Apparition (The Hungry Ghosts) (36 page)

“That’s the problem,” Charlie said quietly. “We don’t have any idea what the city wants. So we’d better make an attempt to find out.”

“How?” Victor asked.

“Let’s go meet the ghost train.”

2.

Outside, the angry throng pelted the greenhouse with stones. The sound of breaking glass told Wayra they probably had less than a minute to find the opening to the tunnels.

Kali suddenly dropped down to a bench filled with small plastic containers that held cuttings from other plants. She squawked and fussed and fluttered her wings as if scolding Wayra for not understanding. He dropped to his knees next to the bench and ran his hand and paw over the ground beneath it, searching for a hatch, a loose board, something. But he couldn’t find anything.

“There’s no door here,” Ricardo said. “And we’re running out of time.”

“Every greenhouse has a hatch that opens to the tunnels.” Wayra looked around frantically, certain the opening had to be in this vicinity. Otherwise the bird wouldn’t have led them to this spot. “It’s here. It has to be here.”

“I told you not to trust him,” Naomi snapped. “This is a trap. This whole thing is a trap. And why should we be following a stupid bird? Tell me that, Ricardo.”

“Shut up, Naomi,” Tess said, pushing the bench out of the way.

Kali, still squawking, flew upward, then dived at Naomi, and she stumbled back, waving her arms, shrieking, “Get away from me, you stupid parrot, get away from me!”

She fell back into a second bench, knocking it over, and sprawled in a thicket of tomato plants. Wayra pushed the fallen containers out of the way and dug through dirt and weeds until he felt a cool metal surface. “Here, it’s here.” He unlatched the hatch, opened it, and peered into a dark hole faintly lit by the glowing lights most of the tunnels had. The drop was maybe six feet. “Get inside, fast.”

A great explosion of glass at the other end of the greenhouse announced the mob’s arrival.
Smoke them out, smoke them out,
they shouted, and the flickering flames of their torches set trees and plants on fire. Tess dropped through the opening first, then Ricardo. Naomi hung back, arms clutched to her body, and shook her head violently. “No, no, it’s a trick. You tricked me once, Wayra, never again.”

“They’ll kill you.”

“I’m already dead.”

Wayra threw his arms around her and dropped her down the hatch. Kali swept in after her, and Wayra quickly pulled the bench over the opening, an awkward maneuver with just one hand. He hoped it would buy them a few minutes. Then he crawled under the bench and eased himself over the side of the hatch, his right hand gripping the metal handle. As he dropped, the hatch slammed shut.

This tunnel, like others beneath the city, had small glowing lights that ran along the base of the concrete walls. The lights along the ceiling didn’t work, Wayra noticed, but there was still sufficient illumination for him to see the others—Kali, perched on Tess’s shoulder, Naomi on the floor, sobbing that she had broken her ankle, Ricardo crouched beside her, moving his hands over her ankle.

“It’s not broken,” Ricardo told her. “You just sprained it. C’mon, we need to keep moving.” He tried to help her up, but she wrenched back from him.

“I can’t walk, okay? I … I can’t walk and … and Wayra threw me down here, he—”

“He saved your ass,” Tess said. “So stop whining. Right now, the parrot is our best bet out of here.” With that, she loped after Kali, who flew straight down the middle of the tunnel.

“I’ll carry you, Naomi,” Ricardo said.

“Stay with me,” she pleaded. “I don’t want to travel with them. I don’t trust them.”

“I’m not dying in here,” Ricardo told her.

“We’re already dead,” she shouted. “Why do you keep talking like we aren’t?”

Wayra leaned into her face. “Let me spell it out for you. Your virtual form became a host body, you can’t get out of it, and you can die in that body.”

Shouts, directly above them. Wayra hesitated a moment longer, wondering why he bothered, then took off after Tess and Kali.

3.

The tunnels spread out beneath El Bosque like splayed fingers on a giant’s hand. Tess followed Kali up one finger, down another, up and down. Once, she lost sight of the parrot and Kali flew back to find her. By then, Wayra had caught up to her and Ricardo was directly behind him, with Naomi hobbling along behind him. That was when she heard the echoing shouts of the mob, smelled the smoke, and realized the crazies had found the hatch and at least some of them had entered the tunnels.

Kali vanished into yet another tunnel, Tess ran faster. The shouts sounded closer, closer. Beads of sweat rolled down the sides of her face, fear coiled in the pit of her stomach, a viper ready to spring. Then the tunnel abruptly dead-ended. Kali made a heart-wrenching sound, a cry that sounded almost human to Tess, and quickly flew back the way they had just come.

“A trap,” Naomi gasped, panting hard. “Just like I said.”

“The parrot has been down here before and we haven’t.” Wayra’s voice sounded tight, tense. “If you’ve got a better idea, go for it.”

“Well, shit, it looks to me like the parrot is lost,” Ricardo spat.

Kali swept toward them, past them, her wings flapping hard, and flew back and forth in front of the dead end, left wall to right to left again, a space of perhaps six feet. “What’s she doing?” Tess asked.

“It’s like she’s … weaving,” Wayra replied.

“We’re trying another tunnel.” Ricardo sounded terrified. “That mob is just minutes away.”

“Look,” Tess exclaimed and pointed.

As Kali repeatedly flew back and forth, the wall started to fissure, then crack, and the cracks sped quickly toward a central spot in the wall. An opening appeared in that spot and the faster she flew, the larger it got. It was as if invisible hands were pulling back on the concrete, widening the opening.

“She’s no parrot,” Ricardo breathed. “She’s … something else.”

Kali circled around them once, squawking, then sailed through the opening. Tess could hear her on the other side of it, fussing, talking.
“Vamonos, amigos, rápido.”

Wayra climbed through first; his head appeared in the opening moments later. “Quick, I don’t think she can hold it like this much longer.”

“C’mon, Naomi,” Ricardo urged, tugging on her hand.

But she jerked free of his grip and backed away from him, tears rolling down her cheeks. “I’ll … I’ll find my own way out of here.”

Tess pushed through the hole, with Ricardo quickly following her. Naomi didn’t appear. Wayra shouted for her to hurry, but Naomi wasn’t in that tunnel anymore. Kali flew back and forth across the opening, the tips of her wings brushing against the fissures and cracks in the concrete, until they began to vanish. The hole started shrinking, but not quickly enough. One of the crazies raced into the tunnel, waving his torch, yelling,
“In here, they’re in here. Behind the wall.”
He dropped his torch and dived for the hole even as the concrete around it continued to repair itself, to weave together.

Tess and Wayra rushed forward to help him, to pull him through, but within seconds, the hole had closed completely, severing his right shoulder, arm, and head, which dropped to the ground.

“Fuck, fuck.” Tess lurched back. Her stomach somersaulted, she nearly gagged on her own bile.

Wayra grabbed her arm. “We can’t do anything for him, Tess.”

He pulled her away from the wall and she whipped around and raced after him and Ricardo and Kali, into a shorter tunnel and up a flight of crumbling stone steps. Wayra and Ricardo threw their bodies against the old wooden door, it swung open, and they stumbled into the altar area of a small church. Tess hurried after them, shut the door, bolted it, and sank down against the wood until she was sitting on the floor.

Kali landed on Tess’s forearm, her beak open, her soft green breast throbbing. Tess shrugged off her pack, unzipped it, and pulled out a bottle of water. She poured some into her hand and Kali dipped her beak into it, drank, paused, drank some more, then hopped to the floor. Tess tilted the bottle and slowly poured water over Kali. She unfurled her wings, tilted her head back, preened herself, and made a soft, trilling noise of contentment.

Tess polished off what was left of the water, fished out two more bottles and got up and gave them to Wayra and Ricardo. The
brujo’
s eyes darted around as he gulped from the bottle. When he finally had sated his thirst, he wiped his arm across his mouth. “A church. I don’t do churches.”

“Or cemeteries,” Wayra reminded him.

Tess wondered if he would burn up if she poured holy water on him. With that thought, another memory surfaced, of herself hiding in this very church. It had been deserted except for an elderly couple and … a priest, yes, a priest. And then another chunk of the memory crashed into place.

“I hid from you in here,” Tess burst out, staring accusingly at Ricardo. “You seized a priest and threatened me.”

Ricardo looked guilty. “The situation was different then.”

“Yeah, you weren’t trapped in your virtual body.” She noticed that the mark on her wrist didn’t burn or itch even though she was only a foot from him. “I like you better like this, Ricardo.”

“Only because I’m no threat to you.”

“It’s more than that. I think you’ve changed.”

He seemed bemused. “Before I was Darth Vader and now I’m Luke Skywalker?”

“Maybe not quite as extreme as that.”

She pushed to her feet and went over to one of the stained-glass windows. In the center of a blue pane, part of the Virgin Mary’s robe, was a piece of clear glass the size and shape of a dinner plate, a replacement pane. Tess peered out.

Twilight still clung to the air, the road out front looked deserted. Definitely the same church, she thought. Next door was the Mercado del León, the market where the blackness had taken her. She had come full circle in El Bosque.

After a while, Wayra joined her at the window. He gestured at the blankets and pillows piled in one of the pews. “I found those downstairs. You and Ricardo should get some sleep. I’ll take the first watch.”

“We’re still in El Bosque. What’re we doing in here?”

“I have no idea. But this is where Kali brought us.” He tilted his head toward the pew closest to them, where Kali huddled, trembling. “And until she’s rested and can show us the way out or until the city decides what to do with us, we’re stuck here.”

“What
is
she, Wayra?”

The shifter shook his head and jammed his hands in the pockets of his jacket. “Whatever she is, she apparently commands the residual magic of the city. She might nibble at any of the food we still have. I’m going to find some reinforcements for the front door, just in case the crazies figure out where we are.”

Tess nodded, retrieved her pack, picked up a couple of blankets and a pillow, and went over to the pew where Kali was. She made a bed for herself, gently picked up Kali, set her on the plump pillow, and dug a battered apple from her pack. She bit into it and offered the piece to the parrot. Kali pecked at it a couple of times, then lost interest and waddled to the edge of the top blanket and disappeared beneath it. Tess drew it carefully over the two of them, aware of the parrot nestling down against her leg, her body chilled.

Tess’s head sank into the pillow, her eyes screamed to shut. She turned on her side, her spine against the back of the pew, and drew her knees up toward her chest, offering Kali a culvert of denim and body warmth. Maybe she dozed, maybe she only thought she dozed. But when she snapped into full consciousness, Ricardo sat in the pew in front of her, a tall black man, a
brujo
trapped in his virtual form, his chin resting on the backs of his massive hands.

“I can’t remember what it was like to die, Tess. That’s how long I’ve been what I am.”

“For me, it wasn’t much different than being alive,” she said. “There were things that didn’t make sense, but once I realized I was dead or near death, everything clicked into place.”

“So where is Naomi now?”

“Maybe she found another way out of the tunnels.”

“And maybe not. Maybe those loons killed her.”

Tess didn’t say anything.

“You know, it’s weird. I want to hate you. But I can’t seem to muster it. I want to hate your father, Ian, your mother, Maddie, your whole group of intruders. But it’s just not there for me. It was for my sister and I think it’s what made her so powerful.”

“It’s also what destroyed her.”

“Probably so.” His smile smacked of resignation, sadness, and profound regret.

Another memory clicked into place for Tess. “In the lead-up to the solstice battle against Dominica’s tribe, there was a woman who brought together tens of thousands of people whose loved ones had been seized by Dominica’s tribe. They were willing to fight against her to avenge the deaths of their loved ones. When Ian and I first wrote about that battle in the
Expat News,
a reader commented that we hadn’t given that woman enough credit. He talked about it like the battle was a novel where we’d ignored an important plot point. But he missed the central message. That battle, Ian and I meeting as we did, my dad as a chaser, it was
our
story. Other characters in that battle, in those dark years, have other stories. Do you see what I’m saying?”

“We’re the heroes of our own stories.”

“Joseph Campbell.”

“Dominica hated his work.”

Tess laughed. “That figures.” She lifted up on her elbows and bit into the apple she’d tried to feed Kali. “But what’s
your
story, Ricardo? I think that’s what you need to ask yourself.”

“Sordid, opportunistic, homicidal, sexually deviant. Not too many heroics there.”

“You can turn that around.”

“Yeah? How? By dying and starting over again?”

“Maybe. Or maybe you can start doing it just by thinking different thoughts, by being mindful of what you’re thinking moment to moment.”

“The Zen of
brujo
conversion.” He shrugged and a frown carved its way down between his dark eyes. “I sometimes listened in on that
net
that connected Dominica to the rest of her tribe. She really hated you and Ian. She particularly hated the fact that she couldn’t seize you. I think that’s when I knew her days were numbered. I have to admit that I was surprised when she seized Maddie.”