The Collection

honked, and I stepped up to the open passenger window. Julio grinned. There was something about that grin which I didn't like. 'Going stag,' he said, motioning his head toward the back­seat. 'Got some extra baggage.'

I peered through the back window.

Father Lopez was lying across the rear cushion in his body bag.

'Time's wasting,' Julio said, chuckling. 'You follow me.'

I don't know why I didn't argue, why I didn't say any­thing, why I didn't ask anything, but I didn't. I simply nod­ded dumbly, went down to the carport, got in the Jeep, and followed Julio's car down the street toward the freeway. I don't remember what I felt, what I was thinking.

The trip was long. There were a lot of cars on the high­way at first, but the farther we drove from the valley, the less crowded the road became, until soon Julio's Chevy taillights were the only ones before me on the road.

It was nearly midnight and we were well past Tucson when I saw Julio pull off the highway onto an unmarked dirt road. For the first time in a long while, I thought of Father Lopez's body lying across the backseat of the car. I thought of the redneck.

We got him.

The words seemed so much more sinister in the darkened moonlit desert. I realized I had no idea what was going on, what had been planned by Julio and his friends, whoever they were. I could have turned back then; I thought about it, but I did not. I had gone too far already. I had to see this through.

The road twisted and turned, snaking down unseen ravines, crossing dry washes and gulches, until my sense of direction was thoroughly confused.

And then we were there.

Bumblebee was not as big as I'd thought it would be, and did not look nearly so much like a fort. I'd imagined some­thing like the Alamo, I suppose because of Baker's story, but the sight that greeted me was far different. Twin rows of parallel buildings ran along both sides of the dirt road, ending at what looked like a church at the far end. The buildings were old, abandoned, like those of any ghost town, but they I were primarily adobe. Although there were a few dilapidated wooden structures-a one-room barbershop with a painted pole faded in front of it, a saloon with a long porch''] and collapsed roof-most of the buildings were a pale, weathered extract of hardened mortared desert sand.

It was then that I noticed that the town wasn't empty. In front of the church at the far end, I saw a large crowd of people, maybe sixty or seventy of them. Looking around, I saw the shadows of their vehicles blending with the surrounding saguaro and cottonwood.

Julio got out of his car.

Father Lopez emerged from the backseat.

I can't say I was surprised. It was something I'd been half expecting ever since Julio had told me this morning that they were taking the redneck to Bumblebee. But I was frightened. Far more frightened than I would have expected. I had dealt with death before, had seen more than my share of bodies, and no amount of blood or gore had ever really bothered me. But the unnaturalness of this, seeing the priest's body lurch out of the back of the car, peeling off the open plastic body bag, scared me. It seemed wrong to me, evil.

I got out of my own car. The town was dark, there were no lights, but the moon was bright enough to see by. Father Lopez walked slowly, awkwardly, like Frankenstein, but his steps grew quicker, stronger, more assured, as he followed Julio down the empty dirt street toward the church. The songbird seemed to have forgotten me, or else he had more important things on his mind than guest etiquette, so I invited myself to pursue the two of them, instinct overriding fear.

We moved down the dirt street. The buildings to my left and right loomed in my peripheral vision like hulking crea­tures, but I concentrated on the creature before me, the re­animated corpse of Father Lopez. Magic powers.

Baker had said that he'd felt something here, something supernatural. Maybe it was my imagination, but I seemed to feel something, too. A kind of tingling in the air, a vibration which spread upward through the soles of my shoes as I walked and which grew stronger as I approached the crowd in front of the church. This close, I could see that most of the gathered people were women, Mexican women dressed in traditional funereal peasant garb, black dresses, and lacy mantillas.

With them, held by two or three women at a time, were dead men, men who had obviously died violently. Dead men whose eyes were blinking, limbs were moving, mouths were working. I saw bloodless bullet holes, cleaned knife wounds in pasty flesh.

They all turned to look at us as we approached. I saw similarities in the features of the dead and the living. They were related.

Now Julio acknowledged my presence. As Father Lopez continued on and two older women moved forward to take the dead priest's arms, the songbird backed up and turned to me. 'Don't say anything,' he warned. 'No matter what hap­pens, just watch.'

'But-'

'It's up to the women,' he said. 'They have the faith. They make the rules.'

I may not be the smartest guy in the world, but I know when to shut my trap and go with the flow. And standing in a ghost town in the middle of the desert at midnight, surrounded by walking dead guys and their wives and mothers and daughters, I figured this was one of those times.

Led by the women, the crowd moved into the doorless church.

I followed.

Inside, the building was lit by a double row of candles which lined indented shelves along both side walls. The trappings of Catholicism which I'd expected to see were absent. Indeed, aside from the candles, the church was devoid of any sort of adornment or religious decoration. The crumbling mud walls were bare. There were no pews. I looked to­ward the front of the elongated room. On the raised dais, where a pulpit would ordinarily be, the redneck stood naked, tied to a post.

I wish I could say that I felt justice was being served, that in some mysteriously primitive way the natural order of things was being put to right, but, God help me, I felt sorry for the redneck. He was crying, tears of terror rolling down his blubbery face, urine drying on his legs. I knew he was crying only for himself, was sorry for his actions only be­cause of the circumstances surrounding his capture, but I suddenly wished that I had told everything to that fat bastard Armstrong and that the redneck was sitting safely in a cell in South Phoenix. He deserved to be punished, but he did not deserve this.

No one deserved this.

But a wish and a nickel will get you a piece of gum. The redneck was not in jail in South Phoenix. He was tied to a porch at the front of this empty church.

And the dead men and their women advanced on him.

The redneck screamed, a high girlish sound which should have been gratifying but somehow was not. At the front of the room the living and the dead separated, women filing to the left, dead men moving to the right. As I watched, the women fell to their knees and began praying. The sound of their mumbling filled the room. I was chilled, but I was sweating. I stood unmoving next to Julio.

The women sang a hymn, a minor key hymn I did not recognize in a dialect of Spanish which was unfamiliar to me.

In single file, as if part of a ritual, they left the church through a side door in back of the dais. As one, the dead men stood.

The church was silent now save for the pitiful whimper­ing of the bound murderer and the amplified beating of my terrified heart. One of the dead men stood apart from the crowd, stepped out of the line, moved forward. I recognized the familiar profile of Trinidad. The blood on the coyote's head had been cleaned off, but his skin was gray, his body anorexically thin. He moved easily, normally, as though still alive, and stepped up to the redneck.

He unfastened the ropes tying the murderer's hands and feet to the post.

Another dead man moved forward, handed Trinidad a pistol, and the coyote put the gun into the redneck's hand.

There was not even a pause. 'Die fuckers!' The redneck began shooting the second his fingers touched the trigger, arms twitching in panicked terror, laughing hysterically. Bullets hit the walls, slammed into the dead men.