The Carrion Birds

by Urban Waite

  “The sheriff,” Dario said. “She came in last night looking for you, she was looking all over the place, asking if we’d seen you.” Dario watched the man’s eyes drop once, then again, the hoods working and the lashes bobbing on his face with the alcohol. “Friend,” Dario said, addressing the man. “What were you saying you were in the business of?”

  The man wobbled off the stool with one hand held out on the bar for balance. Dario just watching, not getting up, but watching, only his coffee cup on the bar before him.

  “I think I’ve had too much.”

  “Your hat,” Dario said, looking at the worn threads of felt there on the bar, the familiar look of the thing he was sure he recognized now.

  “It’s not mine,” he finally said, the focus in the man’s eyes drifting. “Never was.”

  “Yes,” Dario said. “Perhaps it isn’t.” Dario picked the hat up off the bar and examined it under the overhead light. “Maybe a friend of mine left it here.”

  Both of them standing now beside the bar, the hat in Dario’s hands as the man searched the room with his eyes, panic now apparent on his face. The words that eventually surfaced a train wreck of bent metal. “It’s time . . .”

  “It’s time you were going,” Dario finished.

  Behind, there was the hard squeal of a chair. Lalo stood from the table, looking to Dario for direction.

  “Perhaps we can help you out with a ride?” Dario asked.

  “No,” the man said, holding out a cautious hand, speaking to both men now. “I’ll be fine.”

  He stumbled toward the door without turning to look behind him. Dario watched him go, and when the bar door closed, they were already moving to the back, where their own cars sat.

  When the door shattered inward with the big booming sound of a shotgun fired at close range, Ray was already moving down the stairs. A big Mexican came through what was left of the door frame with a Mossberg pump raised on his shoulder in a sweep of the room. The door lay turned over on the floor, both hinges blown out of the jamb, a fine dust of plaster from the walls in the air, and splintered pieces of wood all across the floor. The Mexican turned at the sight of Ray and raised the shotgun toward the stairs. Ray put one bullet in the man’s chest from about twenty feet out, then, still moving down the stairs, before the man had even fallen, Ray put another bullet in his head.

  A strange quiet filled the room for a half second. The big Mexican lay there on the floor, his arms played back in a pose suggesting he had tried to catch the bullet with his hands. Ray carried the Ruger, holding it on the door and the night beyond. His pants pulled roughly up on his hips. Barefoot, he took the stairs two at a time, switching the Ruger to his off hand in order to scoop the Mexican’s shotgun up. Then almost in the same moment flattening his body to the floor as the guns opened up on him from outside the house.

  For a minute there was nothing but gunfire. The sound of it so close it seemed to inhabit the room. Glass broke from the windows and fell crackling to the floor, plaster walls took bullets and broke apart, exposing the fine ribbings of wood beneath. The overhead light fixture rocked back and forth on its wiring, spewing a haze of ceiling dust before crashing to the floor. The sound of it all, like the rough fill of gravel down a metal sink. The mildewed, time-worn smell of plaster dust everywhere in the air.

  Across the room, Ray saw Sanchez’s legs splayed out flat on the kitchen floor, his back hidden behind the small wooden island. Everything in the kitchen, cabinets, empty beer cans, tiling, bit up and dancing as the bullets went past and either shattered it or thudded into the plaster and framing behind.

  They were being fired on by what sounded like submachine guns, the bullets hitting rapidly and in distinguishable lines across the walls, as if the gunmen meant to sweep through the house one room at a time. Hazed in dust, the downstairs rooms hung suspended in a plaster fog when the firing stopped.

  Ray pulled himself across the floor toward the kitchen, parting glass with his forearms, the Ruger tucked down in his back pocket and the shotgun held in his right hand, dragging himself forward through the chaos. No sound now except the rain.

  “Are you hurt?” Ray asked, pushing himself up next to Sanchez, both men now hidden behind the small kitchen island that separated them from the living room. The smell of alcohol on Sanchez’s skin like a generous pouring of cologne.

  “No,” he said. The hunting rifle in his hands, a collection of unused bullets on his lap. “You?”

  “No.” A sheen of sweat appeared all along Sanchez’s skin, the scent of him in that room, sour as moonshine. And Ray watching him, trying to decide if the boy was sober enough for any of this. The cold seep of reality now seen working away at his face. It didn’t matter, it couldn’t, ready or not they were going to have to do something.

  Ray pulled the shotgun around and shucked the bullets. There were three more casings in the pump. He put them, one at a time, back into the body of the gun and leaned against the island next to Sanchez.

  The two of them sat there breathing in the thick air. Adrenaline going. No lights on and Ray—with his back pressed uncomfortably into one of the island cabinets—looked onto the desert behind the house through what remained of the shattered kitchen door.

  Car high beams came on brilliant white in front of the house and created a mirror from what remained of the glass in the windows and door. The two of them reflected in the panes, covered in plaster, white as painted aboriginals.

  “We’ve got to go,” Ray said. He put his head up over the island and looked into the living room. Beams of light entering through every hole in the wall, looking somehow like stars in the darkness, like galaxies suspended milky through the room.

  “The dope,” Sanchez said.

  Ray swore. “It’s hidden,” Ray said. “Buried twenty paces from the back stairs.” He looked around behind again at the galaxy of holes in the front wall, and then he looked toward the back door and the night out there, knowing they’d never find the dope in the darkness.

  “We can take them,” Sanchez said, repeating it several times until Ray responded.

  “No,” Ray said, realizing for the first time that he didn’t have his jacket or even his shoes. “We can’t.”

  Sanchez moved to get up. “No,” Ray said again, pulling him down. He could feel Sanchez panting beside him. His sweatshirt still gripped in Ray’s hand. “I’m sorry about what I said earlier. About doubting you, but now isn’t the time.”

  Ray swiveled out to see what he could make of the situation, knowing that even if they escaped it was going to be rough going. “Who’s out there?” Ray asked, speaking to Sanchez, the light everywhere and the room feeling infinitely smaller.

  “The cartel,” Sanchez said, his voice cracking at the edges.

  “Dario?”

  Sanchez told him yes, he was clutching the rifle to his chest, the collection of bullets scattered across his lap. “I wasn’t sure earlier, but I’m sure of it now and for what it matters, I’m sorry.”

  Ray nodded, acknowledging the fear he heard in Sanchez, the insecurity in the boy’s voice. He turned and spoke to Sanchez. “Run out the back,” Ray said. “Go straight on for thirty steps, then lie flat, I’ll find you.”

  Ray kept his eyes focused on the living room, on the light coming in through the little holes, through the window, and through the empty doorway. He brought up the Ruger and braced it along the island, watching for movement. “Now,” he said. “You have to go now.” Ray turned and looked at Sanchez, trying to make him understand.

  “Fuck,” Sanchez said. “We can take them.” But they were empty words. Ray knew Sanchez would go, that whatever liquid courage he’d filled himself up on had faded and that he was scared now, as he should have been.

  Ray heard the wet slopping sound of the rainstorm outside. Sanchez eased the door open, and somehow, even with much of the door gone, the storm
seemed louder than it had before. The heavy drip of water falling off the eaves and collecting in streams along the ground. Sanchez paused to look back at Ray.

  “Go,” Ray said. He watched Sanchez for a second longer, crouched there at the kitchen door with the hunting rifle in his hand. Giving Ray one last look before he slipped through the door and the shadow of rain swallowed him up whole.

  Ray focused his attention on the front of the house. He waited, counting the seconds. Ten seconds passed like ten minutes. A shadow moved across the holes, blotting the light from the room and outlining the figure of a man bent double at the waist. Ray traced the figure of the man as he moved along the porch toward the empty doorway. The figure stopped just outside, and Ray fired three shots into the living room wall, raking the gun upward along the door frame. The man fell out across the opening of the door and lay still on the porch. The guns opened up immediately.

  He had known he would get one man coming through the door, but they wouldn’t try it again. They knew someone was still alive. Someone with a gun, and they’d try for the back next, or come in through one of the side windows. They would spread out or stick together, but they wouldn’t go back to trying the front door again till they knew whoever had fired those shots was dead.

  The only thing Ray heard as he went out the back door was the whisper of bullets parting air, singing through molecules as they cut the fabric of the night. He felt the rain cold on his skin. He felt it in his hair and on his face. There was no stopping it. No adjusting. No time. He counted out the steps as he took them, feeling bullets whizzing by in the night air.

  Dario waited for the gunfire to stop. Lalo, the big Oaxacan, was dead. One of the new men, too, possibly Hector. No idea really, and no clue where the two brothers had gotten to. Dario just sitting there in the rain, his back to Burnham’s truck, feeling the water pelt down everywhere.

  Under his suit he wore a bulletproof vest he’d taken from his office. In his hand a Walther MPK he’d been given, the same model he’d seen the military using in the streets around Juarez, and he kept checking the slide like he didn’t believe it would ever work. Holding this type of gun was not something he was used to anymore and he kept checking the band of his pants where he kept his .45, watching the sides of the house, hoping for any kind of movement.

  He’d had big hopes for his time in Coronado. Thought that by being up out of Juarez and away from all the troubles down there he’d be infinitely safer. That he could avoid the reputation he’d made for himself and that he’d hoped hadn’t followed him north.

  He bent over into the mud and crawled to the edge of the truck. His suit clumped with the wet earth. If he saw someone he would stand his ground, he would try to take them apart piece by piece, shooting the fingers from hands if that’s what it came to. Breaking whoever was inside apart, bullet by bullet. He waited. Staring out at the house. His eyes just beneath the front fender looking up to where the light of their high beams flooded the rain-washed siding.

  Nothing moved. The feel of the cold desert mud under his palms, slipping up through his fingers. Sand and grit, little pieces of pebble, and that deep smell of earth that always came with desert rainstorms.

  He eased back around and pushed himself up on the tire, keeping his head hidden behind the body of the truck. Wet all the way through. His linen suit caked in mud. He couldn’t see a thing around him. The night out there and the sound of the rain coming at him like a wave cresting in a black ocean. He didn’t know where any of his men were and he was tempted to just run straight on toward the house with the Walther switched on full automatic.

  Ray lay there in the mud next to Sanchez. Both watching the back door of the house. Quiet all around, broken only by the constant fall of the rain. Neither daring to say anything.

  The house—caught up in the high beams—emanated an aura of light from every side like some celestial house of worship. His face so close into the earth that Ray could smell the turned dirt leavings of worms. All around him he knew the insects of the desert were trying for escape, tarantulas and scorpions flooded up from their burrows and now forced to crawl the surface like the rest of them.

  He didn’t have a plan, but he knew they had to get out of there. Killing all the men just wasn’t a possibility. He could see getting one of them, but the moment he fired, the sound of the gunshot would give them away, and in the open, the remaining men would get them easily.

  He forced Sanchez to a low crouch, brought him up by his elbow, the two of them hunched over in the rain, caked in mud and a fine layer of desert sand, watching the house.

  “Now what?” Sanchez said.

  “We run.”

  “You could take them,” Sanchez said. His voice sounding stronger than it had in the house. Rain sobering him, sinking cold into his skin, and bringing him back from whatever place he’d disappeared to.

  “I don’t think so,” Ray said.

  “Then what?”

  “We need a car. If we went on foot, we wouldn’t get far enough away.”

  “We could run for the town.”

  “We’d be halfway there when the light comes over the mountains. Anyone with a pair of binoculars could pick us off the plain.”

  Sanchez didn’t say anything. He seemed to be weighing the options, only there weren’t any, and he stood there with rain dripping from his nose and chin, holding the rifle in his hands.

  “Take this,” Ray said, giving the shotgun to Sanchez. “It’ll spray enough of a space that even if you miss it will hit something.” Ray took the rifle and strapped it over his shoulder. He still held the Ruger in his other hand.

  From the window he’d watched the two cars drive silently up toward the house. He knew who these men were. Their faces clear, reflecting the red tinge of Sanchez’s brake lights for only a moment. Burnham’s pickup and the Bronco parked in front of the house, beneath where he stood looking out of the upstairs window. The Bronco was closer. If they could get around the house without being seen they’d have a chance.

  Ray asked Sanchez for the keys and as soon as he had them, they went circling low and wide around the house, straight out from the back about fifty yards, then circling around to the west. The rain fell harder, the earth saturated, their skin wrinkled and sopping with water, their clothes soaked through. High beams from the cars still focused up onto the house. No sound except for the continuing rain.

  They circled wide through the desert, the front of the house now visible. The man Ray had shot through the wall lay out on the porch, dead. The light from the high beams the only thing telling him the cars existed at all.

  One of the men had positioned himself on the driver’s side of the Bronco with his gun braced over the hood, covering the house. A veneer of light—reflected off the white clapboards—fell like a shroud over the puddles in the earth and the metal of the Bronco.

  Sanchez and Ray lay flat on the ground, just outside the reflected light, watching the car. Goose bumps on their skin, the rain falling, and shivers moving through their bodies in electric waves. “It’s going to be fast,” Ray said. He talked with the Ruger held forward on the man in front of them, ready at any time for the man to turn.

  “I don’t see anyone else,” Sanchez said.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Ray said. “When I get to him you just open up with the shotgun. If we can’t see them in this, they can’t see us.”

  “I won’t even know what direction to shoot.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Ray said. “Just try and aim away from me.”

  “Okay,” Sanchez said.

  “You ready?”

  “Yes.”

  Ray pushed himself up off the ground and ran as fast as he could through the rain, hearing only the slap of his bare feet as they hit the puddles. The man hiding behind the Bronco turned and for a moment all Ray could see was the black outline of his body, backlit by the tall face o
f the house. He was yelling something, his mouth open, the beginnings of a syllable on his lips when Ray shot him twice in quick succession. His body pushed back against the truck with the force of the bullets. He bounced off the front fender, then fell face-first onto the ground and lay still.

  “Where is everyone?” Sanchez yelled over the noise of the rain.

  “Shoot,” Ray yelled, already pulling the Bronco door open.

  Ray threw the rifle in ahead of him and then pulled himself inside, fumbling out the keys as he went. Twisting the key in the ignition, the motor rumbled on just as Sanchez opened up with the shotgun.

  For a moment the interior of the Bronco was awash in explosive noise and light. Ray reached over and pushed the passenger door open. Sanchez rounded the hood, blasting nothing and everything all at the same time. Sanchez ducked his head and as soon as he was halfway through the open door, Ray gunned the engine and they went spinning through the mud toward the road.

  “I think I got someone,” Sanchez yelled, his eyes chasing whatever point in the night he thought he’d hit.

  From the surrounding desert, muzzle flashes opened up on them in pockets of light. Ray heard the bullets skitter across the metal, thud into the body of the truck, and go crashing through windows, the night pouring in after them. His foot already pressed hard against the gas pedal, the Bronco went scraping past one of the cars at the base of the drive, fishtailing in the mud, then finding purchase and pulling forward up the road.

  Dario lay in the mud. The cold seep of it up into his clothes from the ground beneath. The Walther still in his hands. The front fender speckled with buck from the shotgun. He didn’t know how he was alive, how he had managed to avoid getting shot. The man holding the shotgun, their eyes meeting—the same man from the bar, the same they’d followed to the house—and then the shotgun going off, Dario half turned with his finger on the trigger. Somehow, though, Dario was alive. Lying in the mud, feeling the sore intake of air into his lungs.

  Running a hand along his chest, he felt where the balls of shot had struck the metal plate beneath. With one hand he undid the Velcro straps from his shoulders and pulled the vest off. Two distinct impacts in the chest plate, one beneath the heart, the other at his navel.