The Forsaken (19 page)

“What is in dis place dat you seek?”

“None of your business. I paid.”

“No one told me you want to go here,” the pilot said, handing Jude the photograph and stepping out of the helicopter to stretch his legs.

“What are you talking about? It was part of the agreement. I’ve been in the sky for hours. You’re taking me.” Jude could smell the rising stench from his own body. Too much sweat. Too much heat.

“Two hundred American dollars, or you walk to dat village. I am reasonable man, you can trust dis.”

“You know where it is? You know exactly where it is?” Jude removed his safety buckle and hopped out of the seat. “No tricks?”

“I have been to dat place, yes. But no reason to go back. No reason. Not in dis life.”

“What are you afraid of?”

“It is getting dark soon. We must go quickly if I am to bring you to dis location. Have you enough money for da journey?”

Jude shoved his hands in his pockets and pulled out a half-dozen bills. Fifties, twenties, tens all blended together. He’d meant to exchange them for local currency.

“I have money!” he shouted.

The pilot rubbed the short black hairs on his chin and with stubby fingers snatched the handful of bills from Jude’s hand. “Dis should cover it. Get in car. Village you seek is not close by. Many hills. Many people asking questions.” Jude rushed into the backseat and sank in, keeping his bag close.

The pilot squashed an insect on the dashboard and cleaned the guts off his finger with his tongue before gunning the engine and peeling off down the hill.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” Jude said under his breath.

“What’s so difficult to believe?”

“The helicopter was supposed to be a plane with a fully functional crew. Instead it turns out to be a man half my size who’s the pilot. Who also happens to be the taxi driver. Any other surprises I should be aware of?”

“Just one.”

“What’s that?”

“Keep your head down when I tell you to. Some men, men with weapons, do not take kindly to uninvited visitors in dis territory.”

“Why don’t we go another way?”

“One way. Only one way.”

As the car swerved its way around steep corners until its slow and steady halt at the foot of the mountain, Jude sat curled and tense. “Why are you so afraid of the village?” he asked a second time, hoping to dig an answer out of the man. “What’s there?”

“Some tings we should not talk of.”

“Things?” Jude asked. “I’m looking for a man, that’s all.”

“For what purpose?”

“Unfinished business.”

“A lot of men seem to have dis unfinished business. Be careful, sir. Revenge does not often bring peace.”

“You talk like someone who’s gone looking for blood.”

The man shrugged. “I have lost someting before as well, friend. But remember dat hatred and evil are real. Dem are broders. Very real. No forget. Like a curse, come dem, but only wit permission.”

Jude redirected his focus out into the plains and dilapidated homes to his right and his left. These were the unfinished stories he had read from above. Haunting and able to be felt. These stories had names. They had eyes. They were children left behind, mothers and fathers lost and trembling. For the few he saw comforted by their safe homes, he felt a whisper of fear climb inside him. This fear was for the ones who thought they were unaffected. The others, the sick, the ones without that hope of being okay, without such illusory safety, would bring reminders soon of their existence. He was sure of it. In time, their hands would run red, like the dying sun, and their palms would fill with the horrors of the innocent lives they took in order to feel again. Their bellies would swallow the cries of the splintered souls that bastard earthquakes and malnourished hurricanes forgot.

Lower now, the sun was beginning to lose its effect, the heat stifled by a slight chill. It was nearly dusk. The moon would rise soon, maybe.

Barren land stretched across the town outskirts for miles before Jude could see any more grass. It was a mystery how there seemed to be so many fields and trees from the sky, but maybe he just wasn’t looking hard enough for the barrenness. For the swamps and tourist traps.

The neighing of wild animals drifted in then through the cracked window. On the road, the car’s one good headlight flashed over infected, rabid dogs picking away the chunks of meat from an unlucky rodent. They possessed sinister growls, teeth matted with bits of flesh.

The driver lifted his eyes. “Hades be missing its pets perhaps, hmm?”

They had come to the point where Jude was required to lower his head and hide on the floor with a blanket over his body while the driver conversed with military. From what Jude observed, the men were more like rogue, rebel soldiers who fed off the desperation of locals. Jude couldn’t understand the men as they spoke, but he felt eyes drift over his back. He kept still. He didn’t speak. Tried hard not even to breathe. By the time he counted to fifty, the car was moving forward again.

“I told you it be okay,” the driver said calmly. “You listen. Wise man.”

Jude sat back up in his seat. Checked his pulse. He was still functioning as normal. Whatever normal was.

The wheels of the big-body car crunched the rocks and stones beneath it. The dirt road had ended minutes ago, and the car barely crept over the carved-out path.

Finally, the vehicle stopped.

“Dis is as far as I go. Next chapter is yours to explore. Please, be on your way quickly.”

Jude scanned the area through the windshield. It was a village, obsolete and technologically insufficient by the looks of it. “I’ll need a ride back,” he said.

“Phones are in da village, for a price. Everyting is a price. Here is my contact numba. Call me if, and only if, you desire to leave here. I will not negotiate price or make dis trip a tird time.”

Jude took the torn piece of paper with nearly illegible handwriting, and stepped outside into mud. “What’s your name?” he asked.

“Barnabas.”

“Thank you, Barnabas, for bringing me here.”

“You must go now. Dis is where we take our separate paths. My family waits for me. I hope you find a friend in dere soon.”

Jude’s bag came whirling toward his head. When it landed, he picked it up, tossing it over his right shoulder. He sighed and started walking, as splashes of black mud kicked up from the tires and stained his pants.

Before he reached one of the entrances to the small village, he stopped and glanced at the photograph one last time. His eyes moved up again to find the old, beaten tree in the picture. This was indeed the place he sought. He touched the tree just to make sure it was not a dream.

As he moved deeper, he caught a glimpse of a faded post; it barely kept its spike foot beneath the rough soil and read: DEAD. The English language was one of the universal tongues here. V-I-L remained above it, along with two other faded letters that were near scribbled beside, G and E. The word
of
was caught between these letters and the below word, DEAD.

Jude glued the loose ends together and spoke its name: “Village of the Dead.”

26

JUDE PRESSED CLOSER INTO
the village. No more than a crawl. His mouth thirsted for water, his body for sleep, his mind for those little pills. He swallowed hard, and put these wants to rest as best he could.

Looking far off, he saw a steep hill, sunken between two enormous rock formations that appeared to hold this foreign land between its jaws. There were scattered workers in the fields far off, but he imagined night would draw them home. Many had retreated to their tight living quarters already. The few people scattered about were little more than pale eyes glaring back at him, the stranger.

Such a little, fragile thing this village seemed, but its presence, its being, could cut right through. He felt as if he were stuck in a bad documentary for
National Geographic
. He half expected nude natives to parade by him with spears, but the people here were more modern and civilized than his pathetic stereotype had allowed. They lived in small huts and cheaply made, four-wall domiciles, but they weren’t amazons. The sandy outskirts closed in the village on every side that he could tell, except for a few fences and doors leading toward the great hills.

No matter whom he asked, the people in the village denied any knowledge or information of any kind regarding the man in the photograph. After nodding off snarls and swallowing his pride and impatience, Jude’s eyes roamed to a small oasis past the river and deep within a mountain’s throat. It was consumed with withered bushes and fragments of trash and debris. Smoke enveloped the hills as men fed the spiraled flame. Back where he stood, he noticed several homes adorned with pink and white stucco. Bars locked off the windows, like cells in a prison. Like the one he had left Kevin in before he’d been taken.

Fear lurked behind every shadow and each new stare. He noticed that the farther in he got, the more men and women, even children, he saw. Fear lived with them. But fear of what, he still didn’t know.

The citizens of this village were stained with an ashy skin tone. They dressed casually, for the most part jeans and khakis. Two prostitutes, older women missing teeth on both sides of their jaws, winked at Jude as he denied their pleas to go to bed. Numerous merchants still lined the streets and sold from their wooden pulpits. He studied their rigid bartering techniques and the way they seemed to take advantage of the more naïve ones among their tight-knit community. Rare goods and certain amenities were a premium cost most probably couldn’t afford. A blink kept him moving. Rows of prayer beads, pamphlets on black magic and rituals filled one merchant’s tent. The adjacent tent housed dream catchers, holy books, and gold-plated bracelets. But Jude’s focus was scattered. Distractions, that’s what these things were. The beggars were like carpets for these sidewalks, which were little more than narrow, dirt paths. The wanting hands of these needy people were claws at his feet. One beggar clawed hard enough to stop him still.

“Who is this man? I do not recognize his eyes.” The man who spoke wore a circular hat, shadowing his face from the artificial lights surrounding. Quickly, he shot a glance inside Jude’s jacket, something that stuck out a little. His badge.

“You would be wise to put that away. It will not do you any good here.”

Jude saw that his badge was exposed and immediately concealed it, hoping no one else had noticed. “I’m just passing through. Didn’t mean to disturb you.” He threw a few dollars at the man and some loose coins he wanted to get rid of.

“I do not want your money. Tread carefully, though, foreigner. And open your eyes to see. You never know who’s watching you.”

“I’ll be fine,” he replied smugly. “What was your name, again?”

“Your tongue fires too quickly. I never gave you my name.”

Jude continued down the path. It seemed as if he were going in circles. For all he knew, it was possible. At the end of the road, he purchased a bottle of water and a snack. But all they had for an actual meal was some fried rodent, and he wasn’t about to ask which kind, so he settled for imitation chocolate. Pictures danced to life of being in the backseat of that car, watching menacing dogs tear at the flesh of something dead in the road. It ultimately killed his appetite. But the thirst remained, even after he drank an entire bottle of water.

He searched for a place to stay for the night. As he moved from store to store, from tent to tent, noticing how rapidly the locals now moved to wrap up their items and return to their homes, he felt uneasy.

Out of nowhere suddenly, two men appeared and began following him. His pace stayed the same, but his nerves spiked as the shadows of these men seemed to climb the buildings around him. It wasn’t until after he turned down an alley that he realized there was nowhere left to go.

Panic.

What did they want?

He was surrounded, trapped on both sides. They descended upon him mercilessly with their fists and a club. Jude absorbed a blow to the jaw then the back and, with his fall, his teeth bit the dirt. One of his attackers combed through his ribs with the heel of his boot. The other, a solid tank, bashed him in the nose. Jude heard a crunch.

Each new blink brought another swarm of knuckles and knees to the face. He’d managed to slug back once or twice, but it wasn’t enough. His spine coiled and he chewed the bottom flesh of his lip, curses pouring out as new pain poured in. Breath by breath. With his tongue, Jude drank in the blood-soaked soil as his body swelled. “We do not like strangers,” the larger barbarian said. “Be gone or we make you gone.”

Hacking a wad of phlegm, Jude replied, “I don’t want trouble.”

A laugh roared from the caves of each aggressor.

“Did I say something to amuse you monkeys? Why don’t we put away your bad attitudes and let me just be on my way? I didn’t come here for a fight.”

“We bring fight to you!” one hollered, dragging his stiff knuckles through Jude’s gut. “This our territory!”

The club tore into Jude’s flesh once more. He scanned the ground, his vision splintering off. Ripped pieces of his fingernails were scattered inside the dirt. His belly twisted into knots underneath bruised ribs. A blistered, sore jaw made it difficult to speak or swallow.