The Dead Run Read online

  Both men hit the floor at the same time. Galvan landed on his feet, Gutierrez the back of his skull.

  Galvan felt a tiny pulse of approval—within himself, but coming from the thing, the voice. It was a physical sensation, as if a hand had reached inside Galvan and triggered some pleasure chemical, some endorphin.

  Like a dog treat after a successful trick.

  The whisper again, so close the speaker’s lips might have been brushing Galvan’s ear.

  “He’s still alive. Finish the job.”

  He wheeled, trying to find its source, but instead the darkness spun up around him and Galvan fell to one knee, dizzy.

  “Who are you?” he demanded. “Show yourself!”

  “Kill him, or you will die.”

  “Fuck you.”

  Galvan wrapped a length of chain around his fist and rose, tensing for whatever came next.

  The man who walked toward him parted the darkness like a curtain, his long, thin body faintly and bizarrely luminescent.

  Like an angel, Galvan thought numbly.

  He moved silently, as if skimming the ground; came to a stop before Galvan; and bent forward to peer into his eyes. Galvan felt a spark of heat, beginning at his chest and spreading quickly throughout his body. It was as if someone had switched his blood for gasoline and thrown a lit match at his heart.

  But it felt good.

  He opened his mouth to speak and found that he could not.

  Tried to raise an arm. Nothing doing.

  All he could do was stare.

  The man before him was a foot taller, with straight white hair that fell past his shoulders. Necklaces and amulets wreathed his bare chest, and a lattice of tattoos covered his face from chin to forehead—a geometry of symbols unlike anything Galvan had ever seen. They didn’t look seared onto him so much as pushed out from within, the markings of some cruel and ancient god.

  As suddenly as it had come, the heat was gone, and Galvan was shivering uncontrollably.

  The man straightened, and the corners of his mouth twitched.

  “Strong, yet merciful. You have done well. My Righteous Messenger is revealed.”

  He uncrooked an arm like a bat’s folded wing and raised a finger. Galvan’s shackles fell open, dropped away. Clattered against the floor.

  “Listen well. What you will carry for me is beyond value. The hands of the wicked cannot keep it alive. The hands of the weak cannot protect it. Complete your task, and you will have your freedom, and my gratitude. If you fail me, not even death will ease your pain.”

  “Who . . .” Galvan wheezed. “What are you?”

  The dark eyes were like pools of oil. “Of late, I have been referred to as El Cucuy. Others know me as the high priest of the ancient and pure Temple of Tenochtitlán, he whose worship began with time itself and will continue to its end.”

  “What do you—”

  “From you, Jesse Galvan, I require one day’s service. No less and no more. You are mine, from now until the sun sets again.”

  Galvan tried to speak without shaking. “What kind of service?”

  “A package must be delivered, and a pure man must deliver it.”

  “I don’t know where you get your information, Cucuy, but I’m not so pure.”

  “Your opinion is of no consequence. Your suitability shall be determined presently.”

  El Cucuy drifted away, into the gloom. Before Galvan knew what was happening, his hands were being cuffed behind his back by a guard he hadn’t even noticed. The prod of a nightstick told him to follow El Cucuy.

  A nightstick, or maybe a gun.

  The passage curved and curved again. These chambers were far older, far grander, than the slapdash prison above. They had been constructed with skill, with reverence. An intention to endure the weight of time.

  This is a holy place, Galvan thought with a shiver. A temple.

  But a temple to what?

  The guard paced Galvan down a set of stairs, rough-hewn but perfectly proportioned, and then down another corridor and into a small, rectangular room lit by a single torch. Incense boy stood in one corner, sickly-sweet smoke still billowing from his burner.

  In the center of the room, a girl lay on a waist-high stone slab. She was gagged and bound and naked, staring up at El Cucuy with terror in her eyes.

  “No!”

  Galvan lurched toward her, mind reeling, the timeline of his life collapsing on itself. A chop to the neck dropped him to his knees.

  Through the tears springing to his eyes, Galvan saw El Cucuy’s lips twist into what, on another man, might have been called a smile. He strolled slowly toward the girl, arms clasped behind his back, snow-white mane undulating softly to the brittle rhythm of Cucuy’s footsteps.

  “You shall cross the desert. Pass across over the false border.” He spat the last word, as if its taste were rancid. “You shall make your way to a holy site, a place whose power has long been sealed by blood. There, you will deliver the treasure you carry into the hands of my son,” he said, circling the slab, the girl. “It is a journey of some fifty miles, all told.”

  “So go yourself,” Galvan shot back, his voice thick with pain.

  “I cannot.” El Cucuy traced a long pale finger up the girl’s quaking leg. When he spoke, his voice was wistful—pregnant with what Galvan might have taken for sadness, had the speaker been anyone but this monster. “My life is bound to this place.”

  Perhaps it was an opening, a trace of something human. Galvan modulated his voice, forced himself to meet Cucuy’s eye. “Listen, I’ll do whatever you want. Just, please, leave her alone.”

  El Cucuy cocked his head at Galvan and blinked as if seeing him for the first time.

  “Yes,” he said slowly, opening his mouth. Galvan glimpsed the flicker of a moist black tongue and looked away. “Yes. I can feel it. You will succeed where the rest have failed.”

  He raised his arm, closed his eyes, and plunged four knifelike nails into the girl’s chest.

  Galvan wailed, and lunged. Two guards restrained him.

  Her body bucked and spasmed as the old man’s hand entered inch by inch, the muscles beneath the withered, leathery skin of his arm summoned to action. Trickles of blood appeared at the corners of her mouth, ran down her neck, and veined across her cheeks.

  The expression on El Cucuy’s face never changed. He might have been tinkering with a radio dial, trying to tune in a ball game. There was a casual precision to his movements; he had done this before.

  The girl’s eyes flared, bright as lightning, then went glassy. She was gone.

  When El Cucuy’s arm emerged a moment later, a soft, sputtering organ lay in his palm.

  “Hold out your hand,” he ordered. The guards pulled Galvan to his feet, unlocked his bracelets.

  Some part of Galvan that was beyond fear, revulsion, any emotion at all, had taken control. He did what he was told.

  Like a chef plating a delicate entrée, El Cucuy laid the lump of tissue carefully atop his waiting palm.

  “The heart of a virgin,” he said in a fierce, reverent whisper, and took a step back. “The sacred vessel of the gods. If you are pure, my Righteous Messenger, it will live on.”

  “You’re crazy,” Galvan managed through gritted teeth, blood sluicing through his fingers.

  And then he felt it beat. Contract and expand, right there in his grip. A crimson drop flew from it, hit his chin.

  Thu-thump.

  Thu-thump.

  El Cucuy gazed down at it and nodded.

  “ ‘A righteous man, flanked by evil in all directions’—that is the dictate. We have our righteous man. Now, let us flank you.”

  They climbed the stairs and returned to the antechamber, the prisoners still suspended high above the ground. Galvan stared up at them, the girl’s heart palpitating in
his hand. He felt protective of it, for reasons he did not understand. As if it were a field mouse he held, or a baby rabbit, not a—a . . .

  He spun to face El Cucuy, towering beside him.

  “Who was she?” Galvan demanded.

  El Cucuy continued to regard the shackled men. “No one of importance. Her parents sold her to me. It is well-known, the price a virgin brings. And I have no shortage of funds, or of need.” He half-turned toward Galvan, the huge pupils of his bottomless eyes growing even larger. “These hearts are my only sustenance, Messenger—they are the food of gods. Nothing else has passed my lips for hundreds of years.”

  He nodded toward the men. “Choose four. They will protect you. To the death.”

  “You wanna protect me, give me a gun. And a car.”

  “You must travel as men did in ancient times. Four, Messenger. One for each direction. The rest will die.”

  Galvan stared at the prisoners. They stared back, silent, bug-eyed.

  “I’ll take Gutierrez.” He nodded at the enforcer, still lying on the ground.

  “You almost killed him.”

  “Exactly. And him.” Galvan pointed at Payaso. “Other than that, I don’t care. Let the guards decide.”

  “Very well.” El Cucuy turned his head a fraction of an inch and addressed his head man.

  “Prepare them.”

  The hidden wheel began to grind, carrying the prisoners to the floor. Two guards lifted Gutierrez, his face a bloody pulp.

  El Cucuy turned to face Galvan.

  “Do not fail me, Messenger. Or you will learn the length of my reach and the depth of my rage.”

  And with that, he strode toward a door on the opposite side of the chamber—an exit Galvan had not even noticed—and the flickering light beyond.

  “Hold on. The DMZ is a big place. How will I navigate? How will I find—”

  “He will find you,” Cucuy answered without turning. “Travel north, Messenger. And keep your wits about you, lest your burdens increase a thousandfold. My enemies are legion.” He paused for the briefest of instants. “And their true strength hides itself.”

  Before Galvan could give voice to any of the hundred other questions swimming through his brain, Cucuy was gone.

  CLOTHES. SHOES. A wristwatch, a gallon of water, a couple of candy bars. A compass. Galvan was beginning to feel like he could do this—like just being out in all that open space, breathing that free air, would fill him with enough strength to reach the border, win his life back.

  Then came the baling wire.

  “Hands over your head,” barked the head guard, one of six who’d dragged Galvan and the others down another tunnel, then isolated them in different alcoves and outfitted them with their meager supplies.

  Galvan obeyed, the heart still balanced in his palm.

  “Put it in here.” A black box, metal, size of a toaster oven. Corners sharp enough to poke out an eye.

  “Arms up.”

  He did as he was told and felt the black box pressed against his back. The guard secured it there with wire—thick, serious stuff, the kind a chain-link fence was made from—and began to tighten it with pliers, twisting until each deep breath he took pressed the metal against Galvan’s skin with the force of a garrote.

  The box was a champagne cork, and Galvan was the bottle. Inside the container, and just barely, he could hear the heart.

  “How the hell am I supposed to move like this?” he growled. “Come on, you’ve gotta loosen it.”

  No response.

  “How many men has your boss sent before me?”

  Not much for conversation, this guy.

  A minute later they were in motion again, the guards pacing their charges through a curving, narrow tunnel, its walls moist and mold slicked, the only light the flashlight beam of the lead man.

  At every turn, Galvan expected it to end. Five minutes turned to ten, and ten to twenty. Even taking the twists and turns into account, they had to have walked a mile, maybe two.

  Finally, a set of stairs. A bulkhead made of steel. The guard swung open the double doors, and the sunlight poured in—sudden, blinding. The next thing Galvan knew, he was standing in it, sweating, struggling to breathe.

  He and his four new best friends.

  The prison was a tiny speck on the horizon.

  There was nothing else but dirt and scrub brush, low rolling hills and dust and cacti.

  “Adiós, cabrones,” called the lead guard from the top step. “Buena suerte.”

  He retreated into the tunnel’s cool and slammed the bulkhead doors. In the vast emptiness of the desert, the click of the lock was as loud as a gunshot.

  CHAPTER 7

  The ribbon of light was thin and pale, a tear in the vinyl they’d used to cover the high-set basement windows.

  It was Sherry’s only comfort. Her only friend.

  Not her only hope—you learned about yourself quickly in a situation like this, learned what you were made of, faced the truth. And the truth was, Sherry Richards was no fighter. Those people you saw on TV, basking in their fifteen minutes of celebrity after surviving an avalanche or a shipwreck, those resourceful souls claiming they’d never lost faith? She wasn’t one of them. When she woke up in this black room, trussed to this chair, gagged with this rag, no hitherto-unknown reserve of courage had revealed itself.

  She hadn’t tried to wriggle her way free of the ropes binding her wrists and ankles. Hadn’t plotted her escape. She’d accepted it.

  I’m helpless.

  No one is going to save me.

  I don’t believe in anything.

  I’m going to die.

  Alone.

  Please, God, don’t let it hurt.

  ON ONE HAND, thought Nichols, they were certainly making better time in Cantwell’s Audi than they would’ve in his cruiser.

  On the other, they’d probably be dead before they got wherever the hell they were going.

  “You always drive like this?”

  “You asking as a cop?”

  “I’m asking as a passenger.”

  She glanced at him over her right arm, rigid against the wheel. “I drive this way when somebody I care about’s in trouble.”

  “You didn’t tell me you knew Sherry. She a patient, too?”

  “Not officially, no. But I’ve tried to help her readjust. Fit in.”

  “But I thought you and her mother—”

  “Had a falling-out, yes. Melinda doesn’t know.”

  They drove in silence for a while, suburban strip malls giving way to scrub brush, open road. The billboards that weren’t for Salvation Through Christ and Christ Alone advertised adult megastores or eat-the-whole-thing-and-it’s-free steak houses.

  Nichols took the opportunity to reflect on the various fallacies of this impromptu adventure. His radio was back in the cruiser, so nobody on his staff had any idea where he was or why he’d disappeared off the face of the earth, midshift. He’d effectively deputized a woman he knew nothing about, except her propensity for flouting traffic laws. And they were on their way to confront a man who, if Cantwell was correct, was far too dangerous to waltz up to willy-nilly and start asking half-baked questions.

  On the bright side, if she was wrong, all they were doing was illegally harassing a private citizen who’d probably sue the Del Verde County Sheriff’s Department for the thirty-seven dollars and eighty-three cents left in its annual operating budget.

  Good times.

  “Anything else you haven’t told me, doc?”

  Cantwell’s answer snapped at the heels of his words, as if she’d been waiting for the chance.

  “Plenty. Seeing as how you’ve rolled your eyes at half of what I’ve said so far.”

  “Look, if I didn’t take you seriously, I wouldn’t be in this car. But I’m the kind of cop w
ho deals in facts, not rumors—which is to say, a good one. And I can’t help thinking that if local girls were disappearing at the rate you say, I woulda heard about it. You know”—he tapped a finger to his badge—“being sheriff and all?”

  “That should tell you how powerful they are.”

  “Right, I forgot—got the whole department paid off. What was the fella’s name again? Spiff?”

  “Aaron Seth. I’ve been monitoring him for years. And in my professional opinion, he’s one nasty motherfucker.”

  “I’m afraid you lost me with the technical jargon there, doc.”

  She actually smiled. Score one for the team.

  “Care to elaborate?”

  “Well, like most cult leaders, Seth’s past is mysterious.”

  “Because he lies about it, you mean. Better your followers don’t know you spent ten years shampooing carpets before becoming the Chosen One.”

  “That’s usually the case, yes. But Seth is genuinely impossible to trace. No tax records, no birth certificate, no social. He claims to have ‘walked out of the desert’ twenty years ago—”

  “Not hard to believe, around here. Half of what I deal with on a daily basis is people walking out of the damn desert.”

  “—after wandering for forty years, like the ancient Hebrews.”

  “Okay, yeah, that’s different.”

  “Oh, and he says he’s descended from the high priest of an ancient god. Who’s going to pass his powers down to Seth, bringing an end to the world as we know it.”

  “Sounds like pretty standard stuff—a little from column A, little from column B. Where do the girls come in?”

  “I’ve never gotten close enough to find that out. Melinda Richards was my best source, but she’d only heard rumors. I know he recruits families with young daughters. By the time the girls disappear, they’ve been off the grid for years.”

  “And you believe he’s killing them.”

  “No, I think he’s trafficking them. Telling their parents they’ve gone off on some kind of missionary trip, then selling them into sexual slavery.” Cantwell’s jaw tightened, as if she were grinding her teeth. “Forget about luxury cars and villas and all that. The new status symbol, if you’re a Mexican drug lord, is a harem of virgin girls.”