The Dead Run by Adam Mansbach

his knees.
    Through the tears springing to his eyes, Galvan saw El Cucuy’s lips twist into what, on another man, might have been called a smile. He strolled slowly toward the girl, arms clasped behind his back, snow-white mane undulating softly to the brittle rhythm of Cucuy’s footsteps.
    â€œYou shall cross the desert. Pass across over the false border.” He spat the last word, as if its taste were rancid. “You shall make your way to a holy site, a place whose power has long been sealed by blood. There, you will deliver the treasure you carry into the hands of my son,” he said, circling the slab, the girl. “It is a journey of some fifty miles, all told.”
    â€œSo go yourself,” Galvan shot back, his voice thick with pain.
    â€œI cannot.” El Cucuy traced a long pale finger up the girl’s quaking leg. When he spoke, his voice was wistful—pregnant with what Galvan might have taken for sadness, had the speaker been anyone but this monster. “My life is bound to this place.”
    Perhaps it was an opening, a trace of something human. Galvan modulated his voice, forced himself to meet Cucuy’s eye. “Listen, I’ll do whatever you want. Just, please, leave her alone.”
    El Cucuy cocked his head at Galvan and blinked as if seeing him for the first time.
    â€œYes,” he said slowly, opening his mouth. Galvan glimpsed the flicker of a moist black tongue and looked away. “Yes. I can feel it. You will succeed where the rest have failed.”
    He raised his arm, closed his eyes, and plunged four knifelike nails into the girl’s chest.
    Galvan wailed, and lunged. Two guards restrained him.
    Her body bucked and spasmed as the old man’s hand entered inch by inch, the muscles beneath the withered, leathery skin of his arm summoned to action. Trickles of blood appeared at the corners of her mouth, ran down her neck, and veined across her cheeks.
    The expression on El Cucuy’s face never changed. He might have been tinkering with a radio dial, trying to tune in a ball game. There was a casual precision to his movements; he had done this before.
    The girl’s eyes flared, bright as lightning, then went glassy. She was gone.
    When El Cucuy’s arm emerged a moment later, a soft, sputtering organ lay in his palm.
    â€œHold out your hand,” he ordered. The guards pulled Galvan to his feet, unlocked his bracelets.
    Some part of Galvan that was beyond fear, revulsion, any emotion at all, had taken control. He did what he was told.
    Like a chef plating a delicate entrée, El Cucuy laid the lump of tissue carefully atop his waiting palm.
    â€œThe heart of a virgin,” he said in a fierce, reverent whisper, and took a step back. “The sacred vessel of the gods. If you are pure, my Righteous Messenger, it will live on.”
    â€œYou’re crazy,” Galvan managed through gritted teeth, blood sluicing through his fingers.
    And then he felt it beat. Contract and expand, right there in his grip. A crimson drop flew from it, hit his chin.
    Thu-thump.
    Thu-thump.
    El Cucuy gazed down at it and nodded.
    â€œ ‘A righteous man, flanked by evil in all directions’—that is the dictate. We have our righteous man. Now, let us flank you.”
    They climbed the stairs and returned to the antechamber, the prisoners still suspended high above the ground. Galvan stared up at them, the girl’s heart palpitating in his hand. He felt protective of it, for reasons he did not understand. As if it were a field mouse he held, or a baby rabbit, not a—a . . .
    He spun to face El Cucuy, towering beside him.
    â€œWho was she?” Galvan demanded.
    El Cucuy continued to regard the shackled men. “No one of importance. Her parents sold her to me. It is well-known, the price a virgin brings. And I have no shortage of funds, or of need.” He half-turned toward Galvan, the huge pupils of his bottomless eyes