Muerte Con Carne (11 page)

A shuffling sound scraped across the dirt just ahead of her. Marta squinted into the darkness and squeezed the cross as her mind raced.
Don’t be scared, Marta
, she told herself.
This is why you came out here in the first place. Go!
It sounded like it was getting closer and closer, and she jogged toward it.

“Hello?” she said. “
¿
Hola?”

The shuffling stopped. Something shiny stood just in front of her, and it took Marta a few moments to realize it was a pair of eyes glaring at her. Another set stood just beside the first pair, slightly shorter.

Marta’s heart skipped a beat. She made sure the crucifix was pointed straight as she took tentative steps forward.

“
¿
Hola?” she said again. As she grew nearer, she saw that it was a man and a woman, and it wasn’t until she stood right beside them that she noticed the child draped over the man’s back. A little boy, maybe six or seven, unconscious, his lips chapped and white.

“
¿
Agua?” the man said. “P-por…por favor.”

Marta opened her bag, pulled out the two remaining bottles and handed them to the man and woman. Their hands shook as they reached for the bottles, their dry tongues hanging from their flaky and moistureless lips.

“G-gracias…gracias…” the woman muttered as she struggled to twist the cap from the bottle.

“No problema, no problema,” Marta said. “
¿
El niño está bien?”

Just as Marta said it, the woman ran some of the water over the boy’s face. His eyes cracked open and he moaned, and his mother poured water into his mouth. The boy drank, his tongue lapping it up as fast as it could. He choked but never stopped drinking.

The man took a long drink, then put it to the woman’s lips and held it for her as she drank.

“Where did you come from?” Marta said in Spanish.

They didn’t answer, just continued drinking, panting. The woman began to whimper as the boy struggled to lift his head from the man’s back.

“How long have you been walking out here?”

“Days,” the man said. “Long…hot days…”

Marta fumbled with her bag again, pulled out her Powerbars. “Are you hungry? This isn’t much, but it will help. Go ahead.”

The man took the bar, eyed it suspiciously. “Who are you?”

“I only want to help you. Please eat.”

The man and woman shared a long glance with each other, started to back away from Marta. When Marta tried to follow, they hurried their pace.

“Wait. Please, I only want to help.”

The boy started to cry, his voice hoarse and dry.

The small family started to run from Marta, but they still couldn’t move very fast. Marta followed, but kept her distance, didn’t want to scare them any more than they already were.

And then there were headlights.

The family froze up, spoke in hushed panicked tones to each other. They both shot an accusatory glance at Marta behind them as if she was the cause for this.

This is it, Marta. This is what you wanted.

But something wasn’t right. If this was Border Patrol there would surely be more than one vehicle, and the officers would be shouting orders, running toward them by now.

The vehicle just sat there, the headlights bright and engulfing them all. The driver’s door popped open, and Marta shielded her eyes to try and get a look. She could see a figure, but just barely over the glow of the lights.

There was a sound, a clicking and a sort of whoosh.

The Mexican man yelped, wobbled on his feet for a minute before crashing to the dirt. The boy bawled, rolled off the man’s back. The sound came again, and this time Marta saw the dart hit the woman in the neck. The woman shrieked, fell on the ground beside her child, clawing at the dirt to get closer to him.

“What is this?
What the fuck are you doing!
” Marta ran to the woman, pulled the dart out of her neck. She knelt down by the child, tried to scoop him into her arms, but the boy screamed, shrill and deafening, as if to touch him at all was pure agony.

“Bonita.” The voice was deep, with a hint of fascination.

Marta thought it sounded vaguely familiar, but didn’t have much time to think about it before the dart hit her in the arm, a quick deep sting that numbed her flesh almost instantly. She stumbled forward, landed on top of the woman’s back. Her arms and legs hung uselessly from her body and her vision began to blur. A gruff laughter filled her ears as the tips of the brown leather boots stepped toward her.

***

“Maybe slow it down, mi amigo.” The bartender’s face swam in Felix’s vision, the man’s thick mustache like a squirming black centipede arched over his mouth.

“‘Nother shot. Pour it up.” Felix slammed the shot glass on the bar top, knocked it over. He glanced over at the other two men who were both looking at him. It looked like they were laughing at him, but he couldn’t be sure. The neon light from the wall clock spread blue across their faces.

The bartender sighed. “Whatever you say.”

Felix took the shot, held his breath to make sure it stayed down. He hissed, slapped the bar and nearly tipped backward on his stool. A pair of arms caught him, caressed his chest, and all he could think was how good it felt to be touched. How good it felt to have Marta beneath him, begging him for more. When the wet lips touched his ear, he thought for a moment that it
was
Marta, but then he smelled the cigarettes on the breath and remembered the stubby woman who kept walking in and out of the bar.

“Come on, Papi. Lemme show you my pussy. I’ll show you and you love it.”

“¡Deja a mi jodido cliente en paz, Lupe! Vete.” The bartender shooed her off like some dog that had just tracked mud over his floors.

“Suck my tits, motherfucker.” The woman waddled away, toward the other two men who looked far happier to see her than Felix.

Felix tapped his finger on the shot glass. He didn’t even really want another shot, but Marta’s face swam in his mind and he wanted to drown it away, hold it under an ocean of tequila until the bubbles stopped.

The bartender did as he was asked, but shook his head. “That bad, mi amigo?”

“She broke my heart, Ignacio. Sh-shattered it like a fucking vase.” He slapped the bar hard, stung his palm. “All I did was love her, man. Th-that’s all…all I did…”

The woman’s scream filled the air like fireworks, and Felix flinched, nearly fell backward again but caught himself on the edge of the bar.

“Hijo de puta…” Ignacio knelt down, came back up with a shotgun. “That’s enough!”

Felix blinked away the fogginess, then faced the shrill sound of the woman’s phlegmy screams. She lay on her back, holding her face, staring up at the fat Mexican man as he cocked his leg back and kicked her in the stomach. The woman rolled to the side, her mouth opening and closing as she struggled for air.

“I said that’s enough!” Ignacio pumped his shotgun and aimed. “Get out of my bar, motherfucker.”

“Bitch said…I had a small dick. I showed her and she laughed.” The man kicked her again and the thud was followed by more screaming as the woman found oxygen.

Felix jumped to his feet, but brought his barstool with him as he stomped toward the man. The woman saw him coming, curled herself into a ball and whimpered.

“Wait a min-” Ignacio’s voice was cut off as the barstool cracked across the fat man’s shoulder, just where it met his neck. He hit the floor, kicked his legs, his teeth bared, eyes squinted in pain.

The barstool didn’t break, and Felix held it over his head. “You fucking piece of shit!” As the man cowered beneath him, muttering drunken Spanish gibberish at him, Felix couldn’t figure out why he was doing this. But it felt fucking good to hit something.

The barstool was yanked from his hands so hard he almost fell again. He spun on his heels expecting another drunken man with a face full of liquored-up rage, but it was Ignacio.

“Easy, mi amigo. You got him, okay?” He set the barstool down, his shotgun lying on its side on the bar. He picked it up and aimed it at the man on the floor who still writhed as he held his shoulder and neck. “Ándale, pendejo.”

The other man, clearly not this man’s friend, cackled as he sipped on his beer, his tongue pushing in and out between the missing front teeth in his mouth. His laughter was hoarse, whispery gasps mostly, a few deep chuckles managing to break through here and there.

The injured man rose to his feet, shot every one of them a dirty look as he stumbled out of the bar.

Felix’s vision swam for a moment, his stomach twisting and reminding him of how much alcohol he’d poured into it for the past few hours. Ignacio patted him on the back, shook his head.

“Another shot, mi amigo? Gratis, yes?”

Felix nodded, though he didn’t know how much more he could drink. Though a sickness started to spread through him, the adrenaline of hitting that man pumped him full of energy. He wanted to hit someone else.

“My hero.” The woman’s cigarette breath was in his face again, and that alone churned his stomach. “Por favor, Papi. Lemme pay you back.”

Felix didn’t remember sitting back down, didn’t remember Ignacio pouring him another shot, but there he sat with a full shot glass in front of him. It took him a second to realize that the pressure in his lap was the woman massaging his cock and balls, her hands venous and thick-knuckled.

He wanted to shove her away again, but the more his cock swelled, the better it felt. The woman was behind him, her arm wrapped around, and he could imagine it was Marta. It was Marta’s face he saw in his head, her naked body covered in sweat, his cum splashed over her stomach.

He took the shot, struggled to swallow it.

He was already halfway across the bar before he even realized he’d been on his feet.

8

Marta was bouncing when she started to regain consciousness. Something was pressed into her stomach and making it hard to breathe. Her mouth was dry and bitter and no words could break through the thickness of her throat. All she could see was blurry colors, everything moving.

Upside down. She was hanging upside down, and she couldn’t lift her head because of all the bouncing, the moving. Her face kept hitting something wet, soft. She tried to speak again and her open mouth hit the wet, soft surface. The taste of salt filled her mouth.

Her eyelids fluttered and the colors started to take shape. Dried grass and dirt beneath her…and boots. The backs of what looked like shiny blue, plastic boots came in and out of her vision.

I’m being carried.

It was then that she realized her face was knocking against a sweaty, hairy back, and the bouncing was the motion of her being carried over someone’s shoulder. Someone tall, large. She was able to lift her head just a bit, starting to get control of her body again. The pickup truck grew further and further away, but the screaming was getting closer. And the crying. A child bawling, a male and female voice pleading…in Spanish.

“W-what’s going…o-on?” More salty fluid invaded her mouth as she spoke and she tried to spit it out but couldn’t. She kicked her legs, thrashed her torso to get herself loose, but the arm she didn’t even realize was holding her in place tightened, squeezed the air out of her lungs.

She bared her teeth, growled as she continued to fight, smashing her fists into the hard back, but the arm constricted even more, crushed her stomach, threatened to break ribs. No more fighting, just trying to breathe now.

Her eyes felt ready to pop from their sockets, and she lifted her head to relieve some of the pressure. Just in front of her stood what looked to her like some kind of homemade boxing ring. But there were skulls…human skulls at every corner. Flies crawled across their surface and swirled above them. The mat was nothing more than plywood stacked on top of truck tires, and she caught a glimpse of the blood spatter stains covering it before she was carried away from it.

They entered a house now, and the screams became deafening.

“¡Por favor! 
¡P-por favor!
 
¡Deja libre a mi familia!
”

“Mi hijo. Devué‚lveme a mi bebe…”

The arm loosened and Marta sucked in a lungful of air, panted as she caught her breath. Her body was thrown forward, whipping off the shoulder she’d been draped over and slamming to the floor. The back of her head collided with the hardwood and nearly sent her diving back into unconsciousness. Her teeth snapped shut over the tip of her tongue, nearly clipping it off and instantly filling her mouth with the taste of blood. She sucked on it as she whimpered and crawled backward on her elbows.

When she saw the one who’d been carrying her, a scream blasted from her throat as she furiously kicked her legs to get away from him.

The man was massive, a towering mountain of muscle. His head was covered with a blue, sparkly mask, the kind she’d seen Mexican wrestlers wear. Lucha libre. He was shirtless, the muscles in his pectorals twitching and bouncing as he stared at her, his gut big and round, but solid-looking, swirled with hair and beaded with sweat. His eyes were wide as he stared down at her, his smile full of long, yellowed teeth.

“Bonita,” he said. He wore blue spandex pants, and she could see his cock swelling as he stared at her, sliding down his leg as it grew. He giggled like an excited child, clapped once, then slapped his chest. “Bonita.”

“Get the fuck away from me!”

The wrestler flinched at the sound of Marta’s voice, covered his face, spun in a circle and whimpered. He grew shy then, could barely look at her, plodded across the room.

Marta followed him with her eyes and saw the others in the room. An old woman, her hair as white as spider web, rocked in a large wooden chair. A child sat just in front of her, sitting Indian-style, his elbows resting on his knees and his chin cupped in his hands. He grinned to reveal a mouth full of silver capped teeth.

The huge wrestler scurried toward the old woman, knelt down beside her. She reached over and ran her hand over the mask. “Está bien, Gustavo. Está bien.”