Ash Return of the Beast

CHAPTER 49



The Next Day…

11:50 a.m.

After four hours on the plane from Albuquerque, Ravenwood and Tocho arrived in Guatemala in the middle of Fiesta de la Virgen de la Asunción, the city’s annual celebration of the Virgin of the Assumption, the patron saint of Guatemala City. Even the airport was buzzing with festivities. The place was a kaleidoscopic frenzy of people laughing, dancing, shouting, singing, many of them adorned in colorful masks and elaborate costumes.

“Oh, god, get me out of here,” Ravenwood said as they dodged their way through a moving throng of native teenage party animals. As she and Tocho made their way to the exit, she glanced back over her shoulder. “Do they even know what they’re celebrating?”

“You know kids. Any excuse for a party. Have you forgotten?”

Ravenwood cracked a grin. She and Tocho had partied plenty when they were teenagers. “Seems like another lifetime. I remember the night of the high school Independence Day party.”

Tocho’s face lit up. “Oh, yeah,” he said with a laugh. “When I drove my motorcycle into the gym. Everybody stood up and cheered.”

Ravenwood laughed along with him. “Just as the band was playing Born To Be Wild.”

Tocho growled out the opening lyrics. “Getcher motor runnin! Head out on the highway! Yeah, was that wild or what?”

“You set the whole thing up, right?”

“Yeah, the band knew exactly when I was planning to bust in through the doors.”

“And Vice Principal Alvarez ran around after you, trying to chase you out. God, that was hilarious.”

Tocho cracked a grin. “Yeah. Good times.”

They exited the comfortably air-conditioned terminal and stepped out into a muggy 80-degree Guatemalan afternoon.

“God,” Ravenwood said, “I can hardly breathe. It’s like trying to suck a milkshake through a pinched straw.”

Tocho chuckled. “Get used to it.” Then he pointed to a bus that was idling at the curb just few yards away. It was painted in a dazzling array of bright, gaudy colors and black smoke was billowing out from a corroded exhaust pipe. “Hey,” he said, “there’s a chicken bus.” He grabbed Ravenwood by the arm and pulled her along. “Let’s take it into town. I know where we can rent a car for really cheap.”

She pulled her arm back and followed him. “I don’t care what it costs as long as it gets us where we’re going.”

“And back.”

“Yeah. That’d be good, too. What the hell is a chicken bus?”

“You’ll see.”

The driver jumped out of the bus and greeted them. He motioned for them to hand over their baggage. They’d packed light with only a canvas travel bag and a backpack for each of them. The driver hefted the bags up onto the top of the bus where they tumbled into position amongst a dozen others. He climbed up a metal ladder on the side of the bus and secured the bags with a rope tethered to a rail. He looked down at them and shouted. “qué estás esperando?” What are you waiting for?

Tocho took Ravenwood by the hand and helped her into the clattering vehicle. It smelled like a locker room full of sweaty feet. As she turned toward the seats, the first thing to greet her was a chicken. It had jumped out of the arms of an old native woman in the seat nearest the door and it began pecking at Ravenwood’s sandaled foot.

Ravenwood let out a screach and jerked her foot back. The startled chicken commenced squawking, its wings flapping frantically as if it was under attack. The old woman scowled and––with what seemed to be an effort of great inconvenience––she retrieved the chicken and returned to her seat. She soothed the poor creature with a few gentle strokes over its ruffled feathers, all the while giving Ravenwood the evil eye.

Ravenwood gathered her composure, smoothed out her white cotton shirt and apologized. “Lo siento mucho. Perdóname.” Then she looked up and noticed at least a half dozen of the other passengers were each hugging a chicken in their lap.

Tocho nudged her from behind and pointed over her shoulder toward the back of the bus where the only vacant seat seemed to be waiting just for them.

They sat next to each other on the cracked and crinkled brown leather seat. Whisps of cotton stuffing poked out from the gaps in the seams.

The driver got behind the wheel and wrestled the gear shift into position. The bus lurched twice, a lock of Ravenwood’s hair flopped down over her eyes, a chicken squawked, and soon they were off to the big city.

Ravenwood shifted uncomfortably in her seat as the vehicle rattled on down the road. “Chicken bus.”

Tocho grinned.

***

A light rain was falling as their rental car––an old 1991 sun-bleached-red, 2-door Nissan Sentra––rattled along the stretch of poorly paved road on their way to the small mountain city of San Cristobal.

Ravenwood fiddled with the air-conditioning knob. It clicked and nothing happened. “Great,” she said, falling back into the seat.

Tocho shrugged. “What do you want for fifteen bucks a day?”

Ravenwood cracked her window a couple inches and a light spray of rain blew gently into her face. The air smelled fresh from the lush tropical greenery whizzing by but it wasn’t worth getting soaked. She rolled the window back up. “Doesn’t anybody else take this road? We haven’t seen another car since that taxi passed us a half-hour ago. Are you sure you know where you’re going?”

“It’s a shortcut. Relax. I know what I’m doing.”

Two hours into the drive Ravenwood could feel a difference in the air pressure. She yawned wide to unplug her ears. “We’re climbing. We must be getting close. Right?”

Tocho looked at his watch. It was just after 4 p.m. “Another hour, I’d say.”

“I thought you said it was a shortcut.”

“Well, believe it or not, the main road would take… what the––?

The engine started shuddering. It choked a couple times and the car slowed to a crawl. Tocho steered it to the side of the road where it conked out completely. He slammed the steering wheel. “Damnit!”

Ravenwood shut her eyes. “This is not happening. Tell me this is not happening.”

Tocho flung the door open and jumped out. He lifted the hood to take a look but, not being much of a mechanic, he really didn’t know what to look for. He left the hood up, got back into the car and slammed the door shut. “I can’t believe this.”

“You left the hood up.”

“I know I left the hood up,” he snapped. “If somebody comes along and sees it, maybe they’ll give us a hand… or a ride… or whatever. Christ, I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? Well, I know. I know I don’t have time for this, Tocho. We’re sitting here in the goddamn rain, on some god-forsaken…shortcut…” she underscored the word with a cold glare, “…in the middle of nowhere while the fate of the goddamn world is at stake.”

He looked at her and then turned away. “I’m sorry. Whaddya want me to say?”

Ravenwood took a breath and turned her face to the window. She rolled it down a crack. The rain splattered in but it cooled her down. “Fifteen bucks. We should have splurged for twenty.” She crossed her arms and sank back into the seat. Then her face lit up. “Wait.” She pulled her cell phone out of the side pocket of her new khaki cargo pants and waved it around. “Shit!”

Tocho shrugged. “Not a lot of cell phone towers in the middle of the jungle.”

She snapped the phone shut and tossed it over her shoulder into the back seat.

The rain was coming harder now. She pushed the button to close the window but it didn’t work. “Can you turn the key on, please? I gotta close this thing before I drown.”

Tocho shook his head. “It is on. We got nothin’.”

There really wasn’t anything more to say. So they sat… and waited.