Reeferpunk Shorts @page { margin-bottom: 5.000000pt; margin-top: 5.000000pt; } Contents Title/Copyright Page Introduction Reefer Ranger Fourth Horseman Del Rio Con Amor Paraplegic Zombie Slayer bio Reeferpunk Shorts Volume One by David Mark Brown ***** A Reeferpunk Collection Copyright 2011 David Mark Brown Art by Cody Hockin This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. All rights reserved. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means without prior written permission of the authors, except as provided by United States of America copyright law. These stories are completely works of fiction. Introduction to Reeferpunk Reeferpunk is a dieselpunk, refried alternate-history that explores the ramifications of an industrial revolution sans cheap oil.� But what if instead, brilliant minds devised an early cellulosic ethanol from the wondrous cannabis plant.� Mein Hanf! What if during the turbulent years of the Mexican Revolution and the grisly war to end all war a sinister and wealthy oligarchy set their minds to control 30% of the world's known petroleum resources in order to bring a global economy to its knees just as it was learning to walk? What if the success of their evil plot relied, in part, on the gumption of a disillusioned Mexican revolutionary turned goat herder ar tPnd hemp farmer, along with his two native American friends? Welcome to the pulp world of� Reeferpunk . Reeferpunk delivers a surge equivalent to a cocktail of 1 part serotonin, 2 parts adrenaline, with a dash of grenadine served over ice. It scratches the urge primeval. Whether experiencing an apocalyptic Dust Zone rampant with zombies, or torching an arsenal of German weaponry in revolutionary Mexico, Reeferpunk delivers thrilling, high-octane action. The first in a series of two volumes of shorts per year, Reeferpunk Shorts, Volume One includes four shorts: Reefer Ranger: Texas Ranger, J.T. McCutchen, didn't heed the Mexican revolution until it spilled across his border. Soon every revolutionary'll know, you've got to kill the man before you fight the power. Fourth Horseman: If the Dustbowl can't erase the regrets that haunt the Fourth Horseman, it's unlikely the tequila will. Besides, what's Armageddon without Death? Del Rio Con Amore: This ain't just Villa's revolution anymore and there's a whole lot of gold about to go disappearing. Viva this! Paraplegic Zombie Slayer: A neurotoxin transforms the Texas panhandle into a forbidden dust zone where Georgy Founder struggles to keep his three young sons alive and together as a family. It turns out that post-apocalyptic 1928 Texas ain't very handicap accessible, and while zombie-slaying is fulfilling, wheelchair lifts are pretty damn slow. The first novel, Fistful of Reefer, is also available. A double-fisted, dieselpunk, weird-Western pulp featuring goats, guns and the camaraderie of outcasts, Fistful of Reefer lives somewhere between� No Country for Old Men and The Three Amigos. Reefer Ranger Dark fell quickly and without contest during late winter in Matamoros. Ranger J.T. McCutchen strode across the fetid alley and leaned against an adobe wall, having tracked three men to an unmarked cantina. Once he situated himself to hear their echoing voices, he stilled his breathing. Soon he heard a familiar chorus buoyed into the night air by shots of cloudy mescal. �śLa cucaracha, la cucaracha, ya no puede caminar porque no tiene, porque le falta marihuana pa' fumar.” It was a revolutionary verse, one he had heard before. Unclear about the reference to marihuana, he knew the song to be sung often by Poncho Villa supporters. So he waited to discover whether the next verse would indicate something important about the men he sought. �śCuando uno quiere a una y esta unad w no lo quiere, es lo mismo como si un calvo en calle encuentra un peine.” It was nonsense, a farce. Something about unrequited love being as ridiculous as a bald man with a comb. No matter, he hadn’t suspected these men were Villistas anyhow, nor the rivaling Huertistas. The actions of Villa and Huerta only mattered to him when they spilled across the border, which after three years of revolution was happening more often. These were most likely simple bandits, cattle rustlers, but he hadn’t followed them across the border for a good night kiss. Now that he thought of it, it seemed unlikely he’d take the men into custody without bloodshed. For a second he regretted not jumping them before they reached town. He realized the singing had stopped and instinctively reached for one of his Colt .45 Flatheads. He turned to confront a crunch coming from behind him, but for the first time in his eleven years of service with the Texas Rangers, he was too slow. The business end of a shovel came down swiftly across his brow, his skull compacting with the force of the blow. Pain shot through his right arm causing him to drop his .45. Strange, but he thought first about the condition of his hat, rather than his head. He listed and would have fallen, but another attacker shoved him hard against the adobe wall. He smacked the back of his head against the mud brick, bracing himself and wondering where his hat had gone. His vision rolled left and right as if he pitched on a boat. �śUn Rinche solitario. Usted debe haber permanecido el hogar, el diablo tejano.” McCutchen steeled himself against what was coming. Bloodshed was a certainty now, most likely his own. �śWherever I’m standing is my home, you dirty Mexican bastard.” With that a fist came shooting out of the shadows, connecting with his jaw. Briefly he thanked God for the support of the adobe wall. Stay on your feet, he thought. He reached under his duster with his left hand to draw his second Colt Flathead. Now or never. Before he had a clear idea of what he was aiming at, the shovel came sweeping back into view. He forced off a round early as the shovel smashed into his hand. Then he forgot about God altogether. �ś�ĄDammit, el tiro híbrido yo!” A din of angry voices rattled in his head like bees in a tin can before a fury of blows broke against him. Desperately he tried to whistle, to call, anything, but his jaw had swollen shut. He covered his face the best he could. Finally someone pulled him from the wall and threw him to the ground, where a boot to his temple ended the nightmare. ~~~ Two gun shots brought a sudden end to the violence. �śLa prisa, el Villistas est�Ą viniendo. �ĄDe nuevo a la hacienda! �ĄViva Huerta!” Men scurried down the darkened alley echoing the refrain, �ś�ĄViva Huerta!” But the man who gave the orders paused at McCutchen’s body, which looked dead enough. He holstered his gun before stooping to pick up a Colt .45, the second one buried under the ranger’s body. �ś�ĄR�Ąpidamente!” He followed the others leaving a stillness behind. A trickle of filthy water and waste ran down the center of the alley mixing with McCutchen’s blood. A black cat leapt from a stack of crates, chasing cockroaches past where he lie face down in the dirt. An hour later a slumped, old lady exited from the cantina carrying a table cloth full of rags slung over her shoulder like a sack, her stature so diminutive the bundle settled in behind her knees. When she turned, there in her path lie the rinche. �śAy, dios mio,” the lady whispered as she bent down to check for a pulse. Her wrinkled face, round eyes peering from deep furrowed caves, was dark and ruddy like blood and chocolate. She straightened, then scuttled away muttering to herself, her sack still over her shoulder. Thirty minutes later she returned with two goats dragging a litter. Grunting she rolled his upper body into the makeshift basket of rope and clicked her tongue. The goats obediently tugged the limp body of the Ranger, cowboy hat now resting on his chest, to her house on the edge of town where they pushed through the heavy fabric hanging over her doorway. After a final glance over her shoulder the old woman followed them in. Moments later the goats reemerged into the night to scavenge next door for scraps of garbage. Slits of greasy light poured into the street from around the heavy curtain. Inside, the bent lady wrung a rag into a basin of water and dabbed crusted dirt and blood from the Ranger’s face while humming to herself. Unconscious, he rested upright in the basket of the litter. In the flickering light created by her oil lamp the old woman crossed herself in the Catholic manner while growing more rhythmic in her tune. She lifted McCutchen’s eyelids, but his eyes had rolled back into his head. She bent close to his face to block the wavering light. His eyes and the corner of his mouth twitched. She pulled down on his chin to open his airway listening intently as his breath came in raspy, labored draws punctuated with irregular shudders. Finally she massaged his face and neck and felt again for his pulse. Instead of being slow as it should, it increased in tempo, and his muscles tensed. Nimbly she jumped onto the bed and rummaged on a high shelf tucked under the thatched roof. On finding a small bowl of crushed leaves she returned to McCutchen’s side. Transferring flame from the lamp to the leaves, she breathed it briefly to life before allowing the fire to turn to smoke. She placed the Ranger’s hat on his forehead draping a wet rag over its brim to cover his entire face and chest. She sat close to him, holding the bowl, allowing the smoke to rise alongside his neck up into the tent she had created. At first the ranger snorted and coughed, but as she hummed to him and kept the smoke rising steadily with her breath his quaking muscles relaxed. �śAh, marihuana sagrada.” Sacred marijuana. ~~~ McCutchen groaned. He felt he'd awoken in the back of a dark, pulsing cave. Was this hell? He wrestled with his senses until he heard a soft chittering, like quail hiding in brush, but the sounds were incoherent. He focused on smells, but quickly wished he hadn’t, manure and smoke the only two odors he could distinguish. What the hell was going on? He tried to open his eyes. At first they refused, sewn together, until gradually a thick crusorea thickt cracked and broke. For several blinks he saw nothing but a flickering blur. Finally the scales fell away, and he recognized his surroundings as the inside of a chink house. Plaster had fallen in several areas, revealing the wooden structure packed with gravel and mud. It wasn’t a jacal or adobe, common housing for poor Tejanos and Mexicans. It was the traditional housing for Indians. The realization caused him to panic. He seized and reached for his Colts, but they were gone. Pieces of memory came back to him in random order. He remembered hearing the chorus to La Cucaracha, discovering the trail of two horse thieves at the edge of a thicket, and finally the dark shape of a shovel cracking him in the skull. He remembered the scrape but had no way of knowing a full 24 hours had passed. The chittering sounds returned. He moved to rise, but his arms were tangled, or tied down. He swore, his eye and mouth beginning to twitch. His headache pulsed faster with his increasing heart rate. �śUsted no debe maldecir tanto, cursing no good por tu health.” He flinched as an old woman, bearing no signs of fear or menace on her ancient face, pushed through a curtain that served as a front door. He flashed his eyes around the room, but nothing jumped out at him. Nothing seemed to indicate any sort of danger. His arms had only been laced through the ropes of a rudimentary litter, which, upon closer inspection appeared to be the source of the manure smell that infused him. �śPardon my French,” he said as he freed himself and sat up. �śFran�żais?” The lady looked puzzled. �śNo, no. Never you mind. English will be fine. Now if you don’t mind me asking, where the hell am I? And what happened?” �śEn mi casa. Los bandidos le dejaron para los muertos, pero dios sonrió en usted. �żEntienda?” The old lady paused to let him catch up. �śBandits. Yeah, I understand.” He slowly looked himself over. Everything appeared to be intact. He was cut, bruised and bloodied, but not so bad off, considering. His left hand had swollen stiff, along with most of his face. Two thoughts occurred to him. �śMy hat? My guns?” She nodded her head, but stood there silently. He tried again, �śMi pistolas? Ah, sombrero?” �śSi.” She pointed with her lips to his right side. He looked down. His hat, his grandfather’s Stetson, rested beside him. Crushed in the front and dirty, it was no worse off than him. He popped his neck, reached down and took the hat to straighten it. As he did so, a cockroach scurried into the shadows. �śMi pistolas?” The woman smiled and nodded in the affirmative. He was about to try again when he caught a whiff of something strange coming from his hat. �śWhat’s that smell?” �śMarihuana.” He narrowed his eyes at the old lady and waited for her to continue. ~~~ �śMarihuana para sus asimientos y su asma. Leght su asm ayudó a curar. Marihuana, good medicine.” McCutchen bolted upright, pain shooting along his spine. �śYou pumped me full of loco weed? To make me better?” �śSi.” �śYou crazy old hag! What the hell did you do that for?” He could hear his Grandfather’s words echoing in his brain, lecturing him about the limitations of men who depend on stimulants and alcohol for courage. He’d taken a vow when he first became a ranger to never allow anything stronger than a good glass of wine to violate the sanctity of his body, wine being the only acceptable form of booze during his Scotch-Irish, Presbyterian upbringing. His father may of been a spineless, religious nut, but he made a dang good wine. As he started to tear into the old lady again, the muscles in his face jerked and twitched worse than before. �śNot now." He put his fingers to his face to steady the twitching flesh. Nervous tics had affected him since youth and were intensified by stress. While studying the latest criminal justice methods in Austin he’d developed successful means to discipline and control his body. He tried to stand. "Look, woman. I need my damn guns, and I’ll get out of your hair." The woman clucked softly and shook her head, positioning herself to support the Ranger. Struggling to fend the old woman off and stand without her help, McCutchen flopped backward into the litter. Suddenly the old lady shushed him with a slashing gesture across her throat. He didn’t argue, because he heard it too. He tried to still himself, to slow his heart rate and control the muscle spasms in his face and throat. Swallowing came hard, and a humming rose in his ears. Relax, dammit. But it was no use. The old lady reached under the mattress to pull out a slick Winchester rifle, lever action, apparently fully loaded. �śWhat the�"�ś She held a single finger to her lips. He heard it again, the sound of boots scuffling in the dirt outside the chink house. He tried to get the old lady’s attention, mouth to her the same question from before, "pistolas?" But the old lady stared intently at the heavy curtain hanging in her doorway. A shallow bleat from one of her goats ended in gurgling. "Madre santa de Maria." The old woman kissed an amulet hanging from her neck and steadied the rifle. It would’ve been comedic, if his life hadn’t depended on it �" the shriveled old lady leveling a rifle longer than she was tall. Still trying to steady himself and regulate his breathing, McCutchen scanned the room for his pistols. He heard more movement outside. The edge of the curtain bulged inward. This is crazy, he thought. I’m being hunted by bandits in Mexico with only a raisin and some goats to protect me, and the only thing he could find within reach to fight with was a kettle. Cast iron, he figured he could do something with it. The curtain moved again. A goat poked his head through the opening and bleated, blood dripping from its muzzle. A roar and flash ripped the stillness in two as the old lady pulled the trigger on the .30-30 and worked the lever action to reload. ~~~ �ś�ĄDiablo en infiend blo en rno!” The shack danced with the impact of hot lead. McCutchen slammed onto the earthen floor, abandoning the idea of the kettle. Plaster ripped off the walls and shattered in clouds of rock and dust in the air above him. �śSon of a bitch!” He noticed the old lady still standing in the middle of the room. �ś�ĄEl Senior del cielo, derriba su fuego para quemar Huerta y a sus diablos!” She shoved the barrel of the rifle into a hole in the wall and worked the lever, burning the night air with gunpowder and lead. McCutchen pulled himself along the floor turning over everything looking for his Colts, while his throat continued to tighten. His right eye twitched so rapidly he could barely use it. Smoke filled the upper half of the room, and he realized the thatched roof was on fire. In another few minutes the fight would be over one way or the other. The woman stomped next to his right hand, and he looked up. �ś�ĄPistola!” She pulled one of his Colt .45’s out from under her skirts, handing it to him. �śI’ll be a son of a�" !” He spun the cylinder. It was fully loaded. Outside, the gunfire lulled as the bandits waited for the flames to do their work. With nimble fingers the old lady reloaded the Winchester. She pulled a tin out from under rubble on her bed and threw it to McCutchen. �śYou take. Good medicine.” He ignored her and instead tried to level his Colt toward the door where the torn curtain still covered most of the opening, but it was little use. He couldn’t steady his aim, his face and neck yanking to the left. He’d be able to kill a man at ten feet, maybe. At least it was night. But the fire would make it easy for the bandits to see him and the old lady when they stepped from the burning house. The woman bent down and took the tin. She shoved it into McCutchen’s chest. �śO.K., O.K.” He put the tin into an inner pocket in his duster. The old lady didn’t wait any longer. She surged toward the curtain, pushing through it into the night before McCutchen could respond. Gunfire blazed from all around. McCutchen lurched toward the door, chapped that he was following the old lady’s lead. But when a bullet struck the door frame, shrapnel from the wood and rock knocked him off balance. He hit the door jam hard, causing the remains of the burning roof to collapse inward. Sparks showered around him as a roof support struck him on the shoulder and drove him to the ground. The smoldering support pinned his left hand, cooking the flesh. Smoke burned his lungs. He rolled onto his back and heaved the beam off. Above, he saw night sky where the roof had been. He couldn’t believe it, but gunshots continued as the old lady called down fire from heaven while the Winchester delivered it. He pulled himself into the chill night air on his belly, bear crawling away from the illumination of the flames toward the nearest shelter. A hot slug struck him in the thigh like a hornet. He gritted his teeth, rolling onto his back. Another flash, followed quickly by a pop, originated from the brush beyond the clearing the goats had grazed. Dirt kicked up next to the ranger’s boot. He steadied his aim toward the source of the flash and let his Colt roar. After tearing off three quick shots, he continued toward > He threw his back up against the cold cement, gasping for breath. His head spun. Lights danced and popped in his vision until the night suddenly fell quiet. The gunfire ceased, but he couldn’t stop the spasms. Finally, overwhelmed by pain, he passed out. ~~~ McCutchen awoke to several sensations at once. Scattered drops of rain chilled his exposed skin and hissed among the burning embers of the chink house’s rubble. Numbness alternated with electricity throughout his extremities. The orange light of the sun brushed the belly of the clouds on the horizon. Finally a snuffling beside his heard jerked him totally awake. A goat, one of the twins belonging to the old lady, nuzzled at the crusted blood in his hair. Snorting along his shoulder the animal tugged his duster open and sniffed the tin in his pocket. �śAlright, that’s enough. Shoo.” Lying flat on his back, he tried to wave the animal off, but even the slightest movements were difficult. He found his hat lying next to his head, brim down and relatively dry. Well that’s a stroke of luck. He propped himself up and discovered his Colt digging into his back. �śHello pretty.” He checked the cylinder. Three bullets. No sooner than the blood returned to all its normal circuits, his nervous tics kicked in. He could breath, but his right eye flickered and his neck randomly jerked his whole face to the left worse than it had as a child. A crackling sensation returned in his shoulder and hand, like someone had shoved his frame into skin three sizes too small. He’d forgotten about the burn. Picking at the charred edges of his duster, he glimpsed the white puss forming in and around the wound. His left hand had swollen and cracked, first degree burns covering the back of it. The flesh trapped under his ring blistered and continued to cook. He tried to spin it, but it stuck fast, his meaty hand much too swollen. He shook his head. Elizabeth, why can’t I let you go? Finally he remembered the bullet to his thigh. Cringing, he bent down to check behind the torn flap of bloodied denim. �śHot damn, I’ll live yet.” It had merely scratched him, nothing more than a bite of flesh. Coming full circle he remembered what had brought him to Mexico in the first place. Grinding his teeth, he allowed the poison of the night’s events to flow through his veins, strengthening him with hatred. The goat lapped water from the trough, the thought of drink giving McCutchen immediate purpose. �śMind if I join you?” Sweeping flotsam aside, he cupped his hands to drink. After several scoops he steeled himself against the pain and rose to his full 6’3” height. He had some killing to attend to, but first. He scanned the scene around him. Senseless. A warm slice of sun burned over the horizon and under the clouds, blinding him as he peered toward the old woman’s house. He shaded his eyes and moved closer. Remnants of a pool of blood and drag marks in the dirt indicated where the old croon’s first shots had struck home, most likely a kill. He refused to think about the woman herself. There could’ve been only one outcome for her, and thinking about it made his eye spasm. He moved around the edge of the rubble, into the clearing between the woman’s house and the wilderness beyond.engness be The first grisly site he encountered was the companion goat, throat slit from ear to ear, his side half charred by burning rubble. Pattering rain drops dappled the thick dust, disguising the blood trails. But he found one that started in the center of the clearing and worked its way toward the brush. ~~~ He didn’t want to finish analyzing the scene, but he had no choice. Temporarily leaving the blood trail, he swung wide to search the edge of the brush first, drawing his Colt just in case. He recognized the prickly pear he’d loosed three rounds into the night before. At least one of the slugs had not been wasted, blood spatter covering several pads. The trail led south toward a cluster of large mesquites, probably where the horses had been tied up. He would check that later. Moving more quickly, he steeled himself for the inevitable. �śGood God.” In an opening surrounded by acacia shrubs McCutchen found the remains of the old woman’s body. She hadn’t just been killed. She had been desecrated. He swallowed and took a deep breath before bending down over the grisly scene. The woman had been shot several times. By the looks of it, more than a few of them before she fell, and some after. In anger one of the bandits had carved her with a knife. He coughed, finding it harder to breathe. About to stand, he noticed something clenched in the woman’s hand. Prying back her fingers revealed the amulet she had kissed the night before. Too much unfinished business, he thought, as he rubbed the amulet between his thumb and finger. Slipping it inside his duster, he remembered the tin. Curious, he opened it. �śCrazy old bitty.” The tin contained a dozen tightly rolled marihuana cigarettes. He clenched the busted and swollen fingers of his left hand, listening to the voices of his grandfather and the old woman in competition. But his grandfather, a ranger to the end, had gone to rest along time ago. This woman’s body was barely cold, and she had died, in part, because of him. �śGood medicine.” It was the least he could do for a woman whose name he would never know. He pulled out a single cigarette. Stooping over the burning coals of a roof beam, he puffed it to life and took a slow drag. He coughed at first, hacking up a loogie, then settled back into inspecting the scene. By the time he reached the mesquites where the horses had been tied his breathing came easier. There had been five of them. One dead, one wounded. Out of the three remaining, one was heavy while the other two where slight. They rode away toward the south. The woman had mentioned Huerta. If these were Huertistas operating this far north they needed protection against the roving Villistas, the infamous peon cavalry of Pancho Villa. Only one place for twenty miles could provide that sort of protection. First he had to find his horse. The remaining goat followed him half way to the cantina before turning around. He felt affection for the little loaner, but a half-chewed up gringo rinche wandering around Matamoros by himself early in the morning was conspicuous enough without a goat trailing him. On the other hand, there was no point in being furtive now. No longer tracking his prey, his next move would be offensive. Soon enough his enemies would know exactly where he was. By the time he reached the northern edge of town his tic had completely gone. �śWejus gone. ll I’ll be damned.” He patted the tin in his duster. After a quick look up and down the river bank of the Rio Grande he curled his lips and pierced the morning air with a sharp two-toned whistle. He bent the pitch upward and added a trill at the end, repeating it twice before crouching behind a yucca. It didn’t pay to be a visible target anywhere along the river these days, on either bank. In less than a minute he heard a familiar whinny as his horse, Chester the IV, came trotting up from the river bottom. ~~~ Sleek and happy, Chester snorted. Not in the least perturbed it had been thirty six hours since McCutchen left him by the river, he mulled green grass around the bit in his mouth. �śNo, no. I’m fine. You?” McCutchen gritted his teeth, swinging himself up into the saddle. In no hurry, and not particularly desirous of agitating his wounds further, he lead Chester at a comfortable walk around the western edge of town. Having been spotted heading north toward the river, he carefully remained out of view, so watching eyes would assume he had returned to Texas soil. Good riddance. But he wasn’t going home yet. He had work to do. The two-story, stone hacienda jutted from the horizon, visible from miles away. Dismounting on the backside of a knob, he indicated for Chester to stay close. With his Colts reloaded, he took jerky, dried apricots and a canteen to the top of the rise. Making himself comfortable, he watched the comings and goings while putting together a plan for his night raid. The property for miles around belonged to Hacienda Nuevo Santander. As well, the hacienda operated over seventy acres of farmland and a mill. It wasn’t cotton, but McCutchen couldn’t tell from his perch what the mill processed. A cluster of adobe houses sat at the near corner of the fields. That would be the first place they would spot him, if he wasn’t careful. On a slight rise to the east perched the hacienda proper. Brick buildings surrounding the original stone mansion included a store, cantina, blacksmith, kitchen and whatever else the hacendado deemed necessary to live according to proper standards. A damn waste. Extravagance leading to laziness and weakness, as far as McCutchen was concerned. Many of the Mexicans felt the same way, disassembling or crushing most of the haciendas at the beginning of the revolution. The fact this one still prospered fit with the notion that Huerta had taken a liking to it personally. But that was none of his business. His concern was that vaqueros from this hacienda had rustled cattle from Texas ranches, including the Corona, and had recently tried to kill him, twice. Both stealing cattle and threatening the life of a ranger were killing offenses. That meant the law stated he could kill them twice, and he intended to. Justice was coming, but it would have to wait until nightfall. Only one thing troubled him. He’d never gotten a good look at the men, not at the cantina or at the old woman’s. If gambling, affliction of the pathetic, had not been beneath him, McCutchen would’ve bet the bastard that carved the woman still had the Winchester. That was something. And with any luck, he’d reclaim his lost Colt too. His .45 would no doubt be gripped by the man who organized the ambush at the cantina. He’d put down whichever hijo de puta he fo Thta und with his pistola, and be doing the world some good. To pass the time he would work through his relaxation regimen and try to take a nap before heading down for reconnaissance later. He grunted as he crossed his legs and rested his elbows on his thighs, careful to avoid the gunshot wound. Opening his palms upward he cleared his mind. ~~~ McCutchen observed several sentinels setting up watch around the periphery of the hacienda, including one dang near the nob where he’d just been. When darkness fell, he slipped easily through the first line of defense. Guessing they would switch the watch by midnight, and anxious to get the job done sooner rather than later, he moved quickly. He couldn’t have hoped for a better situation. Some of the hacendado’s men started a large bonfire to fend off the damp chill blowing inland from the Gulf of Mexico. McCutchen knew their line of sight would be diminished by the flames. The peons remained the wildcard. He and Chester steered clear of the fire and the buildings, choosing the spot safest from stray eyes. For several minutes McCutchen sat quietly in the saddle observing the scene. Several men, six to eight, sat on benches around the edge of the fire whooping and hollering while peons milled nervously across from them. McCutchen shook his head. For amusement the vaqueros had chosen to humiliate peons by making them dance. The breeze shifted, carrying their voices toward him. "This is some good stuff, yes?" �śWhy don’t you have some?" "Oh that’s right, I forgot.” "You’re too busy dancing." The vaqueros cackled with laughter, firing off rounds in the air and at the peons’ feet. The raucous startled their horses which had been tied up opposite McCutchen’s position. These dumb bastards, Villa could come riding in here with an army, and they’d never hear it. Finally they quieted down as the leader picked up where he’d left off. �śBesides, you’re too poor and ugly to smoke the General’s personal marihuana.” A vaquero choked and blew smoke, the others laughing at him. Finally the pieces started to fit. The crop McCutchen had seen during the day was ca�ąamo, marihuana. Even if Huerta smoked incessantly, the only reason to grow this much this far north was for trade along the border to obtain information, weapons and favors. Whatever benefit McCutchen experienced from the plant, these men were obviously too boorish and undisciplined to enjoy. It spurred an evil inside them. Intoxicated and cruel, the jackals turned violent on the huddle of peons scattering them toward the adobes. The image of the eviscerated old lady flashed in his mind. McCutchen thought a couple vaqueros had broken out in a scuffle, until he realized the one who seemed to be el Jefe had snuggled up with a peon women. She tried to defend herself, and he turned rough. Slapping her, she fell back almost tumbling into the fire. A cry came from one of the adobes. So they’re watching. If he could take out the first few vaqueros maybe the peons would help, or at least not get in the way. El Jefe stood and spat on the girl while she squirmed on the ground. Then McCutchen noticed it. On the the bench beside the man rested a rifle, the old woman’s Winchester. Plus, as el Jefe approached the girl he chose to draw a knife, rather than a gun, threatening her with it lewdly. That left no more than six men against the six bullets in his Colt. He lashed Chester with the reins. The two of them, horse and rider, drew within yards of the fire before the vaqueros realized a terrible apparition bore down on them. Gazing dumbly into the darkness they first spotted Chester’s flaring nostrils, then McCutchen, as he swung his right leg backwards over Chester’s rump. He spun around completely to make a running dismount. The ranger needed every bullet to count. ~~~ With his momentum carrying him toward the vaqueros, McCutchen focused on the first among them to respond and squeezed the trigger. The cylinder rolled, the hammer fell, gunpowder ignited and a singular hole appeared in his forehead. Again, McCutchen squeezed the trigger. Fire lit the end of his barrel. A second man fell with a sudden hole to the forehead. Chester continued at full bore. Leaping over the fire he clipped a burning branch that showered sparks on the retreating men. McCutchen slowed to a steady walk, mechanically working both hands as if he held the second .45 in his left. In reality the right had to work twice as fast. He pulled the trigger a third time, and a fourth.� Two more men fell, skulls vented to the night. But it wasn’t enough. A bullet whizzed past McCutchen’s head. The immediate crack, like axe on wood, meant it’d been all too close. He whistled for Chester and bolted toward the adobe buildings, putting the bonfire between him and the remaining vaqueros, including the son of a bitch with the knife. Only two more rounds came close as he reached for horn and stirrup, snagging Chester at full gallop between the fire and the adobe homes. But as McCutchen shifted his weight into the saddle Chester slumped and dove headfirst into the ground. The sudden change of momentum flung McCutchen sprawling over the horse’s head. He hit hard with no time for pain. Dirt pelted him in the face as a bullet missed low. To make things worse, he heard el Jefe ordering someone to go for help. McCutchen scurried back to the fallen horse who rasped up a mixture of blood and foam with every labored breath. �śDammit. I’m sorry, boy.” He took shelter behind the horse and felt the animal’s warm body jerk with fresh bullet wounds. Now he was in for it. No horse, no element of surprise and only two more bullets-- Angry at himself for stupidly losing precious seconds he reloaded his Colt with rounds from his belt. He tried to think. If one vaquero rode for help only two remained. If he could get them and find a horse-- A slug tore through the meat of his calf, interrupting his thoughts. His body hummed with pain, every nerve fighting to override his ability to reason. But he had to think. Something was wrong. He wasn’t in their line of fire. Like a shotgun blast it came to him. The glint of fire light on steel flickered in an adobe window. He rolled to his left as another flare revealed a rifle baifyd a rifrrel spewing hot lead. The bullet struck Chester mercifully in the head. With no cover and no choice McCutchen pumped his good leg, hobbling toward a narrow opening between adobe homes. Only a couple of stray shots pursued him, the vaqueros possibly reloading. He braced himself against the cold adobe and tried to think clearly, but he was losing the battle. The peons had turned against him. Stupid Mexicans were all alike, willing to shoot the guy helping them, just because he’s a gringo. Or did they know he was a rinche? How could they know? But who the hell else would charge in here alone? His line of thought wasn’t helping, but furious, he couldn’t stop. All the piss poor treatment he’d taken from Mexicans over the years. Even the children hissed, �śRinche, pinche, cara de chinche,” calling him a mean ranger with the face of a bug. He was only doing his job. And a damn fine job at that, protecting worthless, ungrateful trash. And now Chester. The best damn horse he had ridden, shot down by some snot-nosed peasant. Not even a hardened bandito, but a peon who couldn’t even recognize help when he saw it �" a peon growing marihuana and spreading it into my Texas! A darkness absorbed him fully. The gravel crunched behind him. Faster than God, he spun and pulled the trigger. ~~~ �ś�ĄMaria! �ĄNo, Maria!” A woman’s wailing echoed off the adobe walls. He inched closer to the body he'd just shot, now slumped on the ground, and kicked the head out of the shadows. It listed into the sliver of moon light in the narrow alley. McCutchen made out the shape of a woman’s face, a woman’s hair. He knelt down. It was the girl el Jeffe had threatened with his knife, no more than 13 years old. Her dress torn, a dark stain spread across her chest. �śJesus.” McCutchen stood woozily. He'd never shot a women. Never in all his years of bringing justice to these God-forsaken borderlands. And only a girl at that. Sobs came from a nearby adobe. �śShut up! Shut the hell up, you hear me? Comprende English?” McCutchen limped around the back of the adobe into the open night air. �śI ain’t no bug. I ain’t no badman. I’m the God-damned law! You hear me?” He fired into an open window. �śYou caused this, not me!” Something behind him caused him to turn, the hair on the back of his neck jolting with electricity. Something big was moving in the dark a hundred yards off, or a lot of somethings. A single shot echoed from the direction of the sentry on the knoll. He flinched, but it hadn’t been aimed at him. Suddenly the night air boiled with angry voices. �ś�ĄViva la revolucion! �ĄViva Villa!” �śSon of a bitch.” Of all the nights for Villa to attack the Huerta stronghold, it had to be tonight. Of all the dumb luck. McCutchen limped as fast as he could toward the last adobe in the row of buildings, a large square structure standing thirty yards apart from the others. In the daylight it appeared to be the best built, and in this case, the most likely to stop bullets. It also had no windows, only a huge double doors. War whoops shattered the quiet like church bells on a Sunday morning. Momentarily he thought about bolting, setht boltiimply running into the brush and letting the Mexicans kill each other. But he couldn’t do it. He wouldn't scurry into the desert like a bug. Sons a bitches, he still had a job to do. He shot the lock off the heavy wooden doors and swung them open enough to see inside. A stack of kerosine lanterns sat next to a bucket of lighters. Good enough. He shut the heavy doors behind him, drowning in the pitch blackness. Shouts from outside grew louder. Groping in the dark, he found a four by four beam meant to barricade the doors from the inside, and dropped it into place just as bodies slammed against its callous surface. He turned toward the lanterns, found one and lit it. �śWhat in the name of all things holy?” He held the lantern high until it revealed an armored vehicle and crate upon crate of weapons. Several of the crates opened, he didn’t even recognize some of what he saw. They were guns, he just hadn’t seen their sort before. ~~~ A large pile of rifles spilled at his feet. Behind and to the right, several boxes originally reading �śVasićka” had been scratched out and relabeled, �śgranada.” He pulled off one of the lids. �śBombs.” The box was filled with handheld bombs. He'd heard of these, explosives with a fuse or that detonated on contact. He stepped away slowly. The auto loomed to his left. Beyond that, a stack of machine guns, like the ones the cavalry carried, but newer. German. Overwhelmingly, the crates where imprinted with German. He'd seen enough of the language in the hill country around Austin to recognize it without a doubt. The pounding on the doors grew louder before coming to a stop. Gunshots splintered the wood. The heavy doors would take a battering, but they wouldn’t last forever. He jumped onto the runner of the truck which had a large machine gun mounted to its bed, coils of ammunition already fed through the device. He'd never driven an auto or fired a machine gun, but he'd driven a tractor since he was 13 and seen the military work the contraptions several times. �śThis is crazy." Snatching two granadas, he scurried back to the truck, which to his relief started right up. He put out the lantern and stood in the driver seat waiting for the doors to give way. Within seconds the beam splintered and fell to the ground. As the two giant doors swung outward the low rumble of the gasoline engine greeted the confused mob. McCutchen chucked one granada and then the other as hard as he could. Both exploded simultaneously knocking him back into the driver’s seat, deafening him. He jammed the truck into gear and shoved his foot down on the pedal. Spitting gravel against the back wall of the adobe, he shot out a short distance before slamming on the breaks as soon as he cleared the doors. Groans and swears filled the immediate darkness while shooting and yelling filled the further distances like coyotes calling to each other. With his good leg he leapt into the back of the truck to wield the machine gun. Here goes. He depressed the trigger slightly, and the recoil shook him to the bone. He held on, clinching his jaw to keep the teeth from rattling out of his head. Anything that moved, he lit it up, until finally nothing moved. He released the trigger, giving the gun a chance to cool and taking the opportunity to untangle sevhe untangleral more feet of ammunition. From his vantage he saw directly across the fields to the old hacienda. Foolishly, every lamp in every room had been lit, or perhaps the lights were� electric. The Huertistas pulled back and retreated across the field toward the stone walls of the hacienda. But the Villistas responded to the machine gun fire thinking it was intended for them. A cluster of horses pulled away from the main regimen, riding around the field toward McCutchen’s position. �śCome and get me, boys." As the lead horses got within fifty yards he opened it up. The pealing thunder of the gun erased all sounds of life. His eyes, rattling in their sockets, saw nothing but death. Then a click and a whirring buzzed around his head as the barrel spun but the ammunition jammed. Amazed it had lasted this long, he jumped down and took one last granada from behind the seat. As several Villistas regrouped and bore down on him with guns blazing he chucked the bomb into the yawning darkness of the munitions shed and worked his good leg as fast as he could toward the fields. ~~~ This time the explosion rippled like a chain of firecrackers, until eventually fumes from the kerosine combusted into a fireball that lit up the night like high noon. The concussion, followed by a wave of heat, launched him headlong into the furrows of marihuana. �śSanta Maria.” The lead rider, tossed by the explosion, landed yards away from McCutchen. Shock registered on the dazed revolutionary's face as he realized a chewed up gringo leveled a pistol directly at him.� Without another thought the ranger dispatched him. �śMary can’t help you. The time for prayer is over. Judgment has come.” McCutchen picked up a burning splinter of the wooden doors and limped around the edge of the field, lighting the last stalk of each row on fire as he went. He arrived at the bonfire pleased to see the Winchester waiting for him. Holstering his Colt, he clutched the rifle in his hands. �śNo gods. No prayers. Only justice.” He reached inside his duster, took the old woman’s amulet and threw it in the fire. He continued his uneven progress through the blazing field of ca�ąamo, a single, sinister silhouette cutout against the flames he left behind him. Halfway across the field the alarm sounded for retreat. The remaining Villistas gathered in clumps along the road and lashed their horses toward the west and south. McCutchen reached the great stone gates as the surviving Huertistas scattered, gathering whatever horses they could. Right inside the gate, barking orders, stood the man the ranger had hoped to find. While the man waited impatiently for his horse to be brought to him, McCutchen limped steadily forward. His clouded thoughts could think only one thing. Justice demanded to be paid in blood. The marihuana-fueled lawlessness of Mexico would not reach Texas while he still drew breath, and he was breathing now. At thirty paces the bandit turned to face him. A charred rinche recently back from the grave several times over was the last thing he expected, and the site clearly unnerved him. McCutchen wanted to be sure before he shot the man down, so he let him draw first. Steal flashed and gunpowder flared, but the bullet went wide. Mielwent wiore importantly, as McCutchen drew his .45 he knew with a certainty he'd been fired on with his own gun. From twenty five paces he pulled the trigger, putting one bullet in the Mexican bandit’s eye. He took his stolen Colt from the dead man’s grip, using it to shoot the man who finally delivered the ringleader’s horse. The horse snorted but didn’t bolt. McCutchen recognized a mutual spark burning in the beast’s eyes. �śWhoa there,” he calmed the animal. �śYou’ve got a new boss now.” Hoisting himself up with the horn until he could swing his injured leg over the horse’s rump, he stroked the animal's neck. �śChester V, that’s what I’ll call you. Now Hyaw!” He lashed the animal with the reins and galloped out the front gate, heading toward home. As he mounted the little knoll, he stopped to look back at the carnage outstretched below him. �śLa Cucaracha indeed. Everybody knows its the roach that lives in the end.” He spat and turned to go, now at a walk. The next day reports would reach Brownsville of a great battle at Nuevo Santander. Many dead, and many wounded. But nobody would ever know a rinche had started it, or that a rinche had finished it. Fourth Horseman �śWhen the Lamb opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, "Come!" I looked and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hell was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth.” ~ Revelation 6:7-8 The storm thinned allowing sepia sun rays to filter through the dust and illuminate the interior of the trailer with a gaunt light. A man, slack-jawed and skewed across a straw-stuffed mattress in the rear of the trailer, gargled and choked until a clot of phlegm hurdled from his opened mouth. He coughed and his swollen tongue listed back in place. Snot seeped into his mustache as he dreamt. But it was not a fantasy or a dream of past or future from where his dreaming began. First he dreamt of his current situation as seen from outside his body, an effort of his subconscious to free itself. What he saw was a world effected by his apathy. Roiling black clouds of dust and hot winds scoured the flatlands from horizon to horizon like a stew of steel wool brewing over a fire. Beneath the banshee was the panhandle of Texas. An abandoned ranch north of Amarillo lay scattered with the dried out carcasses of its cattle. In the center of the ranch a dirt road leading from Farm to Market 1061 dead-ended at a small Airstream trailer. The trailer pitched in the storm. Abandoned to its fate, the solitary tear-shaped capsule could just as well have sprung from the ground or fallen from the sky as been delivered there by some long gone vehicle companion that forsook its cargo to save itself. Yet tethered to the leeward side was a living beast, a grey gelding with smoking dark eyes like molten lead had recently cooled in both sockets. Impervious to the howling sand the beast neither whinnied nor blinked, only peered th ofrough the black roller as if watching a movie unfold across the curtain. A handful of tenacious flies clung to its rough hide. The horse turned its head to snort at the porthole window of the trailer. Phlegm from its nostrils latticed the glass before being encrusted with dust. Inside the trailer creaks and snaps could be heard above the constant howl of the storm. An irrepressible, fine dust levitated in the space. A tin cup clanged about in a porcelain basin, water a bygone thought. Water, the basis for life.� The front cabin of the trailer housed a small kitchen and storage cabinets, all enshrouded with dust. A blue enameled kettle, matching the cup, overturned onto the floor. The sound was instantly muffled by the suffocating dust and terrible storm. The door to the trailer rattled on its hinges but held fast. On the floor, just beyond the man’s reach, sat a green bottle with a rectangular bottom. Raised glass lettering said only Casa Herradura, 1878, Reserva. A wooden crate, half full of similar bottles still corked and sealed with wax, sat by the door. The man was Death. His skin was raised and bristled with hair as if permanently chilled, his face sallow and etched with the burden of time. His chest rose and sank steadily while an occasional limb or facial muscle jerked with seizure. On his stomach perched an odd device illuminated with a dim, morbid green light from within. Letters and words scrolled across the face of it, appearing and then disappearing from the bowels of the black box. Routinely it vibrated and began its short message anew: �śWork backing up without you. Coming to a head, can’t wait much longer. ~ Famine.” Next he dreamt of the past. ~~~ The air exploded with sulfur, as it did every time the riders scorched the surface of the earth -- burning through planes of time and space to crash exclusively into the four dimensions that humans called home. The smell would become as comforting as pumpkin spice cookies and then lose all distinction of joy, but currently the sizzling sulfur air ignited a raw lust in him, so fresh, so new was his experience. The visceral sounds of war washed over him. Nearby a lance found its mark, pierced flimsy steel armor pounded and reshaped too many times. Then came the sound of snapping wood, an impact, the air being knocked out of mortal rider as he loses his mount. Fresh. All of it so fresh. His lungs burned as he swelled to test the limits of his new mortal shell. Giddy, he swung his scythe with all the might his muscles could muster. In a single stroke the downed rider was cleaved and the earth split for the space of a few yards. Ah, he thought, I will have to do better. According to convention, his companions crossed over before him scattering the battlefield into chaos. Upon his arrival the smell of cooked flesh already intermingled with rot and decay. He spun his weapon in his right hand, dipping it down and back, then lifting it horizontally above his head before finally lashing out at full arm’s length and releasing two heads from their earthly anchors. He lifted his gaze toward the hill Golgotha. Upon it Famine, always mindful of his protege, nodded back in affirmation before turning his horse and galloping off to judge the surrounding lands with scale and withering hand. Injusar hand. tice and Death always followed Conquest and War. And then he bathed in the details of it all. A mongrel hound dodged a falling Muslim warrior. Rain clouds rolled in from the Mediterranean, a whiff of winter in the air, yet still a vague scent of olive lingering from the fall. He raked his scythe low, back in front of his body with both hands, and disjointed a couple of knees from behind.� Then he wound it around to the left and unfurled it above his head for a full reaching blow which left the weapon in his left hand. The untethered head flew fifteen feet before striking a mounted knight and knocking him from his steed. It was a good shot. Something fun to share with Conquest and War later. He spun his weapon down and back before twisting his body to take the scythe in both hands at mid-torso. His last blow had inspired him. Now he was playing around. Hearing someone behind him, he leveled a baseball style swing as he turned to face him. Salty. He had always loved the Mediterranean because of the salt. Now, as the scene played over again in his dream, salt would always remind him of the moment he had felled his mentor, his companion in the transition -- the only one who had known him before he became Death. A stoic look of disapproval, Famine, with his arm outstretched almost to Death’s shoulder, listed and fell. His upper half removed cleanly from his lower. Death jolted from his sleep, smacked his forehead against a shelf above the head of the fetid mattress. Dust lifted from its surface as he shifted to an upright position, sending the peculiar black box tumbling to the floor where it proceeded to vibrate. ~~~ He rubbed his hand on his forehead and ran it through his hair. His mouth was a catacomb, exhaling a noxious gas into the cabin of the Airstream. His arm ached. He rubbed his left armpit as he rolled his shoulder and raised it above his head, causing him to grimace. The wound represented another dream waiting to haunt him at a later date. He exhaled, more slowly this time. These were the tradeoffs. He ached always, racked with nightmares, but the tequila took the edge off. And being here meant he wasn’t there, reporting for duty, punching in for a job that he could no longer bear. He nudged the glowing box with his rattlesnake boot before rising from the mattress with considerable effort. His movements caused the trailer to creek as much as his joints. His mortal shell, the skin he put on every time he dwelled upon the surface, could not stand much more traditional aging. Not without a return to Megiddo. Screw it. Opening the latch to the icebox, he took out a beer. Blowing a cloud of dust from the mouth of the can, he pulled the tab. The sound of the carbon dioxide escaping brought an angry snort from outside the window where snot already plastered the glass. Death reached back into the sweltering icebox for another hot beer. He and ice had never gotten along. Outside the trailer most of the dust had settled, the storm barely visible to the east. They were getting worse because of his presence, but mankind had started the apocalypse by himself. It was typically the sort of thing that would have cheered him, if he’d been working. He gazed upward toward the sun. It was terrible and wonderful at the same time. So much explosive pote ofplosivential. Such a waste. Outlined against the orb, a scattering of vultures circled while waiting out the last of the black blizzard. He wrapped his soured mind around the heavenly computations. It had been six years since he first came here. Six years. How could such a short span of time last so long? He’d forgotten what the passage of time felt like in a chronological progression, and there was no way to know his cumulative age. September 16, 1930 was when he first became Death. So he chose that exact moment to return for his walk about. It was an act he thought not so much ironic as poetic. After another moment of wracking his brain he concluded he had been thirty five, give or take. That would make him, using a twisted logic, roughly forty one. But it was ridiculous. That was a different life, one he’d left for another he now longed to leave as well. How had it ever seemed fresh? He crinkled his face and sniffed the scorched air. He couldn’t distinguish the smell of sulfur any longer. He twisted his boot back and forth in the barren dirt, pushed it down against the grit, until it smoked like a hot iron. Nothing. He lifted it to take a look, but there hadn’t been anything there alive in the first place. Around the backside of the trailer, Blue stamped at the ground and snorted his discontent. Yeah, Yeah. Death took a draw off the beer in his right hand, blew the dust off the one in his left and sauntered around the trailer where he’d left his only companion before beginning his most recent bender. ~~~ Blue’s dark lips quivered as he bore his teeth. Death smiled at him thinly and lifted the can in a mock toast. Blue took it from him and tilted it back, raising his head high to slosh the beer into his throat. A dribble of foam formed at the corners and ran onto his dappled, grey coat. He crushed and ground the can in his molars before tossing it down onto an irregular shaped hill of dust that clanked with the sound of previously discarded tin cans. �śSo what should we do today?” They were the only words Death had spoken out loud for several months, words he greeted his horse with every morning. Blue snorted and tossed his head, a moldy brass bit materializing in his mouth. Along with the bit a leather bridle and reins appeared. Death took the reins limply in his hand and led Blue around to the front the trailer. It was a left over ritual, one that meant nothing here but they still couldn’t shed. Death dropped the reins. Blue wandered a few feet and nuzzled the dirt as if it concealed grass to graze. Death got to his knees and poked around under the trailer, eventually pulling a folding lawn chair out from under a tarp weighed down at the corners with bricks.� He gave the flimsy chair a good shake and situated it facing northeast so hours from now his back would be toward the setting sun. After the first few hundred times of getting up late in the day to turn the chair, he finally adjusted his routine to account for the nuisance. He returned to his stash under the trailer and pulled out a floppy piece of rubber. Then took a valve in his mouth and started to blow. After a few minutes he situated a jury-rigged kiddy pool made from inner tubes just in front of his chair. With an angry slash of his hand he created a rift from thin air, violating the standard four dimensions of Earth’s inhabitants, and a briny water started to fill the pool. After watching the Dead Sea pour through the rift for hal wirift fof a minute he closed it off with a yank of invisible strings and sat. Death took a deep breath through his nose. It was good to smell anything, but the salt was still a self-inflicted punishment. He pulled off his boots to expose his gnarled and pasty toes and dipped them in the water. The water fizzled and popped while the remnant of halobacteria cooked. It was nothing like fresh water, but still the tiny bubbles brought a modicum of relief to him as he tipped his chair back and closed his eyes. In an earlier life he had rotted away for six years in prison. For the last six years he rotted in a dustbowl of his own making. A coincidence that currently seemed neither poetic or ironic, but mostly pathetic. It was then that the black box, now attached to his belt, vibrated again. Letters ran across its illuminated face until they had spelled out another message. �śHow long are you going to need? We can always find another. ~ War.” ~~~ The cages did nothing to block either the flames or smoke, but the smoke concerned him the most. He tore a strip of fabric from his mattress and tied it over his mouth and nose. Fear and instinct commanded he open his burning eyes to grasp the situation, but the noxious smoke hung like a curtain. He fashioned a blindfold and crouched in the middle of his wire mesh cell. The screams and grunts of the inmates stuck in the exercise yard when the fire broke out echoed between intermittent bursts of gunfire emanating from guard towers and prison walls. Take your pick, either the smoldering volcano’s belly or target practice for Johnny Law. Next he heard the grating of metal on metal echo throughout the block as a section of cage doors opened. Inmates, loose on the inside now, did not celebrate their escape. Primitive, guttural noises and expletives burned his ears like the smoke burned his eyes. A scuffle followed by a gargling noise and the thump of a limp body occurred just outside his own cage, the door of which he guessed was still shut.� Oddly he could not decide whether he wished it open. Would he be meat cooked in a smoker, or given the option would he choose an unknown death outside the confinement of his cage? A coughing fit overwhelmed him, and he hugged his knees tight in an effort to arrest his seizing body. Another minute inside and he knew he would be dead. God, anything would be better than this. A fresh wind blew across his face, and he sucked in a ragged breath. He tore the blindfold from his eyes squinting through the swollen sockets. Slashes of white light cut through the smoke, a glint revealing his cage door to be open. He scuttled forward and discovered it sliced clean from its moorings rather than released mechanically. Razor sharp edges flashed in another burst of light. The smoke crowded him again, leaving him no time to ponder the predicament, as he lurched into the hall between the cages and tripped over a body. To his horror, the head was absent. Half in shock, half in awe, he froze there. Holding himself up with his hands planted in a growing pool of blood, he spotted the detached head only inches away. That’s a hell of a thing, he thought. A mammoth grip yanked him up by the back of his neck cracking his spine. �śHello, pretty. Admiring my work?” �śNot him.”� it Another voice rose over the tumult, somewhere before him. �śLike hell not him. When’s it become your business who’s to die and who’s to live? I’ve not hit my quota.” �śBut not him,”the second voice spoke firmly as its owner stepped into view through the smoke. �śYou dull twit. One last time, why the hell not?” �śBecause he’s your replacement.” It was then he noticed a set of scales in the left hand of the skeletal figure before him. They tipped from balanced to wanting and a blinding, white light shot out from them. Immediately the grip released him to the floor.� A long gasping wheeze preceded a falling powder, and his captor was gone. The man with the scales reached down and pulled him up. �śYour prayers have been answered,” he said flatly. ~~~ He awoke from his nap to the sound of rasping metal, and rubbed his bleary eyes with the palms of his hands until the buzzard raking his talons on the Airstream came into focus. He’d grown rather fond of the bird, and was glad to see him back after a week long absence. Plus, three made a party.� Blue snorted in agreement and pawed at the ground. Death reflected on the dream he’d just had. It puzzled him. Before, he had never been able to remember his specific prayers. Famine had mentioned their answering, so Death took his word for it. But now he recalled the moment, preparing to cook in prison for lifting cigarettes, when he confessed anything would be better than this. In hindsight, he believed to die would have been better. How could he have known a life as Death to be an option? A dust devil formed beside him and kicked grit into his face, causing him to stand. Shaking the dirt off and stretching his legs, he felt he should do something special. His lethargy finally started to rub him, and he knew it couldn’t last much longer. He retreated into the trailer and clanged around before returning to the midday sun with a pencil and a spiral notebook. Blue and the buzzard watched curiously as Death pushed his chair back from the pool and sat with the notebook in his lap. He dabbed the pencil on the end of his tongue and started to write. The Day Death Died He wondered if the alliteration was too much, but decided to continue. Like the taste of blood and metal Warm and cold together, I once embraced The life of Death -- Scythe in humming hand Vibrating the invisible pitch of the Universe, I, the only force able to silence it. As he started warming to his subject, he felt the tension in his soul unravel. But folding through time and rough timespace, Trembling through sulfur rifts like a newborn Sloughing from the womb, Soon becomes the hollow life of a wraith: (Did he like that hard rhyme with �śspace”?) Tedious errands, repetition, And failure. How could death make a mistake? Born up by all eternity, Each stroke of the scythe spoke Finality Certainty, Truth. Not for me. A lying slip, a false stroke And Famine falls prematurely He couldn’t stop the errant rhyming as the words poured from his pencil onto the paper. And no mortal years of service can erase The fecund yet foul mistake. Now a piss-poor form of Death I am, Floundering in the dust of Adam Yearning for the day to come When death could finally die. Dropping his pencil into the dirt beside his chair, he stared at the words he had written. He read them out loud to Blue, his voice croaking with the use. Was this how he really felt? He tore the page from the notebook, crumpling it in his fist, and bit down hard on his knuckle. Kicking his chair over he swore loudly and chucked the paper into the pool. The buzzard startled from his roost and flapped away. ~~~ Death wasn’t thinking clearly �" God, if there had ever been a time for prayer. He slammed his fist into the Airstream. Maybe it was the tequila, of which he had only half a case left. The best damn tequila ever distilled, not that anyone would ever know, seeing how he had stolen almost the entire batch. But that didn’t explain the lack of thrill he’d felt out in the field, the showing up late for assignments, the half-hearted beheadings. Hell, he couldn’t even remember the last time he gave his scythe a proper cleaning. He rested his forehead on the hot tin siding. Why couldn’t he enjoy his labor? There was always Blue. Blue had been with him for hundreds of mortal years, longer than he had ridden any other horse. They’d had some good times together, hadn’t they? He wasn’t overly fond of his coworkers, but they weren’t horrible. From there his mind wandered back to his mentor, the best Famine ever to judge the wanting. Shaking due to anger and confusion, he decided to go for a ride to clear his head. As he tugged at Blue’s reigns and raised his left boot, a greasy, leather saddle materialized on the beast’s back beginning with the stirrups and cresting with the horn. It was a Western style circa 1860’s, one of Death’s of Deas favorites. Gripping the horn and shifting his weight evenly into the stirrups brought back good Indian war memories, lots of senseless death. After months of shlepping about on two feet, it felt good to be in the saddle. He brought Blue to a trot and then a lope. For a wraith beast, Blue was the smoothest ride this side of Megiddo. They continued on like that for the length of the dirt road until it connected with Farm to Market 1061. Fresh power lines had been installed along the east side of the road all the way into Amarillo, and they scarred the countryside like stitches on a wound. He hadn’t known what he was looking for until he rode toward it. A call box was mounted on a nearby pole. He moved without thought or hesitation, picked up the phone and dialed 2-1-1 on the rotary before the operator connected. He’d just started to spin the dial for the third 6 when Blue reeled away from the phone causing Death to drop the receiver and look up. An errant Model T struck the pole two down from theirs with force sufficient enough to collapse the hood and bury the pole into the bumper. The windshield shattered from the impact and a passenger flailed halfway through the opening before snagging on the jagged edges. Death was intrigued. After the dust settled the only sounds were a hissing from the front tires and a gentle moan from the driver’s seat. A first-hand witness and stalwart believer in acts of God, Death could not dismiss this curious event as coincidence or even fate. Six years of atrophy intensified the moment and his desperation drenched it with meaning. A tinny voice coming from the receiver he had dropped interrupted him. �śOperator. Can I assist you? Hello?” He picked it up. �śSorry. I’ve changed my mind.” ~~~ He walked Blue slowly toward the Model T. Behind the wheel a youngster of no more than 16 sat bleeding from the head with what appeared a broken arm and most likely collarbone. Death listened intently to the boy’s ragged, short breaths accentuated by a gurgling. Crushed behind the steering wheel he had broken some ribs, probably causing internal bleeding. Too bad. The passenger had already bled out a third of his total supply. Death had tingled with the familiar sensation before he’d gotten within thirty yards. Then he was struck with an odd idea. What if I help this boy? Wasn’t that what he had been thinking all along? He knew what it was like to take life, but what was it like to save it? This could be what he’d been looking for, but it was a big decision. He tilted his head back and focused on nothing in particular, took a deep breath. The buzzard beat his wings against the air as he slowed himself to land on top of the pole above the accident. He squawked. Blue snorted. �śWell those are your opinions.” Death looked back down at the boy slumped in his seat. He was a doer, not a thinker, just like this boy. Sometimes that got you pinched. Sometimes it got you dead. Other times. Well other times God rewarded the bold, didn’t he? Maybe this was one of those times. �śYour lucky day, boy.” But then again, how could it be luck? He jumped out of the saddle, feeling the customary disorientation of a cowboy regaining his legs. �śMaybe this is my day too.� We’ll just have to see, won’t we?” And he went about what he knew he had �śGet me the Sheriff.” Death spoke calmly to the operator as she patched him through. �śYes, there’s been an auto accident on FM 1061 just north of mile marker 162. One passenger is dead, but I think the other might make it. Hurry.” He hung up the receiver while the Sheriff was asking a question on the other end. He’d stopped the internal bleeding. It was an odd sensation, using his abilities for such a cause. But it hadn’t been that difficult once he wrapped his mind around it. The boy lay on the ground beside the car moaning and moving slightly. He would make it. Death looked up at the buzzard still perched atop the pole. �śYou can have that one there. He’s all yours. Just leave this one for another day.” Death shook the reigns and Blue, still cross with him for intervening in such a manner, snorted before slowly turning back down the dirt road. No sooner had they turned when the buzzard fluttered down from his perch to land on the buckled hood of the car. Death flicked his wrist in a circular motion, and a dust devil kicked up behind them. It meandered back and forth across the road, following the pair all the way back to the trailer, just in case the Sheriff decided to look for tracks. ~~~ The buzz of newness wore off more quickly than he’d hoped. The urge he’d felt earlier to break out of his rut had melted along with the setting sun, and the confidence that had compelled his unconventional actions lagged. Sheesh. I’m Death, for God’s sake. What the hell was I thinking? He finished half a bottle of tequila as he sat in front of the Airstream in his lawn chair. A scorpion tried to scuttle from the hot dirt up into the black, rubber pool. The water level had lowered to a puddle, but the moisture, like a siren’s song, brought him blindly forward. The scorpion’s feet must have started to crumble even before he reached the pool, but he was halfway up the side of the first tube before his insides cooked. He shivered slightly and ended with a pop. Instinct wasn’t something that could be fooled now was it? But couldn’t it just as well be habit? And habits needed to be broken sometimes. He hadn’t always been Death. What had he been before? He was too drunk or too far removed from his past to remember. Or perhaps it was simply impossible to figure who you had been when you had no idea of what you were. Habit. He wasn’t sure which idea was more depressing. Had he adjusted to his new life as Death so easily? Was he that impressionable? He tried to stand without using quite enough force to straighten his legs completely. He hovered momentarily above the seat of the chair before falling backwards, skewing the chair while trying to catch the arm. It folded under his weight. Landing flat, he caught the wooden arm in the small of his back. �śDammit!”� Luckily he hadn’t sloshed any of the precious liquor out. He rolled over and managed to stand, careful to keep the bottle righted the entire time. He kicked the chair with a grunt, mounted the two steps up to the trailer and stood in the doorway looking back over the flat plains of the Texas panhandle. �śCould I have brought down the sickle all those millions of times just cause of habit? A dadgum habit?”n>Bum habi He looked at the bottle in his hand. Maybe instinct would be better. There were worst things to be, after all, than Death. He stepped inside the trailer and slammed the door. He finished what was left of the bottle without opening his eyes. His brain hurt. He wanted nothing more than to forget. Startling him, his hip began to buzz. He yanked the black box from his belt. It took him two times through the message to focus his eyes. �śEnough is enough. Straighten yourself out, or we will. ~ Conquest” He threw the box against the far wall and fell back on his mattress. The tiny device came to a rest against the bottom of the door. Its pallid green glow faded. He closed his eyes to sleep �" even this evening’s stuporous funckur insufficient to stop his dreaming. But this evening, rather than dreaming of his past, he dreamt of someone else’s future. ~~~ Fantastic lights, an aurora of color, fanned around the fringes of his peripheral vision. Everything jarred up and down as if he were running. He breathed heavily and laughed in between each gulp of breath. The laughter startled him. It was not his own. He tried to move his arms but could not. This was his dream, but not his body. And he was not in control of it. Tree branches rushed by one after another whipping him. He felt every sting as a secondary response, as if he had to recognize that it had happened first and then experience the reality of it. Steps came unevenly with unexpected landings-- some short, some overdue. By accident, he bit his tongue and tasted the blood of it. Then more laughter. He stumbled and summersaulted into brush, before scrambling back to his feet. His hands were covered with blood. His whole front was covered with blood that was not his own. Hounds bayed in the distance followed by a gunshot. More laughter. What mysterious mirth. Finally he reached a covered porch and burst through the front door.� � An oil lamp hung above a table creating a sunburst of rainbow color rimming his vision. Odors of putrefaction, bleach, sawdust and kerosene filled his nose. On the table sat several wooden crates overflowing with sawdust. Bright red stains in process of being scoured away with bleach spotted the table’s surface. He skidded on his knees into a corner of the room where a hatch leading under the floor had been left open. �śGoodnight, my pets” he said in a voice not his own, slow movements visible in the shadows below. He closed the trap door and drug a bookshelf over the top of it. He paused to run his fingers over a journal titled, �śMy Encounter with Death, and Why He Spared Me.” He straightened, took a deep breath, and admired himself in a cracked mirror hanging above the bookshelf. Death knew the face looking back at him wasn’t his own, but it was familiar. He ran his fingers through his hair, tidying it. Then it struck him. Death, conscious that he was dreaming, realized he was looking at the face of the boy from the Model T, twenty years older. The boy, a man now, strode toward the table, picked up the lid leaning against the first crate and secured it in place with a wooden mallet. Son of a�Ś He shifted to the second crate and did the same. That little devil. Then the third crate, the fourth, fifth and eventually the sixth. Ees the sixach crate contained a severed right arm. Death woke up slowly, feeling nearly paralyzed. He opened his eyes, then closed them, rubbed away the sleep with his hand. He sat up and tried to focus across the room. The dream was still crystal clear in his mind. He picked up the smashed black box returning it to his belt, Opening the door into the predawn air, he kicked the crate of left over tequila down the steps. Blue trotted around the trailer and approached the door so Death could step from stoop to stirrup. He grinned and slapped the beast on the shoulder.� Blue leapt into a gallop. The pair stopped at the call box. The Model T remained crumpled where they had left it, the driver’s door still open. He spun the rotary dial until he heard a rough voice on the other side, �śValley of Armageddon.” �śYeah, tell �Śem I’m coming in for work. I just gotta’ stop off at the hospital first.” He dropped the receiver and pulled back on the reins. Blue rose on his hind legs pawing at the air and snorting sulfur snot onto the pavement. Death whipped out his right arm suddenly grasping an eight-foot long, double-edged scythe which flashed in the rising sun. He spun it in a wide loop before stabbing it into the air in front of them. A rift opened up, through which he saw a hospital hallway. �śHyaw!” and the pale horse with Death as its rider were gone. Above where they had been a buzzard flapped its wings and rose up into the air. Del Rio Con Amor Their horses milled about nervously as the train’s brakes cloaked them in hot steam. Tossing their reins to the other two men, Chancho and Ah Puch dismounted. �śLoad the horses as planned.” Chancho strode toward the lead passenger car, intent on reaching it before the train settled to a complete stop. Ah Puch followed close on his heels. Both men wore the bold grey and braided silver of the Mexican Rurales, despite the alleged disbanding of the infamous Gardia Rural fourteen months earlier in July, 1914. Chancho straightened his black tie and tipped his sombrero down over his brow as Ah Puch slung his carbine over his back, positioning his saber neatly over his left hip. �śWho the hell are you? And why have you stopped my train?” The General himself swelled to block their path. The right sleeve of his starched Constitutional uniform ended abruptly at the elbow and loomed above Chancho’s head. The empty, cut-off sleeve emphasized the absence of the arm that had been there only five months earlier �" until the battle at Celaya. Chancho wasted no time. �śRurales of Coahuila on special assignment, with information about Villista activity in the area.” Obregón betrayed his surprise with a subtle twitch of his left brow. �śRurales. Villistas.” He spat out both words. �śYou still haven’t explained why you presumed to stop my train.” He patted his left hand gently on his holster and smiled thinly.ify �śGeneral, your train would have been stopped one way or the other. The Villistas have disabled the track 30 km north of here.” General Obregón dismissed them with a quick jerk of his head and disappeared into the train while barking orders. �śSeat these men in my private quarters, and tell the engineer to get this damn train rolling.” Two Constitutional infantrymen stood aside in the doorway while Chancho and Ah Puch squeezed past them in time to see the door leading to the adjacent car slide shut behind the General’s backside. An infantryman crowded Ah Puch roughly until he slipped a dagger from his belt, flipped it around backwards in his grip and touched the tip to the man’s nether region firmly enough to convey his meaning. The man coughed and stood down. Ah Puch grinned crookedly over his shoulder as the two men progressed at their own pace toward the General’s quarters. After the two entered, the nervous infantryman shut the door behind them. �śDo you think he bought it?” Chancho bounced up and down on the General’s cushioned couch. �śHe hates the Rurales almost as much as Villa. That’s our advantage. He can’t see past his hatred.” �śAh, but will he stop the train?” Ah Puch shrugged, then stiffened as heavy boots approached in the corridor. Chancho jumped up from the couch as the General threw the door open violently. �śMore of your men have boarded my train!” Chancho did’t budge. �śIt is not safe even for Gardia Rural to ride about today’s Mexico in pairs. Two more of my men have loaded our horses.” Obregón opened his mouth to speak but Chancho continued. �śWe will not be left on the boarder without transport.” The General’s fingers twitched. Realizing his mouth was still open he shut it and narrowed his eyes to slits. Chancho resisted the urge to smile. Mentioning their intention to reach the border and then disembark there had been perfectly played. �śTell me what you know of the Villistas.” The General moved past them and dropped onto his couch as the train shook and lurched forward along the tracks. ~~~ �śIt’s been done before.” Ah Puch interjected. The General slammed his fist against the wall of his personal quarters. �śI will not yield to that jackal, Villa.” �śHe will have organized a hundred of his most experienced cavalry for this mission.” Chancho emphasized the word �śthis” subtly, causing Obregón to tense and lean forward. �śGeneral,” Chancho stopped him. �śIf we Rurales know this train holds special interest for President Carranza, then Villa will know as well.” Carranza and his troops had only been in Mexico City for a month, and it pained Chancho to address him as President, but he swallowed his pride for now. �śThis train,” Obregón gripped the two men with his iron stare long enough for Chancho to count two lengths of rail clack by beneath them, �śis my responsibility. And no number of ignorant and mislead peons will stop it �"�ś �śFrom reaching Corpus Chrentg Corpuisti?” Chancho leaned against the door and crossed his legs. �śWith its precious cargo.” Ah Puch added just as casually. The General’s jaw popped. �śIt is our job to know everything happening in Coahuila, before it happens.” �śIt is also our job to protect the Mexican government’s interests,” added Ah Puch. �śWe are good at our job.” Sensing the General’s breaking point, Chancho and Ah Puch put on formal airs before continuing. �śWe are here to be of service to you and your detachment in the completion of your mission.” The train car shuddered and bucked as it coursed along a rougher section of track. Only two years old, the jarring stemmed from insufficient roadbed material and haste of application rather than age. Even as Provincial Governor, Carranza had known the importance of connecting the scattered, short sections of track throughout Coahuila into the continuous TexMex Railway. The temporary alliance between Pancho Villa and Venustiano Carranza against President Huerta had provided the opportunity for the project to be completed. The General took a deep breath and suddenly slapped his thigh, forcing a loud laugh. �śVery well, Gardia Rural.” He scrutinized them again. �śYou are absolutely sure of your report?” The two men nodded. �śI need to talk with my officers.” Obregón rose to take his leave. Before he could squeeze past the two men Chancho addressed him. �śGeneral, we humbly request to see to our horses and check in with our fellow Rurales in preparation for the conflict.” �śWhat conflict?” The General puffed out his chest. Chancho raised a brow and waited until Obregón dismissed them with a nod of his head, allowing the two men to exit the posh personal quarters back into the echoing corridor that ran the length of one side of the train car. What had been a muffled clacking from inside the General’s quarters thundered as a loud pulsing rhythm off of the hardwood paneling in the hall. The smell of spent coal wafted in through an open window. �śYou’ll find them toward the back, if you can get there.” Obregón pushed past the two men, brushing his empty sleeve, along with its ghost arm, against Chancho’s side. The sensation unsettled him, and Chancho knew at once why the General had chosen to leave the three-quarter sleeve stabbing awkwardly into space. �śNow excuse me,” and without further discussion he slid the door open and leapt to the neighboring car, leaving Chancho and Ah Puch to follow him toward the rear of the train on their own mission. ~~~ �śWhat did he mean by �ŚIf we can get there’?” Chancho waited until both men had stepped out onto the small platform at the back of the General’s train car and slid the door shut behind them. �śNo doubt the gold is in a car between here and there. It will be heavily guarded by the General’s most trusted men. Apparently he does not intend to instruct them to let us pass.” Ah Puch sucked his teeth and glanced back through the glass window the way they'd come. The corridor was still empty. �śNo matter. We just need to identify which car contains the gold. As long a ld. As as we have men in position when the time comes, the plan is good to go.” "Nothing is good to go if we don't divert the train." Chancho rested his hand on Ah Puch's shoulder. "In due time." He steadied himself with the handhold before leaping across the gap to the next car. "But you have no sense of time." Ah Puch complained as they slipped into the officers' car which had been designed much like the General’s, but less posh. On their way down the corridor they overheard Obregón asking his top men for options. Sliding open the solid metal door to the next car, a wall of hot air and stale body odor swam over them. Packed beyond capacity, the creaking passenger car contained more than a hundred regulars, infantrymen in patchwork Constitutional uniforms. The newly conscripted wore the BEF style hat with huaraches on their feet. Some sat backwards chatting to neighbors, but most stared blankly out windows. Upon noticing the Rurales, each soldier fell silent and stared at his lap with sudden interest. Every man, on both sides of the conflict, could tell stories of swift and brutal judgement levied by the Gardia Rural over the last several decades. The relative rarity of encountering one of the silver-braided rural police in recent years only fanned the folk lore into flame. The two men strode confidently down the aisle and out the heavy metal door on the other end of the car without contest. Again in the swirling wind between train cars Chancho shook his head. "Any one of those men could be my brother. They're just peons trying to feed their families." "They lack only initiative. Perhaps today we will give it to them." Ah Puch gestured for them to jump to the next car. "But what if we, what if they�Ś” Chancho rubbed his tired eyes. �śWe’ve been winning, haven't we? Since May? I mean, the revolution?” Ah Puch nodded. "The revolution has gotten smarter with your leadership. The bleeding has stopped. If today's plan works the tables will be turned. Carranza needs the United States, and he needs the treasure on this train to get their attention." "How much gold do you think there is?" Chancho glanced sideways at Ah Puch who couldn't stop the corners of his mouth from turning up in a smile. "All of it. Carranza is clever, but he's a politician. He sees the small, targeted attacks in rural areas as the dying breath of the revolution rather than a new tactic for which he has no counter. I would bet my boots his entire treasury is onboard, everything he can spare anyway." Chancho nodded. "Hmmm. I could use anther pair of boots." "What's wrong with the pair I made you?" Ah Puch glared at his friend. "Nothing. It's just," Chancho shrugged, "a man can always use a second pair." "A second pair! No other pair like them exists! Yours have more features even than --" Chancho held up his hands in surrender. "Relax before you burst a seam, my friend. Of course you are right. Now don't you think we should get on with robbing this train?" ~~~ Ah Puch slid the next metal door open cautiously. With an identical landing the car appeared at first to be another passenger car, but steel-backed window facades revealed that someone wanted a freight car to appear as if it carried human lives. The two men tensed. The ruse meant the car carried cargo considered more precious than human life. This had to be the one. The metal door grated open an inch at a time, both men remaining clear of the opening, until the gap grew large enough to skinny through. Chancho glanced at Ah Puch. No angry voices came from inside; they heard nothing over the pulse of the rails passing beneath them and the wind whipping past. There was no point in taking a peak inside. It would take several seconds for their eyes to adjust to the darkness, and under the circumstances, caution would come across as guilt. Chancho shrugged. Removing his sombrero and crushing it up against his chest, he swung around Ah Puch and slipped through the narrow opening without a sound. Once on the inside he crouched low in the darkness. Immediately he felt Ah Puch settle in behind him. Senses heightened as they waited for their eyes to make the adjustment. Dust motes swam in the slice of light that poured through the opening behind them. At first, neither of the men heard any threatening noise, nothing other than the expected rocking of the rails and the closeness of cargo squeaking against its restraints. Ah Puch placed a quick hand on Chancho’s shoulder and squeezed. They held their breath. From less than a few meters away he heard it, a regular breathing, verging on snoring. Still at a disadvantage in the relative dimness, Ah Puch reached for the metal door and slowly slid it shut. Swallowed up in complete darkness, Chancho groped along the floor for his bearings. Identifying an isle through the cargo the two men slipped further into the middle of the car until they felt themselves a safe distance from the sleeping guard. �śHe can’t be the only one.” Chancho squatted with his back against a wooden crate and focused his eyes intently into the blackness where he knew Ah Puch’s face should be. �śAt least one more at the other end.” �śWhat are the chances they’re both asleep?” Finally Chancho’s eyes seized on the cumulative traces of light seeping through holes where bolts had gone missing, and distinguished the outline of his friend. There was no response, so he continued. �śRight. So what now? I was expecting to sweet talk our way to this point.” �śFind the gold. We have to confirm its exact location.” �śRight.” Chancho pivoted his head slowly trying to discern the best path to take through the stacks of crates surrounding them. He stopped when Ah Puch gripped his shoulder. �śDon’t worry. We’ll probably still need to sweet talk our way out of this.” Chancho grinned. He could see Ah Puch’s ironic smile perfectly in his mind’s eye�"a reminder to both of them that they were doing what they loved. �śI’ll see you back here in ten minutes.” He squeezed Ah Puch’s arm. �śIf the devil don’t get me.” As he tt="ify">Asurned from his friend the train shimmied along another rough patch of rail. Groping in the dark for balance he gripped something leather�"leather and unsecured. Rather than stabilizing himself he fell backwards, pulling the object with him. Only when the object jerked suddenly from his grasp did he realize he had been holding a boot. ~~~ �śWhat in the�Ś Guzman? That you? Dammit, stop playing.�ś Chancho froze. �śIt hasn’t been an hour yet. Guzman?” Chancho cleared his throat while he got to his feet. Behind him he could hear Ah Puch shifting his weight, preparing for a fight. He decided on a gravely voice, �śLike hell it hasn’t. Get your lazy ass out of bed.” �śHey!” There was a sudden shifting in the darkness, followed by the sound of a pistol slipping from its holster. �śWho the hell are you?” �śPlan B,” Chancho mumbled as he leapt into action. Cocking his right leg toward the sound of the guard's voice he gripped his inner bootstrap and simultaneously pulled up as he extended the leg into a full kick. The kicking motion fell just short of the groggy guard’s face who flashed his pistol blindly in the dark. But the strap, upon extending into a two-foot-long pull cord, ignited a small explosion in the tip of Chancho’s boot. Sparks dissipated into the blackness while a cloud of fine powder burst into the guard’s face. �śWhat in the�"�ś the pistol fired, whizzing past Chancho’s ear and ricocheting before digging into a wooden crate. �śChili!” Chancho warned Ah Puch as he crashed into some webbing and shielded his face from the spreading cloud. �śSanta Maria! It burns!” Choking, the guard squeezed off another round before dropping his pistol to rub his eyes, grinding the chili dust further into his skin. �śTorres? What the hell is going on? Ruiz?” Peeking out from under his sombrero Chancho could see the outline of Ah Puch crouched just a couple meters away, outside the effective range of the chili. He himself was just on the edge, and he felt the sudden urge to sneeze. The guard who had caught the brunt of it, Torres, continued to choke on every breath. �śIntru�", intru�",” he coughed in between each attempt to sound the warning. Unable to string together three syllables without the powder triggering the reflex, he’d been completely incapacitated by the chili bomb. �śSomeone’s in here with us, sir.” �śRuiz? How the hell did someone get in between us?” �śI�Ś uh�"�ś �śDammit, do you know who fired?” �śIt wasn’t me, sir.” Chancho knew the two guards would be forced to act soon, and he and Ah Puch were both exposed to opposite lines of site in their current positions. Torres was the problem. He occupied the only nook out of sight from the others, and his being at risk elevated the situation. Not only did the two friends need to not die, they had to convince the General that the whole thing was a friendly misunderstanding. p> Chancho tied a bandana around his nose and mouth, tipped his sombrero low over his eyes and bumped his way toward Torres. He needed to get the incapacitated guard to the front end of the car, where Ruiz had been sleeping, and away from Guzman, their commanding officer. This would keep the scales tipped to their advantage. Even through the bandana his throat itched with every breath. Locating Torres by his groaning, Chancho kicked the pistol out of the way and tugged him off his cot by both legs. The guard hit the ground with an �śooff.” As Chancho dragged him kicking and clawing, Ah Puch leaned in close to the guard’s ear. �śNow go�"that way if you want to live.” Both men pulled Torres up on his feet and shoved him toward Ruiz’s end of the car. �śTorres, that you?” �śIntruders!” Torres finally pronounced the word he had been struggling with for several seconds. �śWe figured that. Are you alright?” Having cleared the area of human threat, Ah Puch and Chancho leapt onto the cot and leaned against the outer wall of the freight car above the lingering chili dust. With crates stacked to the ceiling on both sides, they were finally out of sight. �śHe’ll be fine.” Chancho spoke loudly enough to address the guards. �śChili powder. It burns like hell, but nothing like your mother’s salsa the next morning. You know what I mean?” ~~~ Chancho and Ah Puch held their breath while the urge to sneeze or cough settled along with the fine chili powder. The guards hesitated as well. Nothing came from Guzman’s end of the car while Torres’ muffled swearing drifted from the front. Growing impatient to resolve the situation and move the plan forward, Chancho addressed them. �śMy friends, this bashfulness is getting us nowhere. Guzman, it was Guzman, right? Of course. You cannot leave your post unattended to go and get help, and besides the next car contains nothing but cargo, correct?” Chancho paused briefly, but no response came. �śAnd Ruiz, you also do not want to leave your post while Torres, ah, my sincerest apologies for the chili, is incapacitated. And besides you would need a command from our laryngitic Guzman. So, I’ll make you a deal. Send Torres to fetch the General and I promise my friend and I will remain quite still until he returns. Hmm?” He waited another moment. �śWe’re Rurales on special assignment to help you guys protect this precious cargo from nasty revolutionaries. All just a misunderstanding.” Finally movement echoed about the car. A gash of light and the rumbling of the rails spilled into the confined space as Torres presumably fumbled through the opened door and closed it behind him. �śAh, very good. Hopefully the poor guy can find his way.” Ah Puch placed his hand on Chancho’s shoulder and nodded toward the crate they were standing on. The two men stepped down and tested the air quality, finding it back to normal. Ah Puch rubbed his hand on the side of the box and whispered, �śWhen the door was open, I caught a glimpse. Help me crack this open.” The two men worked quietly, jimmying their blades under the edge of the box all the way around three sides until the lid creaked open. �śMother Mary.” Even in the minimal lighting the luminescent ocean of gold cast an eerie glimmering on, climmerito their hands and faces. They allowed themselves a single smirk before replacing the lid and snugging it down. �śIt’s real now. It’s real, and we’re going to liberate it.” Chancho sat down on the crate and leaned back against the wall. �śAll the generations of my family put together have never seen so much wealth.” Ah Puch’s hoarse whisper grew ragged around the edges. �śOnly the smallest fraction of it would have provided a full life for my parents, a chance to start over�"escape the hacienda where they died without two kernels of corn to rub together.” �śI’m sorry, my friend. It should never have happened.” Chancho shook his head in the dark. �śBut we will ensure it never happens again.” He nudged his friend with his elbow. �śWhat are you going to do with your share?” �śWe have not succeeded yet.” �śOh come on. I’ve waited this long to ask.” Ah Puch sat quietly for several seconds. �śI’m going to buy the hacienda where my parents died, and distribute the land to the peons still enslaved there�"legally. I’ll make sure no one takes it from them again.” �śWill you stay there and farm?” Ah Puch snorted. �śMe? I’m no farmer. I’ve been a bandit since I was a child. There’s nothing after the revolution for me.” �śNonsense. You could come with me to the orphanage. That’s what I’m going to do with my share. I still feel guilty for abandoning the sisters. Hey,” he nudged his friend again, �śA bunch of nuns living in the wilderness. They could use some hired protection. You know, the sort an old bandit could provide?” Before Ah Puch could respond the door to the car slid open forcefully, flooding the space with light and the General’s thunderous voice, �śDammit! Why can’t you two stay out of trouble?” ~~~ �śChili powder?” Standing in front of the open door to the armored freight car the General scrutinized the two Rurales anew. Chancho relaxed. If the General had intended to throw them underneath the moving train, he wouldn’t have dismissed everyone but Guzman. �śEven the Gardia, despite our reputation, know when to kill,” he shrugged, �śand when to simply spice things up.” Obregón barked out an abrupt, high-pitched laugh before swallowing it just as quickly. He shook his head and turned serious. �śYou still insist on petting your horses, or will you stay out of my way?”� �śGeneral. You’ve had time to discuss the matter with your officers. I’m positive they have not provided you with a satisfactory scenario for today’s events.” �śI do not need my officers’�"�ś Chancho continued, �śWhat you need is a means to deliver your cargo to Corpus Christi. I can give you what you need.” �śYou two are chapping my hide. If I wanted Rurales to drive my train�"” the General stopped himself. �śFour Rurales will not help muchnteot help in a shoot out with Villa’s cavalry, not while we are sitting ducks. But there doesn’t need to be a shoot out.” Obregón nodded impatiently, �śGo on.” �śThere is an alternate track, an abandoned rail running parallel for twenty kilometers. It is long enough to bypass the Villista ambush.” �śVilla is not so stupid to choose a place that could so easily be�"�ś �śIt accesses an old silver mine, abandoned over 15 years ago. Goes through some rough country. Most of Villa’s men were only children when it was in use. As you know, Villa grew up in Chihuahua. They don’t know it exists. Did you?” The General quipped back, �śAnd you?” �śI grew up here, and again, it is my job to know everything about Coahuila. We road the entire length of it only two months ago. It is old, but functional. You will barely need to slow down.” �śIndeed.” Obregón rubbed the nub of his amputated arm, hidden high in his sleeve, through the dense material of his uniform. �śYou cannot continue as you are. Your train will be derailed and torn apart. You cannot go back and wait.” As if it were simply impossible for the General to consider advice from Rurales, he turned to the weary soldier standing beside Ah Puch. �śGuzman?” �śIf these men are telling the truth about the alternate track, it would be our best option, sir. Plus,” he half-grinned, half-snarled, �śit would humiliate Villa.” Chancho cursed himself silently for not thinking of that himself. Guzman had turned out to be helpful after all. The General nodded. �śAnd if they are not telling the truth?” Guzman turned his gaze toward Chancho. �śThen we use them as shields against Villa.” �śVery well. While I appreciate the suggestion, I’m afraid they’re right about our options. If they are lying about the alternate track we will indeed kill them, but we will not fight Villa today. It will be inconvenient, but reinforcements could arrive by tomorrow morning at the latest.” Obregón turned toward Chancho. �śNow tell me where to expect the signal for this alternate track and then Guzman will escort you to see your horses, where I will expect you to stay until you are called upon.” Chancho and Ah Puch both nodded. ~~~ Wiser than most soldiers Ah Puch had encountered, Guzman followed him and Chancho at a safe distance. While remaining clear of any quick movements and gripping his knife tightly, he allowed the two men to saunter through the armored freight car on their way to the back of the train. With light coming through the door where Obregón had exited, Chancho used the opportunity to let his eyes wander about the cargo. Most of it seemed common: a dozen crates of coffee beans, an equal amount packed most likely with tequila but labeled �Ścerveza,’ and several dozen crates of vegetables to make the whole shipment appear as mundane as possible. But near alle. But the far end of the car, stashed in the shadows, Chancho strained to read the label on a dozen oversized metal boxes, �śgeological survey �" Secretariat of the Interior.” But without further time to ponder its contents they reached the metal door, and Ah Puch tugged it open. With Guzman watching from inside the armored car they leapt across the coupling and waved goodbye from the neighboring car before shutting its door behind them. �śCheery fellow.” Ah Puch grunted. They staggered forward in the dark until Chancho bumped into bales of hay. The car echoed and rattled, revealing its relative emptiness. It’s smell informed them it contained mostly feed and grain. They bumped their way to the other end and heaved the door open to let in light. Their partners in crime, Jorge and Emilio, waved at them from the railing of an open-air livestock car containing several horses, their four included. Chancho gave them the thumbs up. �śAny trouble with the caboose?” They shook their heads and smiled. Chancho breathed a sigh of relief and settled back on a bale of hay to map out their next steps. Ah Puch searched the shadows of the car, making sure they were alone, before joining his friend. �śThings are going well,” he offered. �śHmmm? Oh, yes. Did you see those metal boxes?” Chancho scratched his chin. �śMining. I’ve seen them used before in mining.” Ah Puch stretched, touching his toes. �śI wonder what’s inside them.” �śRocks, dirt, ore.” Ah Puch cracked his neck and shrugged. �śThere’ll be plenty of time to look later if this plan works.” The second half of the sentence came out sounding more negative than he had intended. �śOh it’ll work. What is there to go wrong now?” �śWhat is there �"�ś Ah Puch shook his head. �śEverything we’ve done up to this point has been easy.” He leaned forward. �śThis is not a game. There are over a hundred people on this train that will kill us if they find out what we are doing, several who will try to hunt us down and kill us if we succeed.” �śNo one will find out what we are doing. The four of us are together, we're in position, and besides only two people on this train have even seen our faces. They’ll be too busy losing a revolution to find us.” Ah Puch grunted and sat back. �śOne thing at a time.” He knew Chancho would be useless if he grew distracted or discouraged at this point. A sly grin crept across his face. �śThe boot bomb worked pretty well.” Chancho laughed. �śPretty well? It was incredible. Torres is wishing he could've been strapped naked to a cactus instead. The only problem is now I have a hole in my boot.” He held the tip of his boot up for Ah Puch to inspect. �śBah. It’s nothing. I could fix it in five minutes if I had my tools.” "I can't wait to try out the spurs.” ~~~ Ah Puch settled onto his stool and adjusted the nob on the kerosene lantern for more light. He plucked an awl from hi�ś awl frs lips. Gripping it with his nippers he worked it lightning fast along the seam running up the side of the boot. He stopped to check the placement of the magnetized plate sown into the back of the heel for the fourth time. Reaching inside the boot he straightened the ripcord for the chili bomb and continued stitching the seam. �śBy tomorrow you will own the best pair of boots in the world.” Chancho looked up from his work on a massive wall of gears, grease streaking his face and hands. �śBetter even than your own?” �śMine were the prototype. I have made improvements since.” �śIncredible. I will keep them for life.” Chancho adjusted the positioning of a long, metal camshaft with a wrench until the teeth lined up with an even larger gear. �śDamn right. And if your life is any less than fifty years I’m taking �Śem back.” �śI’ll do my best, friend.” He put the wrench down and starting pounding the shaft further into the heart of the sprawling wall of machinery with a wooden mallet.” �śDon’t worry. I’ve put too much work into these boots to let you die now.” Ah Puch snickered at his own joke. �śThere!” Chancho tossed the mallet into the corner and snapped a leather belt with his fingers to test its tautness. �śIf this machine doesn’t chew me to death when we start it up, I’ll consider it a success.” Ah Puch put down his work and took in the entirety of the contraption. Chancho stood on a metal grate over forty feet long and ten feet wide with steel beams connecting it to the roof of the cave every four feet. Where Chancho had been working, a series of gears, pulleys and belts covered the entire far side of the cave and dipped below the grate out of view. �śAnd this thing will lift a train?” �śWell, not the whole train,” he grinned. �śBut enough of it.” �śThis is the craziest thing I’ve ever seen.” �śSays the man holding gadget boots in his hands?” �śSure, they have a few special additions, but they are just a pair of boots. This�Ś” Ah Puch indicated the entirety of the room they were in. �śThis. None of this was even here two months ago.” His voice echoed off the chiseled rock walls. The light from the kerosene lamps fell short of the distant corners of the cave. �śI’ll be happy when we don’t have to work in the belly of the whale any more." �śThe whale?” Ah Puch returned to his stitching. �śOh yes. I forget you are a very bad Catholic.” �śI’m not a bad Catholic. I’m a good bandit. Although many of the Catholics I’ve know have been both.” �śIt’s too bad.” Chancho unscrewed a cap from a large tank half buried in the wall and sniffed its contents. �śYou should meet the Sisters someday. They would set you straight.” He hefted a fuel can from the floor and directed its funnel into the tank. �śOh I’m sure they would. But for now I’ve got no problem wi"> ~~~ Chancho cracked the heel of his boot hard on the coupling. Ah Puch steadied him as the train shimmied along the alternate track, the deteriorating railroad ties a blur beneath his feet. He lifted his foot high enough to twist the heel around 90 degrees, and with a quick yank, ripped it from the rest of the boot. A phosphorus and potassium covered fuse trailed from the detached heel, the friction of the tug sparking it to life. Chancho slapped the magnetized metal of the heel down on the coupling before Ah Puch pulled him onto the platform of the armored freight car. On cue Emilio and Jorge leapt from the top of the feed and grain car to the top of the armored car, clanking onto the metal roof loudly. With one last glance back at the burning fuse Chancho flicked his spurs from their usual resting place until they were underneath the soles of his boots, the sharp tips protruding now from the front. Quickly Emilio and Jorge positioned themselves on the roof, dangling their arms over the edge. Clasping at the wrists they heaved Ah Puch and Chancho up to join them, just in the nick of time. The metal door at the rear of the armored car slid open, tentatively at first, before eventually opening wide. �śThey’re on the roof!” A voice barked. Without warning the heel charge detonated, blasting apart the coupling and buffeting the train cars with a deafening roar. In the wake of the explosion Chancho gained his balance, perched with the half-moon shape of his magnetic spurs under the balls of his feet. Their harness now locked them firmly into place pointing forward rather than back. Clanking loudly, magnet on metal, he darted for the front of the car. Jorge and Emilio stood and latched onto Ah Puch’s arms. �śLaunch me, boys.” With Ah Puch facing toward the front of the train they moved to the back edge of the roof while Ah Puch lunged forward and flipped his legs up and over his head into a backflip. As he swung full circle Emilio and Jorge fell to their knees and then flat on their stomachs. With their heads and arms now dangling over the edge, they sent Ah Puch careening through the opened doorway below. With spurs jutting from the tips of his boots and his momentum carrying him into a second back flip, he felt his left boot grab flesh as his right rotated underneath him more quickly. He caught himself hands first before finally gathered his knees underneath him and crashing awkwardly into a stack of vegetable crates. Beside him he heard muffled swearing. Behind he heard Jorge and Emilio’s magnetic boots drop onto the landing. From the top of the train Chancho could see the tunnel approaching fast in the distance. He knew that timing was critical. At a full run he reached the front of the car, the wind whipping past him, and slid feet first over the edge. Grabbing the lip as he went over, he swung down onto the landing. The sudden proximity of the closed door leading to the armored car and the door across the way leading to over a hundred more Constitutional soldiers sparked an even greater urgency in him. Gripping his remaining heel he twisted it 90 degrees and tugged it from the sole of his boot, flicking its chemical laden fuse to life in the process. As steadily as his nerves allowed he stepped down onto the coupling to place the Ah o placecharge. But before he could reach the joint the metal door behind him slid violently open. ~~~ Plunging down and forward Chancho latched the magnetic-heel explosive to the coupling as gunfire echoed in the confined space between the two cars. The bullet ricocheted off of the hitch in front of his face. Flailing, he grabbed the bottom of the passenger car platform and dangled with his boots bouncing off of the ties as they rushed past. A second bullet missed just right of his handhold. Chancho glanced over his left shoulder at the burning fuse. He would catch a bullet before it went off, but even if he didn’t, he was too close for comfort. �śMy friend! Let’s not be �"�ś but before he could finish his sentence he heard two bodies colliding, followed by a grunt. Pulling himself up by the railing he turned to see Ah Puch heaving Guzman off of the landing. �śDo hurry.” Chancho leapt across the gap back onto the armored car just as the door to the passenger car slid open. �śI’m afraid he had a short fuse.” Ah Puch’s eyes flashed as he took in both the eminent explosion and the pistols leveled from the back door of the passenger car. Chancho hooked his friend around the waist as he rushed past, tugging them both toward the opened door. Simultaneously the charge from his heel and the powder of a few pistols flared into the echoing compartment, buffeting steel and flesh on both sides. Chancho and Ah Puch bounced off a pile of crates and crashed to the ground as the armored car lurched free from the rest of the train. Seconds later bullets commenced bouncing about the cramped quarters until Chancho shoved the door closed with his foot. Swallowed once again by darkness, both men remembered the belly of the whale lurking several hundred meters down track. Chancho rose to his knees, suddenly aware of a miscalculation in his plans. �śHow much do you think those geological survey boxes could weigh?” �śWhat? Who cares? And how should I know. We don’t have time to�"�ś The weight! It matters. Momentum equals mass times velocity. I estimated close enough on the speed of the train, but the car could be considerably heavier than I anticipated!” �śMeaning�"�ś �śWe won’t stop in time!” Bullets continued to bounce off the front of the armored car, but from a greater distance as the gap between them and the rest of the train expanded. �śAh Puch stood and helped Chancho to his feet.” One thing at a time. First we have to hit the switch.” With impeccable timing, Emilio’s voice called from the blackness. �śWe’re getting close. Jorge! Give us some light.” The back door to the armored car slid open and Emilio found Ah Puch and Chancho tangled in some webbing. �śWe need to get to the front of the car and hit the switch.” He revealed a heavy metal pipe taken from the livestock car. �śGood man.” Chancho reached for the pipe. �śNo.” Ah Puch stopped him. �śWe’re still in range of their fire. We’ll have to hit it from the back.” �śO.K. But it’ll be harder.” Emilio shrugged. �śNot much.” Chanchohei.” Ch removed himself from the tangle and flicked his spurs back into their resting position. �śI don’t know. I think you still gotta’ work on these magnet spurs.” �śFine, fine. I’ll replace them with jet packs. Just get moving.” �śReally? That would be great!” �śChancho!” �śO.K. O.K., my friend. Keep your magnet boots on.” ~~~ Chancho blinked furiously from the combination of bright sun and whipping wind. Ah Puch held him by his bandoliers while the others stood clear of the swinging pipe. �śWe only get one chance at this. Miss it and the tail end of the train will catch up to us before we’re ready for it,” Ah Puch cautioned. Chancho shook tears from his eyes, watching the tunnel entrance rush toward them faster than he liked. �śI’m more concerned with the possibility that we may not stop at all.” He cringed. �śOr we’ll wish we hadn’t.” �śWe’ll be sitting ducks when the rest of the train returns�"with all of its angry soldiers.” �śIf we aren’t crushed by the deadman.” Chancho tried wiping away tears with his shoulder. �śThis just keeps getting better.” Ah Puch shifted his grip on Chancho’s bandoliers, but in the process one of them snapped. Chancho dipped forward unevenly, dangling too far over the railing. �śHold me steady! We’re almost to the switch!” The throw bar, topped with a red octagonal sign, swept into view as the front of the armored car passed it. The whole of the car had already passed the switch itself, but it was the trailing three cars that concerned the revolutionaries at the moment. �śI don’t want to throw it with my face!” �śDammit, your bandolier.” Ah Puch clutched at Chancho’s clothing, scratching for something solid to yank him backwards by. �śAh Puch!” Chancho attempted to hold the heavy bar in front of his face in the hopes of deflecting the brunt of the collision. At the last second Ah Puch lunged further forward gripping Chancho under his armpits. Digging his feet against the bottom of the railing he lurched back. With a final bunt-like swing Chancho whacked the flat portion of the throw bar as the two of them tumbled backwards onto the platform. �śDid you get it?” �śI don’t know. I think so. I hit it anyway.” �śWe’ll know soon enough.” For a moment they watched the freight car, the flatbed with their horses and the caboose clack along the rails, already several hundred meters behind them. Emilio cleared his throat from the doorway of the armored car. �śThe deadman!” Chancho jumped to his feet. �śThat’s what we’re about to be.” Emilio shrugged. Ah Puch continued the thought. �śWe’d planned on throwing it by hand, but we’re going too�"�ś �śGive me a boost.” Chancho cut him off. �śWhat?” �śQuickly. We’re entering the tunnel. I can trigger the mechanism. Just give me a boost, now!” The sky disappeared as the armored car shot into the tunnel, still clipping at over 20 kilometers per hour. Ah Puch obeyed instantly. Settling onto the metal grate of the landing he laced his fingers together and clasped the back of Chancho’s boot where the missing heel would have been. Chancho rested his other boot on the top of the railing and poised himself for the jump. �śHow can you even see it? It’s too dark.” �śI know where I put it! Get ready! Three, two, now!” Ah Puch launched him forward into the oily darnkess of the tunnel confident that he’d just thrust his friend face first into solid rock. Chancho shot forward searching the glimmering darkness for whispers of light reflecting off of the metal lever he had placed in the wall. Catching a glint no more than a meter from his face he flung his defective bandolier toward it like a lasso as he rushed by. With a jerk and pulse of lightning to his shoulder sockets the bandolier caught. Flipping the lever into its recessed position, he ripped free and smashed hard into the wall of the tunnel before crumpling to the ground. ~~~ Through the ringing in his ears Chancho heard a four-stroke, diesel engine pulse to life followed by a small explosion detonating the deadman. Cringing, he waited less than three seconds for what he knew was coming next. Thankfully the crashing of the armored car into the deadman sounded little worse than overly rambunctious freight cars coupling�"no secondary clatter of a car derailed. He checked his person for major injury. While bleeding in a few places, nothing seemed to be broken. He gave a second thought to the trailing train cars, but figured they would have run him over already had they been coming. He tucked his bandolier securely around his waist and hobbled toward the armored car on his heelless boots. �śAh Puch? Emilio? Jorge?” He arrived at the landing on the back where Ah Puch was picking himself up. �śI think I should be a better Catholic, after surviving that.” �śI hope that doesn’t mean you’ll be a worse bandit.” �śBy no means. I hear the Church needs a good bandit every now and then.” The two friends allowed themselves a smile before checking on Emilio and Jorge, who were fine despite being buried in lettuce and tomato guts. Finally Ah Puch brought them back to reality. �śChancho, the train will be returning.” �śRight. Everything’s fired up. I’ll start the lift. But after that collision we’ll need to clear the tracks. We can’t leave anything behind, or all of this will be for nothing.” �śNo evidence. We’ll take care of that. Just make sure the belly is ready for its meal.” Ah Puch and the others scurried to the front of the car to clean up any debris and ensure the deadman would either retract or detach. Chancho inched along the wall until he found a control box dangling by its electrical wires. He hit the first button flicking to life a orange-yellow light cast from three fixtures in the ceiling, still swinging from the impact of the armorerd f the ad car. The second button caused the floor of the cave to shift. It dropped a centimeter before beginning to crank upwards at a rate of a centimeter per second. He stood still listening to the creaks and groans, thinking it indeed sounded like a behemoth of a whale slowly rising to the surface. The air in the tunnel tasted like the oil soaked dirt crusted on the fenders of the tractor he had maintained at the orphanage, before he’d left. The memory gave him both hope and guilt. He waited a moment longer until it was safe to lay the control box on the slowly rising floor of the tunnel. He ran along the rail until he reached the end of the lift and jumped down to the original level. Turning back to the lift he watched with a sudden dread as the lower level rose to fill the tunnel. An engine, of sorts, emerged from its earthly womb. Just born, and yet Chancho knew it was only moments away from its inevitable death�"the harbinger of death being its only purpose in life. Painted dull black, it absorbed the sickly yellow light. Against the starkness of the moment Chancho realized the contraption was merely a diesel-powered rocket on wheels. It was gruesome, and he hated that he had built it. But the plan�"the life of the plan drove him on. He jumped down to the track that would become the new floor of the tunnel and scooted behind the rocket engine’s controls. Designed for one simple reason, the device took to its roll quickly. The motor fired and pulsed up to speed, surrounded by nothing but a jacket of dynamite and iron plating. ~~~ The engine waited for its moment without complaint. Having set the wheels in motion the plan now drove itself forward, with or without Chancho’s assent. The lift’s gears tugged the armored car upward, gradually closing off his only means of exit. In reluctant surrender to the plan of his own initiating, he hoisted himself up to the original level of the tunnel and then jumped to reach the level where the armored car rested. Dangling from the lift as it rose closer to the roof of the tunnel, Chancho realized he never thought the plan would actually work. He’d seen these last stages of the plan as a vague generality, thus proceeding through the early stages without acknowledging their end. He swung his leg up and over the edge of the lift and rolled himself onto the uneven tracks just as they pushed past the roof of the tunnel and settled into place. Ah Puch had been right. Chancho played the revolution like a game, but human lives were at stake, many more than just his own. He heard the rocket engine chug free of its restraints in the tunnel below. The lights flicked on automatically now that the electrical connection was completed by the lift itself. No more kerosene lamps, the belly of the whale buzzed with diesel powered electricity. Ah Puch reached down to help him up, a grin stretching both corners of his mouth. �śYou did it. Your crazy plan actually worked.” Chancho dusted himself off and felt the sudden urge to see the grisly conclusion to what he had set in motion. He needed to see it for it to be real. �śLet’s get topside.” �śGood idea. It should be quite a show, and we need to make sure before we celebrate. Who would've thought you’d be the pragmatist.” Ah Puch slapped the side of the armored car as they squeezed past it toward the ladder going topside. �śJorge, hit the latch. We’re going up to see the fireworks. Then we’ll come back down to run our fingers thrd a fingerough some of that gold.” He slapped Chancho on the shoulder and laughed. Chancho reached the ladder first and flew up the rungs. In seconds he reached the trapdoor. With the mechanical lock having been thrown from below, he could see faint cracks of light around its edges. When he shoved it outward and upward with his shoulder dirt and sunlight sifted through the opening. He emerged onto the surface in a daze. Shielding the sun he scrambled to the top of an outcropping of rock and followed the distant track with his eyes until he saw it. The dull-black engine chugged forward at an increasing speed. It even looked like a rocket, its huge cowcatcher making up a third of its length. It was an ingenious design, created to derail and incapacitate an object of much greater mass�"to create chaos and distraction. Finally the others joined him on the rock. �śWe did it didn’t we? I mean, changed the revolution?” Chancho spoke to Ah Puch but kept his eyes on the rocket engine. The General’s train came into view around the bend, returning to collect its lost prize. �śIt was worth it, right?” Ah Puch knew what his friend was getting at. �śYes. It was worth it. You’ve made Mexico a better place today, my friend. You’ve proven the ideals of the revolution can and will prevail.” The moment of impact came. The rocket engine slammed underneath the passenger car full of Constitutional soldiers, heaving it upward and derailing it. The rocket continued its forward momentum until it reached the officer’s car, bucking it off the rails as well. But before it could reach the General’s private car it detonated with an ear-clapping concussion. Flame and smoke burst outward before being swallowed by a larger surge of destructive force that tossed fragments of steel and iron arching in every direction. �śAye yi yi yi yi!" Ah Puch and the others danced about waiving their sombreros over their heads. Meanwhile, a half dozen riders, one of them Pancho Villa himself, rode around the backside of the hill with the four victorious revolutionaries’ horses in tow. Paraplegic Zombie Slayer The color red. I close my eyes to picture the sun the way I remember it from six years ago in 1922, before the world turned red. Nearly midday, I’m burning precious heat for me and my family by remaining in bed. Last night had been my watch, but still, I should have gotten up almost an hour ago. The wind ripples the sheet stapled over the window, reminding me the outside world is always just a membrane’s width away. Opening my eyes, I prop myself up and stretch for the grab bar above my bed. The electrical tape wrapped around the metallic surface is sticky and comforting. Dangling from the bar, I jerk twice, shifting my weight until I feel the familiar grooves fall in between my fingers. Each contraction and expansion of my muscles operates like a bilge pump. Daily I awake drowning in a rancid gall�"a bitter caldron of regret cooked by the fires of the dust zone and coursing through my veins. Five reps, I gulp down the first fresh b of4reath of the day, but still want to die. Ten reps, I curse the helium plant and the gates of hell they opened on us all. Fifteen reps, I stop clenching my teeth and cursing under my breath. Twenty five reps, I remember my Rosalyn�"asleep before the hearth, Brothers Karamazov open in her lap. Twenty six reps and I remember her pitching forward into the dirt, blood spatter and brains caught in her fair hair like bracken and foam on a river’s shore. �śGeorgy Founder,” I curse myself, �śit should have been you that day.” Thirty reps and the tears course through the forest of bristle on my face. Mingling with sweat from my brow, they drip onto my lifeless legs. I keep rising and falling. Thirty five reps, I blame myself for selling out, for accepting handouts from the plant. Forty reps and I feel my heart begin to surface as the poisonous brine dips lower. I keep breathing. Fifty reps and I know I must keep living for my sons. Their voices carry through the bedroom wall from the kitchen. Fifty five reps, I worry about my youngest, Mik, remembering the glazed look he gave me the night before. Mykola, always lost in books like his mother, but with a heart so dark and bottomless it’s haunting. Sixty reps, I hear Pyotr arguing with Leonid about the location of the new hemp field. Sixty one and my muscles complain. They say they’re finished, like I’m finished�"an old cripple pretending he’s still a whole man because he can do chin-ups. Seventy reps, I curse my body and curse my mind, but not before it reminds me that today is my fortieth birthday. Forty. I repeat it three times until I almost lose count. Seventy five reps and for the first time since yesterday morning I imagine the numbing comfort of vodka on my tongue, burning my throat, washing away the red dust. Eighty reps, and there is nothing left but rage and the strength of will. Ninety reps, the poison is gone. Determination replaces thought. Ninety five reps, courage replaces fear. One hundred reps and I drop from the bar back onto the creaking mattress and roll to the edge. I love my sons. �śThe field has been planted. It stays.” I raise my voice before settling into my chair, fair warning for the whelps to sort themselves out, quickly. I strap down my withered legs with leather at the ankles, all the hair rubbed off long ago. Two slaps reverberate throughout the sturdy craftsman home as I clamp the .44-40 Mare’s Leg and the 12-gauge shotgun in place. �śStraighten up. We’re riding to Bertie’s for supplies in thirty.” I hear dishes dropping into the sink, Mykola preparing to wash. Disengaging the break, I test the wheels with a quick forward and back followed by a 360 degree spin before sidling up to my shelf next to the door. Routine guides me. I drop my bandolier over my neck and arm, sheathe my lance over my right shoulder and with two fingers transfer a single kiss from my lips to the photo of Rosalyn holding our baby Katerina in her lap. ~~~ After shoveling down what’s left of the morning’s oatmeal with a wooden spoon, I drop the pot into the sink and reach up to slap Mykola on the back. With my legs I would have been taller than him, but he’ll outgrow us all before puberty runs its course. I turn to Pyotr, my middle-born, sharpening his knife at the table. �śThe quicksilver lights burned all night this time. Good job, son.” �śIt’s kind of a shame. They work so good we haven’t had govno for fun around here�"�ś �śHey, use English for swearing. Don’t tarnish our mother tongue with filth.” My eldest, Leonid, drops his boots on the floor and sits to put them on. Pyotr stabs his knife into the table. �śRoger that, dillweed.” �śBoth of you�"�ś A screeching whistle followed by a pop cuts my reprimand short. �śFireworks.” �śThe perimeter!” Pyotr sheathes his knife, flashing a wicked grin. �śLeo, eyes!” I block Pyotr’s attempt to get past me to the back door and wait for Leonid to rush up the stairs to the crow’s nest. �śCome on, Papa. It’s the first time in a week.” Pulling my middle child close, I growl the words, �śWe do nothing if�"�ś �śWe don’t do it together.” Mykola and Pyotr finish the family mantra in sync. I release Pyotr’s shirt. �śStart the truck, and stick to protocol.” �śFor a perimeter alert, in the middle of the day?” Threatening him with a glare, he finally relents and bolts toward the front leaving only Mykola and me in the room. �śI don’t like the feel of this one. It’s too hot outside. Something isn’t right. Keep an eye on your brother.” He nods and scoops a three gallon jug of water from under the sink before following Pyotr out the front door. We’re still a family I remind myself. Function as a family and there’s something worth fighting for. I rake four survival packs from the bottom shelf into my lap, roll into the entry and flip the lockdown lever. Calculating the remaining daylight in my head, I turn the timer to eight hours and set the cycle to repeat. On cue, the diesel four-stroke in the crawlspace under the floorboards chugs to life, wafting an acrid smoke into the living quarters. Slamming the metal door on the electrical box, I know the house will maintain perimeters whether we return to it or not. The storm shutters lurch into motion before settling into a gentle crawl downward. Forty seconds and the house will be locked tight. Forty seconds for a forty-year-old cripple to�"with a jolt I remember the photo. Nimbly I spin my chair and zip back to the master bedroom. Pocketing the picture, I reach the front door just before the lowering shutters bar the way. While I don my goggles against the red dust Leonid drops from the roof to report. �śStation 12 went off, but I can’t see anything.” Pyotr shouts from the driver’s seat of the truck. �śThat’s my new trench. We caught one!” Leonid continues, �śnothing on the horizon. It isn’t a hunt.” �śGood.” I take a deep breath, filling my lungs with sulfur. �śFire sign?” �śNone, Papa.” �śI still don’t like it.” Pyotr guns the engine and slaps the seat beside him. �śJump in Mik. We got us a twitcher to kill.” Mik lowers himself from the bed of the truck and scoops the survival packs from my lap. �śLeviathan’s ready," he nearly whispers the words. I’m already wheeling toward the tailgate before he finishes. Leonid remains vigilant, scanning the horizon for movement, until the chairlift comes to a stop. Eighteen seconds to load a forty-year-old cripple into the back of a truck. I roll forward and lock my chair into Leviathan. As it’s gears tug me into position atop its two triangular tank treads, Leonid finally steps onto the runner and slaps the door. ~~~ Ghosts never sleep in the dust zone, and the living expect each day to be their last. Worse yet, will this day be the day the toxin tips the scales of a loved one? It’s rightfully said that in the dust zone everyone sleeps with a rifle under their bed and a bullet in their brain�"God willing someone loves you enough to put it there when the time comes. Katerina had just celebrated her seventh birthday when she started to turn. The outbreak had been raging for a year, but I hadn’t lifted a finger to move my family to safety. The twitchers crippled me when they took Rosalyn, and for a year I did nothing but drink. Neighbors disappeared. The local government collapsed until only the helium plant remained. Connections there, deals I made with the ones who brought the twitch upon us, made sure my family had food to eat and I had vodka to drink. One day, watching the skies turn red from the front porch, I heard Leonid’s voice calling me. The vodka had run out, so I cursed and wheeled back indoors. Our porch had a loose floorboard at the threshold. Unable to step over it, too lazy to fix it, the board mocked my laziness and inadequacy every time I entered my own home. Upset at the floorboard and the lack of vodka, I rolled into the living room to see my gentle Leonid holding the Winchester .44-40, my father’s rifle, with closed eyes and clenched teeth. He shook as he pointed it at the closet door. �śLeo!” I chided him. He startled and dropped the rifle, angering me further. I only cared that he broke the rules, abused my father’s rifle. �śWhat are you doing?” I slapped him with the back of my hand, angry that the vodka had run out. Angry that the board had mocked me and that I was sober enough to hear it. I slapped my eldest in anger, and he looked at me, the same expression as the floorboard, as the bottle�"flat, empty eyes. Never, since that moment, have I seen the gentle Leonid, the boy who used to love his father. I killed him with the back of an angry hand. I mocked him. �śYou’d rather shoot the closet than listen to your papa?" Steadily, he shook his head and pointed at the closet. I raised my hand a second time, but he’d finished with me. Fixed on the closet again, he moved quickly for the Winchester, raising it into firing position before I wrested it from his grip. Throwing him against the wall, I charged the closet and threw back the door. In that moment I knew no judgment of heaven or hell would ever be severe enough for my transgressions. Curled up on the floor, my Katerina hissed at the sudden light flooding into the darkened closet. Scratching at her blind eyes, toblind eshe pulled the skin from her face in bloody flakes. Spittle strung from her swollen lips, no longer little-girl-pink. I slumped to my dead knees and pulled her against my chest, propping us up against the closet door. A cold sweat had soaked through her nightgown, the only clothing she’d worn for three days. Her hummingbird heart rattled in it’s cage. I tried to hug her, but she groaned in pain and slashed my cheek with wicked nails. There beside us both, unflinching, Leonid, the boy turned man, held the Winchester at arm’s length. I placed Katerina back on the floor in the closet, lifted myself into my chair, took the rifle from my son, and buried a bullet into the brain of my only daughter. I shut the door and we moved eleven miles out of town that day�"as far from the hell Amarillo had become as I could manage. We didn’t know then that the plague dwelled in the water, the food, eventually the land itself. That you couldn’t avoid it. That every rudder’s days were numbered until the bullet in the brainpan went off. Every day for nearly 2,000 days since, the four of us, the Founder men, have haunted the dust zone, just as it haunts us. Jolting across the compound to station 12, dervishes of ruddy dust whip the side of the truck. I pray for one more day as a family, for another chance to bring us together. But I worry the bullet will go off, or worse, my sons will learn the truth about the plant and how their papa is a sellout as well as a cripple.� ~~~ The wind and constant creep of knee-high dust obscures the opening of the pit as we pull within sight, but clearly something has disturbed it. Splintered wooden lath creates ragged jaws around its edges. �śNo one rushes in, Pete!” I yell over the growl of the engine and the constant drowning hush of sand washing past the fenders. I pound the top of the cab three times. Pyotr kills the engine and slams on the breaks twenty-five yards from the pit. �śLeo, perimeter. Mik, cover. Pete�Ś” all three boys are out of the truck crouched and ready. Pyotr flicks his battle ax from underneath the seat and spins it from hand to hand. I switch the M2 Browning .50 caliber machine gun to single fire and rotate my perch on Leviathan for a clear shot at the pit, over Pyotr’s left shoulder. �śPete, for God’s sake, take it slow. They could be playing us.” �śOr just thirsty. I doused this one yesterday. Knew those damn twitchers couldn’t resist a little drink.” Leonid spits, visibly upset. �śRuddy hell, Pete. Now you’re inviting twitchers?” �śBoys! Eyes up.” But I know the conversation is nervous prattle. They’re on game. Mykola shifts deftly to Pyotr’s left with the shotgun, keeping out of reach and out of my line of fire, while maintaining tight cover. His eyes are on the terrain around him while his aim is on the pit. Leonid, like a spider with the eyes of an eagle, quickly covers fifty yards to our right, his back turned to the pit. In recent months we’d seen secondary pairings waiting nearby in ambush. The twitchers were getting more sophisticated, and more violent. I test the gyros on Leviathan to 90 degrees either side of the pit and use my higher vantage to take one last look over the horizon. No other alarms have gone off and note r off anhing stands out. No smoldering plumes of fire sign either. Maybe it’s just a wayward pairing or a thirsty loner after all. �śTwitcher!” Pyotr confirms visual contact. Everyone freezes. The gyros come to rest with the barrel of the .50 cal. aimed directly at the yawning mouth. At first there is no sound above the wash of rushing sand. I strain my ears. A faint moan curls up from the pit, followed by a nearly fleshless arm, striated red and brown and spasming violently. �śSpouse?” Mykola calls for a confirmation on pairing. �śNegative.” Pyotr maintains an alert crouch, creeping forward, now within 5 yards. �śGood boy,” I whisper to myself before keeping my eyes vigilant, scanning our broader surroundings. I have to trust Mykola to cover Pyotr now. Everyone does their job and we all survive. Remain a family and there’s something worth fighting for. �śCould be a loner�"" Pyotr’s cut off by a gargling scream�"blood cry. It’s a bluff I tell myself, keeping my eyes diligent on the horizon. But there’s nothing. Screw it. I focus on the pit in time to see a head lurch up from its dust enshrouded confines. Dark red and frothing, it's a dominant. �śWhere’s the wife?” Mykola dances closer, keeping a clear line of sight. �śDammit, it’s a loner, and it’s gonna’ get out! I’m going for the kill.” �śPete!” I’m too far to stop him. He lunges, spinning the double-sided ax back and above his head for a quick kill. A cocky move, leaving himself open. But the twitcher doesn’t lurch from the pit. He crows angrily, struggling as if held back by something, until the ax falls�"removing his head cleanly at the neck before burying deep into the edge of the pit. A volcanic spray pulses twice from the carotid before the twitcher’s tense body sags, its bright red blood slipping silently beneath the dust. �śMik, did you see that? Damn, that one was high strung.” Pyotr laughs as he steps on the twitcher’s shoulders for leverage to pull his ax free. I notice Mik is frantically wiping the twitcher’s blood from his goggles, his shotgun lowered. Something isn’t right. Why would a dominant be out this far at midday by himself? And why hadn’t he lunged�" �śHe’s not a loner! Pyotr, there’s another�"�ś In sickening slow motion I watch a second hand clutch Pyotr’s ankle and yank his feet out from under him. ~~~ Pyotr’s chest hits the edge of the pit hard, catapulting shattered lath and earth in an explosion of dirt and blood cry. Bouncing backwards into the pit, he’s gone in an instant, taking with him his mother’s fair hair, slight frame and lightning temper. �śPyotr!” I watch impotently, my twitching finger resting on the trigger of the .50 cal. Mykola rushes the pit, his goggles still half muddied with twitcher blood and blowing dust. Dear God, I pray, I won’t lose two sons today. I flip the machine gun to rapid fire and depress the trigger. In the split second between my body’s assent and the gunpowder’s explosion in the chamber of the .50 caliber, my mind registers Pyotr's face lunging above the edge of the pit. I tug the aim high and watch dirt kick up immediately behind him. Several thunderous rounds tick off before I can release the trigger. Pyotr’s dagger flashes, the tip facing backwards, as he launches his upper body from the side of the pit bringing his full weight down with the savage blow. Shrieking in pain, the twitcher’s torso emerges from the pit for the first time, and a chill grips me. So dark red as to nearly be black, the beast’s face is a blur of movements too rapid to discern�"it’s physical actions outstripping my racing mind’s ability to interpret them. Twice it slams Pyotr’s body into the side of the pit. Gripping my son from behind with only one hand, a vaporous boil of blood bursts from its injured shoulder with each rapid pulse of its heart. �śDammit, Pyotr. Get out of there.” Mykola’s standing only five feet away, already dangerously close. But his shotgun would tear both of them apart. I rest my finger on the trigger. One more second and I’ll have no choice. If the twitcher decides Mik is more of a threat it could be on him before there’s time to respond. Then the miraculous happens. In the flurry of uncontrollable movement Pyotr guesses right. Grasping his ax with his left he throws a backward jab with his dagger in his right. The thrust, directed originally at thin air, catches the twitcher’s dancing head in its jaw. Spasming in pain, the monster throws Pyotr through the air like a rag doll, ax and all. Gunfire explodes as both Mykola and I unleash hell’s fury. But the twitcher’s lightning quickness renders the .50 cal. worthless, like trying to shoot quail out of the sky with a pistol. Mykola blasts the animal’s leg off with his first shot�"five feet away with the choke set to full spread and he nearly misses. The twitcher spins and takes a moment to regain balance on one leg, focusing on Mykola now. The trigger still depressed, I sweep the ground aiming for his second leg while battering the desolate plains with the machine gun’s echoing thunder. The recoil starts to tip the truck, and I adjust my aim accordingly. Mykola pumps another round into the chamber and fires at the twitcher’s midriff. Both of us are late as the twitcher leaps toward my youngest. The shotgun blast rips off another leg, but fails to stop it. In a desperate effort Mykola grips the shotgun like a bat. Suddenly with a whuffing thud Pyotr’s ax strikes the twitcher full mast and in mid-flight. With a final blood cry the beast’s torso knocks Mykola to the ground and falls motionless, bleeding out in the ruddy dirt. I slam Leviathan’s gyros into a full 360 sweep of the horizon, searching for twitchers who may have heard the gunfire, and come up empty. In the seconds it takes me to remount the machine gun onto the truck and begin lowering the ramps, Leonid lifts Mykola to his feet. Mykola dashes toward Pyotr while Leonid dislodges the ax from the dead twitcher. All three sons are huddled together by the time I bring Leviathan’s treads to a stop right beside them. �śPete? Dammit, Pete.” Mykola leans back so I can see my middle born. Leonid has him propped up, and he’s smiling. ~~~ �śDid you see that?” Pyotr winces as he sits up. �śWhat the hell was that thmen was thing?” Mykola whispers. �śScrew that. Did you see the way I knocked it out of the air with my ax?” Pyotr pokes Mykola in the chest. �śI saved your hide.” �śAfter you put all of us at risk with your impulsive behavior.” I come down hard on him, angry that he behaves irrationally to prove himself. �śIt takes a man to know the difference between courage and stupidity.” But I vaguely remember what it was like to be fifteen and how a boy needs affirmation from his father, so I smile and try to soften the rebuke. �śIt also takes a man to hold his own with a twitcher and keep his wits.” �śYeah, you did good, you dillweed.” Leonid shoves him and they both laugh. But I can tell he’s still upset. I wish I could embrace him to put force behind my words. Instead I use his Russian name, �śPyotr. Look at me.” I set all joking aside, desperate to hold my struggling family together. �śIt was an amazing shot. You did good.” He crinkles his eyes with the smallest of smiles and they begin to glisten, so he looks away. Mykola changes the subject. �śAre you alright?” Pyotr regains himself. �śYeah. That thing scratched me up good, but nothing’s broken.” He gestures to his brothers and they pull him to his feet. �śSpeaking of the devil. What the hell was that, anyway?” Leonid returns to his normal dispassionate self, �śboiler. Tar baby.” �śWhat? That nonsense Bertie’s always prattling on about?” Pyotr objects as he walks toward the remains of the darkest twitcher I’ve ever seen. �śHow else do you explain it? We all saw it. I the least, and only right at the end.” Leonid turns toward me as we follow Pyotr to investigate the corpse. �śPapa? Have you ever seen a twitcher move like that?” I shake my head. �śNo, son.” �śSix years?” Pyotr kicks the body. The whites of the twitcher’s eyes are larger than half-dollars, its pupils gone. �śBoilers really exist, and we haven’t seen one for six years?” �śMost people who see one don’t survive,” Leonid says. Pyotr straightens. �śWell, I guess we’re the dust zone’s new elite.” I reverse the right tread and spin Leviathan toward the pit. The thing unsetting me from the start comes back to roost. �śThe real question is why. Why today? Pete, you said it yourself. We haven’t even seen a loner in over a week, and today this.” I stop as close to the pit as I can get and stretch over the armrest to see the bottom. �śAnd how come both of you weren’t sliced to mincemeat rolling around in there?” Pyotr looks over the edge and shakes his head. �śIt’s all gone. I sharpened two dozen pieces of sheet metal to put in there.” Leonid stomps his boot creating a loud clatter. He sweeps away dust revealing a stack of discarded sheet metal just the other side of the hole. �śThey knew about the trap?” I swivel the gyros to scan the surroundings, suddend oings, sly feeling uneasy. �śDid you see the way the wife struggled before you killed it?” Pyotr bends down to take a closer look at the headless twitcher still clinging to the side of the pit. �śYeah, it was stuck on something. That’s why I went for the quick kill.” �śNot something. Someone. Look.” I gesture with a nod and all three boys look further into the pit. Leonid spots it immediately. �śIts legs were bound. They disarmed our trap and tried to use it against us. But if they were coming for us, why not just bring the hunt?” I finally make the connection myself. �śBecause we aren’t the prey. This was only an attempt to keep us busy.” ~~~ Within the dust zone there is only one way station known among even outsiders, Bertie’s. When trouble’s coming, Bertha knows about it. Already burning midday heat, I ride the lead in Leviathan with Leonid manning the .50 caliber from the truck bed. He’s a deadlier aim and Leviathan’s undercarriage can withstand improvised explosives better than the truck. I barrel past a burned out metal hulk in the road, crushing a ruined door with my treads. The glass shatters and I bounce to a stop indicating for Pyotr to drive around before I kick Leviathan back up to cruising speed, around 25mph. At top speed she’ll reach 30 plus, fast enough to outrun most twitchers. Twice in recent months we’ve seen refugees’ rigs smoldering in the road after tripping explosives set by twitchers�"nothing left but burnt hulls and melted rubber. And blood, always blood. I’ve never seen one of the explosives and can’t figure how they set them without fine motor skills. Throwing caution to the wind, I trust Pyotr’s additions to Leviathan to keep her intact. Still, the threat lingers in my mind. What started as territorial attacks and raids for water and food escalated into full-scale war a couple years ago without explanation. Leonid, as good at interpreting twitcher motives and movements as anyone in the dust zone, thinks the twitchers are dying�"that desperation is changing their behavior. Maybe so. Unfortunately, a wounded animal often poses greater threat than a healthy one�"whatever healthy is for a twitcher. Massive fire sign plumes a hundred feet into the air less than a mile northeast of our position, close enough for us to taste the crackle. I open Leviathan’s throttle. The hair on my arms raises and I count the seconds. The cinnabar deposits are getting bigger. By the time I get to forty-five I start to worry. At fifty I crane my neck to witness the final woof of pale blue flame around the edges of the storm, indicating the end of the burn�"less than a few hundred yards away. I let up on the throttle as the hair on my arms settles. Mykola had first asked about the blue flame. Once we deduced it was quicksilver, Pyotr adapted it for our lanterns. I’m damn proud of each of them. I love my boys. Without warning Leviathan bucks and a deafening wind and scorching heat engulfs me. Careening sideways and bouncing on the right tread, I cut the motor and disengage the transmission just in time to keep the machine from toppling forward. A secondary quicksilver burst plumes, crackle thick in my throat. Less than a second before it burns me to death from the inside out, I slam my on , I slaskull into the crash pad in the head rest, igniting the counter burn and releasing my harness. A sudden whoosh chokes me and thrusts me from my chair. Blocking my descent with my hands in front of my face, I crash to the asphalt as the pale blue flame licks my back. Just as sudden as it began, the popping ends. Face down in the road, my eyes still closed against the crackle, the first sensation I register is road rash on my right arm�"a good sign. �śPapa!” �śAre you o.k., Papa?” Gentle hands roll me over and I open my eyes to see all three of my sons hovering over me. I give them my best smile. �śThat was a close one.” I see genuine relief in each of their expressions. They still love their old papa, despite his weaknesses. Mykola leans close. �śHappy Birthday, Papa.” The intimate words startle me. �śMik!” Pyotr shoves him, but smiles as the two lug me into a sitting position. �śWe were going to wait until this evening to surprise you.” The sentiment, as sudden as the explosion, takes a few seconds to settle in. �śI didn’t, but I didn’t think�"�ś �śOf course we remembered.” Pyotr mocks offense. �śNow let’s get you in your chair.” I search for Leonid, but he disengages. Turning his back to us, he fiddles with a few levers on Leviathan, lowering my chair to road level. ~~~ �śWe shouldn’t stay here long. Secondary fire sign is too likely.” Leonid kicks the left tread. �śThe first storm was too small for complete burn.” Pyotr grunts. �śNot to mention the twitchers that set the explosives. Damn if they aren’t learning my tricks.” �śPapa, your legs.” Mykola gestures with his eyes until the rest of us look down. The backs of my legs are blistered and red. I shrug. �śThey’re fine for now. I’ll treat for infection when we get home. Leo’s right. We should keep moving.” I take a moment to inspect Leviathan. �śHow’s she look?” Leonid stoops to inspect the transmission box and then swings underneath to check the axle and universals. While Pyotr and Mykola lower me into my chair I praise the three of them. I feel every word of it, struggling to hold back tears. �śI’m proud of all of you, the Founder sons. You’ve outdone your old man in almost every way.” �śAlmost?” Pyotr grins. �śYour Papa still has a few tricks up his sleeve yet, you whelp.” Leonid reports, �śSolid. The blast might have blown debris into the gear box, but nothing significant. Pete’s blast plate diverted most of it.” Pyotr swells with pride. �śWho’s the dillweed now?” �śYou are, dillweed.” Leonid turns toward the truck. �śLoad up, boys. With this much twitcher attention in the fringes, I’m tonges, Iworried about Bertie’s. We may have more trouble before sun fall.” Ten minutes later we roll up to Bertie’s and instantly know something is wrong. Bertha isn’t sitting on the roof to welcome us with her rifle. I stop in front of the place and indicate for the boys to drive the loop around, but quietly. Pyotr eases off the main road and starts around the perimeter fence of Bertie’s junk and swap yard. If this place has been overrun, it’ll be a nightmare of the living dead. Information is often the hair’s breadth between life and death in the isolation of the dust zone, and no one has more information than Bertha�"if she’s still breathing to gather it. I need to think. Leaning back, I find the headrest stripped of padding by the explosive counter measure taken minutes earlier. It's frustrating, but a small price to keep my lungs from melting. Lifting my goggles onto my forehead, I rub the creases left around my eyes. The ruddy coloring of the skin on the back of my hands, combined with the spiderweb of wrinkles, unsettles me. I secure the goggles and scan the horizon before looking more closely at my immediate surroundings. First rule of the dust zone: What’s over the horizon can put you under the ground. Eye’s up before looking down. This time looking down pays off first. Twitcher tracks. Dozen’s of them. Hundred’s of them. I clutch my chest and slough a chill. The hunt. Bertha. Only a few uninfected have been known to survive a hunt. I zip fifty yards down the road westward, toward Amarillo. Most of the tracks kick into a lope moving in that direction, but others scatter northward at top speed, lumbering footfalls landing every several feet. Back at Bertie’s the tracks grow muddled, but at least a hundred twitchers converged here within the hour. Tracks in the dust zone never last longer. But if Bertha had been the target of a hunt they would have burned the place to the ground. They moved on too fast. They were hitting every known human stronghold in the area, but on the way to what? Revving the engine, the boys careen around the opposite side of the junk loop and jolt across the road ditch before slamming on the breaks a few yards short of Leviathan. �śNews?” All three jump out of the truck, but only Leonid speaks. �śFire sign east of Amarillo. Lots of it. More than I’ve ever seen, multiple storms at once.” �śSomething strange, Papa.” Mykola speaks. �śSomething else?” �śDust.” Pyotr and Leonid look down as Mykola continues, �śhundreds of trailing clouds of dust.” A tense silence passes, as we pay respects for the soon to be dead. �śThe hunt.” ~~~ Back on ground level, I test my wheels before hitting a button on the end of the arm rest. With a metallic fwing, a half dozen blades protrude from both wheel hubs. �śPapa, you should stay in Leviathan.” �śLeo, you forget yourself.” I growl under my breath, loud enough to be heard over the creaking floorboards of Bertie’s general store. �śI’m still in charge in l in chhere. And I say we don’t do anything�"�ś �śUnless we do it together.” They recite the chorus I’ve beat into them�"an empty recitation. For five years I’ve relied on the dust zone to keep my family together. Through discipline and bitter survival I’ve ruled with an iron fist. But we all feel the same need. Whether forty years old or eleven, we need more reason to be together than just to be together. More to fight for than survival. But I don’t know what reason to give them, so I pound my chest and impose my will. It won’t be long though, before the whelps overpower the alpha. �śIf Bertha’s still alive we’ve gotta’ find her. If twitchers are still in here, we gotta’ kill �Śem. Questions?” They fan out, leaving the main walkway for me. Bertie’s is always crowded, but now shelves are tipped over and supplies scattered across the floor. Stealth is useless, so I crunch my way across grains of spilt rice mixed with dark blobs that look suspiciously like blood. The generator, usually a constant droning at Bertie’s, is eerily quiet. With the windows long since replaced by metal sheeting, the store is blacked out, even at midday. Rolling further from the the front door, it becomes difficult to tell what my wheels are crushing beneath them, and difficult to discern which noises I and my sons are making and which ones we aren’t. I hear the rhythmic whirring of Bertha’s windmill built into the back wall, the blades that power her generator still turning. Then why are the lights off? My wheels bump against something lying across my path, and the scent of rotting flesh swells in my nostrils. Quickly I draw my short stick and flick both blades open, gripping it in the middle. A sudden crack disturbs the silence, followed by blood cry. Like a bursting damn the store reverberates with it as the shadows swarm. �śTwitchers!” A smudge against the blackness lunges from a nearby shelf, crashing into the tip of my lance. Rocking onto my back wheels with the impact, I retract the blade faster than the falling body can smother it and spin the opposite end with force enough to remove the twitcher’s head. Still spinning the lance over my head it slices two more twitchers before rebounding off a tipping shelf about to block my retreat. I click the lance in place horizontally behind my head and whip the wheels in opposite directions. Spinning 180 degrees, I lunge forward in time to smash into the falling shelves and skitter sideways, barely clearing the blockage and managing an open space in the center of the store. A shotgun roars from less than ten yards away, the flare of the powder revealing a shattered twitcher spraying blood foam. �śMik! Stay clear! Find the lights!” Shadows converge on the blast. Blood soaking the floorboards beneath me, I realize it’s time to get dizzy. A quick flick of my wrists and I start the spin. From the depths of my oily soul I dredge the layers of guilt and shame for the bedrock of rage, for the need to destroy everything and everyone who has ruined me, taken my Rosalyn, my Katerina. Anything that threatens the lives of my sons. In that place, I find my blood cry. Shattering bones with my hate alone, I scream as twitchers seethe from the darkness. And I spin. Impacting twitchers erratically, I wrench my body in an ocean of movement, lurching onto a single wheel, before slamming back down onto two. Keep the spin. e ap the sI surge every ounce of my poisonous strength into my grip on the wheels. I feel blood trickling down the back of my throat, rage ripping from my lungs. Spinning blades churn the air around me like a blender with my broken body caught in the middle. Keep the spin. I bounce sideways with a sudden impact and lurch unsteadily up onto a single wheel�"the attacker’s eyes close enough for me to see their pupil-less whites. I loop around once and catch the twitcher with a savage head butt before he can tip my chair the rest of the way over. With a yank, I bring the wheel down on his neck. With a second, I rip out his throat as I keep the spin. But there are too many shattered bodies, mine about to be one of them. Finally the chair catches in a twitcher’s rib cage and pitches sideways. From the darkness a flying demon drives me the rest of the way to the floor, chomping at my throat with his teeth. It takes too long for me to shift my grip from the wheels to the throwing knives in my bandolier, my fingers refusing to unfurl. I count three beats of the twitcher’s heart, the veins of his neck throbbing faster than the pistons in an auto. He lunges forward to end me. ~~~ With a frizzle and jolt the lights burst on. Dazzling bright, they cause the demon to twitch and miss its aim. And Instead of my throat in its teeth it finds my blade crunching through the roof of its mouth. �śBack to hell with da lot of ya’! When you get t’ere say hello to my husband!” Bertha’s gravely voice reverberates through the store followed quickly by dancing lead and burning powder. Multiple guns go off at once, and I remember my .44-40 and 12-gauge, sawed off to fit beneath the arm rests of my chair. I draw them both and join the party. In the searing light the twitchers seize and pitch erratically, and soon the room is filled with blood foam and smoke. With only two ways in or out, Bertie’s quickly becomes a twitcher mass grave. By the time the gunfire stops I’m buried three bodies deep. After Mykola and Pyotr pull me from the tangle of twitcher bodies, I comprehend the extent of the slaughter. Bertie’s will never be the same. Flies buzz around our heads, entering and exiting at will through the countless bullet holes puncturing the tin siding. The end of the store closest my position, completely ripped open by fleeing twitchers, floods with waining afternoon sun. And the bodies�"more twitchers than I’ve seen alive all my days in the dust zone�"bleed out in heaps. �śThis twas only a puncheon of �Śem. Da main column be headed north and west a here more dan tirty beats ago.” In the road Bertha updates the lot of us as Leonid jumps down from the crow’s nest. �śI t’ought I was a goner for sure, specially after you guys came along. The twitchers just staked da place out.” �śThanks for the vote of confidence, Bertha.” Using rags torn from a twitcher’s body, I wipe the stickiest blotches of blood from my chair’s arm rests. �śOh, I gots a bit more confidence in ya’ now. I ain’t never seen nothing like dat before.” The old, ample lady gives Leonid a squeeze around the shoulder that makes him blush. �śChur boys are something special.” She scowls at me, a look I recognize well from an earlier life. �śAnd you ain’t so bad yourself.” Delivering the nicest words she’s spoken to mize spokene since the outbreak, she winks. �śOf course I gots to charge �Śya for the damage you done to my store.” Leonid cuts to the chase, �śBertie says Frank and her spotted a group of refugees heading their direction from the northeast about the same time she picked up on signs of the hunt. Frank got off in time to give them warning�"�ś �śTold �Śem to turn around and take der worthless butts back to Oklihomie, was what I told Frank to tell �Śem. For dey git us all kilt.” Leonid nods. �śThe hunt overtook Bertie’s before she could be sure Frank reached the refugees.” I interrupt. �śYou thinking what I’m thinking?” Leonid and Bertha both nod their heads before Leonid sums it up, �śthe twitchers are after the refugees, but they seem to be herding them rather than hunting them, just yet anyway.” I look around at my sons faces. Leonid’s use of the word, �śherding” chills us all, but I know he’s right. �śThe helium plant.” Leonid nods. �śThat only leaves why. Why are the twitchers herding a group of refugees toward the most secure spot in the dust zone?” �śBecause they want in.” The truth hits me. Pyotr speaks for the first time. �śI’ve seen enough.” Leonid judges the remaining daylight. �śWe’ve got time to help Bertie clean up some first.” �śNo.” The blinders fall from my eyes. I see my sons for who they are, what they have become�"men, battle torn and bleeding. And I know why. I know what will hold us together, the force calling us to something beyond our own survival. Confusion on their faces, only Bertha knows what’s coming, but even she doesn’t understand it. They all think they know me, and maybe they do. But I remember the me from before, from before the color red. ~~~ I take a deep breath. �śFor six years I’ve refused to say it, but I was wrong. Your mother wanted to leave Amarillo when the twitch began. It was my fault she died. In my weakness�Ś” I take my goggles off and press my puffy eyes with the heals of my hands. �śI killed Katerina.” Mykola tries to soften it, �śshe caught the twitch�"�ś �śI killed her!” Swallowing my grief, I continue. �śI should have taken you, all of you from this hell hole years ago. But I didn’t.” I shake my head. �śWe know, Papa.” Leonid speaks, �śyou work for the plant. We know, all of us. In exchange for supplies, you tell them about the outside.” I blink with shock, looking at each of them in turn. Only Leonid returns my gaze, cold and unforgiving. Maybe I’ve already lost him. Maybe not. Bertha spits. �śWhat he means is you spy on us for dem.” I nod. �śThis only confirms my decision.” I see it clear as day, as obvious as the sun. Bertha can’t keep quiet. �śYou’re still gonna’ help tose sons’ a bitches who done dis to us?” �śMaybe. But I don’t work for them anymore. From now on I work only for you.” I roll forward until each of my sons lifts their eyes to look at me. �śMen, you’re not boys anymore.” I point to Bertie’s store, blood soaked and battered. �śThis! This is what we are now. I should have taken you far from this place years ago. There’s no undoing that. This. This is what we are now.” I unsheathe my short stick and flick the blades open, still oozing with the cold, thickening blood of twitchers. �śThe dust zone is our home. When I cared only about myself, my life was empty. In my fear I’ve taught you to do the same.” I spin the lance over my head before stabbing it deep into the dirt. �śIt’s time we take our home back. We don’t need the plant. All we need is each other.” Pyotr is first to follow suit. With a one-sided grin, he backs a few steps from the circle and spins his ax from hand to hand. Mykola lifts his head. �śI want to see the outside world.” His words freeze me. �śBut not until the twitchers are dead, all of them.” With frightening venom on his lips he steps back and slams the butt of his shotgun on the hard dirt crust. Leonid shakes his head, staring me down. �śAfter six years you want to fight?” He swallows back tears. �śI remember the day you shot her. Do you even remember? Or were you too drunk? I loved her so much.” He removes his goggles to blot muddy tears from his eyes. �śYou didn’t even know she was turning!” He raises the back of his hand, stopping just short of striking my face. Without blinking I give him permission.� �śStrike me, Leonid. God knows I deserve it.” He begins to shake. Even just the appearance of the twitch in my oldest son shatters the last of my pride. I shove my chair back and lurch forward. Draping my arms over his shoulders, I force him to either support his old man or drop him. His shock turns to strength as I feel his muscles tighten around me. I whisper into his ear, �śI’m sorry, son. I’m so sorry.” And I hug my eldest for the first time in six years. �śAch, cut all da kissy kissy, and let’s kill us some twitchers!” Bertha slaps us on the shoulders and Leonid helps me find my chair again. I start to object, �śBertha, you can’t�"�ś �śOh can da crap, Georgy. Look what dem animals did to my store. Besides, I’m tired of living witout my Marty.” With a vicious yank she pumps her 12-gauge with one arm. �śPayback, she’s a bitch, no?” ~~~ We draw out plans to hit hard and fast, to extract as many refugees as possible and let the helium plant take care of itself. Bertha and Leonid agree that once the conflict starts with the plant that the twitchers most likely won’t pursue. So we stake everything on it, and end the session with the same old words given new meaning. �śWe don’t do anything, unless we do it together.” Wind whipping past us, we approach the outskirts of Amarillo at a 30mph clip. The sun dips low in the western sky. It’s almost six o’clock in the afternoon. The day’s still at its hottest, the twitchers at their slowest. But all that will change soon. Pyotr and Mykola ride in the cab of the truck with Bertha manning the machine gun, like only a fifty year old German woman named Bertha can. Leonid insists on joining me in Leviathan. I’m grateful. I’ll need his marksmanship before this is through. �śBertha knows exactly where the armored Jeffery is and which railway to take.” �śRoger.” �śThe trick will be to take the heat off them and make it to the refugees without getting dead.” �śNo problem, Papa. You just drive. I’ll keep the twitchers off our ass.” I reach back and squeeze his shoulder, and feel the roots of a love built on something other than fear for the first time since losing Rosalyn. �śI know you will.” We rumble over the ruins of a stick frame house blown into the road. Crushing a path for the truck, we barrel onto Buchanan street�"going the wrong way on a one way. Funny how some things stick with you. �śNow.” Leonid waves Pyotr off, and the truck obediently slows and turns right into a quiet neighborhood, one known to be mostly twitcher free. Each of my boys has the territorial map of twitcher residences in Amarillo memorized. Fortunately, the twitchers who resided in Amarillo long enough before they turned tend to haunt places of familiarity, providing some predictability to navigating the city. Unfortunately, the events of today have flushed much of what we trusted about twitcher behavior. �śTwitchers! Five o’clock. Four o’clock. Eight o’clock. Lots of �Śem.” Leonid levers a bullet into the chamber of his Winchester ’73. �śDamn. I was hoping most of them would be out of town.” �śMaybe they’re covering all the possible retreats.” �śMaybe so.” I shift my grip on the clutch. �śHold on. It looks like there’s new debris in the road.” I throttle down to jump the curb. That’s when I spot several eyes through a department store window only feet away. �śGot �Śem!” Leonid strikes first, shattering the glass with a .44-40 slug. As soon as he does a swarm of twitchers emerge from the jagged mouth missing the treads by mere feet. At full throttle we bounce around the debris and back into the road, splintering a hitching post along the way. The slower twitchers fall away quickly, but not the faster ones. Round after round Leonid works the Winchester’s lever and burns the afternoon air with powder and lead�"every bullet finding its mark. The rifle’s thunder echos amidst the tall, brick buildings of downtown, drawing even more of a crowd. A block ahead a half dozen twitchers lope straight for us. I grip the double-barrel 12-gauge under the armrest, count to three and pull both triggers at once. A blast of exploding blood foam and sinew envelopes us. A tumbling head deflects off my left shoulder, bruising me, but nothing more. Wiping the mist from my goggles, I nearly miss our turn on 3rd Avenue, and then instantly wish I had. Wrecked autos block our path, new since last week. Railroad tracks hem us in on the right, and besides, we need to keep heading north. �śHold on!” �śI need to reload.” �śJust hold on. I’m going to get someify to get vodka.” We buck the curb onto the sidewalk and I steer directly for the loading bay doors of Hal’s Garage. �śPapa, what are you�"�ś Leviathan’s treads crash into the bottom of the doors first, buckling the dry boards and popping them from their support irons in a shower of splintered wood. Then suddenly the floor beneath us gives, and there is nothing but dust and darkness and the sensation of flying. ~~~ The impact cracks one of my teeth and shoots a rooster tail of sparks out from underneath Leviathan’s treads as they grab at the abandoned rails beneath us. Steering the beast through the prohibition tunnels in the dark reminds me of iceskating at night back in Virginia. Traction is horrible, and in a matter of seconds the twitchers follow and gain on us. �śPapa, I hope you know what you’re doing.” �śFor the first time in a long time, I’m certain.” I absolutely know what I’m doing, just not whether it will work. Somehow Leonid manages to reload and begins picking off the front runners. �śSave some bullets. We’re almost there.” �śWhere?” �śMy supply of hooch.” Lord willing it’s still there. Only a handful of my friends knew about it during the years after prohibition and before the twitch, all of them most likely dead. �śWe’re going to light it, all of it. I’ll make the mess, but I’ll need you to clean it up.” �śNo problem.” We slide around a bend, the right tread chewing into the rock of the tunnel side, bouncing us and spitting gravel. Finally I make out the stash by the glint of sparks bouncing off the glass bottles stacked in wooden crates from floor to ceiling. �śGet ready!” No sooner than the words leave my lips we crash into the wall of vodka and beer, the impact more painful than I had hoped. With nothing to shield the blow, a crate catches me across the forehead. Another smashes into my chest, weighing down Leviathan’s controls. �śNow!” I grunt through clenched teeth. The Winchester barks and a violent woof rushes past us before sucking all the air back toward the fire. I feel the hair on my face shrivel from the sudden heat as hideous howling fills the tunnel. �śHot damn! I can’t see much, but I think that got �Śem.” I blink rapidly, trying to bring moisture back to the surface of my eyes and focus again on the glint of the rails before us. Only then do I realize I still have a case of vodka in my lap. �śThink these might come in handy?” Leonid shifts to see the bottles. �śFor once, yes. I do.” �śUnder your seat, there should be some matches and an old shop rag. Get �Śem out now, incase we need �Śem.” I finish the thought under my breath, �śI have a feeling we might.” �śWhere does this tunnel come out?” Nothing gets past my Leonid. �śThat’s the problem. It doesn’t really.” Fear creeps into my eldest’s voice. �śWhat do you mean it doesn’t come out? It has to�"�ś �śThe exit’s just like the entrance, son. But it’s a lot easier to get down than to get up. I haven’t been down here since I lost my legs.” For several seconds I hear nothing but the grating of the treads on the steel rails as we draw nearer to the end of the line. �śI’m not gonna’ be able to get back out.” �śSure you can�"�ś �śNot with Leviathan, not with my chair. Just me, a broken old man.” �śYou’re not broken! You’re my Papa.” I hear the terror in his voice, and it breaks me, but I know I can’t be soft. �śAnd when we get to the top you’re going to carry me? Through throngs of seething twitchers? We’ll both die, and you know it.” �śBut we don’t do anything unless we do it together!” He’s screaming now. �śNot dying, son. That’s the one thing I won’t allow. You do that on your own, fifty years from now.” �śYou bastard! You make me care for you just to give up and die?” �śLeonid�"�ś �śFor five years I’ve wanted nothing more. I longed for the day you would kill yourself and put us all out of your misery, because for five years you were nothing but a broken, old man.” �śLeonid�"�ś �śAnd today I get my Papa back, just to�"�ś he crumples in a heap. Leviathan slows to a stop. �śWe’re here. End of the line.” ~~~ After several seconds of rare silence, he lifts his head. �śNo. If not for me, what about Mik and Pete?” Five pinholes of light hover several feet above our heads�"a manhole cover leading to a dead end in the industrial district, near the helium plant. I picture myself crawling down the street on my elbows. �śSon�"�ś �śLet’s just get to the street. We’re in the middle of town still. Industrial district, right? We’ll get to the street and play it by ear.” �śWhat did you just say?” I can’t believe my ears. Leonid slaps his hands on the side of Leviathan. �śLet’s get to the street. The others will be waiting�"�ś �śNo, after that.” He hesitates, squinting at me through the darkness. �śWe’ll play it by ear?” I laugh. The first laugh I can remember for months. �śLeonid Founder. Did you just suggest we act without a plan set in advance?” �śI, I�Ś” he stutters. �śIf you can be spontaneous, my eldest, then I suppose I can live without my shell.” �śWhat�"" alignWhat�" �śBut you have to swear one thing to me.” �śPapa?” �śSwear it.” I growl the command, making it unequivocal. �śO.k. I swear.” �śThe moment I decide I’m a liability, you leave me.” �śPapa.” �śDo it, or I’ll blow my brains out before I see you come to harm.” �śO.k.” �śNow come on. We’re still taking the vodka.” We unload several bottles of Vodka into my duffle and I send Leonid up the metal rungs ahead of me. He heaves the heavy lid aside slowly allowing the ruddy light to sift into the darkness. Peering upward I wonder briefly where the blue sky has gone and if I’ll ever see it again. �śClear.” Leonid lifts himself onto the surface before lowering a hand to take the duffle. I hand it up to him and heave myself into a seated position, my dead legs still dangling in the hole. �śThese buildings are usually empty.” I adjust the shoulder straps for both my .44-40 and my shotgun and crane my neck for a look around. �śWe need to get there, the east wing of the plant.” As we watch the eastern sky above an abandoned rail yard, the wind suddenly shifts, rustling our clothing. �śCrackle.” Leonid stands, looking further to the east. �śI taste it.” I check the hair on my arms and count to twenty five. Finally a light blue flicker dances over the buildings, fading quickly. �śThe twitchers are using it to herd the refugees.” �śThey’re close. About a mile.” �śSon, we won’t make it in time to divert them to the pickup zone, not with me like this.” �śPapa, I’m not leaving�"�ś �śWait.” I search the area for something I know should be there. �śHandcar. Help me up.” He tugs me over his shoulders, and I clasp my arms around him like a kid getting a piggy back ride�"like I had done with him six years earlier. �śIf we can parallel the main track before the Jeffery passes then we can alter the plan, switch the rails so they push north instead of east.” �śRight into the middle�"�ś �śOf hell’s birthplace. Yes. It’ll be messy.” �śBut we’ll do it together.” I hear something behind us. �śStop.” I crane my neck, more to hear than to see. �śDid you hear�"�ś �śMoaning. They’re coming.” Leonid lopes toward the train yard and the nearest handcart, his muscles surging beneath me. I’d never noticed how strong he’d become. Suddenly an explosion ripples the air east of us followed by scattered gunfire. �śIt’s started.” Between Leonid’s heavy breathing and the gunfire, I hear nothing and see just as little until he unloads me on the hanuice on thdcart. �śSon, we’ve gotta’ go.” Dozens of twitchers stream between the buildings behind us, heading for the larger fight. But gradually heads turn our direction, and then more than just heads. Leonid begins pumping up and down on the cart handle, but we’re moving deathly slow while a dozen twitchers lope in our direction. I slump open the duffle and use my knife to punch down the cork on a bottle of vodka. Stuffing a strip of rag into the top I strike a match and light it. The alcohol wicks up the rag until the flame begins to smoke. The lead twitchers clump, clawing at each other less than twenty yards behind us and closing fast. �śFire in the hole!” ~~~ The glass bottle shatters one step in front of the three twitchers and blankets them in fire. Sprawling and wailing, the three manage to spread the flames to three others by the time I pack the second bottle and light it up. Leonid has us moving at a fast run now, hopefully fast enough. I crack the second bottle on the wall of a maintenance shed just as another clump of twitchers round the edge of it. The burning liquid fans out in a delicate spray, like a phoenix tail, licking the fetid skin of twitchers. Their tortured screams draw more attention. I toss three more and prep the last two bottles, but a quick count identifies three dozen targets, and growing. �śThe Jeffery!” I spin around to see the armored vehicle clacking toward us on a parallel track still three hundred yards away. �śThe switch. We’ve gotta’ get there first.” �śLess than a hundred yards. We’ll make it. There’s a smash bar.” �śGot it.” I drag my legs across the handcart platform and yank the heavy bar from its moorings. The Jeffery appears to pick up steam. I look behind us and see why. Twitchers are swarming, maybe fifty of them. Even if we hit the switch we’ll be dead. �śKeep going.” �śWhat�"�ś �śJust do it, Dammit!” I light the last two bottles and chuck them in rapid succession, both of them barbecuing twitchers so close I don’t need to aim. Without a second to spare I grasp the smash bar and lunge toward the switch. It connects solidly, sending electric vibrations through my arms and neck, and lifting me from the cart’s platform. �śPapa!” �śI love you!” I speak the words as my shoulder collides with a railroad tie, my limp legs folding over the top of me. With a grunt I right myself and grip the 12-gauge in both hands. A click followed by a roar, and the air bursts into crimson. I pull the second trigger, cutting two twitchers in half. Another lunges head first forcing me to drop the shotgun and roll to my left. The animal cracks his skull on the base of the rail behind me and falls limp while another bulls me over. I tug a knife from my bandolier and plunge it into his heart. Before we can stop rolling my legs snag something solid. Heaving the dead twitcher off my chest I find two more, faces buried into my calves, snapping bones with their teeth. I spin the .44-40, still strapped to my shoulder, until it’s barrel first and scatter their brains amidst the gravel. I roar into the oncoming ocean of rotten twitcher fllat twitchesh and spit burning hot lead as fast as I can roll the lever, parting the onslaught like a lighthouse in a storm. Every devil I drop is one less to haunt my children, one less to threaten my beloved sons. Until I roll the lever and hear nothing but an empty click. Slow motion overtakes me. In a moment of crystal clarity I see all my strengths and faults meld together into the broken body of a dying, forty-year-old man. A man blessed to mend his worst mistakes before his death. Falling to my back, I feel the ground shake beneath me. And then thunder and lightning crack open the sky above me as the .50 caliber cycles through its belt of bullets. I feel the concussion of each shell igniting, powder expanding the air around it, buffeting my brain, propelling lead into spoiled bodies, poisoned gradually by a toxin born by man and belched into the soil intentionally. Ridiculous, all of it. For a split second I swear I see blue, before my view is eclipsed by the flying silhouette of my second son, Pyotr, swinging his ax as if to split the earth. ~~~ The metal on metal squeal of the Jeffery’s breaks snaps me from my trance. My sons. All I can think of are my sons. I shake the dead twitchers from my mangled legs and drag my body back toward the discarded shotgun, popping two more shells from my bandolier on the way. I hear Bertha swearing underneath the continual torrent of .50 caliber shells reigning down from her perch on the Jeffery. No sooner than I shove the bullets in the chambers and slap the shotgun shut, I turn to witness a twitcher’s head explode a few feet away. �śPapa!” I hear Mykola chamber another shell and just as quickly spend it. Leonid scoops me over his shoulders, this time like a sack of feed. From my perch I finally witness the carnage in its entirety. We had become the main attraction, twitchers streaming toward us by the hundred. Mykola covers our retreat to the Jeffery, firing his 12-gauge faster than I could focus on the spent shells ejecting from the chamber. Writhing limbs surround us on three sides. Finally I spot Pyotr, a whirlwind standing in the tracks at the head of the Jeffery, amidst a stack of dead twitchers three feet high. �śI’m out!” Mykola backs against the armored car scrambling to reload. �śPete, time to go!” Leonid strains at the hand holds on the Jeffery’s side. �śHold on, Papa. This is going to hurt.” He lunges up the side in two quick motions and hurls us both onto the top. I flop off his shoulders like a dead fish and roll down into the passenger compartment. All I can see now is Bertha straddling the .50 caliber M2 against a red and violet sky. Pyotr flies over the edge of the Jeffery followed closely by Mykola and the sound of scratching nails on armor plating. Dizzily, I realize we’re already in motion. �śPapa!” Pyotr scrambles down to my side while Mykola leans over the edge to dispatch the freeloaders. �śI’m fine. I’m fine.” I prop my head up with Pyotr’s help. �śYou look like govno.” He smiles. �śWell, I’ll fit right in.” I grip him by both shoulders and smile back. �śYou’re crazy, my son.” I pull him toward me. �śThank you.” �śYour legs.” Mykola joins us. �śThey mean nothing. We’ll cut them off when we get home.” I embrace my youngest as well. �śFor now let’s stop the bleeding.” I look them both in the eyes. �śWe’re not home yet.” By the time I tie off both legs and we reset the M2 so I can operate it, the helium plant looms on our left and the hunt ring just ahead on our right. �śPapa, the gunfire is coming from the refugees, not the plant.” Leonid is right. Other than the blinding flood lights around the perimeter, the plant is asleep. �śTose ain’t refugees. Dem’s da U.S. army.” Bertha points at the side of a wagon emblazoned with a white star and containing two back-to-back Browning M2s struggling to hold back the breaker of twitchers. A straggling of men rally to the protective bubble the guns temporarily create. �śYou mean we risked our lives for a friggin’ war?” �śPyotr. Whoever they are they don’t deserve to feed the twitchers. The plan hasn’t changed. We’re getting them out.” �śHold on! Track’s coming to an end.” Leonid yells from the driver’s seat as he engages the Jeffery’s tires. The rubber squeals against the rails until we burst through the deadman and onto a dirt road. �śAlright. Bertha, take the wheel. You’re gonna’ be my legs.” �śJust so you know, I ain’t got my license renewed in seven years.” �śJust get us to those machine guns.” She cackles as she leaps toward the front to relieve Leonid. Seconds later my eldest joins the rest of us. �śWhat’s the plan, Papa? I look them in the eyes and grin. �śThe Founder men are gonna’ tear hell a new corn shoot.” ~~~ With a string of twitchers still following in our wake, I put Pyotr on the back, giving him firm orders to stay onboard until we stop. Leonid rides on the right, Mykola on the left while I mow a path with the .50 cal. The darkening sky smells of sulfur and cooked flesh. The only sounds in the air are those of death and a lust for it. My body screams with pain, my legs oozing blood. Yet, sweeping filth from the dust zone from the back of the Jeffery while fighting side by side with my sons, fills me with an emotion I can only describe as peace. As the sun begins to set we hit the outer ring of the hunt, a writhing wall of twitchers frenzied beyond normal, and continually fortified by newcomers. The rising cacophony of their ungodly shrieks combines with the numbing thunder of the machine gun to arrest my senses and nearly freeze time. The air fills with flying fragments of poisoned bodies once human, and the road beneath us is paved with bones. With a sharp jerk of the wheel and skidding tires, we lurch to a stop beside the military wagon, forming a t se forminriangle of Browning M2 machine guns. Mykola and Pyotr instantly join the defense of the haggard survivors while I cover them from atop the Jeffery. Leonid’s job is to find the leader of the shrinking band and explain our next steps, quickly. Even with the third machine gun, we’ll run out of ammunition before twitchers. And to get away clean we need to punch a bigger hole than the Jeffery can make. Leonid grips my shoulder from behind and yells into my ear. �śYou’re in charge.” �śThat was fast!” �śThey’re almost out of ammo. Now or never. They’ve got a dozen grenades left.” �śPerfect.” I swing the M2 to cover Mykola while he reloads. �śHave �Śem stack all the explosives in the wagon and clear out. Keep one grenade for yourself and join Bertha. We do it now.” The hunt ring slowly closes on us as my belt of ammo shortens. I spin the gun to a temporary stop in order to be heard, �śTime to go! Load up! Bertha, get ready to push!” Pyotr and Mykola grab handholds as Bertha slams the Jeffery into reverse and pops the clutch. I straighten the last few feet of ammunition and pulse the M2 back to life, but the twitchers’ ring has pushed so close that I’m nearly aiming straight down. The Jeffery jolts as we bump the wagon, pushing it in front of us. The remaining survivors clamor around the armored car for hand holds. Those with ammunition left join Mykola in keeping the seething ocean of twitchers at bay. Empty clicks replace the jarring pulse of the .50 caliber as the last of the ammunition runs through its chamber. �śBertha, we gotta’ go!” She guns the engine until we’re bouncing at nearly 30mph. I lean over the drivers seat and yell, �śdo it! Do it!” Leonid chucks the grenade into the middle of the munitions pile on the wagon and Bertha slams on the breaks, sending the wagon careening into the ring of twitchers by itself. I roar above the fray, �śwait until you see the blue flame and make for the opening!” But things are quickly getting ugly. Screams crowd me on my perch as I realize we’re completely overtaken. Men are fighting back twitchers with rifle butts and bloodied knuckles. But in a barroom brawl the average twitcher is three times stronger than a uninfected man. Pyotr tucks Mykola in behind him and creates a flashing wall of death, the setting sun glinting off his spinning ax. Twitchers encase the Jeffery on three sides, and still nothing happens�"no fire-storm-causing explosion. Leonid recognizes the problem first, �śDud! It’s not gonna’ blow.” ~~~ Before I can respond Bertha hits the gas, spitting gravel as we close the gap. The wagon itself swarms now with twitchers. �śBertha, what are you�"�ś �śShut up, Georgy! You talk too much.” Bertha leans toward Leonid and yells something in his ear, handing him the wheel before he can object. In a flash she launches herself from the cabin and leaps with amazing agility. Clearing the ten foot gap from the front of the Jeffery to the wagon, she crumples and rolls into a mass of twitchers on top the pile of munitions. A split second later we collide with the wagon knocking everyone from theirighe from feet. �śLeo! Reverse, now!” With a few .44-40 rounds remaining, I shoulder my mare’s leg in a desperate attempt to cover her. I splinter the skulls of the first two twitchers to stand, but the jarring retreat of the Jeffery on top a pavement of crushed twitchers, forces me to hold fire. For a few sickening seconds I watch the old woman. Her hair ripped from her scalp by a twitcher, she manages to duck and shake him off. During a final scramble, she raises her hands over her head in victory before being completely subsumed. In a frightening burst, a light rips through the swarming clump of rotten flesh on top the wagon and flowers into an explosion of shattered bone and splintered wood. Even as we continue to rumble backwards at full throttle, the shockwave quickly overcomes us. The crackle’s so thick I can barely breath. �śLeo!” But the pedal is already to the metal. A surreal popping dances in the air all around us. Twitchers begin to bark frantically as the warning spreads through the ring. They crumple away from the Jeffery, pushing and shoving to retreat. The fire storm is going to be bigger than we had hoped. The wind switches direction, suddenly blowing outward rather than drawing in. We aren’t going to make it. �śEveryone hit the ground! Faces in the dirt! Face down, now! Go!” I see Mykola and Pyotr obeying immediately, the other men following suit. With the twitchers still retreating, the area surrounding the Jeffery is abandoned. I drag myself out from behind the M2, lurch and then roll roughly down the side, colliding with the ground as the air liquifies. A searing heat embraces me. Several seconds pass, but all I can think of is coughing. It feels like a burning lizard has crawled down my throat and begun to chew my gut. Face in the dirt, I swallow a mouthful and gasp. I’m alive. My next thoughts are for my sons. I prop myself up to scan the surroundings. Leonid is crawling to my left, his skin a bright red, but alive. �śMykola, Pyotr.” I croak their names, my voice reduced to the rasp of sandpaper on wood. �śPapa.” I turn to see Mykola bracing Pyotr, both of them standing and alive. �śIt’s time to go home.” I reach out and my youngest pulls me up. The firestorm radius spread thirty yards past our position, cooking twitchers as it went. But they’ll be back. Mykola boosts me onto the Jeffery. �śEveryone on board.” I growl the command as loudly as I can. I nod to Mykola after he sets Pyotr down beside me. �śHelp the rest, quickly.” Leonid gingerly crawls up the heated metal of the armored car and nods as he gets behind the wheel. I wrap my arm around my middle child and pull him close. He breaths deep and lays his head on my shoulder. We wait another twenty, maybe thirty seconds until everyone still moving is helped onboard, less than two dozen of us. Just before we start rolling I notice Frank is one of them. The twitchers regather around the rim of the fire storm and cross over after us, but by the time we clear the far side of the burn they turn back to clean the bones of the dead. Frank works his way over to me, his face as bright pink as everyone else's. He grips my shoulder. �śThe old hag went out the way she wanted, in a blaze of glory.” I nod. �śThe same way she lived.” Frank continues, �śI owe you and your boys my life.” < /> Mykola climbs over to join us, and I give his arm a squeeze. �śOh, they’re not my boys anymore.” I grin, the most whole I’ve ever felt. �śThese are the Founder men.” Mykola smiles. �śHappy birthday, Papa.” Greetings from Author David Mark Brown I hope you’ve enjoyed these first four Reeferpunk Shorts, �Ścause there’ll be plenty more from where those came from. I’m loving writing them and am particularly fond of the characters you will get to know and love over the next decade's worth of Reeferpunk. I know the first book, Fistful of Reefer is cataclysmically good. The next three will somehow be even better. I'll grow fat on my wealth of penny rolls (I like my money in shiny form) leading to a blase fifth book, then rebound for the sixth, seventh and eighth. The ninth will be a terrible attempt to take the characters into space on a diesel-powered locomotive (only read it if intoxicated). And blah, blah, blah. So I hope you stay tuned! I’m pretty stoked about my upcoming plague novel, Twitch and Die! (hopefully out by Christmas). Having just finished Paraplegic Zombie Slayer, you’ll soon get the chance to go back in time and find out about the birth and initial outbreak of the horrible plague. Enjoy the show! Bio I wrote my first award-winning story in 4th Grade, titled "The human bean." It wasn't a play on words. My profound piece about the human condition blundered into a mutant story about a human/legume crossbreed. (Curse you, phonics! But hello, commercial fiction!) My first book, Tainted Love: God, Sex and Relationships for the Not-so-pure-at-heart (inspired by my soiled experiences) was published in 2002 by InterVarsity Press. After several years of retooling myself as a novelist (by drinking more and making less money), I reemerged in 2009 with the idea for Reeferpunk. Raised on a Texas cattle ranch and schooled at the U of Montana (Berkeley of the Rockies), I am the world's most self-proclaimed redneck granola. When not spinning genius into the aethernet I obsess over home wine making, earthen construction, social justice, ultimate Frisbee and industrial hemp. My lovely wife and I adopted our first child from Vietnam before producing a second through more traditional means. The four of us live happily in Nampa, Idaho. Connect with me online: Twitter: RedneckGranola Facebook: RedneckGranola Smashwords: DavidMarkBrown Website: The Green Porch ; Reeferpunk Also available: Fistful of Reefer Fistful of Reefer� is a dieselpunk, weird Western pulp featuring goats, guns and the camaraderie of outcasts. Set along the Texas border during the waining years of the Mexican revolution,� Fistful� focuses on a group of unlikely heros and their unlikely foe as they stumble upon the fringes of a cabal bent on world domination. Fistful lives between� No country for Old Men and The Three Amigos. Coming in January 2012: Twitch and Die! A Western plague novel. End Table of Contents Title/Copyright Page Introduction Reefer Ranger Fourth Horseman Del Rio Con Amor Paraplegic Zombie Slayer bio