The Dead Run Read online

  Silence. He could feel her stewing beside him.

  “I see my mistake now,” she said slowly, as if it were just dawning on her. “See, I thought you were the police. I didn’t realize you were just the grammar police.”

  The comeback was a touch late, but it was right on time. Nichols couldn’t help but laugh. Cantwell kept a straight face, so as not to undermine her position, but he could tell she was patting herself on the back inside.

  “Look,” he said after a beat, “I’m not saying you’re wrong, okay? I’m saying we know nothing. Sherry could be miles away by now, or they could have grabbed her before she got twenty feet. Stashed her someplace we’d never find, poking around.”

  He raised an eyebrow at Cantwell—a top-five move in Nichols’s professional repertoire. “Or maybe some eight-year-old’s ponytail came loose last month during a game of freeze tag.”

  Cantwell continued to look straight ahead. “The man’s a monster, Nichols. And I mean that literally.” She slumped lower in her seat. “According to Melinda, he’s got these . . .”

  “These what?”

  “These powers.” She rubbed her eyes with a thumb and forefinger. “I’m not saying it’s true. Just that he’s got his ‘flock’ convinced. Melinda told me point-blank that she’d seen him read minds. And heal diseases.”

  “Pretty easy to read minds if you’ve already filled them with horseshit.”

  “Seth’s big thing is that a new world is about to be born—through him, naturally. Some Aztec god is gonna anoint him with powers or something.”

  “Yeah, you mentioned. And the Virgin Army is connected to that how?”

  “I don’t know that it is, in terms of the theology. I think he’s trafficking girls into Mexico to fund his organization, plain and simple. Some of them turn up dead, and then the legends start. People can’t face a gruesome reality, so they make up an even more gruesome story.”

  Nichols stroked his chin. Coulda sworn he’d shaved today, but the stubble said otherwise. “I dunno, doc, maybe there’s more to it than that. If this guy really believes he’s some Aztec priest”—he gestured emptily, feeling out of his league—“I dunno, sacrificial virgins seems like the same general field of . . . stuff. Those guys were always throwing girls into volcanoes and whatnot, right?”

  Cantwell pulled her hair back, then let it fall loose over her shoulders. “Your knowledge of anthropology is stunning, Sheriff.”

  Nichols smiled. The doctor was on a roll. “Well, I—”

  A savage rumble of engines brought him up short. They turned in time to see a swarm of Harley-Davidsons burning up the highway: twelve or fifteen of them, chrome pipes throwing sun back at the sky, exhaust streams wobbling the air.

  One bike broke away from the pack and made a sweeping left turn, through Seth’s ramshackle gates. The rider was a massive slab of a man, clad in an old-school chin-strap helmet and a black leather vest, his beefy sunbaked arms like an extension of the hog’s high handlebars.

  Cantwell squinted to make out the red, white, and blue rocker emblazoned on the back of his cut, as the other bikes followed the leader and a cloud of dust bloomed from the unpaved road.

  “True Natives. Why does that ring a bell?”

  Nichols’s face was grim. “You probably read about ’em in the paper. They call themselves a border-patrol group, but they’re really just a glorified bunch of outlaws. Leader’s a local scumbag by the name of Kurt Knowles—low-level drug mule turned American patriot. Likes to talk tough about shooting immigrants on sight, but he’s never done shit. That looked like him leading the pack.”

  Nichols moved his hand until it rested atop his service revolver. “What they’re doing here, I have no idea. But I don’t like it one bit.”

  CHAPTER 15

  The sound of Kurt Knowles’s approaching motorcade shook Seth from his reverie. He rose from the wicker couch, the room still pungent with the lingering scents of the sheriff and the Cantwell woman—his aftershave, cheap and sharp and liberally applied, and her perfume, expensive, subtle, a touch daubed behind each ear.

  Both smells were lies. Disguises. Masks applied without the slightest thought, the most cursory reflection. That was the human condition, Seth mused: one coat of paint slapped over another, until no one could remember what they were trying so desperately to cover in the first place. Man’s true nature, his entire history, suffocating beneath it all.

  Such a hideous sound, those bikes. Such coarse, filthy men they bore. But like everyone with whom he dealt, the True Natives served a purpose. And like everyone with whom he dealt, Seth had molded them to it. Just as his father had molded him.

  Seth flashed on the last memory he had of Cucuy in the flesh. As a child, he had only seen his father once every few months; the rest of the time Seth lived with the family of one of Cucuy’s minions—an Ojos Negros guard whose wife and six children treated their charge with fear and deference, until Seth’s desire for affection curdled and their fears grew justified.

  He was fifteen when Cucuy last summoned him; by then the hallowed lair was the only place he felt at home. There, he was not el demonio, as the local children whispered, but a luminous being, an inheritor of sacred mysteries.

  It was in the library, beneath flickering candlelight that transformed the cobwebs’ thin filaments into thick, quivering nets, that Cucuy had ordered him forth into the wilderness of the world, to forge a port for the ship that would come. It was there that the Ancient One finally spoke to Seth of his destiny.

  It may take five years or fifty, Cucuy breathed, in that voice that seemed to emanate from inside your own head. He grazed Seth’s soft, flushed cheek with two long fingers—a wholly unprecedented act of affection, and the first time in the boy’s memory that anyone had touched him except in violence or for money. But in the fullness of time, you shall usher the Holy Line of Priests into a new age. Until the moment grows ripe, conceal your past, your motives. Burn down the life you have led, my son, and rise in power from its ashes.

  Whether Cucuy meant it literally, Seth had not been sure. But he set fire to the house that very night. Walked into the desert as the collapsing roof silenced the screams, and felt nothing but the warm glow of his father’s approval, every bit as palpable as the caress of Cucuy’s fingers against his cheek.

  Now Seth rose and walked to the door to receive Kurt Knowles. He had spent years on the biker: turned him from a drug-addled thug into an ideologue, purged his organization of threats, meted out rewards and discipline with the same heavy hand. Most people were simple, when it came down to it. You probed until you found the knotted tumor of trauma inside them, then fashioned it into a joystick with which they could be controlled. More often than not, that trauma lay so close to the surface you could practically smell it on the person’s breath.

  Kurt Knowles, for instance, had grown up without a father.

  Game over.

  The Natives had only just passed through the gate. Seth could tell by the pitch of their tires against the ground—though he was half a mile away, in one of several small outbuildings reserved for his personal use, and connected by specially constructed tunnels. His senses had always been highly attuned, but now they were operating at a level that was revelatory even to him. As if every fiber of his being strained toward the coming strength, bucking against the limitations of the flesh like a dog on a too-short leash.

  Seth peered out the window adjacent to the door, its beveled diamond pattern dissecting the world beyond into neat, orderly matrices.

  If only.

  The True Natives were backing their garish machines into a haphazard row, lighting cigarettes, popping the tabs on cans of beer. They had never been allowed inside. It didn’t appear to bother them; these men were used to being treated like animals.

  But animals knew better than to befoul their nests. Only since coming under Seth’s tutelage had thes
e barbarians begun to understand that concept.

  He opened the door moments before Knowles’s knuckles would have met it—a sound Seth could scarcely have tolerated. His sensibilities always grew delicate in the presence of the uncouth.

  And yet, Seth reflected, he was capable of great carnage himself—of acts the men outside might find repulsive, even terrifying. The paradox pleased Seth, and he considered it a moment longer. The distinction lay, of course, in the purpose behind the act. Bloodshed could be deplorable, or it could be holy. A debased man defiled all he touched, even a doorknob. A godly man spread grace and glory.

  Even when he spread it with a knife.

  “Good afternoon, Kurt.” Seth positioned himself carefully on his side of the threshold and smiled without showing any teeth.

  The biker’s eyes widened. Seth seldom dealt with him directly, these days—the father grown imperious, remote. Like everything he did, it was a tactic, a way of strengthening control.

  “Where’s Marcus?”

  “On a short errand.”

  “Oh. So . . . you handling this month’s shipment yerself, then?” He peered over Seth’s shoulder into the dark house, a look of expectation playing on his ham hock of a face.

  “No girls today, Mr. Knowles. But I do need you and your associates for something else. A courier is coming north, through the desert. I need him retrieved.”

  He extended his hand, a slip of paper scissored between two fingers. “You will coordinate with this man, in case of any immigration or police presence. He is a Mexican federal agent. New to his post, but an old ally of ours.”

  Knowles took that in slowly, brain hamster-wheeling inside his thick skull, then turned to look over his shoulder at the others.

  “All due respect, Mr. Seth, sir? The boys, they have some, uh . . . some . . .”

  Seth stepped closer, the arches of his feet bridging the doorframe. “I’ve no time for this. Whatever you have to say, be quick about it.”

  “Well, Mr. Seth, as you know, the Natives been real outspoken about the wetback problem—them sneakin’ over here and stealin’ American jobs and all. Some of the guys, they’re worried about how stuff like this looks. I mean, if word got out that we were bringin’ this fella of yours into the country, or we was to be seen—”

  “Are you questioning me?”

  Seth’s voice was like the cracking of ice. The sound jolted the True Natives into motionless silence—like children on a frozen lake when the first fissure appears.

  Before Knowles could respond, Seth’s hand was in motion. Whip-fast, he slapped the big man across the face, so hard Knowles staggered.

  Seth waited for the biker to right himself, his countenance betraying nothing. Sometimes a father had to lay down the law. And when he did, dispassion was of the utmost importance, so that the wayward child knew he had been struck in justice, not in anger.

  Seth always imagined his own father’s eyes on him, at moments like this. And then a faint whisper of insecurity whipped up inside, a fear that he was a debased and shoddy mockery of the man Cucuy intended him to be. That he was flying blind. Self-taught, when he should have been steeped in mysteries that would have dictated his every action.

  Most of the time, Seth was able to scoff at himself for such worries—after all, if Cucuy had wanted things to be different, he would have made them so. And here Seth stood at the precipice of greatness, the mantle of power nearly upon his shoulders. And yet, the figment of his father’s judgment was so vivid—perhaps because Cucuy himself had been so absent for so long.

  The wholly unwelcome notion that he and Kurt Knowles were not so dissimilar flitted through Seth’s mind like an errant butterfly, and he crushed it in his fist. Unbecoming. Ridiculous. The son of man and the son of god shared nothing.

  Knowles straightened, and Seth reached for his face—the hand cupped, the movement slow.

  Knowles flinched, expecting further punishment.

  The desired response.

  Instead, Seth touched his cheek. Gentle.

  The father is all things.

  “You really have come a great distance, in a very short time,” he said, soft and thoughtful. “When we met, you’d never given a moment’s thought to illegal immigration, had you, Kurt?”

  “No, sir, Mr. Seth. You opened our eyes to—to everything.”

  Seth drew back his hand and shooed away the flattery. “Ah. You give me too much credit.”

  The Natives let out the breaths they’d been holding, dropped their gazes to their beers. Seth took his cue from them and let the moment pass. These demonstrations lost their vigor if they stretched too long.

  “I will be in touch with an exact location as soon as I have the information,” he said, picking up the thread of their business as if it had never been dropped. “I leave it to you to rendezvous with our friend. He will be expecting your call. And for the record, this courier is as American as you are. If not quite so . . .” Seth glanced at the garish flag adorning his lackey’s vest, and his eyes narrowed in distaste. “So zealous about it.”

  Knowles’s face flickered with trepidation, but it was a shade off: not quite the fear Seth wanted. He considered letting it pass—how thoroughly one embarrassed a captain in front of his soldiers was a fine calibration—then decided he could not risk leaving the stone unturned. Knowles and his Natives were Seth’s boots on the ground. They knew the ever-changing vicissitudes of the border better than he did, and it would not do to have the biker biting his tongue if there was something new afoot, some difference in the equation.

  “Something troubles you?” he asked, dropping his volume, inviting Knowles to speak without the others hearing. Lowering the stakes. Letting him know he did not have to worry about reprisal.

  “It’s just that . . . well, your couriers, Mr. Seth. None of ’em has ever made it across, is all. I was just thinking that maybe there’s something we could do different. Meet this one a little farther south, maybe, or—”

  Seth closed his eyes in a long blink, by way of both acknowledging the statement’s veracity and cutting it short.

  “He must come this far on his own. It’s too complicated to explain, but I have my reasons.” He opened his eyes, and wondered for an excruciating moment if he fully understood them himself. For all Seth’s study, the possibility that he was unprepared seemed determined to assert itself.

  “You are correct, of course. But I am told this courier is different. Stronger. A man of great moral fiber.” He treated Knowles to a tick of a smile. “We must have faith. Now . . .”

  Knowles knew a dismissal when he heard one. By the time Seth turned his back, the engines were already gunning, the True Natives as eager to escape the compound as children waiting for church to end. Seth walked back into the cool shadows of the outbuilding and pressed a button mounted on the wall.

  He took a deep breath and shut his eyes again, savoring the sense of heightened physicality, the greater attunement, that seemed to accompany moments of impending change.

  When he opened them, a young male aide stood at the ready. Only the single bead of sweat glistening on his temple attested to the speed with which he’d come.

  “I must commune with my father,” Seth told him. “See that I am not disturbed.”

  The aide nodded, produced a key from his pocket, and unlocked the basement door. Seth descended the staircase, his footfalls heavy on the burnished wooden planks.

  A single, low-watt lamp lit the room. The only item of furniture was a small hot tub, built into a wooden frame. It was modest in size, accommodated only one. But the model was custom crafted, at considerable cost—built to meet precise standards of performance more befitting of a piece of laboratory equipment than a relaxation device.

  Specifically, it had been calibrated to maintain a temperature of ninety-eight point six degrees at all times.

  And
it was filled with virgins’ blood.

  Not all Seth’s girls traveled south of the border.

  He disrobed and lowered himself into the tub, sighing in deep satisfaction as the warmth enveloped his body. Soon, he would be in the presence of his father.

  CHAPTER 16

  Are we gonna talk about this, or what?” Payaso demanded, breaking the breath-and-footfall rhythm the three of them had built up over the last thirty minutes, trudging wordlessly across the face of what suddenly seemed to Galvan like an alien planet. He might as well have crash-landed here an hour ago, for all he understood about this rock—its rules, its life forms. No amount of chitchat seemed likely to change that.

  Leave it to Payaso to disagree.

  “Save your strength,” Galvan shot back without breaking his stride. “We’ve got a long way to go.”

  Payaso broke into a jog and caught up to him. “Fuck that, hermano. We need a new plan, me entiendes?”

  Galvan whirled to face him. “Yeah? How do you figure, hermano?”

  Payaso pointed at the box wedged under Galvan’s arm. “That thing’s a magnet for I don’t know what. I say we drop it and book. The fuck’s he gonna do? He told you himself he couldn’t leave Ojos, right?”

  “We wouldn’t make it twenty feet,” Britannica said, and they both turned to look at him. “Those girls—those things—would take it, and kill us all. Cucuy and his servants are their eternal enemies. We’re forever tainted by association. According to legend, anyway.” He lifted the hem of his shirt, used it to swab the sweat from his face. Dropped his head. Walked on.

  Galvan and Payaso exchanged a look and followed. “Keep talking, Padre. Tell us what you know.”

  Britannica was already bathed in sweat again. “I don’t know anything. Not for sure.”

  “Fuckin’ speculate, then.”