The Ten-Ounce Siesta

by Norman Partridge

“No. I killed the last one.”

  “No, you didn’t,” Angel insisted. “You killed a Komodo dragon. That doesn’t count. I killed the redhead.”

  They looked at the guy. He was all thawed out under that plastic-wrap shirt, sweating like he’d just stepped out of a microwave.

  Angel pointed her gun at the guy’s head. Jack aimed for the heart.

  The guy nearly sprang out of his chair. “They live out in the fucking desert, okay? I’ve never been there, okay?”

  “Never?” Jack cocked his Colt Python. “You sure about that?”

  “Okay!” The guy sputtered. “Okay! I took Eden’s boyfriend some money one time. His name is Harold Ticks. I met him at this highway off-ramp. I got there early. He drove down this dirt road. He said that Eden and her sisters lived on some kind of ranch or something about forty miles out. Maybe fifty. But he didn’t invite me for a fucking visit . . . Okay? I’ll draw you a fucking map if you want.”

  Jack turned to Angel. “What do you think, partner?”

  She smiled. “A map would be good.”

  ***

  The sun was down, and the woman was gone.

  And Tony Katt was conscious again. The doped-up feeling was almost gone. He had sweated it out or bled it out.

  But that was dangerous, because Tony was beginning to feel the pain.

  He knew he couldn’t take it once it hit him full force. He pulled at his bonds. Barbed wire tore his skin and he grunted but made himself pull again. Yucca leaves scratched his flesh and broke loose, skittering down the tree trunk. The great yucca groaned . . . and pain seared Tony’s flesh . . . pain he could feel . . .

  He eased off, sweating hard now, bleeding from fresh wounds. He sucked a deep breath through his mouth.

  That was when he saw it. The canteen. His captor had left it by the tumbledown shack.

  Maybe it was empty. Probably it was. But if it wasn’t. And if he could get to it . . . oh, how he wanted a drink right now.

  Tony closed his eyes. He could do this. He was the heavyweight champion of the world. Despite the broken nose, despite the tortures he had suffered while lashed to the tree, he was strong. He’d been training for six weeks. Running six or seven miles a day in the desert sun. Sparring with guys who could take your head off with a single punch. Pounding the bags, doing drills for speed and endurance . . .

  During that time, he thought he was training for a fight. Now he knew that he had been training for something else.

  This was the main event. In this corner: Tony Katt. And across the ring, in the opposite comer: a fucking yucca tree.

  And to the winner? Why, a canteen that might very well be empty.

  Tony closed his eyes. In just a minute, he’d hear the bell, and he’d come out for round one.

  But he didn’t hear a bell. He heard something else.

  Some kind of screech.

  Tony opened his eyes.

  Above him, circling in the red sky, screeching . . .

  . . . circling lower . . . and lower still . . .

  Vultures.

  BY THE TIME JACK AND ANGEL REACHED THE HIGHWAY OFF-RAMP, THE SKY WAS ELECTRIC with colors usually only seen in tropical fish tanks.

  Jack braked as the Celica reached the spot where pavement gave way to dirt. The windshield was dotted with dead insects, but the sunset was something to see. It painted the hood of the Celica in mirrored tones. The rust spots shone the way they sometimes did under the neon lights of Vegas, like deep pools of Captain Morgan’s spiced rum.

  “Beautiful,” Jack said.

  “Not now it isn’t,” Angel said. “But it will be later.”

  “Later it will be gone.”

  Jack punched the trip meter odometer and it registered at zero. The dirt road angled off in a straight line, spearing the great white nowhere called the Mojave Desert. The guy in the plastic-wrap shirt had said that the Lynch sisters lived forty or fifty miles out. Jack wanted to know when he was getting close to the place. He didn’t want the gang to know that he was coming. He didn’t want to stumble in with headlights blazing. If the moon cooperated, he might even drive the last five or ten miles without lights.

  Jack shifted into first gear and started out. The first five miles were pretty smooth. Jack accelerated and cruised along in fourth gear, the tac running just a little bit lower than he would have liked.

  Then the potholes started.

  They weren’t bad at first—Jack held steady in third gear—but as sunset gave way to night the potholes became harder to see. Eleven miles from the highway. Jack took one hard. The front left shock screamed bloody murder, and Angel said, “Slow down, Jack. We’ll get there.”

  “Okay,” Jack said. And then it was the low end of third or the high end of second, dodging potholes as they came.

  Twenty miles of that and he had a stiff neck from gripping the wheel while the potholes bounced him around. The Celica sure didn’t have four-wheel drive. Not even close. Jack began to feel pretty stupid for bringing it.

  “Maybe we should have brought your car, Angel.”

  “Uh-uh. I’ve got a rental. Mazda Miata. It’s built low to the ground—a real highway hugger. We wouldn’t have made it this far.”

  Five more miles and Jack abandoned third gear altogether. He remembered the Jeep Cherokee parked outside the porno guy’s studio. He wished he’d stolen the damn thing.

  A couple more potholes jarred him good and he stopped wishing. Instead, he berated himself for not stealing the Jeep.

  Jack didn’t mention the Jeep to Angel, though. He didn’t want to give her the chance to agree that he’d made a mistake.

  Jack rolled his neck and strangled the steering wheel. The engine whined in high second gear. No use hitting third, though. The potholes wouldn’t let him hold it, and he was tired of shifting back and forth.

  Five more miles. Headlights washed the white road. Jack couldn’t turn them off. Darkness had fallen, but the moon wasn’t up yet. And he had to see those potholes.

  Two more miles and Angel offered to drive.

  “No,” Jack said. “It can’t be much further.”

  He glanced at the trip meter. They’d traveled thirty-eight miles since leaving the highway. Rancho Lynch couldn’t be much further. They had to be—

  “Jack!”

  WHAM! The undercarriage of the Toyota smacked something hard and the steering wheel seemed to jump in Jack’s hands.

  “What was that?” he asked.

  “A rock. I think so anyway. A big rock right in the middle of the road. I don’t know how you missed it.”

  “That’s the problem. I didn’t.”

  But the car seemed okay. Jack kept his hands on the wheel and held tight to second gear.

  He hadn’t clicked another tenth of a mile when the engine started to knock badly.

  Then the Celica died.

  “Shit,” Jack said. “Shit.”

  He got out, lay down on the road, and peered under the front end.

  The Celica wasn’t going anywhere.

  Angel stepped out of the car. “What’s the deal?”

  “That rock took out the oil pan. We’re screwed.”

  “No we’re not. We can walk. How much further can it be?”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah. Jesus, Jack. I’m not walking thirty-plus miles back to the highway. If we go to the Lynch place, at least we’ll have a chance of swiping a car or something.”

  Jack thought about that. They’d notched thirty-eight miles since leaving the highway. The porno producer had said that Eden’s place was forty or fifty miles off the main road.

  They had to be close.

  Two miles if they were lucky. Twelve if they weren’t.

  Jack grabbed his pistol and jammed extra ammunition into his pockets. Angel did the same.

  “Let’s get started,” Jack said.

  ***

  Eden lay in her bed, wearing nothing but a red satin sheet. Candles made from the rendered fat of a black ram gutter
ed low on her dresser, flickers of blue flame reflected in the big mirror above. Three incense sticks stood waiting in a human skull, ready to fill Eden’s bedroom with the intermingled scents of vanilla, sandalwood, and jasmine at the touch of a demon’s hot claw.

  For so many years she had waited to be strong. Everyone told her that she wasn’t. Mama, Daddy, Tura and Lorelei . . . even Harold. Time and time again she was forced to confront her weaknesses, each time accepting lies from the lips of those who claimed to love her. She was weak. She was no child of Satan. She was not even a child of her own mother, who disowned her with the last words she spoke on this earth.

  Mama’s words couldn’t hurt her now. Eden was too strong for that. But the words had cut her when Mama spoke them in the chapel, just as so many other slights and reprimands had cut her over the years.

  Eden was a good girl. She accepted every slight. Every reprimand. Every punishment and reproach. Until the very last one that spilled from her mother’s lips.

  If I had it to do over again I’d rip you from my belly with a coat hanger. That’s what I’d do. By Satan, I would.

  Those words broke Eden. In their wake, she was weak. Too weak to do anything. Too weak to fight the sisters who abused her. Harold saw that when he undid the handcuffs Tura and Lorelei used to chain Eden to her bed.

  And then Eden lost Harold too, breaking down in front of him, so that his only recourse was to flee into the night.

  That was the greatest blow of all. The pit of weakness called to her, and she plunged into it. She hit bottom. And it was only then that she heard His voice. Only then, for the first time in her life, that she truly took Satan’s hand.

  For it was Satan’s hand who guided her own.

  Satan fitted Eden’s hand with a pistol, and she shot her mother in the heart, and she was strong. Satan slipped a straight razor into her waiting palm, and she slit her father’s throat, and she was stronger still. With a rusty knife from Satan’s pit she stabbed her lover in the back and felt his strength quiver on the blade as she spilled his blood. And with a dead man’s pistol she killed her sister—yes, even this she did—and strength fairly pulsed in her veins.

  And soon she would crucify the heavyweight champion of the world to the glory of Satan. Surely the dark one could not receive a greater gift than this. Eden had stolen this prize for Him. Alone, she had captured the strongest of all men. And she would slay him and revel in Satan’s glory, but she would not do these things alone.

  Satan would send her a demon, for no man could satisfy her now. No mere mortal could hold sway with a woman of her strength.

  Of course, the mere mortals in Las Vegas did not recognize the true nature of Eden’s plan. The fools would pay her ten million dollars for Tony Katt’s safe return, and she would pocket the ransom money and sacrifice her captive.

  Eden would sacrifice Jack Baddalach, as well. For she would demand that he alone deliver the ransom.

  She had not forgotten the Harold Ticks Shuffle. Harold might be gone, but she would keep something of him, even if it were only his treachery.

  And when she had that ten million dollars and Jack Baddalach was dead, she would burn his bones and sow his grave with salt. And her demon lover would dine on Tony Katt’s flesh and grow strong, and from Katt’s naked bones Eden would fashion a gate to the great pit of hell which yawned in a Mojave Desert chapel. And all who came to worship at the place called Hell’s Half Acre would see this gate. And all who came would know of Eden’s strength . . .

  Hot as hell’s promise, the night air drifted through the open pillbox window. The moon hung high in the sky, a ball of fierce blue light shining upon the earth, fierce blue light that licked Eden’s body like the flickering flames of black ram candles.

  Upon the desert sands, she heard a heavy tread.

  A shadow passed before the moon.

  Eden sat up, fearing an intruder. She almost reached for Harold’s .357 Magnum, but the hot breeze blowing through the pillbox window stilled her hand, for carried upon it was the scent of hell.

  The smell of balms known to Satan’s children filled Eden’s lungs. Oil of dog and attar of black roses. Eau de Sodom and essence of iniquity.

  Eden breathed deeply and tossed back the red silk sheet.

  Down the hall, the front door swung open.

  Naked, she waited. Her chest rising and falling as anticipation pounded in her blood, the scent of demonflesh searing her lungs.

  A heavy tread slapped the tiled hallway floor. Eden smiled and stared into the darkness.

  The hallway stretched before her, a study in gray and black slivers of light. Then a huge silhouette appeared, coming closer, closer . . .

  “Here, my lord,” Eden said. “I await—”

  He came to her, his great arms outstretched.

  “Yes, my lord,” she said. “I have waited so very—”

  ***

  Tony Katt snapped the crazy bitch’s neck.

  “Who’s stronger now?” he whispered. “Huh, bitch? Who’s stronger—”

  Oh, God. That was it. Tony dropped onto the bed. He had burned himself down to cinders. He didn’t have an ounce of strength left.

  Weird. Tony felt every damn thing. Every ache, every pain. Every cut, every blister, every open wound. That fucking tree had rubbed him raw. But he felt the satin sheets, too. Cool on his tortured flesh, slicked tight against his back by ribbons of blood.

  It fucking hurt. Sure it hurt. But pain was the only thing that had kept him alive.

  The buzzards had pushed him over the edge. Oh, he’d known pain before they came. He remembered that.

  Hell, he would never forget it.

  ***

  The dull Percodan edge fading . . . fresh waves of pain sharpening his senses . . . from the tiniest discomforts on up to nuclear shockwaves of misery . . . from chapped lips and dry mouth through blistered skin right on up to barbed-wire punctures and flayed flesh, Tony felt it all . . . and just when he thought he couldn’t stand one more sliver of agony the vultures swooped down, pecking his head with stony beaks . . . sharp knifing nips on his busted nose until it was almost like he could breathe through the damn thing . . . nip nip nip . . . and the taste of blood wetting his lips as the vultures tore through the leather mask and ripped at his cheek, their talons digging into the flayed flesh of his shoulders as the birds’ clawed feet fought for purchase and Tony couldn’t stand it anymore, not one second more because the pain was Jesus on the cross kind of shit . . . and he couldn't even scream, all he could do was tell himself that he was the heavyweight champion of the world the baddest man on the planet Tony the fucking Tiger King of the fucking Jungle and it was way past time for him to rear up with every ounce of strength he had and . . .

  One of the yucca limbs broke loose and slipped from his arm in a bloody tangle of barbed wire. Tony started to fight. He skimmed those damn birds with his fist, grabbed one by the throat and squeezed its fucking avian neck and it shit all over his shoulder but he squeezed and squeezed until its fucking black scavenger eyes nearly popped out.

  He tossed its dead scavenger ass into the dust. Yeah. He was Tony the Tiger. He was King of this fucking Jungle. Nothing with a brain the size of a walnut was going to treat him like so much fucking carrion. No butt-ugly bird was going to make a meal of his eyeballs.

  Soon the Tiger was loose. He stumbled to the canteen. Thank God it was still half full. Tony drank thirstily, then dropped the empty canteen in the dirt.

  It landed with a sound like a bell stoppered with cotton. It was only then that Tony noticed how quiet it was. Eden Lynch was nowhere in sight. Only those dead women bound to the other trees. Christ, he didn’t want to end up like them.

  He almost had ended up that way. He wouldn’t now.

  He needed to get out of sight. Just long enough to catch his breath. He stumbled into the shack. Jesus. Another dead guy. This one with his throat slit from ear to ear. It was some old guy. Not Harold. Tony wondered what had happened to his homeboy. B
ut he couldn’t think about that now. He had to worry about his own ass.

  Quickly he looked around. A knife lay on the floor. Yeah. Bloodstained and rusty, but at least it was something. And there was a jug of water in one corner. Tony took a deep drink and kept it close.

  A bunch of shelves on one wall. Crazy labels on this shit. Dried leaves and herbs, mostly . . . but there were some lotions, too. Tony unstoppered a few bottles and smelled the contents. Not bad. He oiled up his sunburned flesh, greasing his wounds. Oh, man, that felt good. Cool as ice. Oh, man . . .

  Some other bottles on a low shelf. Prescription bottles. Tony sorted through them. Shit. Some of this stuff was real nasty. He hoped the bitch hadn’t fed him any of it.

  All right. There it was. His Percodan.

  He’d just take one. Only one, and then he’d rest some. That cave on the back wall . . . even if Eden noticed his escape, she wouldn’t look for him there. He’d sit in the dark, drink some more water. Drink it slow so it wouldn’t make him sick. Then get the hell out of here. There was a truck parked by the bunker, a couple cars, too. Maybe one of them had the keys in the ignition. If not, he’d find the keys. And if that meant going in the big concrete house and killing the bitch, so much the better.

  He had to check out that house, anyway. Maybe the bitch had trapped Harold in there. His brother might still be alive. And Tony wouldn’t pussy out on him. He remembered Harold taking that bullet for him in the slams. So he needed to get up, get started, and he needed to do it right now . . .

  ***

  For a second Tony was back there in that cave, thinking these thoughts all over again. Like he hadn’t done any of it yet. But he knew he had. The bitch lay next to him on satin sheets, and she was dead.

  Tony thought about getting up. Oh, man. He hadn’t seen any sign of Harold, but he had to look. His brother might be bound and gagged, might be suffocating this very minute . . .

  Maybe if he slept. Just a little . . . No. Hell no. He wasn’t going to sleep with any dead bitch. He had to find Harold and get the hell out of here.