“You know, I could just shoot you and forget about it. You’re right.”
Lewis sighed. “The body is buried in a shallow grave in Lobos Canyon. There’s a road that goes up the canyon off the main highway. It crosses Arroyo Azul, then stops. Forty yards up the foot trail. You can’t miss it.”
“You’ve gone to a lot of trouble,” Peabody said.
“Come on, Maggie,” Lewis said.
The woman stood with him and they walked across the plaza. Lewis saw the two men step out of the van and approach them. He led Maggie on at a normal pace. “Relax, Maggie, this will be over soon.”
The men were twenty feet from them. Then there were bodies between them. Six, seven. Ernesto was in the middle of it all. The two apes stopped. Tourists standing outside of shops pointed and grew frightened. The Mexican men surrounded the two white men. Lewis got Maggie to the passenger side of his truck before she passed out. He put her in and closed the door. More Mexican men crossed the plaza to stand with Ernesto and the others. Lewis got in behind the wheel, backed out of the space and drove away.
At the intersection, he turned north. A couple of lights later, he began his circuitous route over the back roads of town so that he would be headed south toward Martin’s place. He stopped at a Giant Burger fast food restaurant, parked in the back by the dumpster.
He attended to Maggie. He shook her gently. “Maggie? Maggie?” Maybe she wasn’t all right. Perhaps they had poisoned her. He needed some water for her. He got out and ran into the Giant Burger.
A teenager met him at the counter.
“I’d like a large water.”
The kid turned around, scooped ice into a cup and poured the water. He came back and put it down. “I’ll have to charge you for the cup,” he said.
Lewis reached into his pockets and realized he’d spent his last money on gasoline. “I’ll owe you, okay?”
“A dime, sir. Company policy.”
Lewis leaned forward and grabbed the teenager by the front of his purple and gold uniform. “I’ll pay you later, okay?”
“Yes, sir.”
Lewis took the water out to Maggie, opened her door and stood by her, helping her sip. She came around.
“Did I faint?” she asked.
Lewis nodded.
“Shit,” she said. “What a wimp. I’m sorry.”
Lewis just smiled. “It was just your turn. You okay?”
She nodded.
“What is going on?”
“I don’t really know. I had to dig up Martin’s body in order to get you back.” He looked at the sky. “Maybe I didn’t. Jesus. I should have just lied to them in the first place. I didn’t think they were stupid. But they are, Maggie.”
“You had to dig him up?”
“You don’t want to hear about it. Anyway, I know they still want us dead. At least, I think they do.”
“So, what now?”
Lewis shook his head. “We’ve got to show Martin to as many people as we can and tell them everything. There’s a chain-link fence, ten feet tall, in the canyon beyond Martin’s. I saw men looking for something with a metal detector.”
“You’re not making anything clearer to me,” Maggie said.
“You can understand my problem then.”
Lewis closed the door and went back to his side, got in. He drove them across the river and up to Martin’s He turned off the engine and looked at the cabin. He didn’t know if he could keep going. This was where it all started, he thought.
“Is this where you put Martin?” Maggie asked.
Lewis nodded. “I carried him from his grave, Maggie,” he said, his eyes forward. “Maggie, he wasn’t buried in a coffin. Can you smell it. Can you smell the death?”
“Yes.”
“I have to carry him again.”
“I’ll help you, Lewis.”
“No, no. You didn’t see him, Maggie. I can’t let you near him. I’ll do it.”
“I want to see,” Maggie said.
Lewis looked at her face. He realized that she didn’t want him to have to feel it alone. “I love you.”
“I want to see it.”
“He’s in the shed.”
Out of the truck, they walked, holding hands, to the back of the house and to the shed. When Lewis pulled open the door, the stench wafted out and made them back up.
“Come on, Maggie, go back to the truck.”
“Let’s do it,” she said.
Lewis was glad he had wrapped the body in the tarp. He went in and pushed the body over, the upper part falling out into the daylight. He took the shoulders and pulled him clear of the shed. Maggie grabbed the feet and they began the walk to the truck. The smell bothered them, made them turn their heads to take deep breaths to hold.
Maggie was doing well. At the truck, she struggled to get the lower part of the body high enough to go over the side wall. She heaved and Martin rolled in. The tarp came away from his face. Maggie saw the maggots and the mud-caked neck. Lewis reached quickly and covered him.
Maggie walked absently toward the cabin. Lewis followed her.
“Maggie?”
“I’m okay. I just need to sit down.”
She sat on a stump to the side of the door. Lewis leaned against the house.
“Want me to tell you what I think?” Lewis said.
Maggie nodded.
“I think the army or somebody let something loose up there, chemicals or something, and it’s killing everything. There’re no animals up there, not even bugs.” Lewis was starting to cry. “The trees are dying, Maggie. The only thing up there is a fence.” He rubbed at the mark on his hand.
Maggie stood and hugged him.
He took a breath and let it out slowly. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
They did not speak. Lewis drove and thought about the blemish on his hand. Would it become a wound like the ones he had seen on Martin’s legs? Would Ignacio and Ernesto get them too from being up in the canyon? Would everyone who had contact with the dead man develop them? Maggie? Maybe you had to touch something to become infected. Perhaps he’d already been exposed by picking up the squirrel. He was mad at himself for having let Maggie handle the corpse. Laura had even been close to him. He had no idea of the extent or range of this thing. It could have been in his imagination. But the squirrel was real. The absence of the animals in the forest was real; it had even scared young Ernesto.
Lewis didn’t know what he was doing, where he was taking the body. He was hungry, needed to eat. His brain needed food. He didn’t have cash, but he had credit cards. He pulled into a gas station/fast food place and killed the engine.
“We have to eat something,” Lewis said. He took out his wallet and handed her a credit card. “One of us has to stay and make sure no one comes near our cargo back there. Try to get something that’s not too disgusting.”
“Hot dogs, something like that?”
“Whatever.”
Maggie got out and walked into the store.
Lewis pumped the gas.
Lewis could easily imagine getting to the Capitol steps with Martin’s body and being put away for being a crazy man. He could dump the body onto the desk of the editor of the Santa Fe newspaper and say, “Feature this: NERVE GAS THREATENS THOUSANDS.” He’d always wanted to say, “feature this,” but it sounded stupid. It still did. He topped off the tank and put the nozzle back. He looked inside and saw Maggie at the counter. The cashier read the pump through binoculars.
Lewis looked at the highway. A state trooper passed by. He wondered if they were on the lookout for an elderly couple, a black man and a Japanese woman, driving a Ford F250 pickup with a dead Mexican in the back. He pictured Peabody and his men trying to drive across that arroyo in the van, but then he realized that the ground had soaked all the water from yesterday’s rain and so the arroyo was now no more than a trickle. By now, they had found the empty grave and were swearing and loading pistols.