A loud drumming of feet could be heard on the roof. Hideous blue faces were gibbering upside-down through crazed windows. It was now or never: the bus driver cranked the wheel to its limit and backed over the near edge of the roadway, his rear tires settling deep into the soft bank. Then he rolled the steering wheel hard to the left and gunned forward into the massing loonies. With a lurch, the vehicle came back onto the pavement, turning in as tight a radius as was physically possible…and it was almost tight enough. But no-now the front of the bus was dangling over the opposite shoulder! One more correction was necessary, one more reverse…
Too late. As soon as the bus stopped again, those blue horrors were inside. They came like locusts, heedless of injury as they leaped and scrambled over the sill. The driver produced an old machete from under his seat, hacking furiously, but it didn’t slow them down one bit: multitudes of hands pinned him down while a terrifying madwoman straddled him and crushed his resisting mouth under hers. Was it worse because he recognized her? Would it have been better if it was a stranger? For the inhuman beast stealing the breath from Don Diego’s lungs was someone he dearly loved, who often kept him company on these long road trips since his wife had passed away: his virtuous eldest daughter, Lupe. They were inseparable. As her mouth turned inside-out, filling him like a sack of live eels, he convulsed as though electrocuted…then went limp.
Watching the others come, the American suddenly realized that they were familiar to him as well, if only of brief acquaintance-they were his fellow bus passengers! Women, for the most part, though such a word hardly seemed to describe them now. Hags. Furies. Banshees. Blue-skinned ghouls, storming the bus as though it belonged to them, and why not?-they had paid the fare. They came piling in like grubs, brazenly naked or wearing only scraps of clothing, their black eyes fixed on him with implacable, cold lust. Old or young, male or female, they craved him.
Backing down the aisle he felt like an object; a piece of meat. It was a new sensation, being wanted, and not as pleasant as he might formerly have imagined. Leading the pack was the Canadian girl, her pale, perfect beauty now transformed into something washed up on the beach: all jaws and cartilage and kelp-like red hair. That hair obscured her eyes, but it seemed to him that they were messed up-empty holes crying black tears.
She came fast and there was no place left to go but the restroom. Ugh. No time to think about it-he fell inside and turned the latch. As violent blows started falling on the flimsy door, he pressed his back against it, bracing his legs against the opposite wall.
They didn’t give up. They weren’t going to give up. Ever. Looking at himself in the mirror, he thought, This is it, man: now you’re stuck like this. Trapped for eternity in a Mexican toilet, with women clamoring for his body-it had to be a joke. The thought wrung a ragged, involuntary laugh out of him, or was it a scream? He clamped his hands over his mouth to silence it. Please God let it be a joke.
The pounding became more frenzied, jarring his spine. The whole bus shook with it. As the door deformed in its frame, blue fingers wormed in at the weak spots, clamping tight and pulling with inhuman strength-any second they were going to rip the thing right off its hinges. The man closed his eyes, whimpering through gritted teeth…when all at once the hammering stopped.
As if by magic, the monsters disappeared.
Then he realized why. The bus was moving.
The cause was simple: the driver hadn’t set the brake, they were on an incline, so the bus was rolling backwards. It glanced off another vehicle, then tipped sickeningly over the edge of the roadway and down the high bank. Veering sharply right from the angle of its tires, it toppled over onto its side, hitting the desert floor like a great carcass.
The young man emerged. He climbed out of the vehicle and dropped to the sand, vomiting his guts out. He was dyed blue from head to foot, soaked with raw sewage and the disinfectant liquid from the exploded toilet. Defenseless, half-blind, he expected to be attacked any second. When no maniacs came for him, he realized their fevered attention was being drawn elsewhere-to a caravan of new arrivals. He could hear the screams. It was a hellish fly trap up there, with more flies arriving by the minute. Down here, in the dark, he was already forgotten.
Hugging his aching ribs, he dragged himself as far from the road as he could, a mile or more, huddling under a bush amid stands of tall cacti. At one time he would have been worried about snakes or scorpions, but now he didn’t care about much of anything. He would wait here until morning-wait for help to come. Then, as if a switch was thrown, he was out.
White. He came to in a world of muffled whiteness, with surreal ranks of cacti looming above him like sentinels. It was fog-dense morning fog. His body hurt all over, and he was cold, curled up in a ball with his jacket collar around his ears. It took him a second to remember where he was and why-much longer to believe it. How long had it been? Five or six hours at least. Everything was dead quiet. Maybe it was over.
Stiffly climbing to his feet, he hobbled back in the general direction of the highway. Just to see. He was a little disoriented, but it didn’t matter if he went back the exact same way he had come, as long as he found the road. And a drink. Definitely a drink.
It was a long hike, much longer than he remembered. The terrain became very rocky. He didn’t dare consider that he might be lost. When the fog clears, I’ll see exactly where I am, he thought, but when the fog cleared there was nothing-just more rocks and a barren vista of brown hills. Topping each rise, he kept praying to see something hopeful, preferably a mercado with a cooler full of ice-cold sodas…and was forever disappointed, falling deeper and deeper into despair until by the time he finally did sight the road he had practically given up. But there it was.
“Oh thank God,” he croaked.
It was the highway all right, however a different, more level stretch than the one he had left behind. There was no traffic-jam here, no Pemex station-the lanes were clear in both directions. Hiking down to it, he fell on the pavement with the gratitude of a shipwreck survivor. But was he north or south of the pile-up? Rather than heading into trouble, he decided to stay where he was and wait for help to come to him. Which was just as well-he couldn’t move another inch. His blisters had blisters. But the thirst was getting out of control; if someone didn’t come along soon…well, someone had to come along.
He got as comfortable as possible and waited. As he sat there, a couple of large black birds landed nearby. It took him a minute to realize they must be vultures. That was interesting, sitting under the hot white sky and watching turkey vultures waddle along the opposite side of the road like fat little undertakers-it was the corniest thing ever. Real vultures! Back and forth, back and forth, exactly as if they were pacing. Which they were, of course. It was too stupid.
An hour passed. Then two. Dozing under the makeshift cowl of his jacket, he heard the truck before he saw it. It was a big one-some kind of heavy construction vehicle. It came rumbling around the bend of a hill, and at the sight of it the American let out a hoarse cheer: it was a huge red dump-truck bristling with armed men. His body had stiffened from sitting so long; it took a painful effort to get to his feet. By that time the truck was much closer, coming on fast. Its wheels were taller than he was, and there was a railed walkway around the high cab on which several men were standing. They were pointing at him and calling to the driver.