Who had lived here? What had caused the fate of this place? I could see some sort of building, half of it collapsed, an ironwood growing out of the center of the rubble. We moved closer, stepped over the remains of a low stone wall that stretched in either direction, crumbled and rotted before us. Structures had come to rest against one another—gray stone, mud, wood, rusted metal, all of it gnarled and twisted, decaying and lifeless. But there were patches of greens and yellows where plant life bloomed, thick stalks of grasses and mesquite bushes competing for the available space.
I ran my finger along the edge of one of the stone buildings.
It was covered in a black ash.
And the answer arrived in me, suddenly, uninvited, terrifying.
La Quema.
“Solís burned this place,” I said, not meaning to do so out loud, but once it was out, a silence blanketed us, as if all sound had been smothered by this place.
There was not much light left shining on la ciudad, but I tried to make out what I could. A large stone pillar lay across the road that seemed to split la ciudad in two, and I don’t know what it used to hold up. A building? Some sort of monument?
A rustling noise broke the silence.
I held my breath.
We all did.
I made a tentative step toward it, my arm out to protect me in case there was something there.
There was a scrabbling in the dirt, and then they scurried out from the eastern side of the road, squat creatures with horns on their heads and long, shaggy brown fur covering their bodies. I had no idea how they survived in the heat like that; they had to be creatures of the night. The lead one looked back at us, and their eyes flashed red in the setting sun. We all stood as still as we could as a lip curled up and tiny, needle-like teeth were bared in our direction.
Then it led the pack away. They scampered over a pile of rubble and vanished.
An awful sensation passed over my skin, and I had never felt so exposed in my life, as if a million eyes were focused on my body.
I turned to look behind us.
They stood there.
A line of them. A wall of them. From one side to the next, from far in the east stretching to the edge of sight in the west.
The dead.
Clothing in shambles, limbs missing, skin desiccated and rotting, bodies torn apart, torsos eaten and hollowed.
Most were burned to a crisp, nothing more than human shapes of coal, and they stood there, staring at us, their eyes glowing white.
Felipe cried out, but Rosalinda clamped a hand over his mouth.
“Who are they?” asked Eliazar, his voice shaky.
“The punished,” one of them answered, and they stepped forward, their skin crackling with each movement. “Those who were eliminated in La Quema. The original inhabitants of esta ciudad.”
And then, in unison, in one horrific rush of sound, they all took a step forward. Then another. Then another.
“You must move through,” they said. “You must learn the truth.”
The truth.
Oh no.
Was this what Roberto y Héctor had experienced? Was this what we’d been warned about?
Felipe screamed, and then he was the first to run. He made it to the pillar and cleared it in no time. We all ran, as Felipe’s reaction woke us from our terror, and my own muscles felt like they were tearing apart as I did so. Still, I pulled myself up and over and I followed after the others, desperate to know if this would all be over if we made it to the other side of la ciudad.
I looked back.
They—the dead—were in front of the pillar already, a single line, moving ever forward, making sure we could not leave.
I ran in the other direction as fast as I could.
The remains of la ciudad were like the bones jutting out of a carcass that was half buried in the desert, that las bestias had picked clean. We moved through a corpse, dodging piles of basura, pushing through bushes that had sprouted up in all this death. I caught up to Eliazar, who was struggling to keep up with the other three.
“Go on ahead,” he said, digging his fingers into his side. “Please.”
“No,” I said, looping his arm over my shoulders. “We go together.”
The sun set further. The shadows became longer. The shuffling dead pushed behind us, but I would not turn around to gaze at them. Instead, I heard them, a persistent trudging forward.
We couldn’t run anymore. I heard a whimper next to me. Rosalinda. She clutched Felipe’s hand now.
Emilia looked from side to side as she urged us to continue, staring into the shadows. She beckoned us forward. “We’re almost there!”
Had we made it?
I ducked through the remains of some large stone gate, and on the other side, I could see it.
The buildings, growing smaller, spreading out.
More ash, more destruction.
The debris of the northern gate.
We were almost there.
Another whimper, to my left.
But it wasn’t Rosalinda or Felipe.
The shadows twisted.
Then grew.
Reached out.
I shouted and fell to the side, scraping my leg on a pile of jagged stones.
“Xochitl!”
The dead were still to the south, climbing over debris, moving toward me.
Emilia grabbed me under the arms, pulled me up, but then it came for her.
The shape groaned, and Emilia yanked me north and—
“No.”
There was a woman there, her body one enormous shadow that took shape, twisted into reality. Wide nose, long black hair, wrinkles jutting from the corner of her eyes.
She wore a light brown tunic, but there was a stain, slowly growing, overtaking the center of her torso, and it kept spreading.
Red.
Blood.
Emilia
