Esperanza

by Trish J. MacGregor

  Ian wasn’t feeling quite as magnanimous as Wayra. He shook off the other man’s arm. “Hold on. My son is back in 1968. How am I supposed to get in touch with him? The last time I talked to him, he was on his way to Quito.”

  Wayra paused. In the starlight, his features looked more wolflike than human, his teeth seemed pearl white, sharper. Ian instinctively stepped back, putting a little more distance between them. Shit, suppose he bites me? Will it turn me into a shifter?

  “I wouldn’t,” Wayra said, as if reading Ian’s mind. “I never have. That’s why I’m the last of my kind. We’ll figure something out about your son. I’ll know more when we get into town. But you must do everything I tell you, follow my instructions to the letter. I know Dominica. I know what she’s capable of, and she’ll find us.”

  With that, he walked on ahead, quickly, as if he couldn’t get away from Ian fast enough. Ian stared after him, mortified and ashamed that he had hurt Wayra’s feelings.

  Dan drove through the twilight with a CD playing, fingers tapping against the steering wheel. He kept worrying about the voice in his head that he’d heard earlier, so Dominica urged him to sip more water and eat some of the snacks he’d bought. She made minor adjustments in his blood chemistry that calmed him. She wished she could do the same for herself.

  She felt increasingly anxious and wasn’t sure why. Perhaps she had to get out of Dan to explore the feeling. But she didn’t dare do it while he was conscious. She couldn’t risk that he might recover all his memories and take off.

  When they reached a lonely stretch of road, she put pressure on his bladder, released more endorphins, and Dan pulled to the side of the road. Yawning, he got out and relieved himself by the side of the car, taking in the glorious moonlit landscape around him. The majestic volcanic peaks, the steep slope covered with trees, the silver ribbon of a river meandering way below him. He glanced at his watch, frowning, and wondered what he was doing out here, miles from any town or village. Dominica quickly censored these doubts by tweaking his pituitary gland again. Now he could barely keep his eyes open.

  She urged him to remove the keys from the ignition and toss them off to the side of the road. Now, in the event that he awakened, he wouldn’t be able to flee in the car. Dominica erased his memory about the keys. She would remember, that was all that mattered. She coaxed him to the trunk.

  He removed the sleeping bag, and spread it out on the back seat. Then he climbed into it, zipped himself inside, a caterpillar in a cocoon, and fell asleep. Dominica quickly went to work on him, making sure he would sleep soundly and deeply for several hours. Then she slipped out of him and immediately heard Pearl calling to her. Dominica located her at the edge of a nearby village.

  “Nica, I wasn’t sure if you could hear me,” Pearl said. “We found Wayra and Ian. They were arguing and . . . Ian seemed to be ill. We pursued them as they drove away from us and something . . . unprecedented happened. Wayra drove their truck over the side of a cliff and it crashed into a field a hundred feet below. We searched through the debris, but found no sign of either of them.”

  “That’s impossible. You must not have checked the area thoroughly.”

  “We checked a five-square-mile area.” Her voice turned to steel. “They are gone.”

  Even Wayra couldn’t take a human being through time. He certainly couldn’t do it while the car he drove plunged over the side of a cliff. “Then we shall go to Tulcán to find Tess and her group.”

  “What about Dan?”

  “He’ll sleep for hours yet. What does Rafael report?”

  “By dawn, the entire city and the surrounding villages will be completely shut down. No power, total isolation. We believe the liberation group may make their move on the solstice, during the nationwide celebration in honor of Inti.”

  The ancient Incan sun god, Dominica thought.

  “Much of the tribe now believes that the insurrection is in full force,” Pearl went on, “that Rafael has overthrown you. He hasn’t told them otherwise. To maintain your position as tribal leader, Nica, you’ll have to address the tribe and do something impressive that really fires their hunger and passions, that shows your strength.”

  “I appreciate your honesty. What sort of impressive feat do you suggest?”

  Pearl told her and Dominica smiled.

  Twenty-five

  JUNE 2008

  They dropped off the Otavalo cop and his son in Ibarra, where they also refueled, and landed in Tulcán just after dusk, as the moon pushed up from the horizon. It was the northernmost city in the country, a popular border crossing between Ecuador and Colombia, located at just over three thousand feet. Tess didn’t know how far it was from Esperanza, but in the Andes, distance was less important than topography.

  The Andes—nearly 23,000 feet above sea level at their highest point—ran like a spine down the middle of this country, with Esperanza folded somewhere within those impossible peaks at 13,200 feet. They would have to ascend more than ten thousand feet. Even if Esperanza was seventy miles from here, the trip could take hours. It would depend on the weather, the treachery and general condition of the roads, whether there were landslides, fog.

  Ed Granger already had said they would go the rest of the way by car. Although it was possible to fly into Esperanza, darkness and the crosscurrents right now created too much risk for a chopper. But Tess wanted to know who was driving what kind of car, how far it was, and what sort of weapons he had to protect Lauren and Maddie from brujos. So as they crossed the tarmac, she said, “How about some details on all this, Ed?” And enumerated her questions.

  He seemed astonished that she asked. “Don’t you worry about it, mate. Ed Granger knows what he’s doing.”

  It troubled her that Granger spoke of himself in the third person. “I appreciate everything you’ve done. But you didn’t answer my questions.”

  “We’re renting a four-wheel drive at the hotel. We can trade off on driving. It’ll take seven hours and we can’t do it at night. We’ll start at first light. It’s three hundred and ten miles.”

  The minicalculator in her brain did some quick division. “That means we’ll average about forty-five miles an hour, Ed.”

  “On these roads, with switchbacks, landslides, iffy weather, that sounds about right.” In the waning light, the tattoo that climbed from his hand up his arm seemed to be dancing, laughing. “Hey, mate, trust me. Even if we could fly closer, we can’t do it in the dark and the roads are impossible at night.”

  “Manuel Ortega drove from the bodega to Esperanza at night.”

  “Manuel’s a goddamn nutcase.”

  Manuel is the form my dead father uses in Esperanza, you jerk. She didn’t like being herded and that was how this felt—Granger calling the shots, controlling where, how, when.

  “If you knew we were in Otavalo,” said Maddie, “why didn’t you just pick us up there?”

  “I didn’t know where you were until I got a call from Kim Eckert.” He glanced at Maddie, as if really noticing her for the first time. “And no one told me you and your grandmother were along for the ride.”

  “We’re not along for any ride,” said Lauren. “We’re here because we’re family.”

  “I didn’t mean that in any sort of demeaning way, ma’am.”

  “You could’ve flown into town,” Tess said. “And saved us a harrowing escape.”

  “I’m all for the cause, but I don’t do Otavalo. I don’t like leaving Esperanza. But Illika Huicho asked if I’d help, so here I am.” A big PR smile from Granger. “Do you remember her?”

  The leader of the Quechuans. “Yes. So what’s the plan after we get to Esperanza?”

  “The plan?” He blinked rapidly, as if he didn’t understand the question. “What do you mean?”

  “The plan. You’ve gone to all this trouble—but for what? Why?”

  “I’m not the guy to ask.” He strode on ahead of her, swinging his long arms.

  Lauren and Maddie fell into step bes
ide her. “Thoughts?” Lauren asked.

  “He makes me uneasy,” Tess said.

  “I don’t trust him,” Maddie said. “He has a chopper, for crissake. He could’ve picked us up in Quito and flown us to Esperanza when the winds were calmer. Or something.”

  “I just don’t like him,” Lauren said. “Do you think he has a brujo inside him?”

  Her mother’s question spoke tomes about how far they had come in terms of accepting what was possible. “My wrist doesn’t burn, so I don’t think it’s that. Maybe it’s just how he is. He’s got an agenda. I think he and his agenda have bothered me since the beginning.”

  “What do you want to do?” her mother asked.

  “We’re going to get Granger roaring drunk and pump him for information.”

  Maddie snickered. “And then what?”

  “We’ll find our own way to Esperanza.”

  Lauren rubbed her hands together like a gleeful kid. “Now you’re talking my language.”

  Inside the terminal, Granger filed paperwork with airport security about the chopper, paid the tie-down fees, then they took a cab to Hotel Inca, Tulcán’s equivalent of upscale. Not a Hilton or a Radisson, for sure. But the property featured a restaurant, wireless Internet, a swimming pool, a thermal spring. It seemed that the comforts of home were intended to lull them into a complacency they might not feel otherwise.

  Once they were in their room, Tess took a quick shower, put on clean clothes, then counted out cash from their reserves, money they’d carried hidden on their bodies and in their packs. She went downstairs and bought supplies in the hotel store—bottled water, fresh fruit, canned goods, flashlights, matches—and a bag to put everything in. Then she approached the young Asian man at the desk and asked about the rental car reservation under Ed’s name.

  The man found it readily enough, a Ford Expedition, four hundred a week, to be returned in Tulcán. Bad gas mileage, Tess thought, and counted out the cash. “I’ll need a map, too. We’re headed to Esperanza first thing in the morning.”

  He brought out a map, drew a red X on Tulcán, another X on Esperanza, then drew a line into the mountains, an erratic zigzag that looked like a two-dimensional roller-coaster track. “Carry extra gas with you. Even though there’re stations, the pumps are often dry because the campesinos hoard gas for their generators. I can include a ten-gallon container in the price.”

  “I appreciate it.”

  “There’s a GPS in the car, so you can recheck the mileage and the route I’ve drawn. There may be a lot of traffic. In the last two days, I’ve rented twelve four-wheel-drive vehicles—what we usually rent in a week. All of them seem to be headed to Dorado, the last town before Esperanza.”

  “Why? What’s going on?”

  “The summer solstice, the Festival of the Sun, when the Quechuans and the Incas honored the sun god Inti. There’ll be free concerts, free food, that kind of thing. A hotel guest gave me a blog address where more information is available.” He handed her a slip of paper. “Here, you can check it out in the computer room. The Ford’s silver and it’s parked at the right side of the building. The gas container will be inside. Here’s the key, I just need to see your driver’s license and passport.”

  She set both on the counter, picked up her bag of supplies, and hurried toward the computer room. “Be right back.”

  The blog, liberationblogspot.com, appeared to have been started by a woman named Vivian Ortiz, whose parents had bled out simultaneously on a beach in Guayaquil in 2003. Once the coroner had ruled out a virus or bacteria and determined that her parents had died of cerebral hemorrhages, she’d started the blog to find out if anyone else had experienced something similar. When reports had started pouring in from all over South America, her blog had expanded to a website, where readers posted their own stories.

  Tess clicked around on the site, noting the map of red dots where every bleed-out had occurred, a running tab on the number since 2003: 22,272. The latest blog entry had been made two days ago.

  As longtime readers of this site know, we intentionally avoid words & phrases that would enable our enemies to discover this site by doing a Google search. We have used codes for those buzzwords. That said, you’ll understand the following announcement.

  The time has come. We will be gathering in Dorado on June 21. We encourage you to arrive a day early as turnout is expected to be high. Dorado has only 2 hotels.

  A campground will be available in a pasture at the south end of town. General parking will be in the high school football field NW of downtown. Signs will be posted. For subscribers, I’m posting a list of necessities here. Feel free to pass this info on to everyone on your list whom you trust. Bus transportation is listed here. If you’re driving your own vehicle, we encourage you to follow buses. Safety in numbers. We’ve waited a long time for this moment, people. Let’s make it count. Now isn’t the time to be afraid or intimidated. It’s up to us to do what is right, to end the tyranny that has torn apart so many lives. Sí, se puede.

  Viv

  It sounded like a call for grassroots war against the brujos. But in what sense? To fight them? With flamethrowers? Even if their army numbered in the tens of thousands, where would they get enough flamethrowers?

  Tess printed the latest blog entry, clicked to a map of Ecuador. She located Dorado, a town of 21,000 located at 7,200 feet, with the Río Palo less than a quarter of a mile to its north, Esperanza fifty miles beyond that—and six thousand feet up.

  She clicked the link for bus transportation. Fourteen Ecuadorian cities were listed, with at least two buses leaving from each city. All buses were identified as Dorado 13. The synchronicity of that number prompted her to scroll down the page of cities to check for Tulcán. Sure enough, two Dorado 13s had left Tulcán at seven this morning and another two were scheduled to leave at ten tonight. She scrolled up the list again, clicking cities at random. All buses traveled in pairs. Safety in numbers. And a greater choice of host bodies for brujos.

  Her cell rang. It had been so long since she’d had any cell service that she’d nearly forgotten about the phone. The message in the window read: You have 10 new voice mails. All were from Dan, pleading for her to turn herself in, her status as a fugitive could add another fifteen years to any sentence she received, she couldn’t stay on the run forever. He was in Quito and would help her cut a deal.

  “Yada, yada,” she said, and deleted all the messages.

  She picked up her printed sheets and returned to the front desk, where the clerk returned her passport and driver’s license. Tess called Ed’s room from the lobby and invited him to dinner. Then she called her room, and when her mother answered, Tess told her she’d rented a car and they should load up before dinner with Granger. “Look for a silver Expedition on the north side of the building.”

  Ed didn’t get drunk easily: a bottle of wine with dinner, most of which he drank; a couple of beers, then several shots, one after another. By the time he was into the shots, his tongue had loosened considerably. He ranted about the stupid chaser plan to enlist human beings to do what chasers did, guiding transitionals into the afterlife. “I mean, mates, are you kiddin’ me? How many people can see transitionals, much less talk to them and have the knowledge to guide them?”

  “No one in Esperanza whom Ian and I encountered had any problem interacting with us,” Tess remarked.

  “Only because you were in Esperanza.” His words slurred now, so the sentence actually sounded more like, Oncause yuh speranza. “Woulda been a lot different if you’d ended up somewhere else, I can tell you that. But see, someone got the bright idea that if you and Ian survived your near-death experiences, you’d be able to see and talk to these souls, and could take over some of what chasers do, then more transitionals could be recruited and pretty soon there would be hundreds or thousands of helpers worldwide who would be offering guidance to transitionals at the scenes of disasters, wars . . .” He threw back another shot. “That would free the chasers to tend to
the brujo bastards. Me, I don’t see how it’s going to work. Right now, Dominica’s tribe is the largest we know of and it’s pretty clear that brujos worldwide outnumber chasers.”

  “In other words, you’re saying that evil is winning,” Maddie said.

  “You got that right,” Granger murmured.

  Lauren piped up. “Then why don’t you amass an army and fight them?”

  “Fight them?” He threw out his beefy arms. “How?”

  Tess couldn’t let that pass. “I seem to remember you and your gang racing down from the posada with shovels and rakes and flamethrowers, Ed.”

  “Sure, we can do that. A small group of brujos, no problem. But there’re tens of thousands of them around Esperanza. We aren’t equipped to deal with that.”

  “Excuse me, Ed, but it seems to me that most of the people in Esperanza who have stayed now live defensively, in fear of the brujos, terrorized by them, deluding themselves that they can live their lives around them. Why not come up with some comprehensive plan to take them out?” Tess asked.

  “For crissake.” For the first time, Granger’s voice held a sharp edge of irritation. “You can’t take out what’s dead.”

  “Sure you can,” Maddie said. “Head to head, toe to toe, one to one. Your flamethrowers are the weapon of choice? Great, supply flamethrowers to every Ecuadorian who has lost a loved one to a brujo. Galvanize them, organize them, get them all to Esperanza at the same time and wipe them out. But that takes too much work, doesn’t it, Mr. Granger. Just like flying us into Esperanza would take too much work. You can do it, I know you can. But the status quo is easier, isn’t it. I frankly think you assholes enjoy being victimized by the brujos. You’re more united in your struggle against a common enemy—the commies in the fifties, the establishment in the sixties, Nixon in the seventies, the Muslims and gays in the twenty-first century. There always has to be some amorphous enemy, doesn’t there. Jesus, you disgust me. I wouldn’t ride to the mall with you and I sure as hell won’t endure three hundred miles in a car where you think you’re in charge. You’re pathetic.”