Just electronic hiss and then, softly, that same eerie electronic voice said, “Don’t leave meeeeeee. . . .”
Zen shut off the call and shoved the phone in her pocket. “Mom, come on. We have to get out of here.”
Her mother didn’t argue. She grabbed her bag, and the two of them moved around the wrecked car, back into the glow of the station wagon’s headlights. . . .
And the car died before they got there, with a soft, apologetic cough and shudder. The lights faded out, leaving them in the cold glow of stars.
“Stop,” Zen said as her mom made a move for the car. “It didn’t shut off all by itself.”
The phone rang again. Zenobia ignored it this time and concentrated on the dark around them. When the phone fell silent, she heard a whisper of blown dust hissing over the road, and then a profound silence.
“I know you’re out there,” Zen said. “Come out.” She pulled her mom away from both cars, out to the center of the starlit road where she could see someone, something, coming. Her mother was breathing fast now, and shaking, but she had gotten into her medical bag and was holding a scalpel now. “Come out! Are you scared?”
There was a rustle from the other side of the wrecked car, where the shadows were deepest, and she saw a flash of eyes. Lower to the ground this time, as if it was crouching, whatever it was.
“Don’t leave me,” it whispered, and it was the same voice, weirdly processed, artificial, inhuman.
Zenobia aimed and fired, three tightly grouped shots right where the eyes were, but they were gone, and she didn’t think she’d hit it. Whatever it was, it moved fast. And silently.
The roar of the shots seemed both enormous and oddly flat out here in this vast, empty place. She’d hit the wrecked car, for sure; she heard the falling tinkle of broken glass, probably from the windshield. But nothing else.
“We need to make it to the car,” her mother said. “Zen—”
Something flew out of the shadows by the wrecked car and rolled unevenly to a stop by Zen’s boots. A faded red heart that her mother kept on the keychain.
It had taken the car keys.
What do we do? Getting in the car was useless. It hadn’t protected the two dead people on the road. Something out here in the dark had rolled their car into scrap metal until they came out.
Come on, come on, someone help us. . . .
There was a flickering light on the horizon. Moving toward them.
It was a car.
“Mom! Run toward it! Stop it!”
“I can’t leave you!”
“Just go!” Zen brought the gun up. She’d fired five shots, she thought. She didn’t know how big the clip was, and she didn’t dare check. Save the bullets. Save it till you see it. She began walking backward, focused on the shadows near the bodies, where the creature liked to hide. She heard her mother’s running footsteps behind her slapping on the still-warm surface of the road, and Zen took step after step, steadily backward.
The growl of an engine got louder and louder, and now the lights were splashing bright over the road’s surface, throwing Zenobia’s shadow into a long, thin pointer toward the silent station wagon. It lit up the overturned car, too, and just for an instant she thought she saw . . . something. Something black and tangled and angular and only vaguely human, with eyes that flared like cold moons before it was gone.
Her mother was yelling something, probably to the driver, but Zenobia didn’t dare look back. She had to keep her attention out there, in the black beyond the headlights, because that was where the danger waited.
She could hear it making that awful, atonal crying sound. It was like sheets of metal scraping together.
Zen backed up until she was even with the bumper of the vehicle—it was a pickup truck, a big one—before she risked a look at it. The driver had his door open, and he was stepping down. Her mother was giving him the highlights, talking fast, the way she’d update other doctors in the ER.
He was young—eighteen, if that. Tall and thin, dressed in jeans and a checked shirt and cowboy boots. He was carrying a shotgun.
“Get in the truck,” he said, and racked the shotgun like he knew what he was doing. Her mother scrambled in and waved to Zenobia.
Zen shut the door on her and turned to face the boy. “What is it?” she asked him, because she could see it in his face. He knew. He hadn’t been out here by accident, cruising around with a shotgun. There was no surprise on his face, looking at the scene in front of them. “What is this thing?”
Her phone rang. Without looking away from the road, he said, “Don’t answer it.”
“I called 911. It answered!”
“Yeah, it does that,” he said. “I’m Mateo. You?”
“Zen. Zenobia.” She laughed, because it was crazy, really. “We’re stranded in the middle of nowhere with a monster, and you’re introducing yourself?”
“Seemed polite,” Mateo said. “So, Zenobia, how are you with that pistol?”
“Not bad. You didn’t answer me. What is that thing?”
“I call her Corazón Oscuro,” he said. “Dark Heart.” He aimed the shotgun suddenly at a patch of darkness. “Get in the truck. We’re leaving.”
“But—”
“Okay, let me say it different. The truck is leaving. Stay if you want.”
She gave him a fast glare, but didn’t argue. She dashed around to the other side of the truck and got in as Mateo did in the driver’s seat, with her mother wedged in between them. He put the truck in gear and whipped it in a fast turn; it went off the road and into the crunchy shoulder, then into sand, but the big tires kept them moving, and he slammed his foot down as something darted out of the cover of the shadows. She saw it in the rearview mirror, lit red by the taillights, and this time, it was clear.
It was a girl. One no older than Zenobia, but covered in moving black shapes that had claws, arching tails, barbs. Covered in scorpions.
Her eyes reflected the taillights like doorways to hell.
Her phone rang. She exchanged a look with Mateo, and this time, he nodded. She took it out and answered it on speaker. “Diga me.”
Static, and then a scream, inhuman and metallic and shockingly loud, and without thinking, she hung up on it.
“What in the name of God is going on?” her mother asked. She sounded uncertain, for the first time. Lost. Adrift, the same way that Zenobia felt. “We left our car. We can’t leave our car—it’s got everything we own inside—”
“You can’t go back until morning,” Mateo said. “I’ll take you at first light, and you can be on your way. For now, I’m taking you to my house. You can wait there while I’m gone.”
“Gone?” Zenobia leaned over to look at him. “Gone where?” He didn’t answer, but she saw his jaw was set and the sweat trickling down from his hair on the side of his face. “You didn’t find us by accident. You were looking for it.”
He didn’t confirm that, but she already knew.
Her mother reached over and grabbed Zen’s hand and held it tight. She still had the scalpel in her left hand, and Zenobia’s right held the pistol. The shotgun was on the rack behind them. And the truck sped on through the empty night, with the stars looking down in terrible, distant pity.
• • •
Mateo’s house was just a tiny place, a faded old ranch style house that had been plain when it had been built, probably forty years back; now, the desert sun and sand had blasted the paint away, and the whole place had a half-abandoned feel. Someone had loved it, though. Zen could see spots out in the fenced yard that had once held a garden, or flowers; all that was left now were a few cacti and some old, brittle corpses of plants long dead. There was a small stone alcove with a statue of the Virgin Mary in it, and a faded photo in a frame with some plastic flowers in a pretty vase.
Mateo pulled the truck to a stop and said, “I’m going to go open the door. Wait here.”
It felt safe in the truck—safe and warm, and he locked it up with them inside as h
e headed for the low front steps. Zen looked at her mother, who was staring straight ahead now, and she looked frozen and pale and very odd. “Mom? Are you okay?”
“No. I am not even a little okay. What—what was—”
“I don’t know, okay. Let’s not think about that right now. Just . . . breathe.”
Her mother nodded and reached for Zenobia’s hand, and the two of them sat in silence, waiting while some stranger opened the door of a house they’d never seen before, and how was it possible that this was the best alternative?
Strange, possible creepy killer guy, or the obviously not right dead girl with scorpions all over her . . . Yes. It was the best possible alternative.
The door of the ranch house opened, spilling a warm yellow stripe of light out onto the porch and casting Mateo into silhouette. She saw him beckon to them, and nudged her mother. “Mom. Let’s go.”
“I should—we should call someone first.” Her mother felt around her pockets and seemed surprised. “I left my phone. Oh God, I left my phone in the car.”
“It’s okay. I have mine.” Zen flicked it on and checked; the familiar glow of the screen, with its background of her making stupid faces with her best friend, Gloria, was still the same. Normal world, when nothing was normal anymore. She checked the signal. “There’s still no signal, Mom. Maybe Mateo has a phone inside.”
She nodded silently, and Zen could see her gathering mental strength before she reached out and unlocked the door. “Wait,” her mother said. “Give me the gun. I’ll hang on to it.” She didn’t trust Mateo. That seemed crazy, since he’d just rescued them, but Zen handed the gun over, and her mother checked the clip. There were still bullets left; how many, Zen couldn’t tell. “If anything happens, Zen, you stay down,” she said.
“Mom, be careful with that!”
“Safety’s on,” her mom said, and tucked the weapon in the back of her jeans, under her shirt.
It wasn’t far to the house, maybe five or six steps, but it felt like an eternity between the safe space of the truck and the beginning of that square of light from the open door. Mateo rushed them inside and slammed the door; there were a lot of locks on it, and those dead bolts looked pretty new. He didn’t relax, even then, and went from window to window, pulling back dusty curtains and checking each. “Stay here,” he said, and disappeared into the rest of the house. Zenobia sat down on the edge of a sofa that had seen way better days, and felt the delayed shakes start to hit. Her mother didn’t sit—she paced, as if she couldn’t relax enough to let her guard down even for a moment.
The house looked like a typical family home, with pictures of kids on the walls and on top of the old-fashioned TV set that had to date back to the ’90s, at least. There was a fine reddish sift of dirt on top of almost everything. The house smelled oddly lifeless. No odors of food or laundry. Just stale air and dust.
Mateo came back after a few moments, and he seemed slightly less tense. “We’re secure,” he said. “For now. You need to hold out until first light, then I can get you back to your car.” He paused, then said, a little awkwardly, as if he weren’t used to asking, “You need something? Coffee, maybe?”
“Bathroom,” Zenobia’s mother said. He nodded and pointed down the hall, and she headed that way.
Mateo looked at Zen, clearly asking the same question, and she shook her head. She needed answers more than hospitality. “What is that thing out there?”
“Not your business. You can be in your car and on the road tomorrow morning. You figure out whatever story you want to tell and stick to it.”
“What are you going to say?”
He shrugged. “Depends on which cops show up. If it’s somebody I don’t know, I’ll say I was passing and I picked you up, and you were too scared to go back. It’s true, anyway.”
“Won’t they think you . . .”
“You’re my alibi. I couldn’t have done it if I came along later, right?”
“You could have circled back.”
It seemed like he hadn’t thought of that, and she wished she hadn’t said it, because he looked genuinely worried now. Maybe he wouldn’t take them back after all. Whatever they’d seen back there (that girl, buried in scorpions), maybe it was just panic and shadows, and they’d really hitched a ride with the boy who’d just killed two people.
To cover her sudden unease, Zen got up and walked over to look at the photos. They were faded from sun and time, and in the earliest ones the colors had gone shabby and beige tinged, with only a little blue and red still standing out. It was a Hispanic family, and the photos showed new additions . . . first a boy, then another boy, then a girl. Then, in the later photos, just the two boys and no girl. Then the mother was missing, and there was something about the strained smiles on the faces of the boys, the haunting look in their eyes, that made her feel even more afraid.
That, and the fact that neither one of the boys was Mateo, who was restlessly still flicking the keys around his finger.
“Those are my cousins,” he said. “My uncle. You wanted to know about Corazón? Here she is.” He put his finger on the last photo that held the girl. In it, she was a fresh faced teen about Zenobia’s age. Pretty, hopeful, smiling. What was unsettling was that she was the only one smiling. The mother looked pale and wan; the two boys were trying to smile but not making it. And the father was looking right into the camera with so much intensity that Zenobia took a step back when she met that captured stare. “She went missing a few months later.”
“Missing?”
“My uncle said she ran away. I don’t know, I wasn’t here, but then his wife, Marta, killed herself. Then it was just my uncle Nando and the two boys.”
“Where are they now?”
“My cousins are dead,” Mateo said. “Nando’s on death row in Huntsville. They found five girls buried in the desert out behind this house. They say he killed the boys, too, when the cops came. They found all three of them on the ground outside, shot, but Nando lived. Guess he wasn’t much good at suicide.” There was no emotion in what he was saying, just a simple statement of fact, though she thought she saw something burning deep in his dark eyes. “The house has been mostly empty. I came here when the reports about Corazón started.”
“What kind of reports?”
“People saw her standing on the side of the road in their headlights, trying to get help. Most didn’t stop. Some did, maybe tried to help, I don’t know.” He looked away. “She wants somebody to find her, I guess. I’ve been trying, but I don’t know where to look.”
“Does she always show up at the same place on the road?”
He shrugged. “As far as I can tell, yeah. But I’ve looked all around there. I couldn’t find her. It’s a big desert, Zenobia.”
Zen stared at the picture of smiling young Corazón, with her whole life ahead of her, and asked, “Do you have scorpions out here?”
“It’s the desert. Of course we do.”
“We used to have them around my house in El Paso,” she said. “We used black lights to look for them. They show up real well.”
He nodded, though he looked a little lost, until he finally put it together. “You . . . think the scorpions might lead us to her.”
“They might,” Zenobia said. “If all she wants is to be found.”
He smiled bitterly. “Don’t suppose you have a black light, do you?”
“How do you think I found them in El Paso?” Zen asked. “I have an app for that.”
• • •
“This is crazy,” her mom said for the thousandth time as Mateo edged the truck to a quiet stop on the side of the road. He’d taken some time to put together a kit, though what was in it, Zenobia didn’t know . . . more shotgun shells, she hoped. Ahead, the station wagon sat silently where they’d left it. Both doors were shut now, which seemed weird. The wrecked car was still on its side, and although Zen couldn’t see the bodies, she knew they’d still be there too. “We should drive straight to the nearest town and call the
police. It’s the only thing to do.”
“She wants help,” Zen said. “Until she gets it, she’ll keep stopping people. Mateo, has she killed before?”
“No,” he said. “Never. I think this was probably an accident. She must have tried to get them to stop, and they panicked and flipped the car. She tries to talk to people on their phones—maybe that freaked them out.”
“It freaks me out,” Zen’s mom said. “Are we talking about a ghost? Really?”
Mateo shrugged. He switched off the headlights, and the night seemed incredibly black now. “Stay close. I’m not sure what we’re going to find, if we find anything at all.” He got out of the truck and grabbed his pack from behind the seat, then the shotgun.
Zenobia started to get out, but her mother grabbed her and held her back. “Zen. Wait. This is crazy. You know that.”
“I saw her,” Zenobia said. “So did you. Crazy or not, this is what we need to do.”
“I don’t believe in monsters.” But out here, in the vast, empty desert, that sounded like a lie.
Zen silently broke free and got out of the truck, and her mother followed.
“So what are we looking for?” Mateo asked her.
“If Corazón wants to be found, then she’s going to try to lead us to her,” she said. “Right?”
“Right.”
“So, look for scorpions,” she said. “Here. Use the black light.”
It probably didn’t even qualify as a long shot, but it was all Zen could think of, and when Mateo activated the app, a sick purple glow bathed the ground by the side of the road.
A scorpion lit up like a neon sign. It was the size of Zenobia’s hand, pale, and it arched its tail and scuttled quickly off.
“Could be nothing at all,” said her mom. “It’s the desert. Scorpions live all over the place.”
“It’s worth a try,” Mateo said, and followed the scorpion’s trail.
It didn’t seem to mind being followed, which seemed weird; it kept a steady pace and ignored them as it scuttled along over a sand dune and down the other side around a spiky explosion of mesquite bush. As Zenobia looked around, though, she caught more faint glows around them—more moving shapes, pincers, and barbed tails. It was like a . . . migration. Did scorpions migrate? She didn’t know.