Esperanza (55 page)

She wondered why it didn’t feel all that good.

At Santa Clara Church they picked up twenty-three passengers, five hundred flamethrowers, and hundreds of other weapons that ranged from grenades to handguns to high-powered rifles with scopes. Ian was astonished that a church had amassed such an arsenal, but was grateful for anything that might give them an edge against the
brujos.

Wayra and one of the priests spent an hour on a basketball court behind the church, demonstrating how to use the flamethrowers and grenades and how to load the rifles and guns. He also spelled out some basics, first in Spanish, then in English.

“It’s likely that anyone we encounter in Esperanza is a
brujo,
that they now inhabit everyone in the city who is not in hiding. These are our fellow
countrymen, so don’t shoot to kill. Aim for a leg, foot, shoulder. An injury is often enough to cause a
brujo
to vacate a host body.

“Anywhere north of the Río Palo, a
brujo
can assume a virtual form. Sometimes you’ll recognize that there’s something not quite right about it, something
off.
But these forms are convincing, so when in doubt, use the flamethrower. Just the threat of fire will cause the
brujo
to shed the form or leave a host body. Fire obliterates them. And remember that these forms can interact with most things in the physical world—they can open doors, drive cars, fire guns.”

“How many of us will there be?” asked one man in the crowd.

The priest answered. “Around twenty thousand. There are five hundred buses parked in the pasture on Dorado’s north side, where people will board. The rest will go by cars. We aren’t sure what kind of defenses they’ve erected, what the conditions are. But we hope to simply move in and overcome them. Most of you who are here understand the ways of
brujos,
know how dangerous they are. What we’re about to do is perilous, I cannot emphasize that enough. No one will think badly of you if you decide to back out now.”

A woman raised her fist and shouted,
“Libertad de los brujos! No más tiranía! Sí, se puede!”

A roar went up, a call to the end of
brujo
tyranny, and Ian felt a tectonic plate shifting, something so profound that he lacked the language to describe it.

“
Bueno, vámonos!”
the priest yelled, and motioned the group forward, toward the bus.

As the crowd dispersed, Wayra suddenly doubled over, clutching his arms against him. Ian grabbed his arm. “Jesus, what is it?”

Air hissed through Wayra’s clenched teeth. He tried to straighten up, couldn’t, and Ian helped him over to a bench. Even once he was sitting down, he remained doubled over, unable to speak, barely able to breathe. His body began to change, fur appearing on his cheeks, the backs of his hands.

“Wayra, you can’t shift now.” Ian looked around anxiously, worried that someone would see. “There’re a bunch of people here.”

The fur vanished into the pores of his skin. He finally raised his head, his face eggshell white, his eyes dark pools of sorrow. “Sara . . . Dominica seized her . . . killed her . . . a sacrifice to Inti, the sun god.”

Sweet Christ.

“I’m done walking circles . . . around Dominica. We must . . . hurry, Ian.”

“Can you get up?”

He inhaled deeply, sat up straight, but the effort cost him. Sweat poured down the sides of his face, he grimaced. “The pain . . . is passing. Just help me stand.”

Ian helped him up, he swayed, then seemed to gain control of himself and strode forward. Color returned to his face, his pace became more certain. By the time they reached the bus, he acted almost normal. But he wasn’t, that deep sorrow was still evident in his face. “I’ll drive,” Ian said.

“Good idea.”

Several men from the church had put the weapons into large plastic bins, and as passengers boarded, Wayra handed out flamethrowers, rifles, handguns, additional ammo. They loaded the bins into the rear of the bus and covered the remaining weapons with quilts just in case the Dorado cops were checking vehicles. As Ian slipped behind the wheel, the ghost of Sara Wells suddenly appeared on the hood, sitting there in a lotus position, staring in at him.

“The others are in the church where you and Tess spent your last minutes as transitionals. The
brujos
are now trying to smoke out the bunkers and underground shelters. Pablo, Charlie, and I and the rest of us will do what we can to help once you get into the city, but it’s going to be bad, Ian.”

He had dozens of questions, but she evaporated before he even opened his mouth. He started the bus, pulled out onto the road. Wayra was on his cell, chattering away in Spanish, then snapped it shut, frustration rolling off him like an odor. “It seems that the only cell service that’s working is right around Dorado. They’ve got their own tower and it doesn’t work for Esperanza. We’re just a few miles from town, so we’re going to head straight to the bridge. Buses are moving across already.”

“Do you know how to get to that church where Tess and I were just before we left here?”

“Of course. Why?”

Ian repeated Sara’s message.

“That’s all she said?”

“That’s it.”

“Shit. Drive faster, Ian.”

The Ford trundled over the bridge, the rushing Río Palo sweeping past below them, the beauty of this small valley utterly breathtaking. Tess felt as if
she were returning home after a long journey abroad and could barely contain her excitement as the bodega came into full view. It was larger than she remembered, made of stone, with half a dozen small windows bordered by dark blue wooden shutters.

Passengers waiting outside with their bags waved and shouted, drivers honked in return. Employees stood in the open doorway, applauding, and held up signs in Spanish and English that read,
NO MORE BRUJO TYRANNY! DEATH TO TYRANNY!
Men and women waved posters that bore photos of loved ones who had been killed by
brujos,
other groups simply stood there, watching the procession, weeping, their fists raised in solidarity.

But suppose this was a trap? Suppose the
brujos
knew about it? They had to know, Tess thought. There was nothing subtle about their approach. And the clunk and clatter in the Ford’s engine continued and worsened every time they hit a pothole.

Maddie, busy in the back seat with her digital camera, recording everything, suddenly said, “Maybe it’s just me, because I’m tired, but I really don’t like the sound the car’s making.”

“I’m getting kind of creeped out by all this,” Lauren said. “You think these people cheering us on are
brujos
? That maybe they’re cheering because we’re the lemmings who’re about to jump over the edge of the cliff?”

“My wrist doesn’t burn,” Tess said. “I think we’re fine. We’re all just worn out.”

“Yeah, even the car,” Maddie remarked.

The road twisted upward like a strand of DNA and was perilously steep, one hairpin curve after another. The mountain blocked most of the afternoon light, so headlights came on, glancing off trees, creating a strobelike effect. She tried not to focus on how narrow the road was, the lack of a guardrail. One of the buses was so close to the lip of the cliff that as its right rear tire struck the skinny shoulder, a chunk of mountain fell away.

Tess smelled something burning now, an odor like scorched fabric, not smoke. She hoped to hell it wasn’t the engine overheating. The car behind her suddenly pulled out into the other lane—the lane that went down the mountain—the driver honked twice and flashed a thumbs-up as he drove past. Other vehicles immediately followed. It made sense. Esperanza and the villages that surrounded it like planets revolving around the sun were the only hubs of civilization up here. She doubted cars would be coming down the mountain. Anyone who could leave probably had left already. Two lanes of traffic would get them there twice as fast.

The burning odor grew. She came out of a turn and the road briefly leveled off, then dipped steeply downward. Tess tapped the brakes—and her foot went clear to the floor. The brakes weren’t just mushy or soft, they were
gone.
“Aw, shit, shit,” she breathed, and quickly pulled out into the other lane to avoid rear-ending Dorado 13.

“Don’t tell me that’s what the smell is,” Lauren said, her voice sharp with alarm.

“Start looking for a place where I can pull off. Preferably a level place, with a guardrail.”

“You’ve got a hill coming up,” Maddie said. “Get back in the right lane when you can. We’ll be okay.”

Until the next descent, Tess thought, and hit the horn, then the blinker, and darted into the right lane, cutting dangerously close to the Dorado 13 that she had just passed. The driver slammed on his horn, letting her know he didn’t appreciate it, and swerved into the left lane, gaining on her. Tess lowered her window, shouted, “My brakes are gone!”

But the bus had only a door on the right side, no window that could be lowered, and the driver couldn’t hear her. She made frantic hand gestures. Dorado 13 sped on.

“We’re going to have to bail,” Lauren said anxiously.

“Bail?”
Maddie exclaimed. “Into what? We bail, we’ll go over the side of a mountain.”

Or the Ford would roll backward, down the mountain, crashing into every vehicle behind it, a domino effect that could kill hundreds. Tess gripped the wheel, bleeding off as much speed as she safely could while in a climb. Fifty to forty to thirty-five, then down to twenty miles an hour. She let the speedometer needle slip to fifteen. As the cars behind her started pulling into the other lane, she hit the hazard light. The top of the hill was visible, a clump of wilted flowers marking a roadside fatality, no guardrail, no place to pull off. She frantically pumped the brake, hoping it would kick in. Nothing happened.

“Mom, get into the back seat with Maddie, both of you bail out on the right side.
Hurry!”

Lauren scrambled over the seat, Maddie hurled open the door, and they threw themselves out. Then the car reached the top of the incline, which looked to be about two heartbeats long. Tess turned off the engine, grabbed her pack, and swerved the wheel to the right, aiming the SUV for the edge of the cliff. She jerked up on the door handle, but it wouldn’t budge, it was
stuck, and the trees at the edge of the cliff were rushing toward her.
Jesus.
Tess climbed over the seat, kicked open the back door, dived for the ground. She slammed into it, rolling, air rushing from her lungs, dust biting at her eyes.

The Ford crashed into several large boulders, the rear end flipped upward, over, and the SUV vanished over the edge of the mountain. An explosion sundered the air, a fireball soared through the trees, incinerating everything in its path. Embers rained down, other trees caught fire, the dry branches crackled and burned like money. Clouds of smoke rolled across the road.

Coughing, rubbing her eyes, Tess pushed to her feet, aware that something had gone awry in her right leg, the one that had cost her thousands, the one with all the metal inside. Or maybe it was her knee, her ankle, she couldn’t tell.

She limped forward, shouting for Maddie, Lauren, only vaguely aware of the shriek of tires against asphalt, the squeal of metal hitting metal around her. At some point, she realized her hair—her long white hair—was burning and she scooped up handfuls of sand and slapped it against her head, smothering the fire. She tripped over something, it was Maddie, groaning as she lifted up, face smudged with soot and dirt. “Tesso, Jesus, where’s Lauren?”

“Running like hell,” Lauren shouted. “Can’t see shit through this smoke. Keep talking to me, keep talking.”

She emerged from the smoke, face and hair gray with ash, eyes leaking with tears, blood rolling down the right side of her face from a gash in her temple. She fell into Maddie and Tess, and they held her up. Tess tore off her jacket and pressed it against her mother’s temple. “Hold it there, Mom. Keep moving your feet. Left foot, right, good, good.”

A bus covered in ash squealed to the side of the road, its windows black with soot, and people poured out to help them. They coughed, stumbled, and limped into the bus. The doors whispered shut behind them. When Tess could finally see again, when the aching, pulsing burn in her eyes began to ebb, she and Lauren were in seats at the back of the bus, where a man and a woman with first-aid kits tended to their injuries.

Someone else handed Tess a large bottle of cold water and a damp cloth so she could wipe the ash off her face. The woman examining Tess’s ankle—not her leg, not her thigh—announced that she had sprained it. “And your knees look like my son’s the first time he fell off his bike,” the woman said in Spanish. “I’ll wrap the ankle and clean the scrapes and you’ll be good as new.”

“Thank you so much,” Tess croaked, her voice as dry as paper.

She took a long swig of deliciously cold water and then wiped the damp cloth over her face and neck. It came away black. She poured water over it and wiped again. When she raised her eyes from the cloth, a tall man stood in the middle of the aisle, staring at her. Soot was smeared across his face, ash had turned his hair and beard a dirty white. Ash even coated his lashes, so that when he blinked, bits of it fluttered away like tiny insects. But it was his eyes that spoke to her, his eyes that drew her up from the seat, his eyes that she remembered.

“Ian?”