Norman Partridge - The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists

He couldn’t see her face at all, only a mask of red, but he knew he was shadowing Miss Claire Ives, a cold-blooded killer wanted by every lawman from J. Edgar Hoover on down.

Covered in blood, she sure as hell looked the part to Tate. Like some kind of nightmare. But Tate was bleeding, too. God knew he was leaking bad enough to start seeing things. Angels or devils, as the case might be. But somehow he knew that this vision was real, just as he knew that he had to confront it before he could worry about his own wounds.

He was hurt, sure. Tore up in the shoulder, missing most of one ear, blood from some other wound making a sticky mess of his left boot. But the woman was bleeding too, and the blood didn’t seem to slow her down none.

It was crazy, that’s what it was. Crazy for the both of them. Why, if they had any sense they’d both sit down and hope to hell that a certain young lady in a black slip was on her way back from Fiddler with an ambulance.

Hell, two ambulances.

But neither one of them sat down at all. Claire Ives rushed on, and Tate Winters followed.

The Ives woman neared the road where the stolen Ford was parked. Tate glanced ahead, at the spot where the field ended and the two roads met.

That was where he’d make his stand.

At the crossroads.

The gunfire had stopped.

Arson heard movement in the field.

Pale cornstalks parted like a wound.

Claire came to him.

Christ, she was all torn up. But Arson didn’t care. He swept her into his arms. He couldn’t get the words out fast enough.

“It’ll be okay, baby,” he said. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of you.”

“Always?” she asked, looking at him hard.

“Yeah. Until they put one of us in the — ”

She pressed her fingers to his lips and stopped his words. “No,” she said. “Always.”

Arson nodded, and Claire smiled under all that blood. He helped her into the Ford and climbed behind the wheel. It was still dead quiet — no sound but the wind combing through the corn.

Dead quiet. Yeah. That’s what it was.

Hank’s screams echoed in Arson’s memory. Pearl’s, too. But they were only echoes. Arson knew that his brother and sister-in-law were dead.

He wasn’t, and he was damn glad of it.

And he had his Claire.

That was all that mattered.

That, and getting the hell out of here before the law finished them, too.

Claire reached out and took his right hand. Their fingers knotted around her blood. He raised her hand and kissed it, her fingers still locked in his.

“Always,” he said.

His lips shone like rubies.

Wet with her blood.

The engine roared to life, and the Ford started coming.

Tate stood at the crossroads and raised his pistol. Straight on, the Ford came at him. Faster now. Black as a hearse, it came, its engine geared high, bearing killers who paid their way in blood.

Their own, and the blood of many others.

Tate aimed his gun and waited. He was bleeding bad. The car was thirty feet away, and in a couple of seconds it would be on him.

It wasn’t going to slow down. It wasn’t going to stop.

Neither was he. Blood leaked from his head and shoulder. Blood filled his boot. But he could bleed for at least another thirty seconds or so.

He could stand his ground.

He could pay his way in blood, the same way these two had. Hell, he had already done that.

He’d already paid the price.

And now he’d pull the trigger.

Claire opened fire.

The lawman stood his ground and did the same. His bullets tore through the windshield like angry hornets, and Claire closed her eyes in spite of herself, but it didn’t do any good because windshield shards sliced through her eyelids and stung her eyes. Still, she fired blindly as the car raced forward, fired until her gun was empty, and then another staccato blast exploded from the cop’s pistol and Arson grunted hard.

The Ford bucked and rolled on one side. Arson lurched against her and her door came open as the car kept rolling. The gun flew from her grasp and then she felt it, hot on her face, a spray as warm as summer sunshine and she knew it was her lover’s blood and Arson’s scarred fingers brushed her breast so lightly so tenderly as they tumbled from the car.

Together they hit the hard dirt road.

They rolled in a red tangle.

And when they came to a stop they didn’t move at all.

But the blood did. Arson Pike’s blood washed Claire Ives, filling her wounds, and what she felt was the warmth of it, and the life in it.

The busted windshield had blinded her, but it seemed she could see clearer than ever now.

As her heart beat its last, and Arson’s did the same, everything Claire Ives saw was red.

Tate’s feet were cold.

He opened his eyes. Raindrops splashed his face. The gray sky had opened up, and thunder boomed, and lightning flashed.

Tate saw a vision. At least he thought it was a vision. An angel reaching down for him from above.

And then the angel tugged at Tate’s belt, and the lawman noticed that the angel didn’t have any trousers.

“Steal my pants and I’ll shoot you dead,” Tate said.

“Sweet Jesus!” John Wallace Johnson gasped. “You’re alive!”

“Yeah.” Tate sat up. “Now give me my belt.”

John Wallace Johnson turned sheepish, handing the belt to Tate. “I was going to use it for a tourniquet,” the kid explained. “You’re hit in the leg, you know.”

“How about my goddamn boots? What were you gonna use them for?”

John Wallace didn’t answer. Tate got to his feet and grabbed his boots. He looked up into the sky, and raindrops pelted his face, and he took a step and nearly toppled over.

“You ought to sit down, you know,” John Wallace Johnson said.

“Shut up,” Tate said. He took a couple more steps, and then a couple more, and pretty soon he was where he wanted to be.

The battered Ford lay on its side in the cornfield.

Arson Pike and Claire Ives lay in the road at Tate’s feet.

“They got what they deserved,” John Wallace Johnson said. He snatched a handkerchief from Arson Pike’s pocket and brushed Claire Ives’s bloody cheek with it.

“Souvenir,” he explained.

Tate glared at the young man, but the sound of sirens rose in the distance before he could tell John Wallace Johnson exactly what he thought of his souvenir.

Tate heard those sirens and thought of one thing and one tiling only.

Imogene. Damn. The little flapper had gone and done it. She really could ride a Harley.

A woman like that… well, she just had to be a real sweet slice of something. Tate closed his eyes and thought about it while warm summer rain washed his face.

‘You really ought to sit down,” John Wallace Johnson said. ‘You’re a mess.”

‘Yeah,” Tate said. “But I clean up real good.”

Then he turned his back on the dead bandits, and John Wallace Johnson shrugged and did the same, and together they started for the main road. The sky above held only clouds, and rain poured down on the corpses as they lay all alone in a twisted red tangle, their blood washing away in braided rivulets that left pale trails on dead flesh.

And when they were washed clean, the earth puddled darker than earth should.

COYOTES

I was out past the dump, digging a grave for a coyote, when I spotted the van with the naked Mexican chained to the bumper heading my way.