They waited. Perhaps there was still a chance this was only a short delay. The sense of collective yearning was palpable, forty people hanging on the edge of their seats. Then the driver turned off the engine and all hope collapsed. Without a word, he opened the door and got out.
Abandoned, the passengers gave in to resignation. Actually there was a certain sense of relief, as if everyone could now relax and be themselves. No one was particularly angry or upset. This was why he loved Mexico.
The Canadian girl came half awake, taking her fragrant head off his shoulder. “What’s going on?” she groaned.
“Nothing. We’ve just stopped. It’s probably a car accident or something.”
“Where are we?”
“I don’t know. Nowhere.”
The Mexicans were making a party of it. Cigarettes were lit, snacks brought out, and the volume of conversation increased. A radio was turned on, playing a live New Year’s Eve countdown from Mexico City. Some folks got up to stretch their legs, and the young man decided to do the same. He would scope out the situation and bring the girl a full report-show her he had everything under control. As if a sixteen-year-old girl traveling alone through the backlands of Mexico needed reassurance from him.
Outside it was quite a scene. The bus was part of a long line of stopped traffic in the middle of the desert-a festive-looking chain of lights spanning the void. Many people had gotten out of their vehicles and some were wandering down the road trying to find out what was going on. There was a lit Pemex sign ahead, but the gas station itself was hidden by a dip in the fathomless landscape.
The young man wanted to walk down there and see, but he was reluctant to venture too far from the bus. What if the traffic started moving, or the bus turned around and went back? Last thing he needed was to be stranded out here. But he figured he was all right as long he kept the driver in sight, so when that officious old character and some other men started down the hill, he tagged along behind.
It was nice to be outside in the fresh air. He had been a prisoner for hours, afraid to budge. And it was so stupid: as if he had any chance with this incredible girl. Confidence with the opposite sex was not his strong suit; his record with women was a catalogue of rejection-it was a rejection, in fact, that led to his dropping out of college and impulsively heading for Mexico. He tended to rush things, that was his problem. Unrequited love was a bitch.
But…he couldn’t help feeling that this situation was different. For one thing, this was Mexico-a whole different universe. For another, he and the gorgeous Canadian were the only gringos on the bus. Initially they had been in separate seats, but jolly Mexican ladies had insisted they sit together, playing matchmaker for the clueless estudiantes. Embarrassed, he had been all too ready to decline-no, no, gracias-but to his amazement the girl came over and sat by him. And from that moment on, he was in love.
Yet…he didn’t want everything to depend on a girl. Not again. Not here. As he walked, he tried to fully immerse himself in the moment, in the extraordinary fact that he was alive, here, now, on this beautiful Godforsaken highway somewhere in Mexico. The gravel crunching under his feet, the rolling horizon like a black cardboard cutout under dimly luminous clouds, the tiny flecks of rain in the breeze-it was all marvelous.
Below the highway embankment he could see an army of tall, pale figures with arms upraised-saguaro cacti. For a second he had a wild impulse to run down there: a hike out into the desert would put things in their true perspective. But he knew he wouldn’t really do it.
The Pemex station came into view, an island of sickly fluorescent light. It looked as desolate as a base on the Moon. Now he could see the trouble: there was another bus down there, a sleek white charter bus, straddling both lanes of the road. It didn’t look damaged, but there must have been an accident of some kind because a lot of people were laying on the ground, with a bunch of nurses giving them CPR. Not nurses-nuns. A busload of nuns. Other people were running around frantically yelling for help.
Was he crazy or were some of the nuns chasing them?
The bus driver and his party ran to offer assistance, other men joining them along the way until the group snowballed to twenty or thirty people. They passed at least as many running in the opposite direction, who frantically tried to warn them off, shouting ¡Monjas locas! ¡Locas! but they kept going. Meanwhile, police and military vehicles began arriving from the south, pouring on their sirens as they sped along the shoulder of the road.
Having fallen behind the driver, the young man was about halfway down the hill when he realized he was walking into something very wrong-and he stopped.
An olive-drab truck full of soldiers pulled into the gas station first. Before it could even begin unloading, a group of people-including several nuns-rushed the truck’s bed and leaped in among the surprised troops. The canvas cover bounced cartoonishly from the violence within. A police Bronco stormed onto the scene and four smartly uniformed federal officers charged out, shouting orders. Nuns rushed them and they disappeared from view. Was it the fluorescent light, or did those nuns’ faces look weirdly blue?
At the same time, the bus driver’s posse was nearing the outer realm of glare from the gas station. The men’s elongated black shadows stretched behind them as though reluctant to get any closer, but the determined hombres did not waver. From their vantage it was likely they could not properly see what was happening to the police and soldiers. Weirdly manic female silhouettes rushed to meet them, and in a second the two groups collided.
It was a massacre: the thirty volunteers suddenly found themselves senselessly, viciously assaulted. Tackled in flying leaps, half of them were pinned to the ground before they knew what hit them, their faces crushed under the searching mouths of their attackers. Stranger still, some of these attackers were the “accident victims” who had themselves been receiving CPR only moments ago. And more were jumping to life every second.
Frozen in place, the young man watched all this with increasing disbelief, unsure of how to react, but at the sound of gunfire he realized he was in over his head. The bus driver obviously had the same thought: As the rest of his party got caught up in the fighting, he had an abrupt change of heart and ran for his life. It was a close thing. He was a heavy smoker, and not young either, but he could move when he had to.
“Come on, man, come on!” shouted the American. It had occurred to him that he wasn’t going anywhere without that bus driver.
The driver was faltering, wheezing badly. He had already run quite a distance, and now the running was all uphill. In desperation, the young man sprinted down to him and took the driver’s leathery arm around his neck, half-carrying him up the road. The older man smelled of sweat and Old Spice-it reminded him of his grandfather.
As they retreated alongside the line of traffic, they passed the bizarre spectacle of what appeared to be people making out in some of the cars: mismatched couples locked in furious sexual combat…though the men were clearly not the aggressors. In fact the women seemed to be sucking the very life from their reluctant male prey. Like spiders, the American thought wildly. Black widow spiders.
A man’s flailing leg kicked through a windshield, spraying them with glass as they hurried by. A car pulled out of line and drove down the steep embankment, plowing into the ditch at the bottom. Truck horns brayed, and they could hear small children screaming. Over it all was a shrill, rising din-the hyena laughter of the insane.
Now the young man was tiring. Almost there…almost there. They had crested the hill, and he could see the bus-Tres Estrellas de Oro-but all around them things were getting sketchier by the second. People were bursting from cars and fleeing in all directions with blue-faced monstrosities hot on their heels. Any second one of those things would notice them and it would all be over. The number of scary maniacs was doubling as the victims revived and joined their ranks-very soon there wouldn’t be anyone sane left. From the direction of the gas station, they could hear a demonic host approaching. It was hopeless.