Erik Handy by Hell of the Dead

place nearly twenty-five years ago. The bartender looked around at it.
    The walls were dirty now, but they weren't much cleaner back then. He couldn't remember what color they used to be. The bar was the original one and it looked like it. He chuckled at all the beer that was spilled there over the years. All the people who used to come in, but didn't any more because they had moved on in one way or another. He was the only oldtimer left. That didn't bother him because it didn't matter. His brain moved back to the present troubles.
    He wasn't worried like some were. Yes, those outsiders were a threat, but so far the town was left alone. It was often times a beneficial relationship because those loonies would shop and drink and fuck in the town. And they paid with money, not promises. So let them do whatever they want as long as the cash kept coming and they left their depravities out.
    But they didn't leave the town alone.
    He allowed a shiver to run wild throughout his body.
    The grocer. His pregnant wife.
    The bartender overheard the constable tell someone that her head was cut off. It looked like a machete did it. He couldn't remember what the grocer looked like.
    The bartender tired of thinking. He believed thinking never resulted in anything good. So he stopped and finished his early morning beer.
     

Chapter 41
    She woke up where her last john left her. On her back. In bed. She thought he was still on top of her, but it was just the weight of the blanket in her half-sleep. She got the blanket from an open-air vendor in the city quite some time ago. She never bothered to wash it. She thought it had lice in it. She thought she had lice, but then again she always itched.
    Especially lately.
    It just wasn't the constant appearances of the limp dick constable or the men who came in from the jungle that made her skin and other parts crawl. No. This had been going on for a few weeks now. The itch she couldn't scratch. The burn when she peed or shat.
    She rolled over on her side. Something squished between her legs.
    She considered that she probably passed whatever she had to several men already. She was sure the constable would be suffering soon if not already. Good.
    A bottle bluntly crashed to the floor in the bar downstairs.
    He already started, she thought. Oh well. I'll be starting any minute now. Not that drinking numbs anymore.
    Unlike the bartender, she didn't let her restless mind wander to the town or her somber situation. No, she wasn't in this bed, in this bar, town, or this country. She was in America. In a nice city. Not like the smelly and filthy places in this country. No, a real, bold city. She would have an apartment where she'd have a TV and a hot shower. She'd have clean clothes. Nice clothes. She'd work in a store. She thought she'd like to sell nice things to nice people. People she wouldn't have to fuck. She'd never fuck again until she found the man of her dreams. But she couldn't dream that big so she didn't know what he'd look like. She'd change her name to something American like Marci or Kim. She looked forward to air conditioning.
    The fantasy played itself through like it did a thousand times before, leaving her with her reality.
    Sleep had completely left her and she'd be back in bed soon enough. She got up and went downstairs.
    ***
    The stairs numbered fourteen. She counted each one. When she reached the bottom, she looked through the doorway at the bar proper. Her thoughts hit zero and her limbs went numb.
    Someone was holding the bartender's head to the bar top. The someone was a woman, the whore guessed, judging by the one sagging white breast that lazily flopped around. She was white, pale, and her veins poked through her skin as if she was sheathed in dry rubber. The woman ignored her. She was focused on what she was doing to the bartender.
    His face was away from the prostitute, which spared the girl from vomiting at that instant. The pale woman began to punch the old-timer in the side of