Blood & Tacos #1 (6 page)

So eager were the couple for extended healing sessions that they complied, smuggling in cups of some feral moonshine that tasted of potatoes, oranges and bakery goods. Whatever it was, it did the trick – The Albino Wino was shortly restored.

The initial escape was easily done, after three nights of not at all unpleasant copulation, the four of them loosed upon the barnyard dirt. Freed from their cages by the longhair male who, it turned out, was some sort of trustee – possessed with a set of keys to everything on the farm – bewitched into rule-breaking sexual sessions through Bronte's longing, lingering gazes. On the third night of these clandestine moonlight rendezvous the girl let their fate slip.

"Thank you," she said, "for spiritually fulfilling me and healing my debilitating hepatitis with your seed."

The Albino Wino fumbled for his pants while the girl played with the fine gossamer of his chest hair. "What are you talking about?" he asked.

The girl rolled off of him and turned to her side, her back to The Wino. "Tomorrow," she said sadly, "Theseus will take your arms for the ritual…"

The Wino rubbed his face. "Tomorrow…"

Bronte, feigning sleep, visibly stiffened in the moon glow. She and The Wino exchanged a glance, a nod. The Albino Wino rolled, uncovered from a clump of hay the smashed top half of the minibar rum bottle and grabbed it by its stubby neck. Springing to his feet, he leapt upon the longhair male and raked the jagged edge of the bottle across his throat. Bronte gave a short shriek as the blood spray painted her bosom and face, streaking her hair pink.

The longhair girl fell agog at the sight. Bronte Fox, bloodlust and, yes, possibly
envy, building up inside of her, called for the girl's blood. Bronte fell atop
her like a snowy blizzard. The girls, both naked still, writhed upon the ground
until Bronte plucked an old horseshoe from the hay and bludgeoned the girl to
death with it.

Covered in gore, but semi-clothed at least, the duo snuck out of the barn.
The night was cool but clear and under the moonlight The Wino and Bronte seemed
as though one with the stars, beautifully iridescent, a constellation of two
– The Vengeance Seekers, perhaps, one day to rise above this mortal coil to
sit beside Orion the Hunter.

The Wino clutched the longhair male's pitchfork, Bronte the girl's kitchen knife. The lights in the compound's main house glowed in the distance. Theseus would be in there, fornicating and snorting the bones of their pale brothers and sisters.

They met little resistance on the way to the main house, and what resistance they did meet they dispatched like spear-hurling primitives, pitchforks rocketing javelin-like into jugulars and sternums. Their opposition, conditioned by spiritual nonsense, to believe that these beings in all their albinistic glory were something other than human, were defeated at the mere sight of them as they creeped like pale spectres through the scrub.

The most troublesome were the two large longhairs who had given The Wino his beatings. But by the time The Wino and Bronte encountered them, they had firearms. The Wino shot out their kneecaps and left them writhing on the ground, giving them something to think about. With each cult-sentry dispatched, so did their arsenal increase, inevitably to the point where so burdened were they with weapons that many they left with the dead.

Cultists, roused by the fighting, fled through any available exit. The Wino and Bronte shot as many as they could. Vengeance is a black and murky beast that clouds judgment and dampens all sense of kindred humanity at the best of times, but The Wino felt no kinship with these cannibals; the world would be better off without them. The chaos, the storm of people fleeing, helped protect them from the gunfire of those remaining. The Wino lost his right earlobe, torn free by a lucky shot. With blood trickling down his pulsing neck, The Wino unloaded with return fire, blowing the shooter's brains out the back of his head.

By the time they discovered Theseus Jones, sleeping still in some drugged stupor, a trio of buxom beauties by his side, The Wino and Bronte were surely fixed to fight an army of trained killers, never mind this lot of beardy, tripping rabble.

The women fled screaming, but were gut-shot by a grim-faced Bronte, the red mist far from settled in her eyes.

"I can make you a God," Theseus said upon awakening to find The Wino poking the barrel of an AK-47 in his face.

The Wino shook his head. "I don't want control over no man, no institution,
or no cause," he said. And with that, the great Theseus Jones closed his eyes,
clasped the vial around his neck and was turned into a bloody, chopped-up cadaver
in a hail of righteous gunfire.

They found the still and The Wino drank deep. Having had their fill of killing,
they let the remaining cultists run free. The little girl who served Theseus
his bone powder caught The Wino's eye. She mouthed the words
thank you
and was gone before The Wino could respond.

Bronte shared a drink with him, coughing the moment the shine hit her lips. The Wino laughed and drank some more. With breath like gasoline, the couple headed off into the night.

Some ways down the trail that led to the highway, a mewling was heard.

"What was that?" Bronte said.

The Wino shushed her with a pasty index finger to her lips. A blinding flash erupted from the scrub, leaping into The Albino Wino's arms.

"Chalky!" The Wino exclaimed. "Drawn by the scent of the poisonous hooch on my breath, no doubt. Thanks for waiting around for me, buddy."

Chalky, apparently none the worse for wear from waiting weeks for his master, purred and nuzzled The Wino's snowy beard. The Wino turned to Bronte, "You ain't got no allergy to cats, I hope? This little guy's been with me through hell and back and I ain't about to throw him over for some piece of sweetmeat."

Bronte Fox answered by scratching Chalky under the chin and passionately kissing The Wino on the mouth. Tongues doing the Watusi together under the full moon, The Wino finally pulled free. He said, "I swiped us some cash from some dead longhair fool. Let's you, me and Chalky find us a place we can get us something good to drink."

With that, the trio headed for the highway, on to bigger adventures and deadlier foes.

THE END

Keep an eye out for the magnificent return of The Albino Wino in his next
white-knuckle adventure
: A PALER SHADE OF WHITE!

Cameron Ashley
is the editor in chief of
Crime Factory
.
His most recent fiction can be found in
D*cked, Noir at the Bar
and
upcoming in
The One That Got Away
. He lives in Brunswick, Melbourne.
This one's for Nette.

By Max Auger

(discovered by Christopher Blair)

CHRISTOPHER BLAIR found this Reagan-era classic at the Coos Bay Swap Meet
on the coast of Oregon. Even among survivalist training manuals, Laser Tag accessories,
and tarnished throwing stars, the embossed mushroom cloud and hammer and sickle
on its cover were hard to miss. Very little is known about the author Max Auger;
we do know that this is his first printed effort and a prime example of the
'80s post-apocalyptic sub-genre of men's adventure.

That sign's in Russian!

At first, Capt. Mike McCreary thought the binoculars were playing tricks on him. He pressed himself further into the rich Texas soil and leaned forward into the dry grass like a crouching lion. He blinked and looked again.

It was too much to take in. Less than a mile away lay his hometown, its neat, clean buildings untouched by the Russian and Chinese death that had streaked in a year before. In fact, the town looked just the way it did when he'd left Sunny here to be safe. There it was, just west of the school: the little house they'd bought with his promotion pay. Sunny was in there. Waiting for him, but thinking he was dead.

Every fiber of his body wanted to run to her, to tell her that he'd survived. But his military training told him to stay put.

The farms and fields encircling the town of Wrangler Plains looked like a pale green quilt. He saw the workers and tractors and clouds of dust, working together to bring in the harvest, the familiar motions of bending and lifting, of wiping honest sweat from an honest man's brow. He knew that his childhood friends were down there, the ones who'd stayed home, just a few minutes' sprint from the gentle rise where he now lay.

If not for the sign, printed on a bright piece of plywood planted on the shoulder of Highway 27. In bright red letters:

And printed in smaller letters:

McCreary handed the binoculars to Spec. Charles Whitefeather, crouched beside him like one of his Comanche ancestors stalking a buffalo. Whitefeather shook his head politely. "No thank you, Captain." McCreary cursed his insensitivity: Of course, Whitefeather wouldn't need the binoculars. Not with his hunter's eyes.

Instead, he handed them to Private Billy LaRoy to his left. Next to LaRoy, Spec. Brad Hawker, the sniper, took it all in through his scope.

"I don't understand, Cap," LaRoy said, "Why are all them R's backward? I may not be no college boy, but I know when letters ain't right."

"That's Russian writing, Private," McCreary said. "It looks a little like ours, but it ain't."

Whitefeather hit the dirt next to McCreary.
"Tanks!"
he hissed.

McCreary grabbed the binoculars from LaRoy, just as Hawker muttered, "Five of ‘em. No six. No, seven! To the right of the church, off the main drag."

Son of a bitch: Seven tanks were rolling across Hank Steinhoff's alfalfa field. Suddenly, they stopped about fifty feet from the First Church of Christ, a row of fat iron turtles. In unison, their turrets began to swing. Even a mile away, the squad could feel the tanks' metal rumbling in their bellies.

"This doesn't make sense," McCreary muttered. "The Reds weren't supposed to
this far north. Intel said we stopped 'em at San Antone."

"Those tanks are huge," Whitefeather said, "I ain't seen nothin' like that this close. Not even doing Black Ops in Europe. I feel an ill wind blowin', Captain." He paused, then added: "This is bad medicine."