But the mall guard was dead. I knew that because he was all over the fucking windshield. He pretty much exploded on contact. Green shit everywhere. I mean I had to turn on the wipers just so I could see. Clots of red and yellow, yeah, like blood and I guess body fat, but mostly green—I guess you know what I’m talking about.
“He was a simulacrum,” Thomas piped up, needlessly.
Yeah, a sim. But obviously I didn’t know that then. It was just more weirdness. I was being chased by spiders with blades for hands, Bastián was dead, the mall guard was made of snot, and all I wanted was to be anywhere else in the world but this fucking desert. Kept my foot on the gas even when smoke started coming out from under the hood. Long as the wheels turned. One eye on the mirror at all times.
Pretty soon they switched off that tall beam of light. And I killed the Toyota’s lights and drove by the moon, just to be less conspicuous. I expected to be chased, but that didn’t happen. At least not right away. And then I thought, well, where do I go? Back to the depot? Tell an overseer I totaled a company vehicle and by the way Bastián was cut in three pieces by a giant crab?
Since there was nobody on the road back of me far as I could see—and in the Atacama that’s a long way, even at night—I stopped the vehicle and tried to take inventory and come up with some kind of plan. Took off my shirt and tied it around my ribs to stop the bleeding. Obviously the Toyota wasn’t going to make it much farther. Smoke kept coming even when I turned the engine off. I got out and opened the trunk. Found a spare tire—useless—a tire iron, the four-way kind—also pretty useless—and a jack. The jack had a detachable steel handle, which was better than nothing, so I took that. A knife would have been better. Even a box cutter. Anything. But the jack handle was the best I could do.
Then I rolled the Toyota off the road and pointed it across the salt flats, got the engine running—barely—put the transmission in neutral, braced the tire iron against the gas pedal, put it in first gear and jumped the fuck out. The vehicle rolled out into desert on a slow curve, probably would have come right back to me except the engine died when it was a couple of hundred yards off in the flats. Engine caught fire. Pretty soon it looked like a bonfire, burning out there. I hoped it looked like I’d driven off-road and maybe died in the fire. Or at least that somebody might think that from a distance. Then I hunkered down behind the little dirt-and-pebble embankment at the side of the road, which was the only thing to hide behind, which wasn’t much.
Still trying to make a plan. The moon was close to setting and dawn was about an hour away. If more mall guards showed up I thought I might have a chance, but if a posse of those spidery things came down the road I figured I’d be better off slitting my own throat before they did me the favor… But then I saw headlights in the distance.
It was just one truck. A four-wheel-drive Ford with roll bars and a pickup bed. It slowed down, probably because the driver saw the Toyota burning like a motherfucker out there on the salt flats. Stopped a few yards away from where I was hiding. Looked like there was two guys inside. One of ’em gets out. He’s a mall guard—same clothes, same pistol on his hip. Flashlight in his right hand. He’s looking down at the road, shining that light on the gravel, checking out the tire tracks where the Toyota veered into the salare. And every step brings him a little closer to me.
So while he’s staring at the ground I get up and run at him. All I have on my side is surprise. He sees me coming, of course. He drops the flashlight. Reaches for his pistol. But I swing the jack handle before he even touches the weapon. He dodges real quick, but I manage to stun him. So I hit him again, a home-run swing to the side of his head, which drops him like a bag of sand. I go down on my knees and take the pistol out of his holster.
In those days I didn’t know a lot about firearms, but I’d handled my daddy’s old .45 a few times. So I switch off the safety and pray the fucking thing’s loaded, because the second guy is getting out of the Ford in a hurry, and he’s definitely armed and dangerous. I get off one shot, which goes through the Ford’s windshield. Useless. Second shot clips the guy’s shoulder, which turns him around. I’m up and running, he’s still trying to bring his weapon up though his arm don’t work right, third shot is to the head and boom, he’s down.
Another head shot for each mall guard, just to make sure. Which causes blood and green goo to leak all over my shoes.
Then I get in their truck and drive. Full tank, reliable vehicle, and by this time I’m so high on adrenaline I start to feel pretty good about myself, all things considered. Back of me I can see more headlights, but I’m way ahead of ’em. I blow past the depot where Bastián and I worked, and by the time the sky gets light I’m halfway to San Pedro de Atacama and if anybody’s following they’re well out of sight.
In San Pedro I traded the Ford to a guy no-questions-asked for his little piece-of-shit ten-year-old Hudson, which for some reason there are a lot of in the Atacama, somebody must’ve opened a dealership once… a plain dumb car, which I managed to drive all the way to Antofagasta before its tranny seized up. Laid low for a while, did day labor at the puerto until I could afford a plane ride back to the USA. Back home I spent a year or so trying to chase all this shit out of my head with Jack and Coke, hold the Coke, until I shot off my drunken mouth to that writer. After which Werner Beck showed up and more or less explained things to me.
And that’s my story.
“But that doesn’t explain anything,” Leo protested.
“What do you need explained?”
“The light in the desert? The spider things?”
“You should ask your daddy about all that, Leo. Assuming you ever see him again.”
“Also, what’s in the back of your van that’s so important?”
“Your daddy should’ve mentioned that, too.” Dowd grinned, displaying a row of crooked teeth. “You could call it a secret weapon. Or part of one.”
“And you keep talking about getting on the road. Road to where?”
“Do you really have to ask?”
Leo shook his head. “This is crazy.”
Dowd’s grin expanded. “Amen, brother,” he said. “No argument from me.”
18
JOPLIN, MISSOURI
ETHAN’S FIRST CONCERN WAS FOR Nerissa, who was hugely disappointed to discover that Cassie and Thomas and Leo hadn’t shown up at Werner Beck’s safe house.
Ethan was disappointed too, of course. But Ris seemed to lose all the fierce energy she had been drawing on for days. She looked suddenly years older, and the tone she took with Beck was querulous and irritable. “So where are they—do you have any idea where they are?”
Beck escorted them to a plain pine table in the kitchen of this small, plain house. “Sit down,” he said.
“And Leo! He’s your son, for Christ’s sake! Are you telling me you can’t find him?”
“We made plans for this contingency.”
“What plans? What do you mean?”
“If Leo’s doing what I told him to do, we should be able to catch up with him. And if Cassie and—what’s the boy’s name?”