The Voting Machine

The Valley of Fire

When my father was young he was daring and passionate: a rebel, a lover, a fighter, ready to take life as it came. No apologies, no regrets. Then, in his final years, that confidence crumbled. All the doubts he beat away had suddenly overtaken him. One morning, a month before his overdose, he arrived at my apartment uninvited, donning Ray-Ban sunglasses and a vintage leather jacket.

"Let's go for a ride," he growled. He reeked of cheap marijuana.

"Where are we going?" I asked, still wearing a T-shirt and pajama pants, rubbing sleepers from my eyes. It had been a long time since I gotten in the same car with him.

"Trust me."

"Why would I do that?"

I finally agreed on the condition that I got to drive. We took my car to the 10 and headed east to Montebello. The gates to the cemetery were unattended. It was the first time we'd visited my mother's grave together. He pulled out a joint from his jacket pocket and was ready to light up when I stopped him.

"Not here, Dad." I clutched his wrist so he didn't have a choice.

"Sorry." His voice was raw and scratchy. "I know you despise me."

"That's not true."

"You'll see how life is, Temo. You make mistakes. Everyone does. You think that love is something that can happen many times. And then you look back and realize you only had that one chance. And you blew it."

Of course, he was not talking about me. This was his veiled way of explaining himself, of warning me not to follow his path.

"I thought I was bigger than life. I thought there was more than enough of me to go around. But you can't give yourself to everyone, Temo, any more than everyone can give themselves to you. Don't miss your chance, Temo. Don't screw it up like I did."

*****

The blast ripped a hole in through center of the compound. Walls collapsed and ceilings crumbed. Fragments of glass and metal sailed through the air like arrows. Our chairs and metal headbands shielded us from the shards and splinters that killed the men surrounding us. My chair had been knocked sideways on the floor and the wrist cuff snapped loose. I snatched a key ring from a dead man's belt. We unchained ourselves and grabbed their rifles, venturing out into the smoke-filled hallway.

We stumbled to the end of the corridor, our ears ringing with the crackle of flames and the moans of dying men. A stairwell led up to the iron gate of a giant loading garage. I remembered it from when we first approached the compound. It opened to the only paved road out of the compound. Through the gate we could see four pick-up trucks in the garage, with fuel barrels stacked on the side. The doors to the road were raised and outside the desert night was black and bottomless. Three rifle-toting men shouted in Spanish and climbed frantically into the cabin of one of the trucks. A fourth man carried a surface-to-air missile launcher, which he mounted in the back, crouching beside it in the giant trunk. Their vehicle screeched out of the garage with the lights off, vanishing into the black. It was only a few minutes later when a fireball lit up the horizon that I knew the drone had got them.

"Stupid fucks," Luke muttered. "Don't they realize the drone has infrared?"

"The only way out is underground. The way we came in. The bird can't see down us down there."

"That's how Juan Ricardo must've escaped."

"I hope we catch him. I'm looking forward to a little payback," Luke said, grinning as he clutched his rifle.

The stairs only went up, so we continued climbing to the second story. As we turned the corner, Luke spotted a husky guard in a bandanna at the top of the steps and shot him before he even saw us. The massive body tumbled down the staircase to a landing. Once it settled, we searched the pockets.