Chapter Thirty-Four - Cody
So it was that, many hours later, we found ourselves parked in front of a steel gate on a dirt road in the Organ Mountains, with the lights of Las Cruces shining barely ten miles away. It seemed unreal, that such a dark and deadly operation should be going on within sight of the modern, ordinary world, right down there in the valley. We’d already been to the house down in White Sands, and found it dark and empty.
Matthieu was picking the lock while I stood there and watched him. We both had our night-vision goggles on, which I’d never used before. They painted the whole world in shades of ghostly green, spooky and mysterious. Still, I could see almost like it was broad daylight, and that was all that mattered. We were practically invisible in our combat fatigues, and as soon as he finished picking the lock, I silently swung the gate open and returned to the truck.
“Ready?” Matthieu asked. He was wearing a helmet with a face visor, to keep Layla from kissing him I suppose. He had the Guardian Stone to protect him, of course, but there’s nothing wrong with taking extra precautions. My own head was bare, but I dearly hoped I never had to see Layla at all.
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” I muttered. I got behind the wheel and snapped my seat belt, knowing the sudden impact of hitting the house would throw me forward if I wasn’t buckled in. I couldn’t afford to get knocked out against the windshield, or worse, punch through it.
We crept forward with no headlights, as quietly as we could on the gravel road. When we came in sight of the house itself, I saw that it was a doublewide mobile home with French doors in front that led onto a concrete patio.
“Ram right through those doors,” Matthieu whispered, nodding towards the front of the house, quickly buckling himself in for the impact.
“Here we go, then,” I said, and hit the gas. The truck’s powerful engine picked up speed quickly, and in spite of the goggles I shut my eyes reflexively at the last second.
The impact was incredible. I was thrown forward against my buckle with enough force that I was sure there’d be bruises there in the morning. There was a massive sound of shattering glass and snapping wood and squealing metal, and the truck’s windshield blew out, showering us with bits of glass. Then we were through, and found ourselves sitting in the middle of what looked like it might have been a fairly ordinary living room before the wall came crashing down. Showers of sparks from ripped-out electrical wires lit up the room.
“Go!” Matthieu cried, and the two of us quickly scrambled out to head for opposite ends of the house.
I stumbled through rubble almost knee-deep, doing my best not to step on the live wires that were still sparking and shorting in places. My boots were supposed to be shock-proof, but I didn’t want to test that theory. I remembered something about how Lisa had found Marcus hung up in one of the back bedrooms, so that was where I headed first.
Then I found myself tackled from behind and knocked hard to the floor, and before I could come to my senses I felt something biting me on my left shoulder, dangerously close to my neck. I instinctively punched at the thing, and my hand encountered dry, leathery skin barely clinging to bone. One of the zombies. It couldn’t bite me very well through my clothes, but I can promise you it hurt plenty, and the thing was trying to get its stringy hands around my throat at the same time.
I fought the thing in a wave of revulsion and horror, and I found that every time I punched or ripped it, chunks would come loose in my hands, foul and greasy. None of that seemed to be hurting the thing, though, and we rolled and grappled on the floor for several minutes with neither of us able to get the upper hand. I was terrified that another one would pile on at any second, and if that happened then I was lost.
I vaguely heard gunfire and Matthieu yelling and the room was suddenly lit up by an explosion that threw both me and the zombie against the wall so hard that it felt like it might have cracked ribs. But at least it knocked loose the thing’s hold on my neck, and before it could get up I scrambled to my feet and kicked it in the head as hard as I could with my steel toed boots. The thing’s head came loose from its body and sailed across the room like a football, and then it was still.
I was still shaking from the fight, but there was no time for that. I quickly got a grip on myself and ran for the bedroom again, sliding along the wall to keep my back covered this time.
I kicked in the bedroom door without a second thought, and inside was a scene that broke my heart. In spite of the adrenaline rush of fighting off the monster and the blood and sweat and smoke of battle that was all around me, the sight in front of me was enough to stop me cold.
Marcus and Lisa were hanging from the ceiling by their wrists, just like Marcus must have been that other time. A long steel rod had been built into the ceiling, maybe for that very purpose, and both of them were almost naked except for whatever they’d been wearing at the hospital. The green glow of the goggles made it hard to see exactly what the situation was, but I could tell that Marcus’s bandages across his stomach were soaked dark with blood, and neither he nor Lisa lifted their heads nor made a sound when I burst inside.
The battle was still raging outside the bedroom, and then all of a sudden there was silence. I almost dreaded to see what the outcome had been, but I was afraid to cut the prisoners loose without help. It might do more harm than good.
I crept back outside to the living room, where I found Matthieu sitting on the overturned couch while he put pressure on a bloody wound in his thigh as best he could.
“What happened?” I asked, staring at the blood.
“Got shot in the leg, that’s what. Layla’s pretty good with a pistol, turns out. But not as good as I am, though,” he said with satisfaction.
“You got her?” I asked, hardly daring to hope.
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure I did. I know I got her better than she got me, but you better go after her and make sure, though,” he said, handing me his pistol. It was a Glock .45, heavy and lethal. It still had several rounds left.
“Which way did she go?” I asked.
“She busted the bedroom window out and ran off up the valley, but she wasn’t moving too fast. You better hurry, and take this, too,” he said, handing me back the Guardian Stone.
I quickly zipped it up in my pocket where it couldn’t get lost, then ran outside and picked up Layla’s trail right where Matthieu had said I would. She must have been moving faster than he thought, though, because I lost her trail about a hundred yards from the house. I don’t know if she went to ground or if she was still running, but either way she was gone.
I cussed and kicked the ground, but there was nothing to do except go back to the house and try to do what I could for the others.
Matthieu was still bleeding when I got back inside, and it was obvious there was no way he could help me with Marcus and Lisa.
“Was there anybody else?” I asked when I got back indoors.
“No, it was just Layla and two zombies, fortunately,” Matthieu said.
“Are they both dead?” I asked, vividly remembering my brush with the one in the living room.
“Yeah. Well, deactivated is maybe a better word, but you know what I mean,” he said.
I went back to the bedroom, and found a chair to climb up and cut the ropes that held Marcus and Lisa to the ceiling, trying not to let them fall.
It didn’t look good. They hadn’t been in good shape to start with, and I was sure Layla hadn’t given them any food or water ever since she hung them up in there. I had to get them to a hospital, and Matthieu too, for that matter.
“We’ve got to get y’all to the hospital,” I told him, as soon as I carried Marcus and Lisa out to the living room.
“Yeah, but not in Las Cruces. None of us can be associated with what happened here tonight, not even remotely. In fact I’d like to get out of New Mexico completely, if we can. El Paso’s only about forty-five minutes; I think it’ll be best if we go there. But we c
an’t leave the house like this, either. We’ve got to bury what’s left of those zombies somewhere nobody will find them, and then we need to set this place on fire,” he said.
“Can’t we come back and deal with that later? Marcus and Lisa might not make it that long. You might not either, if you keep bleeding like that,” I said severely. He gazed at the others, and finally nodded.
“Yeah, you’re right. We’ll come back later and finish up. Let’s go. We can take Layla’s car,” he agreed.
I had to carry all three of them out to Layla’s brown station wagon, laying Marcus and Lisa in the back seat as comfortably as possible, while Matthieu rode in front.
“You know, Cody, I’ve been thinking. You might ought to hold off a while before you drink that serum Layla gave you,” Matthieu said after a while.
“How come?” I asked.
“Well. . .Curses are usually made to last forever, unless the one who cast them specifically breaks them. I’m not quite sure Layla had the power to break it in the first place. In fact, I wouldn’t put it past her to give you a vial of poison, just for the pleasure of causing more heartache. You better let me stop by and test it, before you try to use it,” Matthieu said.
I hadn’t thought of that possibility, but I decided it was definitely a good idea to find out what was in that vial before I drank it.
“Okay, no problem,” I said.
“I’ll try to stop by on our way home. It’s not too far out of the way. Just wait till then before you touch that liquid. I’ve got to get my uncle Rob and some of the others out here to take care of that scene in Las Cruces before somebody else finds it, so that might take a few days,” he said.
“No worries; you know where to find me,” I said.
We got to El Paso with no trouble, and then had to wait for an hour or more while the nurses decided what to do with us. Matthieu had to have surgery to get the bullet out of his leg, and the others were admitted to the hospital, too.
I called Mama to come get us, but El Paso is an awfully long way from Avinger. There was no way she could get there before late afternoon at the earliest. I wasn’t sure yet when Marcus and Lisa would be released; hanging from a bar for several hours hadn’t been good for them. Marcus had had his stitches torn open, and both of them were dehydrated.
But by late afternoon they were both awake at least, and the hospital was nice enough to let them have next-door rooms. Lisa was able to sit up in a wheelchair and let me push her into Marcus’s room so we could talk, after he woke up from having his stitches redone.
“What happened?” he asked thickly, and I told both of them the story, with comments and interruptions along the way.
The hospital grudgingly let them go home the next morning (against medical advice), with a long list of home-care guidelines and strict orders to check back with a doctor if they took a turn for the worse. We probably would have stayed longer in El Paso, if it hadn’t been for the need to get back home and take care of Mrs. Stone’s funeral.
Mama left Brandon at home so he wouldn’t miss school, even though he wanted to come. But it was better that way, since it left a lot more room in the car. We only drove partway that first day, taking it easy and spending the night at a motel in Sweetwater before finishing the trip the next morning.
Early that same afternoon, Matthieu stopped by on his way home as he’d promised he would. He had a white rat in a wire cage, which I could only guess was for testing the vial that Layla had given us. I was kind of disappointed, honestly; I could have done that much myself, if I’d known that was all he had in mind. Marcus was at home resting, but Lisa and I were sitting at the kitchen table with Mama, drinking hot chocolate.
“Are you all by yourself?” I asked, when he showed up alone.
“Yeah. The others are still in Las Cruces, getting the truck fixed and stuff. But they told me to go on home so I could rest,” he said.
“Did you get everything taken care of at the house?” I asked.
“Mostly, I think. We buried those poor people out in the White Sands Desert where nobody will ever look; it was the best we could do for them. We pulled the truck out and got rid of all the evidence we could find. I think it’ll be all right,” he explained.
“Sounds like y’all are pretty thorough,” I said dryly.
“We have to be. Now, do you still have that vial Layla gave you?” Matthieu asked.
“Yeah, Mama has it in her purse, I think,” I said.
“May I see it?” Matthieu asked.
“Sure. Let him see it, Mama,” I said, and she wordlessly handed him the vial. Matthieu held it up to the light and watched it sparkle.
“I see. And you’ve never tasted it yet, right?” he asked.
“Nope,” I said.
“Do you have an eyedropper we could use, maybe?” he asked.
“Sure,” Mama agreed, getting up to fetch one from the medicine cabinet.
“Now, let’s see what happens to Mr. Rat when we feed him a drop of this,” Matthieu said.
As soon as Mama got back with the medicine dropper and handed it to him, Matthieu took some of the green liquid from the vial, then poked the dropper through the bars of the cage. The rat came up to it curiously, sniffed the offering, and then licked it twice.
Nothing seemed to happen at first, but Matthieu kept watching intently, and sure enough, five minutes after tasting the liquid, the rat started jerking and twitching and fell to the floor of the cage curled up in a ball with a thin trickle of blood running from his mouth.
“That’s what I was afraid of. That vial is nothing but poison. If you’d swallowed it, I don’t think you would have been alive for long,” Matthieu said calmly.
I don’t guess I was all that surprised by this turn of events, but for Lisa it was a shock.
“But. . . “ she said, looking stricken. I knew immediately what she was thinking; that all that suffering had been for nothing, and how close it had come to being even worse than nothing. Layla Garza’s whole deal had been a cheat from the very beginning. It would have been one last twist of the knife; one last method of extracting a final bitter drop of agony, after all the rest. And worst of all, Lisa herself would have been a willing part of it. Without a word, I took her in my arms.
“Never think of it again,” I whispered in her ear, too low for anyone else to hear; the same words she’d whispered to me on that night at Autograph Rock when I first told her about the Curse. I knew she’d remember, and I wanted her to know it didn’t matter. She laughed through her tears, and then kissed me fiercely right there in front of company.
Matthieu discreetly pretended not to notice, and when Lisa had pulled herself together he went on as if nothing had ever happened.
“I’d get rid of this, if I were you,” he said, holding up the vial.
“Is it safe to pour it on the ground?” I asked.
“I’m not sure about that, honestly. I can take it with me and get rid of it for you, if you like,” he offered.
“Yeah, maybe you should. I’d really appreciate that,” I nodded.
“No problem,” he agreed.
“But what about the Curse?” I asked, and Matthieu seemed uncomfortable.
“It’s still there, Cody. I don’t know what to say. You’ll still be okay as long as you keep the Guardian Stone somewhere on your body at all times``. But if it ever gets lost or stolen, I don’t guess I need to tell you what happens then. I suggest getting it attached to a chain, to make it easier to keep up with. Maybe you should come over to Natchitoches sometime and we’ll see if we can find out any more possibilities for how to break that curse. My parents have a library bigger than some small countries, all about things like that,” he offered, and I let out a deep breath. If I’d lived with the curse this long, then surely I could live with it a while longer.
Hopefully.
Not long after Matthieu left, Brandon got home from school and I was finally able to ask hi
m what my dream of the lightning on the mountain might mean.
“The lightning bolts mean that for a while you’ll be surrounded by danger and evil and there won’t be any place to hide. You’ll have something to do which seems insane, like climbing up on that boulder. Throwing the lightning back at the sky means you’ll have to take your enemy’s greatest weapon and turn it against her. The rain means peace, but only if you have the courage to do the other things first,” he said.
“You sure are obscure sometimes, Scrapper,” I said with a sigh.
“I only know what I know,” he shrugged.
And with that I had to be content.