Defiant (an Ell Donsaii story #9) (28 page)

“Do you have an AI?” Elsa said wonderingly.

Ell squatted down next to the girl she’d come to admire. “Yes, yes I do. Can you keep it a secret?”

Wide eyed, Elsa nodded solemnly. Fortunately the little girl didn’t ponder the low likelihood that someone who could afford an AI would need to become a migrant.

Ell stood and started walking down the road after the group. “We need to go.”

Elsa started walking beside her.

“What do you think of Señor Tecate?” Ell asked.

“I think he’s a
bad
man. Mama hates him.”

Ell nodded solemnly back at the girl. “He didn’t ask me to stay back here because he wanted me to watch for trucks. He wanted me to get lost back here. And now you’ve accidentally been caught in the trap he set for me.”

Elsa stared up at Ell with wide eyes. She looked frightened but seemed to trust Ell to take care of her. “Will we catch up to them before they finish their break?”

“They didn’t take a break so they’re already a long way ahead of us. They also went a different direction than Tecate told me they would go.”

The faint moonlight was enough for Ell to see a tear form and track down Elsa’s face. “Your AI tells you this?”

Ell nodded.

“Can it help us find them?”

Ell nodded, “Yes, but they’re far ahead of us. It will be hard to catch up to them so we’ll have to walk fast. Can you do that?”

Elsa bobbed her head resolutely.

Ell had thought that they would readily catch up to the group once Tecate
actually
gave the other migrants a real break. But then she realized that she had no idea where the group had left the road, if you could even call the two ruts a road. She’d watched for footprints going off to the right but, wherever they had left the faint dirt tracks, Ell hadn’t seen them. Her HUD showed the other migrants pretty far off to the right now though and she was sure she must have missed their trail. She turned off, intending to simply use her HUD to walk directly toward the group’s infrared signature but the ground was crusty away from a trail where people or animals had walked before. Their feet broke through the crust into softer material, making walking into hard work. In addition, they kept encountering thickets of scrub brush that they had to detour around.
Crap,
she thought, Allan could tell her where to go, but not how to get there.

Paused in frustration Ell heard Elsa plaintively say from behind her, “Are we getting lost?”

Ell stopped and stood, irritated and considering her options. Finally she turned and went down on one knee beside Elsa. “I have another secret. Can you keep this secret for me too?”

Elsa nodded with great seriousness.

Ell spoke to Allan under her breath, telling him to unspool the graphene cable, sending down the lifting harness from the underside of the hoverbike. She stood and turned Elsa so Ell stood behind the girl. Looking up into the sky she watched for the flashing of the LEDs on the harness. When it came into view it was slightly northwest of her location, presumably due to the light breeze Ell could feel. Ell looked down and said, “I’m going to cover your eyes a moment, OK?”

Elsa nodded and Ell put her hands over the girl’s eyes, continuing to whisper to Allan, guiding the harness into place. “OK hold the altitude. Move a little more east, slow, slow. Got it,” Ell said, reaching up to snatch the harness with one hand. “Give me three feet of slack.”

To Elsa, Ell said, “Stand very still and keep your eyes closed.” Elsa nodded so Ell moved back from the girl a moment and shook out the harness. She stepped into the thigh straps, shrugged the harness over her shoulders, then closed the chest buckle.

Kneeling next Elsa, Ell said, “Um, we’re going to fly a little bit, is that OK?”

“Fly?” Elsa said, sounding both apprehensive and excited.

“Not very high. Just a little bit off the ground, OK?”

Elsa nodded. She wondered if perhaps her new friend was a little bit loco. On the other hand, somehow she trusted the bigger Elsa implicitly.

Señora Gardon
turned Elsa to face her and said, “Jump up and hold onto me.”

Elsa noticed that Señora Gardon had straps on her chest that she hadn’t had before. They looked vaguely like military gear. Elsa jumped up, throwing her arms around the woman’s neck and her legs about her waist. Elsa noticed that she had to jump quite a bit higher than she had to when she jumped up on her mama. Though, she didn’t jump up on her mam very often any more, she was getting too big.

Señora Gardon put her arms around Elsa and mumbled to herself as if she were praying. To Elsa’s great astonishment, without the woman moving her legs, Señora Gardon gradually tilted forward—tilting Elsa backward so that she found herself clinging more fiercely—then they slowly lifted off the ground until they were a little higher than the surrounding bushes.

Soon they were sailing through the air. It felt something like swinging on a swing, though the swing would have to have been huge! Elsa felt her heart thumping in her chest, though she wasn’t sure whether it was excitement or fear.
This must be what it’s like to be a bird,
she thought.

They sailed along for about five minutes. By then Elsa’s fear had dissolved and her excitement had her looking around in amazement. They began to slow and with Señora Gardon whispering more of her prayers they gradually stopped and lowered to the ground in an open area.

Señora Gardon helped Elsa jump down to the ground, then quietly said, “Remember Elsa, you promised not to tell anyone we flew, not even your mama, OK?”

Almost shaking with excitement Elsa nodded. Señora Gardon took her hand and, glancing up at her HUD guided her around a couple of bushes and onto a path.

Worried about her daughter Lucia had stopped and let the other migrants pass her. When the last of them had passed she hadn’t seen either her daughter or Elsa Gardon. With a sensation of mild panic she scrambled and jogged past the others to the front of the line. She reached Tecate without seeing her daughter. “Tecate! Tecate, my daughter Elsa, she’s not with us! I can’t find Elsa Gardon either!”

Tecate didn’t stop walking, “I told you not to bring a child! It isn’t my job to babysit your children out here!
You
were supposed to keep an eye on her.”

“
You
told Elsa Gardon to watch out behind us, Elsa stayed with her! But you were supposed to stop for a break… and you didn’t.” Lucia trailed off, suspicion flooding through her.

Tecate gritted his teeth. “Gardon” must be the name of the tall woman. He thought,
if that idiot child really stayed with Gardon it could screw everything up.
Women could be unbelievably sentimental about children and the entire group might revolt. Over his shoulder he said, “OK, we’ll stop in a minute. Then you can go back and look for them, but it’s not my fault if they’ve gotten themselves lost. I told all of you that you needed to stay close…”

With a thump, Tecate had run into someone standing in the path.

Gardon!

She stood in the path, feet apart, arms akimbo, wearing some kind of harness that she hadn’t had on before. He realized uneasily that she was actually taller than his own 170 centimeters. The child stood behind her to the left.
How had they, not just caught up, but
passed
everyone to get out in front?
The woman’s eyes tracked him like someone aiming a weapon. Tecate stepped back and reached behind him for the pistol in the holster on his belt.

She said in a quiet but angry tone, “You left us… you hoped we’d get lost.”

Tecate snarled, “I
did
hope you’d get lost,” he pulled out the Ruger, “you’ve been nothing but trou…”

Tecate stared wide eyed. The woman had moved suddenly, fast, like a striking snake. There’d been a hard thump against his wrist and now Gardon had the pistol in her own hand. Even in the dim light of the moon he could see the safety was now off and the bore of the weapon faced him as a single, untrembling black circle. His hand and wrist began to ache. His heart pounded and he found that it had become difficult to breathe while staring into the barrel of his own gun.

She ground out, “
I’ve
been no trouble at all. I’ve helped you take care of these people who’ve trusted their lives to you. A trust you haven’t justified… You’re
done
trying to screw these poor people out of more money.” She held her hand out.

“Wh-what do you want?” he said, staring at her outstretched hand.

“Give me your backpack.”

“No,” he protested weakly.

The barrel of the gun shifted slightly and she fired it. Tecate felt a tug of air as the bullet flashed past his head. There was a burst of warmth in his pants as he lost a small squirt of urine from his bladder. “Give it to me,” she said again, though she sounded a little distant after the gun had gone off so close to him.

Tecate shrugged out of his backpack. Knees watery, he handed it over.

She took it and motioned him back with the gun, “Lucia,” she said to the mother, now clinging to her child. “Go through that and find his money.” She handed the bag over.

The trembling young mother knelt, opened the bag and went through it, quickly finding Tecate’s stash, a combination of pesos and dollars.

Gardon turned to the rest of the migrants, “We’re taking our break here while we figure out what to do with Tecate and his attempts to get you to pay more and more. Sit down and rest.” She turned, “Count the money please Lucia, let’s make sure he still has it all.” Then she turned back to the main group, “I know that most of you weren’t able to pay Tecate the full 30,000 pesos he demanded. So you signed agreements to work for his syndicate for various periods to make up the difference. You should know that it is likely they will have penalties and costs that will put you farther into debt while you work for them. This practice is often known as ‘debt slavery.’” A hiss of indrawn breath greeted this information. “Worse, some of you women will find yourselves expected to work as prostitutes.”

Angry exclamations greeted this information. Tecate slowly backed away, reluctant to leave his money, but thinking that once they realized they were lost without him, they’d welcome him back on his own terms.

One of the women saw him sidling though and pointed, “He’s trying to leave.”

Gardon turned and Tecate found himself once again gazing at the barrel of his own gun. He wondered momentarily if he could run, but, no, she moved too fast! From the narrow profile of the pistol he had no doubt that if she pulled the trigger, he would not survive. He raised his hands and slowly walked back their way.

Gardon said, “This is the way it’s going to be Tecate. First, you’re not getting any more money from this group. You’re going to take us in to the city and get us ID like you promised…”

Tecate protested, “But ID will cost more…”

Gardon cut him off, “You didn’t tell us that in Ojinaga, so you’ll pay for that out of the money you’ve already been paid. And you won’t sell labor contracts on anyone. Understand?”

“You can’t do this. The syndicate will…”

“Tecate,” the woman interrupted, pointing a finger at him, “
your
job is to figure out how to keep the syndicate from giving
this
group any trouble…”

***

The many roommates with whom he shared his small apartment were out at a local bar frequented by migrants. Enrique tried the number of the phone he’d bought for Lucia in Mexico again. It was Friday night and Lucia was supposed to turn the phone on every Friday night so he could talk to her. He hadn’t been able to get through last Friday either. He had finally called a friend of his Uncle Tomas in San Pedro. The friend had heard that Lucia had left San Pedro with Elsa but didn’t know more. Enrique had been agonizing over what to do. It was bad enough to be hurt and worried about how to pay his share of the rent, without worrying about what had happened to his little family.

Why would they have left San Pedro? Hopefully Tomas’s friend just had been mixed up on his information.

He heard a knock at the door. Probably one of his roommates, drunk and lost their key. Picking up his cane he limped to the door. He felt amazed that, having broken his leg only a few weeks ago, he could already walk a few steps on it, even without the cane. The Americano doctors had put a metal rod inside of it that was as strong as the bone was before it broke. They told him that the more he walked on it, the faster it would heal.

Leaning on the cane, he opened the door. “Papa!” Elsa shrieked, bouncing into the room like a pinball. She stopped, suddenly shy, “Can I hug you? Or will it hurt your leg?”

Enrique knelt on his good knee and threw his arms around his daughter. Lucia stepped to him and knelt to hug him as well. A tall, very pretty woman still stood in the hall. He looked into Lucia’s eyes and said, “How?”

“It wasn’t easy,” Lucia said, “and we wouldn’t be here at all if it wasn’t for Elsa Gardon, here…”

Epilogue

Shan Kinrais drove slowly up the steep driveway to the Wildberry Lodge. It was a bed and breakfast in Leicester North Carolina, near Asheville. He’d never been there, but his dad’s business had been doing very well. His dad had rented three rooms for the week that coincided with spring break for UNC. The whole family was going to be up there because Morgan and Lane had spring break at the same time. Shan felt pretty depressed to be going on vacation without Ell, but she’d urged him go.

“You need to get your mind off of our troubles,” Ell had told him from Texas. “I’m hoping to get back to North Carolina before summer so we won’t be apart all that much longer.”

Shan had agreed to go, agreeing that being there with his family would be good for him. It might get him out of the funk he’d been in, moping around the house alone. He’d been going through the motions, teaching his classes. Writing up the paper on carbon chemistry that would bear Ell’s and Gary’s names. He’d met with Gary a couple of times. In addition to working on the paper, they’d had a good bitch session about Stockton’s short sightedness.