Blood & Tacos

Issue 3

Fall 2012

Published by Creative Guy Publishing

ISSN 1929-011X

Amazon Kindle Edition

Contents:

- Welcome Back!

- VIPER: Shadow Sisters of Shinjuku

- DOOMSDAY WARRIOR #9: America’s Zero Hour (review)

- THE CHEMISTRATOR: Drug City, U.S.A.

- CANNON FODDER: Cult Action Films of the ’80s (review)

- MAJOR MCCALL AND THE WIFE: Fragged

- COOKING LIKE A TOUGH GUY (article)

- STUDS WINSLOW and the Bitches of the Fifth Reich

- INTERVIEW with JOHNNY and TIME OUT SYDNEY

- BLOOD & SWEETGRASS: This Rez is Mine

Welcome Back!

Welcome back! CGP is very pleased to present another issue of blood and guts, mayhem and … tacos.

Blood & Tacos 3 includes a schwack of fist-pumping fiction from the legendary Stephen Mertz, along with Garnett Elliott, Todd Robinson, Chris La Tray and Rob Kroese. Like you couldn’t have read that on the cover.

We’re also featuring a great article this month on the Cannon studio and four exemplary films from same and reviewing Doomsday Warrior (specifically book 9). Finally, have a look at our new feature, Cooking Like a Tough Guy.

Enjoy!

VIPER: Shadow Sisters of Shinjuku

By Tony Amtrak

(discovered by Garnett Elliott)

Very little is known about the elusive Tony Amtrak—mostly rumors and conjecture and rumored conjecture. Some say he was a former Italian mafioso, now in witness protection. Others claim he was yakuza, now in witness protection. The only detail the rumors share is that he was a criminal of some kind, which may account for the lags between publishing dates for his most famous series, featuring Viper. Luckily he got time off for good behavior. Or he escaped. Or witness protection.

GARNETT ELLIOTT found this 1980 martial arts adventure under the passenger seat of a rental Toyota Corolla in Yuma, Arizona. He also found three .38 shell casings, a catcher’s mask, a Ping-Pong ball, and a woman’s pump, size 6.

Forty stories up, the Big Ginza discotheque cast a glitzy eye over smog-laden Shinjuku skyline. Getting there required a short trip on a private elevator. It also required the doorman’s approval.

He was a former sumotori, squeezed into a white dinner jacket. Thick arms folded, face impassive as an executioner’s, he pronounced judgment on every gaudily dressed, would-be clubber who approached the elevator’s mirrored interior. Those who got the nod stepped inside. Those he declined slunk away, to seek the district’s easier pleasures.

Viper Ogata watched from the lobby as a trio of burly Australians tried their luck. He in the lead had at least six inches on the doorman. Grinning, he attempted to brush past like no one was there. A hand the span of a dinner plate shot out and pressed against his chest.

“Hey now,” the Aussie said in passable Japanese, “that’s not—”

The doorman grunted. Viper stepped aside as two hundred pounds of blond gaijin went hurtling past, to strike a chrome table face first. The foreigner’s buddies hurried to help him up. They shot backward looks at the doorman, who waited with arms crossed like before. Calm as stone.

“Let’s go,” one of the Aussies said. “I know a brothel where they want our business.”

It was Viper’s turn.

He sauntered to the elevator, fishing in his blazer’s pocket for a cigarette. The sumotori shifted a little to the left and blocked him.

“No yakuza.”

“What?” Viper put extra incredulity into his voice. “Who do you think runs this place?”

“The Okajima family, under Boss Tsutomo. And you’re not with them.”

Viper popped the cigarette in his mouth but didn’t light it. “Look, I’m in a hurry. My friend called and said she needs my help. She works up there.” He pointed at the ceiling.

The doorman blinked at him.

“Big trees hate the wind, you know,” Viper said.

“What the hell does that mean?”

He answered with a punch, hands moving so fast the Rolex on his wrist made a golden blur. Two knuckles seemed to brush the fabric just above the doorman’s gut. The big man let out a breath. A look crossed his face like he was pondering some formidable problem. After several seconds of not breathing, his cheeks began to purple.

Viper leaned close. “The Gichin Fist,” he whispered, “first of the Seven Techniques of Ancient Ryukyuan.” He patted the doorman’s shoulder. His hand flashed out to stab the elevator button, and he stepped inside.

The doors shut with a chime. Viper paused to admire the multiple reflections of himself. Slender as a bamboo shoot, but tough like steel wire. He smoothed his tie. Music vibrated from somewhere above; it became deafening when the doors slid open and Donna Summer hit him with a wave of syncopated noise.

Bodies jerked atop the flashing red and yellow squares of Ginza’s dance floor. A spinning mirror-ball cast a thousand diamond fragments. People moved aside for Viper as he headed towards the bar, his eyes wary behind mirrored sunglasses. He refused to take them off, even at night. A young salaryman hurried by holding two beers in tall paper cups. Viper snatched one without resistance. He drained half the contents in a single swallow, nose wrinkling at the malty taste.

“Viper! Over here!”

Mikki waved to him from behind the crowded bar. He threaded his way over. The fat executive on the stool Viper wanted suddenly remembered an urgent appointment. Mikki leaned across the counter to light his cigarette, her western-sized breasts straining against a red sequined top.

“Sachiko’s looking for you,” she said.

“Uh-huh. Where’s she at?”

Mikki gestured towards a far booth, almost lost in the shadows. The angle afforded a nice view of her cleavage. “She’s worried about something.”

“So I gathered.”

“What’s so great about her, anyway? How does she rate a personal visit from Viper Ogata?”

“Sachiko’s an old friend.”

Mikki’s eyelashes lowered. “You making any new friends?”

“Perhaps. Be patient.”

He left his beer on the bar. Sachiko had been working the Shinjuku district for three years, a hardened pro at twenty-two. It took a lot to rattle her. But something had. She sat hunched in the dark booth, hands gripped around a tumbler of amber fluid. The sweep of her long bangs concealed her face.

“Relax,” Viper said, sliding into the cushions across from her. “I’m here. What’s all this nonsense about someone trying to kill you?”

Sachiko didn’t look up. Didn’t speak.

Viper watched the dancers making fools of themselves. “C’mon, Satch. My time’s valuable. What’s going on?”

No reply.

“Satch—” He reached over to brush her hair back. Sachiko grinned out at him in an empty-eyed rictus. A feathered dart, about three inches long, jutted from her neck. Her hair had been covering it.

Viper glanced sidelong at the dance floor. Could her assassin still be here? All he saw were drunken, gyrating idiots. A professional would do the job and leave.

Stray flashes of light from the disco-ball wandered across the table. One passed over Sachiko’s hands, where something gleamed. He lowered his sunglasses. Yes, she was holding a piece of plastic, pressed against the tumbler. He pried her index finger away and removed a white rectangle, the size of a domino. A stylized egret was stamped in gold paint on one side. The number ‘102’ on the other.

Frowning, he slipped the plastic into his blazer pocket.

“Back so soon?” Mikki’s smile drained away when she saw the look on his face.

“Wait twenty minutes and call the cops,” he said. “I was never here.”

Boss Gomyo sat with his gut wedged up against the pachinko machine. One hand worked the lever, sending tiny steel balls through the lighted pins at a steady pace. The other shoved rice crackers into his mouth. Every now and then his new flunky, Shigeda, held a cigarette to Gomyo’s lips for a quick puff.

He played, snacked, and smoked this way for a solid fifteen minutes before making a slight nod in Viper’s direction, indicating he was ready to listen.

Viper cleared his throat. “Boss, I was wondering if you could tell me what this was.” He slid the rectangle from his pocket and presented one side, then the other.

Gomyo’s eyes flicked away from the machine exactly twice. “‘Resplendent Egret Joyous Massage.’ It’s a parlor run by the Okajima clan. That’s a guest pass.”

Viper put the plastic away. “Thanks.”

“You gonna tell me where you got it?”

“Off a dead prostitute in Shinjuku. She was a friend of mine.”

Gomyo pushed himself back from the machine with a grunt. “Observe,” he told Shigeda, and turned to slap Viper so hard his sunglasses flew off and struck an old woman playing three machines down. The woman pretended not to notice. A school of bright stars swam across Viper’s vision.

“That,” Gomyo said, “is what happens to people who trifle with my time. And I like brother Viper, here. He’s my number one enforcer.”

Shigeda sneered. He looked all of eighteen years, wearing an open-collared dress shirt and gold chains. “I don’t see what’s so special about him.”

“Viper spent some time in Okinawa, on the lam. He met an old man there. Didn’t you, Viper?”

“Yes, boss.”

“The old man taught him a few tricks.”

“I was a poor student, boss.”

“Ah. Modesty.” Gomyo returned to his game. “Shigeda, pick up the man’s sunglasses. He gets anxious without them on.”

Shigeda scurried to obey, though his face burned red. Viper grabbed the mirrored shades from his hands.

“Go find your whore’s killer, you soft-hearted moron.” Gomyo’s attention stayed fixed on the cascade of shiny beads. “If you start a war with the Okajima people, I’ll want a whole pinky. Not just the tip.”

Viper bowed and got the hell out of there.

The Resplendent Egret parlor was sandwiched between a ramen shop and a record store the size of a bedroom closet. Viper stepped into a shabby, yet clean front room. Gilt-framed prints of birds hung on the walls.

“Good afternoon, sir.”

The old Korean woman behind the desk nodded when he showed her his pass. She led him down a hallway to a room marked 102.

“An attendant will be with you shortly, sir.”

The room smelled of disinfectant. There was a bench with a slim beige mattress on top, a folding table, and a paper robe hanging off the door. Traditional biwa music strained from overhead speakers.

A depressing place. Viper sat on the edge of the mattress and closed his eyes. He tried to imagine Sachiko working this very room, but the vision wouldn’t come. He recalled instead the first time they screwed, standing up in an alley behind the Amada Club. The alley had smelled like piss, and a family of stray cats kept brushing against his ankles during the act.

The door creaked. His eyes snapped open. A young woman in a cheap pink kimono entered. Her long hair was hennaed brown in the current fashion.

“Please remove your clothing.”

He shrugged off his blazer. “Easy money for you,” he said, pulling a roll of yen from his pocket.

She slipped the front of her robe open without hesitation. A pale nipple peeked out.

“No, no,” he said. “I just want to ask you about someone.”

“You are … police?”

“The furthest thing. Sit down.” He patted a spot next to him on the mattress.

She sat. Her hands, he noticed, glistened with massage oil. “There was a girl working here not long ago. Sachiko. Part Chinese. You remember her?”

The woman shook her head. “I’m very new.”

“What about the other girls? You think they might know?”

“I can ask. You’re the only customer for the moment. The rest of the girls are out back, having a smoke.”

He peeled off several thousand-yen notes. “Show them that.”

She took the money, bowed, and left.

He waited less than three minutes. The door slammed back open and a pair of broad-shouldered, dead-eyed men wearing loud Polynesian shirts burst in. Viper, half-expecting such a welcome, shot off the mattress and kicked the first one in the throat. He bent double, and his partner threw a reverse punch Viper could’ve seen coming through miles of fog. He sidestepped, looped a hand under the man’s armpit. Twisted at the waist. The heavy flew six feet and crashed into the folding table.

Viper ducked out into the hallway. A slender man barreled towards him, tugging an automatic from his linen suit. The sight of the gun caused time to slow. Between heartbeats, Viper flicked the six-inch tanto from his belt and hurled it overhand. The blade seemed to tumble lazily, taking an eternity to bury itself deep in the gunman’s wrist. A jet of bright red sprayed from his ulnar artery and doused the prints along the walls.

“Stop!”

Now a second man was coming down the hallway; tall, with a shaved head and a golden earring dragging at one lobe. Behind him, the old Korean woman and Viper’s would-be masseuse watched with terrified eyes.

“Viper Ogata,” the man said, “I’m Kanbei Kana. Do you recognize me?”

Viper nodded. “Underboss to the Okajima clan.”

Kanbei drew a handkerchief from his pocket and clamped it around the gunman’s spurting wrist. “I suggest we call a truce.”

“Agreed.” Viper glanced into room 102. The thug he had hip-thrown swayed to his feet. Beside him, the first heavy clutched at his neck and breathed with gurgling noises.

“I see you live up to your reputation,” Kanbei said, a note of approval slipping into his voice. “You went through these three like they were bean cakes.”

Viper shrugged. “I doubt if you would’ve been so easy.”

“Who can say? But I’m assuming you didn’t come here to start a brawl.”

“Someone killed my friend. A working girl named Sachiko.”

“Sachiko. Yes.” Kanbei yanked the knife from his underling’s wrist. The man groaned, and pressed the blood-soaked handkerchief tighter. “She was a top earner here at the Egret. A good girl. You and I should speak in private.”

Ignoring the scowls of Kanbei’s men, Viper followed the underboss into a back room. Several chairs were arranged around a battered table, with a teapot in the center. Kanbei poured two cups of pale emerald liquid. He sipped and watched Viper for several moments before speaking.

“Sachiko’s is only one of several recent deaths here in Shinjuku,” he said, his broad face hardening. “All prostitutes. Three of them were with the Okajima clan, but there have been independents killed as well. It’s affecting the girls’ morale.”

Viper tasted his tea. Gyokuro, the finest quality. “Some kind of sex-killer?”

“I understand that’s the usual motive in these cases. But I was able to examine two of the bodies myself, before police arrived. Let me show you what I found.”

He excused himself and returned to the room moments later holding a square of folded cloth. Inside, the wicked shapes of shuriken gleamed.

“Lodged in the girls’ throats,” he said. “Both had been smeared with poison.”

Viper recalled the dart jutting from Sachiko’s neck. “A professional assassin.”

Kanbei nodded. “I thought maybe another yakuza family had been behind the killings, to disrupt business. But your presence here seems to contradict that.”

“Boss Gomyo has no interest in prostitution. He sticks to gambling and loans.”

“Gomyo.” Kanbei made a face. “That fat old carp. Listen, Viper, why don’t you ditch him and work for me? Boss Tsutomo values skilled fighters. Gomyo’s old-fashioned and treats his men like dirt.”

“That may be true, but he’s still my boss.”

“Screw that ‘jingi’ crap. I’ll pay double what he’s giving you.”

Viper set his cup down, hard. “I shared sake with him. What kind of man would I be, if I went back on my oath?”

Kanbei’s eyes narrowed, like he was sizing Viper for a punch. He ran his finger along the bridge of his crooked nose. Gradually, some of the tension left his jaw. “You’re right. Honor has its place. But perhaps in this case we can still work together. Avenge Sachiko’s death and put a stop to these killings.”

“Go on.”

“There’s one establishment in Shinjuku seemingly unscathed by the murders. The Red Pagoda, a love hotel run by a madam named Pinku Serizawa. She’s quite the mystery woman. None of her in-house girls have been touched.”

Pinku Serizawa. The name struck Viper as familiar, but he couldn’t recall details. “What are you proposing?”

“An investigation. You could enter the Pagoda the same way you entered here, posing as a client. Mari could go with you.”

“Mari?”

“The girl you were questioning.”

Viper mused over the idea. “What about the cops? You’ve got a couple on your payroll, surely.”

“They claim to be following all leads. But you know the police. We yakuza are not bound by crippling restrictions.”

“True.”

“I could have several cars full of men surrounding the hotel. At a signal from you, they would come swarming inside.”

Viper drained his tea. “A mixture of deception and overwhelming force. I like this plan. I like your spirit, Kanbei Kana. My only stipulation is this: we act at once.”

They took a taxi from the Resplendent Egret parlor. Mari had changed into a tight-fitting denim skirt, white satin blouse, and knee-high black leather boots. She crouched in the cab’s cramped space next to Viper. The driver had given him a knowing leer when he named his destination.

Traffic slid by, swimming through a haze of rain and smog. Mari leaned her head against the passenger window. “You must’ve really loved this girl,” she said.

“Love?” Viper frowned. “We screwed a lot, in the beginning.”

“But you’re risking your life to avenge her.”

“I considered her a friend.”

“Just a friend?”

He had to think about it. “When we met, we were young and had a sense the world was using us. As time went by there was less physical contact but more … intimacy. It was a strange relationship.”

“You’re a strange man, Viper Ogata.”

“Yes. And now you risk your life for Sachiko’s death, too.”

“I’m not afraid.” She wedged herself tight beside him, nuzzling her soft lips against his neck. “I feel like the safest woman in the world.”

Twenty minutes later they pulled up to the Red Pagoda. Four stories of curving eaves, each smaller than the one below it. Fuchsia neon blurred the raindrops clinging to the cab window. Viper paid the driver and helped Mari out. The rain had stopped, but the air still felt slick, like warm grease. There were several discrete entrances along the ground floor. No windows, he noticed, except at the top. That could make signaling someone outside a problem. He scanned the street, wondering when Kanbei’s backup would arrive.

“Not sure I like the looks of this,” he said.

“C’mon.” Mari tugged his wrist towards an entrance, her expression mischievous.

A wall of colorful lit panels dominated the lobby. Each one depicted a room, decorated in a particular fetishistic theme. There were rooms made up like Osaka bars, rooms done in blue with polyurethane waves crashing above the bed, rooms crammed with pinball machines …

“I want this one. It’s got a horse.” Mari stabbed a button beneath a panel. The panel went dark.

A frosted glass window lit in the adjacent wall. It slid up several inches and a pair of elderly hands reached out, to gesture at a placard hanging alongside. The placard gave hourly and overnight rates.

Viper counted out enough yen for a night’s stay. The hands whisked the money away, to return moments later with a key. Their room was on the second floor.

“Do you have anything with a view?” Viper asked.

The window clicked shut.

Mari hummed a pop song as she nudged him to the elevator. The doors opened before she could hit the button, spilling out a balding executive-type with a slim black woman on either side. The girls were doing their best to hold him upright. He grinned at Viper through a sake haze. “You’ve got to try the Savannah Room,” he said. “Real grass. It sways in the breeze and everything.”

He wobbled off.

The second floor had thick carpeting, lit by ankle-high strips of purple neon. Viper found their room easy enough.

The first thing he noticed was the horse, impaled on a candy cane–striped pole jutting from a round bed with fuzzy pink sheets. Mari clapped her hands together. The horse looked like it had been salvaged from a children’s carousel. A black leather saddle covered with chrome studs hugged its back.

He turned to lock the door. When he turned around again, Mari had shucked out of her blouse, denim skirt, and panties. She still wore the boots, though. She’d found a riding crop from somewhere and smacked the weighted end against her palm.

“What’re you doing?”

“We’re in a love hotel, aren’t we? Don’t tell me we’re just going to watch TV.”

“This is an investigation.”

“Sure it is. Come over here and investigate, already.”

“What the hell.” Viper took off his blazer and unbuttoned the silk shirt underneath. Mari cooed when she saw the rainbow of irezumi tattoos circling his shoulders. He slid the tanto out of his pants. “Can I get a drink, first?”

“You’re going to need it.”

Midway during the performance, she reached up and tried to tug the sunglasses off his face. He pushed her hand back down against the sheets. Gently.

“I’ve never known pleasure on such a scale before.” Perspiration beaded Mari’s pale skin and soaked the bed.

“It was … creative.”

“Where did you acquire such stamina?”

“Martial arts training.” He propped himself up on one elbow to check the time. Two hours had passed. “Tell me what you know about Pinku Serizawa.”

She pouted. “Back to business?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“I’ve only heard a couple things. She’s strict with her girls, but they’re very loyal. And she wears a veil. Some client cut her face when she was first starting out. That’s the rumor, anyway.”

“Do you think she could be the killer?”

“Can’t say.”

Viper massaged his lower back. “I’m not sure how to go about this. Sneak around the building? See if I can get one of Pinku’s girls sent up here?”

Feminine laughter echoed through the room. Startled, Viper whipped his head around. The laughter hadn’t come from Mari.

“Let me save you the trouble, Viper Ogata,” said a woman’s voice. It sounded tinny. “Interesting pillow talk. Good thing I decided to listen in.”

The door to the room made a thudding sound, just before ear-splitting psychedelic rock came crashing in from hidden speakers. Viper felt the bed moving underneath him. It was revolving, and the carousel horse started to bob up and down on its striped pole.

Mari screamed.

He caught a glimpse of movement in his peripheral vision. A bamboo shaft poked from between the vents of an air duct, set near the ceiling. The shaft angled down towards Mari.

He snatched up his tanto and threw it. The blade traveled straight, like an arrow, slipping between the vents. The bamboo sagged, convulsed. A purple-feathered dart struck the horse’s rump and stuck there.

Viper ripped the cover from the air duct, reached up and pulled. A woman’s limp form tumbled out and hit the carpet. She wore dark clothes and a partial face mask. The tanto’s hilt protruded from her left eye socket.

“Kunoichi,” he said, his words lost in the rock music’s din. Mari screamed some more. He cast the blowgun aside and searched the body for further weapons. The shadow warrior had a wakizashi thrust through her sash. Instead of shark hide, the hilt had been wrapped with pink suede. He grimaced, but took the sword anyway.

Mari shouted questions. He motioned her for silence as he pulled on his slacks. The door wouldn’t open; the thudding sound must’ve been magnetic bolts being thrown. He stepped back, spun, and kicked with all his strength. The door flew off its splintered hinges.

He checked the hallway. Empty, for now. He ducked back inside, grabbed Mari’s naked form, and dragged her from the wailing guitars.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” she said, eyes wide.

“Follow me.”

He padded down the hall to the elevator. Trying to escape by the ground floor was too obvious. Likely, there’d be an ambush waiting. Going up seemed the best option. If he could reach the topmost tier, he could try to signal Kanbei’s men through the windows. Provided they were actually outside.

Mari reached for the elevator buttons. He slapped her hand away. “Too easily trapped.” He led her to the stairs. A glance through the fire window showed the stairwell empty. He shouldered the door. His brain whispered an urgent warning and he looked up, in time to see a second kunoichi braced spider-like near the ceiling. She hurled an egg-shaped object at his feet.

He shut his eyes. A searing flash burned red through his lids, and he smelled acrid smoke. Eyes still closed, he activated technique five of the ancient Ryukyuan school: the Ghost and Body Spirit Emulsion. Like a bat navigating darkness, his mind reached out and pinpointed the woman’s ki energy as she leapt down. He thrust up with the wakizashi. There was the sensation of wet resistance, and then a groan. A weight slumped to the floor.

“Come on,” he said, snatching for Mari’s hand. He pulled her through the cloud of yellow smoke and bounded up the steps, two at a time.

They reached the last flight. Viper threw the door open and rolled out into a high-ceilinged chamber with wooden flooring and tatami mats. Plate glass windows let in the last of the evening’s graying light. He sensed subtle shifts in the air before him and whipped his sword up. A shuriken clanged off the blade. He parried three more, swatting them aside with lightning-quick swipes.

“Come out and face me,” he shouted, while motioning with his left hand for Mari to stay put in the stairwell.

A half dozen shapes melted out of the shadows, like phantoms made real. All women. All wearing the same dark clothing and head masks of their assassin caste. As one, they drew blades and closed on Viper from every direction.

His mind drifted back to his training in Okinawa. How the old man would spar with him while they were both knee deep in the freezing ocean. Viper used only his hands, while the master wielded a bo staff of ancient oak. For hours they would weave and feint and block, until Viper’s lips turned a chattering blue and his forearms ached with bruises.

He recalled that training now, his body moving on impulse to the rhythms of a lethal dance, sword flicking out like an extension of his warrior’s soul.

Seconds passed. When it was over, six dead kunoichi lay sprawled at his feet. The wakizashi’s blade felt heavy with gore.

“Impressive.”

A woman floated down from the ceiling. She wore a skin-tight pink bodysuit and pink satin veil. Rhinestones glimmered in a butterfly pattern across her chest. Viper knew this seemingly magical descent was another ninja trick; a coil of fine wire looped over a crossbeam, let out slowly. Still, the effect was uncanny.

Her small feet touched the floor. “I suppose it was only a matter of time before the yakuza showed up.” The veil muffled her voice, but Viper recognized it as the same one that had spoken to him and Mari.

“Pinku Serizawa.” He raised the wakizashi like an accusing finger. “You’re the one behind all the killings.”

She bowed. “Fine deductive work, Viper-san.”

“But why? And why have you trained these women in the Way of the Shadow?”

“Not well enough, it seems.” She glanced at the corpses strewn around Viper. “The murders are strictly business. I want to establish a monopoly on prostitution in Shinjuku, draw all the working girls away from their stupid pimps. The training is for their protection. And mine. I knew filthy men like you would eventually invade my temple, looking for their cut. That is why you’re here, isn’t it?”

Viper shook his head. “You owe me a debt. Of vengeance.”

Pinku’s bitter laughter rang through the chamber. “How ironic. It was my disfigurement, at the hands of yakuza scum, that led me on my personal path of vengeance. I suppose things have turned full circle.”

“For the death of my friend, Sachiko, I claim your life.”

She beckoned. “Come and take it.”

He rushed towards her, blade held low. She met him halfway, turning cartwheels gracefully as a pinwheel. He slashed. She vaulted without effort, up over the sword, her body tucking into a somersault. Viper felt a sudden pressure on the back of his neck. He sprawled forward, dropping the wakizashi but managing to keep his balance. She’d kicked him in mid-air.

“Slippery bitch,” he said. “I’ll—”

But she was on the offensive, her limbs blurring towards him in a series of palm and wrist strikes. He blocked two frenzied blows, only to have a third find his groin. Reeling, he tried the Gichin Fist. She dodged aside. Her fingers raked across his chest, tearing skin.

“You’ve met your match, Viper Ogata.” He sensed she was smiling beneath the veil. Steel climbing-claws jutted from the fingertips of her right hand. “I’m fast as you. Faster.”

As if to prove it, she feinted with her claws. Viper’s hands tracked upwards to block, and her left came out of nowhere trailing something shiny. There was a metallic click. Two chrome, fur-lined handcuffs encircled his wrists.

Pinku chuckled. “Who knew bondage gear made such good weapons? I doubt if you’ll be able to fight as well without your hands.”

“Try me.”

“Oh, I will.” Still chuckling, she drew a huge purple dildo from behind her back. Her fingers closed around the shaft, twisted. Out slid an eight-inch blade of gleaming steel.

A war-whoop echoed from the stairwell.

Mari came bolting past, shrieking, one of the downed kunoichi’s daggers in her clumsy grip. She aimed a blow at Pinku, but before it could connect the ninja master ran her through with the dildo-sword. Mari drooped to her knees, muttering Viper’s name.

He took two running steps forward. His legs leapt in the intricate movements of ancient Ryukyuan technique number three: the Yoko Tobi Geri, or Flying Side Kick. Distracted by Mari, Pinku had no time to dodge. Viper’s heel made a satisfying crack as it connected with her chin. She shot backwards. Her lithe form struck a window and sailed through in a shower of broken glass.

Viper landed close enough to see her slide down the eaves, shattering neon tubes as she went. She dropped out of sight. There were two distinct thuds moments apart, then the sickening wet sound of flesh striking concrete.

That should be enough to signal Kanbei.

“Viper.”

Mari crawled to him, trailing slick blood across the varnished floor. He knelt and grasped her hand. Pinku’s thrust had opened her gut from hip to sternum.

“You did it,” she whispered. “You avenged Sachiko’s death.”

“We did it.”

“Viper, I’ve only known you a short time, but I …”

Her chest heaved. The rest of her words were lost in the death rattle.

Outside, through the shattered pane, he heard multiple clunks of car doors opening and slamming shut. Soon, gunfire would echo through the building as Kanbei’s men battled the remaining kunoichi. Pinku Serizawa’s reign was over. But what did that leave him with, exactly?

He contemplated the price of vengeance as the sky darkened, and Shinjuku skyline glowed in the distance.

THE END

Garnett Elliott lives and works in Tucson, Arizona. Recent stories have appeared or are slated to appear in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Beat to a Pulp: Round Two, Needle Magazine, Pulp Modern, and Battling Boxing Stories. Look for his novellas "Vin of Venus" from Beat to a Pulp publishing, and "The Shunned Highway" in Alec Cizak’s anthology Uncle B’s Drive-In, due out later this summer. You can follow Garnett on Twitter @TonyAmtrak.

DOOMSDAY WARRIOR #9: America’s Zero Hour (by Ryder Stacy)

By Scott Reder

As you probably remember, the dastardly Soviet Union launched a nuclear first strike against America in 1989 and left part of the country a wasteland. And in what was left of the USA, they invaded and set up a puppet government. Fortunately for the Russians’ plans, the deadliness of radioactive fallout seems to have been vastly overestimated, because they were safely able to invade Denver right after nuking Colorado Springs and other parts of the state.

The initial blasts left survivors trapped in the highway tunnels of the Rocky Mountains, and those brave Americans dug like gophers to reach mine shafts and build an underground complex they named Century City.

One might assume that a living space created underground after a nuclear war would be grim and desolate, but Century City seems more utopia than post-apocalyptic hellhole. The spacious cafeterias are stocked up with rabbit stew. Scientific research continues and has progressed to a point where amputated arms and legs can be replaced by servo mechanical limbs. There are even ‘street performers’ who do magic, which proves that even a nuclear holocaust can’t stop the likes of David Blaine. Women still wear halter tops and miniskirts, so American civilization continues to function at a high level.

In the fight against the Soviet invaders, one extraordinary American emerges as the key figure in the resistance: Ted Rockson, also known as the Doomsday Warrior.

Rockson’s arch-enemy is Killov, the head of the KGB. He has led an attempted coup against the Soviet military forces, which forces Rockson into a temporary alliance with the Soviet premier. Killov’s forces are defeated, but he escapes with five powerful antimatter warheads. Rockson has to track and disarm these warheads. This means leading a handpicked group of Freefighters north through the frozen Canadian wastelands in pursuit of Killov.

During their trek, two Freefighters are captured by a tribe of Sasquatch. These have not only become plentiful but gained rudimentary intelligence, and they use simple tools like stone axes and clubs. Unfortunately, they’re also hungry for human flesh and promptly barbecue one of the captives like a slab of Kansas City ribs. Rockson’s rescue team shoots a few of the Sasquatch but end up mostly fighting them hand to hand and with throwing stars. Even better, one has a special explosive throwing star that is used to blow the head completely off a Bigfoot.

That epic battle of Man vs. Sasquatch is not without humor:

The Sasquatch was left clutching air. And he got even madder when Rockson delivered a kick to his knee—or what he hoped was its knee. It howled “Frekkkkk!” Rock thought it might mean “Now I kill you and eat you, but first I pluck your arms and legs.”

Rockson and his men also fight wolves, endure the freezing cold, cross dangerous thin ice, and deal with Eskimo tribes that have incredibly advanced technology. Finally, they battle a small army of Killov’s KBG thugs to try and stop the missiles.

This series by Ryder Stacy (a pseudonym shared by Jan Stacy and Ryder Syvertsen) seems to carry over from one book to the next, and this one ends on a bit of a cliffhanger. There are also some scenes here with the puppet Soviet president of the US, returning from Russia, that have nothing to do with the plot. So presumably it pays off in a later book. Presumably.

The original covers of the series are also a joy to behold, with a defiant hand thrust into the air clutching a variety of weapons or American symbols with a mushroom cloud in the background. Although holding a knife as depicted on this cover would seem like a good way to lose some fingers.

As an echo from the Cold War 1980s, when nuclear war seemed almost a certainty, this is a goofy little time capsule of post-apocalyptic sci-fi action. You have to admire a book that features macho guys using throwing stars to fight a tribe of hungry Sasquatch. There’s just not enough fiction incorporating scenes of explosive throwing stars being used to decapitate mythical animals. And that’s a damn shame.

Scott Reder is an amateur book reviewer who plans to start an underground fight club for Sasquatch.

THE CHEMISTRATOR: Drug City, U.S.A.

By Calvin Beauclerc

(discovered by Rob Kroese)

Drug City, USA was published in 1983 and epitomizes the anti-drug hysteria of the era. It probably also holds the record for the most unsuccessful attempts to inject new slang terms for drugs (e.g., “cloud powder”) into the English language. ROB KROESE picked up a copy of Drug City, USA at a flea market in Stockton, California, along with a poster of John Taylor from Duran Duran (“for a friend”) and a complete set of Jarts.

From the thin volume Authors Named Beauclerc: A Compendium:

Calvin Beauclerc, a bakery truck driver who lived his entire life in rural Indiana, was once detained for several hours by the local police for threatening to blow up his neighbor’s collection of garden gnomes with what turned out to be a two-liter bottle filled with brown sugar and Pine-Sol. Drug City, USA was his first novel. It was followed by Drug City, USA 2; Drug City, USA 3: Escape from Drug City; Drug City, Canada; and Drug City 4: Return to Drug City 2. Beauclerc also wrote at least six of the seventeen entries in the popular D.R.U.G. F.O.R.C.E. series for teens. Intended as anti-drug propaganda, it concerned a group of teenagers whose experimentation with drugs goes horribly wrong when a bad batch gives them superhuman powers. The books are still banned by most public school districts in the United States.

The sign said “Averyville, population 9,184,” but Dax Maxwell knew it by a different name: Drug City. And the population was about to go up by one. And then, with any luck, it would go down quite a bit—because a lot of those 9,184 people were bad, and Dax planned to kill them.

Dax hitched his pack up his shoulder and strode into town. Averyville looked pleasant enough: on Main Street, pedestrians milled busily between brightly lit stores with professionally designed signs. But Dax knew that looks could be deceiving. Just as the drugs produced in Averyville’s drug factories lured their victims into a waking nightmare of unquenchable drug-thirst, the cobblestones of Main Street led inexorably to avenues paved with the cracked asphalt of broken dreams. Dax stopped in front of the plate glass window of a drugstore and lit a cigarette. He shook his head, reflecting ruefully on the series of events that led him to this moment, his mind going back, back, back ….

It had all started when his uncle got him that chemistry set for his tenth birthday. After that, Dax was only interested in one thing: mixing up chemical concoctions. Dax’s grades suffered from his obsession with chemistry, and he was frequently getting in trouble for his ingenious but dangerous experiments, like the time he mixed dry ice and Pop Rocks in a blender and came dangerously close to creating a cold fusion reactor.

After high school the only job he could get was working for a local gardener. Dax’s job was to spray weed-killer on a vacant lot, but the lot was so big that by the time he had killed all the weeds, a whole new batch had started to grow. Determined to make a better weed-killer, Dax mixed up a concoction that was so effective it turned every plant on the lot brown in a matter of hours. The next day he got a call from a colonel in the army, who was interested in Dax’s weed-killer. They drafted Dax and used his weed-killer to clear the jungle foliage that provided cover for America’s enemies in a little-known country called Vietnam. They called it Agent Burnt Umber.

“There’s no smoking in Averyville,” said a gruff voice behind him. Dax shook himself out of his reverie and turned to see a lanky man dressed in jeans and a plaid shirt. He wore a wide-brimmed hat. A revolver hung from his belt and a silver star glittered on his chest.

“This is a free country, last time I looked,” said Dax.

“City ordinance,” said the sheriff. His name tag read “Parsons.”

“Well, that’s a real cute rule for a place known as Drug City,” said Dax, dropping his cigarette on the cobblestones and grinding it out with his boot.

“No littering either,” said Sheriff Parsons. “I’m gonna have to take you in.”

Dax shrugged. He knew guys back in the Nam who could have dropped a knuckle-dragger like Parsons with a karate chop to the throat before the signal to pull the trigger could even get from Parson’s test-tube-sized brain to his finger. But that wasn’t Dax’s style.

“All right, Sheriff,” he said, moving toward the car. “I don’t want any trouble.”

“Drop the pack,” growled the sheriff. “Slowly.”

Dax did as he was told.

“Turn around,” barked the sheriff. “Gimme your hands.”

Dax turned around, holding his hands behind him. The sheriff clamped a pair of handcuffs on him and shoved him into the car. Dax smiled grimly, looking at his reflection in the police car window. What he saw was a man who had been in far worse fixes than this. Those experiences came rushing back to him, just as surely as the photons of his image bounced off the window glass and struck his retinas.

After being drafted by the army, Dax worked for Colonel Randers, the head of Special Chemical Division, on a variety of top secret projects—from formulating truth serum that could make a VC spy spill the beans on his own mother to devising nerve gas that only worked on Communists. Yet he was troubled by reports that Agent Burnt Umber was making American troops sick, and he insisted on being deployed on combat duty in the jungle to prove that the defoliant was safe. He saw a lot of men die in country, but not from poisoning—unless it was lead poisoning, from being riddled with bullets. Dax became a formidable soldier on top of being a genius with chemicals, and his squad mates called him “The Chemistrator” because of his jury-rigged explosives, smoke screens, and other chemical innovations, often concocted entirely from raw materials Dax had happened upon in the jungle. Once, he had exploded an underground VC stronghold using only bat guano and mango juice.

But that was a long time ago.

Dax stared out the window of the cop car. The pleasant boulevards making up the public façade of Averyville gave way to seedy neighborhoods populated by drug-addled crazies wearing dirty, mismatched clothing and shouting confused obscenities at invisible tormenters. In the distance, a series of factories belched black smoke into the air. Whatever household goods these factories had once produced, Dax knew that they had been retrofitted into drug factories for producing drugs.

Dax winced, knowing that these nefarious facilities were operating according to his own blueprint: the chemical recipe for synthetic synapse-incinerators that he had devised. Lost in a world of his own thoughts, he closed his eyes and reflected on how that had come about.

After the war, there was no place for men like Dax. His country wanted to forget they had ever needed a man who could kill a hundred men with only his hands and naturally occurring substances on the jungle floor. Unable to find work, Dax used his knowledge of chemistry to create a synthetic form of cocaine that was eighteen times as powerful as the real thing. And the kicker was that it was completely legal: because Dax’s drug was a chemical compound that was unknown to science, there were no laws against it. The drug had many street names: Bolivian blizzard, Nicaraguan nostril nuke, Colombian corn flour.

Dax became a rich man. He got married to a model named Stephanee and they had a daughter together. They named their daughter Argonia, after Dax’s favorite noble gas. The plan was to live happily ever after.

But Chico Juarez, a local drug lord, had other plans. Angry with Dax for stealing his business, Chico Juarez sent his thugs to shoot up Dax’s house, killing his wife and his daughter. Dax only escaped with the help of a noxious smoke screen he concocted from Clorox and leftover packets of Arby’s Sauce. That night, huddled alone on a park bench in the cold, Dax swore that he would never again use his knowledge of chemistry for evil. He found a job in another city as a high school janitor, determined to make an honest living for himself.

“Here’s your cell,” growled the sheriff, shaking Dax out of his reverie and shoving him into a cold concrete room that smelled like urine and hopelessness and more urine. In place of a bed was a pile of old newspapers. They reminded Dax of the time he found an old newspaper on the floor at the school, where he worked as a janitor, months earlier. The headline had read:

Synthetic “Snow” Storm Unstoppable?

“Drug City” Floods Eastern Seaboard with Cheap, Legal Cocaine

Police Say Their Hands Are Tied

“If only someone would put a stop to this,” says teary-eyed mother whose drug-addicted son went on a drug-fueled killing rampage to get drug money to buy drugs

That article was like a catalyst in a chemical reaction in Dax’s soul, even though Dax knew that souls didn’t really have chemicals in them. Thinking about them as if they did, though, made it easier for him to understand, because Dax knew more about chemicals than souls.

It was bad enough that Chico Juarez had killed his wife and daughter; now he was using Dax’s own drug formula to make millions by turning decent Americans into cloud powder junkies. Dax had unfinished business in Drug City. It was payback time. Time to even the scales, like a chemist weighing out the chemicals of justice.

So here he was, stuck in a cell in Averyville, with no way out. Or was he?

Dax waited for the sheriff to leave, pretending to sleep. When he heard the door to the police station close, he jumped to his feet, pulling out a small plastic bag of green powder that he had hidden in his rectum. Opening the bag, he rubbed some of the powder in rings around the bottom and top of one of the bars to his cell. Before his eyes, the steel rusted away. After a few seconds, he gave the bar a powerful kick. It broke loose, flying across the police station. Dax slipped through the opening and grabbed his pack, which the sheriff had left on his desk. Where he was going, he was going to need it.

Dax paused to remember how he had first come into possession of his pack. He had been on his way home to be with his family when he had spotted the pack in the window of a store, not unlike the window of the drugstore that he would later look into and remember how he got his first chemistry set when he was ten. Looking at the mottled brown cotton bag, he knew he had to have it for his chemicals, which he always carried with him. That was a habit he had picked up in Nam, while working for Special Chemical Division. “Be prepared,” he murmured to himself, recalling the Boy Scout motto. He’d never had time for the Boy Scouts, because he was so busy mixing chemicals as a kid. Maybe if he’d joined the Scouts, things would have turned out differently for him. Maybe if he hadn’t stopped that day to buy the pack, he would have been home in time to save his wife and daughter from Chico Juarez’s thugs. But maybes didn’t put food on the table, and they sure as hell didn’t bring the dead back to life.

“Hey, what are you doing?” barked a deputy who had just walked into the police station, shaking Dax out of his reverie.

Dax dropped him with an uppercut to the jaw. Sometimes the best chemical reaction for the job was the firing of neurons that caused a fist to slam into a face. Dax picked up his pack, noticing a desk calendar underneath it. Today’s date was circled, and inside the circle was written:

9PM MEET CHICO JUAREZ AT MAIN DRUG FACTORY

BIG DRUG SHIPMENT GOING OUT

That was just the sort of intel that Dax had been hoping to find when he deliberately got himself tossed into jail. He checked his watch. It was 8:30 p.m. He hoisted his pack onto his back and walked out of the police station. Dax had a party to crash. A drug party.

Dax lay on a warehouse roof, surveying the arrival of six eighteen-wheelers behind a factory with a sign that read “Apex Lawn Furniture.” Dax knew that the sign, like the rest of Averyville, was a lie. The Apex Lawn Furniture factory didn’t make lawn furniture. It made drugs. Drugs that were made with the chemical formula that Dax had formulated. Everyone knew that Apex Lawn Furniture made drugs, of course, but new signs cost money. And drug dealers didn’t have to advertise. Drugs sold themselves. How many lives had Apex Lawn Furniture ruined with his formula, wondered Dax. How had things gotten so out of control?

Dax closed his eyes and reflected on how things had gotten so out of control. There wasn’t any moment he could pinpoint, however. It had been a gradual process. He probably shouldn’t have started selling drugs, though. That was definitely a mistake.

Dax opened his eyes to see that Sheriff Parsons had arrived to greet the trucks. A limo pulled up next to him and a tall, brown-skinned man with dark, slicked-back hair, wearing a dark suit and mirrored sunglasses stepped out. Chico Juarez. All the players were here. Time to mix it up, like a chemist mixing chemicals in a big chemical mixing machine.

Suddenly, something whacked Dax on the back of his skull, and everything went black. Blacker than carbon, thought Dax, which was ironic because carbon’s chemical symbol was C, and he couldn’t.

Dax regained consciousness when someone emptied a bucket of cold water on his head. He was inside the factory, tied to a chair. Around him were dozens of pallets holding plastic bags of crazy candy. Women wearing nothing but g-strings and steel-toed boots loaded the pallets into the trucks on forklifts. Sheriff Parsons, Chico Juarez, and several of his goons stood over Dax.

“Enjoying the view?” asked the sheriff.

“I am, actually,” said Dax, taking a good long look at the warehouse personnel. Either there was a correlation between bust size and forklift proficiency that Dax wasn’t aware of, or these women had been hired as much for their centerfold-quality bodies as for their warehousing skill.

“Women are better workers,” said the sheriff. “We keep them nude so that they don’t try to steal any product. And also so that they are nude.” A stunning redhead walked past with a clipboard, and the sheriff slapped her on the behind. She scowled playfully and went back to work.

“Well, three cheers for equal rights,” said Dax. The sheriff grinned. But Chico Juarez wasn’t in a jovial mood.

“Joo theenk joo can just walk een here and blow up my merchandise?” growled Chico Juarez, in a thick Hispanic accent. He was holding Dax’s pack, which was filled with his custom-made bombs. “Who do joo theenk joo are?”

“Name’s Dax Maxwell,” spat Dax. “I’ve got a score to settle with you. Those are my drugs.”

“Your drugs!” exclaimed Sheriff Parson. He and Chico Juarez laughed the hysterical laugh of evil men.

“How do you figure?” asked the sheriff.

“I came up with the formula,” Dax said. “I’m the only one who has the right to sell that brain-busting bromide, and I’m closing up shop.”

“I remember joo,” said Chico Juarez. “Joor wife screamed like a leetle girl when I killed her. And so deed joor daughter.”

“My daughter was a little girl,” growled Dax, straining against his bonds.

Chico Juarez laughed again. “Well, chereeff, maybe we chould let Meester Maxwell sample some of hees drugs.” Chico Juarez sneered at Dax, his eyes hidden behind the mirrored shades. Looking into the sunglasses, Dax saw his own reflection, and he reflected on the time he had seen his reflection in the front window of the drugstore earlier that same day, reflecting on his childhood and wondering where it had all gone wrong—and at that point, things hadn’t gone nearly as wrong as they had in the hours since. Or had they?

Laughing, the sheriff grabbed a plastic bag full of fairy flakes from a nearby palette, sticking a knife into it and pulling out a knife-full of the demonic dust. He stuck the point of the knife into Dax’s left nostril.

“Dios mio!” cried Chico Juarez. “That cloud candy is dieciocho times more powerful than regular cocaine. That much will keell him!”

“That’s the idea,” said the sheriff. They both laughed. The sheriff put his hand over Dax’s mouth. “Take a deep breath!”

Dax bit down hard, his incisors puncturing the sheriff’s hand. The sheriff jerked his hand away. The flesh tore, spilling blood on the factory floor. The sheriff screamed, and the goons raised their guns. Dax sucked air in through his mouth and made himself sneeze—a trick he had learned in Nam. A cloud of djinn dust exploded from his nose. As it did, Dax bit down hard on a fake molar and breathed out, blowing a red gas into the cloud. Dax clamped his eyes shut as the two chemicals reacted with a brilliant flash, blinding everyone in the room.

“Nice treeck, Meester Maxwell!” cried Chico Juarez. “But joo’re going to need more than magic treecks to get out of thees one!”

What Chico didn’t know was that the trick wasn’t over yet. The rabbit was out of the hat, but it hadn’t yet transformed into a beautiful dove. Dax had worked for months perfecting the formula for the chemical in his tooth. His eyes still closed, Dax reflected for a moment on the long hours he had spent in his lab, feverishly working on the perfect mixture. It had taken him weeks, barely sleeping, subsisting on a diet of glucose, caffeine, and his own urine. It was probably the most difficult thing he had ever had to do, except for seeing his wife and daughter killed in front of him. That was rough.

The flash disappeared, leaving behind a thick gray cloud that made it impossible to see. Chico Juarez’s goons fired wildly. The cloud’s corrosive properties proceeded to eat through the nylon rope binding Dax’s hands, and soon he was free.

Dax put on a pair of infrared goggles he had hidden in his rectum (behind the bag of corrosive powder he had extracted earlier) and made his way through the maze of blinded goons. Topless women screamed as he ran past, but Dax kept going.

The cloud cleared. “Stop heem!” yelled Chico Juarez.

Dax dove behind a row of barrels as the goons opened fire with their AK-47s and AK-48s. Bullets ricocheted around Dax as the men converged on his position. There was no escape. He was surrounded. Dax began to wonder if he’d gotten the formula wrong. Could it be? After all the hours he had spent in his lab, checking and re-checking all of his calculations, drinking a little urine, and then re-checking them again? Having briefly opened his eyes, he closed them again, re-re-re-checking the calculations in his head. He cursed himself for not bringing any urine with him—but despite its balloon-like elasticity there simply hadn’t been room in his rectum.

Just as the goons were almost upon him, it happened: the corrosive vapor ate through the plastic wrapping around the cocaine on the nearest palette and the contents spilled out. When the pernicious powder made contact with the vapor, it exploded in a flash. Then the rest of the palette exploded with a massive roar, tearing several of the women in half. The bottom half of one woman ran past Dax frantically, spurting blood from her severed abdomen. Dax shook his head. He’d seen a lot of topless babes in his day, but nothing like this.

He had to remind himself that as gorgeous as the women had been before being torn apart, they had gotten themselves into this. Chico Juarez hadn’t shown Dax’s wife any mercy, and Dax wasn’t about to alter his plan to save a bunch of drug-pushing floozies, even if they were knockouts with boobs like giant Bunsen burners.

The blast knocked the goons near Dax off their feet, and Dax got up and ran, making his way past the trucks and into the night. Behind him, a chain reaction was occurring, one palette after another exploding with a deafening roar.

“Noooo!” he heard Chico Juarez cry. Dax turned to see the once-powerful drug lord on his knees, shaking his fists at the heavens in despair, his precious pallets of gutter glitter exploding before his eyes.

“Adios, muchacho,” said Dax, as a stack of pallets behind Chico Juarez erupted, ripping Chico Juarez to pieces.

Dax Maxwell stood in the rain, regarding the gravestones grimly. “I did it, baby. I got ’em. For you and Argonia.”

There was no answer, but Dax didn’t expect one. His fingertips traced the lettering on the cold stone, and Dax thought about the acid the gravestone maker had used to etch his wife and daughter’s names into granite. A simple chemical reaction, thought Dax. That’s all it took to mark a piece of stone forever. That’s how his heart felt, a piece of stone forever marked by his memories of Stephanee and Argonia. He had tried to live a normal life, but you couldn’t live a normal life when your heart was made of stone, and it was etched with the names of the dead.

A newspaper fluttered in the wind, coming to rest against his daughter’s gravestone. The headline read:

Son of drug lord Chico Juarez elected mayor of Los Muertos, Mexico

Promises to provide employment for thousands in new lawn furniture factory

Chiquito Juarez swears that factory is not secretly a drug factory for making drugs

So, thought Dax. Drug City has moved south. I guess that’s where I’m headed too. He hitched his pack up his back.

The Chemistrator had work to do.

THE END

Rob Kroese is the author of the Mercury Falls and Mercury Rises. The conclusion of the Mercury Trilogy, Mercury Rests, is being published by 47North in October.

CANNON FODDER: Cult Action Films of the ’80s

By Ryan Jackson

Let me just come right out and say that I love exploitation cinema—what some like to call B-movies. I’m also an unabashed fan of awesomely bad, cheeseball action, whether it’s in big-budget studio fare or no-budget schlock. So when Johnny Shaw asked me if I would be interested in writing a piece for Blood & Tacos about the cult action films of the 1980s, of course I jumped at the opportunity.

When I sat down to write this piece, I made a list of my ten favorite B-movie action titles of that decade. I was somewhat surprised to discover that the notorious Cannon Group produced literally all of them. For those unfamiliar with Cannon, they ARE the ’80s in a lot of movie-geek circles and are responsible for some of the most beloved B-movies of all time.

A brief history: in 1967, Dennis Friedland and Chris Dewey formed the Cannon Group. While they ran it, they released numerous soft-core sex comedies. Ultimately, they discovered that the only type of sex film that turns a legitimate profit is of the hardcore variety. So Friedland and Dewey cut their losses and sold the Cannon Group to two Israeli-born cousins, Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, in 1979.

Menahem and Yoram were to the ’80s what Bob and Harvey Weinstein were to the ’90s (albeit less successful critically and at the box office). Under new ownership, the company flourished. Cannon left the “titty era” behind and started churning out exploitation flicks of a different sort. The Cannon brand quickly became synonymous with the low-budget, balls-out action flick. The Golan-Globus era lasted for ten years, and in that span Cannon’s legacy was cemented. The company did produce some art house titles that garnered them some critical praise, but Cannon will always be known as the house built on the films of Norris, Bronson, Van Damme, and Dudikoff.

I’ve chosen titles from the Cannon library that I feel are worth a view. These films are, in my opinion, quintessential Cannon flicks. Movies in which, when the hero is called to action, he readily responds, “Show me who to punch or shoot.” The kind where lowlifes with high-caliber weapons are left riddled with more holes than the plot. These flicks are all about packing as much kick-assery on screen as possible. If you’re into that kind of thing, look no further.

Ninja III: The Domination (1984)

This movie is why I was a ninja for three consecutive Halloweens. Made during the ’80s ninja craze, Ninja III: The Domination is mindless martial arts mayhem with a little Exorcist sprinkled on top. The acting isn’t great, but fight sequences are actually quite good. The filmmakers were clearly aware of this, so the movie doesn’t waste its time exploring character. It’s pretty much non-stop ninja action from beginning to end, which is what makes it so fun to watch.

The movie opens with a ninja pulling off a daring assassination on a golf course, killing an entire staff of bodyguards, the mark, and his female companion. The cops show up, and the ninja proceeds to haul ass, and of course a foot chase ensues. The ninja manages to kill what seems like at least half the police force during his escape attempt before he is shot more times than Amadou Diallo.

Christie, played by the lovely Lucinda Dickey, is a telephone pole maintenance worker slash aerobics instructor who discovers the Swiss-cheesed ninja as he’s dying. The ninja gives Christie his sword and somehow manages to send his spirit into her body. At night, the ninja wakes inside her and takes over, turning her into sword-wielding, smoke bomb–throwing killing machine who goes on a blood-soaked rampage against the cops who gunned the ninja down. One of them manages to charm Christie by having absolutely no charm (and a whole lot of body hair). She falls for him, somehow, and they begin to date. The whole time this crazy ninja-possession shit is going down, he’s the one cop you hope gets killed, but sadly he does not.

In the final act, Sho Kosugi shows up fresh off a plane from Japan. Kosugi is the evil ninja’s nemesis (I’m assuming there is some kind of blood feud between their respective ninja clans). And apparently only a ninja can destroy another ninja. I’m not making this up.

Ninja III: The Domination is ninja porn at its best. Dickey is sexy and does a pretty good job kicking ass. And in the instances where she can’t, there is an obviously male stunt double to do it for her. Do yourself a favor and watch this now.

Cyborg (1989)

Cyborg is a post-apocalyptic sci-fi actioner starring Jean-Claude Van Damme. It is also everything a Cannon film should be. Van Damme plays Gibson Rickenbacker, a mercenary hired by a cyborg named Pearl to escort her out of the city and back to Atlanta. Pearl is carrying a cure that she downloaded into her cybernetic brain that can save the human race.

There’s just one problem: Fender Tremolo. Fender is a psychopath with all-white contacts who wants the cure. He’s also the leader of a gang of ruthless killers, the same who slaughtered Gibson’s family and left him for dead. The stage is set for the inevitable showdown. That’s pretty much all you need to know about the plot, because it’s all just setup for Van Damme to roundhouse kick shit in slow motion.

The movie does have some badass moments. One of them takes place in a sewer when Van Damme holds himself up by his legs in a full splits between walls above a pirate’s head while holding a knife in his mouth. There is also a hilarious scene when the cyborg takes off her wig and exposes her cybernetic brain. The effect looks like something out of the TV show Small Wonder. All in all, Cyborg is pretty much The Road Warrior without the cars. The hero’s name is even Gibson. But, honestly, who needs cars when you have JCVD?

Death Wish 3 (1983)

For those unfamiliar with the Death Wish films, I suggest you start with Death Wish 3—in my opinion, the gem of the series. It’s gloriously violent and extremely over the top. Charles Bronson once again plays the trigger-happy vigilante Paul Kersey. He comes to New York City to visit an old Korean War pal, only to discover that the gang of street punks who terrorize the neighborhood have murdered him. The cops wrongly arrest Kersey for the crime and throw him in jail. There he unknowingly clashes with the leader of the street punks, Manny Fraker, played with lunatic zeal by Gavin O’Herlihy.

The police captain knows that Kersey is innocent, but he also knows about Kersey’s penchant for blowing away bad guys with a big gun. Tired of seeing his men killed in the streets, the captain makes a deal with Kersey, allowing him to go free as long as he murders the gang of street punks. Kersey agrees, because, well, he loves to kill him some scumbags.

Once Kersey is settled into his dead friend’s apartment, the fun really begins. When Kersey and the fed-up tenants go head to head with the punks, the body count becomes impossible to keep track of. Bronson turns in his usual emotionless performance. Whether he’s shooting a punk in the head or watching his girlfriend (who would be more believable as his granddaughter) meet a fiery demise when she’s blown up in his car, he’s consistently wooden. The street punks, however, seem to rape, rob, and kill with a sense of glee.

Death Wish 3 is a film that dares you not to enjoy it. In fact, I dare you not to. And did I mention that you get to see Counselor Deanna Troi’s boobs (as portrayed by the boobs of Marina Sirtis)?

Invasion U.S.A. (1985)

If you haven’t seen the movie, I suggest you read this only after you experience the awesomeness that is Invasion U.S.A. It opens on a fishing boat full of Cuban refugees floating aimlessly in the ocean. A U.S. Coast Guard ship sails up, and the captain smiles from the deck, welcoming the Cubans to America. The captain reaches out to help an old man on board, but as he pulls him up he draws his pistol and shoots the geezer in the head! The crew of the coast guard ship then opens fire, cutting down men, women, and children alike. The captain and crew then board, open the lower deck, and haul out a shitload of cocaine. And that’s just the opening scene!

Our captain, it turns out, is really a Russian terrorist by the name of Mikhail Rostov (played by Richard Lynch). You see, Rostov is planning a full-scale invasion of the United States, and he is using the drugs to buy a stockpile of weapons. Only one man out there can stop Rostov: Matt Hunter, a gator wrasslin’, ex-CIA, terrorist-killing machine equipped with twin Uzis, played by none other than Chuck Norris.

This is the setup for Invasion U.S.A. I honestly don’t know where to start with this one—I guess by saying Richard Lynch plays a complete psychopath. Within the first fifteen minutes, he kills the Cubans, shoots a guy three times in the dick, and throws a coke whore out a window. Around 30 minutes in, he strikes an entire suburban neighborhood with a rocket launcher at Christmastime, killing families and literally destroying the whole block.

The film’s violence is only matched by its absurdity. Hunter is arguably the most badass character Chuck Norris has ever played. He may be the hero of the film, but make no mistake, Hunter is a stone cold killer. He murders terrorists without blinking an eye and would beat the shit out of Walker, Texas Ranger, if he ever had the chance. But Richard Lynch is the real star. As Rostov, he gives a legendary B-movie bad guy performance and steals the Chuck’s thunder. If you watch only one of the movies I’ve recommended, it should be Invasion—specifically, to witness Lynch’s portrayal of maniac Mikhail.

Ryan Jackson writes stories where people die at the end. Lots of people. Ryan is currently working on a screenplay that is either going to make him tons of money, or end up in a drawer somewhere collecting dust. And yes, people die in it. When he’s not killing people on the page he can be found at his blog: http://halfricanamericanpsycho.tumblr.com and his twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/RyanJackson. He has stories on The Flash Fiction Offensive and Plots With Guns.

MAJOR MCCALL AND THE WIFE: Fragged

By Stephen Mertz

All kidding aside, Blood & Tacos is honored to have STEPHEN MERTZ included in this issue. While we poke fun at the genre here and there, we’ve always viewed our stories as loving homage and the writers of the originals with respect and admiration. Having Mr. Mertz included in Blood & Tacos definitely forces all of us young pups to raise our game.

If you don’t know who Stephen Mertz is, you know nothing of men’s adventure books. Wikipedia him if you have to. But what you should really do is buy. If you need a place to start, try Hank & Muddy. In men’s adventure, he wrote at least nine Executioner novels, possibly more. He created Stone: MIA Hunter and Cody’s Army, as well as the Tunnel Rats—an accomplished writer who deserves to be discovered and rediscovered. Check out a pro at work.

Vietnam. 1970. Quang Ngai Province, north of Saigon.

The Huey gunship banked in over Firebase Tiger, a clearing carved from the jungle hilltop. The woman, who was calling herself Tara Carpenter, snapped pictures from the open side door of the helicopter, from behind the shoulder of the door gunner and his big, mounted M-60 machine gun.

The landing zone was a barren five acres. After the stark green carpet of jungle they’d flown over from Saigon, the base was drab and squalid. There were no trees, no color except for the coating of dust that blanketed everything: bunkers, vehicles and personnel. Machine gun emplacements were at intervals along the perimeter. Artillery and mortars were inside the compound. The sun, like an angry red ball seen through the gauze of a humid haze, arced low in the west, painting the horizon a brilliant red. This all vanished behind a veil of red dust, a sandstorm kicked up by the chopper’s backwash as the pilot touched the Huey down gently and initiated systems shutdown.

Tara’s fellow passenger stood beside her.

He said, “Getting enough pretty pictures for the war protestors back home?”

He didn’t wait for a response, leaving the gunship and striding toward a welcoming committee of three waiting soldiers.

His name was Cord McCall. He was an investigator assigned to a special operations unit of the Joint Services Criminal Investigation Division. Death was naturally commonplace in a war zone, but there were other crimes perpetrated within military ranks—homicide, desertion, robbery—that fell under the CID’s jurisdiction. McCall, a Major, was forty years old, dark-haired, heavily muscled. His fatigues were sharply pressed even in the three-digit heat and suffocating humidity. He wore an Army issue Colt .45 automatic in a shoulder holster.

Tara caught up with him. She was seven years his junior, a redhead with intelligent green eyes that glittered like those of a mischievous cat. The GI fatigues she wore did nothing to conceal a trim, shapely figure. She chose not to respond to McCall’s sarcasm because, McCall knew, she well understood and appreciated its source.

He was not overjoyed in the first place about being assigned the dual task of performing his duties in addition to nurse-maiding an embedded journalist. But there was another, more significant reason for his displeasure with the presence of Tara “Carpenter” in Vietnam, and she and he were the only two people in country or anywhere else who could appreciate the undercurrent of tension that crackled between them.

They were husband and wife.

Therein lay one hell of a tale, somehow as simple as it was complex. She’d been his wife for three years before he volunteered for Nam. Tara had never been your average military base wife. She’d been freelancing her photographs to wire services and news magazines before they met. During their separation while Cord was in Vietnam, she had continued to rise through the ranks of professional news photographers.

But he had been dumbstruck when he showed up that morning at the Saigon airport, not having the slightest idea that the photojournalist assigned to him was his own wife.

Tara had brazenly confided in him, with only a trace of smugness, that it had taken considerable finagling on her part, including coming up with a cockamamie story for her editor about the need for a cover name, but she pulled it off. Wars were the stuff Pulitzer Prizes were made of but ambition and self-interest were not the only reasons she’d hustled up this assignment. She’d grown impatient, sitting on the sidelines in the States. She wanted to learn for herself what was going on in Vietnam. Her voice softened when she explained to McCall that she wanted to experience his world. She would not have interfered under normal circumstances but this war was hardly normal. As his wife, she well knew his strength, his self-confidence. Now, she explained that morning at the airport, she yearned to know the source of that strength that she had decided could only be forged in sharing the fires of war with him.

Well, hell.

He had agreed to maintain the secret that she was his spouse as much to avoid complications as to avoid appearing the fool, but he’d made no secret of his displeasure during the drive to CID HQ and had protested adamantly, in her presence, to his commanding officer. Colonel Conglose had proceeded to not-so-patiently re-explain to McCall how this was part of an important PR campaign being waged on the home front by the Pentagon. McCall would obey orders and allow Miss Carpenter to accompany him during duty hours until further notice. That said, McCall was handed his assignment to Firebase Tiger.

He and Tara crossed from the Huey to the trio of waiting soldiers.

The ranking man stepped forward. He had the build and the leathery features of a farmer, thirtyish, with a sunburned crew cut and flinty eyes. He did not salute. Enemy snipers loved to disrupt the chain of command, and seeing who was saluted made selecting targets easy. Saluting was avoided in the field.

“Major, I’m Captain Larson, Executive Officer in Charge. Welcome to Firebase Tiger, though I imagine you’d rather be someplace else.”

The man next to Larson was a strapping man with a caffè latte complexion and E-6 stripes on his sleeve. “That goes for every mother’s son in this hell hole, sir.”

Larson said, “Easy, Top. Major, this is Sergeant Hines. He’s my top shirt.”

“I know,” said McCall. “I studied your personnel files on the flight in.”

Hines kept shifting his attention between them and scanning the darkening jungle beyond the perimeter.

The third man was a first lieutenant named Grey and everything about him matched his name. Blond-haired, in his late twenties, there was paleness to the junior officer that was almost albino-like except for the empurpled, swollen area around a bandage at his right temple.

Grey said, “Sergeant Hines speaks the truth. I wish I’d never heard of Firebase Tiger.”

McCall said, “You have a colonel who was fragged.”

Larson nodded. “Lieutenant Colonel Emmett, 13th Infantry Battalion. Someone tossed a hand grenade into his hooch just before dawn and splashed the walls with his guts.”

“Hooch” was GI slang for makeshift living quarters. “Fragging” was another recently coined term. Bad command decisions by an officer too often got good soldiers killed. Sometimes an officer’s own men—considering it more an act of survival than murder—would toss a grenade into the officer’s hooch, blowing the officer into itty bitty officer parts—“frag” him, in other words—before the officer got anyone else killed.

“Where’s the body now?”

Larson said, “What was left of it was tagged and bagged and sent to Saigon on the daily chopper run.”

Grey cleared his throat and nodded at Tara. “Uh, if you don’t mind, Major, who is she?”

“Her? Name’s Carpenter. Pretend she’s not here. Okay, Captain, show me where the fragging took place.”

Larson led them toward a squalid, dust covered pile of sandbags that was somewhat bigger than the other hooches.

“The colonel’s hooch was next to the main bunker.”

Tara commenced taking pictures.

Activity swirled around them; a world of coarse language, exhaust fumes and the clicking and clanking of engines, equipment, and weaponry. Nearly every soldier in sight was toting an M-16 and a wary attitude. The shadows of encroaching night deepened by the minute.

The colonel’s hooch was a low, ten-by-twelve, makeshift structure of timber and plywood beneath a shell of sandbags. Its entrance was charred, misshapen from the outward force of the murderous blast. McCall stooped and entered while the others grouped behind him outside.

Walls were splashed with gore. Flies buzzed, thick and loud. The sickly sweet smell of death was almost overpowering in the enclosed space.

“Did anyone see anything?”

Larson shook his head, negative. “Everyone heard the blast but Security was paying attention to outside the perimeter. The nearest personnel when it happened were me and Sergeant Hines and the lieutenant.”

Grey indicated his bandage. “I caught this when my patrol was ambushed the other night. I was laid up in my hooch, woozy on pain pills the medic gave me. But we compared notes. No one saw anything. It wasn’t the VC. They’d never breach our perimeter.”

Hines indicated the Tactical Operations command bunker.

“The captain and I were sprucing up the files for the Inspector General’s visit day after tomorrow. If it hadn’t been for a couple of walls between the colonel’s hooch and the TOC, we’d have been hamburger too.”

“Any ideas about who’d want the colonel dead bad enough to frag him?”

Larson said, “Suspects?” The flint was cold in his eyes. “Yeah, I could think of a few.”

Grey cleared his throat. “You might as well go ahead and tell him, Cap.”

Tara said, “Tell us what, Captain Larson?”

This got McCall’s goat.

“Not us, ma’am. Me.” He spoke to the men. “I take it the colonel was not well liked.”

Hines chuckled. “I’ll bet you’re saying that just because someone fragged his ass to hell.”

McCall said, “Emmett was assigned here just last month. A new CO always shakes up a command to put his own brand on it. The troops never like it, but it usually settles into a mutual respect.”

Hines regarded the damaged hooch with no visible sign of emotion.

“You want a list of suspects, Major? You could start with every man on this base.”

Grey stared at the ground as if looking at something far, far away. “Eight men who were stationed here went home yesterday in body bags.”

“A platoon from Bravo company,” said Larson. “Ambushed. Heavy casualties.”

“Wiped out by one of our own bombs,” said Hines. His eyes kept shifting back to the jungle tree line. “The VC find our dud shells, rig them up and use them against us.”

“Let me guess,” said McCall. “Saigon promised replacements today but they’re not here.”

Larson nodded. “The green machine. Efficient as hell, ain’t it? And until those new men get here, I’m way short of manpower. I’m hoping Charlie hasn’t figured that out yet.”

“Issue me an M-l6,” said McCall. “You’ve got one replacement.”

“Two, actually,” Tara volunteered.

They ignored her.

McCall didn’t miss the flash of anger that made Tara’s eyes turn a deeper shade of green.

He went around to the entrance of the command center and glanced inside. Tactical maps were spread out upon folding tables. Ammo crates served as chairs. A clerk was busy at a typewriter. A radio man monitored mostly static from a small receiver.

Grey said, “Colonel Emmett should never have ordered me and my men out on that patrol.”

Larson told McCall, “The firebase is assigned two companies of light infantry. One supports the other. The line company conducts recon patrols around the base, and it was Bravo Company’s turn on the rotation schedule. The other company provides mortar and artillery support from here.”

“The colonel should have never ordered my platoon into that area after dark,” said Grey. “I’m not some wet-behind-the-ears cherry. That ambush wasn’t my fault. Me and Sergeant Williams always brought our guys home. Right, Captain?

Larson nodded. “Right, Lieutenant.”

Hines said, not unkindly, “You need to relax, Lieutenant, if you don’t mind my saying so, sir. You, uh, haven’t been right since, well, since it happened. Maybe you ought to lay down in your hooch, sir. I’ll have a medic check in with you.”

A sideways glance told McCall that an impulse within Tara was trying to dissuade her from capturing on film, for posterity, Lieutenant Grey’s vulnerability and emotional unbalance; a poignant portrait of the ravages of war on a trained, competent man. She grimaced, lifted her camera and snapped the picture.

Grey said, “The sergeant who died in the ambush, Sergeant Williams, he served way back in the Korean War and until two nights ago he was keeping alive a good bunch of guys who should have been back home drinking beer. Every man on the base respected him. The sarge was our teacher, our preacher, the one we looked up to. And I owed him a personal debt. That’s why I wish to God that I’d been one of the dead in that VC ambush, not him.”

“Lieutenant,” said Larson, “you are not responsible for what happened.”

McCall said, “What sort of personal debt?”

“My dad served with Sergeant Williams in Korea,” said Grey. “He saved Dad’s life. Sarge greased a Red Chinese who was about to run Dad through with a bayonet. They stayed in touch after the war. They were both lifers. I must have heard the story a hundred times growing up. I never got tired of it. Cancer got Dad last year. I was raised to be a soldier. I couldn’t believe my luck when I got assigned to Sergeant Williams. I was supposed to be the platoon leader, but we all knew who kept us alive.” Grey’s lower lip trembled.

Tara stepped forward. She rested a hand gently on Grey’s shoulder.

“Lieutenant, listen to your captain and to Sergeant Hines. There is a thing called survivor’s guilt. You must maintain. That is what you owe Sergeant Williams and your dad and yourself.”

Grey’s lower lip stopped trembling.

“Yes ma’am. You’re right.” He drew himself to his full height, his shoulders back. “I’m not doing anybody any good, pissing and whining, am I? I’ve got to regroup and be ready for whatever’s coming next.”

Tara nodded with a smile. “1 couldn’t have said it better myself.”

Grey turned to Larson. “Captain, uh, I guess maybe I should try and get some rest.”

“I think you’re right, Lieutenant. You’re dismissed.”

“Thank you, sir.” Grey added to Tara, “And thank you, ma’am.” He lowered his eyes from theirs and walked away.

When Grey was out of earshot, Larson said, “There goes a fine soldier, wearing a hair shirt from hell.”

“He’ll make it,” said Hines. “That kid’s got a lot to offer this man’s army, but he was on the razor’s edge of losing it. Miss Carpenter, I believe you helped steer that soldier back in the right direction.”

Tara started to say something.

McCall spoke before she could.

“Yes, ma’am. That was a humane and noble gesture. But now I must ask you to allow me to proceed without distraction. You’re a non-participating observer, Miss Carpenter. Captain, I’d like to take a look as Sergeant Williams’ hooch.”

“This way,” said Larson. He started them toward a line of hooches near a row of mortar placements. “Mind if I ask, Major, what are we looking for in Williams’ hooch?”

Striding apace with them, Tara said, “The lieutenant said the men on the base looked up to Sergeant Williams like a hero.”

Hines nodded. “That’s as good a word as any, ma’am, and that’s why everyone hated the colonel after Sergeant Williams died on a patrol that never should have been sent out.” A bleak smile creased his coffee latte features. “And that’s the connection. I get it. Lady, you’re a Sherlock Holmes.”

McCall tried hard not to yield to his building irritation.

He said, “She’s a civilian.” This wasn’t going to work, having Tara tagging along every step of the way. He would just lay it all out for Conglose when they got back to HQ. They had a war to win. He had a murder to solve. What the hell was Tara thinking? What the hell was she doing here? Cool it, he told himself. He said, “And I’ll thank you, Miss Carpenter, to just zip it and take your pictures, okay?”

“Understood, General.”

McCall sighed. “Sarcasm yet. I’ll be lucky to stay a major with you bird-dogging me.” He barely caught the man-to-man grin that passed between Larson and the first sergeant at this verbal sparring. Damn. The electricity between him and this sassy redhead was so obvious that anyone who witnessed it would catch on even if they didn’t know exactly what they were seeing. To change the subject, he nodded to the row of mortars near Williams’ hooch. “Not the quietest neighborhood.”

“No such thing as a quiet neighborhood in this sector,” said Hines. “We’re surrounded by bogey land. It’s a free fire zone beyond that perimeter.”

“The first change Colonel Emmett made when he took command,” said Larson, “was to send out patrols after dark. It was unnecessary. Too risky. Everyone except the colonel knew it. The mission for this firebase is recon. You can’t recon in the jungle at night.”

Hines spat. “We have an outstanding record for targeting VC for the flyboys. We do our job. But doing our job wasn’t good enough for the colonel. He wanted a higher enemy body count so he could get himself a general’s star and he didn’t give a damn about sacrificing good men like Sergeant Williams for a promotion.”

Tara lifted her camera and snapped a picture of Hines.

They reached Williams’ hooch.

McCall entered the hooch alone. Tara lowered her camera and positioned herself between Hines and Larson in the entrance. Their grouped presence in the doorway deepened the interior gloom. The hooch was of uniform furnishings: cot, foot locker, a makeshift desk. McCall knelt on one knee to conduct a thorough search of the foot locker.

“Uh huh,” he said.

He rose, letting the lid of the locker snap shut. He exited the hooch, leafing through a small bound-leather volume.

Captain Larson craned his neck to try to make out the printing on the book.

“What did you find, Major?”

Hines guessed, “A Bible?”

McCall shook his head, snapping the book shut. “Not even close.”

Tara studied the book’s dimensions and appearance. “A diary.”

“When men keep one, it’s called a journal.”

Larson ran a broad palm across the bristle of his crew cut. “Why would Sergeant Williams keep a journal?”

“Why the hell wouldn’t he?” growled Hines. “I’ll bet he had plenty of stories to tell, going back to Korea.”

“Too bad he kept them to himself.” Larson extended his hand, palm up. “Mind if I take a look, Major? Maybe he wrote something that will help us.”

Tara said, “You could make bet on that.”

McCall slid the book into a pocket. “Sorry, Captain. First I’ll have a look for myself.”

Tara studied him. “You think that diary—excuse me, journal—holds a clue to who fragged the colonel?”

“That’s what I intend to find out.” McCall patted the book in his pocket. “Something tells me this is going to make for an interesting read, and I want to get started.”

Sergeant Hines said, “I’ll show you to the guest billets, for what they’re worth.” He glanced at his watch. “And it’s past chow time.”

Tara let herself into one of the guest billets—not her own—without announcing her arrival.

McCall sat at a makeshift desk, a slab of plywood resting across two empty oil drums. Remaining seated, he pivoted with incredible speed, a blur of movement, freezing with the .45 in straight-armed target acquisition, its muzzle inches away from the center of Tara’s forehead.

She froze, lovely mouth agape, her green eyes wide, holding her breath in astonishment.

McCall sighed mightily, flicked on the safety and returned the .45 to its shoulder holster.

“Now there was a real temptation.” He returned to the material spread across the desk. “I thought we were going to avoid personal contact, Miss Carpenter.”

She stood beside him. She rested a hand on his shoulder. Her touch had always had its intended affect on him. He felt that humanizing affirmation borne of the touch of woman, of grace and beauty so uncommon, practically unknown in the harshness of war except as memories nursed by those who fought. She glimpsed the paperwork he’d been poring over: three personnel files, a yellow pad full of his notations, and the slim leather volume, folded open with the spine up.

She read aloud the names off the personnel files.

“Captain Larson, Lieutenant Grey, Sergeant Hines. I’m glad I don’t have to guess which one of those three fragged the colonel.”

McCall decided that he could either blow up or give up. This woman had a backbone of steel coupled with a tenacity that could wear down stone.

“And what makes you think the killer is one of them or that I’m guessing? It’s called investigating. What the hell am I going to do with you?”

An impish smile curved her lips, and with one graceful, impudent motion she was straddling his lap, her fingers entwined behind his neck, mischievous green eyes glistening, her lips, inviting, only inches away.

She whispered huskily in his ear, “I’ve got an idea what you could do about me.”

“You’re a vexatious wench.”

“Vexatious?”

“Sometimes I wish you were more of a nag. That would be easier to deal with.”

Realizing that he was serious, she lost some of her good humor. She withdrew from his lap.

“So what about the journal? Was it interesting?”

“What journal?”

At that instant, someone outside yelled, “Incoming!”

Then everything became drowned out by a startling, eerie whistling that increased in pitch and then was itself drowned out by a deafening explosion, an impacting blast that shook the hooch violently. Dust and red dirt powdered down upon them.

McCall grabbed the M-16 he’d been issued and rushed outside.

A night fog had fallen. A bursting flare overhead cast the base in surreal daylight. The first explosion had been a direct hit on the Huey that had brought them here, now nothing but an unrecognizable, flaming ruin. Everywhere on the base, soldiers were responding to the attack, some firing their M-l6s on the run, firing the weapons on full auto into the darkness beyond the perimeter. The artillery and the mortars and machine guns opened up, shredding the night with thunder and fury.

A whistling round missed McCall by inches, chipping off a chunk of the hooch doorframe. He felt a trickle of blood from a flying splinter, razor-thin along his cheek.

The next incoming mortar shell struck the main bunker. The Tactical Operations Command evaporated in a copper-red eruption of flame.

Then Tara was with him.

She said, “Damn but I wish they’d issued me a weapon. Don’t suppose I could borrow one of yours?”

McCall grabbed her wrist. “First let’s get you to cover. They’re targeting the hooches.”

They stormed into the battle, dodging strobe-like explosions. Shouts filled the air along with the stench of destruction, of burnt gunpowder, of killing and dying. McCall led her to a nearby pile of debris somewhat in the shadows; empty oil drums and discarded machine parts. A good place to stash a troublesome wife until the fighting was over. A round pinged off an overhanging piece of metal. She was right. He could not leave her unarmed.

He handed her his M-16. “Here. You qualified with one of these on the range back home. Time for practical application. Keep your head down. You are a non-combatant.” He unleathered the .45 from its shoulder holster and flicked off the safety. “I’ve got to keep moving, to help out.”

She took hold of the rifle, wholly comfortable with it. Then her eyes were distracted by something.

“Cord, look.”

He whirled, half knowing what to expect. Then he saw it too.

Through the disorganized melee of battle, a soldier, whose features were obscured, darted through the tumultuous firefight with determined haste, staying low to avoid incoming fire, one hand steadying his helmet as he ran, appearing to McCall to be somehow disengaged from the battle, particularly when he gained the hooch the McCalls had just vacated. The soldier entered the guest billet.

“Wait here,” said McCall, and he bolted.

“Right,” Tara said to herself.

She gave McCall a ten-count. Then she slung the M-16 over her shoulder by its strap and followed him.

McCall hesitated at the entrance to the hooch, the .45 automatic held down at his side, his presence undetected by the man inside because of the ferocious battle raging around them and because the soldier was preoccupied, in the process of reaching for the slim black book on the desk.

McCall said, “It’s not a journal.”

Larson whirled. His expression struggled between surprise and panic.

“Major, I can explain.”

They had to raise their voices to be heard above the cacophony outside.

“Captain, I’m arresting you,” said McCall. “You murdered Colonel Emmett. You fragged a fellow officer.”

Larson drew his broad, farmer’s body up straight, doing his best to reassert command even if he was outranked.

“Arrest me? On the strength of what? Every man on this base wanted to see that bastard dead.”

“Yeah, but you’re the one who went for the bait.” McCall nodded to the black book. “That’s no journal. It’s a notebook that I always carry. I had it on me when I knelt down to search Williams’ foot locker, and with the dim lighting inside the hooch and a little sleight of hand I had everyone thinking I’d found it there. I wanted to see if I could smoke out someone with a guilty conscience, and it looks like I succeeded. You wanted to see if Williams incriminated you in a journal after you confided in him that you were going to frag the colonel. Maybe I hadn’t gotten to that page yet and you could steal the book before I did. It was a crazy long shot, but it was the only chance you saw, so you went for it. A soldier like Sergeant Williams would tell you to bite your tongue and follow orders.”

A jolt of raw, bitter emotion erupted from Larson. “That’s exactly what he told me. Let it alone, Williams said. Follow orders. Right, follow orders. Sounds real honorable but look what it got the sarge and those other men of Bravo Company. Emmett was killing my men, goddammit. He had to be stopped, and I stopped him.”

A shell struck the next hooch over with a thunderous crack! like a lightning strike. Shouts for “Medic! Medic!” could be heard.

Larson lunged at McCall. “Bastard!”

McCall had hoped that sight of the .45 would discourage something like this, but Larson wasn’t about to be taken easily. McCall brought up the .45.

The snap! of a camera flashbulb came from close behind his ear.

Tara had crept up from outside and eavesdropped. The white flash seared the interior of the hooch, not impairing McCall’s vision because it came from behind him. The flash startled, stunned and stopped Larson. He reflexively threw his arms up to cover his eyes.

Tara said, “Gotcha!”

McCall brought his .45 around in a swipe that cracked the side of Larson’s head. Larson’s knees buckled and he collapsed. McCall pinned Larson with a boot to his back. He holstered the .45 and reached for the handcuffs attached to his belt. He spared a quick glance over his shoulder.

The beauty of his wife’s face was smudged with grime. Her red hair was tangled. She looked stunning.

He said, “Thanks, hon.”

Larson’s face, against the earthen floor, was an emotionless mask.

“You’ve got this all wrong, Major. Yeah, I thought it was Williams’ journal that you found. I came for a look to see if he thought anyone on base killed Emmett, to see if he wrote that down. I didn’t frag anybody.’’

“Sergeant Hines will fess up,” said McCall. “He gave you your alibi when he said you and he were together prepping for the IG inspection. But Sergeant Hines is lying because he hated Emmett too. You weren’t in the TOC bunker with your First Sergeant when Emmett was killed. I’ll go to work on Top’s conscience and his duty under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and when he breaks, Captain, I’ll have the proof I need.”

Larson sneered. “What the hell kind of a soldier are you? Whose side are you on, McCall? I’m on the side of our troops. That’s more important than any VC body count so some fat-assed colonel can advance his career. You think I could let that go on? Our body count is my concern. Emmett got what he deserved. You know that, in your heart.”

“You’re out of luck, Captain. It’s my job to take you in.”

Someone outside yelled, “Incoming!” and again the air was split by that fast-approaching, ear-piercing whistle.

McCall sprang at Tara without hesitation, yelling to the man on the floor, “Move, Larson! Save yourself!

Larson got to his feet but made no effort to move.

He said in a calm voice, “Up yours, Major.”

With the incoming whistle growing impossibly loud, McCall plowed into Tara with enough force to knock her off her feet, sending them both airborne, pitching them outside of the hooch and onto ground. They landed together. Cord’s arms were around her. They rolled a few times before coming to a stop with Cord on top.

Again lightning and thunder struck. The ground trembled beneath them as a direct hit demolished the hooch. McCall pinned his wife, shielding her from a pelting shower of falling debris.

Then they lifted their heads.

The battle was winding down. Three Huey gunships had rotored in to commence pulverizing the surrounding jungle, making the night sky a fire show of tracer bullets, rocket fire, and multiple explosions. There was no more incoming fire. The mortars and artillery were quieting down. The primary activity on the base now was tending to the wounded, regrouping, assessing.

Tara arched her neck for a view of the smoldering remains of the hooch they had just vacated.

“Captain Larson …”

“It’s better this way,” said McCall. “He died in combat. That’s better for his family back in the world.”

“You’re not going to report that he fragged a colonel?”

McCall said nothing.

She stared up at him for a long moment. Then she kissed the thin red line of dried blood that crossed his cheek and for one stolen moment there on the battle-scarred ground, they shared a prolonged embrace.

“Know what?’ whispered Tara.

“What?”

“It’s been so long, I wouldn’t even mind being on the bottom.”

“You,” said McCall, “are impossible.”

“And that’s only one of the reasons you’re crazy about me, right?”

“Yeah, I guess so. Crazy is definitely the word. I must be out of my mind.” Two figures were hurrying in their direction. “Here come Sergeant Hines and Lieutenant Grey. I’ve got some explaining to do.” He got up off her, extending a courtly hand. Tara accepted, rising to her feet, and he said for her ears alone, “Now stow the personal stuff, okay, hon? I mean it, Tara.”

He turned to greet the approaching men.

“Right,” Tara said to herself, and hurried to join them.

THE END

Stephen Mertz was one of the architects of the men’s action/adventure series genre. His two landmark series from the 1980s, Stone: M.I.A. Hunter and Cody’s Army (as by Jim Case), have been reissued in e-book format. Under his own name Stephen has written a number of highly praised novels. The most recent of these, Hank & Muddy (2011) and The Castro Directive (2012), are also available as e-books. He lives and writes in Arizona.

COOKING LIKE A TOUGH GUY

– the soup edition

By D. Richard Pearce

Welcome to Cooking Like a Tough Guy. Find your seats, shut up and pay attention.

Now you may be wondering why or how exactly cooking can relate to being a tough guy, despite having seen all these shows of sweaty chefs yelling at everyone. I mean great, yelling and all, but how does being able to feed yourself and others fit into your kitbag, and why should it take up valuable space?

Well, for one thing, you never know when an undercover assignment is going to come up, and there’s ALWAYS room in the kitchen for another tough guy, whether it’s on a cargo ship, working the mining camps, or out on the trail. Why is this? Because bad cooks tend to mysteriously disappear – being able to actually cook will protect your cover and keep you from getting killed by the ostensible good guys.

Also, for the more debonair among you, cooking well is a way to impress the chicks. When you can whip up a four course dinner from a piece of celery and some condiments, you’re well on your way to seduction, if your particular method of slap-and-tickle is heavier on the tickle.

So this issue, we’re going to start on some basics – soups. With soups, you get some basic principles, how to use a knife (you think you know already, doncha?) and some other lessons that’ll carry you through on further lessons. Walk before you run, grasshoppa.

Gear – first things first – you need a knife. Combat knife will NOT do. But you’ll like the chef’s knife – it’s got a BIG blade. Go find one, the bigger and sharper the better. Don’t go spending a lot of money either – a mid-range knife will do you just fine. As a matter of fact, the best kitchen knife is one you’ll find down in Chinatown in the market – looks like a cleaver, only lighter, and will set you back about five bucks.

How to use a knife: if you want to get through this with all your digits, you need to learn how to hold a knife. Fortunately, if you use a combat or scuba knife, you already know. If you use a switchblade, pay attention. Basically, you hold the knife in a good firm grip, high on the handle, as if you were going for the low disembowel, spleen to sternum. There’s no hilt here, so you’ll be gripping it high on the handle, and by the end of the day, you should have a blister on the first pad of your index finger. Quit whining, in a week, you’ll have a callous. When you’re chopping (vegetables, not people), you’re going to be laying the edge of blade flat on the board, creating a rocking motion and feeding whatever you’re chopping to the blade with your other hand – the tip should never leave the board and if you’re making a bunch of noise, you’re doing it wrong. Think stealth mode there, Cookie.

The other thing you’ll need is a Burr mixer – Burr is a brand name, and there are a lot of pretenders in stand up mixers, but come on, do you want to work with, a Cuisinart or a BURR? What separates the men from the boys here is the heavy-dutyness and of course the power tool orange handle.

Ok, here we go.

A word about recipes – generally speaking, tough guys don’t follow recipes – there’s little room for measuring cups in your gear, and frankly a cup of motor oil is no different than a cup of olive oil (and you all should have an idea about volume in chemicals, right?). You’ll also note some optional ingredients in the lists below. These are by no means exhaustive lists; if there’s something in the fridge you think would make it better, add it. Feel free to use your judgment and for god’s sake, taste that crap as you’re going – if it tastes good, you’re doing fine. We’re not pastry chefs here.

The Holy Trinity – soups and sauces start with the basic three: carrots, onion, celery. Generally an equal amount of the three, but this can vary by soup. In all of the following lists (not recipes, remember) you’re going to start by dicing or chopping the carrot/onion/celery combo. If your pieces are about ¼ inch or so, you’re doing fine – anything smaller is mincing, and tough guys don’t mince. Ever. We don’t have time for the intricacies of recipes and cutting into powder.

Start the process by cutting off one of the round sides of whichever vegetable you’ve chosen – you want it to lay flat on the cutting board so it’s not flailing around while you finish the process. Nobody trusts a cook called Stubby.

Once you’ve got the three diced up, throw the mix into a pot on med-high heat with enough oil, olive or vegetable, your choice, to just cover the bottom of the pot. Stir it so the Trinity is coated and put the lid on – we’re going to let it sweat for a while.

Once the Trinity is soft and sweaty, you can throw in the bulk of your other ingredients.

Most of these soups are creamy, so when everything’s nice and soft and bubbling away, you get to use the power tool – stand the mixer in the pot and turn it on – in a couple minutes you should have a nice, smooth creamy soup. If there’s anything you wanted chunky, hopefully you set it aside, and now’s the time to add it. Turn the heat down and let it all simmer until dinner time – remember soups and sauces always taste better the next day, so if you can afford the time, let it all simmer for a couple hours then take it off and throw it in the fridge for tomorrow. That’s it – the basics – each of the soups below are made essentially the same way, and any differences will be described in the breakouts.

Hey by the way, we’re assuming some basic intelligence on your part – if you’re cooking in the Himalayas, and your soup is getting a bit thick, add some extra water/stock. If it’s too thin, let it simmer longer. You’ll notice I don’t tell you how much salt and pepper – the point here is to add a bit (a bit being about enough to cover the bottom of a shot glass – not the whole shot) and taste it – if it tastes thin, add some more; if it tastes good, don’t. Do I have to tell you everything?

Black Bean Soup:

So you’ve been assigned to cook duty in the Texas jailhouse. This one will feed about 5 or your fellow prisoners and you:

- Holy Trinity: 3 carrots, 2 Med or 1 largish white or yellow onion, 3 stalks of celery (whole stalks – not sticks you stole from the bartender)

- A clove or two of garlic, sliced.

- 2 cans of black beans or 1lb bag dried (if dried you’re gonna have to soak them overnight)

- Oregano, basil and thyme (aka Italian seasoning)

- Salt & Pepper

- A quart of chicken stock (in the carton) or water and a couple OXO cubes, or if all else fails, water.

Optional leftovers:

- Refried beans

- Squash

- Bell peppers

Sweat the Trinity, add the rest. Boil it for 20 minutes or so. If you have any of the optional leftovers, add them, but bump up the liquid count by a pint or so. Burr mix the crap out of it and enjoy.

Tomato Soup:

Just like mom used to make – oh no wait, she opened a can. Beat mom at her own game.

- Trinity: 2 Med or 1 largish onion, 3 stalks of celery, 3 carrots

- A couple of the big cans of tomatoes whole in the juice, or a couple pounds of tomatoes getting soft.

- The aforementioned Italian seasoning

- Quart of stock/water & oxo/water if nothing else

- Salt & pepper

Optional leftovers:

- Green beans

- Sausage

See above – the only difference being if you have some leftover sausage or ham, dice it up and add it AFTER the mixing. Who’s gonna complain about chunks of meat in their tomato soup?

Potato Leek (aka Vichyssoise):

Feeling fancy pants? Working undercover in a frou frou joint while you wait to ambush the ambassador? This one will make the snootiest French chef boss kiss you on both cheeks. (Don’t forget to punch his lights out afterward.)

- Trinity: 2 Med or 1 largish white or yellow onion, 3 stalks of celery – no carrot for this one. Hey – rules are made for breaking.

- 3 good sized spuds, fit to match a steak. Peel em and chop em.

- a couple cloves of garlic (shallots are fine if available, and they oughtta be if you’re making this soup).

- 1 leek

- Stock/oxo/water, again a quart or so.

- Coffee cup of white wine

- Salt & pepper

Ok this one’s a bit fancier – slice the leek across the grain with your big ass knife. Save the green part on the side. Throw the white part in with the Trinity and potatoes, sweat em til they’re soft, then add the wine, and let it sizzle a minute. Now add the stock and Burr it to gruel. Now add your green leeks and let it simmer for a while. If you get this one right, the ambassador will invite you to his table, making it much easier to kill him/seduce her.

All right, get out there and make some soup, Seagal.

D. Richard Pearce is the author of the stories "The Once and Future Dentist" (Escape Pod 13) about everyone’s favourite gunman (or at least his) and "El Alebrije" (GUD issue 2). While he has seduced with his cooking, he finds it handy to keep a bottle of Tanqueray in reserve, just in case…

STUDS WINSLOW and the Bitches of the Fifth Reich

By Halloran Oates

(discovered by Todd Robinson)

TODD ROBINSON has always modeled his life after the deep-sea diving adventure hero Studs Winslow. Which explains his penchant for challenging people to see who can hold their breath the longest and Speedos. He found this copy of Studs Winslow #94 in a mylar bag right between #93 and #95 on his Studs Winslow shelf/shrine at home.

Halloran Oates (1922–1998), a WWII veteran and deep-sea salvage expert, wrote 109 novels featuring Winslow and one unfortunate nonfiction book disproving the female orgasm. He passed away in 1998 while trying to break the world record for Antarctic Nude Freediving at the age of 76. He broke the record first, though.

Studs Winslow focused his breathing, eyes open a sliver.

Deep in.

Hold.

Slooooow exhale.

He blocked out the cries of the Caribbean seabirds swirling above his boat, The Goateed Mollusk IV. He pushed away the warmth of the blistering equatorial sun. He tasted the salty ocean air on each breath he drew deeply into his belly.

Exhale.

The gentle rise and fall of the boat helped with the breathing meditations he’d been taught by Master Fang Fang in the lost city of Quangtang. Lost, that is, until Studs had found it. (Check out the exciting adventure in Studs Winslow and the Lost City of Master Fang Fang.)

After he’d fought off the nine dead soldiers of Emperor Hing and released the city from its thousand-year curse, the grateful Master Fang Fang had rewarded Studs with the secret practices of his temple. One of which was the meditative breathing that allowed him to make the deep dive that he’d soon be undertaking.

He drew his attention to a point of red on the horizon.

Deep in.

Hold.

Slooooow exhale.

The point of red turned a chocolate brown, then the darker hue of untainted coffee. Then that point split into two as Studs realized that he was now staring at the perfect nipples adorning the breasts of Cookie Cutter.

“Damn, Studs, you not done yet with that Chinese hoodee-doo?” Cookie shook her head, playfully expelling the water from her regal afro.

Studs wiped the water from his muscular, sunburned chest. “You’d think that a woman with your education would have a little more respect for the ancient arts,” Studs said as he flipped an unfiltered Lucky between his lips.

“Damn, Winslow. You know me. You can take the girl out of Detroit …”

“Then send that girl to Oxford, then Harvard. Offer her the highest academic honors and dual doctorates in archeology and mystical artifacts …”

“… but you ain’t gonna take the Detroit outta that girl.” Cookie smiled at Studs as she wrapped her arms around his rippling waist, her soft pillowy breasts pressing against his ribs. She reached into the front of his bellbottom jeans, under his swim trunks.

“I hope you’re not starting the fun without me,” said Lily, the Swedish backpacker they’d picked up at Dirty Jack’s Oyster Bar the night before.

Lily hadn’t been Studs’ first choice. Studs had wanted to take the local waitress with them, but Cookie had one sexual rule and one sexual rule only—only one black girl at a time on Studs’ boat. She said that two Nubians at a time brought out “the Africa” in her. Studs had no idea what that meant, but he was curious to find out one day.

As Lily pulled herself out of the water, the sun glistened on her naked white skin. She arched her back, pointing at Studs and Cookie with her Swedish torpedoes.

“We ain’t lighting those kind of fires just yet, baby,” Cookie said, retrieving Studs’ lighter from his trunks.

“Says you,” Studs said.

“You got work to do first.” Cookie flared the lighter, lay the flame against the tip of Studs’ coffin nail. “Speaking of which, I can’t get as deep as you …”

Lily chuckled. She’d learned all too well last night, late last night, and early this morning, that not all of Master Fang Fang’s ancient oriental secrets were necessarily breathing-related.

Cookie rolled her eyes, but a smile curled the corner of her lush lips. “BUT, from what I could see, that didn’t look like no Spanish galleon down there.”

Studs undid his thick skull-and-crossbones belt buckle and dropped his jeans to the deck. “Well, we’ll find out one way or the other, won’t we?”

Studs flipped his cigarette into the ocean, planted a hard kiss onto Cookie’s open mouth, and then dove into the sea.

As she watched Studs’ shadow disappear into the depths, she muttered under her smile, “Crazy-ass cracker.”

Studs pushed deeper and deeper towards the unclear object resting on the ocean floor. As he got closer with each breaststroke, the outlines of the sunken boat became clearer.

Cookie was right. That was no Spanish galleon that had been put in a watery grave by the forces of Poseidon. Meter by meter, Studs realized just what was sitting down there.

And he was none too happy about it.

Sweet Eleanor Roosevelt, thought Studs. That’s a goddamn Kraut Schnellboot. Studs had seen plenty of S-Boats during his stint in the Navy during WWII—hell, he’d even jumped aboard one when he and the Screamin’ Seamen took down Hitler’s Mer-Man program—but he’d be a monkey’s uncle before he ever expected to find the wreck of one in the Caribbean. (To find out how Studs defeated the Mer-Men, read Studs Winslow’s Screamin’ Seamen.)

Finding a remnant of Uncle Sam’s old adversary had Studs’ full attention. To the point where he didn’t notice the immense shadow bearing down on him.

The rows of teeth opened inches from his face before Studs noticed the ten-foot tiger shark. Studs twisted his body away from the monster as the hellish jaws slammed shut. The leviathan passed by, then turned back to claim the meal that it had oh-so-narrowly missed.

Studs cursed himself for his rookie lapse as the beast charged him a second time. He didn’t want to use the bowie knife strapped to his thigh, but he unsheathed it just in case.

The shark opened its mouth again.

Studs waited.

At the last second, he pistoned his legs and glided above the shark’s snapping maw. With his free hand, Studs grabbed the shark’s dorsal fin and allowed the giant fish to pull him along. The shark bucked and writhed, but to no avail. Studs drew himself down the side of the shark and locked eyes with the beast intent on tearing him to pieces.

Animal to animal, eye to eye, and man to beast, Studs passed along to the shark the predatory message from time immemorial that he was nobody’s lunch.

Studs felt the murderous fish relax underneath him, cowed before the greater warrior. He released the dorsal fin. The beast circled once, laid its coal-black eyes on Studs’ rippling muscular form, then swam into the depths to find a more agreeable meal.

Studs couldn’t be sure, but he thought that if the shark could have reached whatever passed for its forehead, it would have saluted him.

Turning his attention back to the dive, Studs worked his way back through the briny sea towards the S-Boat. When he reached the ship, he swam to the bow and wiped away the algae that had grown over the ship’s name.

Feuchter Traum.

Damn.

Studs had heard of this boat. And of all of the items that it had carried back to der Fuehrer during the war. Rumors whispered in the darkest alleys of Berlin of the curses that the men who piloted the ship endured after each voyage.

From the looks of the long tear along the hull, the boat’s final curse had been its own when it hit the reef that Studs knew had taken many a boat on the south end of the island.

Working his way topside, Studs tried to pry open the ship’s hatch, but years underneath the surface had wedged it shut beyond repair.

For anyone who wasn’t Studs Winslow.

As he put his considerable strength behind the effort, Studs felt the first licks of oxygen deprivation in his lungs. The hatch began to give with a rending screech. Almost, but not wide enough to fit into.

The tussle with the shark had drained too much of his oxygen to continue any more. If not for that damned snaggle-toothed minnow, Studs might have been able to stay under another 20 minutes, maybe even gotten the hatch open on the first try.

He’d have to neuter his curiosity for the moment, return to The Goateed Mollusk IV, and work some more of Master Fang Fang’s Oriental mojo before he could make another attempt.

As Studs kicked his legs, propelling himself towards the surface and the oxygen that his chest burned for, he saw the outline of the second boat next to The Goateed Mollusk IV.

Guests.

Studs didn’t mind guests at all. He was famous for his parties on eight continents, if you counted Atlantis (which Studs did, after the discovery in Studs Winslow and the Atlantean Princess of Sea-Love). Whether the party be on his boats, at his villas, or in one of his compounds, Studs never turned away guests. As long as they were invited. (For a comprehensive list of party dos and don’ts, see Studs Winslow’s Swinging Party Guide.)

But Studs didn’t remember inviting anyone that day.

Breaking the surface of the water, Studs sucked in the sweet ocean air. He took a quick look at the new boat and felt a flicker of dread. He reached for his boat’s ladder and looked straight up into the barrel of a Luger pistol.

Above the pistol was a pair of enormous breasts in a black leather bikini. Most men might not have been able to lift their eyes above the death-black chasm of the pistol’s barrel, but Studs Winslow was no ordinary man. Besides, it wasn’t the first pistol he’d faced that week.

After a cursory once-over, Studs tore his eyes off the leather-bound woman flesh and looked into beautiful high cheekbones haloed by golden hair and a pair of the most evil baby-blues he’d ever seen.

Above those eyes perched an SS cap.

Damn.

“Hello, Herr Winslow. It is a pleasure to finally make your acquaintance.” The smile was genuine. So was the malevolence behind it.

The exhausted Studs was pulled on board by two surprisingly strong (and equally buxom) Aryan princesses in matching black leather bikinis and caps.

The first woman, obviously the leader, kept her gun aimed squarely at Studs’ chiseled midsection.

Cookie was seated on the deck, still naked, arms tied behind her back.

Studs couldn’t help but smirk. “You never let me do that to you.”

Cookie glared at him, but her full red lips fought a smile. “You never pulled a gun on me.”

“Well, not in the sack.” Studs looked at Lily, still in just her stringy bikini bottom … but with an MP40 pointed at Cookie’s back. “What’s the deal, Lily? Why are you working with these Nazi bitches?”

Lily’s eyes narrowed. “Because, Studs Winslow. I am one of them. Heil Hitler!” With her free hand, Lily threw a sharp Nazi salute, snapping her heels together. If Studs didn’t know better, he would have sworn that the little bounce made her Teutonic ta-tas pop a little Nazi salute of their own.

“You traitorous Nazi whore,” spat Cookie.

“Quiet!” Lily cracked Cookie across the mouth with the barrel of the submachine gun.

Cookie flicked her tongue to the corner of her mouth, tasted the blood there. Cookie nodded and gave a Lily a deadly look. “I’ma let you have that one, ofay.”

“Enough!” commanded the Nazi bitch apparently in charge. “Do you know who I am, Herr Winslow?”

Studs rolled his neck. “No, but I’ve shot enough of those hats off heads to know what you are.”

Tossing her rich blonde hair back, the Aryan bombshell laughed humorlessly. “I wouldn’t expect you to recognize my father’s features in me, but you will know his name. I am Commandant Helga Fuchs!”

Fuchs. Studs knew the name all too well. Many an adventure had pitted him against Hitler’s greatest scientist/warlock/madman, Fritz Fuchs. When Studs and the Screamin’ Seamen had detonated their explosives in the underwater Mer-Man research compound, who do you think had been conducting the experiments? When Studs was thrown naked into that Antarctic ice pit naked to fight an overly libidinous Abominable Snowman (the twisted tale of Studs Winslow versus the Abominable Sex Snowman), who would you guess had let the beast off its leash? When Jack the Ripper had been transported through time to 1968 London, who was at the controls of the Chrononaut’s time machine? (Dig the slaughtered beatniks in Studs Winslow Swings through Time.)

So when Fritz Fuchs’ hyper-intelligent Croco-Gorillas turned on their creator and ripped him to shreds, Studs finally thought the man and his madness had been laid to rest. Or at least been digested by Croco-Gorillas.

Studs snarled. “Yeah, I recognize the name of that lunatic.”

Helga backhanded Studs across the chops. “My father was a genius!”

“Your father was a madman.” Helga swung again, but Studs caught her by the wrist. “And it looks like his daughter inherited his madness.”

The two silent women who had pulled Studs aboard whipped out submachine guns and aimed them at Studs’ head. With her free hand, Helga pressed her Luger to Studs’ temple. She slid her hand up his chiseled thigh and removed his bowie knife from the sheath. She tossed it to the deck. Lily picked up the blade and stuck it into the thin fabric of her bikini bottom.

“And you, Herr Studs, you have a remarkable physique for a man who fought in World War Two.” Helga didn’t sound surprised. She traced the barrel of the gun down Studs’ neck, through his thick mat of chest hair, and over his flat stomach. She pressed herself against him, smelling his musk, lips brushing against his shoulder. Catching herself, Helga snapped back to attention, the business end of the Luger pointed back under Studs’ chin.

Studs smirked at Helga Fuchs. He assumed that somehow she’d found out about the Fountain of Youth that Studs had stumbled upon all those years ago in Bolivia (in Studs Winslow and Muhammad Ali in Bolivia).

If the Nazis had that kind of regenerative power? Studs would have shuddered at the thought—

—but Studs Winslow wasn’t a man who shuddered.

Studs released his grip on her wrist. “If it’s the secret of my good looks you want, my answer is healthy living. If you’re here to kill me, then do it.”

Helga Fuchs smiled. “Oh no, Herr Winslow. We’re not going to kill you. We want to hire you.”

“You can’t afford me.”

“On the contrary, you can’t afford to say no.” Helga snapped her fingers. One of the mute twins went to the control panel on the The Goateed Mollusk IV’s winch and raised Cookie six feet overhead. With a switch of the lever, the boom turned, dangling Cookie over the water.

“What you gonna do?” Cookie catcalled. “Try to drown me? Shee-yit, I was captain of the Oxford swimming team three years in a row. Don’t matter my hands are tied behind my back. I could make it to shore without my arms.”

“Don’t think that I don’t know your capabilities, Ms. Cutter.” With that, Helga lowered her gun and fired the Luger.

The two small toes of Cookie’s left foot popped off. Cookie howled. “Ahhh, my goddamn pinkie toe! I’ma kill you.”

Helga smiled. “I’m paying you with her life, Herr Winslow. You do what we say, and we won’t drop your precious Cookie Cutter. As you can see, the dip will not be refreshing.”

Studs looked out onto the cruel ocean, dorsal fins already breaking the surface in the sharks’ quest to find the source of the blood that was dribbling into their water.

The dinner bell had been rung.

“You’re as crazy as your father, Helga.”

“And you, Herr Winslow, are running out of time. You have thirty minutes to retrieve the item we have come for. In precisely thirty minutes, if you have not returned from the Feuchter Traum with the object I desire, I will cut the rope myself, and your precious Cookie Cutter will be torn to pieces.”

“It can’t be done. I need at least that much time to do the breathing exercises necessary for a dive that deep. And you expect me to make that same dive in water that you just made shark infested?”

“Twenty-eight minutes.”

“I’ll drown before I get down there.”

“If you drown, your black beauty will not be far behind.”

Cookie twirled angrily at the end of the rope. “Hey, who you callin’ a … actually, both them words fit. I’ma still gonna kill you.”

Helga laughed. “Such spirit! It’s a shame that you are unfit to join the Fifth Reich, and that spirit will be leaving this world in … twenty-six minutes. Your move, Herr Winslow.”

Studs gritted his teeth. “What is it you need me to get?”

“In 1941, the Feuchter Traum was on route to the Fatherland carrying a precious item … a precious item that had existed in legend amongst the Mexican people and their Mayan ancestors for centuries.”

“I don’t got time for a history lesson.”

Undeterred, Helga Fuchs went on. “My father, knowing the powerful mysticism of the Mayan people, believed that this item would be a suitable addition to der Fuehrer’s already impressive collection. He sent a team deep into the jungle to an ancient pyramid, a temple many thought was on cursed land, built by a cursed people. And do you know what they found, Herr Winslow?”

“The world’s greatest enchiladas?”

“They found the Amulet of Qaxteqackotittlq.”

The name meant nothing to Studs.

But it meant something to Cookie. “Aw, hell no.”

That couldn’t be good.

“The Amulet of Qaxteqackotittlq is on that boat, Herr Winslow, and I want it!” Helga checked her watch. “And you have nineteen minutes to get it for me.”

Without another word, Studs dove off the edge of the boat, executing a perfect jackknife.

Studs thrust his muscular body deeper and deeper into the water, moving fast not only to avoid drowning, but to get below the sharks that were quickly amassing under Cookie.

Studs took a quick look up. He saw four or five blue sharks, two good-sized bull sharks, a lemon shark, and his old friend, the tiger who’d tried to nosh on Studs only minutes earlier. Studs guessed that the blood in the water was too much to keep the old boy away, even after his encounter with Studs.

As he turned to the Feuchter Traum, a large shadowy motion caught Studs’ eye, moving in from about a hundred yards off the boat.

A shadow that big would have sent a shiver down Studs’ spine—

—but shivers didn’t have a home anywhere on Studs Winslow, especially not his spine.

Instead, Studs just used it as further motivation to get a move on … before the great white got there.

When Studs reached the Feuchter Traum, his lungs were already aching. Studs grabbed the narrow hatch opening, planted his feet against the side, and pulled with all his strength. Forty years of rust fractured under Studs’ steel will. The hatch opened.

Once inside the boat, a pulsing sensation started up behind Studs’ eyes. It was a sensation he’d felt only once before, when he’d been possessed by the power of Dr. Tutu’s voodoo bag in Haiti. (Dig the magic in Studs Winslow and the Voodoo Orgy of Dr. Tutu.)

There was something evil nearby, and Studs could feel it. He let it guide him to the Amulet of Qaxteqackotittlq.

Passing through the cabin, Studs saw a weak green light emanating from under the door of the captain’s quarters. As he swam closer, the throbbing grew stronger. The Amulet of Qaxteqackotittlq was behind that door.

Studs opened the door. The room was bathed in weak green light emanating from an ornate wooden box. A box held in the clutches of a Nazi skeleton.

As Studs pried the box from the dead Nazi bastard’s hands, he noticed something … strange about the skull, particularly the mouth. But he had no time to think on the curiosities of German dentistry; he had to not drown himself. And get back to the boat before Helga Fuchs turned Cookie into fish food.

When he swam out of the cursed German Schnellboot, Studs immediately saw that the ocean around The Goateed Mollusk IV was a bloodier hue of crimson.

For a moment, he feared that he was too late, that the madwoman had tossed his Cookie to the sharks before he had a chance to return with the Amulet of Qaxteqackotittlq.

Then he saw the chunks—the remains of four or five blue sharks, two good-sized bull sharks, and a lemon shark littering the water. The great white had decided to take out the competition before meal time.

For reasons he couldn’t figure out, it relieved Studs to not see any pieces of his old chum the tiger shark.

What worried Studs was that he couldn’t see the great white.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have the time to find him. Studs pumped his legs and worked his way to the surface before the black spots that were forming in his vision grew any larger. Studs needed oxygen, and he needed it now.

Twenty yards to the surface.

The spots grew darker.

Ten.

With an explosion of size and movement, the great white came at Studs from underneath The Goateed Mollusk IV. Studs broke the surface of the water and took in huge lungfuls of sweet, sweet air.

The giant dorsal fin of the great white erupted out of the water ten feet from the gasping Studs.

“My knife!” Studs yelled.

Lily took the bowie from her bikini and tossed the blade to Studs. He caught it and turned to face the leviathan.

The shark skimmed the surface, inches from Studs’ chest. For the second time that day, Studs locked eyes with another of the world’s deadliest predators. This one was used to being King of the Sea, however. And Studs was too tired and weak to give an effective warrior’s glare.

The shark’s eyes said, You’re lucky I just ate, Bub. But I’ll be hungry again reeeeal soon.

So, with a bellyful of his fellow sharks, the great white swam a respectable distance from the boats. Didn’t leave, but kept its distance.

Waiting.

Studs didn’t want to wait until the monster got its appetite back. He tossed the carved box onto the deck of the boat, climbed the ladder, and collapsed into an exhausted heap.

With a hunger in her eyes that wasn’t too different from the shark’s, Helga Fuchs picked up the wooden box and opened it. Her eyes lit with the flames of pure Nazi bitch evil. “Mein Gott. It’s true. The Amulet of Qaxteqackotittlq!” The other women gathered behind her, their faces masked with a lust that, under different circumstances, Studs would have been more than willing and able to sate.

“I did my part,” gasped Studs. “Reel in Cookie.”

“Do it,” said Helga, her eyes never leaving the amulet.

Lily went to the controls and dropped Cookie onto the deck next to Studs.

“What have you done, Studs?” she asked. “Don’t you know what that amulet can do?”

“Guess I’ll find out soon enough,” he said. Behind his back, Studs handed Cookie his bowie. In all the excitement, they’d forgotten to take it from him. Cookie’s cocoa forearms flexed, only the barest motion giving away the sawing at her bonds.

“It has the power to raise the dead, Studs.”

“Bring him out,” said Helga.

The Aryan twins re-emerged from under Stud’s canopy, each struggling with one end of a coffin adorned with swastikas.

“That ain’t who I think it is, is it?” asked Studs as he pulled his jeans back on over his trunks. He pulled out his smokes and lit one. Putting the pack back into the pocket, he tapped the skull’s ruby eye on the belt buckle twice. The belt buckle beeped quietly.

“Prepare yourselves, Studs Winslow and Cookie Cutter—prepare yourselves for the return of Adolph Hitler himself!”

With that, the Aryan twins opened the lid of the coffin, revealing the desiccated bones within. Studs looked at the withered skull, tiny mustache intact.

“Honey, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” said Cookie.

“Of course you wouldn’t.” Helga withdrew the amulet from the box, a magnificent golden medallion on a thick leather thong that wouldn’t have looked out of place adorning the chest of a true disco stallion.

Tenderly, Helga lifted the head of her Fuehrer and placed the Amulet of Qaxteqackotittlq around his neck.

Immediately, the green glow enveloped the bones of Adolph Hitler.

“Studs?” Cookie whispered.

Pink flesh grew on the bones, oozing around itself, rebuilding.

“Yeah?” whispered back Studs.

Spots of white skin began spreading, stretching over the flesh.

“That amulet raises the dead.”

Hitler’s fingertips convulsed, celebrating the new life coursing through them.

“I can see that, Cookie.”

Hitler’s mustache twitched, became fuller.

“Yeah, but these dumb Nazi bitches don’t have a doctorate in mystical artifacts.”

“What’s your point, Cookie?”

Hitler’s eyes sprang open. Undistilled fury and hatred under the lids. And something else …

“The Amulet of Qaxteqackotittlq brings back the dead …”

Studs recognized what else was in that evil bastard’s eyes, realized what was wrong with the mouth of the Nazi on the sunken ship. Fangs! Hitler’s mouth was filled with fangs.

“… but as a Mayan Vampire.”

Mayan Vampire Hitler leapt from the coffin with an ear-piercing screech, howling, “Mi hambre debe ser saciado!”

In a flash, the Nazi bitches of the Fifth Reich’s expressions turned from lust to horror as Mayan Vampire Hitler tore the throat from the nearest Aryan twin, then the breast off the other. Mayan Vampire Hitler feasted on the bloody milk that poured from her chest. Her breast fell to the deck like a nippled jellyfish.

“Mein Fuehrer! What has happened to you? Stop!” screamed Helga, her gun drawn onto Mayan Vampire Hitler. She fired twice.

Mayan Vampire Hitler laughed at the smoking holes in his chest.

Lily panicked, firing the fallen twin’s submachine gun wildly. Her bullets shredded the sails on The Goateed Mollusk IV, slammed into the engines.

Studs hit the deck.

Cookie saw her opportunity. Executing a perfect judo flip over the hail of bullets, Cookie kicked the gun out of Lily’s hands.

“Didn’t know I was also captain of the Harvard Kung-Fu Squad, didja bitch?”

Then with a spin kick that would have made the Atomic Samurai Women of Nagasaki proud (read the classic adventure in Studs Winslow and the Atomic Samurai Women of Nagasaki), Cookie cracked Lily right across her high cheekbones with a foot that was missing two toes.

Lily flipped in the air twice before plummeting into the ocean.

Cookie stood, hands on her cocked hips. “I told you I’d get you, ofay.”

The great white was on Lily before she could respond to Cookie’s funky sass. Mayan Vampire Hitler laughed and advanced on the weeping Helga Fuchs. He stopped laughing when his arms started to smoke. “¿Qué me está pasando?”

“Hey, Hitler!” said Studs.

Mayan Vampire Hitler turned to Studs. His eyes went wide with fear and rage as his skin began to blister. “Espárragos Winslow? ¿Qué estás haciendo aquí?”

“Next time one of your crazy-ass Nazi bitches wants to bring you back from the dead, make sure they don’t make you a Mayan Vampire.”

Small flames erupted from under the blistering skin of Mayan Vampire Hitler.

“And make double sure they don’t do it on the deck of a boat underneath the Caribbean sun.”

With a scream of unimaginable agony, flames engulfed Mayan Vampire Hitler ..

Helga Fuchs made a run for it, trying to get across the gangplank to her own boat and escape.

Mayan Vampire Hitler gave chase, covered in flames. “Puta alemana estupido!”

As he leapt on her, Helga fired her remaining bullets into the chest of her immolated Fuehrer. She screamed as his fiery fangs tore into her flesh. The two of them fell under the canopy in a flaming embrace of death.

“Daaaamn,” said Cookie. “That is one overcooked Nazi Mayan Vampire Hitler jive turkey.”

Studs took his bowie back from Cookie and reached down to cut loose the gangplank connecting the boats, when a charred hand slapped onto the railing of the Nazi bitches’ boat and flipped the gangplank into the ocean from their side.

Laughing hoarsely, Mayan Vampire Nazi Bitch of the Fifth Reich Helga Fuchs stood under the boat canopy, safe from the deadly sunlight. “Ahhhahahahaha! You may have won this day, Señor Winslow, but I will return and you will face my Mayan Vampire Nazi wrath!”

As the boats slowly drifted apart, Studs sighed sadly and shook his head. “What do you think, Cookie? You ready to go shopping for The Goateed Mollusk V?”

“You didn’t,” said Cookie.

“I activated the failsafe, just in case.” Studs tapped his enormous belt buckle.

“Do it,” said Cookie, and dove overboard, swimming for the shore.

“What are you talking about, Señor Winslow?” Mayan Vampire Nazi Bitch of the Fifth Reich Helga Fuchs had stopped laughing, a concerned look drawn over her Mayan Vampire Nazi Bitch of the Fifth Reich face.

“Bye-bye, Helga,” Studs said as he hit the ruby button on his belt buck two more times and dove over the side of the boat.

The Goateed Mollusk IV exploded as the TNT in the hold detonated. The last thing Studs saw before hitting the water was the explosion engulfing and vaporizing the Nazi boat and Mayan Vampire Nazi Bitch of the Fifth Reich Helga Fuchs along with it.

Studs smiled as he swam towards shore. His smile didn’t last long.

The giant dorsal fin cut the water ahead of him, heading straight toward Cookie, her wounded foot leading a delicious trail right to her delicious body.

“Swim, Cookie!” shouted Studs. “Swim!”

Cookie turned back to see the monster shark bearing down on her. She doubled her effort, but it wasn’t enough to outpace the shark.

“Nnnnooooooo!” screamed Studs as the great white swallowed Cookie whole and turned towards the greater ocean.

Studs swam for all he was worth after the great white. On another day, without the physical demands made of his body that the day had already taken, he might have caught the beast.

But not today.

Despite his effort, the great white lengthened the distance between them. The despair in Studs’ chest grew over his lost Cookie.

The great dorsal fin slipped under the surface.

Studs treaded water, unwilling to give up, unwilling to face defeat even in the face of the hopelessness before him.

The great white didn’t surface.

But another fin did.

The tiger shark was back and circling Studs.

Studs pulled his knife, ready to take revenge on all of sharkkind for his lost Cookie.

The shark swam by Studs. It slowed down to look him in the eye.

This time, their communication was different.

It wasn’t the predatorial dance of time immemorial.

No.

The tiger shark’s eyes said: The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Studs nodded and grabbed onto his newfound ally’s dorsal fin. In a bolt, the tiger shark was off, carrying Studs with him.

Under the surface, Studs could see the great white two hundred yards ahead, but they were gaining. The tiger shark was faster and didn’t have a bellyful of Cookie slowing him down.

One hundred yards.

Fifty.

Twenty.

Then they were right beside the grey-skinned giant. Studs pushed himself off the tiger shark and plunged his bowie knife deep into the belly of the great white. The shark jerked and writhed as Studs drew his knife down the length of the monster’s body. Entrails poured into the water, pieces of other sharks. Pieces of Lily.

Then a honey brown arm reached from inside, grasping for Studs. Studs grabbed Cookie’s arm and wrenched her free from the belly of the beast. The two of them kicked to the surface and swam for shore as quickly as they could. The sea was red with the great white’s blood as smaller sharks enacted their revenge for the giant shark’s tyranny. The feeding frenzy was magnificent and terrifying.

Studs gave one last look back at the tiger shark. He gave his aquatic friend a final salute and headed for shore.

When Studs and Cookie reached the beach, a small group had gathered on the shore. Dirty Jack was one of the onlookers. He waded out and helped the exhausted Studs and Cookie onto the beach. They fell onto the soft white sand, spent.

“What the hell happened?” Dirty Jack asked.

“Mayan Nazi Vampires.” Cookie said.

Dirty Jack shrugged and looked out at the fiery wrecks of the two boats. “Oh well. Who wants Rum Runners?”

Studs and Cookie each weakly raised a hand.

THE END

Todd Robinson is the creator and Chief Editor of the award-winning ‘zine THUGLIT.COM. His writing has appeared in Plots With Guns, Needle Magazine, Shotgun Honey, Strange, Weird, and Wonderful, Out of the Gutter, Pulp Pusher, Grift, Demolition Magazine, CrimeFactory and Danger City. He has been nominated for a Derringer Award, short-listed for Best American Mystery Stories, selected for Writers Digest’s Year’s Best Writing 2003 and won the inaugural Bullet Award in June 2011.

The first collection of his short stories, Dirty Words, is now available as an E-book and his debut novel The Hard Bounce will be released in January 2013 from Tyrus Books.

INTERVIEW with JOHNNY and TIME OUT SYDNEY

By Michael Wayne

In July, Johnny did an interview for Time Out Sydney all about Blood & Tacos. Due to space, they could only print an edited version of the interview. For your reading pleasure, here is the unedited interview conducted by Michael Wayne (check out his blog at http://wayninginterests.wordpress.com).

Johnny, what was it about the modern age that was screaming for a return to the gung-ho pulp action heroes of old?

I seriously doubt that the modern age was screaming for Blood & Tacos, but they are now. No matter how civilized we pretend to be, the universal appeal of sex and violence has never diminished. Blood & Tacos gives the people what they want, except we’re slapping sideburns and bushy mustaches on it.

There’s something freeing about stories set in the 1970s and 1980s. Stories that consciously forgo any political correctness and let loose the dogs of war.

What can readers expect from a typical issue?

If you’ve read the Executioner, the Destroyer, or the Death Merchant, you’ll know right away what we’re all about. Entertaining stories that deliver fast-paced thrills and big action. Manly men doing manly things.

Every three months, Blood & Tacos delivers five original “re-discovered” stories from the 1970s and 1980s. Men’s fiction “discovered” by today’s hottest crime writers. The stories run the gamut from “one man’s war against the mob” to “survival in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.” Two-fisted tales with heroes named the Silencer, the Albino Wino, Bastard Mercenary, and Tiger Team Bravo.

Was it hard to convince other crime writers to get on board? What kind of talent do you have on board?

Surprisingly, most writers jumped at the chance to be a part of the Blood & Tacos family. I’m getting submissions from all over the world.

Remember, a lot of established, best-selling authors started their careers writing for the men’s adventure paperbacks of this era. Nelson DeMille (Ryker), Joe Lansdale (Stone: MIA Hunter), Marc Olden (Black Samurai), and Lee Goldberg (.357: Vigilante), just to name a few.

While I’m proud to have veteran writers like Gary Phillips and Ray Banks participating, the opportunity to publish an author for the first time (in the case of Christopher Blair’s story, “Battleground USSA: Texasgrad”) is even more rewarding. I’m also really excited to announce that the new issue will have a story by Stephen Mertz, a writer who actually wrote men’s adventure novels, including Executioner and Stone: MIA Hunter books.

You’ve been very careful not to denigrate the source material, although there’s plenty of room for humor. How do you find a balance between hard-boiled ball-tearers and the more satirical stories?

“Hard-boiled ball-tearers?” Maybe I should get you to write a story. I’m definitely using that in the publicity from now on.

The original stories from the era were so over the top, bordering on or completely sliding into self-parody, that it would be difficult to do anything more outrageous than what was written in, say, the Penetrator series. That gives our writers a lot of latitude. They can play it straight. They can go broad. I leave that choice up to them.

We’ve always described the aesthetic of the stories as “ridiculously awesome.” When an albino henchmen attacks a mustachioed hero with a spear gun. That kind of thing. That’s what we’re going for. It’s about big, harmless fun.

They’re definitely very cinematic stories. I know you can’t speak for the other writers, but what’s your process to get into the headspace of Brace Godfrey?

Writing as Brace Godfrey is a blast. I’ve created a character that I write through rather than about. And he’s a real piece of work.

I see Brace as a reformer, although limited by a narrow worldview. I really like the idea of a writer that wants to be the first person to feature a Hispanic hero or a tough female heroine but, when he does so, incorporates all the worst stereotypes and caricatures in his portrayal. The opportunities for humor and satire are broad.

That was essentially the heart of blaxploitation and characters like John Shaft in the 1970s. Black heroes had finally arrived, but they were all pimps and players. And it’s not like things have changed much. It’s still happening with Asians. There might be stories with Asian heroes, but I can count on my left hand the number of non–martial artists out there.

You’ve recently released your first novel, Dove Season, which certainly testifies to your authority in the crime fiction genre. How did you get started, and what are your influences?

I started as a screenwriter and playwright but over time grew more and more intrigued by fiction. I was so intimidated by writing a novel that when I wrote Dove Season, I didn’t tell anyone—including my wife—that I was writing it until I was 100 pages in and confident that I would finish. Since the publication of Dove Season, exciting things just keep happening. In fact, my new novel, Big Maria, comes out in September.

I have always been drawn to writers that play with tone. Writers that are hard-boiled and comfortable in the shadows but can shift to humor just as quickly. Off the top of my head, writers like James Crumley, Charles Willeford, Jonathan Latimer, and Chester Himes really showed me that realistic crime stories didn’t have to be humorless.

How far can you see Blood & Tacos going? Where would you like it to?

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention my partners-in-crime. Pete Allen, the publisher of Blood & Tacos and the mastermind behind Creative Guy Publishing, has given me incredible creative control that borders on irresponsibility.

Also, my wife Roxanne Patruznick, who continues to do me the enormous favor of volunteering her incredible talent by supplying the original covers for each issue. How many magazines get original oil paintings for their covers? Honestly, they’re the best part.

Right now, we’re concentrating on putting out a solid issue every three months. But don’t worry, we’ve got big plans.

Look for a Blood & Tacos book imprint in 2013. Pete and I are still working out the details, but at the very least we should have the year one annual (collecting all the stories from the first four issues) and a Chingón novella in print in the first half of next year. After that, our plan is to open it up to the authors to write novellas for their characters, stand-alone stories that deliver ungodly amounts of ridiculous awesomeness.

Could you reveal your favorite three-shot?

No question about it: Swamp Master by Jake Spencer.

Here’s the promotional copy from the cover of Swamp Master #2: Hell on Earth: “Mutants and killers rule a devastated land. One man defies them. In Post-Nuke America, Mutant Death Squads terrorize the masses of Occupied Florida. Now mindless killer drones are infiltrating the coast from a floating fortress manned by neo-Nazi stormtroopers. These assassins are wired to kill and willing to die—and only one man dares to take them on. Swamp Master.” Are you kidding me? Talk about ridiculously awesome.

Bonus: what’s the perfect soundtrack for reading an issue of Blood & Tacos?

“The Big Payback” by James Brown, Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger,” and the theme to The A-Team playing simultaneously at full volume.

BLOOD & SWEETGRASS: This Rez is Mine

By C.W. “Pops” McEwen

(discovered by Chris La Tray)

C.W. “Pops” McEwen is the pseudonym for the authors Rory and Roisin McGarrity, a married couple. While squatting as members of the Cherish Wind Commune on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation, they became fascinated with Native American culture, though fearful of the Cheyenne people. So rather than talk and interact with any of the natives, they chose to write about them safely from afar.

For the sake of authenticity and to establish the existence of “Pops,” the couple used a photo of Andy Devine taken on his deathbed.

This first installment in the Blood & Sweetgrass series from 1976 began a franchise that would last for over twenty adventures. CHRIS LA TRAY stole this book from his uncle’s bookshelf, replacing it with a library sale copy of Journey to Ixtlan with the spine turned inward.

A light breeze gathered the thick cloud of marijuana smoke and floated it directly into the path of a mother and her three children. The woman wrinkled her nose and cast a dark glance up the rising slope that ended in the shade of an immense cottonwood. Her expression paled at the sight of the men sprawled there, and she put her hands on the backs of her two smaller children to hustle them forward. She hissed several words to her teen daughter, who loitered several paces behind with a smile threatening her lips. The girl rolled her eyes then quickened her pace in her mother’s wake.

The gang of Gravemakers, seven men and two women, who rested in the shade passing joints and sharing a fifth of Jack Daniels, laughed and jeered. They were a rowdy bunch, aware and reveling in the discomfort their presence evoked in the more wholesome people forced to pass by them on their way to cool off in Frenchtown Pond. It was a community place, on the edge of a small town, just off I-90. Like the locals, these scruffy motorcycle outlaws were here to escape the heat of summer-come-early in western Montana. But unlike the folk splashing at the shores of the small pond in shorts and swimsuits, the bikers made few concessions to the heat when it came to their attire. All wore boots and jeans, men and women alike; some even covered their denim with leather chaps. A couple were shirtless, though most wore T-shirts or stained muscle shirts. They all wore leather vests emblazoned with the red, gold, and black colors of the Gravemakers MC, with their almost comical pistol- and machete-wielding skeleton mascot in an oversized sombrero at the center.

No one dared laugh in passing, however. Only the ignorant or the young even glanced.

If not for the marijuana, it’s likely the stench of their sunburned and unwashed bodies, soured by sweat, oil, and gasoline, would have been the primary assault against the summer air. Still, the reek was not unnoticed.

“Do you never wash,” a quiet voice said, “or did the back alley whores who squeezed you out into the gutter not teach you such things?”

As one, the bikers turned their heads to face the speaker. He was tall, dressed not unlike them in cowboy boots and jeans, and shirtless beneath a vest. His vest was of deer hide, however, with fringe around the bottom seam. Where Gravemaker skin was sunburned and lined, bristling with hair, his was copper and smooth. His long hair, so black as to shimmer blue in the sunlight, floated like a halo in the kiss of wind around him. He crossed his arms over the single bear claw that hung from a cord around his neck, the movement sending ripples of muscles up and down his biceps.

A large silver belt buckle at the front of his jeans was etched in swirling script: Native Pride.

The Gravemakers’ faces froze, incredulous; joints half drawn upon, whiskey in mid-guzzle, laughter dying before it could pass gapped teeth.

The speaker laughed. “Do not look so surprised,” he said. He glanced to the left of the bikers, where their hogs, menacing even at rest, were parked, to a young Indian woman cowering under the watchful eye of another woman in Gravemaker colors. “After all, you cannot expect to take one that belongs with the People and not expect retribution.”

The gang staggered to their feet. One of the Gravemakers took two slow paces forward. He was not tall, but powerfully built; almost rectangular in shape. His hair, streaked with gray, was pulled into a single braid that trailed down his back. Pale, illegible tattoos in greenish-blue etched his chest and arms like a highway map. He spit, only half of the output making it through the patch of beard and mustache that ringed his mouth.

“And just who the fuck are you?” the biker said. “You look like Tonto, but I don’t see no fuckin’ Lone Ranger.”

The Indian smiled, waiting for the laughter from the biker gang to subside. “My name is Blood.”

“Blood? Is that supposed to scare me? ’Cuz it don’t.”

“It is nothing more than my name.”

“Maybe I’ll call you Buck instead.” More laughter from his companions.

Blood shrugged, his gaze narrowing.

The Gravemaker produced a switchblade from his pocket and flicked it open, the blade glittering in the sunlight. “Well, Buck, you should know, we Gravemakers take what we want, when we want.” A murmur of assent echoed his statement as the bikers produced a clatter of weapons: an assortment from blades to blackjacks to chains.

Blood didn’t waver. “Not from the reservation you do not,” he said.

“You ain’t on the rez no more, Chief.”

The Indian uncrossed his arms and squeezed his hands into fists. Veins bulged, sinews popped. “North America is my reservation.”

With a yell the leader of the Gravemakers hurled his body knife-first at Blood.

Dancing aside as if his Tony Lamas were bare feet, Blood avoided the clumsy charge and with a “Hiiii-YAH!” struck a thunderous blow with his elbow against the back of the biker’s neck. The man skidded face first across the weed-choked ground, the toes of his boots leaving twin trails in the dirt.

With whoops and screams the remaining bikers engaged the Indian; a stomped-up cloud of dust soon obscured the action.

Blood was a cyclone of fury, a dust devil of destruction beyond the abilities of the gang of simple brawlers. He exceeded anything they had faced or even seen before. Their lack of organization worked against them in their first rush to attack, and Blood took full advantage of it. His fists and elbows struck like hammers, his knees and feet like cinderblocks. He eschewed picking up any of the more lethal weapons being wielded against him, even though he had ample opportunity to do so. In fact, a large knife was sheathed at his back, though his grip never strayed to its carved-antler hilt.

In moments it was over. The bikers littered the ground surrounding the tree, men and women alike, moaning in pain or unconscious. Streams of gory red seeped from noses, lips and foreheads, and several limbs were bent at unnatural angles.

The Indian called Blood stood a moment, his hair streaming behind him, chest heaving, sweat glistening, surveying the battleground. Satisfied, he turned and strode to the young Indian woman who now stood near the motorcycles. She watched him approach with wide eyes and quickening breath. Her face spoke of youth while her body, in hip-hugging bell-bottom jeans and a denim halter top, declared her woman.

Blood gently took her chin between his fingers. He turned her face—angular, beautiful—from side to side to check for damage. “Are you hurt?” he asked.

“I am not injured,” she said.

“Did they …?”

“They did not,” she said. “They said something about a party tonight, though. That … that I should be ready.”

Blood nodded, rested his hand on her shoulder, and then pointed toward the parking lot thirty yards distant. “You’ll see my truck there. Wait for me.”

At each motorcycle Blood gripped any wires he could and yanked them free, immobilizing the gang’s means of transportation. He then moved through the fallen bikers and searched their bodies, throwing small handfuls of marijuana and pills into piles all around them and tossing aside weapons. He faced the growing crowd of people who had left the shores of the pond to bear witness to the mayhem. One boy began to clap, then a girl, and finally the adults joined in. Cheers followed.

Blood held up his hand but did not smile. “These bikers are criminals!” he said as the applause died away. “And they will not be down long. Whoever has the fastest car, or lives nearest, should go and call the police. There are enough drugs here to have them all in jail.”

“I’ll do it!” a man said. With a serious look on his face he ran toward the parking lot.

Blood turned and saw that the woman he had saved had not followed his instructions. Instead she stood over the biker leader, staring down with an angry look in her eyes. The man sputtered at Blood through gritted teeth. “You’re dead, Buck. You’re one dead fuckin’ Injun!”

For the first time Blood drew his knife, then kneeled beside the biker. He held its point just before the man’s eye, dangerously close to piercing the orb. “Remember my face, white man,” he said. “And make sure you describe it well to your friends. Because if I see any of you again, there will be war. See me first and run. You may live.” He grabbed the man’s ponytail and then with a jerk of the hair and a sweep of the blade cut it free. Finally Blood reversed the angle of the blade and struck a heavy blow with the hilt against the biker’s temple, knocking him back to unconsciousness.

Blood stood. The girl looked at him with wonder. “I have heard about you, Blood,” she said. “I would have thought you’d kill him. I would have thought you’d kill all of them.”

Blood looked away. He looked at the victims of his wrath, then at the faces of the crowd still watching him with admiration and fear. He turned his dark eyes back to the young woman. “On another day, yes, they would pay with their lives. But not today.” Sirens kicked up in the distance.

“I would kill them,” she said.

“Not here,” Blood said. “This is a place for families.”

Blood pulled his battered red ’64 Ford pickup off at the truck stop at the intersection of I-90 and Highway 93. From there it was only a short drive to the southern border of the reservation. The girl went to the restroom to wash her face and hands. Blood bought a foam cooler, a bag of ice, a 12-pack of RC Cola, and two Snickers bars. He stood outside waiting for her, leaning against the bed of his truck, sucking down an RC and munching one of the candy bars.

He turned the can in his hand. It was some special edition. MLB All Stars. Rod Carew, Minnesota Twins.

Blood knew there were still many proud, brave Indians in Minnesota.

The sun was angled slightly to the west. The rays beat against the asphalt until it softened, the heat reflecting off its surface. Blood closed his eyes, feeling the heat of the truck’s metal against his back, then the trickle of sweat that traced the length of his spine until it gathered at his belt line.

Traffic on the highway was a steady rush and rumble. A trucker rode his jake brake as he slowed, then turned into the lot, sputtering toward the diesel pumps, the noise more like a train than anything else.

When Blood opened his eyes the girl was approaching. She’d pulled her hair back and tied it in a loose braid. Her face was clean and fresh, her eyes large and dark. The girl was more young than woman, but Blood could appreciate the curve of her hips, the budding fullness of her chest. She came close and stopped in front of him. Blood offered her a Snickers. She peeled the wrapper halfway off, her eyes never leaving his face, then slowly eased the bar into her mouth and bit off a chunk. More sweat burst from the pores all over Blood’s body as she licked a smear of chocolate that had caught on her lip. He turned to hide the flush of his face and dug into the cooler for another soda. He glanced at it, then handed it to her.

“It is a George Brett.” He looked away, embarrassed. “I got a Rod Carew.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“We should get going,” Blood said. “I have a safe place I can take you.”

The two climbed back into the truck. Blood ground the gears pulling back onto 93, then turned north up the long climb that topped out at the reservation boundary.

“How did you even know about me?” the girl said, her arm out the window, her hand held into the wind so that the speed of their passage forced it up and down, up and down. “That those bikers had taken me, I mean.”

“I have eyes all over the reservation,” Blood said.

“More like mouths.”

“Mouths?” Blood said, glancing in her direction.

“Yes, my big-mouthed aunt. She works for The Colonel.”

“You should not talk about her like that,” he said. “If not for her, you would likely be dead.” He stared directly at her. “Or worse.”

Minutes passed in silence but for the wind blowing through the open windows, the big tires whining over the highway. “They are planning something,” she said. “Something big. Something to do with the powwow.”

“That starts in two days. How do you know this?” Blood said.

“I heard the bikers talking about it. They made some kind of deal with The Colonel.”

Blood frowned. His face flushed dark. “I knew it would come to this. It is time I had a smoke with The Colonel.”

“I will help you.”

Blood shook his head. “You are brave, Daniela, but such is not for you.”

The girl laughed.

“Did I say something funny?” Blood said.

“No one calls me that.”

“Calls you what?”

“Daniela.”

“What do they call you?”

She moved closer and leaned into Blood’s ear, her lips barely touching the lobe as she said, “Sweetgrass.”

Night settled over the hulking log building with the large sign that read The Colonel’s Trading Post. Night lights came on. The occasional car pulled off the highway and coasted onto the concrete pad between twin sets of gas pumps. Others pulled up in front of the building to shop at the small store for snacks and sodas.

In the lot across the highway, more lights glowed, creating pools of shadows among the dozen small shacks that advertised FIREWORKS. Days away from July 4th, the Bicentennial, a steady stream of cars pulled into the lot, even as others pulled out and headed back toward the city, away from the reservation, their illegal booty stashed in trunks and backseats.

A dark van eased into the parking lot of the trading post, away from the booming fireworks business, and disappeared behind the building. Minutes later a short, fat Indian woman exited the front of the store, lit a cigarette, then immediately threw it into the lot before going back inside.

“There is the signal,” Blood said, putting aside a pair of binoculars. He waited in his truck off to the side of the makeshift fireworks lot. “Are you almost finished back there?”

“Almost,” Sweetgrass said. Her fingers worked at his hair, weaving it into a tight braid. At intervals she removed something from the dash board, something that glittered briefly in her fingers, something she weaved into his braid.

“Finished,” she said.

When Blood opened his door, Sweetgrass put her hand on his arm. “Let me go with you,” she said.

He shook his head. “If those people leave, and I do not come back, you must warn the reservation. If I cannot stop them, it will be up to you.”

“Someone needs to watch your back.”

“You will be.”

Colonel Judge Officer did not like to be threatened. And he was being threatened.

The Colonel was a large man, even seated behind his desk. He wore a white cowboy hat with twin braids hanging over each shoulder. A stylish tan western blazer covered his ample frame. His features were strong, if gone to fat. Two massive Indians stood behind him on either side, arms crossed, looking fierce.

The Colonel dragged on a cigarette, and then tapped the ash into a tray overflowing with butts.

Across the desk a man in a wheelchair continued to speak. “After all, Colonel, you said you could take care of things. This shit doesn’t feel like ‘taking care of’ to me.”

“A bump in the road,” The Colonel said. “Nothing more than an inconvenience. There are plenty of women on this reservation; plenty of young, beautiful, and eager women.”

“But my men—”

“Your men acted foolishly. You should be punishing them instead of bringing your complaints to me!” The Colonel roared, half-rising from behind his desk. “They were hardly fifty miles from here and never should have stopped. If they had done as I suggested, we wouldn’t be having this fucking conversation!”

Anger gurgled beneath the surface of the man in the wheelchair’s gaze. Like The Colonel, he was an old warrior, gone to fat. He had a heavy beard, though his head was shaved. He wore the colors of the Gravemakers, and the knuckles of his hands turned white as he squeezed the arms of his chair. Two Gravemaker bikers stood behind him, poised to act with the slightest signal, staring bullets at The Colonel’s statue-like bodyguards.

A tense moment stretched, then the man chuckled, relaxing into his chair. “Officer, you’re right. Goddamn if you are, Judge! We shouldn’t let the actions of a few stupid shitheads derail a perfect fuckin’ deal, now, should we?”

The Colonel smiled, though without warmth. Only his wife called him Officer, and then it was Colonel Officer, and even then only when he demanded it during sex. No one called him Judge. Not to his face, and never within earshot of anyone who may report it. “No,” he said. “We certainly shouldn’t.”

“And the product?”

“On the grounds. Under guard in my trailer as we speak,” The Colonel said.

“Then let’s fucking drink!” The man in the wheelchair reached into his vest pocket and pulled out a flask, chuckling at the flashes of alarm that passed over both Indian bodyguards’ faces as he did so. “To drugs and money and pussy!” he said.

The Colonel produced a flask from his own jacket and unscrewed the cap. “To business.”

They drank.

“And this ‘Blood’ motherfucker,” the man in the wheelchair said. “We don’t have to worry about him fucking with us any more, right?”

“Blood will be … taken care of,” The Colonel said.

The man in the wheelchair nodded. “Who is he, anyway?”

The door at the back of the room burst open in a shower of splinters and wood paneling. The corpses of the two Gravemakers who had been guarding the black van outside flopped on the floor, their throats gruesome, open gashes. A lean, dark form followed them into the room, eyes blazing.

“I am Blood,” he said.

The man spun his wheelchair around to face the newcomer. “What the fu—?”

“Kill him!” roared The Colonel.

All four bodyguards leapt into action. The first came at Blood with brass knuckles; the Indian ducked under the biker’s roundhouse swing and drove his knife up under the man’s ribcage. The force of his blow, and the man’s own momentum, buried the blade so deeply that it emerged from his back; Blood was forced to let go of the hilt or risk having the weight of the man pull him down as well.

The hesitation nearly cost him. The other biker swung a heavy sap. Blood turned away, but still took the blow on the left side of his back. The man was strong, and knew how to wield the weapon; Blood was driven to one knee.

The man raised the sap to strike again; Blood twisted his head in a half-circle, snapping his braid like a whip. The biker cried out and staggered back, dropping the sap and grasping at a spray of blood from his face. Blood came to his feet, wiping away a dripping cut on his own cheek, then smiled wickedly. He lunged at the biker, whipping his head back and forth, swinging his braid so sharply it nearly cracked. The man dropped to a knee, clutching his throat.

Blood didn’t watch him die. He turned in time to see both Indian bodyguards facing him with raised revolvers. The guns boomed in the close confines of the room.

Blood dropped onto his right shoulder and rolled forward, bullets whistling just above him. One struck the side of the gashed biker’s face, ending his death throes with the finality of oblivion.

Blood’s booted foot kicked at the two-handed grip one of the Indian bodyguards had on his pistol, pushing the next shot into the ceiling, while Blood’s other leg swept the gunman’s feet out from under him. The man went down with a crash. Blood let his momentum carry him in a half-circle toward the other gunman. He came up in a crouch, swinging his braid at the assailant.

This man had seen Blood’s hair in action, and sought to defend himself by catching it in midair. He screamed at the folly of his actions when four of his fingers were sheared off just above his knuckles. His thumb hung by a thread of skin and muscle, a razor blade pulled from Blood’s lethal braid still embedded in the meat of his hand.

The revolver the man dropped barely hit the floor before Blood had it in his fist. He fired a single shot into the man’s face, then turned and delivered two more rounds into the prone form of the other bodyguard.

Less than ten seconds had passed since Blood burst on the scene.

The man in the wheelchair looked to The Colonel in time to see a panel sliding closed in the wall, with The Colonel on the other side. Turning back around, the biker saw that Blood had witnessed the same disappearing act.

The man screamed and hit a button on his wheelchair. It leaped forward with a squeal of tires, catching Blood by surprise. The Indian was knocked sprawling to the side. He rolled to his feet in time to see the wheelchair, and its raging occupant, disappear out the shattered door he’d arrived through.

Blood wanted The Colonel, but a quick inspection revealed it would take some time to figure out the mechanism to open the sliding door. Meanwhile, the Gravemaker leader was getting away. Deciding a quick course of action, Blood went after the wheelchair.

Outside Blood could only guess which direction the man had gone. He guessed left, the shortest route around the building, and sprinted in that direction, glancing inside the black van as he passed. Blood came around front of The Colonel’s Trading Post and skidded to a stop: there was no sign of the wheelchair or its occupant. Then the whine of a racing motor grabbed his attention.

The man in the wheelchair had gone the opposite direction from Blood and circled around. Now he was racing across the parking lot toward him. Panels in both arms of the chair dropped open, and the splatter and flare of small arms fire erupted from within.

Blood leapt behind a row of metal garbage cans at the corner of the building. A sharp pain ripped at his lower leg, telling him he’d been kissed by at least one bullet.

The turbocharged wheelchair raced by him, bounced across the field bordering the lot, and headed for the open highway.

The man in the wheelchair did not hear the howling engine of the battered red ’64 Ford pickup. It roared across the highway, barely missed an oncoming motorist, and scored a direct ramming hit.

The wheelchair flew through the air as if it were a football punted by a giant. In midair the man fell from it and bounced on the ground; the Ford’s momentum carried it forward, but even though she stood on the brakes, Sweetgrass could not stop it from grinding the man beneath its wheels. The lurch as the truck plowed over the sudden corpse was enough to make Sweetgrass bash the top of her head against the roof and nearly throw her out the open window.

In seconds it was over. Sweetgrass sat panting at the wheel; the door was pulled open and Blood was there. “Are you alright?” he said.

She nodded. And smiled through the lip she’d bit bloody without even noticing.

An hour later and ten miles away, Colonel Judge Officer watched from a distance as a trailer parked in the vendor area of the powwow grounds burned a bright flame against the night sky. Thousands of dollars, with the promise of thousands more, were going up in smoke, but his expression was passive. He licked his lips, then rolled up the window of his brand new 1976 Cadillac Eldorado and sighed. There would be other deals. And other opportunities to even the score with the man called Blood. The car pulled away, headed north.

Blood watched the same burning trailer, from a vantage much closer. A quick call from a pay phone to a trailer a half mile from the powwow grounds put phase two of the plan in action. A squad of young Indians had swept into the night, quickly overcome The Colonel’s guards—who weren’t expecting any trouble and were half drunk—and seized the contents of The Colonel’s trailer, ostensibly there to sell trinkets to powwow visitors. Instead it was full of narcotics, meant to be disbursed to the crowd, in hopes of converting a whole new batch of thrill seekers into addicts. The Gravemakers would supply the product and The Colonel would share in the proceeds.

A solid plan, but for one thing. They didn’t take into account a man named Blood.

“What are you going to do about The Colonel?” Sweetgrass asked. She stood beside Blood, half supporting him and his wounded leg.

“His day will come,” Blood said. “We will smoke together yet, you’ll see.”

“I intend to be there,” Sweetgrass said. “Just try and stop me.”

Blood laughed. “I have already tried once, and failed. I will not try again.”

He looked at her face, into her eyes, then leaned forward and kissed her. It was a deep kiss, and lingered long.

“You seem eager to try other things,” Sweetgrass said when they came up for air.

“That I am,” he said, his voice husky.

“I would invite you to my house, but my aunt and her big mouth will be there.”

“Then I guess it is time you saw my trailer,” he said.

The pair turned and walked back to the truck. They got in, and Blood pulled away from the powwow grounds. As they pulled onto the dark road that led east, away from the highway and toward the Jocko Hills, Blood said, “At least The Colonel learned one important lesson tonight.”

“What’s that, Blood?”

“He learned,” Blood said, “this rez is mine.”

THE END

Chris La Tray is a rocker, a writer, and a wannabe adventurer. His nonfiction writing has appeared in the Missoula Independent, Vintage Guitar magazine, and World Explorer magazine. His short fiction has appeared at Beat to a Pulp; Pulp Modern; the Crimefactory special edition, Kung Fu Factory; Noir at the Bar; Needle: A Magazine of Noir, and the charity anthology Off the Record. His story “Run for the Roses” was the winner of the 2011 Watery Graves Invitational story competition, while his story “Genny Bow” won the 2012 Watery Graves Invitational story competition as well. He lives and travels from Missoula, MT, where folks seem overly impressed by how loud his obnoxious rock band, American Falcon, is. Obviously none of them have aurally experienced High on Fire.

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Table of Contents

Welcome Back!

VIPER: Shadow Sisters of Shinjuku

DOOMSDAY WARRIOR #9: America’s Zero Hour (by Ryder Stacy)

THE CHEMISTRATOR: Drug City, U.S.A.

CANNON FODDER: Cult Action Films of the ’80s

MAJOR MCCALL AND THE WIFE: Fragged

COOKING LIKE A TOUGH GUY

STUDS WINSLOW and the Bitches of the Fifth Reich

INTERVIEW with JOHNNY and TIME OUT SYDNEY

BLOOD & SWEETGRASS: This Rez is Mine