The Demon Plagues by David VanDyke Page A

his leg, he
staggered slowly down the street.
    As soon as he rounded the corner he
straightened up and increased his pace, sliding the bottle into his
coat pocket and giving the impression of having someplace to go. A
brisk manner usually kept off the panhandlers, made the pickpockets
think twice, and let the streetwalkers know he wasn’t interested
tonight.
    Ten minutes later, a trio of vatos didn’t get the message. As he crossed a poorly-lit street, two
young men stepped out from an alley, blocking his way.
    He immediately sidled to his left, away from
them and into the middle of the street. He heard a footfall behind
him, and took a long stride forward, a standard move whenever there
was a surprise from behind – get out of reach . He felt
something whistle by his head.
    Skull darted forward toward the nearest of
the two in front, combat knife in his right hand. The man had some
kind of club, dimly seen in the murky darkness of the run-down
neighborhood, and he swung it in an overhand blow that would have
bashed Denham’s head in had he been there. Sidestepping, he reached
out with a flick of his wrist, drawing the blade across the
attacker’s bare right bicep as he spun away. Blood spurted and the
club dropped from nerveless fingers. The man howled, stumbling.
    Turned around and facing the remaining two,
Skull backed up rapidly. There was simply no reason to prolong the
encounter. He could have drawn the revolver but gunshots would
garner unwanted attention. Instead he switched the knife to his
left hand and drew the heavy bottle from inside his jacket, hefting
it in his right. He threw it overhand by the neck as hard as he
could at the nearest man’s head, hearing it thud against his
target. The would-be mugger dropped boneless onto the broken
pavement, the bottle shattering next to him as he fell.
    “ Vete a la mierda ,” he snarled at the
last man, holding his knife aloft to glitter in the moonlight,
spinning it between his fingers. Better not to risk another
exchange of blades; you just never knew when you might get
unlucky.
    The punk decided today was a good day to stay
alive. He stopped following, turning to help his comrades. Skull
backed away for a few steps and then ran far enough to be sure he
had broken contact before slowing to a brisk walk again.
    Twenty minutes later he caught the smell of
the stockyards and meat packing plants. Beeves were brought in on
railroad cattle-cars, disgorging their complaining cargo generally
upwind of the slaughterhouses; the smell tended to upset the
animals. Then they were checked over and given a last day or two
fattening on corn silage to counter the stress of travel before
they were sent through the process that eventually turned them into
steaks for the rich, cheap cuts for the middle class, slimy pink
ground meat for the poor, and kibble for dogs.
    He found the ramshackle converted warehouse
with the flickering XX and Azteca Cerveza signs, the faded
paint reading El Vaquero Feliz – The Happy Cowboy. Cowboys
there were, by the score, the lucky ones that rode in on the trains
to make sure their cattle got to their destinations, as well as
train crew, stockyard hands, butchers and plant workers. Gamblers
swarmed there too, and pimps and whores; places like this ensured
the out-of-towners left some of their hard-earned pay behind, and
gave the locals a place to blow their bonuses.
    A UGNA Security Service truck parked
conspicuously in the capacious lot, and a double squad of
jackbooted troopers roamed the outside of the joint, combining
their law-and-order function with the Mexican Federale tradition of bribery and ‘protection.’ They didn’t go inside the
big building unless things got out of hand; no matter what the law
and the norteamericanos said, business had to be done, in
most places the same old ways. The gringos could hardly keep
their own house in order, much less a police hundred million
Mexicans who didn’t really want them there.
    Perversely, Skull