Fierce Bitches (Crime Factory Single Shot) (8 page)

    Mama Rita’s yell was like the popping cork on a fizzy drink. The violence tamped down in the women roiled, surged and splashed out in highly concentrated bursts directed at the other men among them. The gringos fell beneath a swarm of slashing knives, pounding fists and biting mouths. They were consumed in five minutes of frenzied savagery, and lay in heaps like discarded scraps from a butcher block around the camp.

    Except the African. He lay unmolested, still curled around his wounded leg, guarded by Ramon and Mama Rita. When the others had been finished off, the women gathered about the black man. Mama Rita left her post and melted into the crowd and Ramon looked down at his replacement taking his last breaths.

    Reduced to a former threat, Ramon no longer tasted anger when he looked upon him. The man was himself save a random sprinkling of fate. In rendering Ramon a pitiful creature, the retard had probably saved his life. He could have easily found himself drowned in the blood tide rather than riding atop its foamy surf. It was a rare moment of reflection and the clarity and plainness of the revelation stole his appetite to claim vengeance. It would not be right for him to kill this man. It should be an event alive with heat, passionate and personal as he was no longer capable of delivering.

    Consuela stepped forward and Ramon raised his eyes to hers.

    He held out his weapon for her, and she took it. Ramon stepped back into the crowd. She knew what to do.

    Consuela stood over her tormentor and Mama Rita gestured for the other women to hold the man still. His arms and legs were restrained and, with his neck strained, he pointed his shiny black pate at Consuela, “Eh, you cunt, you–”

    She pulped his gums with a single blow.

    His eyes rolled into his head and it went slack. Consuela brought her instrument down again and his jawbone cracked. She knelt over him, bloody bubbles forming in his nostrils and the corners of his mouth. Even his tear ducts leaked wispy red trails. She reached her slender hand into his maw, and withdrew it a moment later, viscous and glistening in the failing light, clutching the fruit of her enemy’s mouth–broken enamel shards.

    The company packed what they could carry and torched everything else.

    When Peck returned a week later he found the town empty except for the birds. Like a black cloud hanging over the tin-shack camp they cleaned the bones of the dead, and there was nothing left for him to burn.

Texas was visible from their vantage point on the mountain. It looked peaceful and easy, like a big-hipped woman on her back, but he knew the danger inherent in the invitation. At the time of his death, Ramon reflected on his tribe. His family had mostly gathered by now inside the tent. Some of his wives cried. Some tended the children, still others sat empty-eyed on the ground. Did they think of the future? The past? Most likely they thought of nothing at all. His wives were past subtext. Years of whoring followed by bloody exodus and hermetic living, relentlessly chasing down the horizon, pursued by the cries of the damned, had a way of stripping all that away. Becoming the wrath of God came with a price. They were through with games, being coy, and all forms of manipulation or coercion subtler than a foot in the ass, a finger in the eye or a knife in the gut. They would plant themselves in a fertile new country and thrive. They would survive his absence as they had his presence.

 
   He loved the lot of them. Fierce bitches.