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The dust swirled around my worn boots, a miniature desert storm kicked up by the frantic thump of my own heart. The air hung thick and heavy, the scent of dry earth and something else… something metallic and sickeningly sweet, clinging to the back of my throat. It was the smell of blood. Old blood. New blood. The kind that stains the soul as deeply as it stains the earth.
I’d been clean for six months, six agonizing months of sweat-soaked nights and gnawing cravings, a testament to a willpower I never knew I possessed. Six months of staring at the cracked pavement, avoiding the shadowed corners where my past lurked like a hungry ghost. But tonight, the ghost had found me.
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I reached the relative safety of the small office and set down the suitcases. The Mexican stood and slowly shook his head as I approached. I looked down and saw that Kat’s shirt had been cut away. One large hole had punched through her upper shoulder leaving a blue-black, bloodless hole. Her eyes blinked rapidly as I knelt beside her.
“Hey,” I said. She looked at me, pulled another breath and then her eyes slipped shut. She had a small smile on her face as if she knew some secret that I could only guess at.
I froze for a moment and then reached down and shook her shoulders.
“She’s okay, Billy,” The Mexican said. “I gave her something… We need to get her somewhere where I can stitch her up… Or you. Listen, I don’t want to sound hard or as if I don’t care, but right now, unless we want to just give up and die, we need to get ourselves in gear. If it wasn’t one of the trucks that blew by us while we were on that dirt road, and we know it wasn’t that red pickup… someone is still out there, and once they get their shit together they’ll come back for us, amigo. And there has to be some locals of some sort around here, eventually one of them is gonna show up. Federales… Maybe locals… What you need to do Billy is get us another truck so we can get back across the border and make that meeting… Put this behind us,” the Mexican said.
I looked around the showroom. “I don’t see any here, which means I’m going to have to go back outside to find one. Which means,” I looked at the Mexican, “I need you to keep watch in front; I’m going out the back door.”
I walked over to a small plywood board to one side of the double doors, and began to search through the key-tags that hung from it. “Hey, take a quick look out front and tell me whether you see a light green Ram out there, about ten years old or so,” I continued to search through the keys as he looked.
“Si, out by the road,” he replied.
“How about a two-tone red and white Chevy?”
“No veda nada… No, not out here.”
“Good,” I said as I dropped the remaining keys in a heap by the board. I had kept two sets out; apparently, there were two green Ram’s, another out back somewhere along with a tu-tone Chevy that had possibilities. “Okay I’m going to get it,” I said as I turned and walked down a hallway in the direction of the back of the building, I turned back. “Kat?” I asked.
“She’s safe, amigo… Go, I’ll keep watch on her.”
I turned and walked down the hallway through a set of double steel doors and into a small garage area. I searched the garage quickly, but no red and white Chevy or green Ram resided in the shadowy interior. I walked to a set of double steel doors set into the back of the garage, pressed the bar handle, and stepped out into the back lot.
I found the Ram first directly behind the rear of the garage checked the stock numbers and after determining, which set of keys went to it opened the door and got in. A low chiming greeted me as I opened the door. The Ram was one of the upper level models; it was also not four-wheel drive. The tires were not much more than passenger tires and when I turned on the ignition to check the gas gauge the needle stopped just above empty.
“Fuck,” I said to myself. “this one isn’t going to do us a hell-of-a-lot-of good.”
I found the other truck farther back in the lot. It was a low end model; built more with a hunter or some other type of sportsman in mind and much better suited to our needs. Plain stark vinyl interior and the gas gauge leveled out at half when I checked it. Not great, but a lot better than the other truck and we didn’t have the time to pick and choose.
“This is her,” I told myself. I started the truck and drove out of the back lot toward the front of the dealership.
I had been tensed, expecting to hear the chatter of machine pistols while I was out back, and when I drove by the glass encased showroom and saw the Mexican crouched by the side of a car on the showroom floor I breathed a sigh of relief. I just caught his waving hands out of the corner of my eye before two men jumped out from behind one of the trucks in the front row and opened fire on me.
Too late, I thought as I realized I had left the machine pistol lying on the front seat instead of keeping it in my right hand where it should have been. I could hear the sound of a machine pistol behind me as the Mexican opened up. I did what I could. I aimed the truck at the two men; levered the door-handle and prepared to jump just as the windshield hit by several of the rounds fired by the two men was blown inward: My world faded to black.
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