Читать книгу Devils And Dust - J.D. Rhoades - Страница 10

IN THE darkness, it was impossible to tell how long the truck had been on the road. Hours. Maybe days. Ruben fell into a kind of trance, fear and exhaustion turning his mind blank. Finally, the humming of the tires on pavement stopped and the truck was bouncing and jolting over another rough road. Eventually, it stopped. The people crammed inside murmured and stirred. The back door was yanked upward again, and bright light streamed in.

“Okay, muchachos,” a voice drawled, “ever’body out. Time to see the judge.”

Slowly, hesitantly, the people climbed out of the truck. Ruben and Edgar were the last ones out. Ruben looked around him, blinking in the bright sunlight.

They were on a flat space, pounded flat and worn down by multiple feet, in front of a row of long, low buildings that looked like barracks. Tall fences, topped with wicked-looking spirals of barbed wire, surrounded the area around the buildings. Beyond the wire, Ruben could see fields stretching out before the trees began again.

“Where is this place?” Edgar whispered. “Are we in prison?”

“No talking!” a voice barked. It was the blond man, still holding the shotgun trained on them. Other men with guns surrounded the group. “Form a line!” the blond man snapped. No one moved. The man raised the gun.

“Form a line!” Ruben shouted in Spanish. “Single file. Or he’ll shoot us.” They looked at him in surprise, but slowly shuffled into line.

The blond man was looking at Ruben appraisingly. “So,” he said, “You speaka de English.”

“A little,” Ruben said. “I learned in school.”

“Good. You’re the translator. Tell these assholes to march.” He gestured with his weapon toward a building down the row. The only tree inside the wire, a tall tree of a kind Ruben couldn’t identify, grew in front of it. “Building Three. That’s the Judicial Building.” The blond man grinned nastily. “Pray it’s the last time you have to see the inside of it.”

“That building.” Ruben pointed to the group. “Over there.”

Surprise was turning to resentment, but they complied.

When they got to the building with the large number 3 painted on the front, they were herded through the door into a large room, empty except for a table along the back wall. A pair of flags, one the familiar American flag, the other one a kind Ruben could not identify, flanked the table. The man who sat behind the table was the same bald man they had seen shoot the old man by the side of the road. This time, however, he was dressed in a black robe. As the group shuffled to a stop in front of him, he picked up a large wooden gavel lying on the table before him and banged it twice.

“All of you stand accused of attempting to violate the sovereign and sacred borders of the United States of America. The court has seen the evidence against you, to wit, that you all were apprehended, without passport or other legal authorization, in a truck just north of the Texas Border. Do any of you wish to offer any defense?”

They looked at each other in confusion. Ruben’s heart was in his mouth, but he had to speak.

“They don’t know what you’re saying,” he said. The blond man moved toward him, but the bald man motioned him away.

“If they don’t speak the language,” he said with a deadly mildness, “they shouldn’t be here.”

“What court is this?” Ruben said. “I thought in America, you could get a lawyer. And a chance to speak.”

“The courts,” the man said, “have become too weak and corrupt to deal with the threats we face. It’s up to the people to take justice back. To take their country back. And this…” he gestured with the gavel, “this is a court of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

Ruben opened his mouth to speak again, but not quick enough. The bald man smacked his gavel against the wood with a sound like a gunshot.

“Very well then. No valid defense is presented. The sentence is life at hard labor.”

“This is not right…” Ruben began. Pain exploded in the back of his head, driving him to his knees. He dimly heard someone screaming. A boot caught him in the stomach and doubled him over. Then another sudden shock of pain in his head, and everything went black.