And she somersaulted over the side and went splat! when she hit the tracks.

A short while later, she got up and started walking on broken bones. Leaving behind a lot of blood and a bit of brain.

6.

A Dark Ride

The patio outside their Nogales motel room. Jamie chain-smoked and slapped at no-see-ums and a particularly persistent black fly. Thomas stared meditatively at the great eye overhead, occasionally shaking his head in wonder or disbelief.

"Can we please go in now?" she asked. "These bugs are eating me up."

Thomas grunted.

Jamie said, "How long can you sit and look at the G.o.dd.a.m.n thing? Let's go in. It's obviously not going anywhere."

"Um-hm."

She said, "I have to be home by midnight or John boy will get suspicious and once the son of a b.i.t.c.h catches scent he's like a f.u.c.king bloodhound. There ain't no quit in the man. Believe me, we don't want him sniffing us out. He'll kill us both. And his cop buddies will cover for him. So chop-chop. Get a move on. Hot night in f.u.c.k City."

"I can't believe you," he said, finally taking his eyes off the eye. "Don't you know a miracle when you see one?"

"Jesus! We didn't come here for miracles. It's a no-tell motel, for Christ's sake. We came for s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g our a.s.ses off and so far you've let me down big time. I could've saved my money and stayed home with my vibrator. Mr. Mojo ain't afraid to go up my a.s.s either. Unlike one a.s.s clown I could name. Reverend."

"Could you be any cruder? My G.o.d ..."

"Oh, I can be a lot cruder, Jesus boy." She flipped her cigarette into the deepening dusk surrounding the patio. "And I can make you love it."

A small plane with navigation lights blinking pa.s.sed in front of the eye gleaming in the moonlight. Thomas looked up and said, "The thing must be outside the earth's atmosphere. As high as the heavens. I wonder what the s.p.a.ce station sees."

She slid out of her chair and knelt between his legs and unzipped him. He tried to push her away and stand up but she kept him pinned to his seat. Her fingers found his limp c.o.c.k, brought it out into the night air and took its bulbous k.n.o.b in her mouth. It began to swell and quickly became a mouthful.

"Somebody could see us," he protested weakly.

"So what?" she said around his d.i.c.k, sounding tongue-tied. "n.o.body knows us here."

She sucked hard and bobbed her head until he groaned, then she pulled it out and said, "C'mon, we're going inside so you can f.u.c.k me proper." She yanked him out of his chair by his d.i.c.k but this time he didn't object. She led him to the sliding-gla.s.s door, opened it and pulled him into the stale, frigid air.

She undressed in a hurry. "I'm itching like a b.i.t.c.h. Those little f.u.c.kers feasted on me. Didn't you get any bites?"

"A few, I guess. Mostly from you."

"Ha. So you did notice. I was beginning to think you were a f.u.c.king zombie. I'd hate for my best efforts to go unnoticed."

"I noticed. Why else would I let you lead me around by my ... thing."

"Don't play the prude. It makes you sound like a phony. And don't kid yourself. When you whack off with your left hand your right does know what you're doing. Now get your clothes off."

She poked the head of his erect p.e.n.i.s with her fingernail and said, "You're going to put that in my a.s.s or I'll start screaming b.l.o.o.d.y murder. Don't think I won't."

"Jamie, please ..."

She slathered ma.s.sage oil between her legs, front and rear, and then climbed onto the bed, remained on her hands and knees and waggled her a.s.s. "Come and get it, big boy. Climb on and pop it in the p.o.o.p chute. It's a dark ride."

He obeyed. He positioned himself to mount her and she reached back to guide him into forbidden territory. He went in slow, an inch at a time.

"Oh ... yeah," she said. "How's it feel?"

"Um, tight. Good."

"Bet your a.s.s, baby. Now all the way. Reach around and finger me while you f.u.c.k me. Yeah. Yeah. Jesus Christ, that's wicked good!"

When the screams started in the next room, they paid no attention. They went on with their f.u.c.king and didn't finish until the police sirens screamed up outside.

7.

Killing Pedro

Pima County Sheriff Pedro Delgado wasn't going down easy. The Baddest Sheriff in America sure as h.e.l.l was not going down without a w.a.n.gdangdoodle of a gunfight. Funny thing was, Pedro didn't much give a rip if the three chollos killed him or if he killed them or they all killed each other.

Pedro was old. Sixty-six. Way he saw it, it was better to die by gunfire with his Old Gringo boots on than to die p.i.s.sing himself in some reeking retirement home. The handcrafted boots were Tattoo Eagles, the style he'd made famous-so much so that the good folks at Old Gringo sent him a new pair free of charge whenever he wanted them. He didn't reckon he'd be needing another. Seeing as how he was likely to die here on this lonely stretch of desert road unless these chollos were as stupid as they looked-which hardly seemed possible. Nah, he figured they knew their business and business was pretty d.a.m.n good, what with things going red hot along the border these days and politicians shooting off at the mouth, playing one group of folks against another, and with what some folks called The Machete War off some dumb-a.s.s propaganda movie seemed about to break out for real between Mexico and the States, Machete being this Christ-like warrior avenger bent on taking it to white folks for being the white wicked sp.a.w.n of Satan or something.

Lord knew Pedro had no shortage of enemies. When a lawman actually does his job, he makes plenty of enemies. The reason he was hated with so much venom was because his political enemies couldn't get away with calling him racist. Pedro Delgado was a third-generation Mexican-American. They couldn't very well accuse him of being racist for locking up illegals from Mexico. And that p.i.s.sed them off so bad they couldn't s.h.i.t straight. He was a stickler for enforcing the law and they couldn't tolerate that because it queered their deal, wrecked their grand agendas. They were desperate to knock his d.i.c.k in the dirt but couldn't figure how to do it so it would stick. So they'd sent these three shooters with gang tattoos and blue bandana do-rags to gun down the Baddest Sheriff in America. Tres amigos.

"Bring it on, amigos," he said, hunkered down in an arroyo with his gun out and ready. "Let's get this hooraw over with. I ain't getting' any younger. And you boys ain't likely to get any older."

He should've seen this coming but when their pickup had barreled up behind his cruiser with lights flashing and horn honking, Sheriff Delgado had cut speed and pulled over to see what the trouble was.

Quick enough he saw trouble aplenty. That was when the three chollos jumped out of their truck with guns drawn, one of them waving a machete with his left hand. Pedro thanked the good Lord his reaction time was still pretty swift for a man of his age as he slid across the seat and ducked out through the pa.s.senger door and the a.s.sa.s.sins threw a hail of hot lead into the Pima County cruiser. One round knocked his hat off and a fragment of another clipped his earlobe and stung something fierce. Pedro drew and returned fire just to keep the boys honest, not to actually hit them because he had no clear shot.

The punk wearing a straw cowboy hat over his do-rag yelled "La raza!" and winged another shot at Pedro's hatless head. The shot punched a hole in the pa.s.senger-door window, missing his head by a good three inches. And that was when he decided to low-tail it for the arroyo just off the side of the road without trying to grab the cruiser's scattergun. He reckoned the 12-gauge would be of little use to a dead man. Then the chollo in the hat demonstrated that he wasn't as dumb as he looked when he reached into the cruiser for the scattergun. Pedro aimed his pistol and snapped off a shot at the man's head.

Missed.

He blamed the miss on the darkness, though the moon was plenty bright and there was good light from the pickup's headlights and the cruiser's too.

Pedro pulled his rosary from his shirt pocket and began to worry the wooden beads as he kept the pistol pointed toward the road and in the general direction of the three a.s.shole hombres determined to kill him. His late wife had given him the beads years ago and made him promise to always keep them near his heart when he was on the job. He wasn't a devout Christian but hunkered in this arroyo he was no atheist in a foxhole either.

"Lord," he said, "I hope you can forgive me for having to kill these men. Or if it goes the other way, I hope you don't find my sins too offensive. Lord knows I most always tried to do the right thing. Forgive my failures if you can. Amen."

The pickup's headlights went out. Then the cruiser's lights went dark. The punks would be coming in for the kill now.

Pedro looked up at the sky. Whatever that thing was up there that looked like a giant eye seemed brighter than the full moon. d.a.m.ndest thing. Like it was there just to witness this shootout. A worn-out Bible quote popped into his head and he said it aloud: "If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out." He chuckled at the sudden silliness of life. At the absurdity.

The scattergun boomed and took off the left side of his face. He hardly felt the pistol shot that hit him in the neck or the one that thumped into his breast. On his back now, he raised his pistol and fired at one of his killers and the chollo went down, gut-shot.

The scattergun boomed again and Pedro's left arm went away, taken off at the shoulder. The moon, the big eyeball, the whole world went dark. Pedro felt his heart thud to a sudden stop and then the bottom dropped out, the bottom of his life, the bottom of existence itself, and he was falling down a dark shaft, screaming, screaming all the way down. He came to a wrenching halt and realized he was back in his mangled body.

His remaining eye saw things in a different light. A harsher light. Not a new light but an old one. Ancient.

When the man with the raised machete stood over him and howled in triumph, Pedro recognized that the powerful craving he suddenly felt was ferocious hunger.

Hunger for living flesh. He ached to sink his teeth into the machete man's inviting throat.

Then the machete's blade came down and hacked hacked hacked his head off his neck.

And still he was hungry, snapping his ruined teeth and broken jaw at the man who lifted his head by his spa.r.s.e hair and held it up to the moon.

8.

Dead But Not Gone

Piggy p.o.o.p walked the tracks. Not thinking. Just walking. Walking. One foot dragging. Step. Drag. Step. Walking.

Until she saw the fire. Then thoughts formed, flickered, flared against dancing memories. She veered off the tracks and headed toward the firelight, her gait gawky and halting because of the injuries sustained in the fall, the leap and impact. A hitch in her get-along.

A thought leapt into her mind: hobo fire. Then: campfire ... cookfire ... food! She was achingly hungry. Hunger kept her going now. Where the impulse toward death had been a driving force in her life, now it was a raw visceral hunger that drove her.

She knew she was something other than alive. She could feel herself swinging like a wobbly pendulum between the poles of Dead and Alive. You didn't do a flip off a bridge like she did and live. No way. Impossible to walk away from that. Yet she had. And was. Walking. Dead. Walking. And oh so hungry. Hungry with a deep carnal l.u.s.t. Carnivore l.u.s.t. Stronger than s.e.x. Stronger than death. She wanted, needed b.l.o.o.d.y meat. Extremely rare. Make that raw. And while you're at it, make it living. I want blood pumping through my dinner. Blood. Lots of blood. To sate the terrible thirst on the underbelly of this infernal hunger.

She left the rail bed and shambled up a short weed-choked slope. She saw two men huddled round the fire. What used to be called hobos, b.u.ms. Sitting there like they were waiting for her. An existential invitation to dine. Meat on the hoof. She heard the blood pulsing through their veins. She knew the taste would be intoxicating. Even o.r.g.a.s.mic. Yes.

One of them was wiping the bottom of a bowl clean of bean juice with a crust of bread and the other was turning up a pint of dark port. A third man lay curled in an army blanket, shivering and groaning.

"Be cold as a b.i.t.c.h t.i.t 'for this night is through," said the bean eater.

"Old Sambo's shivering his a.s.s off already and the b.i.t.c.h ain't even here yet," the other man said between sucks on his bottle.

"I could use me some warm t.i.tties 'bout now. Piece of p.u.s.s.y wouldn't hurt none neither. 'Bout as likely as winning a billion-dollar lotto."

"Wouldn't do it no how with that G.o.d's Eye up there watching ya."

Then the wine drinker saw Piggy p.o.o.p step into the firelight and said, "Jesus G.o.d girl!"

"What in h.e.l.l happened to you?!" Bean Sop said.

"d.a.m.n me but what she ain't got a big hole in her head," Wine Suck said.

Piggy p.o.o.p said, "Mumph mee" as she stagger-stepped over to the b.u.m in the blanket.

"What'd she say?" Sop asked his bud.

"f.u.c.k if I know," said Suck. "d.a.m.ned if I didn't just s.h.i.t myself. s.h.i.t."

Piggy went awkwardly to her knees beside the man in the blanket, who had for the moment stopped shivering and groaning.

"Hey," shouted Sop, "he's took sick. Leave him be, little lady."

She bent over and took a big bite out of Sick's face.

Sop shouted.

Suck doubled over and shat himself some more.

Piggy spat and sputtered, sickened a little herself by the mouthful of cooling meat. Just that quick the sick man had died. And dead meat was not at all what she craved. Flesh drizzled with pumping blood was the only thing that would fill the bill.

She craned her head slowly, looking for a bite to eat. Just as her eyes fell on Suck, Sop cracked her across the side of the head with a piece of firewood. The blow dropped her. Her face hit the dirt by the edge of the fire.