by Callie Hart
So, walking. I walk into the forest, and I continue to walk. I don’t deviate from the track the cars use to travel to the estate. Without anyone here to guide me, I’m all too aware that I could put a foot wrong and get blown up by one of Fernando’s booby traps. And wouldn’t that just be fucking perfect?
I know where I left the scrambler. I need to make sure it’s got gas and that it’s still running okay. I head south when the track splits. The journey from the bunker to the Villalobos estate didn’t seem all that long when I was in the car with Ocho the first day I arrived in Orellana, but now, on foot, it feels like miles and miles. The sun is high in the sky by the time I reach the bunker. Natalia told me the old ruined outbuildings here, decayed and standing in ruin, were rigged with traps, too, so I don’t go inside. I skirt around the small settlement, heading to the west, to where I stowed the scrambler.
Only, when I get to the small clearing where I left the Yamaha, the clearing is empty.
“What the fuck?” I know this is where I left it. I have no doubt in my mind. I’m not in the habit of forgetting where I leave vehicles, even if it is in the forest and all you can see for miles is trees. I search the area, scanning the ground for signs of the bike, but I don’t find anything. The ground is soft; after all that rain yesterday, even the deepest, most defined tracks from a set of tires would be gone. Mud sucks at my boots as I cross the clearing, swearing under my breath.
Natalia said the bike was still here. She thought it was yesterday, at least. That means it must have been taken recently, and she’s not being kept in the loop. Am I surprised by this? No, not really. It was a miracle they let me keep my gun on me for so long. I think if I hadn’t used it to shoot William, I’d probably still have it. But a mode of transportation? A means of escaping without them knowing? Fernando wouldn’t stand for that, especially if he thinks there’s a two-million-dollar deal on the line.
“Fuck.” I crouch down, resting my elbows on my knees, trying to think. This isn’t the end of the world. Yes, having the scrambler would have been perfect. It’s designed to excel on rough, uneven terrain and that’s what I’m dealing with around here. But there are Humvees and Patriots back at the estate, too, which are also designed for navigating crazy landscapes. I can take one of those when the time comes. And hell, maybe it’ll be safer if there are two people inside.
God, I don’t even know why I’m even considering something like that. Natalia may not want to come with me. If her father is dead, what’s to say she won’t want to stay here, at the estate? It’s worth a small fucking fortune. The compound and the Widow Makers’ clubhouse is a far cry from the luxury she’s used to.
“You look like the world has ended.”
I jump up, my balisong already in my hand, fully prepared to stab whoever is standing behind me. It takes a full second for me to process the fact that it’s a woman’s voice I’ve heard, and that it’s Natalia hovering on the edge of the clearing, with a backpack slung over her shoulders. Her hair hangs down in a long braid. She’s wearing a long-sleeved shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and some serious hiking boots, like she’s planning on taking off up a mountain.
“So you found me, huh?” I smile at her, flicking the knife over in my hand to retract the blade.
“Not hard to do,” she replies. “You left a track that could probably be seen from outer space.”
She’s right, I’m sure. I’m used to moving through desert and bayou, and I’m good at concealing my movements usually, but in this kind of overgrown, wild forest, even my best efforts are for nothing. I raise an eyebrow at her. “I’ll try not to be too offended. Are you out here following me, or are you about to fly the coop?” I point to her bag.
She pulls a wry expression, looking off into the trees. She doesn’t want to look me in the eye. “I thought,” she starts. “I thought I should probably take you to her. To Laura.” I’m shocked. Too surprised to speak. When I refrain from saying anything, she continues. “Higher up into the mountains, we have a burial site. It’s not much, but that’s where my father told me she had been taken. If you would like to go, to pay your respects to her, I could show you where it is.”
******
The climb up the mountain is gruelling. We don’t really speak all that much. The heat is oppressive, especially since it’s the rainy season and it’s so damn humid, and so we both remain in our thoughts, planting one foot in front of the other, heads bowed as we slog our way upward. We share an easy silence. It feels strange to think I met her less than a week ago. Despite my surroundings, the threat of death hanging over my head, and the knowledge that Laura is gone, I spend a good deal of my day thinking about her. It seems as though I’ve spent more time with her than I actually have. I recognize her tics now—the way she obsessively tucks her hair back when she’s thinking; the way she taps her index finger against the table whenever she’s sitting down; the way her forehead crinkles when she’s confused. And most of all, how her pupils dilate every time she looks at me, like she wants to jump my bones right out of my body. I’m more than happy for her to be looking at me that way, but it carries a certain risk. One day soon, Fernando’s going to notice, and there won’t be any denying the fact that we’re both attracted to one another.
We climb. Thank god I have good cardio. Natalia’s used to the trek up to the burial site, but even she is out of breath when we reach our destination. The trees are thinner up here, so much closer to the timberline, and the mountain gives way to a broad, rocky clearing. I see the small, wooden crosses almost immediately. There aren’t that many of them, maybe ten, and they’re set out sporadically in between the large rocks and boulders. Red, green and orange streamers snap on the gusts of wind that buffet the mountainside. It reminds me of Nepal, of the reams and reams of prayer flags that travel all the way from Base Camp up to the top of Everest, though these aren’t prayer flags. They’re just pretty decorations to mark the graves.
Turning around, my breath is clear whipped away. The burial site itself is fairly barren and stark, but the view from this vantage point is truly spectacular.
“Beautiful, no?” Natalia asks.
“Yeah. Yeah, it really is.”
“Come. I’ll show you the place.” She takes me by the hand, then. It’s a small, simple gesture, but the connection between us feels all the more strong for it. Every time we touch, no matter how brief the contact, it seems as though we’re cementing ourselves together in yet another way. She leads me toward the furthest cross, at the lowest point of the burial ground; as we pass by the other crosses, it doesn’t escape my notice that none of them are marked. Not even with an initial, or something to indicate who lies there. I ask Natalia why this is, and she looks uncomfortable.
“The name Villalobos is not a popular one around here. Thanks to my father, people are scared of us. My grandfather and my mother are buried here. My aunt, who was killed when she was just a child. If any of the villagers suspected these graves belong to someone from the Villalobos cartel, they would dig them up and desecrate them.”
“Jesus.”
“I don’t really blame them. My grandfather was a sweet man. He farmed in order to make money, but he also sold cocaine, too. He wasn’t a violent man. He never killed anyone in the name of competition or business. Whatever profit he made from the drugs, he used to send my father away to be educated. He wanted him to be a doctor, or a lawyer. Something legal. When my father came back from school, he chose to use his business degree to expand my grandfather’s cocaine production. He became very…cutthroat. Unforgiving. If someone crossed him, they were never heard from again. So now, we are feared.”
Natalia comes to a stop in front of a cross with a red streamer. She dips down, resting on her heels as she runs the streamer through her fingers. “Laura’s favorite color was red,” she says.
It feels like I’ve been sucker punched in the gut. I can hardly breathe. “I know. She wore this red dress to her prom. My father nearly had a fit. Said she looked l
ike a prostitute, but she refused to get changed.” I lose myself in the memories for a moment. God, they fought so hard that night. Dad didn’t want her leaving the house “looking like a street walker” and she refused to “give in to his capitalist, archaic, patriarchal bullshit.” They were always butting heads, but it was because they were so alike. Later, at some point while she was away at college, they mellowed towards each other. She was his favorite, and I was okay with that, because she was my favorite, too. She was everybody’s favorite. Full of piss and vinegar, always ready to call you out on your shit. She called a spade a spade, which was a breath of fresh air in our household.
“She always felt so alive to me, even when she was sad,” Natalia says. She looks like she’s about to burst into tears. “I want you to know…if I could have helped her escape, I would have. Things were bad back then, though. My father goes through phases. He was so watchful of me then. He was paranoid that I was going to try and leave myself. I was under constant surveillance.”
I stroke my hand over her hair, sucking in a deep breath through my nose. “I know,” I tell her. “I know you would have. This isn’t your fault.” It’s mine. I should have been watching out for her. I should have been paying attention, not throwing back champagne the night she disappeared. And I should have looked harder for her. I should have stayed down here. I should have figured out where she was sooner.
There are so many reasons to blame myself for this. It’s madness that Natalia would feel even an ounce of guilt herself. I crouch down beside her, taking the red streamer from her hands. I wind it around my own fingers, hating myself more and more by the second.
“I’ll give you a moment,” Natalia tells me. She gets to her feet and heads off, stopping in front of one of the other crosses, placing her hand lightly on the ground in front of it.
“I bet you’re loving how complicated this thing’s become,” I say softly under my breath. “You always did love drama. Remember when we were teenagers, and Dad caught me sneaking out one night to see that girl…god, what was her name? Sarah Goldman. Fuck, Sarah Goldman.” I shake my head, trying not to laugh. “He caught me shimmying down a drainpipe at the back of the house, and he was screaming and shouting, yelling at me, calling me a little punk, and you showed up and just sat there, eating a sandwich, watching us argue, volleying back and forth like it was a goddamn tennis match.”
I almost expect to hear her voice, laughing, telling me I deserved the hiding I got that night, but there’s nothing. No laughter. No elbow in my side. Just the wind teasing the red piece of fabric in my hands, and the mountains stretching on forever in every direction.
Did she ever come up here? Did she ever get to see this while she was alive? I find myself hoping so. She would have really, really loved it.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MASS
A sour, terrible smell hits the back of my nose as we head back down the mountain. It’s ripe and pungent, and makes my gag reflex work overtime. Natalia takes me by the hand again and tells me we need to hurry back, and I can see that she’s edgy. The smell grows thicker, burning my nostrils as we hike down. At the back of my mind, I already know what the smell is, I recognize it on some level, but I don’t want to acknowledge it.
After a while, the smell disappears. Natalia seems to relax, and I forget about it until we pass through a stand of trees and suddenly we’re faced with a yawning hole in the ground, which is filled almost to the brim with bones. Bones fucking everywhere. And not animal bones. Not the remains of game that has been hunted and killed. No. These are human skeletons.
“Damn,” Natalia curses under her breath. She’s anxious as she looks sideways at me. “I’m sorry. I thought...I thought this was further west. The smell…”
The smell must have confused her. It was coming directly from the west, instead of from down below us, but the breeze is strange today, sending blustery gusts in loops up and down the mountain on thermals, and it’s obviously turned her around a little.
I’m beginning to wonder why there’s even any smell at all—the corpses in the huge, mass grave, are all skeletons—but then I catch sight of something that blows that theory right out of the water. The corpses are not all skeletons. On top of the mountain of bones lie three fresh bodies. All three are women, and they’re naked. They’re in various states of decomposition. The first body has to have been out here for at least a couple of weeks. The skin is nearly all gone, as well as the eyes, and most of the flesh on the skull. The other two bodies can’t have been exposed for as long. They’re bloated and purple, as if they’ve been submerged in water rather than left out on the side of a mountain. Then I realize, the rain yesterday was intense and didn’t stop for hours. And with the bodies resting on top of the pile the way they are, they’re likely to have absorbed an awful lot of fluid.
“What is this?” I can barely speak. I want to double over and throw up. I have seen some fucked-up things in my time, but this? This is something else. Something rotten and evil. Tears streak down Natalia’s cheeks.
“This is where my father disposes of the people who stand against him. The people who try to sell cocaine in his country. And the women who say no too many times. The women who won’t submit.”
As I’m staring at the grave, my eyes skipping over countless bodies, I try and estimate how many people are here. The skeletons are scattered and in pieces for the most part. I give up trying to see them as whole people and instead move onto counting skulls.
Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen…
Twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight…
Fifty-two, fifty-three, fifty-four…
Oh god. So many. I can only count how many are resting on the top of the pile. Who knows how deep the hole is, how many bodies are stacked underneath. And who knows how many holes Fernando Villalobos filled before he has this one dug and filled. Something tells me this can’t be the only one.
This must be how it felt for the soldiers who rolled into Auschwitz, expecting to be liberating prisoners of war, only to find the dead piled high on either side of the road.
Something occurs to me, then. Something awful and so horrifying that I can’t even comprehend that it might be true. The women who won’t submit.
Laura was as stubborn as they come. Laura wasn’t a woman to submit, no matter how black the situation. I look at Natalia, and she can already see it on my face.
“No. No, she’s not here, Cade. He didn’t put her here. I’d know if he did. He promised me…”
Too late.
It is far too late for me to be reasoned with. The idea’s in my head now, and it won’t go away. That fucker could have thrown my sister’s still-warm body into an open fucking mass grave? Oh no.
Just. Fucking. No.
I take off down the mountain, and I’m not walking anymore. I’m fucking running. I’m charging. I’m on the warpath, rage pumping through my veins, and I won’t be able to get a hold of myself until Fernando Villalobos is lying in a pool of his own blood. I’m going to pull every single last one of his teeth out with a pair of pliers. I’m gonna dump acid on that motherfucker. I’m gonna hurt him so bad, he’s gonna beg for me to just give in and let him fucking die.
There will be no mercy for him. There will be no forgiveness. There will be only pain and suffering, and finally, when I’ve had enough and my body is tired and I physically can’t torture him any more, I’m going to shoot him in the fucking head and put him down like the fucking dog he is.
“Cade! Cade, please wait!” Natalia is behind me somewhere, running after me, but now I’m faster than she is. I’m not careful. I barrel through the forest, barely missing tree trunks, barely ducking under low hanging boughs in time.
“CADE!”
Natalia’s cry echoes around off the high mountainsides around us. A chorus of shrieks split the air apart as dozens of birds take to the sky. I don’t look back. I am single minded in my purpose, and that purpose is to cause Fernando indescribable agony. My journey down the
mountain is a hell of a lot faster than it was going up. My legs are singing with pain, though, my knees and ankles throbbing from my headlong sprint downhill.
The sun is going down. Little more than a burned orange crescent remains hovering on the horizon. It will sink soon, disappearing altogether, and then I’ll be running in darkness. Natalia probably had a flashlight in that backpack of hers. She probably had water and all kinds of other supplies, but I don’t need any of them right now. I just need to get back to the estate. I just need to—
A low, eerie howl deadens the sound of the forest. One minute everything is alive, bugs chittering, birds zipping between the trees, crickets chirruping, and then it’s as if the forest sucks in a deep breath and holds onto it, refusing to let it go. Another howl, long and plaintive. It’s damned close. I stop dead, waiting, listening. Sound travels so well in the mountains. So well. It could be that the wolves are actually miles away, and their song is simply being carried on the wind, but…
Again, it comes. And this time, a cacophony of sound follows after—yipping and chattering that wouldn’t be audible if the animals weren’t very close by. Goddamn it. Fernando said it himself. These animals are brazen. They’ve taken people from outside the fucking house before, which means they won’t have a problem taking a single person out in the forest by themselves. I’m not worried about me. I have my balisong. Plus, I’ve fought off crazed drug dealers and psychotic Columbian women in the past. Plus the odd Taliban extremist here and there. I can handle a bunch of wolves. Natalia, on the other hand? Does she even have a weapon with her?
Fuck.
My brain changes gear with all the finesse and power of an F16 fighter jet. I turn and run back the way I came, my muscles screaming, my lungs burning, my heart on fire.
“NATALIA!”
