Scott Nicholson - The Shock

“Cut her down,’ Franklin said, his voice even.

“I…” Jorge looked at her, wondering if she had kids.

“It’s not human,” Franklin said. “ Cut her !”

The rock descended and Franklin raised one forearm to block the blow. Jorge jumped forward and slung the machete at her wrist. The swing was high and the blade skidded off the stone with a metallic ping. One of her fingers popped into the air, streaming blood. She didn’t utter a sound.

She jammed the stone toward Franklin’s head. Franklin rolled away and Jorge gripped the machete handle with both hands and gave a roundhouse swing.

The blade bit into the back of the woman’s neck and the stone flew from her grasp, grazing Franklin’s cheek and thudding off his shoulder. Sickened, Jorge pulled the machete free of her flesh. The wound yawned open, showing white tendons and a chalky stitch of skull bone.

She emitted a red urk and collapsed. Franklin pawed at her, shoving at her round body, and Jorge realized the rifle was under her. He glanced back at the RV.

The woman was climbing a little access ladder on the back of the vehicle, struggling to keep her balance with one arm wrapped around her bundle. The four remaining Zapheads gathered around the RV, swatting at the air below her feet as if confused by the ladder.

“Go get her,” Franklin said, shoving at the dead Zaphead. “She is human. So is the baby.”

Jorge broke into a run, sweat beading his skin. He held the machete before him like Antonio Banderas as Zorro, although he hated Banderas because Rosa had called the actor “ muy sexy.” Blood from the blade blew back against his cheek. A high-pitched, electric keening sang in his eardrums.

He leaped over the low stone wall, which was little more than a decorative border. The woman was now atop the RV, sitting and pushing herself backwards with her feet. A Zaphead dressed like a fisherman, right down to the knee-high rubber wading boots, put an experimental hand on the ladder, as if trying to divine its magic.

The nearest Zaphead turned when Jorge reached the shoulder of the road, and Jorge almost dropped his machete. He recognized the woman. She was the cashier at the farm supply store, a buxom, chain-smoking woman who always wore a field-green John Deere jacket. She had no jacket now, nor a shirt, and her breasts swung like sodden melons in the cups of her dirty bra.

Whenever Jorge bought a load of cracked corn, hay, or fertilizer for the Wilcox place, she’d averted her eyes as he filled out the bill of sale, careful to never make contact with the skin of his fingers. Now she had no problem looking at him: her eyes were like electric-blue drill bits boring into his skull.

“¿ Señora ?” He faltered but kept stumbling forward, hoping she would say something familiar so he wouldn’t have to cut her. Anything would do, even her side-of-the-mouth, “Back yer truck to the dock and the boys’ll load ‘er.”

But all she could do was hiss, and Jorge realized that was the source of his ringing ears. The others were hissing, too, like the chirrup of crickets in an endless night. But still, Jorge couldn’t strike her. She was a racist, one who almost certainly wished his kind would never cross the border, but she was a human being.

Wasn’t she?

But before he could decide, the top of her head exploded in a thunderclap of gunfire. Her head flew back, her breasts wobbled, and her knees folded as she collapsed on the pavement.

“Move, you jackass!” Franklin hollered. “They’re Zapheads, for Christ’s sake.”

The other Zapheads turned in his direction, although the fisherman had finally figured out how to lift his leg and place it on the bottom rung.

Four to go.

But Jorge realized he didn’t have to kill them. They weren’t acting aggressively, not like the ones back at the Wilcox place. Instead, they were eyeing him with wary interest, much like they had the ladder: as if he was something new and beyond their understanding. He didn’t want to risk it, though, so he chopped low and nicked a hefty wedge out of the calf of a young man in shorts and sandals. The man collapsed, the hiss from the back of his throat rising in pitch and volume.

Pain. So they feel it, despite what Franklin says.

The fisherman had scaled a few more rungs, but the two remaining Zapheads back away, their eyes glittering like wet diamonds.

“Don’t shoot!” Jorge shouted at Franklin, partly because he wasn’t sure they were a danger and partly because he didn’t fully trust the old man’s aim.

The fisherman continued his climb, moving faster as he figured out the rungs. He was nearly to the top of the RV, where the woman sat in the middle of the roof, hunched as if protecting her baby.

“Hold on,” Jorge said to her, but she didn’t respond. Jorge ran to the rear of the RV and began climbing after him. Jorge gave one machete chop at the man’s rubber heel, but it lifted free just before the blade careened off metal.

The fisherman stood in his tan vest, head lifted as if sniffing the breeze. He put one hand on a small satellite dish to steady himself, then wriggled it back and forth. The steel bar holding the dish gave a grating squeak and tore free. The man lifted the dish like a weapon and turned to face Jorge, who was still three rungs down the ladder.

A shot rang out, whining over Jorge’s head. The Zaphead lifted the dish and Jorge thought about dropping to the ground. But he didn’t think he could climb it again before the mutated fisherman killed the woman and her baby.

Instead, Jorge launched himself forward and rolled. The fisherman paused, the dish still held high, as if he also hesitated to kill. Jorge swung out one of his workman’s boots into the man’s kneecap. The leg folded but didn’t collapse.

The Zaphead hissed in pain, or perhaps rage, and swatted the dish downward as if Jorge were an oversize fly. Jorge raised his machete— just like Banderas would , he thought—and blocked the blow, although the impact drove the back edge of the blade precariously near his face.

On his back, Jorge raised both legs and drove the bottoms of his boots into the Zaphead’s stomach. A chuff of air was driven from the man’s abdomen as the kick lifted him off the RV’s roof and sent him, arms flailing, over the edge. The body struck pavement below with a soggy splat, while the dish clattered a few feet down the road.

Jorge didn’t bother to check the damage. Instead, he went to the young woman, whose face contorted between expressions of fear and gratitude. A tear ran down one grimy cheek. Up close, she looked even younger, maybe seventeen.

This could be Marina in a few years , he thought, even though this woman had reddish-gold hair instead of Marina’s dark Latina features.

“Come,” he said, holding out one hand. “We have a safe place.”

She stared at the gore-clotted machete blade. Jorge looked down at it and wiped it on the leg of his pants. “Only when necessary,” he said.

“Get and come on,” Franklin shouted from the bushes. “Else, I’m going to have to start killing these others.”

Jorge looked down the road. Two more Zapheads had emerged from the forest, although they didn’t move with any sort of speed or menace. Jorge was struck yet again with the notion that they appeared more curious than anything, as if they’d been dropped into an unwelcoming world without a road map.

That, I can understand, mis amigos.

“Come,” Jorge said, more gently this time. “My wife will help care for your child.”

She relaxed a little and peeled back a fold of her bundle. Jorge saw just the tiniest stretch of pink skin before she closed it again and tried to stand. She nearly lost her balance, and Jorge steadied her. The two Zapheads at the rear of the RV had backed away another 10 feet, staring up as if watching a scene on the stage of some theater of the absurd.