Mirage

(1) A Desperate Flight

The group had been walking since just before dusk plunged the Chihuahuan Desert into darkness. The temperature had been stifling but it was falling fast as the Last-Quarter moon began to rise. It was the third day of a trip that was expected to take four or five days. The group had been following their guide closely – no one wanted to be left behind in the blackness – but now that there was some light everyone felt relieved; if the person immediately ahead of you missed a step, you (and everyone behind you) wouldn't end up lost in the vast desert.

Pedro Velasquez and his wife, Yolanda, were making the risky trek with their two young sons. Neither child was old enough to keep up so the parents each carried one. The heavy loads were asleep.

"Ow! Pedro! Help!"

"What's the matter?"

"I stepped on a rock and twisted my ankle. It hurts like Hell."

Pedro ran back to his wife. She was definitely wounded; she couldn't put any weight on her left foot. She hobbled over to a boulder and sat. The migrants behind them shuffled quickly past.

"Shit!" Pedro looked back at the group; they were ten meters away and receding fast.

"Hey, amigos – wait up!" he yelled.

"Fuck you!" came the reply.

He'd expected a polite rejection, but that particular response was unnecessarily crude. Even so, slowing for Yolanda meant more time in the desert, which meant drinking more water, risking running out. And running out of water meant certain death.

They would lose their guide in the darkness in a few minutes. He turned to his wife. "Get up!"

"Pedro, I can't!"

"You have to. Come on!"

His wife cried in agony as she got up. He put her arm around his neck. "OK, let's go."

Pedro did the mental arithmetic and it was stark. They were in the middle of the desert, but he thought they were closer to where they were going than to where they started. The best option was to proceed and hope for the best.

They continued, but could not keep up with their group, which was moving at a steady walking pace. Pedro and his wife were struggling to do a crawl and quickly lost sight of the rest of the party.

Pedro was worried. Not about getting lost in the desert; since boyhood, he could tell north from the stars, so he had his bearings. No, that wasn't the problem. Water was the problem. Or, more precisely, the limited amount of it.

They only had twenty half-liter bottles of water left. They'd started with forty – a mere twenty liters – which wasn't really enough for the original trip, and at this pace it would take much longer. He didn't want to think it, but he knew it was true. They were going to run out of water, but they were trapped. They couldn't go back and if they stayed where they were they were dead for sure. They had no choice but to move forward. Maybe if they rationed the water even more strictly...

He was determined not to give up. His family would not vanish from the face of the earth, never to be heard from again, as so many others from his village had.

They managed to advance another ten kilometers by dawn. Another couple of km later and the furnace was coming on. Pedro found a spot that was marginally shaded by some scrawny shrubbery, so they stopped and rested, waiting for the sun to sink and the milder temperatures of the late afternoon.

The next night they only did another ten km. Less than one kilometer per hour. They were exhausted and slowing down. Between the wounded Yolanda and their increasingly dehydrated state, it was becoming progressively more difficult to move.

# # #

Pedro lay on his back. There was no water left; there hadn't been since dawn – yesterday. He looked straight up. The brilliant sun shined back. It was almost noon and the oven was already on High, baking everything that wasn't in the shade.

Yolanda was on the ground, motionless, just a few meters away. Both were still breathing. The precious cargo each carried wasn't.

He saw the vultures circling above.

A gigantic vulture approached and stood over him, silhouetted against the hot sun, casting an enormous shadow over the delirious Pedro. He tried to shoo it away, but he was too weak to move and his arms barely budged. It laughed at him as he mumbled unintelligibly his remorse over killing his family. As it grabbed his feet and dragged him across the desert he passed out.

# # #

Pedro never imagined that Heaven had concrete floors. Hell neither. It wasn't baking hot – it was warm, but not uncomfortably so – he decided that he must be in Heaven. He opened his eyes. It was light, but wasn't in the sun. The world was blurry and a water bottle came into focus, right in front of his face! It fell over and spilled its precious contents as he reached for it. He was in a room in a building. He grabbed for the bottle and managed to right it after half of its contents had poured out. He greedily sucked the bottle empty, practically inhaling its contents.

Something moved behind him, then another bottle appeared in front of him. "There you go," a voice said. With better coordination this time, Pedro took the bottle and drank about half of it before turning over. A man holding two more bottles stood over him. "They're all already open, so be careful." The man set them on the floor. "There are plenty more where these came from, so drink all you want. I'll be back in a while." The man left.

Pedro had a million questions, but for now he was content to slake his thirst and to thank God for his good fortune.

A million questions, like: What's this chain around my neck? Why is the other end bolted to the floor? What are those bars? Where are my clothes?

Pedro began to realize that, wherever he was, it wasn't Heaven, and God wasn't nearby. Perhaps he wasn't so fortunate after all.