by G. P. Grewal
I awoke with a start, drawing a sharp breath as I realized I were back in the room laying next to Gitty. I laid there a moment listening to her quiet breathing, my heart eventually slowing down. It was dark and hot and I could smell my own stink, my damp undies strangling my balls. I lifted my head, looking around the room for Roy but not seeing him, though neither were there much of anything else I could see.
The floor creaked, or the door, or something. I laid there frozen, my hand slowly moving down to my pistol on the floor, my heart beating a little faster again as I waited for the next sound, not knowing if it were just Roy or the old house settling or something else that weren't worth worrying about. Still, I weren't taking no chances. My fingers squeezed the hard rubber grip of my pistol and I waited. Then, not hearing it again I got up, slowly crossing the room. Roy weren't near the fireplace no more, though neither was he anywhere else that I could see.
I made my way outside, the front door of the house long gone, only to see Roy standing there in the moonlight behind the broken white fence, his back facing me. I said his name loud enough that he should have heard but he didn't move, still staring out at the street. Then, coming up alongside him, I followed his eyes, gasping as I grabbed at my pistol.
Standing across the street were the Mexican I thought long gone, that wiry, shirtless man with the black eagle tattoo spread across his chest, his face still painted like a skull.
Roy didn't say nothing as he stood there, and neither did the skeleton man who in the dark of night looked even more frightening than before, like death come to visit, his eyes nothing but black sockets, his white skull face standing out.
So this is where they get us, I thought, this is where there ain't going to be no escape, though after long moments ain't nothing happen.
"Roy," I whispered, not daring to move, "ain't you gonna shoot him?"
"No."
"You want me to?"
"No."
"Then what?"
He didn't answer. The three of us just stood there, each side looking at the other, though the eyes of the Mexican were fixed on Roy. Weren't no anger in them, or some sign that he was planning to do us harm. He was just calm, motionless, or at least that's how it seemed from the distance I was looking at him, though with those painted black sockets I couldn't tell for sure.
Roy broke his stare, looking down the street one way then up the other, then, with a final glance at the skeleton man standing there in the moonlight, turned and walked back inside. I stood there, sure that in another second he was going to come out again blasting, but it was just me and the Mexican, and after getting spooked from him staring at me I turned and followed Roy back into the house.
He was in the living room, sitting near the fireplace again.
"Roy, what are we going to do? You think we're surrounded?"
"I don't know," he said.
I kept by the window, watching that skull-faced Mexican who was just standing there calmly watching the house. Then he moved, sitting down on the curb.
"He's sitting down now, Roy!"
He didn't say nothing.
"Roy!"
"Get away from the window. If they were going to attack us, they would have done it by now. Or if he was."
"Hell, we can't just do nothing! Gitty, wake up!"
She was sleeping so deep she didn't hear me, and not wanting to let the Mexicans know I was panicking, I didn't want to shout.
"Leave her be. No use in waking her up just yet."
I couldn't believe he was being so calm about it, though I kept watching, that crazy skeleton man never moving, the smell of one of Roy's funny cigars filling my nose. After a while I realized how tired I was and started wondering if I were dreaming, like if it were just another nightmare I was suffering after dreaming about eating the fish and puking up my guts. I must have watched him most the night until at last, my head spinning and my eyes sore, I went and laid down next to Gitty, my pistol resting on my chest. I guess Roy was right. If them Mexicans was going to attack they would have done it already. Then what was the skeleton man up to? I didn't know. I kept trying to make sense of it but I couldn't make sense of anything, and eventually, no matter how hard I fought it, my eyes shut.
Chapter 13
I jumped up in the morning with a vision of that skull-faced Mexican fresh in my head. Gitty was still sleeping, though Roy weren't near the fireplace no more. I got up, hurrying over to the window. The skeleton man weren't out there, the street completely empty save for all the trash and dead leaves blowing around.
I looked around, spotting Roy sleeping on the floor near the kitchen, relieved that everyone was safe. Then I thought the worst, wondering if Roy was really asleep or if something bad had happened to him while I slept. I crept over to where he was laying, at last seeing him breathing just as I was thinking he might be dead.
Oh, but Gitty! I quickly went back to her but she was warm and breathing peacefully too, and I sat down with a deep sigh and chuckled.
"Elgin, you're crazy," I told myself. Then I remembered what Pete had once told me, about how talking to oneself was a sign of being mentally de-ranged. Then I laughed again at thinking myself crazy just for saying I was crazy out loud, which were some sort of double something or the other, though I couldn't remember the fancy word for it.
I was starving, or real hungry at least. Starving would have meant I was close to death. Some food in my belly would have done me good though. It was hard to think straight without breakfast. I thought about waking Roy up but didn't want to disturb him, seeing how little sleep he seemed to get. I did wake Gitty though, kissing her good morning and watching her pretty eyes flutter open, then saw her sweet sleepy morning smile which did much to help lift my spirits.
Outside it was just the two of us. I knew better than to tell Gitty about the skeleton man, not wanting her to be scared. It was a strange thing anyway and half of me was already thinking I'd dreamed it, and even if he'd been real he was gone now and weren't no one around anymore.
There was a shot in the distance and we both shook. It sounded from far off, back in the direction we'd come from, maybe as far back as where them people lived behind the iron gate, though it seemed we'd come too far from there to be hearing gunfire if it were them. Roy must have heard it too, because it were hardly a minute later that he came out to investigate, his pale, worn out face telling how little sleep he'd had.
We left that place behind, not hearing no more gunshots and left to guess what they'd meant. Thankfully, Roy never thought to say anything about the crazy skeleton man either and so Gitty never found out. Wherever he was, I could only guess. I figured he'd probably gone back for his friends, though by the time they came back we'd be long gone.
The hunting was good. There were plenty of critters around and we shot some squirrels, though my rumbling stomach had to wait a couple hours until we stopped to cook them up. They were good eating, and sure beat rats or other such vermin, which I'd gotten sick on more than once before.
"Tastes like chicken," Gitty said. She'd never had one before, which was surprising seeing as I'd eaten squirrel as many times as I'd eaten rattlesnake or pigeons or any other such creatures that a lot of people would have turned their nose up at unless they was really starved.
"You know what else tastes like that?" I said.
"No, what?"
"A lot of things, though the creepiest thing I ever done heard was from a man who once ate the arm of his dead buddy. They got trapped in this cave-in, see, and—"
"Oh, Elgin! That's disgusting! Why would you even talk about that?"
I laughed because it was kind of funny to me, just imagining some man so desperate that he were chomping on his buddy's arm like it were a chicken leg, though I knew Gitty didn't appreciate it.
"I'm just saying, Gitty."
"Well, I'm trying to eat!"
I chuckled and let it go, wanting to tell her more about what that fella had said to me, but as a gentleman I knew it would be goin
g too far. She glared at me like she was a little angry as she worked her jaws on that crispy squirrel kind of slow, like she were still thinking about that arm but trying not to, though no doubt such a an-bom— an an-bom-a-ble thing is hard to forget once you've heard it.
Served me right to get a good scare as I was finding humor in it, or maybe once again by talking about creepy things I'd conjured up something bad. Standing a little distance away was a lone figure, though it didn't take more than a moment to realize who it was, that skeleton face staring at us from across the field. Roy saw him too, letting the smoke out between his teeth as he lifted his head. Gitty was the last, jumping up and nearly tripping over herself with fright.
"It's him!" she cried.
I stood up, my hand on my pistol as I squinted against the sun. If there was more in hiding I couldn't see them, just that one man standing alone across the field just like he'd been standing across the street the night before.
"Stay here," Roy said.
"Roy, wait a second!"
He ignored me, walking right toward him though that strange skeleton man never moved, not an inch, the two just calmly eyeballing each other as Roy approached. He weren't far from him at all when he stopped, though he still hadn't drawn his gun. Then he did, pulling it out of his holster and holding it by his side, me and Gitty speechless, wondering what might happen with every moment that passed, her fingers digging into my arm.
Roy stood there, neither of the two moving, the whole thing going on for too long. I kept waiting for the skeleton man to suddenly charge and for Roy to shoot him, though it never happened. At last it was over, and I couldn't believe my eyes as Roy turned around and started walking back, his back wide open to the skeleton man who just stood there instead of taking his chance. When finally that long walk was over, all we could do was stand there with our mouths hanging open, though Roy just sat back down.
"Roy!" I said.
Across the field, that crazy skeleton still hadn't budged.
"Well, damn, you gonna tell us what happened or what?"
"Nothing happened."
"Nothing?"
"I gave him a chance. He didn't want it, or didn't take it."
"Where's his friends at?" Gitty said, still all jittery as she looked around. "What is this Roy? Is it some kind of trap?"
"It's just him, I think. If his friends were here they'd be all over us by now."
"You think he's playing with you?" I asked. "Like this is some kind of test or something?"
Roy just shrugged, not knowing the answer any more than we did. Gitty was still staring at the skeleton man who watched us from across the field, shuddering as she turned away.
"Just shoot him then! Why don't one of you boys just shoot?"
"Because it don't work like that," I said. "You can't just shoot a defenseless man with no good reason, even if he done try to kill us."
"No good reason?"
"Well, maybe we got reason but that's still just how it is. Ain't no honorable man going to just shoot a man who comes to him all peaceable and without arms. Ain't that right, Roy?"
"Something like that. Besides, if his friends are around, shooting him is just going to piss them off. Let's just pack up and get out of here."
In no time we was moving on, that skull-faced son of a bitch watching us go. For a while it seemed like he weren't around anymore. Then a short time later I spotted him again, trailing us from far behind.
"God damn it! There he is again!"
We stopped and waited, Gitty suddenly all scared. It went like that all afternoon, him disappearing only for us to finally spot him following again, though he never got too close. Roy said not to pay it no mind and to keep moving, and what else was there to do unless we wanted to chance shooting him, though I were still convinced that's what his friends was waiting for, like they was playing some kind of game.
We headed south, then west, then south again, Roy believing it was the shortest way to the coast, though how long it might take he wasn't sure. Sometime that afternoon we heard more gunshots from far off, though in those cluttered, unending ruins it was hard to tell from which direction they'd come, the old overgrown streets otherwise so ghostly and quiet. There was many houses and old buildings, rows upon rows, all dilapidated and empty, which were a fancy way of saying they was run down, though how many people might still be hiding in them and watching us pass we didn't know.
After hearing those gunshots things were tense again, always wondering who or what we might run into on the next street. Thankfully we didn't catch any more sight of the skeleton man. Hopefully we had lost him, which made sleeping much easier that night knowing there weren't some sinister pair of eyes watching us from the dark, though Gitty, still nervous as she were, snuggled up tight as we slept.
Chapter 14
We continued through the quiet streets the next morning, the sun on our backs, always looking over our shoulders for that skull-faced man who'd been trailing us the day before, though we never spotted him.
"I think he's gone," Gitty said. "Thank God. I don't ever want to see that evil face again."
"Roy, how much farther you think we have to go?" I said.
"I don't know. A couple days maybe."
"I just can't wait to leave this horrible place behind," Gitty said. "I ain't ever seen a place so sad. All these houses, so empty and dead looking. Just think about it, how many people must have been living here so happy before all that fighting and killing went down. How many children would we be seeing running around playing hopscotch and throwing ball, little doggies barking in the front yard, daddy pulling up the driveway, mama busy in the kitchen cooking supper. Oh, Elgin, it's just so depressing to think about! All those lives and now there ain't nothing here at all."
I tried to tell her that it weren't nothing that could be helped, that maybe all those people was gone but there was still the future for the ones still living, like that crap I'd sometimes heard from people who was still living in denial about how bad things really were because they ain't have no backbone to face the truth head-on, the truth that the world were a pile of shit and that it were man's fault for making it that way. But whatever. Weren't no getting through to people who had their heads buried in the sand.
We turned a few more streets before we found it, Roy slowing as he was the first to see the body lying in the middle of the street. It was a man. Mexican, he looked like, a big husky fella way bigger than either me or Roy, or had been at least, because now he weren't nothing but a corpse. He couldn't have been dead for too long though. His smell weren't bad enough for that, though the birds hadn't wasted no time getting to him, one of his eyeballs missing on account of them probably having plucked it out. His lips were half gone too, so that he were just staring up at the sky with his one remaining eye and a grisly smile he couldn't help but have.
Gitty let out a little yelp upon seeing that face, quickly turning away.
"He ain't been dead long," I said. "Maybe that was the shooting we heard yesterday. I ain't seeing any holes in him though."
"Probably got it in the back."
Roy rubbed the tip of his boot in the dried up puddle under the body and I bent down to take a closer look, impressed how smart he was that he could figure something like that out without hardly trying. We found more farther up the street: two dead, shirtless Mexicans with shaved heads, one wearing a black scarf that hid half his face. They had lots of tattoos on them too, stuff like skulls and guns and pretty ladies, one of them with the words "SAN FERNANDO" in big fancy letters across his chest, which I guess had been his name.
"Looks like they lost," I said.
"Yeah. Lots of spent casings around though. 9 millimeter, looks like. Must have been a pretty intense firefight."
I hadn't even noticed them, them little brass casings littering the ground. Roy was a real good detective, no doubt.
"You think these are some of them gangers we was told about?"
"Looks like it to me."
"Well at least there don't seem to be anyone around no more."
"That's because you're not looking good enough, you dumb shit!"
The voice had come out of nowhere. We whipped around, grabbing at our guns.
"Touch those guns and I'm gonna put a bullet right in your head!"
It was a different voice, this one from behind.
"I didn't say to turn around, you Mexican fuck. Move one more inch and you're dead. Now your pistols. Drop 'em!"
I did what he said without chancing a look back, carefully easing my pistol out of my belt and tossing it aside. Gitty, seeing my example, did the same, her rifle clattering on the pavement.
"That's real good," he said, still only a voice from behind. "Now you too, asshole."
Roy ain't do nothing at first, his stony expression fixed straight ahead. Then, slowly, his hand moved down to his gun.
"Hurry up! You don't drop that gun in two seconds and you're dead!"
The voice was closer than before, like he was coming up on us—behind and to the right. Roy must have figured it too, because fast as lighting he spun around and—BAM! BAM!—there were two loud shots from his pistol, a third shot, not from Roy, immediately following.
It all happened so fast: Roy spinning, shooting, someone shooting back, and then he was laying on the ground. Without thinking, I dove for my gun, pulling back my hand as a bullet burst on the pavement right next it.
"Not quick enough, you piece of shit!"
He came out of the bushes, his pistol pointing at me, a scruffy, wiry fella with crazy eyes.
"You," he said to Gitty, "back away from that rifle or I'll put holes in the both of you!"
She did what he said, the man bobbing his head as he displayed them rotten teeth of his, grinning ear to ear.
"Yeah, that's a good girl. Now you. Kick that pistol over here, now."
I gave it a little kick, my gun sliding across the pavement, the man cautiously crouching down as he kept his crazy eyes on us and licked his lips, tucking my gun in his belt before going for Gitty's. Roy started moving, holding onto his shoulder, his fingers all covered with blood. He rolled over onto his belly, slowly crawling to where he saw his gun laying on the ground. The other man reached it first, picking it up and giving it a close look, his pistol still pointed at me and Gitty.
