The House of the Scorpion (41 page)

The sun rose high enough to shine into the pit. Matt saw, not far down, a patch of brown. It was the uniform all the boys wore in the factory. “I can see you, Chacho,” said Matt. “You aren't far from the edge. You can make it if you try.”

In the distance he heard a clanking, mechanical noise. It wasn't Jorge's cart, but perhaps the Keeper had borrowed something sturdier. Matt shaded his eyes. He wanted to hide, but he saw with dismay that he'd left muddy footprints all over the ground. He couldn't possibly wipe them out before someone arrived.

He waited hopelessly for the Keeper to find him, but instead, to his amazement, he saw Ton-Ton's shrimp harvester shuddering and groaning over the desert. Fidelito sat on the hood. As soon as he saw Matt, he jumped off and started running.

“Matt! Matt!” shrieked the little boy. “You got out! Where's Chacho?” He flung himself at Matt and almost knocked him over. “I'm so happy! You're alive! I was so worried!” Matt held on to him, to keep him from dancing over the edge of the basin.

The shrimp harvester jerked to a stop. “I, uh, I thought you might need help,” said Ton-Ton.

Matt began to laugh. Only it wasn't a laugh, more like hysteria. “Need help?” he wheezed out. “I guess you could say that.”

“I did say it,” said Ton-Ton, looking puzzled.

Matt began to shiver. His laughter turned into stormy weeping. “Don't do that!” wailed Fidelito.

“It's Chacho,” sobbed Matt. “He's in the bones. He won't talk. I think he's dead.”

“Where?” said Ton-Ton. Matt pointed out the brown uniform, all the while clutching Fidelito's arm. He was terrified the little boy would fall into the pit.

Ton-Ton positioned the harvester at the edge. He reached into the bones with the mechanical arm he used to tip shrimp tanks into his collecting bin. At the end was a large claw. Slowly, methodically, Ton-Ton cleared away the top layer until they could see Chacho's face. The boy's eyes were closed. Ton-Ton moved away more bones until Chacho's chest appeared. The cloth was torn and his uniform was streaked with blood, but he was breathing.

“It'd work better if he could, uh, help,” said Ton-Ton. He maneuvered the machine as delicately as a surgeon performing an operation.

“Could I climb out on the arm and tie a rope around him?” Matt had stopped crying, but he couldn't seem to stop shivering.

“Humph,” grunted Ton-Ton. “You'd be, uh, as much help as a drunk buzzard trying to, uh, carry off a dead cow.” He continued working so slowly and carefully that Matt wanted to scream. Yet it made sense. Any wrong move could send the bones slithering back down to cover Chacho.

Finally, Ton-Ton closed the jaws of the shrimp harvester around Chacho's body. The jaws were strong enough to crush rock, but Ton-Ton lifted the boy as gently as if he were an egg. He backed up the machine. The arm swung around until it cleared the basin and deposited Chacho on the ground. Ton-Ton pulled the arm up and over the top of the shrimp harvester, folding it into the storage position. Careful in everything, he wasn't about to leave this job half done.

Matt knelt by Chacho and felt his pulse. It was slow but strong. Fidelito patted his face. “Why won't he wake up?”

“He's, uh, in shock,” said Ton-Ton, alighting from the machine. “I've seen it before. People can take only so much fear, and then they go into a kind of, uh, sleep. Hold him up. I've got to get fluids into him.”

Matt propped Chacho up while Ton-Ton dribbled red liquid from a plastic bottle into the boy's mouth. “It's strawberry soda,” explained Ton-Ton. “The Keepers drink it all the time. It's got electrolytes in it. Good for dehydration.”

Matt was surprised by Ton-Ton's medical knowledge. But of course he stored away everything he heard. Luna at the infirmary must have talked about dehydration.

Chacho coughed, licked his lips, and swallowed. His eyes flew open. He grabbed the bottle and began gulping for all he was worth. “Slow down!” said Ton-Ton, wrenching the bottle away. “If you drink too fast, you'll, uh, puke.”

“More! More!” croaked Chacho, but Ton-Ton forced him to take sips. Chacho said some bad words, but the older boy shrugged them off. He continued to dole out the strawberry soda until he was satisfied Chacho had had enough.

He unpacked another bottle and gave it to Matt.
Heaven can't possibly be better than this
, thought Matt, swirling the sweet, cool liquid around his mouth. The taste of strawberry soda had to be right up there with El Patrón's moro crabs flown in from Yucatán.

“We'd better get going,” said Ton-Ton, firing up the shrimp harvester.

Matt's euphoria came down with a thump. “Go back? Jorge wants to kill us. I heard him say so.”

“Keep your hair on,” said Ton-Ton. “We're going to San Luis to find my
abuelita.
”

“It was my idea,” said Fidelito.

“It was
my
idea,” Ton-Ton said firmly. Matt held his hand over Fidelito's mouth to shush him. It didn't matter who thought of it as long as Ton-Ton didn't get sidetracked.

“I don't know how far I can walk,” murmured Chacho. He looked dazed.

“That's why I brought the, uh, shrimp harvester,” said Ton-Ton. “You and Matt can ride in the tank. Fidelito can, uh, sit up front with me.”

That, as far as Ton-Ton was concerned, was the end of the discussion. Matt didn't argue. By some slow, careful process Ton-Ton had decided to make a break for it. And if he wanted to make a break at five miles an hour, nothing Matt said was going to talk him out of it. Matt wondered how he hoped to evade the Keepers.

Matt helped Chacho climb down a metal ladder into the tank. Even with the old water flushed out, it reeked of rotten shrimp. Matt thought he'd throw up, except he didn't have anything to throw up. At least he wouldn't get hungry on the way.

Chacho fell asleep on the damp floor, but Matt climbed up the ladder and faced into the breeze.

Five miles an hour! Matt saw he'd been wildly optimistic. Fidelito could have skipped faster than the shrimp harvester moved. Ton-Ton had to maneuver around rocks and away from holes. Several times the machine threatened to tip over, but it ground on relentlessly and righted itself.

They went north around the vast basin of bones, and then west. The soil was littered with boulders, the spaces between with deep sand, where the harvester wallowed and complained before struggling on. Finally, they arrived at the fence and Ton-Ton halted. “Everyone out,” he announced.

He had to help Matt pull Chacho from the tank. Chacho was too weak to stand. With Fidelito dancing attendance, they carried him to a soft patch of sand. “Stay here,” Ton-Ton told Fidelito. “I mean it. If I, uh, catch you near the harvester, I'll, uh, beat the stuffing out of you.”

“He wouldn't really,” whispered Fidelito as the older boy strode away.

“What about the Keepers?” Matt said. “Isn't he afraid they'll catch us?”

“Not a chance!” Fidelito wriggled with excitement. “They're locked up in their compound. The doors and windows are covered with bags of salt—mountains and mountains of salt! All the boys helped.”

“Didn't the Keepers try to stop them?”

“They were asleep,” Fidelito said. “Ton-Ton said they wouldn't wake up no matter how much noise we made.”

Matt had a bad feeling about this, but he was too startled by what Ton-Ton was doing now to ask more questions. The boy had clamped the jaws of the shrimp harvester on to a single wire in the fence. He backed up slowly, pulling the wire with a horrible, grinding, screeching noise until
snap!
The wire parted. Ton-Ton attacked another wire, and another. The more he broke, the easier it was to unthread the fence, and soon he'd created a hole big enough to drive through.

Matt watched the top of the fence anxiously. The one wire they had to worry about was still up there, snapping and humming in the breeze. As long as Ton-Ton didn't disturb its insulation, they would be safe.

“How do you feel?” Matt asked Chacho.

“I don't know,” said the boy in a faint voice. “I'm not sure what's wrong. I tried to reach you last night, but the bones came
down so hard, I could hardly breathe. It was like being squeezed under a rock.” He paused, seeming too weak to go on.

“Does your chest hurt?” said Matt. Now he understood why Chacho had never answered him.

“A bit. But I don't think I broke anything. It's just . . . I can't seem to get enough air.”

“Don't talk,” Matt said. “We'll take you to a doctor as soon as we get to San Luis.” He was deeply worried, but he didn't understand what was wrong either.

Ton-Ton drove through the opening he'd created and helped Matt carry Chacho to the tank. The next part of the trip was much better. A road paralleled the fence, and the shrimp harvester was able to move much faster. Now and then Ton-Ton stopped to stretch his legs and to let Fidelito run off some of his energy. “If you, uh, jump up and down on my seat
one more time
, I'm going to, uh, beat the stuffing out of you,” he growled. The little boy quieted down for a minute or two.

All of them drank strawberry sodas. Ton-Ton had a crate of them in the cab. He took a break for lunch, producing wonderful food the likes of which Chacho and Fidelito had never seen. They ate pepperoni sausages and cheese, bottled olives, and cream crackers. And if the food made them thirsty, it didn't matter because they had more strawberry soda than they could drink. They finished with chocolates wrapped in gold paper.

“I'm so happy, I could fly,” Fidelito said with a contented sigh.

Matt worried about the slow, leisurely trip they were taking. “Aren't you afraid the Keepers will dig their way out?” he asked Ton-Ton.

“I told him about the salt bags,” said Fidelito.

“They, uh, they're asleep,” said the older boy.

“Not after all this time,” Matt said. “Unless—Oh, Ton-Ton! You didn't give them laudanum?”

“They earned it,” he said, in the same dogged way he'd defended them in the infirmary.

“How much?”

“Enough,” said Ton-Ton. Matt could see he wasn't going to supply any more information.

“It was wonderful!” Fidelito piped up. “Ton-Ton told us we were going to rescue you, only we had to wait for sunrise.”

“The harvester works on, uh, solar energy,” said Ton-Ton.

“So Flaco checked to be sure the Keepers were really asleep. He and the others carried off their food, and then they piled as many bags of salt around the building as they could find. Flaco said he'd wait for the supply hovercraft to fly him to the Keepers' Head—Head—”

“Headquarters,” said Ton-Ton.

“Yes! And tell them what Jorge did.”

“Flaco trusts Headquarters. I don't,” said Ton-Ton.

“Me neither,” murmured Chacho. He was propped against the side of the harvester with a bottle of soda. He seemed barely awake.

“Maybe we should hurry,” Matt said, looking at Chacho.

“Yes,” Ton-Ton agreed.

And so the shrimp harvester ground on until it reached the corner where the fence turned right. The road continued north toward a low range of hills. To the left lay the remnants of the Gulf of California, but presently it vanished and was replaced with drifting sand. Whiffs of foul-smelling air drifted over the harvester. It was the same smell Matt had met in the wastelands near the eejit pens, only here it was sharper and more alarming.

The sun was low in the west. Shadows began to lengthen across the desert. The shrimp harvester slowly climbed the road
through the hills, but when it came to a pass, where the road was entirely in shadow, it stopped. “That's it,” said Ton-Ton, jumping from the cab. “That's as far as it will go until dawn.”

Matt helped him lift Chacho from the tank. They laid him next to the road, wrapped in blankets Ton-Ton had brought. He and Matt walked to the end of the pass and hunkered down, watching the sun slide into a violet haze. “How much farther is San Luis?” asked Matt.

“Three miles. Maybe four,” said Ton-Ton. “We have to cross the Colorado River.”

“I don't think Chacho can wait until morning.”

Ton-Ton continued to gaze at the disappearing sun. It was hard to tell what was going through his mind. “I, uh, I followed my parents into Dreamland over there.” He pointed at the haze. “Jorge saved me from the dogs. I thought he was—he was . . . wonderful. But he only thought I was stupid.” Ton-Ton put his head down.

Matt guessed he was crying, and he didn't want to embarrass him by noticing. “Something like that happened to me,” Matt said at last.

“It did?” said Ton-Ton.

“Someone I cared about more than anyone in the world tried to kill me.”

“Wow!” said Ton-Ton. “That's really bad.”

They said nothing for a while. Matt could hear Fidelito telling Chacho how much fun it was to camp out under the stars and how he used to do it with his
abuelita
after the hurricane blew away their house.

“I guess you and, uh, Fidelito had better walk to San Luis,” said Ton-Ton. “If you can find a doctor, bring him here. If you haven't, uh, returned by dawn, I'll go on.”

Ton-Ton gave Matt and Fidelito flashlights. He supplied them with blankets to ward off the cold and lemons to survive the smell. “The Colorado River's b-bad,” he said. “It goes into, uh, a pipe before it gets to the road, but it's still dangerous. Stay away from it, Fidelito,” he warned. “Pay attention, or I'll, uh—”

“Beat the stuffing out of me,” the little boy said cheerfully.

“I mean it this time,” said Ton-Ton.