Four Corners Dark: Horror Stories
Read Four Corners Dark: Horror Stories Online
Authors: William McNally
Copyright © 2012 William McNally
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 1463561857
ISBN 13: 9781463561857
eBook ISBN: 978-1-62110-509-1
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
A
nna Sanchez kneeled and crossed herself, and prayed to the Virgin of Guadalupe for protection. The old church echoed with the murmured prayers of her fellow travelers. She watched them huddled near the altar where one woman stared at pills in her hand. The man called Omar had given them birth control in case they were raped during the three-day trip through the Sonoran desert. Anna had thrown them away. Her late grandfather, a former boxer, had taught her to take care of herself.
There was a surge of activity and the crowd of people, loaded with backpacks and luggage, moved towards the front doors. They were waiting for the truck to the border town of Sasabe.
“It is time to leave,” Omar shouted at the travelers.
Omar was not Mexican but spoke perfect Spanish. He appeared polite and professional, but Anna sensed a coiled snake behind his dark eyes. She followed the others to a 1960s-era farm truck with wood slates lining the open bed. The faded rust-colored paint peeled off in sections. She handed Omar her payment, climbed onto the back of the truck, and sat between two older women.
“Perdón,” she said, sliding down between them.
She placed her knapsack on her lap and felt the cold metal of a revolver tucked in her jeans. The truck rumbled to life and started down the dirt road to Sasabe. The truck had a stenciled number thirteen painted on its windshield to enable the town to track the fees due it for allowing the service within its borders. Number thirteen picked up speed and delivered more souls to the dark desert, driving with lights off as the route was popular with bandits looking to rob the unfortunates who travelled it. Omar glanced out the dusty back window of the cab with a satisfied look on his face. Thirty-five heads was a good take for him tonight.
Anna’s neighbors had told her about Omar, they called him a coyote, a smuggler who could bring people across the border to California in time for harvest. The price wasn’t negotiable, one hundred dollars to Sasabe and two thousand to California. He promised a high success rate but no one really knew for sure, the people he smuggled never returned.
Anna planned to travel up the California coast working the strawberry and blackberry harvests. She had grown up using her hands and didn’t mind the work. After the summer, she would go north to Redding where her aunt owned a bakery. Earlier in the week she had wired seventeen thousand dollars to her aunt, enough money to start a new life. In seventy-two hours she would be past the desert and free.
The moon was nearly full and cast a blue glow on the faces of the people huddled on the truck. There were families, a dozen or so younger people and the two older women next to her. Many were loaded with clothing and possessions. Anna carried only her knapsack and wore two sets of clothes. The only possessions she valued were the Colt stuck down the front of her jeans and the forged passport stuck somewhere else. Somewhere no one would find it. She remembered Omar’s cold advice to the women.
“Take the pills,” he had said. “You don’t want to get to America knocked up. You can’t pick knocked up.”
She turned to one of the women next to her.
“Hello,” she said to the woman.
“Hello. My name is Rosa,” The old woman answered. Her teeth were brown stumps and her face was lined with years of misery. A faded tear drop was tattooed under her eye. “My son is waiting for me,” she told Anna. “He is very successful in the United States and arranged for me to cross. I have waited so long to meet his family.”
The old woman began to cry and Anna put an arm around her frail shoulder. The landscape sped by in shadows for several hours until the yellow lights of Sasabe appeared in the distance. The truck slowed and then came to a stop. The travelers sat waiting for the next step in their journey. Omar climbed out of the cab, looked around, and then opened the wooden tail gate.
“It’s time. Get out,” he yelled in Spanish. Anna and the others never saw the driver.
She climbed down from the back of the truck and then helped Rosa. The travelers were busy organizing their loads. Omar separated them into two groups and Anna was placed with the younger people, Rosa was placed with the others.
CHAPTER TWO
O
mar walked out into the desert and disappeared from view. An hour passed, then another. People began to whisper to one another.
“Maybe we have been tricked,” one woman said.
The truck and unseen driver were long gone. The two groups stood together shielded by a thicket of mesquite. Finally, Omar flashed the signal light for Anna’s group to join him. They scurried across the desert scanning the moonlit ground for snakes and scorpions. When they reached him he signaled for the second group.
“Silence!” Omar hissed at two men whispering.
The second group was slower than the first, stopping to pick up items dropped along the way. Anna saw Rosa in the rear of the group struggling to carry her suitcase. She stepped forward to help, but was jerked backwards.
“You need to stay here,” Omar said flatly. “They must come on their own.”
Omar led them further into the desert. He walked easily across the difficult terrain avoiding obstacles while the others stumbled blindly behind him. The two groups had spread out considerably by the time they reached the halfway point. The distance was taking a toll on the old and the overloaded.
One of the women from the second group ran up to Omar. She was out of breath and dropped two bags both sprayed-painted black to help avoid detection.
“My husband has fallen and is badly hurt,” she said. Omar stopped and stared at the woman.
“Where is he?” he asked blandly.
She gestured for Omar to follow her back along the line of travelers. Anna followed behind them. Omar and the woman reached the end of the line and found a middle-aged man groaning in pain. His leg was bleeding and a sharp white bone pierced his skin. Anna found Rosa towards the back still struggling with her suitcase.
Anna said, “Give it to me. I will carry it for you.”
“Bless you,” Rosa said. “Bless you.”
Anna moved closer behind Omar and watched. The injured man lay in a pile of clothing, books and papers he had dropped when he fell.
Omar turned to the injured man’s wife and said, “Take what you need from him. We are leaving.”
“No!” she wailed. “We gave you everything we had. You promised to help us cross over.”
“This is true,” Omar said with a grin.
He pulled a Luger fitted with a silencer from his vest, aimed the gun and shot the man in the head. The man tumbled forward onto his belongings. His blood pooled in the sand like motor oil. The man’s wife collapsed next to him and began to scream. Omar grabbed her by the hair and put the hot barrel of the gun into her mouth. She struggled, eyes wild, as he slid the long barrel down her throat causing her to gag.
“That’s enough!” Anna said cocking the hammer of the Colt.
Her gun was aimed at the small of Omar’s back. He pulled the barrel from the woman’s mouth and turned to face Anna.
Smiling, he said, “She needs to decide if she wants to crossover with him or with us.”
“She’s coming with us,” Anna said now aiming the gun at Omar’s chest.
“Of course,” he answered. “She will get what she deserves. Allow me.”
Omar extended his hand towards Rosa’s suitcase.
“No,” Anna answered.
“Very well,” Omar said.
He walked towards the front of the line and disappeared into the dark. People helped the distraught woman collect her belongings. She clung to her husband’s body, but they implored her to leave.
“You cannot stay lady. The wolves will come,” one man said.
“You must leave him. He is with god now,” said another.
The group of travelers in the front started moving again. The woman, in tears, left her husband and moved on with her group. Anna stayed in the back, walking beside Rosa.
After an hours walk they reached a guarded crossing and Omar trained a pair of night vision binoculars on the road ahead. Portable observation towers dotted the horizon and unseen sensors ran along the border. He put down the binoculars, walked off to the side and spoke into a radio. When he finished his muted conversation, he holstered the radio and returned to address them.
“We need to continue west,” he said flatly. “The security is too strong here. I have arranged for a train to take us across the border. There is a depot halfway to El Bajito. Of course, there will be a small additional cost to cover the expense.”
“How much more?” a woman asked.
“We must hurry if we are to make the train. We can discuss payment when we arrive.”
The exhausted travelers continued westward into the Pozo Verde Mountains, each step became more difficult as they climbed the rocky trail towards El Bajito. Some of the people whispered about turning back, afraid they would suffer the same fate as the man with the broken leg, but the fear of facing the desert alone stopped any defections.
Omar maintained a brutal pace as they walked through the night and the urgency in his stride told them they would be left if they fell behind. Anna walked behind Rosa who had surprising endurance forged from a life of hard labor. Excited whispers filtered through the line when someone spotted a light, but their relief turned to terror when they realized it was an approaching vehicle. Omar gestured for them to be quiet and stepped forward towards the light.
A pickup truck raced towards Omar and slid sideways, stopping just a few feet in front of him. The truck was painted a dark camouflage and modified with large tires on black rims. A 50-caliber machine gun was mounted in the bed of the truck. One man trained the gun on Omar while another shined a spotlight in his face. Omar stood relaxed in the glare of the light with his hands clasped in front of him.
“You are trespassing,” the man with the spotlight said. He wore a black and green bandana and smoked a cigarette.