Wall: A Post Apocalyptic/Dystopian Adventure (The Traveler Book 3) (29 page)

“Why let people leave at all?” Battle asked.

“Most of these people are Cartel or Cartel sympathizers,” said the driver. “Paagal wants them to leave. But she wants it controlled. She wants to have an idea of who’s leaving.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” said Battle. “None at all.”

The driver shrugged. “It’s what she wants.”

The SUV slowed and turned left into a large parking lot. At the northern edge of the lot was a tall chain-link fence stretching between two buildings. There was a gate in the middle that sat on a set of wheels.

Between the SUV and the gate was a mess of people. Battle counted fifty men, women, and children. A behemoth of a man slid open the gate and a thin, broad-shouldered woman with a buzz cut waved through a party of four. The gate slid closed behind them.

“So she’s funneling everyone through a single spot,” said Battle. “That makes it easy for whoever is guarding the wall on the northern side to capture anyone who comes through. This isn’t good.”

The SUV slid into a parking spot marked with faded yellow lines, and the driver shifted into park. He left the engine running, and a second woman with a buzz cut made her way to the vehicle. She knocked on the window and the driver lowered it.

“Sneak-through?” she asked. “I need payment. Better it is, faster you go through.”

The driver handed her a slip of paper. She unfolded it, read it, then eyeballed the passengers one at a time.

“I need to check this,” she said and jogged through the assembled refugees to the bald woman by the gate.

“What was that?” asked Battle. “The paper?”

“A note from Paagal,” he said. “It gives you clearance without payment.”

“Who are those women?” asked Sawyer.

Baadal turned around. “They’re priestesses.”

Battle pulled himself forward in his seat, using Baadal’s headrest. “What?”

“They’re priestesses,” Baadal repeated. “They work for Paagal. They help all new Dwellers assimilate. They give us our Hindi names. They guide us spiritually when we have trouble.”

“Why didn’t I see any of them in the canyon?” asked Battle. “In two weeks, I never saw one of these priestesses.”

“They were sent away,” said Baadal. “Paagal didn’t want them in harm’s way. They were deployed along the border to the safe houses we’ve long controlled.”

“You learn something new every day,” said Battle, plopping back against the leather seat. “A month ago I was the only person in the world, except when people came wandering onto my land.”

Lola squeezed his fingers. Her eyes were still closed, but Battle knew she was listening to everything. He squeezed back.

“Then,” Battle said, “there’s a Cartel running every part of Texas. Except it isn’t Texas anymore and the Cartel isn’t in control of everything. Now we have Dwellers, who most people thought were extinct despite the fact they’d infiltrated every major town under Cartel control, and a group of bald, cultish priestesses kept in safe houses.”

Baadal’s eyebrows arched high on his forehead. He smiled. “That sounds accurate. Except most of those who joined the resistance against the Cartel didn’t know they were working with Dwellers.”

“This whole thing reads like a series of post-apocalyptic Western dime-store novels,” said Battle. “It teeters on the edge of believability.”

“A willing suspension of disbelief leads to a great deal of enjoyment in a barren word devoid of joy,” said Baadal. “I often find myself daydreaming to escape the reality of what is plausible and what is not.”

“Let me know how it ends,” said Battle.

Baadal turned to face the front. He unbuckled his seat belt and shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

Battle looked out his window at a boy urinating on a fence post. A man who Battle presumed to be the boy’s father stood beside him, doing the same until a guard poked the man in the back with his rifle. They both stopped midstream and shuffled off to join their group.

His attention shifted to a young woman with a six-shooter stuffed into the front of her rope-cinched pants. She couldn’t have been more than seventeen. A boy, maybe the same age or a little younger, stood next to her. His pants stopped at his calves. His ankles and feet were black as soot. They were leaning against a hearse. Their faces were drawn with frowns. Neither of them appeared to have much hope.

The bald woman with their golden ticket started walking back to the SUV, the piece of paper flapping against her outstretched hand. She stopped at the hearse and spoke to the driver. The teenagers perked up. The doors to the hearse swung open. The seventeen-year-old girl pulled the back hatch ajar, and a young woman carrying a baby emerged from inside the hearse.

Battle counted six people, including the baby, standing next to the death wagon. They had packs and weapons. The young mother was holding the child over her shoulder, swaying as she stood there at the rear of the vehicle. The woman looked haggard, as if she’d experienced something beyond the pale, something far outside her narrowly defined comfort zone.

Battle’d seen the look before, on the faces of war-weary Syrians and Iranians whose homes and schools and businesses were smoldering piles of rubble and rebar. They walked aimlessly through their streets with no place to go and nothing else to do. They were ghosts, shells of what once had been whole people.

The young mother had that look as she vacantly rocked from side to side, her eyes fixed on some imaginary distant place.

The priestess arrived at the SUV’s window. “You’re with them,” she said and pointed to the hearse. “Time to go.”

***

Ana looked back at the pair of SUVs with the gasoline cans strapped to their roofs. She didn’t like the idea of more strangers joining them on their already dangerous trip.

She stepped to Taskar. “Tell me why we have to leave your car. I thought you always drove your clients the length of their trips.”

He nodded, his eyes glued to the shaven-headed woman. “I do,” he said. “Things have changed. They’re not letting vehicles cross. Only people on foot.”

“So you’re staying here?”

“I’m staying with my transportation. They’ll open it up soon.”

“How long can you hold out?”

Taskar pursed his lips in thought. “A few days,” he said. A sly grin grew across his face. “I’ve half your rations now.”

Ana thanked him and watched five people step from the first SUV. There was a thin red-haired woman, a boy who had to be her son, two men who were unmistakably Dwellers, and a tall, lean man with sad eyes. His unkempt hair was tousled atop his head. His face was tanned from the sun, save the feathered white lines that revealed the wrinkles in his forehead and at his temples.

He carried himself like a soldier, she thought. He had that confidence, despite his evident sorrow. He also carried an assault rifle.

All five of them slowly walked toward Ana and her group of disaffected teens and twenty-somethings. The man with the sad eyes spoke first.

“I’m Marcus Battle,” he said and nodded at the woman at his side. “This is Lola, her son, Sawyer, and these are our escorts.”

“I’m Baadal,” offered the Dweller. The driver, however, said nothing.

Taskar spoke for the group, directing himself to Baadal. “I’m a fellow Dweller,” he said. “But I am not making the journey. This is Ana and her daughter, Penny.” He then introduced the rest of the party before excusing himself.

Ana took control. “We don’t know you,” she said. “You don’t know us. For whatever reason, they want us crossing the wall together. We’ll help you; you help us. Once we cross, do what you gotta do.”

Battle nodded. “Fine,” he said. “Whatever we find once we move past that gate, we’re bound to be stronger as a group of ten.”

Ana agreed. “Let’s go.”

***

The gate slid on ungreased wheels. They screeched and squealed their resistance along the track as the guard pushed the chain-link open. Battle took a deep breath and crossed the threshold.

He was side by side with the driver, the only one of the party to have crossed before. He’d told Battle his job was to get them into the sneak-through before turning around and heading back to the canyon. The other SUV pulled out of the lot and started back along the highway, retracing its route to the canyon.

Inside the gate was a row of six-foot-tall evergreen hedges. Even before they’d cut through a gap in the growth, Battle heard the chaos beyond it.

He picked through the hedge, helped Lola and Sawyer negotiate their way, and stepped into no-man’s-land. One hundred yards in the distance beyond, he saw the wall for the first time.

It was thirty feet in height, maybe taller in spots, and stretched from east to west as far as he could see. It was made of Texas limestone, a mix of alabaster white and shades of rust.

From where he stood, he couldn’t see a sneak-through. He did, however, see a large blackbird fly past him, using the wind to glide toward the towering wall until it drifted low enough to land atop it. The bird, Battle thought, was taunting him.

“Marcus”—Lola snapped Battle from his trance—“what now?”

“I don’t know,” Battle said and pointed at the driver. “We follow his lead.”

Battle refocused on the world directly in front of him. He was standing in the middle of a sea of people. It was a mixture of a flea market, circus, and red-light district. Tents and corrugated aluminum structures crowded the dry grass prairie that constituted no-man’s-land.

The wind carried with it the odor of burnt popcorn, ammonia, and grilled meat. It was immediately intoxicating, then quickly became nauseating. The odor was overwhelming and stung Battle’s nostrils.

There was music, there were barkers selling their wares, and buried in the mix of sounds was screaming. Battle stepped over the stiffened body of a dead man nobody else seemed to notice. The man was on his side, one arm frozen awkwardly behind him. His neck appeared broken. His eyes were open, his swollen tongue hanging from his mouth. The crowd walked around the body, stepped over it, or on it as if it were part of the prairie.

Battle looked away from the body and spied a wiry, mangy woman working a group of men ahead of them. “Hold your packs in front of you,” Battle suggested to his group. “Wrap your arms around it if you can. Hold your weapons in your hands.”

The mangy woman snuck her bony fingers into an unsuspecting man’s pockets and fished a knife from it. It was in one hand, the other, and then gone. She swiped a package of jerky from another man who seemed enamored with her endowments. He got too handsy with her and she stuck him in the side with the knife, jabbing it repeatedly in and out until the man dropped to his knees and she moved along.

In the distance, there was the rumble of motorcycle engines revving and accelerating. Battle couldn’t see past the humanity pushing him westward.

The driver pointed to their right. “We need to make it north,” he said. “Push this way.”

Lola and Sawyer had their packs on their chests instead of their backs. They’d listened to Battle. He took Lola’s hand, instructed her to take Sawyer’s, and began forging his own path through the crowds.

He kept his eyes above the undulating crowd and focused on the driver. Baadal, he knew, was behind Sawyer. The others, the group from the hearse, were pushing their way northward in a path parallel to Battle. They were a step or two behind, but the young mother with a child in a pack on her chest wouldn’t be denied. She shoved and pushed and shouldered her way past the people in her way.

***

Ana cursed her height. It wasn’t a problem until she was mired in a mud pit of humanity that reeked of sweat and sauerkraut. Ana had never eaten the German delicacy, but had a good idea of its fermented odor from the people she elbowed past on her way north toward the wall.

She was trying to keep pace with the SUV driver and the man named Battle. They were bigger and stronger than she, but she imagined wrongly they hadn’t killed as many people as she had in the previous twenty-four hours. Ana believed she was as tough as they were and could stay with them on a parallel line.

With Penny bouncing in the modified baby carrier, the teenage girl held on to Ana’s rear waistband. Together, they and the three others formed an elephant chain that stayed together despite the torrent rushing around them on all sides.

“Over here,” Battle called out. “This way.”

She stopped moving and stood on her tiptoes. Through the heads and shoulders of others, she could see Battle pointing to what looked like a brick and stone outhouse.

Ana forged ahead, cutting a line across to an alleyway between a row of plywood stands. One of them proudly sold a variety of THC-laced products. The other was a gunsmith. The smith called after Ana.

“Give you a Colt with a handmade pearl handle for two minutes with you,” he snarled. “You can have two if you bring the whole gang.” He burst into laughter as Ana moved without acknowledging him.

Beyond the stands, she found the outhouse, flies swarming above it. Battle and the others were standing around it. They were in a small, almost hidden area behind the busiest parts of no-man’s-land. They were away from the view of the swarm beyond the bazaar of stands and shanties.

Ana pointed at it and looked at the SUV driver. “What’s this?”

“It’s a sneak-through,” he said. “You ready?”

Ana turned up her nose. “We’re going in there?”

The SUV driver nodded and opened the door. Ana gagged from the putrid waft of stale air that spilled from the space.

The driver climbed into the outhouse, his feet pressed against the bottom of the interior walls while he moved past the hole in the center of a slimy limestone bench. Behind the seat, the driver lifted a leg and kicked the back wall with his heel.

A panel gave way, slamming into a space between the interior and exterior rear walls. He grabbed the top of the opening and then slid himself carefully into the hole.

He gagged and cleared his throat. “There’s a ladder here,” he said. “If you can make it past the stench, you’ll be okay. Last one in closes the door behind them.