Nigel nodded. “Lovely.” He checked the gas gauge. “Could’ve nicked us something with a bit more fuel efficiency, Izzy.”
She snorted. “That’s what you’re worried about?”
“Limited funds,” Nigel said. “And a long bloody drive.”
Ran reached out with her telekinesis and plucked the wad of bills from Nigel’s cargo pocket. She counted through them. “I think we have enough,” she announced.
“Hope so,” Caleb said.
Isabela groaned. “God, we’ll be fine. If we run out of money, we get more. No big deal.”
“You mean steal more,” Kopano said.
“Uh, yeah,” Isabela replied. “Obviously.”
Kopano was quiet for a moment. “We must find Taylor. That is the most important thing. But when that is done, we should make sure the cars we stole are returned to their owners. And that anything else we take is returned.” He looked out the window. “I do not want to be a thief.”
“Sure, mate,” Nigel said. “We’ll send ’em nice thank-you notes, too.”
Soon, they had left the city behind and were cutting across the desert. Scrubby plants and cactus whipped by, whorls of reddish sand blown across the hot pavement. They passed through Joshua Tree, the fuzzy branches of the yucca trees reaching up like twisted alien arms. As they drove out of California and into Arizona the land became flat and burned, the view dotted by bursts of emerald palms that stood in opposition to the sun. For stretches, they could see for miles, but then the horizon would rise up and become mountainous. They navigated through chasms, the highway itself cut through the jagged sandstone mountains.
“I just saw a cattle skull on the side of the road,” Caleb said as he peered out the window. “You know, with like the horns all bleached by the sun?”
“So?” Nigel replied.
Caleb shrugged. “Dunno. Thought that was just a thing they put in movies to make it seem hot out.” He paused thoughtfully. “There’s this game we could play. Roadkill bingo?”
“No,” Isabela said sharply.
They all took turns behind the wheel. Whoever sat shotgun tried to keep the driver company. The others took turn dozing off, either sitting upright in the middle row or stretched out across the backseat.
Isabela was grateful that they’d found a blanket in the trunk. When she felt herself getting tired from all the sitting around and endless desert, she draped herself across the backseat and pulled the blanket over her. She turned to face the trunk, leaving a small gap in the blanket for air. This way, no one would be able to see her when she dozed off. None of the others commented on her huddled form.
When Isabela woke up, they were driving on the outskirts of Phoenix. It was sunset. The city glittered orange in the distance, an oasis of glass and life after hours of mountains. She shifted around under her blanket to get a look at the others. Nigel and Ran were both asleep, too, Nigel with his head resting on the Japanese girl’s shoulder. Isabela smirked at that. In front, Caleb drove while Kopano kept him company.
The two of them were quietly talking about Taylor, going over the events of the night before for the hundredth time. The guy who had taken her didn’t seem like a Harvester. Unlike the cult, whoever he was, he wanted Taylor alive. Both Kopano and Caleb agreed that was a good thing. Well, as much as kidnapping could be a good thing.
“If he has hurt her in any way,” Kopano declared, “I will have vengeance.”
“Yeah,” Caleb agreed. “Me too.”
Under her blanket, Isabela rolled her eyes.
“I am sorry, by the way,” Kopano said. “For throwing you through the windshield of that car.”
Caleb rubbed the back of his neck, which was covered in small cuts and bruised up. Isabela noticed he had been sitting rigidly, but she’d thought that was just Caleb’s normal posture. He was hurt, she realized. Ribs probably broken, but hiding it.
“No worries,” Caleb told Kopano. “It wasn’t you. That prick took control somehow.”
Did either of the two would-be heroes know they both had a crush on Taylor? They were both oblivious and going out of their way to be nice, but Isabela figured they had to see each other as competition. All that macho talk, battling over who could promise revenge with the most gravitas. Dense boys. She couldn’t wait to tell Taylor about this.
Weeks ago, Isabela realized, she would’ve been jealous of Taylor getting all this attention. But now, she missed her friend. She even felt a tinge of sadness for the two love-struck meatheads in the front of the van, at least one of whom would surely be rejected.
Ugh. She was getting soft.
It took another couple of hours to reach New Mexico. By then, night had fallen and they were all awake.
They found Silver City and then Route 15. Caleb unfolded the map and studied it in the Escalade’s yellowish dome light. Silver City’s architecture was more modest than Phoenix, the buildings not as glittery and lower slung, man-made hunks of stone popping up from the desert.
“Did they want their town to look like a graveyard?” Isabela asked.
“The place we’re looking for isn’t really in town,” Caleb said. “I think it’s up north in the forest.”
They passed along the edge of town and drove to Gila National Forest. According to the map, the area stretched over four thousand square miles. The rocky desert sloped upwards, gradually giving way to masses of thick, triangular pine trees. The grass grew taller here and didn’t look as scorched; it appeared purple and wavy in the moonlight. They ascended via a series of switchbacks, the trees thickened and soon the dots of light from Silver City were swallowed up behind them.
For a while, there wasn’t another car on the road. Nearby, a wolf howled.
“Bloody hell,” Nigel said. “Of course they would set up in axe murderer country.”
“I find it serene,” Ran replied.
Nigel smirked at her. “See if you still think that when some inbred bloke in a hockey mask is carving you up into little pieces.”
Ran looked back at him. “I would like to see this bloke try.”
Isabela chuckled, enjoying the banter. It helped ease the mood a bit. Kopano and Caleb were both wholly focused on the road ahead, ready for battle at any moment.
“Are we sure this is even the right way?” Isabela asked.
As if in answer, a pair of headlights appeared behind them. Kopano squinted into the rearview and slowed down a bit. The glowing headlamps behind them crisscrossed—not a car, but two motorcycles—the bikes soon careening by them up the road. They each carried the sort of leather-clad tough guy who had accosted the Garde last night.
“Want to bet those lads show us the way?” Nigel asked.
“Do not get too close to them,” Ran warned.
Kopano let the motorcycles get out of sight, then continued up the winding road through the forest. Five minutes later, as they came around a bend, a wooden sign wreathed in Christmas lights came into view. Scrawled in chipped paint across the boards—APACHE JACK’S.
“My dad used to talk about places like this,” Caleb said. “Dive bars off the beaten path. Used to brag about all the brawls he got into.”
“Thanks for sharing,” Isabela said.
A hundred years ago, Apache Jack’s was probably a trading post. There was still a hitching rail outside the long brick building, but instead of horses there were now motorcycles parked in front. The gravel parking lot was also filled with trailers, pickup trucks and muscle cars, many of these decorated to look like postapocalyptic war machines. The whole scene was lit by neon beer signs in the bar windows and fire barrels in the parking lot. A couple dozen men milled around the vehicles or drank on the shaded porch. Half of them were armed with either shotguns or rifles.
Kopano slowed the Escalade, but Isabela snapped at him, “Keep going!”
“But . . . she could be in there.”
“Does it look like we would belong in that parking lot?” Isabela asked. “I’m surprised they’re not already shooti
ng at us. Go, go, go!”
Kopano stepped on the gas and they zoomed by Apache Jack’s. Some of the men in the parking lot tracked the Escalade with their eyes, but none of them made any move to follow. As they drove by, Isabela caught a glimpse of some kind of tall wooden structure behind the bar but couldn’t make out any details.
They put a half mile of winding road between them and Apache Jack’s to make sure they weren’t followed. Eventually, Kopano pulled off to the side of the road and killed the engine.
“How are we going to do this?” he asked.
“We can hike in through the woods,” Ran said. “Come at the place from the back.”
“I should go in alone,” Isabela said. “Do . . . what do you call it? Reconnaissance.”
They turned around to look at Isabela and all of them jumped when they saw her new appearance.
She had taken on the look of a male midfifties biker. Hefty and hairy, with coarse salt-and-pepper hair tied in a sloppy ponytail. She wore an open leather vest that exposed her prodigious beer belly, a pair of scuffed-up jeans and cowboy boots.
“What do you think?” Isabela asked, her normal voice issuing from the biker’s chapped lips.
“Your hottest look yet,” Nigel said, staring at her.
“You want to make out with me?” Isabela asked, leering.
Ran reached back and poked Isabela’s new belly. “Very good,” she said.
Isabela grinned, the biker’s teeth yellow and crooked. “Thank you.”
“I could go in with you,” Caleb offered. He looked around at the others. “No offense to you guys, but the rest of you wouldn’t be able to pass for a Harvester.”
“No offense taken, mate,” Nigel said.
“But if there are any of them in there who were at the fight last night, they will definitely recognize you,” Kopano said. “There were a bunch of you.”
Caleb frowned. “I guess you’re right.”
“It’ll be easy,” Isabela said. “I’ll sneak in there, find out if they’ve got Taylor or the little bitch who shot me and if not I’ll ask a few questions. Find out what they know. You all watch from the woods. If I get in trouble, I’ll send a signal.”
“What kind of signal?” Ran asked.
Isabela shrugged. “I’ll have to improvise. So, just keep an eye out.”
“If you’re gone too long, we’ll come in looking for you,” Caleb said.
Isabela stroked her blubbery man-belly in a way she hoped was disturbing. “Give me some time, cowboy. This is a slow-moving body I’m in.”
Caleb chuckled and looked away.
“Ugh,” Nigel added.
“We should try not to kill any of them,” Kopano said suddenly. “These people should be brought to justice for what they’ve done . . .”
Ran and Nigel exchanged a look. Caleb said nothing, just stared out the window.
“Okay?” Kopano pressed.
“With any luck,” Isabela said, “they will never know we’re here.”
The five of them left the Escalade behind and hiked downhill through the trees. They moved cautiously and Nigel used his Legacy to muffle the sounds of their approach. As the lights from Apache Jack’s appeared, they realized their caution had been pointless. The Harvesters didn’t have any guards posted. Most of them were too busy getting drunk. The Garde huddled in the shadowed cover of the trees and watched them.
“They must think this is a safe place for them,” Ran observed.
“Well, the madmen don’t lack for artillery,” Nigel said, pointing out a number of armed Harvesters milling around on the bar’s back porch.
“These types of guys always carry guns with them,” Caleb said. “It’s their thing.”
“What are they doing with that?” Kopano asked.
He pointed out the wooden structure that Isabela had noticed from the road. It was a twenty-foot-high snake in a ready-to-strike S shape, the thing made out of thin slats of clapboard and wicker. The snake sat atop a mound of sand. At its base—right at the snake’s belly—there was a small door secured with a padlock. A few Harvesters milled around the snake, stuffing rags in between the wooden ribs. The wind picked up and carried the smell of gasoline to the Garde.
“That, my friends, is a good old-fashioned effigy,” Nigel said. “The nutters are probably gonna light it up and dance around it naked before commencing the orgy.” He glanced at Isabela. “Have fun with that.”
Her biker’s face contorted in a very uncharacteristic moue of disgust. “Nasty.”
“That is a cell,” Ran observed, pointing at the locked opening. “They are going to put someone in there.”
“Our kind are the snakes in their stupid bloody metaphor,” Nigel said.
“Taylor,” Kopano whispered. “They would . . . they would burn her?”
“Still want to go easy on them, mate?” Nigel asked.
Kopano said nothing. The five of them remained still for a few more moments. Finally, Isabela stood up from her crouch, dramatically knuckling the broad back of her biker body.
“I’m going in,” she announced, her voice now gruff enough to match her costume.
“Be careful,” Caleb said.
Isabela strutted out of the woods. She walked the way she had seen some of the older men move around the Rio beaches; like her balls were too big for her pants and constantly getting in the way. Belly thrust forward, knees pointed out, shoulders back. When the first Harvester noticed her, she made a show of zipping up her fly as if she’d just returned from pissing in the woods.
Before leaving her friends, Isabela took the pamphlet that Nigel had swiped from one of the defeated Harvesters. If anyone questioned her slovenly alter ego, she planned to use that as her invitation. None of the Harvesters hanging around the back of Apache Jack’s paid her any attention. Most of them were too busy putting the finishing touches on the effigy. A pair of scrawny college-age boys with matching sets of cauliflower ears nodded at her as she climbed the porch’s rickety staircase.
“You ready for tonight, old-timer?” one of them asked.
“Hell yeah,” Isabela replied.
“Can’t wait until they light that bitch up,” said the other, raising his beer bottle in Isabela’s direction, then throwing back the contents.
Isabela grunted a response—that’s how these types communicated—and made her way to the bar’s back door. A woman in her fifties sat on a stool next to the entrance, smoking a cigarette. She wore ill-fitting leather, her neck swimming in beads and charms.
“Haven’t seen you before,” the woman said as she tapped some ash off her cigarette.
“First time,” Isabela said. She tried to move past the woman, but she wedged her foot against the screen door. Was this old hag flirting?
“Picked an interesting night to join the movement, honey.”
Isabela paused. She sensed the two drunks behind her were now watching her exchange with the woman. She took the pamphlet out of her pocket and handed it over.
“Jimbo asked me to ride up here,” she said in her scratchy voice. “Where’s he at?”
Isabela detected something wrong immediately. An uneasy silence fell across the back patio. The older woman’s face fell and she traded looks with the two men standing behind Isabela.
After a moment, the woman spoke. “You ain’t heard?”
“Heard what?”
“Reverend Jimbo’s dead,” she said. “Killed by those abominations.”
Oops, thought Isabela and stifled a smirk. Instead, she clenched her fists.
“When did that happen?” she growled. “How?”
“Last night,” the woman replied. “Probably while you was making your way here.” She shook her head. “We’re going to pay them back, though. Promise you that.”
Isabela nodded. “Who’s in charge now?”
The woman jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “You want to talk to Darryl. Big guy. Skull tattoo.”
Isabela grunted her thanks and was finally allo
wed to step inside. The smell of gasoline struck her immediately. The back hallway of Apache Jack’s was cluttered with canisters of the stuff. Up ahead, she heard heavy metal blasting and men and women shouting at each other. She lumbered in the direction of the barroom.
She passed by a pair of bathrooms, the stink rolling out of them unacceptable. Isabela kept the disgust from registering on her face; she wasn’t alone. Up ahead, two men with shotguns stood guard in front of a metal door. They were both thickly built, scarred up, with the Harvester symbol branded into their forearms. They weren’t day-players like some of these people; they were real killers.
Isabela made note of them. Unusual to have a couple of badass dudes guarding the bar’s freezer. She nodded as she walked by them. They nodded back.
She emerged into the bar proper. The screaming and thrashing music was worse than the garbage Nigel listened to. The room was crowded, nearly every seat filled. Mostly men, but a few women—an assortment of bikers and cowboy types, all of them with that same stupid tattoo. They guzzled beer and shouted at each other about conspiracy theories that Isabela couldn’t make sense of—chem trails, sovereign citizens, Loric anal probes, blah blah blah.
A huge photo of a greasy old man sat on the bar surrounded by wilted flowers and shell casings. The Harvesters kept coming over to dribble beer or liquor in front of it. She assumed that was the deceased reverend.
No one paid Isabela any undue attention. She bellied up to the bar and surveyed the crowd, looking for a skull tattoo. Finally, she noticed the bartender, the sleeves ripped off his flannel shirt, had a skull with a dagger plunged through the eyehole inked on his bicep. She waved him over.
“Everything’s on the house,” he said, “on account of the funeral.”
“Get me a beer,” she said.
The bartender went and came back with a frothy mug. Isabela resisted the urge to wrinkle her nose at the glass, which had smudges all over the rim.
“You Darryl?” she asked.
The bartender squinted at her. “Nah,” he replied when Isabela simply stared back at him. He waved towards the guarded freezer. “If you want him, he’s in with the creature.”