The Dead Run (22 page)

 

CHAPTER 39

I
t was what they called a fever dream, more like an eyes-closed hallucination than a somnolent lacuna. Galvan hadn't pulled the comforter up to his chin and doused the bedside reading lamp; his body had shut down in agony while some white-supremacist scumbag propane-torched his arm stump until the blood bubbled so he wouldn't bleed to death.

Your unconscious mind functioned differently, under circumstances like that.

Jess was back in Ojos. Back under Ojos. He knew it instinctively, though his surroundings were indistinct, wreathed in murk and shadow. It was the smell. Death and decay invaded his nostrils with each breath, but they were cut with something else, something even more stomach-turning because it was so out of place.

Young life, vivid and vibrant. Fresh hot blood, coursing through supple flesh.

Young life, soon to be extinguished. Crimson spattering the ash-gray world.

Jess saw and smelled and felt it all at once, as if his senses had intensified and merged, and time had folded over on itself.

There was a girl here somewhere, and he had to save her. It was the
why
. It always had been.

For better or for worse.

Mostly worse.

He was walking, slowly and easily, through a narrow tunnel. He seemed to know exactly where he was going. He let his body lead the way.

There was no pain, no dehydration. No blistered skin, no loss of limb. In fact, Jess felt fantastic—full of strength, overbrimming with vitality, light and free.

After a moment, his consciousness expanded by a few degrees, like the rib cage when you inhaled deeply, and Jess took stock of himself and understood that it was a matter of addition by subtraction. The fear that had gripped him for every moment of the last year was gone. The ceaseless vigilance it demanded had disappeared, too; he was no less alert now, but that alertness was centered instead of jittery. Calm as the eye of a storm.

He turned left and saw a faint light, licking at the damp wall from within an unseen chamber. The smell of flesh, of life, radiated from it, and Jess followed.

That fear had governed him for far longer than the term of his imprisonment, Jess thought now, the epiphany blooming inside him like some dark flower. That fear had put him in prison, in deserts and border towns, in constant risk. It had been with him for as long as he could remember. He'd been throwing blind punches at it since he was a kid, enacting a series of rituals he didn't even understand in an elaborate, instinctual attempt to keep it at bay. Moving so fast and so recklessly that nobody—not the fear, not his wife, not even Jess himself—could possibly catch up.

Wherever you go, there you are.

Now Jess reached the corridor's end and turned to face the glow. Through a low, rounded doorway was a spider's lair of a room, stacked high with books and lit by scores of candles. In the center of the web sat El Cucuy, his scarifying visage bent low over a leather-bound volume, his pure-white hair nearly touching the pages.

The girl was everywhere and nowhere at once—her presence suffusing the room, her form invisible. At first, he thought it was his daughter, but no. This energy could not be hers. It was older and deeper, suffused with misery and alive with fury.

An image of her filled Galvan's mind's eye, nudging all else aside. She was devastatingly gorgeous. Shockingly young. Clad in a floor-length dress that shimmered with jewels. A terrible wisdom played in a pair of eyes as bright and green as emeralds. As if she knew what fate awaited her.

As if she'd died a thousand times already, was resigned to die a thousand more.

Her hands moved to her chest, covered her heart.

Her lips moved, formed words, Galvan straining to hear. Unable. The message was for him—he knew it, the dream-logic unassailable. He reached out to her, not with his hands but with his consciousness. Tried to gather her in.

And watched her fade away.

Whether it was her sadness that washed over him or Jess's own, he couldn't be sure.

Maybe it was neither. Maybe it was Cucuy's.

The room came back, everything sharpened now. Cucuy still pored over his book. Jess stood and breathed and waited to be seen, the recognition inevitable, as if time itself was rushing toward the moment.

He felt neither fear nor rage; all desire was distant and pale, tamped down and muted. No fight-or-flight flood of epinephrine was swirling into his bloodstream. He was taking his orders from some higher version of himself, here in this fever dreamscape.

He could only hope
that
Jess Galvan knew what the fuck he was doing.

Cucuy, impossibly, continued to be unaware of his presence—the priest's energy flowing, almost visibly, into the pages of the book. Perhaps his abilities, like Jess's own, were different here.

Perhaps here, Jess could win.

He heard himself say the priest's name.

The piercing black eyes swept up and met his own, and suddenly Jess and Cucuy were bound. Connected. As if somebody had run a cable between them—right down to the low thrum of electricity behind Jess's eyes.

Connected
.

The word, the notion, spread slowly across the plane of Jess's consciousness, until it coated everything.

Somehow . . . we are connected.

Perhaps the thought originated with Cucuy, or perhaps Jess volleyed it to him, across their invisible communicative wire.

How it had happened, what it meant, Jess had no idea. Of more importance was the manner in which it was met—the information that ricocheted back to him.

It was not a thought, not something that could be distilled into words. It was information in its rawest form, a message conveyed straight from one sympathetic nervous system to another.

It was fear.

Cucuy is afraid of me.

How? Why?

Before Jess could get any farther than that, the floor began to tremble. Fissure lines snaked between his feet; he looked up at the ceiling and a handful of dirt fell into his eyes.

An earthquake?
Jess thought dizzily, retreating into the doorway for refuge, the constant preparation drills of a California childhood still embedded deep within.
Here?

He cast around for Cucuy, but all he caught was a flash of white and a glint of amulets as the priest vanished into an antechamber, the book clutched to his chest.

The girl's presence returned, pulsing more strongly with each moment that passed. She, too, was afraid. If only he could find her. Comfort her. If only—

And then the world was spinning, the entire maze of caverns flipping end-over-end and Galvan tumbling with it, mind stripped of thought, no time even to contemplate what the fuck was happening, what this could be, because the only thing that mattered now was drawing the next breath, escaping pulverization, staying whole—

 

CHAPTER 40

G
alvan's eyes opened onto a reality that trumped his nightmare a thousandfold. A slot-machine blur of sky and dirt flashed past the windows as the car rolled—though
rolled
did the situation little justice;
rolled
sounded controlled and smooth, and this was the opposite, a high-speed cacophony of crumpling metal and ungiving ground, vulnerable tissue and flying glass.

Galvan's body fell toward the floor, the wall, the ceiling, the other wall; if the laws of physics demanded that this vehicle slow down, they certainly weren't demanding it very loudly. Pescador fell with and on and against him, their bodies bouncing and ricocheting like fresh kernels in a popcorn popper.

Gustavo, behind the wheel, was dead or unconscious, a fat slumped-over sack of a man, head lolling as the vehicle banged its way toward oblivion or inertia, whichever came first. The girl in the front seat wailed in terror, seat belt holding her in place. And the last person in the world Galvan wanted lying in his lap was basically lying in his lap.

Also, Galvan was left-handed now, his half-arm hurt like a motherfucker, and he was probably a couple pints short of a full tank, blood-wise.

Consciousness might turn out be a real short trip, a commuter flight between blackouts, even if the Beemer stuck a gold-medal-worthy landing.

Better make the most of it.

On the next washing-machine spin, he pulled Pescador to him—the Federale sported a gash across the forehead, crimson dribbling into his left eye, and when he saw it Galvan intuited the source of the wound, remembered the whole fucking reason they were here, realized the box had to be in the car somewhere, then put all that aside and focused on the task on hand, which was to push the cocksucker down far enough to clamp both legs around his neck and squeeze until the man's windpipe collapsed.

Which was going to be tricky, given gravity's current propensity to switch directions with each blink of the eye. To say nothing of the redundancy of killing a man when the both of you would likely be dead before the little hand completed its next spin around the clock face.

Then again, thoroughness had always been one of Galvan's virtues.

He locked both legs around the Federale's thick torso as the churning car tossed them again and managed to maintain the grip as they were thrown onto the floor. Pescador pinwheeled his arms and gasped, broke free on the next dump-down.

Things were slowing, Galvan realized; the car was teetering on its side, momentarily stable. Pescador acted on the shift first, scrabbled toward the up-facing door and kicked Galvan in the chest as he tried to follow, knocking him against the opposite window and robbing him of breath.

Then the car fell onto its back, a dead cockroach, and erased Galvan's disadvantage—one of them, leastways. He and Pescador were on their stomachs now, like men crawling through a tunnel, and doing any damage to each other was damn near impossible. The girl—it was the blonde, Betty—was yelling for help, the seat belt holding her upside down and hostage. Galvan reached across himself, managed to press the release button and send her toppling onto the floor with the rest of the worms.

It was hot and still in here now, except for the grunts and the breath, and it was all about exit strategy. Who could open a window or a door and climb back into the world. Galvan flipped himself over and jabbed at the window button. No dice; all systems down. Opposite him, Pescador was yanking at a door handle, to no avail—too much damage to the Beemer's body, Galvan guessed. Galvan pulled on his own handle, but it wouldn't budge, either.

It would have to be a window. And if the buttons didn't work, it would have to be brute force. Galvan cast around for something that could break the glass—which had to be the laminated kind, normally reserved for windshields, to have survived the crash—and remembered the box. He found it wedged against the rear windshield and pushed off against the useless door like a swimmer making the turn at the end of a lap, managed to grab it and gather it in.

There wasn't enough space for a good strong swing, and Galvan couldn't grasp the thing with just one hand, anyway. Instead, he pressed it against the door with his stump, wincing as arrows of pain shot up the length of what remained of his arm, and prepared to throw as much body weight into it as he could.

Pescador's eyes burned into the side of Galvan's head. The Federale was shrewd; if his prisoner had found a way out, he would happily take advantage.

That stacked up just fine with Galvan—as long as he was the first man out, the first one on his feet. That ought to be enough to win the day, if the day was still winnable.

Pull this off, you'll have the upper hand.

Guess that gives me two.

The upper and the left.

Here goes nothing.

He loosed a gut-deep scream and slammed his shoulder against the box. A thin spiderweb of cracks spread out across the window.

That was a start.

Galvan reared back, took a deep breath, steeled himself to go again. The thing's sharp corner had punctured his skin, despite Galvan's efforts to hit it head-on. He felt the trickle of blood, knew he couldn't afford to lose even that much.

Before he could throw himself at the window again, Pescador decided to pitch in. He kicked Galvan square in the middle of the spine, propelling him into the glass with more force than Jess could have hoped to muster on his own, and the panel gave. The shards sprayed the ground, like a mouthful of shark's teeth, and in rushed the hot air.

Let's hear it for teamwork.

Galvan crawled free, snatched the largest dagger of glass, leapt to his feet, and whirled. Blinked back the stars, the spinning Looney Tunes bluebirds. Crouched before the car's gaping wound, heart pumping double time.

He didn't have long to wait. Pescador's head emerged a moment later, and Galvan wasted no time pressing the ice-pick-sharp weapon to his jugular vein.

“Stand up reeeeal slow.”

Pescador raised his palms to shoulder height in an instinctive surrender signal and did as he was told. Galvan quickstepped sideways to give him room, the blade never straying from the softest part of the Federale's neck. He eye-checked the angles, tried to figure out how he was going to do this.

Got it
.

In one swift motion, he slid his abbreviated right arm up the back of Pescador's shirttail and threaded it through the neck opening, yoking him up.

“Don't move,” Galvan whispered, applying a little pressure with the shard and drawing a single fat drop of blood. “Don't even think about it.”

He heard sounds, close by, from the direction of the road—doors opening, boots finding ground—but Galvan refused to look. Nothing could stop him from finishing this, right now. While he still could.

Pescador heard them, too. He tried to turn his head, and Galvan pressed harder. The drop of blood pooled larger, wobbled.

“You wanna look at something, look at me.”

The Federale complied, and Galvan treated him to an evil grin.

“Remember what I told you, motherfucker?”

Dark blobs moved in Galvan's periphery, then resolved into black-clad men. He turned Pescador a hundred and eighty degrees, the cocksucker's body a shield against whatever came, and found himself staring into the barrels of more assault rifles than he cared to count. He searched the glossy pull-down face shields of the men wielding them for some clue, some idea what he was dealing with here, but found only his own reflection.

He looked ghastly. Insane.

Felt that way, too.

Embraced it.

Come on down!

Welcome to the Ruckus.

Galvan jerked Pescador closer. These had to be the Federale's people, his backup squad.

But if he had this kind of hardware at his disposal, why would he use those bikers?

It didn't add up.
Something
must have caused the accident that had awakened Galvan, and a collision with the van these men had jumped from, the one parked by the roadside twenty feet away, was the only plausible possibility.

A rig like that didn't get in accidents by accident, Galvan thought, trying to trace the facts to their logical conclusion as fast as he could. They'd run Pescador off the road. Tried to kill him.

The enemy of my enemy . . .

Is a mystery.

Guy like Pescador probably had no shortage.

Or maybe it was Galvan they were after. He glanced down at the box, lying amidst the shattered window glass, and heard the beating of the heart within. Or imagined he did.

This was all taking too long. Galvan flexed every muscle left at his disposal and waited for somebody else to make a play.

It happened fast. The soldiers parted like the Red Sea, and through their midst strolled a short, stocky guy in cheap sunglasses who looked for all the world like he should have been ushering tourists onto a chartered fishing boat.

He popped a toothpick between his lips and gestured at Galvan.

“Por favor, amigo, drop your . . . whatever that is.”

“The hell I will.”

The man sighed, removed his shades, and blinked at Galvan. “My men could kill you a hundred times over, comprende? My business is not with you. It is with your friend there.”

He flashed a set of large, even white teeth. “Hola, Luis. Cómo está, hermano? Remember me?”

“I'll kill him,” Galvan blurted. “Ease off, or I'll slit his fucking throat.”

The jefe regarded him with what seemed like a new level of interest. With delight, even—unless Galvan was way off, which he very well might have been. He needed a goddamn scorecard to keep track of the players, never mind sussing out who wanted what.

“Would you?” he mused. “Tell me, if you don't mind, why is that?”

The situation was spiraling out of control—not that Galvan had experienced anything resembling control in quite some time. He could feel the last reserves of strength ebbing in him, see the sunbursts pinwheeling across his field of vision, feel his wound throbbing.

There were angles here he wasn't seeing, motivations he was too far gone to grasp.

“I tell you what,” Galvan eked out, acting on instinct, running on vapors. He threw a head nod at the Beemer's wreckage. “First things first, there's a girl in there. Get her out, and make sure she's all right. Then we can talk.”

The guy pooched out his lips and nodded. “An honorable request,” he declared. “I like you already.” He snapped his fingers. “Sacar la de allí.”

Two of the gunmen stepped forward. Within moments, they had extracted Betty from the car. She emerged bloodied but intact. Galvan watched as they led her out of sight, toward the van.

“They'll look her over,” the boss assured him, following Galvan's gaze. “We got a first-aid kit in there and everything. Now then. About our friend here.”