Then Jorge parted the scrub with his blade and saw the RV. The woman was about thirty feet from it, her pace slower than before, mouth parted as she sucked for air. Her bundle was tucked against her chest, one arm squeezing it even as she reached out for the door on the side of the RV.
Behind her, the Zapheads were gaining ground, maybe fifty feet to close the distance. She made it to the door and tugged on the handle, but it didn’t yield. Jorge realized he and his family might have been in the same position if they’d pursued his plan to camp in it.
The three Zapheads Jorge had seen from the lookout in the compound had been joined by two others. They could have been parishioners of one of the little churches that dotted the mountains, or customers of a barbecue restaurant, or the office staff at Marina’s school. Their clothes were filthy, and three of them were female. The one closest to the RV was a teenaged boy in a sleeveless T-shirt, knees pumping as he moved in for the kill.
The rifle roared and the teenager’s chest blossomed with red spray. He pitched forward and tumbled twice on the pavement and laid still, legs tangled beneath his body, one arm poking upward at an awkward angle.
The other Zapheads froze, looking in the direction of the sudden noise. Jorge wasn’t sure they were visible, but the woman hadn’t hesitated. She hammered on the door of the RV, shrieking in a broken voice. “Let me in! Let me in!”
As the kneeling Franklin leveled the rifle for another shot, the brush parted beside them. A dark face stared out, eyes wide, mouth gaping to reveal yellowing teeth.
“¿Hola?” Jorge said, startled, thinking it was one of Franklin’s friends. Then he remembered that Franklin had no friends.
The woman pushed through the scrub pines and high weeds, moving fast. Franklin, getting ready to fire again, must not have noticed her. She was barely three steps from him. Jorge lifted his machete, hesitating.
What if it’s not one of them?
She spat a rasping hiss, lifting her right arm. Her hand clutched a jagged, mossy stone. Jorge shouted a warning.
Franklin turned, knocking the rifle barrel against her. She was heavy and solid, the metal thwacking off her flank. She swatted the gun away with ease and she lifted the rock again. Its weight caused her arm to tremble.
“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.