Hungry Ghosts (Eric Carter #3)(33)
“This is beyond that,” Bustillo says. “No one has gotten through for as long as anyone can remember. It seems once the Aztecs lost to the Spanish everything shut down. Can you imagine how frustrating it must be for them? To be stuck here for centuries knowing that on the other side of those mountains are their families, their friends. Some of them have lost all hope. But I’ve given it back to them.”
“Yeah?” I can see where this is going and I don’t like it. “How’d you pull that off?”
We come to one of the vehicles. It’s actually more disturbing up close like this than seeing it barreling down on me. It’s vaguely car-like. Four wheels, a chassis, seats, steering. But that’s where the similarities stop. Like the trajinera Tabitha created it looks like it’s built from some child’s nightmare TinkerToy set.
The tires are round, more or less, with femur spokes and flat slabs of bone for treads. The seats are rough frameworks covered in flaps of leathery skin and a raised platform in the back holds the driver’s seat and the steering wheel. Skulls are perched all along the sides. For the life of me I can’t see how the hell it runs.
“I told them you were coming. The reincarnation of Mictlantecuhtli who will bind this world together again.”
“You know that’s not technically true, right?”
“It’s true enough for them.”
“Let me guess. They think I’m going to lead them out of here. Over the mountains and through the mists to grandmother’s house we go? I was wondering why you hadn’t killed me. I get you through the mists, you’re hailed as the good guy. And then it’s an eternity of blowjobs for the guy who saved the souls of thousands of desperate dead.”
“You catch on quick.”
“And if I don’t want to do it?”
He pulls Mictlantecuhtli’s blade from his pocket and holds it in his palm as though he’s weighing it. “Then you don’t get this back.”
“I was wondering where that went.” I figured he had it the moment I laid eyes on him. It’s an interesting threat. He’s not saying he’ll take my skin. We both know he can’t use it anymore. And he’s not threatening to kill me, either. I wonder if he thinks I can’t be killed here. I could make a play for it, but to be honest I’m not sure it would work. I’m limping, I’m slow and even if I can get it from him, what about all the rest of these people? It’s not like I’ve got anywhere to run.
“I assume you have the rest of my stuff.”
Bustillo reaches into the vehicle and lifts out my messenger bag, hands it to me. I look through it. Everything’s there as far as I can tell, the powders, the charms. Even the Browning and my pocket watch are in there along with a box of bullets and a couple of loaded magazines. All of this had been sitting in the trunk of the Caddy for over a year. It’s good to have it back. I’d hate to lose it again.
“No shotgun?”
“Sorry. It got run over by one of the cars. It didn’t survive.”
That’s impressive. Benellis are tough. But looking at the bone wheels on these cars I can believe it. Pity. It was a nice shotgun. I got it off a guy in Tijuana who tried to ventilate me with it. But like Tabitha said, shotgun’s gonna do sweet fuck-all out here.
“So aside from threatening to not give me back my toy, what makes you think I’m going to help you?”
“We both know you’re going that way, anyway,” Bustillo says. “And when you get where you’re going you’re going to need the knife. We both win.”
I almost ask him how I can trust him and then realize that’s a stupid question. I can’t. He knows it, I know it. It would just be insulting to ask.
“How could I possibly refuse such a generous offer,” I say, putting my hand on the side of the nightmare Flintstones mobile. “When do we leave?”
The bone cars, a dozen at least, rattle across the desert toward the mountains, engines grinding out a low rumble. Plumes of shattered skulls kick up like gravel behind them. Each car is so packed with the dead they hang off the sides.
The lead car that Bustillo and I are in contains just us and three nasty looking men who I don’t doubt would be excellent at committing just about any sort of violence you’d care to try. They certainly look as though someone did it to them. Like Bustillo one of them was shot in the head, another was opened from throat to gut with a blade, ribs pulled out and his organs hanging like Christmas tinsel, a third had his throat sliced open and his tongue pulled down through the hole. I wonder how he talks with a Colombian Necktie.
I have to wonder how effective muscle like these guys are here, though. Do these dead feel pain? Fear? Bustillo had to have done something to gain status with them so quickly. Nobody just walks in to a group like this and just says, “Hey, I’m in charge now!” Could it have been as simple as them thinking I can open the mists for them?
“Who built these things?”
“No idea.” He yells over the engine noise. “I don’t even know how the damn things work. They were here when I arrived. You say I’ve only been dead a couple of days?”
“Yeah. I put a bullet in you . . . Tuesday? I think it was Tuesday.”
“Feels like months. Did you find the Avatar?” Does he not know? I didn’t see him when I was captured so maybe he wasn’t in one of the cars and doesn’t know she’s here. I’m okay with that.