The War Whisperer: Book 1: Geronimo Page 10

  “Can’t find it. The chart shows right cheek. They put it in a little over twelve years ago. Maybe it moved.”

  He quickly felt up to my waist then began looking down the back of my right leg. Dylan was getting nervous. We’d been there a lot longer than was wise. The night guard would probably be late because of the rain, but he’d be coming. The next bed check was coming soon. Dylan’s fingers brushed the back of my right knee and stopped. “Damn. Look at that.”

  “What?” I said.

  “Right on the surface. Telling me you never noticed this?”

  I felt down with my right hand until I found where Dylan was pointing. “I just thought it was a big wart.”

  I felt what seemed like nothing more than a scrape. “Done.” He pulled up my pants.

  “Don’t I need a bandage?”

  “No. Nothin’ but dead skin covering it. Just below the surface. Scraped it off like a tick. Skin there’s a little pink, but no blood.” He gave me back my knife. “Now, hombre, you got cred.”

  “What?”

  “You can go on the block now and tell the dudes you cut Dylan Nuñez.” Then he laughed.

  I closed the tabs on my pants and pulled my jacket down. Dylan was in the corner next to the fence pulling a scraggly looking bush out of the way. He pulled another bush, then leaned back. He’d been digging there. The fence didn’t go all the way to the ground now. On the other side of the wire was the road that went around two sides of the old UCH campus.

  “Come on,” he said, then he went under the wire. I scrambled after him. He reached in and pulled the bushes back until they covered the hole. We followed the road to a large cottonwood tree twenty meters away, waited a moment to make certain the coast was clear, then he said, “Follow me.”

  We ran along the road, and Dylan could run quickly for a big guy. When we reached the place where the road curved left to tee into Fort Clark Road, Dylan turned right and stopped at a chain link fence that edged the bank of the so called riverbed that had been dry and filled with brush and trees ever since I could remember.

  “We’re going over the fence here, down into the slough, under the Fort Clark Road bridge there, then up on the other side. Got to be careful in case this rain makes a flood.”

  “Think there’s a chance of that?” I asked.

  “No, but we be ready for it anyway. Silly as shit to drown in a desert.”

  “Why is it called a slough?”

  “Just another name for a stream.”

  “Why didn’t they just call it a stream?” I asked. “Same number of letters.”

  “Write a letter to your Congressman you think he can read.” He turned and looked at me. “You know how to ride a bike?”

  “No. Anyway, everybody’s got anti-theft GPS locaters on their bikes.”

  His eyebrows went up. “Not a good time to learn anyway.” He grinned in the dark. “This headed toward being one fucked up escape, vato.”

  “Are we going to make it?” The thought of going back seemed to be closing my throat.

  “Sure. We going to make it. Billy Palmer told me a thing he used to do with trains. Vámonos.”

  Dylan went to a place where the chain link fence had been pretty beaten down, stood on it, and held it down for me. Once across the fence, we ran through the brush growing on the flood control bank until we were down on the streambed running for the bridge. The river bed was wet from the rain but still hard. Once on the other side of the bridge, we crossed the streambed to the other side and ran along the shallow bank around a wide right turn. We were almost to another crossing, a stepped concrete bed with no water on either side.

  Dylan and I crossed on the concrete bed to what was now the north bank, went through a missing stretch of fence, then continued diagonally across a plowed field until we reached a power line right-of-way. We ran along the right-of-way seeing nothing but mesquite and hearing nothing but the occasional jet overhead and the high-pitched whine of a robotrain in the distance. The rain paused, but a drizzly mist still hung in the night air.

  At the end of the deserted right of way, we crossed a hardtop road. Still following the power lines, we crept between two homes separated only by space and brush, crossed a dirt road, and came to some sort of parking or supply place in a big clearing. There were truck trailers, five or six, parked to the left, gravel and piles of stone to the right.

  “Better go around,” said Dylan. “Maybe watch dog, mech security, or someone there.”

  “Mech?” I asked.

  “Robots. We get nabbed by a robot we ain’t never gonna live that down. I just know the directions that kid gave me.”

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “There are railroad tracks north of here—”

  “They run along East Hacienda,” I interrupted. “Follow me. I know how to get there.”

  “How you know?”

  “Long time ago I memorized the map of Uvalde. Come on.”

  I turned south and moved through the mesquite until we reached a dirt road heading north. Catching our breath, we walked along the deserted road that ran between the mesquite and a cleared agrifield.

  Soon we were at a place where the road teed into another dirt road. I pointed. “That way,” I said. “North again.”

  We walked some more, then had to get off the road and hide in the brush as a pickup truck went past very close. Dylan jumped up, startling me, chased the truck, then came back down again until the pickup was out of sight.

  “What’d you do that for?” I asked.

  “The phone and those chips can be tracked. Mira? Satellites and drones? Now they going wherever that guy is going.”

  We resumed going north until we again saw the power line right of way. We followed the right-of-way to a big highway, a train running on tracks on the far side.

  There was some traffic on the highway, but not so much that we couldn’t cross the road without being seen. We waited for our moment, then when there was no one to be seen coming or going, we crossed the highway. There was a small concrete railroad bridge on the other side of the road crossing a small dip in the terrain that may once have contained a stream. We hid in the brush beneath the bridge in the relative dryness while another train passed above us and a cluster of trucks ran west on the road. We went flat on our backs and rested.

  “Sorry you came?” Dylan asked.

  “Compadre,” I said, “I haven’t ever had this much fun in my whole life. What do we do now?”

  “According to Billy Palmer back there in the school, we hop a train going east,” he said.

  “How?” I asked. “Those robotrains go awful fast.”

  “Es verdad, chico. Getting on maybe tricky. Scares me a little.”

  “Who is this kid Billy?”

  “He from Uvalde first back when he had family. He run away from home when he was ten then he hop a train and work in San Antonio as a runner. Traded him my own knife and almost all the food I squirreled away for information. Skinny dude, sophomore, brown hair, blue eyes?”

  “The one with the big scar across the back of his neck?”

  Dylan pointed at me. “That him. He give me instructions to get this far.”

  “What about getting on the train?” I asked.

  Dylan shrugged and held out his hands. “Tricky. Billy say we got to slow the train down to get on, tú sabes? He say they all robot run, got sensors read track ahead. He say a long way out sensors can’t tell difference between a live stick across the tracks, a dead cow, or a truck.”

  “So all we got to do is put a branch across the tracks?”

  “Si. He say use a green one. Need the sap. Once we do that, we wait. The train come along, begin the slow-down maybe a couple kilometers out. The engine rolls that clearing attachment out front. When the branch clear, it going slow as it going to go, tú sabes? Then we climb on the engine.”

  “Why the engine?”

  “Billy say engines don’t have pirate screens, cameras, and sensors like freigh
t and passenger cars. Billy say he ride all over the state on trains like that. Went all the way to Oklahoma once.”

  “So, what’s the problem?” I asked.

  He grinned again. “Train’s still goin’ pretty good clip when it clears that branch. Fast enough to give Billy that ugly scar on the back of his neck, entiende?”

  “Jesus,” I said. “Maybe we should walk. It’s only a hundred and forty kilometers to San Antonio.”

  “You memorized the map of Texas, too?”

  I nodded. “Maybe we could walk it in a few days.”

  “Maybe we could get caught, too,” he said. “I been to San Antonio once with my uncle. Country flat as a tortilla, no place to hide, no place for water. Mira, everything Billy told me been right so far. We do the train.”

  “Okay.” I swallowed hard. “Okay, let’s try it,” I said. “If the train doesn’t slow down, though, then we walk or steal a bicycle.”

  He shrugged and held out his hands. “Siento. I don’t know how to ride a bike either.” He nodded. “Okay, Jer, you got the knife. Get us a live branch “

  It worked. The train turned on its floods and slowed long before it reached where Dylan had placed the cottonwood branch across the tracks west of the bridge. The engine was going pretty fast even so. Dylan and I ran alongside the engine, managed to grab the railing to the maintenance steps, then up we went as the branch was cleared, the lights went out leaving a dull orange running light, the train resumed its usual speed which was faster than I had ever traveled in my entire life. We sat all the way in front, leaning back against the engine housing, the raindrops stinging our faces.

  Dylan produced a heel of wheat bread he split with me, I shared my turkey jerky with him, we had lemon drops for dessert, and we drank rainwater straight from Heaven. I was more free than I had ever been and it was very best meal I ever ate.

  San Antonio

  The first town was Knippa, and the train didn’t even slow down, racing through the hamlet with an electric howl and beep alarms. The same for Sabinal and D’Hanis. In a place called Hondo there was a rail yard in which the train slowed, left off a few cars, then stalled. Some workers had to come out to work on a trackside computer control housed in a black metal box.

  Dylan and I hid near the coupling between the front engine and the second engine. While the technicians tried to fix the track control, we looked at the lights of the large town. Hondo looked different, much better, than North Benson Road in Uvalde. Well illuminated streets, green lawns, houses that looked cared for, warm lights in the windows, even the faint sounds of salsa in the night.

  We heard the technicians close and lock the box, there were clicks and whines inside the robot-controlled engine, and the train began moving, resuming its former speed in a couple minutes. We moved to the front of the engine and later we went through a town so fast I missed the name.

  When we zipped past a place called Macdona, the rain had stopped and Dylan said we were getting close. Fifteen minutes or so later we went beneath a big highway’s set of double bridges. After a few curves, soon we were running alongside another computer controlled train that had too many cars to count: tankers, boxcars, and what seemed like miles of coal cars. That train was traveling much slower than our train.

  A few minutes later a huge airplane, its lights all on, roared over our heads and landed somewhere to our left. By then our track was only one of eight. Then there were even more tracks and more trains, parked and moving, flashing lights, and computer controlled switch engines moving cars this way and that. “Dylan,” I yelled, “What now?”

  “After we pass the airport, the train either goes straight ahead or curve to the right. If it goes right, the train will slow down to make the curve, slow down even more making the next curve. Then we get off.”

  “What if it goes straight ahead?” I asked.

  He cocked his head to one side and shrugged. “Billy tell me he got caught that way twice. Once had to go all the way to Austin or someplace.” He grinned. “Gonna be all right, hermano. Trains go this way from Austin.”

  “Can’t we be leads and runners in Austin?”

  “Maybe, but I got no names in Austin. Billy gave me a name of a boss in the West Side Kings in San Antonio. From what Billy says, the Kings and SA are where we want to be.”

  We waited a breathless few moments, then the train went beneath a mess of highways and began slowing. By the time it made the right curve it was only going a little faster than when we had gotten on. It kept slowing, and when it entered the second, tighter, curve to the right it was only going as fast as a quick walk. Dylan and I got on the stairs, stepped off, and got away from the tracks. We both looked for security cameras and sensors, but the only ones we found had been vandalized long before.

  We moved around an embankment, across another set of tracks, then through a poorly maintained fence into a dark lot crowded with scrub brush.

  When we climbed out of the brush we were on a street that as far as I could tell only had one working street lamp. There were boxy little homes along it. Lights in the houses were mostly off. A sign said the street was called Carranza Ct., and I didn’t know what a Ct. was.

  “It stand for ‘court’,” said Dylan.

  “Court? It’s a street.”

  “Maybe they think ‘court’ sound more classy than ‘street’.” He grinned. “They thinking king’s court or tennis court instead of criminal court.”

  Dylan looked down the street, did a bit of counting, then motioned for me to follow him back into the brush. We went back down to the tracks, walked along them for about five minutes, then he turned right and climbed through the brush up the embankment, over a chain link fence and came to a plank fence that had never seen a lick of maintenance since it was built. We went through that into someone’s back yard.

  There was a clothesline back there with wet clothing hanging there in the rain. “Mira, we got to cover these uniform jackets,” said Dylan. “Our pants are okay. They look like jeans. We need shirts, though. Jackets. Hoodies. Something up top.”

  “What if they catch us stealing their stuff?” I cautioned.

  “Nobody home, man. No car in the drive. If someone in there sleeping, we can outrun some abuelito in carpet slippers.”

  Dylan found a plain gray shirt, a brown and black vee neck sweat, and a black fleece stocking cap. I found a dark red tee shirt, a black hoody, and a maroon baseball cap with a big yellow “H” on the front. Maybe some high school team.

  We put the new shirts over our jackets, and the sweat pullover, and hoody over the new shirts for warmth, went back to the tracks and walked them until we reached a street that was level with the track, West Malone. “What now?” I asked Dylan as he headed to the right.

  “First we find food and eat.”

  “You got money?” I asked.

  “Three hundred and twenty dollars,” he said. “Two hundred from the admin office safe, and a hundred and twenty from pockets of a few teachers using the swimming pool on the north side. My wages, I figure, for all the toilets I cleaned and shit I shoveled at UCH.” He nodded once. “After we eat, we find a place that can put us up without asking a lot of questions.” He frowned and looked down at me.

  “You know how to get in a hotel?” I asked.

  “Sure. Billy told me.” He studied me for a minute. “Can’t pass you off as my son. Would’ve had to have you when I was nine years old.”

  “Little brother?” I suggested.

  “Bueno. You my little brother. No one going to believe Dylan Nuñez is Apache, hermano, so you going to be Mexican, entiende?”

  “Sí, mi hermano,” I said with a big grin and hammy accent. “Yo soy Meh-hee-caano.”

  He laughed. “Perfect. Before we find a place, we need names. Think of something beside Zorro or Cisco.”

  We walked a long way, took a bus that Dylan paid for, got off at Laredo and Apache, which made Dylan laugh, then we walked beneath some wide bridges and ate really great hamburgers a
nd soda in a place called Wendy’s, took a bus to one street, then changed to another bus which took us to Guadalupe Street. From there we walked until we got to Frio Street.

  There was a sort of a motel there with a small illuminated sign that said, “Gomez Court.”

  “King’s court?” I cracked to Dylan.

  “This neighborhood, man, more like criminal court.”

  There were parking places in front of all the units, but only six cars. It had to be way past three in the morning.

  We walked in, there was a room with a potted palm, a rack of brochures, a vending machine with candies, crackers, toothbrushes, and condoms. On the left was a solid wall set with a bullet proof window in it with a complicated looking stainless steel drawer beneath. A sign on the wall said, “$35/hour or $115 for the night.”

  A big man in blue pajamas and a black bathrobe came in scratching his thin white hair and yawning. Dylan paid for a night, the man told him check out was at noon. In three minutes we were paid up, Dylan got lots of change, and we each had a card key. Never even had to give our names.

  The room was at the end farthest from Guadalupe Street and despite a few cobwebs and cigarette burns, was a palace compared to the UCH dorms. We had our own bathroom with piles of clean towels and little soap, shampoo, and conditioner dispensers. There was a bed big enough for four kids, a television with movies, news, weather, cartoons, and sex vids. We hung up our clothes to dry, put out the “do not disturb” sign, took showers, turned on the TV to a movie channel, got into bed, and promptly fell asleep.

  The next morning we asked the motel man and he told us about a diner a couple blocks away. It was called Fabiana’s. We had bacon, eggs, and lots of buttered toast and coffee that tasted the way coffee ought to taste. The counter man, a big and dark man, asked if we wanted Tabasco sauce? I didn’t know what it was and Dylan said, “No, gracias.”

  “Spicy food is good, but you don’t want to punish your taste buds. You get used to soaking your tongue in Tabasco, there’s a world of gentle taste adventures you won’t be able to go on.”