Before Dirty Ed cracked wise again, I chucked my sword at him.
It split the bridge of his nose, and his face caved like a shriveled pumpkin, seeping fiery blood on the head of his white mare. And what a spout it was. It ruined Dirty Ed’s jade poncho till it was as red as a Christmas beet. Like elephant ears, his long hands thumped his bandoleer—a death twitch. Some of the blood flecked my eye.
With a velvet-gloved hand, I wiped my cheek. You could smell reefer. You could taste the cheap tequila, the bile. A rank flop sweat. Behind us, the waves of Goat Rock Beach lapped the shore. Buzzards moaned in the lee of cypresses around the sand. A fox hopped over marram grass.
Dirty Ed, a lumpen mess, sagged off his horse.
Frozen in their saddles, the two remaining riders—skinny Harpo and lard-ass Ping-Pong—stared at the carnage. They were the only Surf Cowboys left. Their bros, a leathery tan, limbless bunch of dopers, lay scattered on the peach dunes, wasted. The horses of the dead had spooked away.
As for the Mommas—Bertha, Lula, Mona, Zetta, and myself—I was the last she-devil standing. Phony-tough.
And I craved blow, sick of course that I did. Not the trash the Cowboys would often snort. They had no better than cut-rate chop, junk laced with laxatives. (Hence the ‘Runny Fuckers’—the sobriquet we gave their crew.) Nope, I went for the pharmaceutical flake instead. After a hit, you felt like somebody. Like beach air itself.
I touched a blue key slung around my neck, then—yanking my sword and a .308 Ruger deer rifle from Dirty Ed’s back—I leapt to the sand pit behind the two surviving Cowboys. As I peeked above the pit, I drew the Ruger to my quarry.
Ping-Pong flipped his horse around Harpo, waving his Smith & Wesson Hush Puppy in the air as though he lassoed a fly. The horses bucked. Doughy clouds passed the sun, and the odd couple signaled to each other.
“Don’t shoot,” Ping-Pong said, his hand edging to the holster on his hip. “I’m not one to bargain, fanny, but I’ll sing for my supper, if it comes to it. Toss that key here. When we find the gold, I’ll cut you a third. I’ll—”
With a slight twitch of his thighs, Harpo made his horse dash. The old cut-and-runner bailed like the cowed bitch he was.
A slight grin curled my lips. I clucked and popped him with the Ruger.
He flew into the wet sand like a cannonball. Stained red with the effort, the waves jerked his corpse offshore.
“Oh hell,” Ping-Pong said. Bracing himself against the side of his horse, he cried. “Let’s not be children.”
He used the horse for cover, trotting from the clearing. Its gait rose as it came to the line of the woody path to the beach. The ankle on his alligator boot slipped below one shank.
There! I clipped him, sending him bunghole over elbow into the earth. The give of the Ruger sent a bone-shuddering vibration through my arm.
He bayed, stretching his injured foot above him, as though he meant to shove the boot back on. But I’d shattered the boot. The missing ankle made his foot dangle like a soiled tulip, sheeting his face and chest with blood. Soon, he rested his head on a thorny bed of brush.
The salty ocean air hove my hair. My frozen nose dripped.
***
An hour passed before Ping-Pong came to.
I’d buried him up to his neck in sand, taking no pains to staunch the stump where his foot had been. On my stomach, I rested my chin on my gloved hands, one of which cocked his Hush Puppy. He was close enough to kiss. The wind had gusted, fog rolling in, blighting the purple sun.
“This,” he said, struggling in vain to turn his head. “This is unacceptable. You got the key, you maimed me bad. Be sensible.”
I nodded and pointed the butt of the Hush Puppy at him. With the other hand in my mouth, I bit one finger to drag the glove off.
“Fuck.” He failed to hang his head. “Tell me, Baby Tuesday, I always wondered—who d’you piss off to lose your fingertips? And how’d you get a Darzo sword?”
With my free hand, I tickled his coke-rimmed nostrils.
“Stop that, goddamit. Talk!”
“The tide is coming in,” I said. “Ever hear of the limpey?”
I unwound my middle finger. In clockwise fashion, the hand revolved. I lowered the Hush Puppy and shifted into a lotus position.
The finger swung. His eyes widened.
My exposed hand twitched—a rocking motion. The loose digit recoiled, sniping at his earlobe.
“Ah!”
“My father showed me this trick,” I said. “I don’t know how he learned it, but it’s a limp finger, you see, a subtle sort of blackjack.”
Without warning, the limpey flicked his nose—and then again. He tried to bite me.
“I reasoned with you.” His tears were flimsy.
“I wasn’t much keen on dear old dad, but that limpey,” I said. “That was some impressive shit. To get it like that, as limp as that, here’s what you do.”
He winced.
“Practice moving the finger with a clothespin on it. You do this every day for two weeks, and you’re set. A darn sharpshooter by then.
“Anyway.” I sucked my lower lip, looked back at my hog. “Lighten up. There’s always something you can laugh at, Ping-Pong, even with your foot blown to hell. Dig? Because you’re gonna bleed so bad it’ll fertilize this now hallowed ground. Grow a big old foot tree. And you, your skull trapped in the roots.”
“Crazy Momma.”
“Just imaginative. I’ve a yen for the absurd touch. But we both know better. You’re much too close to the tide for any tree to take root here. Nature is wasted on you.”
“Get me out, Baby. Others will come, I can help you. I’m not asking for your trust. You don’t have to trust me.”
“Shake it off, because I don’t. Now. At this angle, you have a splendid view of the dirty work you and your buddies did. Because before it’s all over, Ping-Pong, I figure you will reflect some. Won’t see Nixon take the cake, but… Life rolls on. He’ll be prez, and I’ll be rich. The man gets his, always. And this time? I get mine, too.”
“Get me out, bitch! You take me right the fuck on out, or you shoot me honestly.”
“I can hear you,” I said.
He lowered his voice. “Please.”
“What more should I do?” I asked. “I’m not going to get wet, and I sure don’t want to put you out of your misery.”
He stared at the sand. A seagull whined.
“Talk is cheap,” he spat.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I have you at a distinct disadvantage.”
He continued to examine the sand, some speck there.
“Where you off to?” he asked, his voice a numb whisper. “The gold. How will you find it?”
I considered.
“How d’you guys find us?” I asked. “Who ratted the Mommas out?”
“You can buy anything,” he said, smiling. His teeth were not yet rotten. His breath, however, stank of skunk ass. “I guess I could keep you guessing. That would suit you.”
“And tilting at windmills?” I asked. “You might think so, but you far overestimate my concern. Besides, what I say could be a calculated lie.”
“And I could do you the same.”
“Well, then.” I made to leave. “Our paths shall cross no longer.”
“The Vosillar Syndicate,” he offered. “Lula owed them something, and hell. We sniffed each other, anyway. It was too sweet to pass up, and who’d refuse? ‘Ventually, they get what they want. If not, you’re ash, and the thing you’re after… Blown.”
“This gold you speak of,” I said.
“Kee-rect.”
I flattened myself on the ground again, eye-level with him.
“What’s the key do, poopsie?”
“You know that,” he said. “It opens a house. Some say it’s cursed, some freaky deaky city of the dead. But you knew that.”
“Where’s the house?” I asked.
“Fuck off.”
“Memphis,” I said.
“I got nothing, Baby. Could pretend I do, but you can’t do squat about it.”
I put my glove back on and ambled off, keeping my back to him.
“Dumb as rocks cunt,” he said. “They’ll learn you bailed. You can only run so long, even if you hightail it to the Red Pool wastes. Nobody ever comes back alive.”
I stopped by the shack to which I’d hauled each limb and body—Ping-Pong’s foot included. And Mona, too—her dead eyes shining with a sick mirth, her lumpen, blood-soaked form hunched and twisted among the others—groaning, “You weren’t here, Baby, but I’ll come back for you. I’ll rip your throat out and stomp on your face, till you look just like me and we’ll never let you go—”
I lit a cigar I’d filched from Terrible Ted, Surf Cowboy El Capitano.
“Get me, Baby?” Ping-Pong squawked. “You’re finished.”
“I’ll take my chances,” I said; and after I dragged on the smoke, admiring its function—there, in the palm of my hand—I threw the flame on the pile and sheathed the Darzo on my back.
“Jesus, that’s cold,” he said.
The fire engulfed the ring of bodies, the shack. Dusk fell. The heady aroma of charred flesh spread like a blossoming flower. An acrid stench, as when you found a baby bird on the roof back home, trembling. On the grass lay a small nest that squirrels had ransacked. All night, the thing’s begging call had peeped, hadn’t it? Dad protested, but you were adamant. To set a pot on for milk. Warm the kid on a heating pad in a shoebox. Feed it with an eyedropper.
Still, the little head-voice said. The babe whined.
And when it died, as you knew it would, you put it in a plastic sandwich bag. Buried it in the backyard under a shallow mound of dirt. No last words, just glued popsicle sticks to form a makeshift cross. Then, late that night, you heard a keening, didn’t you? That same begging call, an alarm for the shit job you’d done playing wet nurse.
In the morning, windy rain washed the grave away. The baggie was full of mud. The carcass was black and wet with slithering, as though it pulsed. A soft breath. Teeth chattering, you threw the bag into Mrs. Veloe’s yard.
That evening, as caws boomed, you kept wringing the same thought. You’d killed the bird; and again, you’d failed it. Guilt to cover same. To dress your powerlessness over the fates. And still its sharp cry pealed, a bid to something useless and pitiful. A ring like the ruins of Ayutthaya dad had mentioned. A failing record player that hissed, then skipped—
“What’ll you do?” Ping-Pong hacked up phlegm, seawater dousing him. “Tell me, piehole!”
I hopped on my Harley, kicked the motor to life.
“Keep the chin up,” I said, smiling, waving my hand beneath my chin.
“The Vosillars will have your head.” He coughed up water.
…and, as I stroked the key I’d tied round my neck, I sped to full throttle, peeling so fast from there it was as though I’d pissed on a burial ground cursed (or consecrated) by pain.
And I had. The Mommas were kaput. I’d seen it all go down. They were dead partially on my account. Or not—riddle me that. Had I been a witless bystander? A cunning cub?
Selfish, Lord. A greedy cur, and one who survived. Who could have fallen under the scythe just as easy as the rest.
I wanted in and I craved out. Dump the need for speed, the head-voice said. Then pick it back up. Crawl that white line. Hug the darkness.
You know how this goes. To feel behind when you think you’re ahead. Chained to the thing that fuels you and drives you. That loves you the way it wants you to love it back, spooned from under a concrete slab—even if, in dreams, you could drop the whole show. And it wasn’t just about treasure now. It was about pushing through and taking it so far, I fused myself from gold.
I’d even the score.
On the blackened highway, I cut blind curves. At any moment, I expected a parade of mercs to pick me off and fry me over a spit.
It’d take two days to reach El Oyo, a mountain outpost on the lip of the Red Pool wastes. The outpost where Lula had said—there, on the beach, on some back page gone to ash—we could rest our heads, undisturbed. We just had to get there the night after next and breathe a passcode; but what that code was, and to whom we should say it, she had not shared. That bit died with her. The Surf Cowboys had mucked things up. And now that I had, too—I’d have to wing it. Hard.
It was El Oyo or bust.
THE DOOM PIGS BOOK FLAP
Nightfall. Something’s gone wrong in the Red Pool wastes.
In a sealed palace buried in a dead city, a force older than memory has cracked its shell and oozed up from the ground, dripping gold slop. With hypnotic juju, it lures wanderers inside—promising release, promising treasure. The kind of treasure an all-powerful syndicate would kill the world to keep secret.
When the syndicate slaughters a biker clan to protect the palace, one rider—Baby Tuesday—escapes with the key.
Now she’s mourning her dead sisters, half-paralyzed by survivor’s guilt, and burning for payback. But to finish what they started, this hard-luck hellcat will have to earn her name all over again. She won’t do it alone. Enter a doomed journalist with priceless intel and a suicidal sense of humor. Hunted by the syndicate, these two loners are forced into a pact they might not survive.
But as Baby closes in on revenge, a discovery even stranger than the slaughter threatens every plan she’s made. And in the wastes, a sound rises—wails shaped like human words—voices of a lifeform whose hunger has no horizon.
A lifeform that knows Baby’s ugliest secrets.