The Savage(64)

Manny nodded. “No choice but to go north.”

Ricco nodded, too. “Sí. Sí.”

“More jobs. Better money.” Manny paused. “Go to the country that robbed you and your land of its yield.”

One of the other peasants said, “And now we have the cartels. They offer work. Good wage. But life expectancy is zero.”

Manny chuckled. “And who is the biggest customer for the cartels?”

Ricco and the others all looked at one another, lost. Manny said, “The U.S. It’s a conflict of interest, to kill the drug war, to eliminate the cartels, it would be to destroy Mexico’s economy and even much of South America’s, because that drug money is funneled back to the south.”

“And how do you know of such facts?”

“I worked for the government in Guatemala’s intelligence, I know the ins and outs of all economies and their downfalls.”

Chub and Minister returned. Chub asked, “Where is Ernesto?”

“He’s on watch. Spotted lights several hundred yards away.”

“To the east?”

“To the east.”

“What is the plan?”

“We wait and see what Ernesto tells. See if they’re holding positions or combing the desert for walkers.”

“Think it’s border patrol?”

“Not this far out. More than likely landowners.”

“Regulators of territory.”

“Yes, and you know as well as I the rumors that plague this land and those who own it.”

“They shoot first with no questions asked.”

“Many family members take the risk to come to America, only to disappear and never be heard from again.”

Ernesto returned, heavy in the lungs for air, telling Manny, “I think we should move on.”

The weight of water, ammo, and concern rang with their steps over the land as they moved amongst the bite of desert cold through the night. Keeping the peasants to the center, Cotto and Manny took the rear, where Manny could keep an eye on the tracker behind them. Ernesto and Chub led with Minister in the center, each of them blending in. Every so often they looked to their maps, swung out to a rougher, longer route, keeping distance while being very much aware of the small lights off to the east flickering every so often. Trying to distance themselves from the signaling, letting each other know they’d spotted nothing, as it was the same blinking pattern every twenty to thirty minutes.

By the breach of morning, the sky came upon on them with an oceanic glow of silence. Tired and weary eyed, Manny realized what they’d entered, what the signaling of lights had been doing, corralling them to this location, an area littered by crunched plastic bottles and jugs, discarded clothing, shards of jackets, socks and pieces of rag lay strewn about as though a tornado had ravaged the land, decried any trace of human that might have once existed. It was too late.

The air tapered with the piercing of sound and the rear of a peasant’s skull dispelled in chunks of hair, bone, and brain gore. Painting everyone around him to the ground with chaos, panic, and wild eyes.

Leaves overturned and mashed with the memory of that time and the sounds of what Cotto hunted now, twigs freshly broken and the hints of female tarred over the deep inhale of mossy air. Keeping his distance, Cotto tracked and spied upon the Sheldon girl, her scents clinging to his recognition, even though she was without bathing, her salty skin still held the hints of something soapy, a lotion-scented vapor masked by dread, exudation, and this crazed countryside of the ungodly. Still, it was female.

Cotto viewed her panic through telescopic glass: her cutting strides through the brush, being grazed by briar, marred by tree limbs that swelled her pigment when she ran, trying to get a grasp on direction until she collapsed to her knees, the gasp of lungs gripping for more air, quick glances in all directions. She sat gathering her wind, covering her mouth to silence her entwined cries of rage, depletion of oxygen, and all that she’d embarked on like a sudden collision at a traffic light.

Her inhale slowed its pace as her lungs wheezed less and less. Tears were wiped on the hem of her shirt, composure was gathered, and she found her footing, began to walk quickly, using curves of rooted tree to guide her balance until she took to running once more.

Yes, Cotto thought, yes. Lead me to this Van Dorn the same as a feral animal does to its burrowed young.

Every so often she’d slow or stop, glance around, keep watch to her left, then right, then behind her. Listen for the sounds of tread mashing over the leaflets and twigs, everything that coated the earthen woods.

Kneeling, she’d study the indentions within the land, how it had somersaulted, been disturbed or disrupted. Sometimes it was outgrowth from the shoed hooves of Dorn’s mule, Red. Other times a branch or the mold the two’s weight had left. It was assurance that she was following him. Then she’d take off on a jaunt, leap over the fallen circumferences of rot.

Cotto adjusted the rounded focus of his binoculars. Drew the Sheldon girl closer. Studied her every movement, the expand and depletion of her sides, her mannerisms within the woods that enclosed her. How she sniffed the air, touched things broken or out of place, how she calmed within the vegetation the farther she traveled. This girl knew the land. This is something that will be of great use, he thought to himself as he pulled his vial of powder from his pack, snorted quick and hard, gilled each nostril, tasted the drop of drainage falling down his throat. As he bared his teeth, the rush shadowed over him as he watched her nearing the Blue River that ran a glassy green with hints of brown below her. Watched her walk the road. Kneel to its left flank, finger the ground. Her prints sinking into the shapes left by the trespass of mule. But still no Dorn.