[Follow these links to catch up with the #10 stupid thing, #9 stupid thing, #8 stupid thing, #7 stupid thing, and #6 stupid thing I survived growing up in Texas.] Is anything better than being a teen driver? How about being a redneck teen driver? Better yet, a redneck teen driver in a 1978 K-5 hard-top Chevy Blazer Cheyenne 4x4 outfitted by a before-his-time prepper to be a mountain compound survival vehicle?
Oh, baby. It doesn’t get any stupider than that. What am I saying? Of course it does. Let me count the ways.
First off, we all know that truck tires are expensive. Combine that truth with a tendency for rapid accelerating and a penchant to spend money on anything other than new tires and the result is a Blazer with four extremely bald tires. Now put that Blazer with extremely bald tires in Texas and make me the driver. Yeah, now we’re talking stupid. I spun off the exact same exit ramp (in the exact same spot) of I-20 on two separate occasions. Both times I ended up in the ditch while facing the wrong direction. I spun ninety degrees the first time and a cool two-hundred and seventy degrees the second before perfectly sticking the landing just short of the fence line. No harm, no foul.
If you’ve never driven a vehicle with bald tires during the heat of a Texas summer you may not understand the delicate dance that is sometimes required to stay on the road and out of the ditch. When the oils from the blacktop start to ooze and liquify just a bit only to be topped off with rain from a short thunder-boomer the result is slicker than snot combined with mushed-up tarantulas.
My final slip-n-slide off the road shook me up enough so as to motivate me to save my money for new tires. This one occurred in town. Now, when I say “in town” I mean along the tiny strip of buildings populating both sides of the railroad tracks in my home town of Aledo (population 1,300 at the time). Allow me to paint the picture. The main road through town (heading south) tops the tracks before a short decent that leads into a quick “S” curve and then meanders past the elementary school.
When coming from the other direction (heading north), ascending the subtle grade to the top of the tracks requires just a bit of acceleration out of the “S” curve. Did I forget to mention that on the west side of the road there’s a Gulf gas station with the pumps just a few yards off the road? And that it had recently rained? Hmmm, yeah, the rest just paints itself. It’s possible I might have taken the “S” curve a tad bit fast. Tapping the breaks before stepping on the gas for the small climb was apparently the wrong combination. The back tires slipped out from under me like a dog straining for traction on an ice rink.
Rather than try anything…rather than react at all, I simply white-knuckled the steering wheel and waited for the ride to come to a stop. When the time seemed right for stomping the breaks, I did so. It just so happened that the result was my Blazer perfectly parallel with the gas pumps and now facing Southward. The obvious next move was to get out, gas up, and buy a Dr. Pepper. I couldn’t even look the attendant in the eye. To this day, I’m not sure if anyone else even witnessed the event. I’m sure my parents had no clue it happened, until now. (Hi, mom!)
At the Desk This Week
I came up with another fun twist for the final episode of The Green Ones, Season Three this week. It was a bit of a no brainer when it dawned on me. I guess it is not so much a “twist” as a “complication” that actually makes the plot cleaner. It will be a bit of a fun mind blow for the reader though, I hope. Onward and upward. I’m about halfway through this final episode, so I’m getting closer!
Twitch and Die! Blood Cry, Scene 3 - 6
[Click here for an introduction by Jim Buckner]
[Start with the introduction to the series.]
“What in de hell happened to you?” Angelo pulled Chancho over the collar while Chloe knocked off cakes of coal dust and blood. “You look a like you ran into a swarm of meat-eating moths.”
Chancho shook his head at the sorry state of his serape. “No amount of thread will fix this.”
Angelo looked back and forth between the two of them. “Any of that blood belong to you?”
The air smelled like snow and smoke. “Not much.” Chancho gazed skyward. He blinked repeatedly. In comparison to the pitch black, even the gray seemed brilliant.
“In that case, tell ole Angel you brought some a that dynamite up with you. I could only pack two sticks.”
Chancho smiled as Chloe rolled her eyes at him. “Uno mass, mi amigo.” He pulled the stick from his pocket and tossed it to Angelo, who was frowning.
“I suppose three makes a good bundle. Just in case.”
Chancho puffed his chest and took a moment to scan their surroundings. Tendrils of black smoke rose gently from the far side of town. Perhaps the children were lighting their evening fires early to stave off the cold. A glint from the direction of New York Hill caught his attention, but he couldn’t locate it again. To be safe, he motioned them toward a supply shed that shielded them from the hill. “Oh, did I mention I found the black book?” He pulled it from his belt.
“What?” Chloe shot him a glare. “How?”
“That’s the crazy part. Yellow Eyes, she gave it to me.”
Chloe’s jaw dropped. Chancho handed her the book, and she turned it over in her hands, speechless.
Angelo nudged him. “Did you see Serge? Is he alive?”
“Si. He’s alive, but changed.” Chancho struggled with how to perceive the twitchers. They did not seem ill or dying to him anymore. Neither did they appear mindless or possessed. The thought troubled him deeply.
Angelo wrung his hat in his hands. “So the infected, they do not die?”
“I don’t know, mi amigo. Not all of them.” He swallowed. Not long ago, his native friends would have been seen as mindless savages. He couldn’t shake the feeling the twitchers might not be so different.
Chloe added, “They would have killed us. Serge and the woman saved us. It was horrible—two against a hundred.” She had untied the leather straps on the book and scanned the first pages. “They wanted us to have this.” She handed it back to Chancho.
“They chose us to know the truth.” Chancho flipped to the very last page with writing. The script had degenerated severely but was still legible. A single formula had been repeated over and over. He flipped the pages in reverse. The same formula covered the last three. He held it out for the others to see. “It’s a cure, or a remedy. At least this,” he flipped back to the front in search of the scientist’s name, “Miss Sanders seems to think so. I recognize part of it from my own study.” Chancho laughed, “Increíble.”
“What is it?”
He poked a finger through a hole in his hemp shirt. “If I’m not mistaken, a cannabinoid.”
Angelo frowned. “In English, Motorcycle, or Latin at least.”
“That is Latin, my Italian friend. I believe the plant would be called Cannabis sativa.” He was now certain this Gayle Sanders was related to his Kickapoo friends. How else could she have known?
The wind whipped through the ragged holes of his serape, chilling the skin beneath his sweat-soaked shirt. Chloe shivered. “Come.” He tied the book shut and put it back in his belt. “There’ll be time to look at this later. We still need to get back across the fence before dark.”
McCutchen feared he could not contain his rage. The last thing he needed was a full-blown seizure. His right hand trembled, preventing him from properly folding the letters. He weighed them down with a rock, leaned against the tree, and closed his eyes. The right one twitched erratically.
His breathing grew strained. He labored to draw long, steady breaths. Slowly he reached inside his duster and pulled out the rusty tin he kept there. He popped it open, took out a single marihuana cigarette, and laid it in his lap. He needed the full range of rhythm of his habit to occupy his mind and body.
Returning the tin, he took his lighter and lit the cigarette dangling from his lips. He’d gone two days without medicating. His injuries, compiled with his anger and grief, now necessitated it. He exhaled the initial long drag and pulling in another. The calming effects were immediate.
His twitching muscles relaxed. After a few minutes, the pain in his shoulder improved, or at least he didn’t mind it so much. As the marihuana ran its course, McCutchen allowed his mind to return to the letter he’d just read—almost certainly the last thing Doc ever wrote.
He loved the old man like a father, and understood him better than his own dad. His sense of loss was real. If Doc had survived, he would have returned. He would have left another note if at all possible. A chance remained that he simply hadn’t been able. But McCutchen knew for a fact Vezzoni had been alive the previous evening. He gritted his teeth before taking another puff.
Doc would have either killed him or died trying. And Abby. Little Abby. McCutchen’s eyes were burning. It was too much to think about.
He smoked the cigarette down to a stub and snuffed it in the dirt. Focus on the facts. He struggled with all the pieces, his head spinning due to the marihuana’s narcotic effect and his recent blood loss. Grateful he hadn’t replenished his canteens in Thurber, he drained what was left of his water. The water.
His father had been killed by a neurotoxin in the water. Texas Pride Energy knew and didn’t do anything about it. Someone above the Company, probably the same someone pulling his and Lipscomb’s strings, wanted to fabricate the toxin—use it to spread the twitch intentionally. The logbook would tell them how.
To top it all off, he’d been manipulated. They had used him to clean up their mess. Well, it was time he made a new one.
Under better circumstances he would have taken the logbook by force from whoever came up with it. But as much as he hated to admit it, this time he and Chancho Villarreal were on the same side. The Mexican was the only player who wasn’t compromised. He would be the easiest to deal with, and only McCutchen knew his political partner was planning to sell him out.
McCutchen carefully placed the family memory box back under the stone that had concealed it for decades. Leaving out the note written to himself, he bundled Doc’s letters in their leather envelope and tucked it into his saddle bags. He folded and placed the scrap in his marihuana tin. He figured he’d been unconscious for around an hour, making it early afternoon.
With a grunt, he swung himself into the saddle and gave Chester the heading. Hopefully he could make it back to Thurber in time to meet Chancho inside the fence. At the very least, Nanette would know if the logbook turned up and who left with it.
Remembering Nanette forced a bitter laugh. The twitch wasn’t a plague or a curse after all. It was a chemical weapon that could cause a population to destroy itself. It was time-released death. But McCutchen knew death found every man, unless he found death first. That was exactly what he planned to do.
Starr dismounted his donkey on the back side of New York Hill, more than happy to feel his boots on solid ground. During the last few years in Austin he’d lost his cowboy legs. Besides, rodeo cowboys were different from ranch hands. As much as he enjoyed a good ride, he still considered his legs a major mode of transportation.
As such, he wasn’t happy about the seeping wound that troubled his every step. He’d found the bullet. Only a fragment of the ricochet had struck him. After cleaning the wound and bandaging it the best he could, he figured he’d be good to go for at least another twenty-four hours. But there was nothing he could do about the throbbing.
As he crested the hill, Vezzoni’s men replaced the bullet wound as his number one concern. TPE had reclaimed New York Hill, this time in greater numbers. A half dozen Model Ts were parked in a dirt lot behind the brick bungalow he and the gang had holed up in the night before.
He drummed his fingers along the scar across his cheek. Sneaking around seemed a bad idea. He had no way of knowing the location of Vezzoni’s men, and they were no doubt waiting for an opportunity to perforate the folk who jumped them the night before.
Starr needed to get to Chancho first. To do that he needed to cross the fence, which was apparently being closely watched by Vezzoni and crew. That meant he had to convince either a group of goons with misguided loyalties, or Vezzoni himself, that among other things, he hadn’t been the one pulling the trigger the night before. This should be fun.
The wound in his leg represented the first time he’d been shot. He didn’t want there to be a second. Remaining in the open, Starr hobbled to the backdoor of the bungalow and knocked.
The kitchen window flew open. The barrel of a shotgun protruded from it and pointed straight at his head. He calmly held up his hands. “You got me. Now invite me in.”
The door opened. Lorenzo Vezzoni’s broad shoulders spanned nearly its entire breadth. “Senator James Starr.” He smiled while looking Starr over. “I appreciate tenacity in my elected officials, but this…” he puffed his cigar, “is over the top, even for you.”
Starr gave him his best twinkle. “I’m sure it doesn’t surprise you, but I’m actually not here to survey my constituents. Now are you going to invite me in so we can talk?”
Vezzoni didn’t budge. “Looks like a nasty snake bite you got there.” He nodded toward Starr’s leg while tipping ash from his cigar. “Too bad snakes been dormant for the last couple months.”
“Yeah, funny. It felt more like a bullet than a snake when it happened.”
Vezzoni narrowed his eyes.
“So you don’t even want your phony journal back?” Starr shrugged and feigned turning to go. The hammers cocked on the double barrel shotgun pointed at his head. He stopped.
“It so happens I have some political opinions I would like to discuss with you. Step inside my office, won’t you, Senator.” Vezzoni ushered Starr inside where they sat at the kitchen table. He dismissed the goon with the gun and offered Starr a glass of water. He wore an odd smirk on his heavily and freshly scarred face.
Starr noticed no one else had been drinking, so he declined. “As a sign of my good faith, here’s your journal.” He pulled his jacket back slowly, ensuring Vezzoni would see the pistol at his side as well as the journal. He tugged the book from his belt and slid it across the table. “As for my snake bite, your men shot me. Not the other way around.”
Vezzoni sat his cigar in the ash tray. “Just because you didn’t pull the trigger—”
“It wasn’t us. Hell, we were asleep when the shooting started.” Starr gestured toward the bedroom. “I didn’t make the bed. I hope that’s alright.” Briefly, he wondered where the other goons were lying low.
“Then who?” Vezzoni picked up the journal. He gave it the once over while keeping an eye on the senator.
Starr shrugged. “Competitors. We aren’t the only ones looking for the black book.”
The mountainous superintendent set the journal on the table and took up his cigar. He puffed it and blew three smoke rings, one inside the other. “What do you want, little man?”
Starr put on a show of wincing at the remark. No doubt Vezzoni had recognized the .38 caliber Tri-Star as the same pistol recently issued to him and his top men. The gun served as a calling card. Starr knew there couldn’t be more than a few dozen in use, and those were restricted to a tight circle—only those loyal to the benefactors. Or in this case, Starr had convinced them of his loyalty. “I do you a favor, and this is how you treat me?”
“A favor?” Vezzoni snarled and the scarred tissue on the side of his face buckled unevenly. “Is that what you call returning something you stole?”
“Slow down, spaghetti-bender.”
Vezzoni pounded the table, eyes sparking with threat.
Starr ignored it. “First off, I protected your journal from wondering eyes. Secondly, I didn’t take getting shot personal, like some folk around here.” Vezzoni cracked the slightest of smiles, and Starr knew he had him. “Lastly, all I want is to fetch you your precious black book,” he raised a brow and nodded toward the fenced section of Thurber, “from where you don’t dare look for it.”
Vezzoni stood. He had questions he wanted to ask, but they both knew asking them would appear weak. In matters like this each party was always bent on gathering information without giving any away.
This was right up Starr’s wheelhouse. He had demonstrated it would be risky for Vezzoni to kill him. People above both their pay grades might not like it. And Starr was willing to bet the black book had been the bane of the superintendent’s existence for several weeks. All he needed was clearance to go in and get it, if it was to be got. “We know the same people.” He put his elbows on the table. “We’re on the same side.”
“Who else is in my town?” Vezzoni faced him. “I know you came with Angel Tucci. Everyone knows about his damn grappa-running donkeys. But there are two others.”
Starr ran his finger along the scar on his cheek. Good, he’s conceding I can go. “The Motorcycle Mexican and his girl.”
Vezzoni puffed heavily on his cigar before leaning on the table and placing it back in the tray. “So, it really was a political visit.”
Starr shrugged. “Word’s getting out about your little quarantine here. We received a letter from a concerned citizen.”
Vezzoni growled.
“No worries, she’s dead now. Turned violently crazy from some terrible disease making the rounds and got herself shot. But let me assure you, she didn’t have any love for you or TPE.”
Vezzoni slammed his fist on the table and snarled. From only inches away, the wounds covering half of the boss’s face danced like tiny worms beneath the skin’s surface. “She told you about the book? Phebe Marcon?”
Starr didn’t budge.
“Get out.” The gun-wielding goon reappeared in the kitchen door.
Starr held up his hands. “All I’m asking is a chance to determine whether my compadre has recovered the book.”
“And if he has?” Vezzoni flung the table against the kitchen wall.
Starr still sat in his chair, elbows floating in midair, the situation on the brink of collapse. “I will recover it from him.”
“And if he had the book, why wouldn’t I simply wait for him to cross the fence and pry it out of his dead fingers?”
Starr shook his head and tutted. “You really don’t know the Motorcycle Mexican if you think he’s simply going to climb over the fence and get dead. My guess is he’s already rigged a train car with explosives.”
Vezzoni looked as if he might take a swing. Starr instinctively pushed his chair back, then realized the movement looked ridiculous without a table to accompany it. At least the gesture succeeded in defusing the moment. “Don’t forget about the third party who’s been shooting up the place. We both know recovering the book inside the fence is the safest play, and I’m your best bet.”
Vezzoni cracked his knuckles and dismissed the goon with a nod of his head. “It’s already been decided. We burn the town before sundown, along with everything in it.”
“So that’s it? You’re gonna go Biblical on the whole scene, including the book?” Starr finally stood. The scenario was escalating beyond what he’d anticipated. Chancho could be naive, but Starr only wanted the book, not to kill everyone else involved. “Look, I don’t care about the little play you’re staging here in Thurber. If that book contains the information everyone thinks it does, we need to recover it. The rest is no concern of mine. Accidents happen. Mining towns burn.”
Vezzoni opened the door and smiled. “As will you, if you don’t make it back out by 5:30pm.”
Angelo and Chloe stopped in the middle of the tracks. Chancho, who had been eyeing the plumes of smoke, bumped into them.
“Que paso?” He stepped aside to see their mascot standing in the middle of the tracks fifty yards ahead. The boy blocked their path northward through downtown and eventually to the cemetery. He stared at them motionlessly for several seconds before pointing at the back of the firehouse.
Chancho followed the boy’s outstretched arm until he froze in shock at what he saw. The rinche. One hand in the air, the other in a sling, the ex-Ranger leaned against the building casually, like he’d been waiting for a train.
Chancho clutched his pistol beneath his serape, but he still hadn’t reloaded it. The only thing he could imagine more horrible than drawing on the rinche would be using an unloaded weapon. Instead he reached out to still Chloe, who’d already fetched her knife from her boot.
“Whoa there, missy. I’m no threat to you or your friends.” The rinche continued to hold his hand up.
Chancho stepped toward him. “It was you at the stone house, and on New York Hill. But why?”
“That’s a short question with a long answer. Right now there ain’t time for it.”
In a blur of motion Angelo drew his pistol and charged the rinche.
“Angel, wait!” Chloe jumped at him. Chancho and the man in black didn’t break eye contact.
“You kill my brother!”
“It wasn’t your brother.” The rinche shook his head, his hand still in the air. “Not anymore.”
Angelo stood thirty feet away, aiming his .38 straight at the rinche’s head. All the while Chancho hoped the man in black couldn’t see him loading his .38 beneath the dangling scraps of his serape.
“The twitch claimed my father. This thing can be stopped, but trust me or not, there’s no coming back.”
Angelo stamped the ground and shook with rage. “He was my brother!”
The rinche turned to look Angelo in the eye. He wore a snarl on his face. “He was my father, but the damn twitch and those who’ve unleashed it didn’t give me a choice.” He pointed with his chin. “As I was saying, we don’t have much time. Those plumes of smoke aren’t like last night. Vezzoni’s men have set the town on fire.”
With the mention of Vezzoni, Angelo spat and swore in Italian. “I will kill ‘em.”
“Not if I kill him first.” The man in black took a step forward, his good hand still in the air. “I know you don’t trust me, Villarreal, and you’ve got no reason to.” Slowly, he shifted his hand to scratch his forehead beneath the brim of his hat. The slight movement made Chancho nervous. He was only one chamber away from fully reloading his pistol. Everything always came back to the rinche, the one man continually standing in the way.
The rinche continued, “Oddly enough, I’ve come to trust you.” He removed his hat and stared deep into Chancho’s soul. “I’ve seen it up close, like you have. We both want the same thing—to stop it.”
When had they ever wanted the same thing? Chancho wanted to stop the senseless murder of innocent people. Yellow Eyes had given him the journal. With the rinche out of the way, he could protect his own. He could save the children and save the sick. Rinche be damned.
The ex-Ranger kept talking. “Like you, I know there is a logbook that can help.”
Chancho jerked at the mention of the book. He glanced toward Chloe and Angelo.
“Good, you’ve found it.” The rinche continued more urgently, “I’m not going to take it. But there are those who would, Vezzoni for one. So we—”
“Chancho,” Chloe interrupted. “I think somebody wants your attention.”
Waving his arms, the boy indicated for them to follow. He addressed Chloe directly. “We want to go.” He pointed toward the fires, now glowing red over the tops of the wooden structures, and then toward the top of New York Hill. “Go now.”
Chancho watched the boy through his peripheral vision, never completely taking his eyes off the rinche. A tiny flake of snow drifted between the two men. Chancho thought it first to be falling ash. Then numerous others, fat with water, filled the sky.
Angelo’s arm had begun to waver, his pistol slowly lowering. Chancho disguised his movements as a response to Chloe. Redirecting at the last minute, he snatched Angelo’s pistol, raised his own, and advanced on the rinche, double-fisted. “Why are you telling me this? Why are you here?” Anger betrayed his steadiness, but from twenty-five feet and closing even Chancho couldn’t miss.
“If I wanted to take the book, I would have killed you and taken it.”
Chancho ceased his advance fifteen feet shy of the man in black, who was busy shifting his Stetson to shield his face against the snow. From here he could put two bullets in him while there was still time to escape the burning town. “Then what do you want?” He snugged his index fingers against the triggers.
“Texas needs both you and that book. I intend to make sure the pair stays together.” He strode two steps closer. “Listen, I’ve been shot once today over information already, information powerful people didn’t want me to know. What you’re holding is so valuable even your partner is going to try to take it.”
“Starr? Why would—”
“Chancho,” Chloe put a hand on his shoulder.
He flinched and let up on the triggers. He had been a hairsbreadth away from dropping the double-action hammers. “Chloe, get back.”
“We have to go now, for the children.”
“I’ll find a way.”
She placed her second hand on his other shoulder and leaned in close to his ear, “Maybe this is the way.”
Angelo joined in, “The fire will not wait for this reunion to run its course. Signora O’Brien is right. I am sure there are plenty of de sick and infirm around to keep de Angel of Death busy.” He spat.
Chancho kept both pistols aimed at the rinche’s chest while slowly retreating toward the tracks. “I can’t believe you.” Across the increased distance, the heavily falling snow obscured the outline of the man in black. “Don’t follow us.”
“Wait, please. This is too damned important.” The rinche took several steps closer. “I tracked your partner this morning. He didn’t ride to Gordon. He met a man instead, the same man who tried to kill me a few hours ago. This man works for the same people who’ve managed to cover all this up for so long. The same people that deceived me into helping them. They want the book so they can turn the twitch into a weapon. It’s not a disease, it’s a poison.”
The words struck chords in Chancho of both horror and revelation at once. The humility in the rinche’s tone rang true. And the pieces fit. Starr was ambitious, and indeed the twitch didn’t seem like any illness he could fathom. That meant the formula in the book could be an antidote, and even the twitchers could be saved.
Chloe whispered into his ear. “I believe him. Either way, we can’t afford another fight. There’s no time.”
“I can help,” the rinche continued. “I have a gun watching the perimeter fence. She’ll keep the cemetery section clear, but we have to go now.”
Chancho’s mind raced. “No. I’m not leaving without the children.”
“The children? Who, that kid?” The rinche nodded toward the boy. “He can come with us.”
Chloe interrupted, “There are others.”
The rinche shook his head. “It’s too late. They’ve lived here the whole time.”
“It’s never too late,” Chancho demanded. “How can a man ask someone from whom he stole a livelihood to trust him one second and say it’s too late to trust someone else the next?”
The rinche swore. “I’m coming with.”
Chancho ground his teeth. Maybe Chloe was right. In the past he’d been a burden on those closest to him, but he could not survive as an island either. After all, God was mysterious. Maybe this was the way. In the absence of another option, Chancho nodded. “Lead the way. We’re stopping downtown first.”
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!