Visions of himself falling over some stray chunk of concrete and breaking his leg in the Mexico side of the warehouse pushed themselves into Steve's consciousness. He didn't know what would happen if that occurred. Would he have to be rushed to a Mexican hospital? By a Mexican ambulance? Or would he have to crawl back across that invisible border into his own country?
"Don't worry about it," he said aloud. They started walking again.
Although it was too dark to see the sides of the warehouse, Steve had the feeling that the walls had narrowed, that they were now walking through a room much smaller than that which they had originally entered. He shined his light to the left and right, following the contours of the floor, but his beam was not strong enough to reach a wall. He decided to change course, to find a wall and follow it instead of stumbling through this inky blackness in the center of the building. He veered off thirty degrees and the other kids followed him.
He bumped his head on a beam. Steve screamed, and his right hand shot instantly to his forehead to check for blood. His fingers came back dry. "Jesus!" he said.
"What is it?" Seun's voice was scared. "Nothing." Steve played his light along the wooden beam. But it was not a beam. He had reached a wall. His eyes and his flashlight had been concentrated on the floor, and he had been looking through a large hole in the bottom section of the wall. He shined his light to the left and to the right and saw several similar holes. Holes big enough for a person to crawl through. He bent down on his knees and crept closer to the nearest one, shining his light through to the next room. It looked exactly the same.
"Let's crawl through," he said, "see what's on the other
side."
"No!" Seun said.
Steve knew how Seun felt, but his fear was now sub-servient to his spirit of adventure. They had come here to explore, and they would explore.
He crawled through the hole.
"Steve!" Seun yelled.
"Come on through. There're no monsters."
There was a quick moment of indistinguishable mumbling from the other side of the wall, then Jimmy poked his head through. Seun followed, scrambling, and Bill came immediately afterward. They stood up and shook themselves off, Jimmy brushing what felt like cobwebs from his hair.
"What do we do now?" Bill asked.
"Search around." Steve started walking, following the wall, keeping his left hand in constant contact with the smooth concrete.
"Are we going to be able to find our way back?" Seun asked.
"Don't worry about it," Steve said.
There was not so much rubble on the floor here, and the ground seemed much softer beneath their feet. It felt like dirt. Steve pointed his flashlight up for a second and he could see no ceiling.
They kept walking.
The four boys wandered past a series of doors. Steve turned in one of them and the rest followed. They were in a much smaller room, and the walls on both sides could be made out with their flashlights. They walked out of the room through another door and found themselves in a cavernous space with an endlessly high ceiling. Their footsteps echoed as they walked.
Steve was no longer following any kind of wall, and he swung his beam back and forth across the ground in front of him to make sure he knew what was up ahead. The light touched upon an ancient rotting box in a slimy pool of water, moved across several chunks of wood and plaster, and stopped on something small and smooth and brown.
A baby.
Steve stood in place, staring at the infant trapped in his beam, and Seun ran into his back. Jimmy and Bill, walking side by side, ran into Seun.
The baby was obviously Mexican and obviously dead. It lay scrunched and unmoving, half in and half out of a puddle of stagnant water. A trail of small ants wound around its folds of fat and entered its open, toothless mouth. Steve moved slowly forward and tentatively touched the baby's skin. It was cold and soft and spongy and gave a little at the poke of his finger. Immediately he drew back.
"What is it?" Seun asked. His voice was more hushed than usual, whether from awe or fear Steve could not tell.
"It's a baby."
"How did it get here?"
Steve shook his head. He did not know himself. Had the baby been born in the warehouse and abandoned by its mother to die in the darkness of the deserted building? Had the baby been born dead and left there? Had it been brought by illegal aliens trying to sneak into the country and left behind accidentally?
Steve walked carefully around the dead infant. It was small, and there was no hair on its body. It did not look more than a week or so old.
The beam of his flashlight touched the baby's white eyes and was reflected back.
He knelt down silently in front of the infant and stared into its face, gazing raptly at its pure innocent expression. He had never seen anything like it. The infant's dead eyes stared back, seeing nothing, seeing everything, knowing all.
Jimmy knelt down next to Steve and gazed at the Mexican baby to see what was so fascinating.
Bill, captured by the look of hope on the infant's face, so incongruous in these terrible circumstances, bent down as · well.
Seun, dropping silently to his knees, completed the semicircle.
The low benches, stolen from the barbecue sets of mothers and fathers, were arranged like pews in front of the altar. Candles of various sizes and colors, also stolen, burned dimly in their makeshift holders. In front of the benches, on the altar itself, the baby sat upright in a Coca-Cola crate, staring out into the darkness. The crate had been spray painted gold.
A single beam from a flashlight perched on top of a cardboard box shone into the baby's white eyes and was reflected back.
There were more than four of them now. Nearly twenty kids, all approximately the same age, sat silently on the benches staring at the dead infant. None of them spoke. None of them ever spoke.
Steve knelt before the baby, lost in thought. He saw an ant crawl slowly up the baby's fat brown arm, and he flicked it off. The ant went flying into the darkness.
There was a rustling sound from the area off to Steve's left, and he turned to see what caused the noise. A new kid— a girl—emerged from the depths of the warehouse. Her nice blue dress was dirty and sweat rolled down her face. It was obvious that she had been stumbling around in the dark for some time, trying to find them.
Steve smiled at her. He said nothing, but she understood.
She knelt down next to him in front of the baby. Her face was filled with rapture.
A few minutes later, the girl withdrew from her small purse a dead lizard. She held it gingerly by the tail and dropped it into the round fishbowl in front of the baby. There was a split-second flash of glowing luminescence, and the lizard dissolved in the bubbling liquid inside the bowl.
Steve patted the girl's head and she smiled, proud of herself.
They sat in silence, staring at the baby.
One of the candles burned all the way down and after a few last gasps of life, a few final flickers of fire, was extinguished.
They sat in silence, staring at the baby.
One by one, the candles surrounding the benches and the altar went out. When the last one had finally flickered out of existence, the kids on the benches stood up and walked silently, in single file, into the blackness. The girl, too, stood up, moved away from Steve's side, and started back the way she'd come. Jimmy and Bill and Seun walked up to the altar where Steve still knelt. They bent down for a moment themselves, then stood up as one.
They covered the baby's crate with a black cloth.