the stomach. The girl oofs and doubles over, dropping to her knees.
Then Miriam says, “Thanks for the tour.”
She marches toward the tent as people in the street rush toward Ofelia. Miriam sets her jaw. Doesn’t look back. Someone wants to come for her?
Let ’em come.
THIRTY
THE RED TENT
Nobody stops her. Someone yells but she keeps going. Fist throbbing from the hit, Miriam pushes the flap of the tent back, and there, ten feet away, sits Gabby. Staring down at her hands folded in her lap. She’s not alone. Big guy behind her— a muscle-bound freak with a crooked jaw and an ink-black military buzz cut. Ink scrawled up both arms. He steps forward, lifts his chin not by way of a greeting but like he’s looking down his nose at her, inspecting her.
Miriam skirts pas
t him. Gabby sees her suddenly. Launches up. Her face, already lined with crisscross scars, already like a puzzle that a child forced together, now sits streaked with makeup. The two of them succumb to gravity and pull together in a hug.
Gabby cries softly.
Miriam rubs circles on her back. “Shh. It’s okay.” Then she pulls back and holds Gabby’s face with both hands. “Did anyone hurt you?”
A gentle— and hesitant— shake of Gabby’s head.
“No one?” Miriam asks. “Nobody laid a hand on you?”
Gabby flits her eyes toward the big guy only a few feet away. “He . . . slapped me.” And now Miriam can see it— that little crust of blood, a little line of it, down the center of Gabby’s lower lip.
That’s it. That’s all she needs. Miriam leans in, hugs her again, and whispers in Gabby’s ear: “I’m gonna kill them all for you. And I’m going to start with that fucking meatsack over there.”
They share a look then.
What shines in Gabby’s eyes, Miriam can’t quite tell. She thinks it’s fear. Maybe pride, too. Like she loves Miriam, but she’s scared of her too.
That’s probably fair.
“C’mon, girls,” Musclebound Meatsack says. He reaches for them, but Miriam pulls away. “It’s dinnertime.”
The temptation to touch him is an overpowering frequency. But Miriam just offers up her most vicious, vulpine grin and says, “I don’t need to touch you. Because I already know how it happens.”
Her words, though, trail off. Because as he turns, she sees something written across his forearm. A tattoo. Janice. Above that, the tree, the lightning, the warning about the coming storm.
He’s there. In the courthouse. When it all goes to hell. Musclebound Meatsack will be the one who shoots the old guard in the face.
“Just fucking move,” he says.
Miriam thinks: I’m going to kill him here. Now.
Her gaze flits. He’s got a gun slung over his shoulder— a rifle. Miriam’s no expert, but it looks like an AK-47: brown stock, metal everything else. She thinks: Grab the gun. Or maybe there’s something nearby. A knife. Scissors. Christ, if she could get a pair of tweezers, she’d use them to pull the tip of his dick up through his chest and out his mouth. He turns his back, waves them out of the tent. And then she sees it: a metal stool. Gabby was sitting on it.
