“Pueblo”

“Pueblo”

MJ hit the gas and shifted The Kamikaze into third, grinning with delight as the car shot forward in the desert heat. The Camaro zoomed on the empty highway, as the sun started to hang low in the sky. “Slow Ride” by Foghat blazed on the surround stereo that Jack had installed.

“Man, I could get used to this!” MJ yelled at him, as Jack nodded rhythmically. The ’69 Chevy’s 427 big block purred as it roared down the vast expanse of nothingness that was the west Texas desert. They were off to San Jose, to investigate the old Winchester mansion, which was reported to be incredibly haunted. Jack sometimes wished he could have flown. Being cooped in the Kamikaze with MJ could prove unbearable, and potentially fatal. He reclined his seat, into the back, and sprawled out in the bench seat, flopping down one side of the backrest to access the trunk. Guns spilled out of the back. Jack stuck his arm in and groped for his cleaning kit, and drew a single shot sawn-off .45-70 rifle from the passenger door. Unfortunately for him, this gun was spotless, just like every other one they had. They’d been on the road for seven hours now, and MJ had some sort of qualm about hitting the NO2 injector and going 180 mph. So Jack was relatively bored. He opened up the satellite laptop that was on the back seat, and crawled back into the front seat.

MJ watched the mountains loom in the distance, and sang along to Golden Earring, as the sun sank into the haze of the desert. She leaned over to see what Jack was doing on the laptop.

“Jack, what are you doing? Are you playing Warcraft?”

“Would you believe me if it said no?

“Not really, dwarf-boy,” she jeered as his little character ran across the screen.

“Hey, I could be looking up dirty pictures,” he suggested. She scowled at him, and glared.

“Why do you have to be so male?”

“Why can’t you be one?” He jabbed back. “Cuz then I could hit you, knock you out cold, and drive a while, you wheel hog. Christ, I’m the one who restored this baby.”

“But I own it. It’s my car. So back off.”

“Won’t even break the freaking speed limit. There’s no cops here, there’s nothing here but sand. This way, we should be in San Jose by my next birthday. Floor it already!”

“Hey, I’m not a speed freak, let me drive in peace!” she yelled at him.

So he went back to his game, staring out the window every so often at the encroaching darkness. Pretty soon it was pitch black in the desert, the night chill setting in. A thin sliver of moon, a mere smile of silver, shined in the dark, clear sky. MJ was still singing, when she saw something flash and move in the parallel headlight bars of the Z28. She slammed the brakes. Jack pitched forward out of sleep.

“What was that?” he asked groggily, as MJ flicked on the cop post-mounted spotlights and did a wide search with the light.

“I dunno, I thought I saw something flash in front of us. It wasn’t a deer, I know that. Too big,” she said, panning the light the other way. Jack flicked his on too, doing one round watch with the beam. “I don’t see anything,” he said, peering out.

Then his light began to flicker. MJ looked over at his, and then back to her own, and hers flickered, and died. Then the car turned off.

“Dammit, that’s a new battery too, it shouldn’t be doing this,” Jack said, flicking on a flashlight. It too flickered and then died. He shook it twice, jiggling the battery. “Dammit. You got any candles over there?” he asked, flicking on a lighter.

“No,” she said, digging through the glove box. She pulled out a crank powered flashlight, and gave it a few spins, and then turned it on. It lit for a second, and then shorted. A chill wind picked up in the car, and the lighter’s flame went out.

Jack looked at the lighter, then all of the windows in the car curiously.

“MJ, you’ve got your window up, right?” Jack asked, trying to relight the lighter.

“Yeah, I put it up when it got dark,” she said, grabbing the door handle.

“Then you might not want to open that door. Salt the hell out of the windows and doors with me, will you?”

Her eyes got big, and she fumbled for the salt can in the glove box. Jack covered his side door with a solid line of salt, and then dove into the trunk, pulling out an old lever action Winchester shotgun and loading it with shells.

“What’s that for? This is a spirit thing, get out the water pistols! Buckshot wont do crap!” she yelled, diving for a bottle of holy water and saline solution. He leaned over her lap and covered the other door with a line of salt.

“Well, I kinda broke into the Winchester’s Impala, and they had a bunch of these in their trunk. They’re filled with rock salt. So I started reloading my own shells. Here, take a bandolier or two.”

Outside the car, hazy billowing blue shapes began to from. The two heard the stampede of hooves, and a ghostly raiding party of Comanches rode past their car hood, firing arrows back off into the desert. Cracks of rifle fire could be heard, when about sixty ghosts appeared ahead of them in the road, some dressed in pioneer gear, others in doeskin leather. They glowed faintly, their hair wispy, every so often an arrow sticking out of one, a bullet wound in another. The sounds of battle raged on around them, and more horsemen rode by, followed by their immortal pursuers. Then a ghostly face slammed into the driver side window. MJ jumped.

“Shit! And we’re stuck here!” she yelled, preparing to wheel down her window and blast at the spirits with a sawn-off double barrel.

“We’ve got to get out of the car. They’re going to tip it! The salts in here, not out there. And when they destroy it, we have no way to get out of the desert. We need to get out of the Kamikaze soon.” Jack said, reaching into the secret trunk compartment and grabbing gunpowder, tape and rock salt.

“Now hand me a film canister or a bottle or something, dammit!”

She jacked a couple more shells into her full size Remington 870, as another ghost landed on the hood, dancing at them and grinning. She handed him a small old water bottle, and he filled the container with gunpowder, ripping off a piece of his T-shirt. He soaked the strip in a jar of consecrated oil, and stuck it in the bottle as a fuse. Then he taped rock salt to the outside of the bottle.

Holding the bottle in both hands, Jack chanted, “O salt, I exorcise you by the living god, by the true god, by the holy god. I exorcise you so that you may bring health of soul and body to all who make use of you, and you may repel and put to flight every apparition, villain, and unclean spirit from where you are taken. Praise be to Him who will judge the living and dead with fire.”

“Kinda like the whole ‘Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch’ thing you got going there, eh?” she said, staring worriedly at the ghost dancing on the hood of the Camaro. “I thought you were atheist…”

“Deist, you retard. And I picked up some things here and there, like in catholic missionary training.”

“When in the hell did you do that?”

“End of high school, actually,” he said, taping a seal around the bottle cap.

“You told me you were going to Europe!”

“I pretty much just wanted to get away from you,” he jabbed.

She looked back to the dancing ghost on her car. “Should I chance a spirit getting in the car and cap that bastard off the hood?” she asked him.

“If he was the only one, then I’d say yes-“

He was cut off by the car beginning to tip, and going back to the ground. “Dammit, we have to get out of here now! Get your water pistol in your waistband, put your big shotgun on your back, and make sure the rest of them are loaded!” He threw another ammo belt at her. “These are semi-porous rounds, been soaking in saline and holy water for about two days. I don’t know if they’ll work, but as a last resort. I’ve packed both of our pistols, your Winchester, and some food, water, shovels, and glow sticks. Lets try to find some shelter, like a box canyon or somethi-”

Again, the car tipped. MJ checked her double barrel, her .410 revolver, and her 870 on her back. She stowed the double barrel in her waist with her saline water pistol, and put her hand on the door handle. Jack slammed one of the new porous salt round magazines into his .45, checked his lever-action shorty and full-size pump action shotguns, and stowed all three firearms. Awkwardly swinging the food and ammo bag over his shoulder, he tucked his water pistol in his pants, and readied a salt bomb. The car started tipping again. Jack held up his fingers and began to count down.

“Five…Four…Three…Two… ONE!!” he yelled, lighting and throwing the salt bomb at the oncoming horde of ghosts. MJ stepped out, shot the ghost on her hood off, and ran after Jack who was heading to the west. The ghosts started wailing and chasing, and then the bomb went off, creating a supernova and a salt cloud.

MJ heard a scream from behind her, like the scream of a dying man ushering his last battle cry. She turned and hosed the spirit with the .410, the rock salt spreading in a wide pattern from the short barrel. She turned and shot another one running at her with a tomahawk, all the while following Jack. One fell in behind him, waving a knife, and she shot him too, before dodging a prickly pear. Jack winced.

“Man, you hit me!” he yelled at her.

“Not my fault you cant over your own ass,” she retorted. He slowed a bit, trying to pop the end off of a film canister, his lever-action under his arm. “What the hell are you doing?” she asked, spraying another ghost with salt. He popped it open, and carefully drew out a little stopper bottle. He unscrewed the top, and put a drop in his left eye. He handed it to her.

“Tropicamide. It produces mydriasis,” he said, blinking.

“It does what?”

“It makes your pupils abnormally large, very quickly, so you can see much better at night. Muzzle flashes may blind you, though. Just take it, dammit. I don’t feel like guiding a blind person through a cactus maze filled with pissed off dead people.”

“How do you know this? How did you get this stuff?”

“Just take the god damn drops already!”

She took the bottle, and prepared to drop it in her right eye. Jack looked at her as they ran. “Don’t do that. You’re right eye dominant, right?” She nodded. “Put it in your left eye, and use your left eye to scan the terrain. Close it when you’re about to fire, but you can keep your right eye open. Other wise you’d be firing with both eyes shut or blind to muzzle flashes. Now you should be okay. If it bugs you, you can do the other eye.” MJ nodded and handed him the bottle. He put it up and grabbed his shotgun, blasting another ghost. Almost immediately, his left eye brightened, and as he heard a “Whoa” behind him, he knew MJ’s pupil had dilated too.

They came up on a twenty-foot drop to a canyon carved by a now dormant stream. “Great,” muttered Jack, as MJ reloaded her guns. The sound of thunder began to build. Jack peered up into the sky. It was clear, not a cloud in sight. He turned back to where the car was, and they had outrun the ghosts. He un-slung his full size shotgun from his back, and MJ did the same.

“They’re sending in the cavalry,” she said, checking to see if her gun was chambered. There was a slight rise about fifty feet ahead of them, so they couldn’t see the Kamikaze. And there was a canyon at their heels. The sound built up surrounded them, and disappeared behind their backs.

They both turned to follow the sound as it ran across the desert, and when they turned back, mounted pioneer horsemen materialized and charged them.

“Sneaky-ass BASTARDS!!” MJ yelled, as she fired into the oncoming wall of spirits. One of the riders dissipated like smoke as salt pelted his chest. She pumped in another round, and fired. Jack slam-fired his Mossberg 500 into the oncoming apparitions, and seventeen rounds and two empty magazine tubes later, the charge was over. Jack started reloading when the second charge came, this time Comanches, firing ghostly arrows all around the pair of humans. MJ fired off two rounds, and re-slung her gun, pulling the .410 and the sawn-off to bear. MJ fired steadily, a consistent boom…boom…boom, and when she ran dry, fired off both barrels of her lupara. Jack had fired off all four rounds from his lever-action, and grappled with the holster on his single shot 12 gauge. Yet still, there were at least ten ghosts with in yards, riding at them.

MJ re-holstered both of her shotguns, and grappled in her waistband for the saline filled water pistol. She drew it to bear, to find it was almost empty. She looked down at her pants, and noticed the giant wet stain in the front where the child’s toy had leaked.

“Son of a BITCH!” she screamed, squirting off a couple shots, and then reloading her guns. The ten remaining ghosts were close. Jack fired off his last round, and fumbled for the water gun that was caught in his belt. He grabbed MJ and shoved her into the canyon, hoping the accumulated silt where the stream usually flowed would break her fall. He squirted a few shots and then dove into the canyon, as a ghostly knife grazed his back.

He landed in the silt, on the backpack. The bottles of water poked into his back, but he struggled to his feet, and looked up. The ghosts hadn’t followed them. He winced a little from the back pain, and reloaded his lever-action shotgun.

MJ had come off worse for the wear. She had landed on a prickly pear, the thin needles burying themselves into her left leg.

“Ouch, you ok?”

“Yeah, freakin’ dandy. Don’t touch me, I can get up on my own.”

“You sure? Let me take a look,” Jack said, holstering his gun and going for her leg. She backed up into a fighting stance. “I’m fine. Hurts like a bitch, though. Don’t you have anything stashed away to help with this?”

“Depends. What time is it?”

She looked down at her watch. “It’s about 12:30.”

“Then, no, not yet.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” she asked, voice rising.

“Hey, I don’t want you doing this job blazed and then tired. You said you were fine, now deal with it, or let me take a look.”

She scowled, and shut up, glaring at him. He mock-hissed at her like a cat, and walked down the canyon to find an alcove. He checked in the dirt to make sure that they were going the right way, and made little signs to the car in the dirt and pieces of old driftwood. He drew a big arrow in the side of the canyon wall where they fell down with smoke from a lighter.

They continued walking about half a mile to the beginning of the little canyon. MJ winced with each step. Here and there the water had made a little grotto, and when Jack found a good deep one, they both crawled in. It was about five feet high, four feet deep, and the weeds, cactus, and creosote bush had grown along it, hiding all but a small little hole. Jack lined the perimeter with salt, and made shield knots in the sand with his finger. MJ leaned back, and noticed her eye was going back to normal. Jack dug through the pack, and snapped a glow stick, the grotto glowing an unearthly green.

“So, what now?” she asked, shifting over to her non-spiny side.

“Well, you can rest here, or whatever. I’m gonna go try to locate these graves. I want to be out of here by morning, on the road to Fort Davis to grab some sleep and grub.”

“Uh, how we gonna burn ‘em? We have no gas.”

“I’m just locating them. For now. You can stay here.”

“Where are they going to be? There’s a lot of desert out there, and seven hours till daylight.”

“I got a good idea,” he said, grinning, opening up another “battery” and taking two caffeine pills. He got up, waved at her, and walked out of the hole. He had found a passable path up out of the canyon, about twenty feet from the hole, when MJ walked up.

“I’m coming with. Ain’t no way in hell I’m staying alone out here.”

Jack looked at her limp, but shrugged. They climbed to the top of the canyon and looked across the flat desert plains. Jack pointed to their right. “See those trees over there, the ones that stand apart from every thing else? I’ll bet you a jelly donut that the pioneers are buried ‘round there. Tree grove means someone tried to civilize that once. Which means houses, and a cemetery.” MJ just nodded.

And they started walking.

The moon, even for being a sliver, was still bright. They routinely dodged cactus and creosote bush walking on the gravelly, sandy soil, for almost an hour now, and there still wasn’t a spirit in sight. MJ heard a coyote howl periodically, but determinedly limped on. Jack glanced at his watch, and sped up. MJ groaned at him. Jack turned around to wait for her, and when she caught up with him, he had her at gunpoint.

“I’m tired of it, you’re lagging behind. Either drop your pants and let me get the needles out or I shoot you and put you out of your misery. I’m tired and ornery, don’t put it past me.”

She scowled even more at him. He pulled the hammer back on his .45. “Look, MJ, I don’t care about how white your legs are or the color of your underwear. Drop ‘em. I’m not haulin your gimpy ass back to the car.”

“Screw you, asian, I’ll be fine!” she scowled at him. She walked past him to the tree grove. She felt his fingers go around her neck, and jiggle on her carotid. She fell to the ground. He gently laid her down to the rocky soil, and pulled down her pants, deciding that was a better course than getting chewed out for ruining a pair. He switched on a flashlight, hoping for no spiritual interference. The light turned on, bright as ever, and he quickly picked out a few of the needles with his teeth. He could feel her starting to stir as the blood went back to her brain. The flashlight began to flicker again. He whirled around, his shotgun to bear, and blasted a sneaking Comanche brave, hunting his (“hopefully last” thought Jack) game.

MJ jerked up with a start, to see her pants down with Jack pulling needles out of her thigh with his teeth. He gave the flashlight a shake, and it came back on. He handed it and his shotgun to her. She loaded the shotgun and aimed it at his head.

“What, you want me to do more while I’m down here or something?” he grinned, spitting out a needle. He pushed the shotgun barrel to the side. “It’s just rock salt, I’ll get a really bad headache and I’ll be pretty bloody, but I’ll get up and deck your ass. Calm down and cover my back. I’ll be done in a second.”

MJ glared at him, and then turned side to side, looking for danger. Jack finished up. “You know, MJ, I never figured you for the pastel rainbow type,” he grinned again. MJ quickly got her pants back up, and as they both stood up, she threw a left to his jaw that sent him spinning.

“Now, asian, we’re even. You perv.” They continued walking.

They reached the trees, and sure enough, an antique windmill was still spinning. They slowly crept into the overgrown ghost town, guns out. MJ was still limping a little.

“I don’t think you got them all out, you idiot.”

“You can drop your pants again, if you want,” he retorted. She glared at him in the moonlight.

“Don’t you have anything for this, Jack?”

“Well, all I got is the maximum strength stuff. And the über-maximum stuff. And the super death maximum econo-pak stuff. How bad is it?” he asked.

“I just walked how far with needles getting pushed around by my jeans each step I took?”

“Fine. No need to get snippy, sheesh.” He broke out a small floss container.

“I didn’t think you flossed, Jack.”

“Har har. You want this stuff or not? I’m just giving you the über-max, not the, well, you catch my drift.” He checked his watch.

“How much you weigh?” He asked her.

“I’m not telling you, asshole!”

“I’ll guess, then.”

Her checked his watch again, and then stared back up at the moon. “Take this, and measure out about nine little grains. And then lick them up.”

MJ poured a little out on her palm, and looked at Jack. He rolled her eyes at her, and she licked her palm.

“What was that shit?” she asked.

“Let’s just say I’ve boiled down Tylenol to get pure codeine before. The regular maximum stuff is Vicodin, and the super max, well, its mixed with a little morphine. This stuff is easier to regulate the dose with. Which means we need to get moving, because you’re going to be zoning out before too long.”

They hurried through the little town, a small smattering of houses in varying degrees of dilapidation. Jack poked into one of the houses, as MJ went to the cellar.

MJ looked at the one-hundred-and-twenty-year-old things floating in glass jars, and chuckled to herself. Betcha I could make Jack eat some of this, she thought, pocketing a jar. Suddenly a jar behind her crashed, and she whirled around. It was Jack, pushing the shotgun barrel away from his stomach. “Found something.”

They went up back to the surface, and Jack led them behind a house, back a ways into the desert. There was a historical marker set up by the Department of Parks and Wildlife.

Jack looked at her. “This thing is on a trail. A sight-seeing trail. These pioneers ‘warred often with the local natives’, because they had established the town over old burial grounds. In fact, they dug up the old burial grounds and buried every one of the Comanches in a mass grave near the fields.”

“Free fertilizer, I guess,” she shrugged, reading. “So the comanche’s got pissed, and killed every man in the town, dumping them in a mass grave, and re-burying their own dead off to the side. Then they stole the women and ran?”

“Yup. In fact, the new burial grounds is the next sight on the trail. So let’s get to digging. There was about twenty established graves in the town cemetery, down that right fork, and those are probably all six feet deep. The mass grave is over towards those rocks. I think the Comanches ripped one of the grave markers out of a normal grave and stuck it in upside down, to be spiteful. So let’s start digging.”

They started digging in the normal cemetery, digging up all the men. They were going quickly, the little extendable trifold shovels digging the brittle parched earth with little resistance. Sure enough, the first four graves were a full six feet down to the coffin, but the rest must have had skimpy gravediggers, for they were no more than four feet down. They went back to the trail, preparing to go to the mass grave.

“Now, I don’t think anything out here gets too terribly much foot traffic, but just in case, go grab some wood from the town,” Jack said.

MJ returned quickly, the codeine making her hyper. Jack scribbled “Graves closed temporarily due to vandalism,” and followed MJ to the next grave. MJ dug quickly, and when they broke down to where the bodies were, one hundred and twenty five year’s worth of decomposition gases blew out of the hole.

“Whew, damn, this job is the pits sometime…” Jack said, waving away the smell. MJ was zoning out. She noticed Jack had a small freckle on the back of his left hand.

“Codeine hitting you, I take it?”

She snapped out of her trance and nodded. Jack went back to widening the hole, tucking his nose into his shirt.

With a scream, a ghost popped through the hole they had made. He was dressed in burlap trousers and shirt, and brandished a skinning knife. MJ sent him down with a shot. The grave was only fifteen feet long, the Comanches stacking their victims on top of each other. And it was very shallow, and quickly dug all the way up.

The moon was low in the sky as Jack wiped the sweat off his brow. MJ was starting to get tired. Neither one of them could take any more caffeine pills without feeling it for days to come.

“Come on, MJ, its almost daylight. About twenty more graves, and they should be pretty shallow. Comanches didn’t have that damn six feet under tradition. Let’s hit it quickly.” They hustled down the trail as quickly as their tired bodies would let them.

The Comanche’s graves were easy to spot, down in a ravine, each one surrounded by stacked rocks and wooden poles. The first one MJ dug out, and slit away two blankets with her butterfly knife. The face was a bright red, and the eye sockets full of clay. She stepped back from the grotesque mask. The rest of the graves followed suit, taking about an hour. Jack sprinkled salt on each one, as MJ leaned against a rock and ate her rations.

The sky was beginning to brighten in the east. Jack rested a little and ate his rations. MJ’s eyelids were beginning to droop a little.

“Hey, Em, come on. We’re going back to the car. You can sleep there.”

She looked up at him with her large half-closed eyes. “No way, bucko. It’s my car. You ain’t drivin.”

They started following their path back to the road, as they could see the highway from the town. Jack guessed the car’s position as the road dipped out of view, and they started walking back into the desert. MJ lagged a little behind, as the codeine started wearing at her consciousness. About halfway back to the canyon where they had hidden earlier, they took a breather and MJ fell asleep.

“Well, son of a bitch,” Jack muttered, and he fired his .45 into the air. Her eyelids fluttered, she saw him, and went back to sleep. He combined their packs, throwing the salt out. He put the combined pack on her, and draped the shotguns on her too, one over each shoulder. Then, with a grunt he picked her up and put her on his back piggy-back style, taping her arms around his neck with duct tape and taping her legs around his torso. He rolled up both pants legs and taped them.

And, as if the gods truly hated him, the desert sun rose that moment.

The way back was hard. It was far, but even, but the canyon had to be completely avoided except for the shallower part upstream. Jack strained to fight to stay awake and keep them both upright. He reached around MJ’s body for the pack, unzipped the front pocket, and pulled out an adrenaline autoinjector. Then he re-zipped the pocket as he undid the front of his pants and shot adrenaline into his thigh. Almost immediately, he was more alert, and the load wasn’t too bad.

And with single-minded grit, he hauled back to the car, a doped out girl taped to his back, armed to the teeth. The Kamikaze had survived the night, no noticeable body damage. And the battery seemed to work. The suspension probably needed work after the car was tipped, but not right now. He cut the tape on MJ quickly, laying her gently in the passenger seat.

“Sleep well, your heads gonna hurt in the morning.”

Jack dumped the pack in the back, and put the shotguns in their secret trunk compartment. He fished out MJ’s “Blast Knuckles” taser, and taped it to his elbow, pointing down. He got in the driver seat, pick pocketed MJ for the keys to the car, and turned up the AC. Then he started driving.

He almost fell asleep at the wheel, sinking forward, when he was awakened with a 950,000 volt shock as the taser hit his thigh. He screeched, sat up alert, and checked to see if MJ woke up. But she was still asleep, curled up like a cat. So he drove, playing Slayer through the stereo to keep him up.

Jack checked into a decent motel, dropping their bags off in the room, and depositing MJ in a bed. Then he drove around in the Camaro, and filled up at a close by gas station. The only other nearby one, right next to the motel, was getting regassed today, so Jack was forced to pay ten cents more, or drive out a couple miles.

And then an idea hit him. He bought a lot of salt at the local store, put it in a backpack, parked the car at the motel, and walked to the refueling gas station. He checked it out around the truck. It was pretty early on a weekend, no one was up yet, save for two gas station employees. And there were two cameras facing the truck, one of which was inside.

Jack dug through the car for gloves, a long shirt, and a ski mask, poking aviators through the holes in the ski mask, until no part of his skin was showing. Then he slipped on a pair of cowboy boots with thick soles and higher heels. He injected more adrenaline into his system, as he got an old, quiet pellet rifle out of his car trunk. One well placed shot from the top of the motel eliminated the outside camera with ease. Then Jack went around to the back of the gas station, where the two employees and the truck driver were talking and smoking. Jack donned his mask, crept up quietly, and jumped up onto a dumpster and then the station’s roof. There was one camera off to the side, looking at the back door. Jack cut the cord with his Ka-Bar. The three guys started to go back inside for drinks. Jack linked his legs around the roof edge, and hung down, catching the last guy before he went into the door and clubbing him in the back of the head. Then, with supreme effort, Jack picked the unconscious man up by the shoulders, and gently threw him into a soft pile of trash bags as the door closed. He deftly jumped down from the roof, and tried the door.

Locked. Son of a bitch. It took him less than a minute to pick, and he eased it open slowly, his brass knuckles on his fist. One guy was compressing cardboard boxes in the back, when Jack hit him with the knuckles at the base of the skull. He fell quietly against a pile of compressed boxes. Jack taped his hands and mouth with packaging tape.

The last guy was at the front counter. Jack slipped into the bathroom, making sure nothing of him showed, then he went into the front part of the store, taking the man by surprise, dragging him over the counter, and subduing him with one quick punch. Jack cut the last camera, and went behind the counter, canceling the gas pump on the big truck, and cutting through the electronic locks on the refueling hose. He went back out through the front, pulled the hose out of the ground, put it back on the truck, and put his salt laden bag into the front seat. He gunned the truck and shifted the heavy stick, and started driving to the hiking trail, natural adrenaline pumping through his veins.

He soon reached the start of the trail. It started at the road crossed across a flat desert full of creosote bush. No cars were parked there. Jack picked the lock on the gate titled “EMPLOYEES ONLY” where the rangers drove back with their vehicles. The truck didn’t handle the turns so well so Jack careened off road through the bush at about seventy. And there wasn’t any traffic out this early to be seen. The sun was starting to get hot, though.

It took him about half an hour to navigate the heavy gas truck carefully across the desert to the houses and the graves, but he achieved it without flickering lights or so much as a hint of a spirit. The graves were all still open and undisturbed by animals. Jack walked around with cans of salt, dumping a good amount in each grave. The mass grave had to be covered with a bag of well filtering salt, and a couple more cans to boot. He rechecked the Comanche graves, and then he drove around with the huge truck, flooding the Comanche ravine with gas. He lit an old century plant stalk at the end with his Zippo, the sparse dry fiber burning readily. He prodded down in the ravine, until the gas fumes caught and the entire little rocky ravine went up. There was a huge flash of fire, and then the only things that were burning were the old bodies in the sun.

He filled each of the cemetery graves up, and dropped flaming matches in each. Soon the graveyard looked like a scene from hell, with flames bursting out of the graves in the morning sun. The mass grave was even easier. He filled it until the smell of gas over rode the smell of rotten flesh that was still leaking from the mass of bodies, and he threw an entire flaming creosote bush into the grave, as flames leapt high.

He watched the bodies burn, and got back in the truck. It took another half an hour to get the damn thing turned around in the narrow spaces punctuated by flaming pits, and another to get back on the highway. He called MJ.

She answered sleepily. “Hello? Jack? Where are you? And why the hell did you wake me up?”

“Eh, shut up sleeping beauty. I haven’t gotten a god damn wink yet. Meet me about a mile out of town towards the graves. I’ll be in the gas truck.”

“What did you do now?” she asked, the tiredness leaving her voice.

“Just pick me up. Get the car packed, get me picked up, I’ll pay for the motel out of my money. The next town’s in about twenty miles. You can sleep.”

Fifteen minutes later, the Kamikaze pulled up, resplendent in it’s red paint job with two black stripes down the middle. MJ was drinking coffee as he got in, Triumph’s “Fight the Good Fight” blaring in the background.

“Where’s my coffee?” he asked, and she shrugged. “Oh well,” he continued, “remind me, when we stop next to find a public computer, set up a new email address, and tell the gas company where their truck is.”

She ignored him. “How come you got to come and burn the baddies without me?”

“Well, you were so gosh-darn cute in your opium nap that I just couldn’t bring myself to wake you.”

She hit him, and then grinned. “Well, I think I’ll be fine for twenty miles. Oh, and I’m checking us into the next motel. The last one had bed bugs.”

“I’m terribly sorry, Sahib. Wake me up when you get a room. And don’t forget to flip the license plates. Its black button here,” he said, showing her a hidden row of buttons under the bottom of the dash. He looked at her through blurry eyes. “And try not to hit any of the other buttons. Oh, and let’s hit the next good looking tattoo parlor we see. Get some permanent protection. And you better not tattoo a duck on me in my sleep…” he drifted off.

And with that, Jack was out.