Muerte Con Carne (23 page)

“¡Dios mio!” Mamá clawed at Cristobal’s leg when he reached her, and he bent down, scooped her up and held her, his eyes never leaving Alma’s body, his mouth opening and closing, head shaking.

“N-no…no…”He reached out a hand, but was too far away to touch her.

It looked like a purple bubble was being blown from between Alma’s legs. It spread her legs slightly as it began to ooze out, little by little.

Marta backed up toward the door, hauling Rogelio along with her. Carlos’s body dragged from behind, his face sliding across the floor and squeaking.

Francisca. I can’t leave her here. Fuck!

Marta nearly did exactly that. She took a long look at the woman, was justifying leaving her there for now, getting help, sending them back to get her. But she knew if she left this woman here she was as good as dead.

The padlock hung between Francisca’s wrists.

A sharp pain in Marta’s stomach. She yelped, pulled Rogelio away from her. The tip of her blade popped through another point in his skin, and he grunted but still didn’t cry out.

The needle protruded from her belly, just above the belly button. A fat red tear drop bulged out, and Marta reached down, yanked it out, shoved Rogelio to the floor and pressed her foot down hard against the back of his neck. The boy landed on top of Carlos, and his face was pressed into the back of the dead boy’s head.

Marta clamped the knife in her teeth as she fumbled with the keys. Her hand shook as she tried the first key. No fit. The second. No fit.

“Shit!”

She glanced back up at Alma and gasped. The keys nearly slipped from her fingertips. Her foot let up on Rogelio for a second, and he tried to slide out, but she stomped back down and held him there.

The baby was halfway out now, from its head to the top of its stomach dangling out of its mother. It was slimy, covered in a white goo, and its head and arms hung limp, face pinched and frozen in a twisted grimace as if the first and last seconds of its life were engulfed in pain.

Cristobal and Mamá watched without making any more sounds. They held each other and stared as if watching a family slideshow.

The next key Marta tried slid in and turned. Francisca’s hands fell free, and Marta worked as fast as she could to unwrap the chains, both of her hands now mangled and nearly useless. Francisca’s head slumped over, but she caught it right before it smacked the edge of the table.

“Francisca, let’s go.
Come on!
” Marta leaned down and pulled Rogelio to his feet by the back of his collar. The boy fought for a second until the knife was placed back to his throat. Marta felt no remorse for the little bastard.

Francisca turned in her chair, eyes landing on Carlos. “Mijo,” she said, and smiled. She bent at the knees, ran the back of her fingers over her son’s cheek.

“We need to leave. We need to leave right now.” Marta grabbed Francisca with the crook of her elbow to avoid using her injured hand, then quickly replaced it over Rogelio’s chest when Francisca rose to her feet, carrying her son in her arms as if he were merely asleep.

Marta still backed away, unable to turn her back on the family. She was aware that Gustavo was nowhere to be found, but she couldn’t worry about that right now. As long as she made it to the truck, she would be okay. She would escape.

The baby began to ooze out quicker once it got past its hips, and it dropped out of its mother’s womb. It was in free fall for about a second before the umbilical cord went taught and caught it. The fetus bounced back up as if bungee jumping, its juices flinging to the floor in a translucent shower.

Marta gagged, then finally turned and started to run out the door.

But ran into someone. Something hard hit her in the chest and she screamed, sliced the air in front of her with the knife.

“Marta? Marta…it’s me.”

Her heart stopped, breath catching in her throat. “F-felix?”

***

Cristobal peeled Mamá's hands from his shirt and stepped toward the child. His child. A boy. He could have had a son. Alma’s body still swayed ever so slightly, her face now a light purple color. Cristobal nearly slipped on the fluid when he stepped beneath her, cupped the baby’s head in his hands. So light, so soft despite the slime coating its skin.

“Marta? Marta it’s me.”

Cristobal furrowed his brow, kissed the baby on the forehead before turning toward the unrecognizable voice.

“F-felix?”

Marta,
his
woman, stood in the doorway with a knife to Rogelio’s throat. A man stood on the porch. Shotgun in his hands, pointed into the living room. Pointed at Mamá.

I know this man
, Cristobal thought.

Marta pleaded with the man, shoved him backward and out of the house. Rogelio had his eyes locked onto Cristobal’s, begging him for help without saying a word. Francisca held her son in her arms and followed them out, giggling and speaking in baby-talk to the small corpse.

“Páralos,” Mamá said. “Trae la carne otra vez.”

Cristobal watched as they fled toward a blue car parked behind his pickup. Then he dashed toward the kitchen, pulled two long knives from Gustavo’s knife belt.

“I’ll get them, Mamá. I won’t let them hurt our family anymore.”

“Ándale, mijo.” The sadness in Mamá's face had hardened. The wrinkles looked deep and black as she lowered her eyes and glared at the escaping pigs.

Cristobal stormed toward the door, arms spread wide, knives shining blue with moonlight.

When the crying began, Cristobal thought it was a ghost. Alma and the baby are haunting him, and would haunt him for the rest of his life. He knew he deserved worse, but it didn’t stop the cold clawed fingers of fear from scraping across the flesh of his back.

“¡Ay Dios mio!” Mamá cried.

Cristobal swallowed the dread filling his throat. Turned to face the constant wailing.

The baby thrashed its arms and legs, mouth spread wide in a shrill bawl. Its purple skin glistened with the fresh juice of its deceased mother swinging above it.

Cristobal wondered if the death could hurt it. The death being fed to it from Alma through the umbilical cord.
I have to cut it free. My son…my son is alive!

Something stung him in the back. Pulled out. Entered him again. His breath hissed from his lips as he fell to his knees, tried to reach around but couldn’t pull the splinter out. His face slapped the floor and he saw Mamá scowling, hurrying toward the kitchen.

Something heavy landed on his back, and he finally found his voice to scream, but it gurgled out and a light spray of blood misted the floor beneath his face.

He was vaguely aware of shouting voices behind him but he couldn’t understand what they were saying. The baby continued to cry, hanging upside down and wiggling like a fish with a hook snagged in its tail.

Then Mamá was back, holding something. She swung it. The weight on his back was gone.

Then there was an explosion, so loud it muted the baby’s scream. A high-pitched squeal entered Cristobal’s head and mixed with the beating of his temples.

***

Felix heard the cry when they were only a few more strides from the Taurus. His entire body shook, and his thoughts thrashed around in his head like injured snakes. He never thought he’d see Marta again. Thought that when he got to this place, she would be dead already. So just seeing her, touching her, was like a dream, and he couldn’t get his head together.

When he had seen the baby hanging from the dead woman’s birth canal, the dream became a living nightmare. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing, didn’t want to believe it. All he wanted to do now was run, take Marta and just run away and never look back.

But the cry. Marta heard it too because her head whipped around and she gasped.

The man stood in the doorway, a long knife protruding from each of his fists as he stared at them from across the yard. But the baby’s crying caught his attention, and he had his head turned, body visibly shaking even from their distance.

Marta’s knife lowered from the little Mexican boy’s throat, and with a quickness, he shot off toward the side of the house. The blade slid across his cheek before he escaped, but it did nothing to slow him. The little boy in the Mexican woman’s arms flew from her grasp, hit the dirt with a solid thud before being dragged behind the retreating boy. Felix thought the weight of the body should have slowed the kid down some, but he ran until they were both out of sight. Marta tried to make chase, but Felix caught her by the waist, pulled her back.

“Forget it, let’s just get the fuck out of here.”

“You don’t know…you d-don’t know what that little… Fuck!”

Felix popped the passenger door open, checked the house to make sure the man wasn’t sprinting toward them. But he still stood at the threshold, knives now lowered.

“Francisca!” Marta screamed.

Felix thought the woman was chasing the corpse of her son being dragged across the dry earth, but instead she sprinted toward the house.

“The knife,” Marta said. “She took the knife.”

Francisca held the knife over her head with both hands as she reached the front porch, drove the blade into the man’s back who was now turned toward the interior of the home, staring at the baby. The man fell forward and the woman fell on top of him, pulled the knife out and jammed it back in.

“Holy shit,” Felix said, then grabbed Marta by the arm and tried to usher her into the car.

“No…we can’t just leave her. We can’t!”

And Marta wiggled free of Felix’s hand and jogged toward the house.

“Goddamn it. Marta!” But he was already following her, shotgun swinging in front of him. “Marta, hold on a second!”

A pool of blood widened from under the man’s body, and he held his head up off the floor, but just barely. His hand stretched for his back, but he couldn’t reach, and Francisca just kept stabbing. The sound coming out of her reminded Felix of the wild dog that had attacked him.

“Francisca, please,” Marta said and grabbed the woman’s shoulder. “You have to come with us. Let’s get the fuck out of this place.”

Francisca buried the blade one more time, left it sticking out of the middle of the man’s back, turned and locked eyes with Marta. Francisca’s eyes and teeth shone white through the dark red splattered over her face. Her expression contorted, and at first Felix though the crazed woman was going to attack Marta, but then the tears flowed and her mouth arched and she sobbed.

Felix didn’t see the old woman until she was already swinging the knife. It stuck into the side of Francisca’s neck, and the old woman quickly pulled it out and stuck it back in, a forward thrust into Francisca’s throat.

A hoarse scream tore from his throat and the shotgun spat fire at the same time. The old woman sailed through the air before landing hard on her back. The blast hit her in the chest, blew her wide open. Her hands were curled into brown claws at her sides, legs flat and spread wide.

The baby’s cries intensified then, sliced through the air like tiny razor shards.

Francisca fell sideways into Marta, fingering the spot where the blade had penetrated her throat. Marta tried to hold the woman up, and it was then that he saw Marta’s hands for the first time. Dark red and torn to ribbons, fingers crooked and angled in painful directions.

Francisca choked, gurgled in Marta’s lap. Her feet shook, clomped against the porch before slowly coming to a stop.

Marta lowered her head, her fingers threaded with Francisca’s hair, and burst into tears.

“Oh god, Felix. Oh…oh god…”

“Let’s go. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

The baby screamed. Felix couldn’t look at it, so he concentrated on Marta’s face. He refused to look into the house where the purple fetus bellowed as it hung from its dead mother and the old woman lay in a growing pool of her own blood.

“…Ma-Mamá…Mamá…?” The man from the taco trailer writhed, crawled slowly across the floor, slipping in his blood and sputtering red from his lips.

Felix stepped forward, used his boot to roll the man over onto his back. The knife handle hit the floor and propped him up like a kick stand.

The taco man moaned and choked. His quivering eyes landed on Felix who had the shotgun aimed at the middle of his face.

“Looks like you stuck your nose where it didn’t belong, didn’t you, motherfucker?” Felix couldn’t help but smile as he stared down at the helpless sack of shit beneath him.

The man grimaced, bared his golden tooth and growled. Blood bubbled at the back of his throat, and despite his condition, he reached for Felix.

The shotgun blew the man’s face to the back of his head. Blood, brain, and skull fragments exploded and splattered across the floor.

Marta screamed. The baby bawled.

Felix’s ears rang. He had the urge to shoot the man again, keep shooting him until his body was nothing but a pile of meat on the porch.

He blinked the thoughts away, ran a hand over his face. “Marta, let’s leave. We need to get moving…now!”

Marta let Felix pull her to her feet, and then they were both running toward the car. The baby’s cries chased them, blasted into the black sky.

“Gustavo,” Marta said. “I don’t know where he is.”

“What? Marta, we don’t have time for anyone else. We have to-”

“No, he’s the oldest. He…” Marta quickened her pace as she surveyed their surroundings, her head spinning from side to side even after she was in the car with a locked door separating her from the night.

Felix slammed his door shut, locked it, started the car.

“Hurry hurry. Go go go!” Marta slapped the dashboard, checked the mirrors.

Felix cut the wheel to the right and circled the car around, scraping the left side of the front bumper against the pickup. The full moon was straight ahead, looked like it was sitting on top of the dirt road. Felix slammed his foot on the gas and sped toward it.

“Are you okay?” Felix reached across to touch her leg, but she recoiled, covered her face with both hands. When Felix saw the ring on her finger, his ring, he wanted nothing more than to hold her, kiss her, let her know that nobody would ever hurt her again. “Marta…I’m so sorry. I didn’t…it’s my fault, and-”