Constantine - The Novelization - Whoa is (Not)

gray dirt on that side; brown and gray dirt on this side. But that side was Mexico. This wasAmerica. A marvel.Francisco turned and, laughing aloud, strode north, one hand to the iron spike. The bleedingsoon stopped and on and on he strode, till he could feel his boots falling apart under his tread.Yet still he felt tireless, impervious. Mile after mile...He should be thirsty. He should be hot. But he wasn't.At last, in the late afternoon, he climbed a stony ridge, and peered into the distance. Was thata road, there, a couple of miles away, rippling in the heat at the horizon? Yes. A semitruckflashed in the sun, just a toy at this distance. But that was a road.Heading north.What awaited him in the U.S.A.? He knew that many found the United States to be almost ashellish as the more impoverished corners of Mexico. Illegals in North America were oftenunderpaid, exploited. A man picking through the dump, Victoriano, missing two fingers on hisleft hand, had told him that he'd paid a lot of money to coyotes to take him north. He'd made hisway to a meatpacking factory in Texas, because recruiters had told him he'd get ten dollars anhour. They paid him six, and then took half of that for his "housing" - which was sleeping on thefloor of a mobile home with six other men. The work had been so fast paced, such long hours -with no overtime that in his haste and fatigue he'd ended up slicing off two of his fingers with thetrimming knife. When he'd asked for some kind of compensation they'd turned him over to theauthorities, and he'd been deported. Penniless, down two fingers.That was not for Francisco. He was still a scavenger - and Los Angeles was a great heap ofmoney and gold and diamonds and dope and cars to be picked through....Thinking all this, he trudged on, until finally, topping a rise, he saw the highway below-and atruck stop.There was a drive-in restaurant with a gravel parking lot containing only a semitruck, a car.The truck was spuming blue smoke and pulling away. As Francisco trotted down the hillside,pulling the spike free of its thong, he saw that a man sat in the lone car, eating a hamburger, thefront of the car nosed up to the drive-in. He had just started: there would be much left forFrancisco to finish. And he needed that car. But he would have to kill everyone in the drive-in,too. They might call the highway patrol, otherwise, if they saw him take the car.He rushed into the restaurant. Just two people: a cholo cook and a waitress, a middle-agedwhite woman. They both looked startled when he rushed them, and neither managed to makemuch noise before he crushed their skulls with the spike. Easy as smashing lightbulbs.He scooped the larger bills from the cash register, then went out to the car, approaching it frombehind. The man turned around as Francisco opened his car door. Hadn't even locked it. Hestared, wide-eyed, his mouth open and full of half-chewed burger. Didn't manage to swallowbefore Francisco dragged him out by the collar, and crushed his spine under his boot.The spike made it possible, of course. A piece of iron with the power of the old gods in it.The old gods return, Francisco. Trust us! Now, take the car. Head north. Los Angeles…Don't drive too quickly. Don't attract the attention of the police. Just go the speed limit. It's notso very far to Los Angeles…Los Angeles, CaliforniaConstantine sat on the window seat of his apartment with a shot glass in one hand and acigarette in the other. On the window seat was the little black box he'd taken off the special shelfon the wall. The box just sat there, unopened.He poured another shot from the dregs of the Jack Daniel's bottle he'd been working on for acouple of days, then lifted the bottle to the streetlight shine coming murkily through the dirtywindow. The light colored itself amber coming through the bourbon. Just a few fingers left."You're nearly dead, soldier," he told the bottle. He put it down and drained the shot glass.