Matt heard the branch before he felt it. A sharp whistling, then his arms went numb. Dallas fell, and as he watched her, tumbling in slow-motion, he looked down and saw the branch protruding from his chest. A red stain blossomed outward, soaking his shirt and dripping down his stomach in hot rivers. With a groan, his body slid forward, falling toward the ground. He tried to roll away from Dallas, but found he couldn’t move, could only watch as he crushed her already tortured legs. She shrieked.
Matt could feel himself growing weaker. The branch had punched a geyser through him, letting his life pour onto the ground. Dallas struggled to sit herself up, pulling at her legs, trying to get them out from under him. Finally, slippery with blood, she managed to break free. She crawled forward till she reached Matt’s head. His eyes kept sliding closed.
“Bubby. Bubby, get up. I go you.” She patted his face. He jerked his eyes open and wanted to cry. Dallas was sitting right there. He needed to get her out of the forest, but he couldn’t. There was no way. The only thing he could do was watch over her until death took him. Watch over her and watch out for the tree still moving behind her. It picked up the sapling Brooklyn had dropped, and then gouged a small hole in the earth a little ways from its trunk, placing the sapling in it and gently pushing the soil around the smaller tree. Seemingly satisfied, it was finally still, the only sound Dallas’s pleading and the only movement her frantic patting on his cheek.
“Pease, Bubby. Pease. I go you.”
TACO MEAT
by John McNee
When the explosives in Pedro Piss-Pants’s colon went off, they blew nearly his entire left ass cheek some 137 yards southwest, to land on the corrugated iron awning of Za’s Tattoo Parlor. It was found and eaten by a stray cat later that same evening and is the only notable piece of Pedro to remain officially unaccounted for.
When Pedro spattered himself across the back lot of the TP Auto Company, showering the rusted scrap metal wig-wam in a toxic rain of blood and effluent, his antagonists did the predictable thing. They ran. Eyes streaming, ears ringing, and mouths screaming (though of course they couldn’t hear themselves) they ran, away from each other, away from the scene of the crime and, they might hope, to safety.
Blake Rawlinson, 14, ran West, to nearby Elmer View and the warmth and comforts of the Rawlinson family trailer.
His younger brother, 12-year-old Kuger, might have been expected to follow, but he didn’t. He ran East, to the dry riverbed, in hopes of finding a ditch to crawl into.
Gary ran furthest of all, clean across town in fact, to Victoria Square, on the South Side, where the newly strung fairy lights had just been lit. The Mariachi band was already in full swing and his cousin, Officer Dabney Tibbs, was busy persuading Hector Nunez to slide him an apple empanada on the house. Perk of the gig, after all.
Dabney’s partner, Tony Hierra, was, as ever, the one who asked all the pertinent questions. “What you mean he exploded?”
“What do you think I mean?” Gary sobbed, snot dripping from his nose. “He blew up, okay? He exploded!”
“Hold up,” Dabney said. “Who’s Pedro Piss-Pants?”
“I heard of this kid,” Tony answered, grimly. “Homeless, messed up in the head, lives out by the freeway. Easy pickings. That it, Gary? That what you and your messed-up little buddies were doing? Nothin’ on TV, so you thought you’d go pick on the local retard wet-back?”
“Why they call him Piss-Pants?” Dabney asked.
“’Cause he’s always pissing his pants,” Gary said.
“Damn it,” Tony said. “What did you do to him?”
Gary squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep breath. “We tied him to the fence and then…we stuck a bunch of fireworks up his ass.”
“Jesus,” Dabney said.
“Momma’s sick little puppies,” Tony said. “He dead?”
“That’s what I’ve been saying!” Gary cried. “He fuckin’ exploded! Everything but his arms and his head blew up into a billion pieces! Looked like…like taco meat.”
“Jesus,” Dabney repeated.
“It was just a joke, okay?” Gary said. “It was meant to be funny! It was just a fuckin’ joke!”
DABNEY DIDN’T IMMEDIATELY UNDERSTAND what the play was. Even when he and Tony had left Gary behind with a warning “not to go far” and taken the patrol car up to 14th Avenue with the lights off and not a word to anyone who might want to know, even then he didn’t quite get it. But when, as they pulled into the TP Auto forecourt, he turned to Tony and said, “You want I should call this in?” Tony was quick to set him straight.
“Hell you mean call it in?” he barked. “We’re not calling anything in. You nuts? We’re handling this shit. Understand?”
“Clean it up? Aw, no, Tony. Man, I don’t…I don’t know about that…”
“No? Then what? You tell me. Tell me! Never mind making it through the cluster-fuck and managing, somehow, to keep your job. Never mind that. Suppose you do. You really want to stick around for the shit-storm when you’re the cop who was on watch the night a retarded little Mexican got ass-raped with M-80s and blown to hell by a bunch of white kids? One of whom—need I remind you—is your little cousin? Huh? On Cinco defuckin’ Mayo? Huh? You think about that. Even if you’re still alive at the end of it your life won’t be worth living!”
“Yeah, but…” Dabney said. “But…”
“But?”
Dabney shook his head. “But shit.”
Tony nodded, satisfied. “Come on. Let’s make it quick.”
Dusk was falling fast. They grabbed a couple of flashlights and slid around the side of the old building into the broken metal mess of the back lot. They quickly made their way to the far end and found the fence Gary had told them about…but they didn’t find Pedro.
“Gone,” Dabney said. “Where could he go? How could he go?”
“I can barely bring myself to say it,” Tony groaned. “But do you think that the little prick is just screwin’ with us?”
Dabney pursed his lips and squinted real hard—his rarely seen ‘thinking face’. “No,” he answered. “No, I don’t believe it.”
Tony shone a light on the dirt at their feet, illuminating brown stains that might have been dried blood. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s…let’s take a look around. You head over there.”
They split up, scrabbling among the shadows and detritus of half-digested automobile parts.
“Some blood over here,” Dabney called out.
“Here too,” Tony said as he cast his gaze over the scrap-metal wig-wam that, once upon a time when it was new and prettily painted, had held pride of place in the forecourt. Tony could still recall the look of pride on old man Pendleton’s face as he unveiled it. Now just one more reminder of how the whole town was going to shit.
“Ah, Jesus,” Dabney muttered from somewhere in the darkness.
“What is it?” Tony called.
“I think…I think I found a foot.”
Tony winced. “Bag it.”
“Yeah, okay… Shit. He had a lot of hair for just a little kid.”
“Shhh!”
“What?”
“Shut up!” Tony crouched low, turning the flashlight’s beam towards the rear wall of the building. He held his breath, listening to the shadows, so sure he’d heard it. A third voice. The softest whisper. The most pathetic, wilting little cry for…
“…help…”
Officers Hierra and Tibbs quickly regrouped and approached the source of the muted plea. They found a young boy, sprawled out in the dirt, his insides splayed about him, skin a sickly shade of gray, but everything in his vicinity splashed with deep, dark red.