Had Aziza not been stoned to death by the villagers, then Nadif would not be carrying the seeds of Great Satan's destruction in his backpack across the border. He would not have learned to speak flawless Spanish in order to pa.s.s himself off as an illegal immigrant from Nicaragua.

Now when he saw Aziza in his mind's eye, he saw her with one eyeball hanging over her cheek by a stem from a ruined socket, hanging like a broken flower. Nadif's rock hadn't knocked her eye out of her head, that much he was sure of. The stone he threw at his beloved's head had struck the delicate bridge of her nose. He hadn't wanted to partic.i.p.ate in the stoning but it would have been wrong to go against the dictates of sharia law as well as against the will of the other villagers. Nadif had a responsibility as one of them. So he had mustered enough anger at Aziza, anger for getting herself raped by thugs, to propel the stone with enough brutal force to break her nose.

The image of her once lovely eye hanging like a broken flower over her bloodied cheek would not leave him. And try as he might, he could not absolve himself of the guilt he felt for having had a hand in killing her. He told himself he had no reason to feel guilty but he felt it nonetheless.

He looked up at the unholy eye glowing in the night sky and he shuddered. That unnatural eye terrified him. Others among his party of border crossers speculated that it was the eye of their Christian G.o.d come to either judge them or watch over them but Nadif feared that it was the very eye of Great Satan looking down on his cursed continent.

Looking down on him.

Seeing into his heart and reading his murderous intentions.

Allah protect me, he silently prayed. Give me the courage and strength to unleash this plague upon the infidels of this G.o.dless country.

All he had to do was follow the plan mapped out for him by his al-Shabaab handlers. The Mexican "coyote" had been well-paid to see that Nadif got across with no untoward difficulty. He called himself El Lobo and was in effect Nadif's guide and bodyguard. He was a filthy man of slovenly habits and Nadif disliked and distrusted him. But he would follow the plan. As instructed. As he had trained to do. Once across the border, Nadif would rendezvous with a Shabaab brother already in Arizona and would be driven to Los Angeles, California, where he would deliver the canisters of the weaponized plague virus to those brothers who would set it loose upon Great Satan's left coast. They would provide further instructions for him. Nadif was prepared to give his life if necessary. He was ready to earn his place in paradise.

El Lobo spoke harshly to the others in their party, barking hoa.r.s.ely at them to step lively, to stop dragging, to stop talking, but he said nothing to Nadif. Nadif suspected this was because the man had been very well paid to deliver him to his Shabaab brothers.

But perhaps it was something more as well. Perhaps the coyote was afraid of Nadif. Afraid of what he carried. As well he should be. Yes. It was good to command such respect. Nadif was sure that El Lobo could not know what was in Nadif's backpack but he sensed that something of terrible power was secreted within it.

One of the women stumbled and fell to her knees. El Lobo cursed her and kicked her on the rump to urge her on. Nadif had to bite his tongue until he tasted blood so that he would not rebuke the filthy man. It was not easy to see in the dark, not even with the bright moonlight on the land but Nadif knew the woman had stumbled because she had been keeping her own wary eye on the wicked eye above, looking down on them with searing malevolence.

El Lobo coughed, fitfully at first, then with increasing regularity until he had to bend at the waist in a veritable fit of non-stop coughing. He retched. He cursed. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Coughed some more.

The party of sixteen souls had to halt to wait for El Lobo to recover from his coughing attack. When Nadif saw that the coyote was coughing up blood, he feared that one of the canisters had leaked and that El Lobo was merely the first among them to succ.u.mb to the virus. But no, the former Soviet scientists who had genetically manipulated and weaponized the virus would not have been so careless as to improperly seal the air-tight containers.

Nadif warily approached El Lobo, who was now on his knees and still coughing. "Are you all right?" he asked.

El Lobo growled at him and waved him away with a blood-speckled paw. "Estancia lejos!" Stay away!

Nadif was going to stand his ground and remind the man that he had been paid handsomely to take him where he needed to go, but then El Lobo fell face-down on the ground and didn't move. Didn't breathe. Nadif reluctantly checked the man's pulse. He didn't have one.

"el es muerto," he said. Dead. Just that quick. Unnaturally quick, Nadif thought. He glanced up at the fearsome eye above. Then at his traveling companions. Now what? Did anyone else know the way they were supposed to go? A stout man in a baseball cap and dirty overalls said he could get them to the outskirts of Tucson.

The woman who had stumbled and had been punished for it by El Lobo was suddenly seized by a fit of coughing.

Nadif pulled the stout man aside and told him he would pay him two hundred dollars to get him to Tucson. The money was stashed in his sock. He showed it to the man and told him he would pay him upon reaching their destination. The man nodded.

The coughing woman begged them to wait for her to catch her breath, promising that she would be able to keep up with them once she stopped coughing and could catch her breath. Nadif said she would not stop and that she was going to end up like El Lobo. Make peace with your G.o.d, he told her. You are already dead.

He swatted a fly buzzing near his face.

She coughed. She pleaded for them not to abandon her.

Some of them said they thought they should give her a chance. Wait awhile.

Nadif shook his head, steeled himself, then pulled his knife, grabbed a handful of her hair and slit her throat. He looked at the others and said, "Vayamos."

The woman died noisily. Blood gurgled in her throat and bubbled and foamed in the raw gash which made Nadif think of female s.e.x organs and how unclean they were. He realized that he was still holding a handful of her hair. He let it go and her head thumped to the ground. She writhed. She clutched at her slit throat, eyes wide with panic and fear. The others silently watched her die, terror engraved in their moonlit faces.

"Vayamos," Nadif repeated. Let's go.

As if responding to Nadif's command, El Lobo rose up from the ground.

Rose from the dead. Stood there unmoving for a long moment, and then lurched forward, reaching for Nadif.

Nadif's knife-hand shot out to stab the dead man's throat even as his mind whispered to itself that there was no way El Lobo could be up and walking because the dead did not walk. He jerked the blade out and jabbed it back in.

Out, in. Out, in. Jab. Jab Jab.

And still the man stood, still reaching out so that finally Nadif had to take steps backward to avoid the dead man's grasp and the feel of his cold fingers.

"But he was dead," Nadif said. But he said it in his native tongue, not in Spanish. Not that these Mexicans would know Somali when they heard it, but it was a sign that he was losing control.

How could he maintain control when the world no longer made sense? When the dead walk. When repeated stabs to the throat have no power to stop a dead man's walking.

Nadif tripped over a rock and stumbled backward to the ground.

As he struggled to get up before El Lobo could set upon him, he saw another impossible sight. The woman whose throat he'd only moments ago cut was on her feet and was bearing down on him as well.

Just before he jumped up and started slashing at the ghouls with his knife, Nadif glimpsed the evil eye of Satan gazing down on him and he realized that this was h.e.l.l on earth and he was already d.a.m.ned.

Allah was not at all pleased.

An abyss of terror opened inside him and threatened to swallow him up.

12.

Accidental Necrophilia

Thomas drifted in darkness. This was one of those I'm Dreaming moments when he knew he was dreaming strange pathways through sleep and had arrived at a crossroads-he could go toward the muted light and wake up all the way or he could plumb the depths down dreaming's darker path.

Two things brought him slowly to the light. The cold remoteness of his lover's body and the intimate tones of TV voices. First (In the beginning was the word), he focused on the soft and slightly sultry voice of the female newscaster: "... because emergency responders are stretched so thin. In related news, the statewide demonstrations and counter demonstrations set for tomorrow will go on as planned, according to spokesmen for both sides of the illegal immigration issue. The embattled Arizona governor says she won't hesitate to call out the National Guard if necessary, in the event the demonstrations turn violent."

Then he realized, much to his horror, that Jamie was cold and lifeless. Her chest did not rise and fall against his. Her skin was clammy and as cold as a cut of meat on a butcher's block. Her eyes were half open, hooded with swollen lids, glazed and death-clouded.

He tried to push himself off her but they were joined at the loins. Stuck! His painful erection refused to come out of her. The cold walls of her v.a.g.i.n.a held him fast.

"No, no, this can't be," he said, whether to himself or to his deceased lover he couldn't have said.

He tried again to free himself.

No go.

"Please, Jamie, you have to let me go," he said, not caring how crazy it was to say such a thing to a corpse.

He fought the impulse to pummel her to escape the claustrophobic closeness, told himself not to panic. Stay calm. Be rational. He knew he could roll over onto his back, stand up and carry her across the room to get his cell phone from his pants. He could call for an ambulance and hope the paramedics could get him unstuck here in the motel room without having to haul him into the emergency room like this. In flagrante delicto. That was the worst that could happen. And that was if he couldn't get his p.e.n.i.s out of her by his own efforts. He'd never heard of this happening to humans. He'd seen dogs stuck together in intercourse and he'd had a good laugh at their doggy dilemma but this was different. Being stuck to a dead woman was not only not funny, it made him an accidental necrophiliac. Having s.e.x with a corpse was against the law. He couldn't prove she was alive when he entered her. Medical personnel could report him to the police. He could go to jail! And even if he wasn't arrested, there would be whispers and rumors and wicked gossip.

He looked about the room as if there might be some answer to his dilemma waiting there. Could he pry himself out of her with something? Like a shoehorn? No, that would damage her and raise terrible questions. And he might damage himself in the process.

His cell phone rang. His ringtone was the ring of an old-fashion phone, a subtle point of rebellion against the high-tech takeover of civilization. It seemed silly now. How civilized was it to be stuck in a dead adulteress's s.n.a.t.c.h?

It had to be his wife Jean calling. It was almost midnight and she would be worried.

He sat up with Jamie straddling him like a life-size rag doll and scooted to the edge of the bed. Then he stood up and walked with her like a drunken acrobat across the room to slip a hand into his trousers and extract his phone. His wife's name appeared in the LED display. He did not open the phone. He let it ring. And ring. What could he possibly say to her now? Sure, honey, I know I'm a man of the cloth but I'm also a man of flesh with wicked carnal appet.i.tes. No way would that do. He would call her back later, once this pressing situation was resolved. He was confident that he could think up a suitable explanation, as long as he didn't have to come up with a way to explain how he happened to be in a motel room with a dead woman. And the only way to avoid that was to get his d.i.c.k out of her and slip off into the night. The room was registered in Jamie's name. All he had to do was get unstuck. But Jamie was holding him fast, not unlike Bre'r Rabbit and the tar baby.

He had an idea. A cold shower and lathered soap. It was worth a try. Like soaping up to get a ring off your finger, right? "d.a.m.ned right," he muttered.

He headed toward the bathroom. Walking with a woman attached to his loins was murder on the lower back and thigh muscles. He walked with an exaggerated and contorted swagger, bent backward at the waist, swinging his hips and swinging Jamie as well. He thanked G.o.d that she wasn't a large woman. The unusual movement produced novel sensations on and within his swollen p.e.n.i.s, sensations not unpleasant, and he realized in horror that he was inching closer to climax. He scolded himself: If you come in a corpse you'll be d.a.m.ned beyond redemption.

As he was doing his preposterous walk through the bathroom doorway, Jamie's head banged against the doorframe.

"Oh, sorry," he said, automatically.

Idiot, talking to a dead woman. No sooner had the thought run through his mind than the dead woman opened her eyes.

"Jesus, Jamie?"

Her dead eyes fixed on him and her mouth went through a swift series of juddering contortions. He thought for a moment that she was trying to say something but then she bared her teeth and he realized too late that she intended to sink them into his neck. Which she did, viciously and with surprising power in her jaws.

In trying to get away from her perfect teeth and evil intentions, Thomas fell backward, banging his head on the floor and knocking himself out. When he came to, he came to a world of pain and h.e.l.lish suffering.

The woman he'd made an adulteress-a woman dead but in no way departed-was eating him alive, bite by ripping bite.

He fought back in desperation. He pummeled her head and face but they were at such close quarters that he couldn't put much force behind his blows. Between bites, he managed to put a forearm under her chin and jam it into her throat and then rolled over into the missionary position. She snapped her teeth at his face. He bore down now with both his forearms in her throat. Their feet were in the bathroom, the rest of them in the bedroom, where the carpet was collecting his spilled blood. That which wasn't spilled, Jamie had already claimed. And she showed no sign that she would soon be sated.

She snapped. She made guttural sounds in the back of her throat, even as he exerted still more pressure, trying to crush her throat, trying to return her to the everyday realm of the dead.

But she would not give up the fight to remain here in the half-life of living death. Jamie-if it was still Jamie inside this ferocious corpse-fought with as much strength as she'd had in life. Maybe more. And now Thomas was having a harder time fending her off because his skin was so slippery with blood. His blood. He was losing too much of it and was rapidly growing weaker.

The phone. He had to call for medical help or he wasn't going to survive.

He tried to drag himself (and his zombie attachment) across the carpet with one hand while keeping the other arm on Jamie's throat. But his arm kept slipping off her and she kept biting his forearm, her teeth digging in like big-gauge needles. And the more she bit, the more he bled, the more his arm slipped, the more she bit, the more he bled ...

(Was that his phone in his hand? His thick thumb tapping 9-1-1?) It occurred to him that this was h.e.l.l. G.o.d wasn't waiting for him to die to send him to h.e.l.l. h.e.l.l was right here, right now.

Apparently, h.e.l.l was a p.o.r.no zombie movie. And Thomas was d.a.m.ned to play out his part. For the moment Zombie Jamie was mostly chewing scenery but if he pa.s.sed out from losing too much blood, she would freely feast upon his flesh until he was nothing but gnawed bone-or until she exploded like an overfed tick.

Will I be like her when I die? No RIP for Zombie Tommy. Tommy Zombie. Tomby. Zero, none, nada. Not for Zommy.

Mommy?

Such were his last living thoughts as his b.l.o.o.d.y arm slipped, slid and slithered off Jamie and he collapsed face-first on the carpet.

At the end (if the end it was), her teeth didn't hurt him anymore. They only tickled a little.

13.

Postmortem Pedro

Head's in a hatbox.

Stinking to high heaven.

Ranker than a cat box.

This cat with no hat.

Pedro pa.s.sed his time in the box making bad rhyme, influenced by his love for Dr. Seuss. How his grandkids Juanita and Jorge had loved having him read those stories! But this, this was not a tale for kids.

He had never been sure he could believe in G.o.d or trust that there would be an afterlife but he sure as the devil hadn't expected anything like this. His head in a hatbox, his body back there on the prairie by the side of the road, doing G.o.d-knows-what?

This was some kind of bad joke. Unless he was dreaming, which he didn't think he was. He wasn't capable of dreaming up anything this wild and crazy. No way. Not bullheaded Pedro, no.

Pedro the Undead Head, maybe.

An hombre could go loco in such close confines.

The worst was this thirst. Or hunger, whichever it was. Thirst, yes. For blood. That he could recognize it for what it was, was some sort of miracle in itself. It was the heart of the curse of being an undying corpse. The Baddest Sheriff in America was no novice at deduction. That this was a curse rather than a gift was a logical conclusion.

He'd also deduced that he was riding in the front seat of the truck, in the hatbox his killers had dropped him into, now resting between the two killers who were arguing over what they should do with his decapitated head. The pickup's radio was on an all-talk station and some nitwit scientist was laying out his theory that the big eye in the sky was there because of global warming (which he used interchangeably with "manmade climate change of the catastrophic kind").