The Water Knife (42 page)

They all got out. Far below, streams of refugees were flooding out of Carver City. Rivers of tiny ants, all being funneled away from their homes. Choppers beat the air overhead. National Guard Humvees stood sentry at regular intervals on the highway below, keeping order. Whole convoys were leaving the city.

Across the river California guardies had set up small bunkers to keep watch over the river flow. The glass of long-range scopes glinted in the sunlight, revealing the locations of snipers. Militias picking out their targets. Choppers buzzed up and down the river, the thud-thwap of their rotors announcing their presence.

“God.” Toomie shielded his eyes in the sun, studying the activity. “There’s no way she can make it through all this.”

“She wasn’t going to cross right here, was she?” Angel asked, trying not to let his anxiety show.

“No.” Toomie gestured up the Colorado River. “We figured if she went overland, farther upstream, away from people, patrols would be less.”

“How determined you think she is?” Angel asked.

“Pretty determined.”

Angel stared down at the city that he had ravaged. The road was completely filled by refugees and National Guard patrols. Somewhere down in that chaos his water rights were slipping out of his grasp.

Irony? Poetic justice?

Angel decided he didn’t like either very much.

L
ucy tried driving down to Carver City, but Arizona Highway Patrol turned them back.

“Road’s closed!” they shouted. “Turn it around! One way only!”

“They want to stop looters from going in,” Angel said.

To Lucy, he sounded dejected, as if this new window into the horrors that he’d wrought had finally gotten to him.

She turned the truck around and drove back up to their earlier vantage point. Down below, cops and guardies continued waving traffic through. A few of them glanced up, seeming to mark them.

“If we hang around here much longer, we’re begging for trouble,” Lucy said. “Those cops aren’t going to leave us alone.”

“Yeah. And if they pick me up, I’m done,” Angel said. He scowled down at the stream of traffic coming their way, staring so hard Lucy almost thought he was trying to pick Maria out from all the other ants in the clots of refugees.

Abruptly he said, “I think we can do this.”

“Do what?” Toomie asked. “I can’t walk down there.”

“That makes two of us,” Angel said. “We got to sell the truck.”

“Are you kidding?” Lucy glared at him. “It’s not mine.”

Angel gave her a smug smile. “You want to see how this turns out, don’t you?”

It was infuriating to have someone who could see inside her head.

Lucy ended up trading Charlene’s truck in return for a couple of cheap electric dirt bikes that Angel bargained off the refugee stream coming out of the city.

“Charlene is going kill me,” Lucy said as she handed over the keys. She shot Angel a dark look. “Do you know how many cars I’ve lost since I met you?”

Angel had the grace to at least look embarrassed. “Soon as I’m back in Vegas, I can pay it all back.”

“Right,” Lucy said. “I’m sure you’ve got an amazing expense account when your boss isn’t trying to kill you.”

Toomie managed to get himself aboard one of the bikes, and Angel and Lucy took the other.

“Go easy on me,” Angel said. “I’m not up for doing any jumps.”

They set off overland, cutting around the checkpoints, buzzing across the pale yellow dirt. They wound between creosote bushes and tall spiky tendrils of ocotillo, passing yucca and, once, a lonely Joshua tree.

The desert was transitioning, Lucy realized. They were out of the Sonoran Desert and into the Mojave. Dry cousins, merging and blending, and the three of them crossing the transition.

The electric bikes announced their travel with an artificial whir, but nothing moved on the desert except the winds.

When they reached the Colorado River, they turned upstream, following the rough terrain, looking for paths that might lead down to the river’s edge and clues to where Maria might choose to make her crossing.

They rode for hours, cutting close to the water, finding no evidence of the girl, then being forced to ride away, to cut back in again when the hills and trails allowed it.

The bikes started to run low on power. Lucy pulled their bike to a halt.

“What’s the issue?” Angel asked.

“We’re about half out of juice,” she said. “We didn’t bring any panels to charge with, even on a trickle.”

“Long walk back,” Toomie said.

“You want to go back, you can,” Angel said. “I’ll go on. You two don’t got to do this.” He was gaunt and sweating. Rings of exhaustion shadowed his eyes.

Toomie shook his head. “No, I’m not letting her go again.” He said it with such finality that Lucy wondered what guilt the man felt he needed to atone for.

We’re all here to atone
, she realized.
None of us is going back
.

“There’s a good chance she’s already gone across,” Angel said. “Probably already dead.”

“Still got to look,” Toomie said firmly.

Lucy shook her head as well.

Angel grinned at her. “Journo can’t let the story go.”

“Something like that.”

“Good,” he sighed. “ ’Cause it’s hard enough just hanging on. Not sure if I could drive the bike on my own without ripping myself all to hell.”

He wrapped his arms more firmly around her waist, and Lucy engaged the bike again, wondering at how odd it was that someone who had frightened her not so long ago had now become so dependent.

They sped off again, rolling and bouncing, buzzing across the sere desert, winding along the edge of the river.

The power on her bike steadily bled away, and Lucy began to wonder how they actually were going to make it back. They’d gone miles. How many days would it take to hike to Carver City? Already the sun was searing her skin, burning so that it would darken and peel and bleed.

Could the girl have really come this far?

Lucy could imagine Anna up in Vancouver, shaking her head in dismay at the way she made decisions. The risks she took and the reasons for them. She could almost hear Anna saying,
You’re not one of them. You can just walk away. You’re the only one who can just walk away. You’re suicidal
.

Part of Lucy couldn’t help but agree. There were dozens of rules that she kept to when she went out into the desert—everything from remembering to bring a dust mask and sunscreen and twice the amount of water she thought she would need, to never going farther than she thought she could get back if something went wrong, and now she was ignoring all those rules.

And for what? To keep following this story, to keep playing along the sharp edge of disaster…

Toomie gave a shout and raced ahead.

Angel squeezed her tight and pointed. She could hear him saying
something, words of gratitude in Spanish, too fast and muddled by the speed of the wind in her ears for her to know for sure but sounding like a prayer nonetheless.

There
.

The thing that Toomie had sighted. A few clothes, discarded. Clearsacs and energy bar wrappers.

The last markers of the girl who had gone into the river.

Lucy guided them to a stop beside the discarded gear.

“Shit shit shit,” Toomie was saying. “This was her stuff! She was here!”

Lucy scanned the muddy beaches and willow beds, the lonely tamarisk stands. Beyond them the river flowed, languorous.

So this is it. This is where it ends. All that work, and this is where it ends
.

Lucy couldn’t decide if she felt disappointed or relieved.

She scanned the far banks, wondering if she’d catch sight of the militia that Angel had helped create. The people who would have chewed the refugee girl up and dumped her back in the water to flow down to Carver City as a lesson to others.

There was no trace of activity. Just the ripple of the river and a cool damp breeze coming off the water.

So this is where it ends
.

Angel was limping back and forth, staring across the water, wide-eyed and frantic. Looking as if he had been led by a vision to the edge of the abyss, wishing and praying for the Virgin and salvation and coming up with nothing instead. He sank to his knees, gasping, the last of his hope draining from him.

Not all epic quests ended in success. Instead, paranoid and greedy people made stupid mistakes. People died and hurt each other and struggled, and in the end everyone came up dry.

It was so much a story of the desert that Lucy wondered how she had thought it could possibly end any other way.

From deep in the weeds, a muddy girl emerged, carrying a backpack.

“Toomie?”

“Maria!”

Toomie ran for her, his arms spread wide.

Angel let out a whoop of relief and hauled himself to his feet as well.

While Maria and Toomie embraced, Angel knelt down beside her backpack and started going through it.

“Hey!” Maria shouted. “Get out of my stuff!”

“It’s here,” Angel said. “It’s here!”

He came up with a book, holding it high, then riffled through the pages. Pulled out paper, grinning. Triumphant.

Lucy came to look over his shoulder. Sure enough: old paper and seals. It wasn’t what she’d expected. Two short pages, that was all. Dry and creased with folds. A paper right that could change everything. For someone, at any rate. She reached for the papers, but Angel jerked them back.

Lucy glared at him. “Seriously? How many trucks and cars have I given up for you?”

He sheepishly surrendered them.

“They’re so old.”

“More than a hundred and fifty years.”

She couldn’t help but hold them with reverence. “It’s hard to believe this is worth people dying for,” she murmured as she read.

Department of the Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs, the signatures of tribal leaders…Liquid promises. Symbolic compromises for a moment that no one expected to ever come. Millions of acre-feet of water. The missing piece to a puzzle that would allow the pumps of the Central Arizona Project to roar fully to life. With rights like these, they could dig new and deeper canals. Rechannel the Colorado away from California, away from Nevada. Pour water into a different set of deserts and a different set of cities.

A few simple sheets of paper with the power to make Phoenix and Arizona the arbiters of their own fate instead of a place of loss and collapse.

A way for people like Toomie and Charlene and Timo all to thrive, along with all the refugees who crouched there, dreaming of a way north.

Lucy sighed, knowing what she had to do. Jamie was right. At some point she’d gone native. She couldn’t say when, but at some point Phoenix had become her home.

A
ngel reached for the papers, but Lucy stepped back, surprisingly quick. A gun glinted in her hand. The gun he’d given her.

“I’m sorry, Angel,” she whispered.

Toomie and Maria gasped.

“What the—?”

Angel lifted his hands, holding them carefully, trying to read the new situation. “What’s going on, Lucy? Why you doing this?”

“I can’t just let you take these to Catherine Case,” Lucy said.

Angel tried not to let panic leak into his voice as he evaluated his options. “Those papers are my lifeline,” he said. “I need them.”

“What’s going on?” Toomie asked.

“Just a little disagreement,” Angel said.

He had his gun. He just needed to find a way to pull it. Some way to distract Lucy. Except, he didn’t like how Lucy was holding her pistol.

When she’d first pointed her gun at him—what felt like lifetimes before—he’d been sure that she could be reasoned with. That his words could reach her.

Now, though, her gray eyes were as hard as chipped stone.

She was a good shot. He’d seen her nail that Cali’s leg in the near dark. He wouldn’t get a second chance once he drew on her.

“I feel like we keep getting crosswise with each other,” Angel said. “Why’s that keep happening?”

“I’m sorry, Angel.”

From the way she said it, he actually believed her. She didn’t want to do this. He could see the pain there, along with the determination.

“Come on, Lucy. All you got to do is get on board with this. Those papers, they’re our ticket across the border. With those papers I can
call in Camel Corps, we can get a chopper, and we’re all in Vegas in time for dinner.”

“I guess you’d better give me your phones, then.”

“You can’t just leave us here,” Toomie protested.

“Not you two,” Lucy said. “Just him.”

“What do you think you’re going to do with those papers?” Angel asked.

“I’m going to give them back to the city. The papers are theirs. The rights are theirs. They own them. Not California. And not Nevada. Definitely not Las Vegas or your boss.”

“Phoenix doesn’t even know they exist! What they don’t know don’t hurt them.”

“Are you really going to say people aren’t hurting in Phoenix? These water rights are people’s lives,” Lucy said. “Phoenix can rebuild. With water, it doesn’t have to be the way it is.”

“Come on, Lucy! That place is doomed, no matter what. But we can go north. All of us can go north. You can come, too. There’s a place for all of us. We can even get your dog sent up, if that’s bothering you.”

“It’s not that simple, Angel. I’ve spent too much time with those people, and too much time with all their suffering, to just walk away when there’s something I can do to help them.”

“If you give those papers to Phoenix, you’re just going to move the suffering somewhere else. You think Vegas won’t suffer if you do this? It’ll dry up and blow away.”

He eased forward a step, looking for a way to grab her. It would hurt, but he thought he could do it.

“Don’t make me shoot you, Angel.”

She meant it.

“So let’s just talk then.”

“Nothing to talk about.”

“So…now what? You’re going to strand me?” Angel asked. “Seriously?”

“I’ll leave your phone a couple miles over. You can call for help then.”

“There’s no help coming for me if I don’t have those papers.”

“Then come with me,” Lucy pleaded. “Take these back to Phoenix with me. They’ll cover you.”

Angel couldn’t help laughing at that. “Now who’s making up pretty stories? You know how much shit I’ve done to them?”

“Do I get a say in any of this?” Maria asked dryly.

Lucy didn’t say anything.

“Think we might be a little past that,” Angel said. His whole being was focused on Lucy and the gun. The wildness in her eyes. The intensity of her belief.

Phoenix made people crazy, he decided. Sometimes it turned people into devils so bad they weren’t recognizable as human. And other times it turned them into goddamn saints.

Just my luck that I ran into the last goddamn saint in all of goddamn Phoenix
.

He could almost hear the
sicario
laughing at him.

Live by the gun, die by the gun, right
, mijo
? You make a living cutting people’s water, at some point, the scales got to balance you out
.

Symmetry. Clear symmetry.

Some people had to bleed so other people could drink. Simple as that. It was just his turn.

For a little while, maybe, he’d been fooled. Sitting all cool in Cypress 1, cutting other people’s water, enjoying the A/C and waterfalls, it had been easy to imagine that the only game that mattered was the one he was playing.

“It’s not personal,” Lucy said. “I really like you, Angel.”

“Yeah.” He found himself smiling slightly. “I know.” He shrugged. “We’re just little gears in a big machine. I get it. Sometimes we just got to spin because that’s how the machine’s built.”

And it was true. He found he couldn’t take it personally. They were all just little wheels spinning. Him and the Calies and Carver City and Catherine Case, all the different pieces and parts.

Sometimes you found a way to mesh up for a little while, maybe even spin the same direction, as he and Lucy had. Other times you just couldn’t find a fit. Sometimes you were the most important part in the machine.

And sometimes it turned out you were obsolete.

Angel wondered if Simon Yu had felt the same when Angel had come and cut Carver City’s water supply.

He slowly lowered his hands.

“Go on, then,” he sighed. “If that’s what you’re going to do, then do it.”

Lucy’s eyes went to the bike. Angel whipped out his gun. Lucy jerked her pistol back around. “Don’t!”

He grinned tightly. “I’m not doing anything, yet.”

“Drop it!”

“Come on, Lucy. You aren’t a killer. You don’t want blood on your hands. You’re the saint. I’m the Devil, remember?”

“I’ll shoot you if you try to stop me!”

“I’m just asking you to hear me out!”

“There’s nothing to talk about!”

“I thought you were the one who had all that confidence in words.” She stared at him, her expression fearful and panicked for a second, but then she started smiling.

“You aren’t going to shoot me.”

“I will if you don’t listen,” Angel growled.

She just smiled. “No. You won’t.” She swung her leg over the bike. “Don’t do this!” he shouted. “Don’t make me shoot you!”

“You won’t,” she said. “You like me too much to shoot me. Plus, you owe me, remember?”

“I don’t owe you this.”

“Let me go,” she said softly. “Just let me go.”

Angel stared at her as she keyed on the bike. He thought of redemption and debts, remembering her kneeling over him, pulling him back from death. He wondered what good promises were. All the lies people told each other, all the promises lovers made.

“Please,” he said, “I’m asking.”

“I’m sorry, Angel. Too many people need this. I can’t just walk away from them.”

“Ah, hell.” He lowered his pistol. “Get out of here, then. Go be a saint.” He holstered the gun and turned away.

Behind him the electric bike started to roll, crunching over dirt. He found himself listening, hoping she’d change her mind, that she’d come back to him, but he knew she wouldn’t.

Live by the gun, die by the gun
.

Already he was thinking about contingencies. He needed to find some way to explain himself to Case when Phoenix showed up in court waving those papers.

No. It would never work. He needed to run. He needed to run as far and fast as he could. With Case on the hunt and a price on his head—

A gunshot echoed flat across the river.

Birds exploded into the skies, whirling and fleeing.

Angel hit the ground.