I’m dozing when the noise wakes me. A hiss, a crackle. A rattle? I open my eyes with a start, thinking I must have imagined it, then I hear it again, and this time louder. The third time has me jumping back, sick with a whole new fear. The warning rattle is coming from somewhere close and Benjamín stares in horror at El Turrón’s inanimate form. ‘El diablo,’ he breathes and crosses himself. The crackle is more insistent now and I freeze. I can see nothing, but I imagine everything. The evil coil, the head held aloft – and I know enough to keep absolutely still; but the next rattle has Benjamín babbling, ‘La serpiente del diablo se ha despertado,’ and it dawns on me it’s not the snake he’s frightened of, but the more dreadful possibility of El Turrón raised from the dead.

‘Benjamín, shhhh, it’s okay.’ I try to calm him.

‘Noh, it’s the devil,’ he insists, and right then, as though having received its cue from the wings of a theatre stage, comes a man’s voice.

‘Habla,’ Benjamín shrieks. ‘¡El diablo habla! He is the devil, Alice, yo lo juro.’

‘No, Benjamín! No.’ I grab his hand. ‘It’s the radio!’

He stares at El Turrón’s body then back to me.

‘We have to turn him,’ I say.

I’ve never before touched a corpse and I’m scared to do it now. The man’s dead. I know he’s dead, like the dog on the road had been dead in spite of his red satanic eyes, but somehow El Turrón’s presence seems no less threatening now than in life. Gingerly, we push him over. No longer depressed by the weight of his body, the radio is mute. I ease it from the pouch on his belt and allow him to roll back without once looking at the mess of his face.

Like a miner who’s stumbled upon his lost pan, Benjamín examines the piece of equipment in his hands, fiddling with the volume and switching between different channels.

‘Wait.’ I stop him. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘Duval has a radio.’

‘Yes, but so does every man with the Border Patrol.’

‘There are good men with the Border Patrol, Alice.’

‘What if those aren’t the ones they send?’

Benjamín holds the radio limply on his stomach, then leans back against the rock and closes his eyes.

Infuriatingly, I start crying then, just one or two small careful tears before I remember about conserving water. ‘Why did you crash the truck, Benjamín?’ I ask pitifully. ‘Why here? There’s nothing here. Nobody will find us.’

‘Don’t cry, Alice,’ he says helplessly. He hesitates then depresses the speak button.

‘Benjamín, no . . . don’t!’ I try to grab it.

‘Toribio Romo,’ he whispers into the rubber grille, ‘Santo Toribio Romo. Come to us.’