Scorched

by Theresa Shaver

  “He’s a really bad man, right? He killed Abuela?” At my sad nod, she takes a deep breath. “Then you wouldn’t be a bad person if you shoot him again, right?”

  Beck answers before I can. “No, she would be doing the right thing if she shot him again. If he catches up to us, the only thing we can do is stop him for good.”

  The look in his eyes breaks my heart. They are completely empty of any hope his brother would change into what a brother should be, so all I can do is nod with as much compassion in my own eyes as I can and hope I’m not forced to make good on my threat.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “Get up!” Boyd barks and uses his boot to kick at Marco’s leg to get him moving but there’s no response from the man.

  He stands there in the dim light that’s coming through a few cracks around the door of the concrete building they had taken shelter in the day before when the sand storm forced them to stop their hunt. He grunts in annoyance and turns away to open the door letting in more light. The storm passed in the night and the heat of the day is starting to build. Now that there’s more light coming into the building, he can see the pool of drying blood Marco is laying in and that the man is no longer alive.

  Rage fills him at all that the girl and his brother have cost him. His two most trusted men are dead and he’s hundreds of miles from home. He stares down at Marco’s body and considers turning back but shakes his head. Nothing’s changed. There’s still no future back there once the supplies run out. His only choice is to keep going and find the girl and make her give up the gold so he can go north for a better life. Revenge against her and his brother just sweetens the decision.

  He turns his back on Marco’s corpse and leaves the building without giving his dead man a second thought. Around the side of the building, the dune buggy waits. The tarp he had covered it with came halfway undone at some point during the storm, letting sand and dust fill the driver’s seat and foot well. Boyd mutters curses as he struggles with the last knot keeping the tarp secured. He finally loses his patience and just pulls out a knife and cuts the rope. When he throws the tarp back, a choked scream erupts from his mouth when he comes face to face with Pete’s dead, staring eyes. He forgot that the man was still in the back seat. Flies and other insects crawled over the dead man’s face as Boyd gets his breath back and racing heart under control.

  The wound in his arm throbs as he struggles to pull the dead weight of Pete from the buggy and drag it into the building to lay beside Marco. His frustration and anger keep building as he clears the sand from the driver’s area and finally boils over into a scream of rage when turning the key results in a warning buzzer. He almost pulls his gun and shoots the charge gauge when he sees that it only has a half red bar showing. Somehow, he manages to tamp down the violence roaring through his blood and instead pushes the buggy away from the wall of the building and out into the full sun to charge.

  He knows it will take a few hours before it’s ready to drive again so he settles down in the shade of the building and plots all the torture he’s going to inflict on the two people responsible for his misery and then, he smiles.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  When I open my eyes, the first thing I notice is the lack of sound. When we laid down last night to sleep, the wind was a constant roar that flung stones and sand at the cart. Now there is nothing but the sound of Glo’s soft breathing and Beck’s gentle snore. I sit up and try to ignore the ache in my body from pumping and sleeping on a hard, wooden floor for two days and nights. I wrinkle my nose from the smell in the cart. None of us have washed our bodies since leaving home and with all the windows closed the smell is ripe and pungent.

  I move Glo’s head off of my arm that she used as a pillow for the night and try and shake the pins and needles from it before getting to my feet. The windows on the left side and the front of the cart are all covered with a film of dust making it hard to see anything through them. The right side is cleaner so I look out and up and see blue sky above the rocks we had sheltered behind.

  The storm is gone and I hope that means we will be able to make it to our stop today. With everything that happened yesterday afternoon, I hadn’t kept track of how far we had gone once we crossed the river. For all I know, we could have missed the third junction. The idea of having to backtrack fills me with dread. I need to go outside and look around and do my morning business so I open the door and step down leaving it open to air the cart out a bit. Once I’m done relieving myself, I walk around the cart and follow the tracks up the small hill and past the rocks where the land opens up again.

  I stare at the mountains that don’t seem very far away anymore. A smile creeps across my face. We must almost be there! I take a few more steps but the ground under my feet feels different so I look down with a frown. Instead of standing on the old wood and gravel between the steel tracks, my feet have sunk into a drift of sand. My eyes follow the ground ahead of me and instead of seeing the train tracks all I see is sand. My stomach drops when I realized we won’t be able to go any further with the cart.

  I just stand there staring down at the sand until I hear footsteps climbing the small hill behind me. Beck comes to a stop beside me and after a pause, curses.

  “How far are the tracks covered?”

  I shrug and hear him let out a sigh before he starts walking forward across the sand that covers the tracks. He keeps going for a hundred feet or so and then stops. Glo comes up beside me and slides her small arm through mine as we watch Beck start walking away from us again. She lets out a giggle and I look down at her to see what’s funny but she’s looking ahead so I ask,

  “What’s so funny?”

  She points into the distance.

  “Look, those rocks look like a howling dog!”

  I see the rocks she’s pointing at and make out the resemblance to a howling dog or wolf. It’s neat how the landscape can form to look like different things but it doesn’t help us...

  “Coyote!”

  Glo cocks her head to the side. “Yeah, I guess it could be a howling coyote.”

  Now it’s my turn to laugh. “Coyote Rock! That’s where Abuela said we get off the track and walk from. We almost made it!”

  Beck makes his way back to us and I point out the distinctive rocks that are our destination.

  “It won’t be so bad to walk to. It doesn’t look that far. It shouldn’t take us more than a few hours to walk.” I tell him.

  He looks down at the cart and then back to the rocks in the distance and shakes his head.

  “I think we should try and get the cart there. The tracks are only covered for about two hundred feet and then it looks clear. We should try and clear the sand.”

  I bark out a laugh. “Really? Sure, Beck. Let me just go get my broom and I’ll have it swept away in a jiffy!”

  He scowled at my sarcasm but just starts using his feet to try and shovel the sand away from the tracks. I throw up my hands.

  “Beck! C’mon, there’s no way we can move this much sand with just our feet. We don’t have a broom or shovel to shift it, so unless the wind comes back...”

  Something is tugging at my mind. Something Abuela had said to me about...air displacement! I don’t know if it will work or not but it is worth a shot to save us the hours it would take to walk to Coyote Rock. We will be doing plenty of walking after we get there so why not try it? I turn away from him and head down the hill with Glo trailing behind me. I walk past the cart to the small trailer attached to the back of it and eye the hover sled. I walk all the way around it, releasing the clips that hold it in place and pop the remote out of the control panel where it’s stored. I pull the sled off to the side of the trailer until it tips and slides to the ground, half leaning against the trailer. I brace it while Glo tugs on the bottom until I can lower it to the ground without it crashing.

  Once it’s on level ground, I fire it up with the remote and move it around the cart and back up the hill to where Beck is still dragging sand with h
is feet. He looks up, sees me coming with the sled and angrily crosses his arms.

  “You’re not even going to try and help me?” He snaps.

  I ignore him and move the sled right at him until he’s forced to move out of the way. Once I have it positioned over the area of track where I want it, I increase the lift power on the remote causing a cloud of sand and dust to billow out from under it. I let it run for a few minutes and then lower the power and move it ahead five feet. I look down at the cleared tracks and with a smug smile, toss the remote at Beck.

  “Only one hundred and ninety-five feet to go. Enjoy!” I turn and head back down the hill with a giggling Glo.

  “Hey! Where are you going?” He yells after me.

  I don’t look back just wave my hand in the air and call out,

  “Breakfast!”

  I laugh when I hear him groan but keep on going. I had seen a few things in the trailer when I’d pulled the sled off that would help me make some decent food. If we were going to be here for a while, I’m going to make a fire and cook enough food to last us the next few days while we are hiking.

  Abuela had thought of everything. She had packed a box with kitchen pots and pans, a folding grate and two small canisters that have some kind of fuel in them with a thick wick in the center. It doesn’t take me long to set up a little cooking area and with Glo’s help, mix up some batter to make a batch of pan tortillas. I slice up some of the protein loaf and onions and cook it with some powdered eggs. I make enough to last the three of us for a few days and wrap it all up in the clothes and paper from the basket. It’s bland food but it will give us the energy we will need to walk to the valley. I hope.

  Once the food is ready, Glo and I eat quickly and then I send her back up the hill with a breakfast wrap for Beck and told her to tell him to stay up there while we clean up. Charlie’s people had refilled our empty jugs of water so even though it was precious, I’m going to sacrifice a few inches of one jug to give Glo and I a quick wash. I just can’t stand the smell or itchiness anymore. I wet one cloth and run the small bar of soap I had packed over it until I got a few bubbles. We share it so I doubt you could really call it getting clean, but at least I felt better. A second wet cloth wipes the soap off and I call it good. My scalp still itches but there is no way I can waste that much water to clean our hair. Once we are both dressed in clean clothes and all the cooking utensils are put away, I release the brakes and start pumping up the hill towards Beck. He’s made a lot of progress while I cooked and cleaned. It looks like he has half the distance that needs to be cleared done. I set the brakes again and lay out a fresh cloth and the bar of soap for him so he can wash the smell off too. It’s then that I realize that Beck doesn’t have anything with him but the clothes on his back. He left home to warn us and he hadn’t brought anything with him. He really has left everything behind.

  I climb down from the cart and walk over to him with my hand held out.

  “Here, I’ll take over. I left you some soap and cloths to wash with. Um, if you give me your shirt and the soap when you’re done, I’ll wash it.”

  He looks at me in surprise before looking down at his shirt and then wincing. “Yeah, I guess it’s pretty ripe. Do you think we should waste the water, though?”

  I shake my head and take the remote from him. “I won’t use much and it won’t be really clean, but it will stink less and it will feel good to be cleaner, at least for a few hours.”

  He sends me a grateful smile but then turns and points to Glo with a stern finger. “I’m going to wash up. NO PEEKING!”

  Her expression turns to outrage that he would think that she would, but then she sees his teasing eyes. She gives him a shove towards the cart and yells at him.

  “Ewwww! Boys DO stink!”

  I can’t help but smile. As much as I had misgivings about Beck coming with us, he’s doing wonders for Glo. His humor and teasing are helping her with the grief she is dealing with at the loss of Abuela. I’m really glad he is with us.

  “C’mon, Glo. Let me show you how to work this thing so I can do stinky boy’s laundry.”

  She makes a fake gagging sound but walks over to watch me. We clear ten feet of sand before I hand it over to her and I watch while she does another five before I’m satisfied she knows what she’s doing. I walk back to the cart and call out so Beck knows I’m approaching. The last thing I want is to get an eyeful of naked Beck. Instead, I get an eyeful of a half-naked Beck! He opens the door and holds out his shirt, the wet soap and a jug of water but all I see is his bare chest. I feel my face flame up so I keep my eyes down and reach out to take the things he’s holding out to me blindly. My eyes lift to his face once I have a grip on them and I see just how hard he’s trying not to laugh at me so I snatch everything from him and spin away in embarrassment. Jerk!

  I use one of the cooking pots from the trailer and add two inches of water to it until his shirt is barely wet enough to run the soap over it and then scrub it as best as I can with just my hands. Another two inches of water rinses it’s as clean as I’m going to get it without using more water. I eye the jug and figure we’ve used just over half of it for breakfast and all of us cleaning up. I feel like it was worth it but I desperately hope that half of a jug of water won’t mean the death of us at some point.

  Sighing, I put the pot and soap away in the trailer and carry Beck’s wet shirt over to where Glo is working. I spread his shirt out on the sled and figure it will be dry in ten minutes with the sun beaming down on it. I follow along with Glo as she clears the sand and moves forward to the next section but my mind drifts to the valley. It’s so hard to make out any real details from the faded pictures so I fill in the blanks with my imagination. I picture the huge garden I will grow there. I’ll make sure it’s half in the shade of the valley walls so the sun won’t burn it all dead. I’ll be able to water it as much as I want and I can plant my citrus trees and see them grow tall and produce more fruit than ever.

  We had only brought a few books with us so Beck and I will have to teach Glo about the world from what we can remember from school. I mindlessly turn his shirt over to dry on the other side as I keep thinking and realize that Glo and I will have to sacrifice a few of our clothes for Beck. I can rip the seams out and try and patch together another shirt and pair of shorts for him so he’d have at least one change of clothes. That gets me thinking of all the things we don’t have and no way to get them. Maybe once we were settled Beck could go back to the river and see about trading at that market Charlie had mentioned. If I can grow enough food, we could use it to trade...

  “All done! Now what?”

  Glo’s chirpy voice brings me out of my thoughts in surprise. The sand is cleared and all I can see into the distance is the steel track of the rails.

  “Oh! Good job, Glo! I guess we go back to the cart and put the sled away. Then we can get going again.”

  She gives me a weird look and points behind me. I look over my shoulder and am even more surprised to see the cart right behind us. Beck must have brought it along as we cleared and I was so deep in thoughts of the valley that I didn’t even hear it. Shaking my head at myself, I snatch his now dry shirt off of the sled and follow behind her to the trailer where I see him waiting for us. I toss the shirt at his bare chest. He catches it and lifts it up to his nose to take a sniff.

  “Wow, much better! Thanks, Día. I really appreciate you washing this.”

  I mumble a “You’re welcome” and wave towards the sled and trailer and for him to help me get it back up. He pulls the shirt over his head but not before I see the cheeky grin on his face at my uncomfortableness. Double Jerk!

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  We get moving and decide to use the engine for the last time to save our energy for the hike ahead of us. Thankfully, the tracks stay clear of any sand drifts and it’s just under an hour later when Glo calls out that there’s a junction ahead. The first two junctions we had passed kept us going straight ahead and this one’s no di
fferent, which is a problem because we need to go in the other direction. We put on the brakes on as we pass where we need to get off and it takes a bit for Beck and me to figure out how to put the cart in reverse. Once we figure it out, we travel backward past the junction and get off the cart to take a closer look at the tracks. There’s an old rusty lever that sticks out of a metal box beside the tracks to change direction but it won’t move an inch, no matter how hard Beck pulls or kicks at it.

  He finally gives up and stomps towards me, his face red and sweaty.

  “It’s useless! The thing won’t budge at all. We’re going to have to walk from here.”

  I chew on my lip trying to think of a way to get the thing to work. We’d come so far in the cart and I wasn’t quite ready to give up on it yet. I watch as Glo gets down on her hands and knees to study the switch lever and have an idea.

  “What about oil or something to lubricate it? When we pushed the cart out of the building it had been in, the wheels and axles make horrible screeching noises. Abuela had a can of black gunky stuff that she put on it and it ran smoother after that.”

  He nods his head in agreement. “That might work! It might also help if we had some kind of tool to bang away some of the rust and loosen it.”

  “OR...we could unlock it?” Glo’s voice rings out as she walks towards us.

  I look at her in confusion. “What do you mean?”

  She stops to brush off her knees and gives me a “duh” look.

  “There’s a key hole on the side of the box. We need to get the key and unlock it so the lever will move.”

  I look at Beck but he just shrugs his shoulders so I just ask, “What key?”

  A grin splits her face. “The one in the floor where all the buttons are, silly! It’s clamped onto the hatch door.”

  I stare at her for a beat before turning and dashing back to the cart and up the stairs. The panel is already open from when Beck and I figured out how to reverse the wheels and sure enough, there’s a key held against it with two tiny brackets. I can’t believe I missed it before. I pop it out of its brackets and grab the can of oily sludge from where I had stashed it under the bottom shelf and race back out to where Beck and Glo are standing beside the lever. Beck takes the can from me and pours some of the sludge down into the small opening around the lever. He moves over to the track and studies the lines before pouring more of the slimy stuff on both sides. He hands me the can back and takes the key. The key turns with no problem and the lever moves but Beck has to put a lot of pressure on it to get the switch points on the track to move in the direction we need to go.