Westlake, Donald E - Novel 43 (42 page)

  
 
          
“There
aren’t any more!” Valerie cried.

 
          
Kirby
lifted Cynthia up and away. Valerie tried to see back to the village. “Wait!
What’s happening back there?”

 
          
“Give
them a minute to think about it. Then we’ll go back and

 
          
What
was this airplane? How had it come to be exactly where the false Gurkhas were,
exactly at the moment when they were starting their work? Had they been
betrayed? Were other enemies on the way?

 
          
These
were the rational problems, the sensible questions, the meaningful dilemmas.
They were as nothing beside the creatures hanging in the sky.

  
 
          
Twenty
Zotzilahas floating down through the dappled air, falling one by one to the
ground, gathering their cotton cloaks about themselves, grimacing and winking
and grinning at the false Gurkhas, three more of whom flung away their guns and
ran for the jungle.

 
          
“Come
back!” the leader shouted, and fired after them, missing.

 
          
Another,
backing away from the devils, saw the leader turn eyes and gun in his direction
and he fired first, killing the leader 11 times.

 
          
Two
more murderers in Gurkha uniform ran away into the jungle, these keeping their
weapons.

  
 
          
Valerie
stared back at the anonymous green. She wanted to
see
. Fretfully, she said, “Could they be that afraid of clay?”

 
          
“Their
ancestors were.”

  
 
          
The
false Gurkhas had been brought up in Christian homes. They had been taught to
know and to love God and the Blessed Virgin Mary and all the saints. They had
been taught to despise Satan and all his works. They had risen above such
education, and struck out to live their own lives by their own rules.

 
          
No
one had ever told them they had to believe in the Mayan gods and the Mayan
devils. Those beings were there in the stories, that’s all, there in the drawings
and the cloth designs and the carvings, there in the rites and ceremonies that
a minority of their older relatives sometimes engaged in. Nobody had ever told
them they
had
to believe in Zotzilaha
Chimalman, and yet none of them had ever in his heart doubted that the cave of
bats existed, the forked road to eternity existed, the evil hater of mankind
was there in the darkness just waiting the
opportunity
to drag them down to eternal death.

          
 
He flies, Zotzilaha, he comes out of the sky
like a bat. He is full of tricks and malevolence. If he catches you when your
heart is black, you’re doomed.

 
          
When
the sound of the plane was heard again in the clearing, there were only five
false Gurkhas left in it, four living and their leader, who was dead. The dead
one lay surrounded by images of Zotzilaha Chimalman.

          
 
When the silence in the clearing ended, filled
up instead by the growing buzz of the airplane, the last four of the false
Gurkhas faded away into the jungle.

 
          
The
plane roared overhead again, and gone, and
Vernon
opened his eyes. Through his pain and tears
he could see the villagers clustered around their three fallen relatives, the
journalists gathering around Scottie. Hiram Farley, separate from both groups,
bent to pick up one of the figures that had fallen from the plane.

 
          
Vernon
closed his eyes. Everything he saw was red.
The pain in his stomach was duller and his brain seemed to move more slowly.

 
          
When
he opened his eyes again, Hiram Farley was standing over him, hefting the
little statue in his hand. “Well,
Vernon
,” Farley said.

 
          
Vernon
slowly blinked. With his mouth open to
breathe, dirt was filtering in, coating his tongue and teeth.

 
 
          
“Now
why,
Vernon
,” Farley said, “would Asian soldiers be afraid
of a Central American devil? Something tells me you can answer that question. ”

 
          
Vernon
looked at Farley’s dusty boots. He mumbled
something. “What was that,
Vernon
?”