Norman Partridge - The Ten-Ounce Siesta

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. But 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.

All he had to do was get up. Yeah. That was all he had to do. .

Tony lay on red satin sheets with a dead bitch at his side.

He couldn’t move at all.

Burned down, man. That’s what he was.

Cinders. Just cinders.

“This must be the place,” Angel said. “Here’s another one.”

Jack looked away from the redhead’s crucified corpse. Angel stood before another yucca tree. The old woman with the cantilevered breasts was tied to this one. Again, the killer had used barbed wire.

“She was one of the dognappers,” Jack said. “I think she was running the show. She had a voice like a drill sergeant.”

“She’s not going to be using it now.”

“Yeah.”

Jack held tight to his Colt. Angel was sweating, and so was he. They’d had a long walk. Nearly six miles separated the Celica from this spot.

Jack shook his head. As they humped the last two, Angel had complained of blisters. Vociferously. And she was wearing those Doc Martens. She wore hiking boots, but she’d never hiked a day in her life. Her boots weren’t even broken in.

The way Jack saw it, you just couldn’t figure people. There wasn’t any use trying. Like these corpses. Man. Who would do something like this? Murder was murder, but this was overkill. Some kind of rage killing. The killer wanted to make a point.

What that point was, Jack didn’t know. But he wasn’t going to figure it out by standing in the middle of nowhere.

The moon was large and white, and the desert was painted with an indigo glow. About a quarter mile distant stood a huge concrete bunker. There was a little shack off to one side of it. It looked like a place where a kidnapper might stow a kidnappee.

Jack nodded toward the shack. “Let’s check it out.”

Angel agreed. Moving quickly and quietly, they threaded a path through the yucca forest. But neither one of them noticed the tree with the broken limb as they passed by or the tangle of bloodstained barbed wire that clung to its trunk.

Angel went through the door first, holding her pistol in the style of a combat shooter. Jack followed her closely, clicking on a flashlight as he entered the shack.

A dead guy lay on some kind of altar. Jack recognized the stovepipe hat that rested on the old man’s chest.

“Jesus,” Angel said, pointing at the deep slice on the corpse’s throat. “Whoever did this nearly cut this guy’s head off.”

“He’s the rattlesnake man,” Jack said. “Another member of the gang.”

“Jack, what the hell is going on here?”

“I don’t know.” Jack sighed. “Do you think it might be a hit? Maybe Freddy’s bird dog tracked the gang, then had them killed without telling us about it.”

“No way, Jack.” Angel pointed to the corpse’s cupped hands, which were blackened with soot. “The Mafia doesn’t go in for satanic rites.”

Jack nodded. He played the flashlight beam along the walls of the shack. Harsh white light revealed bottles filled with powders and potions, aged spell books coated with Mojave dust, and stripped bones, both human and animal.