Page 60 of Road Refugees

“Yeah,” said Stomach, lifting his lip at me. “Fucking county inspected us, made us take them in and waste all that money. No one cares if they get a cheap puppy that isn’t vaccinated.”

I said, “You know it’s going to be a lot worse when the Bare Bones get here.”

“The Bare Bones,” scoffed Dingbat, the Neo-Nazi. “Who the fuck is afraid of them?”

“Yeah,” agreed Riddlesberger. “Fucking pussies let us run them out of Flagstaff.” He picked up a wooden club of some sort, bashing it menacingly in his palm.

Stomach said, “They’ll get the message when they find your body floating in the river.”

“Beheaded,” added Mumbles, the guy I’d shot through the shoulder.

Riddlesberger made a baby face and spoke baby talk. “And you’ll be all twisted like you already are, creeping along with a cane, your ugly face all warped.”

Although threatened with a gory murder, I had slowly been getting to my feet. I’d had worse than two broken ribs and two mangled fingers in my life. But I overplayed the pain to take them by surprise. Only my words were the truth. “Riddlesberger, you’re just a fucking scumbag. You took my wife off the road and the only plan was to use her as a sex slave.” Heaven was practically my wife. I intended to make her mine once I became an official Bare Bones prospect.

This made them all chuckle. “Sex slaves rule,” said Dingbat.

The rage roiled in my gut at that. But when Riddlesberger said, “They’re better than using the dogs,” I just lost it. All my well-laid plans flew out the barn door, and I leaped for the grip of the iron sticking out Stomach’s ass crack.

Riddlesberger got to me first with the club. When he cracked my skull, I could feel it actually cracking. It was like I could see with my inner eye a hairline crack race through my parietal bone.

But he didn’t fell me. Sure, I squeezed the trigger from a crouching position. His idiotic arm was raised, about to club me again. It was like an image from an Alfred Hitchcock film. But I was a crack shot, and my round went through his lower jaw, taking parts of his tongue, lymphs, and teeth with it. The only regret I had was that it set the dogs off. They’d probably heard plenty of gunshots in their miserable lives, but this one made their evil leader twist and drop his club.

I quickly straightened and jammed the Glock’s barrel against his temple. Frankly, I was shocked no one else was stopping me. Were they so amazed I had the guts? Did they secretly wish Riddlesberger dead too? Stomach and Dingbat both had pieces leveled at me, but sort of half-heartedly, down by their waists.

I was bummed that all I thought to say was, “You’ve had a hard life,” but hey. I was under stress and in pain. About to blow out the brains of someone I knew, not some anonymous ISIL member. I think Riddlesberger said something like “Hey, just one sec—” before I pulled the trigger. This time there was an exit wound the size of a quarter, lumpy and shiny brains splattering on the hay, on the tarp where I’d just been buried. He fell in a pile, bad side of his head turned to us, so we could easily see some bones in his jaw, the hole in his row of teeth, stained and ravaged by meth. “Good thing it’s over.”

I pivoted to the remaining three men, swinging the Glock between Stomach and Dingbat, the only two armed. Mumbles started inching out the open door and I let him, since we were in a classic standoff position.

“You’re letting me out of here,” I told the two scumbags, “and you’re telling no one what happened to your rapist buddy here.”

Stomach growled, “Oh, I think it’s three against one, pal. Do the math.”

I said, “Three minus one equals two,” and they both looked around at the spot Mumbles had vacated.

I could’ve shot Stomach in his mangled head. But something came out of the blue.

My future wife, Heaven, tiptoeing up behind Stomach, a length of barbed wire in her gloved hands.

I couldn’t quite believe what I was seeing. I knew my eyes were saturated with terror, but when the two men looked back at me, I had to take my shot.

Dingbat was the farthest from Heaven’s trajectory, so I squeezed my trigger ever so gently. The bullet splashed out Dingbat’s cranium, an instant blood collar obliterating a few of the fascist tattoos. I knew the brain survived, say, the guillotine, for even half a minute. Indeed, when Dingbat finally dropped to the ground, he twitched something fierce for awhile, limbs flopping like a fish on deck. My buddy in arms Slappy strode in to shoot Dingbat again, this one in the carotid artery. Still, he flailed.

My fierce girlfriend garroted Stomach. She whipped a loop of barbed wire over his head and twisted so hard he dropped his piece. Eyes bulging, he tried to get a finger between his skin and the wire, to no avail. Heaven was not extinguishing his existence in one second. He emitted that choking noise that sounds like a clogged drain, and his tongue slipped in and out like a lizard.

My woman could twist those wires! Her features were grim, determined, but when she flashed her eyes to mine, her lips lifted into a smile. She smiled as she choked the life out of that crazy bastard! For their parts, Slappy and Crybaby stood by mentally noting her work with approval. Heaven, at five foot ten, leaned into her work, all her heavy lifting at the ranch paying off in spades. None of us seemed inclined to help. She had it all under control.

Fact, Stomach hadn’t even hit the hay yet when Slappy dragged Riddlesberger’s body over to some machine that stood about hip height. He kicked a switch on, and a motor started. As Stomach’s windpipe was cut, blood pouring over Heaven’s hands, Slappy lifted Mr. Riddlesberger, destroyed head and all, and shoved the head into the sky blue bin.

Oh. It was a food grinder, maybe the one they used to feed odious corn to the dogs. Slappy was literally grinding Riddlesberger’s face off. This seemed to give Crybaby an idea. He started hauling Dingbat off to the side, heading for what looked like an exercise treadmill. These guys meant business.

When Stomach fell, I put my boot on his ruined neck as double insurance. When Heaven let go of the barbed wire—forever embedded in his lymph nodes and larynx—she stood back with her strong arms at her sides, a feminine Hercules, panting. The look she gave me was victorious.

“I used a lot of barbed wire in Cornucopia,” she explained. “Had to make a lot of chicken fences.”

As bloody as we both were, we had to embrace. Love simply flooded my veins. The scent of her hair as I buried my face, her boobs pressed against my chest, even her bloody gloves grabbing the nape of my neck, the entire moment gushed some long-forgotten hope in me, and I muttered,

“Please marry me.”