[Follow these links to catch up with the #10 stupid thing, #9 stupid thing, #8 stupid thing, #7 stupid thing, #6 stupid thing, and #5 stupid thing I survived growing up in Texas.] If you’ve been keeping up with all the stupid things I survived, you may notice this time around that I don’t always learn my lessons after the first colossal failure. Yes, I had a bit of a close call with fireworks at the age of thirteen. The difference this time is that I’m sixteen, and I have a license to drive. What could possibly go wrong?
In my defense, most teenagers of my era were shooting mailboxes with shotguns…or smashing them with baseball bats. I was much too big brain to go down that path. Using a bat was asking for a dislocated shoulder or shattered wrist. I mean, there’s stupid and there’s stoopid. And blasting mailboxes with shotguns is petty vandalism. Not really my cup of tea. Plus, unless we drove an hour away before initiating the carnage, we’d probably end up replacing the mailboxes the next weekend when word leaked out who blasted them.
No, no. My version of shooting mailboxes was much more benign, and more sporting! While one person navigated the winding Farm-to-Market road from the driver seat, the person riding shotgun would light the roman candle, hang out the window, and let it rip. The explosion of sparks when an incandescent, burning ball strikes a mailbox or a road sign is something to see. And for some reason it never occurred to us that said incandescent, burning balls could possibly light stuff on fire. Well, maybe this thought did pass through my mind on a subconscious level. (I did learn my lesson!) Perhaps that would explain why we typically took the precaution of firing these burning munitions along the road that paralleled the railroad tracks.
Most everything along the railroad tracks had already been burned, and if we started a fire everyone would assume a passing train had done it. See? Big brain.
Plus, the road that followed the railroad tracks came with the bonus of catching air with three of the tires when jumping the tracks. (Maybe we never got more than two wheels off the ground at once, but it felt like we were flying.) The more I think about it, I’m not even sure these actions deserve to be on this list. Other than being illegal in a handful of ways, what could have been a better use of a Saturday for a group of friends with a bundle of roman candles, a license to drive, and a fondness for creating memories?
We never wrecked. No one was injured. As far as I know…we didn’t even burn anything down. And I’m still a dead-eye with a roman candle.
At the Desk This Week
We’re rocking and rolling now. I blew up a bunch of stuff this week and got in the groove of the storytelling. The episode was starting to get carried away lengthwise, but I figured out a way to speed up the unfolding of the plot by removing the need to travel to an additional location. It can be a bit tricky when dealing with a present tense, first person POV to skip too much of the unfolding story by simply moving characters from point A to point B. At the same time, I don’t want to describe the travel from point A to point B if it isn’t critical action and/or character development. In this instance, I figured out a way that makes sense with the plot to remove the need for shifting locations at all. By doing so, I’ve removed an entire cycle of action/trough in the episode which will result in a denser “lightning in a bottle” effect for the story. By doing all of this, I’ve placed my characters at the beginning of the final showdown with around 2,500 words left to make it happen. By the end of August I should be able to wrap up the first and second drafts for the third season of The Green Ones!
Twitch and Die! Blood Cry, Scene 7 - Hot Damn, Scene 2
[Click here for an introduction by Jim Buckner]
[Start with the introduction to the series.]
The dizzying, fat flakes of snow collected on the steel rails before settling on the rest of the vast brown and gray of Thurber. With the rinche and the boy in the lead, the group followed the tracks into downtown at a sprint. Fires had sprung up around the entire perimeter of the town, flushing everything living toward the center.
A haunting chorus of moans and screams rose in the fiery distance. They grew louder as the party passed the hotel and entered the downtown block.
“This is a bad place to be.” Angelo eyed the darkened windows surrounding them.
“What next?” The rinche slowed his gate, breathing heavily.
Chancho pointed, “The engine.”
The boy had continued toward the locomotive and passenger car of the Black Diamond. A dozen hands were waving from its windows.
Chloe burst for joy. “The others!”
“Not all of them,” Angelo nodded westward. A scattering of children darted back and forth across the road, zigzagging their way toward them.
The snow-muffled sounds of twitcher screams and crackling fire were suddenly punctuated by gunfire—both from afar and nearby.
The rinche rolled off a couple rounds into the hotel doorway. Two dead twitchers temporarily blocked several more clamoring to burst through the opening. “Take cover! Vezzoni’s on the hill.”
A second rifle shot pinged off the passenger car before thundering across the expanse between the mining town and New York Hill. Chancho had no choice now but to trust the rinche. His first loyalties were to Chloe and Angelo, then the children. If he moved fast, they could all ride the Black Diamond to safety.
“Starr?” Chloe stopped shy of the passenger car steps, her hands on the shoulders of the boy.
“I thought you guys might need some help.” Starr poked his head out of the locomotive as the drifting snow absorbed another rifle crack. A burst of gunfire followed. “Engine’s all fired up!”
Smoke curling from the end of his .38, Chancho backed into Chloe. “Get the kids on board. Starr’s the engineer.” He leaned back to brush her cheek with his lips. “We’ll deal with him later.” With a final peck on her cheek, he charged out to fortify a tiny perimeter around the train.
Angelo had taken position to the west while the rinche covered their tail. Somehow, he managed to burn half the twitchers that poured from the hotel despite their frantic and irregular movements. Chancho knelt east of the tracks and steadied his aim. The snow masked him from Vezzoni’s rifle fire. That left the blood-thirsty horde as his main concern—persons or not.
Unfortunately, only twitchers coming straight for him created manageable targets, and only at close range. Too quickly he exhausted all six rounds, leaving a small pile of twitching bodies at his feet and no time to reload.
“We’ve gotta go!” Starr kicked a wounded twitcher off the running board as Chancho retreated in his direction.
“There’s more kids!” Chloe ushered two more girls aboard, her knife in hand. “These twitchers are slower than the others. We can hold ‘em for another minute!”
Chancho agreed. These attackers lacked the fervor of the earlier ones in the cave. They were still twice as fast as him. A screech split the air behind him. He dropped a shoulder and dove. Glancing off the back of Chancho’s head, the twitcher flew over the top of him and crashed into the steel of the train car with a grisly crack.
Chancho rolled and crawled beneath the train. He emerged beside Angelo.
“Fire!” Angelo held a stick of dynamite in his white-knuckled grip.
“Lo siento, mi amigo.” Chancho held his pistol by the barrel, still hot from being fired, and slammed it into the skull of a charging twitcher. The grip fractured the bone as the beast lifted him from his feet and drove him into the dirt.
“Heads up!” The rinche tossed a lighter at Angelo’s feet.
The Italian ducked to collect it as another twitcher plowed over his head. Rising, lighter in hand, Angelo tossed the frothing creature into the side of the passenger car. He sparked the lighter and lit the short fuse. With surprising strength and accuracy, he flung the lit stick directly into the open front door of the hotel. “When you see the devil, tell ‘em Angel sent you!”
In a shuttering growl, the wooden walls of the hotel exploded outward. Fractured boards whistled in every direction accompanied by a gory mass of flesh and bone.
“It’s coming down!” The rinche retreated while pumping another shell into the chamber of his 12-gauge with one arm.
The multi-story building tilted toward them. The popping and splitting of beams rose over the relative silence. Chancho yelled, “To the train!” He and the rinche stumbled and slipped across the dirt and snow mixing quickly into mud.
“Here! Use this.” The rinche tossed the shotgun to Chancho.
Chancho caught the weapon. “What about you?” Without hesitation, he blasted a twitcher in the shoulder, spinning him in the air like a ragdoll. In response to Chancho’s question, the rinche blocked an attacking twitcher with his damaged arm. He delivered three quick blows that ended in a headlock. With a vicious twist, the rinche snapped the spine and dropped the twitcher limply to the ground.
“Just get that train moving.” The rinche grunted as another demon collided with him.
“Starr!” Chancho bolted toward the engine. Looming overhead and tipping further, the hotel had caught fire. Black smoke billowed from the windows.
“Way ahead of you!” Starr yelled back.
Chancho noticed the train was indeed moving, but Starr had slipped the wheels on the wet tracks. “Pull it back until she grabs!”
Everyone yelled at once.
“They’re all onboard!”
“There are too many of them!”
“¡Ándale! ¡Ándale!” Chancho slammed back the pump, chambered another shell, and shattered twitchers two at a time—the shotgun at full choke.
Grabbing, the train lurched forward and picked up speed. Limitless twitchers continued to pour from the hotel, now leaping from its windows. A crack radiated from inside the building, the train still in its shadow.
“Angel!” Chancho yanked a twitcher from the side of the passenger car and pulled the trigger with the barrel buried in its chest. “The building!”
Angelo shook his head. “There are too many! Get de kids out, I am going to meet my brother!” He flicked the lighter and sparked both of the remaining sticks of dynamite to life.
“Angel!” A twitcher slashed Chancho across the face and pinned him to the ground. “No!”
Angelo lowered his shoulder, up-ended a charging demon, and unleashed a chain of Italian curses with all the pounding thunder of the heavens. As the collapsing building encased him, he plunged through an open window with a lit stick of dynamite in each hand.
Chancho smashed the twitcher’s skull onto the steel railing. As he tried to stand, a shock wave lifted him, and the crumbling remains of the hotel exploded in a final blossom of fire. The roar smothered him while the brute force buried him face down in the mix of mud and snow. Angel.
With someone’s help Chancho pushed himself up on hands and knees. He shed the pile of rubble that had covered him. “Starr?”
“Wouldn’t want anything to happen to this, now would we?” Starr held the logbook in his hand. “See you back in Austin. Be good, ole boy.” Starr leapt clear of the rubble and darted on wounded leg for the train. Then engine and single car were rolling almost as fast as he could run.
Chancho rolled onto his back and blinked as snowflakes drifted into his eyes. His muscles burned, his ears rang, but over it all his heart boiled. How could the rinche have seen what I missed?
“Chancho!”
Chloe. Chancho willed himself upright as she reached him. “Dammit, why aren’t you on the train?”
Her coat and blouse were blood-stained and torn, her knife dark red and dripping. “Why aren’t you?” She embraced him.
Defeated, Chancho whispered into her ear, “Starr got the book, but—”
“No time boys and girls,” the rinche joined them. He straightened his spine and rolled his neck in a series of painful sounding cracks. “Pick your poison, flames or demons.”
The train was gone, halfway to the perimeter fence north of them, hopefully on its way to Mingus. The twitchers had been beaten back for the time being, but dozens continued to flee the flames of a Thurber now lit up like a torch dipped in tar. The fire encased them on three side. A small opening remained toward the northeast—Vezzoni’s house.
The rinche nodded. “It appears the superintendent didn’t have the heart to set his own house on fire.”
“The cemetery is just beyond it.” Chancho took a final glance toward the burning remains of the hotel.
The rinche stooped to collect his shotgun. “What about my lighter?”
Chloe put a hand on Chancho’s shoulder. “Angel?”
Chancho shook his head and nodded toward the shattered hotel.
“I loved that lighter.” The rinche pumped the shotgun and loaded it with five more shells.
Chancho pierced him with a scowl. “Keep up if you can, rinche.” He and Chloe bolted for the only opening in the ring of fire. While darting down the alley beside the burning mercantile, Chancho glanced over his shoulder to see the rinche only yards behind.
He had helped them rescue the children. Chancho credited him that. Still, he didn’t know if he could ever trust the man who’d nearly destroyed him.
“They’re gaining,” the rinche yelled up to Chloe and Chancho as they hurtled the picket fence surrounding Vezzoni’s front yard.
Chloe huffed, “We won’t make it to the perimeter.”
“Get close enough, and Nanette can cover us.”
“Nanette?”
“A friend.”
The large cotton woods and elms sheltered them temporarily from the blinding snow. But the looming branches intensified the howls and screams of the twitchers closing in on them. The demons crashed through the fence as Chancho reached the corner of the house. He hurdled a bench and plunged his boot into a soft spot in the dirt. Stumbling, he noticed a large swath of brown where the snow had melted.
Lighter and more nimble, Chloe darted past him. “You coming?”
“The ground was soft.” Chancho scrambled to his feet. Something didn’t feel right—like the ground was responding to his movements.
“Coming through.” The rinche headed straight for him, pursued closely by the lead twitchers.
“Wait!” Chancho blurted too late. Under the rinche’s added weight, the ground gave way beneath them. While clutching a tree root with one hand, Chancho lunged for the rinche with the other. He grasped the larger man by the wrist, and his grip on the root gave way. Both men tumbled into the dark.
“Chancho!” Chloe reversed direction. “Not again.” In the face of an oncoming wave of twitchers, she dove into the sink hole. With a thud, she landed in the slurry of soil, mud, and snow right next to Chancho’s head.
The darkness ripped in two as the rinche fired his shotgun into the flood of twitchers currently cascading through the ragged opening above. A shower of dirt, bone, and blood pelted them. Chancho helped Chloe to her feet, and again they ran—this time underground and back toward the heart of Thurber.
“What is this?” Chloe panted.
“A fresh mine, like at the entrance to #13.” Chancho slipped and stumbled downhill. Chloe bumped into him.
“It’s too shallow.” The rinche sparked the tunnel with the deafening roar of his 12-gage, keeping the twitcher wave at bay.
Chancho regained his feet and barreled onward while straining his eyes for any and every mote of light. Shy of pitch black, light had to be filtering into the tunnel from somewhere. Squinting, he picked out a speck of light floating in the distance like a ghost.
“This was built for underground travel.” The rinche’s voice seemed to come from inside Chancho’s head. He knew it was true. The twitchers had tunneled underneath Vezzoni’s house. It pointed to only one possible motive. Revenge. But Vezzoni probably hadn’t been there in weeks.
Again the tunnel pulsed with gunpowder. A swell of blood cry from the twitchers further behind forced the ones in front onward, and no amount of shotgun shells would stop them all.
They reached the origin of the ethereal glow, now dancing with hues of orange and red. It cascaded down from a shaft that most likely originated from the mercantile. That would explain the stash of goods the children had created out in the open.
The rinche spoke into the smothering darkness, “As long as I’ve got shells and there’s tunnel ahead, we can fend ‘em off. Just don’t pick a dead end.”
“No problemo,” Chancho quipped, “except I forgot my map.”
Opening after opening, they sped past tunnels branching off of what Chancho hoped was the main route. In the murmuring darkness, he was no longer certain whether the twitchers were behind them or in front. He feared most likely they were both. A series of vertical shafts continued to provide enough light, while fear of what lurked in the dark fueled them onward. So they ran.
After what seemed like two miles and fifteen minutes, Chloe asked the question they’d all been pondering. “Where do you think this goes?”
There could be only one answer. For the last few minutes, Chancho had suspected they were climbing uphill.
“New York Hill,” the rinche answered.
Chancho agreed. If the twitchers were after Vezzoni, the hill was the one place he thought he was safe. It would be the best place to strike. He shuddered at the implications.
Led by Serge and Yellow Eyes, could the twitchers have discovered the truth and organized such an extensive effort to exact revenge? If so, then the twitchers could not be viewed as demons or monsters. No more so than the majority of men Chancho had known during his days.
“They’re closing again. We need to find an exit.” The haunting sounds of breathing and boney hands clawing at raw earth grew louder until the rinche blasted the narrow space behind them.
Chancho’s memory flashed as he recalled the first time he’d heard the scratching—below the floorboards of the bungalow. The final piece fell in place. “I know just the exit. Save a couple of shells.”
“A couple’s all we got.”
Vezzoni swore at God and the devil combined. The heavy blanket of snow not only slowed the ravaging work of the flames, but it blinded him and his men in their efforts to ensure no trespassers escaped the perimeter. He’d pushed up the timing of the plan in an effort to outwit mother nature, but it seemed she’d taken the side of the twitchers. Currently, they poured out of every crack in the town below like cockroaches.
He shielded his eyes with his hand and squinted through the falling snow. Out of all the plumes of smoke, only one of them was moving. The Black Diamond. Vezzoni cursed himself for abandoning it so readily.
With any luck Starr had gotten to it first. He’d never trusted politicians. Then again, maybe one as untrustworthy as James Starr could be trusted after all—like two wrongs making a right.
The wall of snow temporarily thinned, and Vezzoni recognized three figures standing in the midst of a burning ring of fire downtown. “Ha!” Maybe his gamble with Starr had paid off. He chewed on the sodden end of his cigar, long extinguished, and decided on a new course of action. “Picard! Move your ass!”
“Yes sir.” Carrying a rifle, Picard jogged into view from his flanking position on the bluff overlooking Thurber.
Vezzoni removed his fedora and knocked the snow from its brim before placing it back on his head. “The fire’s thinnest on the northeast. Survivors will make for the cemetery. Take everyone but Willy and the Rabbit to shore it up. No one and nothing gets out, you understand?”
“Yes sir.”
“Not a hot damn cockroach. Nothing.” Vezzoni dismissed his right hand man with a nod.
Picard barked orders left and right. A smattering of men emerged from roosts and bunkers, their hats pulled down and jackets up against the swirling snow. Picard jogged further afield and repeated the orders. A few more men appeared from behind a white shroud. These represented less than half of their total numbers.
Vezzoni swore. What the devil kept the others? Everything fell quiet. He checked over his shoulder. The Model Ts were all accounted for. He cupped his mouth, “Picard!” Before he could finish his tongue-lashing, Picard bolted straight for him, screaming in horror.
Vezzoni froze. A blur of gray, like liquid smoke, poured around the end of the row of homes on his right. Twitchers. He spat out his cigar and bellowed into the sound-dampening snow, “Contingency!” To his left the same blurring shadow emerged at the end of the street.
He barreled toward the porch behind him, “Contingency!” A cascade of gunfire rang out behind him, followed immediately by blood cry and the dying gasp of Picard. “Contingency, dammit!”
With his shoulder down, Vezzoni shattered the door and removed the splintered frame from its hinges. He didn’t slow down until he’d smashed through the closet door directly behind it.
Finally, a more substantial outpouring of gunfire peppered New York Hill as his men reached their emergency positions. Blood cry swelled to meet the tide of gunpowder and lead.
In the time it took for the door frame to topple to its final resting place, Vezzoni had rolled two live grenades out the gash where the door had been and scooped up a M1919 machine gun. Ignoring the tripod, he stabilized the gun against a hip with one arm and leveled the belt of ammunition with the other.
In a single bruising concussion, the two grenades blasted a hole in the rushing onslaught of twitcher flesh. Before the shockwave could dissipate, Vezzoni stepped onto the porch and zippered Hill Street from end to end. He severing twitchers limb from limb with a searing blur of lead bullets like the repeated stroke of a butcher’s knife.
“Con-tin-gen-cy!” He growled over the rattling rhythm of the gun—spewing lightning at the rate of eight bullets a second.
The gun clicked, the belt of ammunition exhausted. Vezzoni tossed it back into the closet like a paperweight and crouched with his teeth showing. “Bring it,” he mumbled into the settling cloud of smoke. But nothing came.
Muffled pops filtered through the ground above them. “Shhh.” Chancho pressed his ear against the earthen wall. Chloe settled in beside him, disturbing his efforts to listen. A distant rumble shook the earth. Clods of dirt dropped from the ceiling of the tunnel.
“Move!” The rinche bulled the two of them over as a large fall slumped where they’d just been.
“Santa Maria.”
“Quiet.” The rinche held them down. The rasping breath of twitchers—the constant scratching of feet and hands flailing their way through the darkness with erratic grace—swelled to take the form of shadows rushing through an adjoining tunnel.
The scant light of the hastily dug tunnels lessened Chancho’s disorientation in comparison to the pitch black of the mines. The most recent twitcher threat disappeared along the passage he’d come to think of as “below” them. Then the scratching returned, this time from above. A blur of shadow rushed past, less than ten feet away. The honeycomb tunnels swarmed with twitchers bound for the disturbance on the surface.
Chloe whispered in his ear, “We’ve gotta move.”
The effort felt impossible, like remaining in the eye of a hurricane on foot. He knew they had no choice. “Up,” Chancho said. It was the only direction he could trust. With her hand on his back, they stood. “Now.”
Chancho burst through the intersection above them and scrambled up a path so steep it became a series of irregular steps. Chloe followed a hair’s width behind. The rinche brought up the rear.
The scratching and breathing filled Chancho’s head, blurring his own sentience until he wondered if he’d become a twitcher in the darkness. They were cheese in a maze full of mice. They had only their sense of touch to direct them. Gravity said down, so Chancho clawed his way up.
Now all the passages were slanting up to one degree or another. They had to be directly beneath the center of the hill. As suddenly as it had begun, the pounding gunfire from the surface stopped. A rush of twitcher consciousness flooded in to replace it. The earth itself seemed to radiate the noise.
Turn after turn, Chancho clutched at rock and soil. The rush of blood in his ears and the pounding of his heart fought against the twitcher awareness assaulting his mind. Up and out. Throwing his arm back, he barred Chloe from stumbling into a river of twitcher flesh rushing through an adjoining passage. They were so close their eyes glinted with the scant trace of light.
Chancho panted for fresh air. His clothing was soaked through, his nose clogged with earth. Suppressing a cough, he continued upward in the wake of the twitchers who’d just passed. Upward they scrambled, now slipping on earthen steps moist with melted snow.
Chancho lost his footing and clutched a root jutting from the wall. Roots. The air grew colder and scented with decay. “There.” His voice croaked. Long slits of light filtered through the motes in the air high above them. “Floorboards.”
He climbed straight up using holds dug into the sides of the tunnel. “Give me your hand.” He tugged Chloe up to a hold below him before scrambling a few more feet.
“I’ve got it,” she panted. “Go.”
As Chancho dangled several feet from the floorboards, blood cry battered the sides of the tunnel. It shook the ground all around them. The cry of hundreds of thirsty twitchers originated from the surface. He clung to the side of the shaft, shut his eyes, and fought back the tide of fear crushing his brain and overwhelming his instincts. Run. Run you idiot.
From below, the cry responded—emanating from the womb of mother earth or hell or both. The wave from beneath collided with the wave from above. Lust and rage rattled Chancho’s bones and shook the floorboards.
Below him, the shaft exploded with gunfire. The rinche pumped what must have been his last shell into the shotgun’s chamber and called out, “Catch!”
Chancho released his grip with one hand and swung outward to face the dim shaft as the form of the shotgun came into view.
“Now!”
Chancho clutched it by the stock, thrust it upward as far as he could reach, and pulled the trigger. Kicking violently, the gun tumbled out of his grasp and plummeted down the shaft. As Chancho briefly followed the shotgun’s descent, his eyes focused on a writhing sea of movement beneath them. It was rising fast.
Coughing on dust from overhead, Chancho surged upward an arm’s length at a time. The shotgun blast had sufficiently splintered the boards. With both feet planted on a firm hold, he used his shoulder and arm to shatter what remained.
“What the hell!” The startled face of a Company goon hovered directly above him.
“Excúseme.” Chancho clutched the goon’s collar and yanked his face into what remained of the splintered boards. “Coming down!” Chancho yelled as the goon slid past him. Twitcher screams rose to meet the goon’s descent.
Chancho lunged upward a final time and hooked the top of the floor with both elbows. After forcing his way through the hole, he spun around and hung his upper body through the opening. “Give me your hands!”
Chloe latched onto his wrist. Pushing off the floor, Chancho yanked her up and through. Right behind her, the rinche’s hand shot up to clasp a splintered board. Before Chancho could reach out, his hand disappearing into the hole as blood cry gurgled upward.
Chancho shot Chloe a desperate look. With it they communicated what had to be done. Chancho snatched the goon’s discarded .38 and lurched for the opening in the floor. “Catch me!” Chloe’s arms wrapped around his waist, slid over his butt, and finally held around his boots. Dangling upside down, Chancho stopped even with the rinche. Exhausted, and with only one good arm, he struggled to kick his ankles free from a growing number of twitchers.
From point blank range, Chancho unleashed every round into the blurred clot of twitchers as fast as he could pull the trigger. The raw earth absorbed the flash and pop of the pistol as ragged human forms fell away in clumps. “I’m out!”
“Grab hold.” His feet free, the rinche heaved upward with his good shoulder as Chloe pulled. Chancho hooked his arms around the rinche’s sides, and they all came out together. Tumbling away from the opening as fast as possible, Chancho rebounded off the heavy oak desk. “Give me a hand.”
Chloe joined him and they flipped the desk over the opening as twitchers slammed into its top.
“Out of the way.” They jumped clear as the rinche pulled the bookshelf down on top of the desk, scattering books across the room. “Go.” He shoved them into the other room and closed the door. “Keep moving.”
“Wait.” Chloe hurdled the couch and swiped a shotgun from the coffee table. “There’s more.” She tossed the shotgun to Chancho before rummaging through an overturned crate for another .38 caliber pistol. She started to toss it to McCutchen, but he’d already managed to reload his Colt .45 with one arm.
“You owe me a lighter and a shotgun.” He grunted as he slammed the cylinder shut and spun it.
“Keeping running tabs, are we?” Chancho checked the chamber of the shotgun.
“Damn straight.”
Chancho grinned, unable to stop himself. “There’s no debt between friends.”
The rinche shook his head, “I’ll be a son of a—” A wave of blood cry cut him short, rattling the bungalow’s windows.
“Madre de dios,” Chancho rushed to the front window. What he saw chilled him deeper to the core than any of the day’s already numerous nightmares.
Thanks so much for taking the time to read Twitch and Die!, Season Four of the Lost DMB Files. I’ll be publishing FREE daily scenes from the Lost DMB Files until…I die…or something terrible happens. Seriously, I’ve got over 400 scenes written so far, and I’ll be writing more until the story reaches its natural ending. You are totally welcome to read the entire story for FREE! If at any point you decide you would rather finish the story in ebook or print format, just click the buttons below and you can do that as well. If you enjoy reading the serial releases, BUT you would also like to support me as a writer (my kids need wine!) please subscribe to my premium content for bonus scenes, exclusives, and insider access to my process. And of course, I’d be grateful if you would share this post with any of your reader friends who you think would enjoy the Lost DMB Files. Happy reading!