Noiryorican

by Richie Narvaez

  “Cable’s out,” my brother said. “Shoot, it was just on last night. Something about air traffic being stopped, borders being closed.”

  “Same old drill,” I said.

  “Same old drill,” he said.

  I cracked open another beer. My brother kept shifting around in his chair, kind of restless, picking and scratching at hisself. Sometimes he would get up and walk around the room, and the dog would follow him. Finally, Jorge put in a DVD for some action movie we’d seen a million times. But then he started talking.

  “What was up with those Diaz brothers today?” he said, looking at the screen.

  “Just loco,” I told him. “They were always a few sandwiches short of a picnic.”

  He laughed. “But why would they want to leave town? You think this virus from the news got them spooked?”

  “Everything spooks them. Here we are, miles from the nearest big town. We got nothing to worry about. Worst thing’ll happen, it’ll hit Houston. They’ll make people wash their hands a lot, and that’ll be the end of it,” I said.

  “But, Marco, I heard—I heard that people that pass from this thing…well, they don’t stay dead.”

  I about spit up my beer. “That’s ridiculous, bro.”

  “Well, that’s what I read.”

  “Read where?”

  “On the Internet. Though it’s not working.”

  “What you mean?”

  “I don’t know. Internet went down last night. Probably ’cause of the cable.”

  “People spend too much time on the Internet anyway,” I said. “That’s all fake news and commercials. Shoulda seen all the stuff they wrote about us in Iraq. Don’t pay that garbage any mind.”

  It was getting on long past suppertime, and we’d finished three six packs. I looked over at Jorge, and he was looking kind of paler than normal.

  “You look tuckered out, guey. Go on to your room and get some rest,” I told him.

  He said maybe I was right and took off. The dog followed right behind him. Me, I took two steps and collapsed onto the couch. I propped my bum leg on a pillow and fell out.

  When I woke up, it was nighttime. I rolled over and saw my wallet on the floor. Must’ve fallen out when I fell asleep. It was empty.

  I found the dog tied to the front porch and gnawing on the thick piece of rope keeping him there.

  My brother had lit out.

  I had an idea where Jorge was, out at the abandoned Cactus Motel. Kids been getting high there for years. Even I used to go there when I was young and had nothing to do. I got out my M9 pistol from my footlocker, loaded it. I pictured aiming it right at Jorge’s head. I should go get him and drag his ass back home. Pinche guey.

  But who did I think I was? I couldn’t save him. I wasn’t good for anything. I put the gun in the drawer next to my bed and threw myself down on the mattress.

  That night the dream came back.

  We were stabilizing that village, going from door to door, crossing out unfriendlies. Young and old, innocent and guilty. Didn’t matter. Yes, sir, right away, sir. We booked out of there, making good time in a cloud of sand and dust. I was sitting in the back of a truck, watching the village shrink away, looking at the blood covering my boots. Then came the explosion so loud. I went tumbling, feeling things break in my body. On the side of the road, I had one arm curled under me, my other hand opening and closing on the dirt. Then someone was calling my name, getting my attention, bringing me back to consciousness. “Villalobos! Villalobos! You all right?” It was my CO, and I think he saved my life, snapping me awake before I could fall deeper into the kind of complete oblivion you don’t wake up from.

  I fell on the floor again, blankets around my leg, covered with sweat. I dragged myself up.

  I noticed then the dog was in the room. He walked slowly over to me, his dirty nails scratching on the floor, wagging his dirty tail, and damn if that dog didn’t sit down right in front of me and put his head in my lap. He looked up at me with these huge brown eyes. Looking right through me.

  I got up, got myself a shot from my bottle next to my bed, sat back down in that spot on the floor, and the dog put his head right back where it was before, and looked up at me with big brown eyes full of pity.

  I woke up late, a few hours past dawn, and I was about to call Mom on my cell, when the house phone rang.

  “Marco. Gracias a dios! Hurry!”

  When your mother calls you half-hysterical on the phone, you better get going. I didn’t think twice when the dog followed me into the truck, and we raced out the ranch in a cloud of dust.

  I heard what sounded like a shotgun blast echo over the hills.

  The truck had good pickup, and I floored it.

  The dog and I jumped out of the car at the same time and ran for the door, Old Pendejo barking fiercely the whole way. I ripped open the front door. He pushed right past my legs and ran inside. In the foyer it smelled like a thousand places I knew in the war. In the kitchen, there was Mom sitting on the floor, a shotgun in her lap.

  And there, in front of her on the floor, was Mrs. Coleman. With her head busted open like a pumpkin tossed out a speeding truck. I’d see things like that before, but seeing it on Mrs. Coleman’s plain, brown kitchen floor just made it much more disgusting. She had on her bunny slippers, too.

  My mom started talking. “She got the strangest fever I ever saw,” Mom said. “She was so cold, so cold. I made her some soup, but she wouldn’t eat it. Did you boys eat?”

  “Yes, Mom, we ate.”

  Mom nodded. Her hair, which was always neatly combed, was a big cotton candy mess above her head. There was blood all over her apron.

  “What happened, Mom?”

  “She got up, looking horrible. Really bad. And then she attacked me. Like she was…like she was trying to eat me. She was trying to eat me! She clawed me like an animal!”

  My mother showed me long, deep scratches on her arm.

  “I got to get you to the hospital.”

  “I shot her. You have to understand, I had to. Then she got up again. She got up again. So I had to shoot her again.”

  I saw then that Mrs. Coleman also had a spread of gunshot across her left side. No sixty-year-old lady would’ve been able to withstand one blast, let alone two.

  “I’ll call the sheriff later,” I said.

  Mom showed me the cell phone in her hand. “I tried. No answer.”

  She seemed like she was in shock, but she said she just wanted to go home. I picked her up and carried her to the truck.

  She whispered, “Drive fast, Marquito.”

  I wanted to get Jorge, but Mom was sick, and I had to take care of her. I sat on the floor right outside her room while she slept. Old Pendejo, he stayed right there with me.

  I went downstairs and made some toast and tea with a little of her bourbon and brought it up to her. The dog came into the room with me.

  “Some food for you, Mom.”

  She was propped up on a bunch of pillows and staring out at nothing. It looked like she had a fever, but she felt cold, was pale as hell.

  “Thank you, son. But I don’t think I could keep it down.”

  “Well, I’ll just put it here. Tea’s got some bourbon in it.”

  She reached for that right away. She said, “I see that mangy dog is still around.”

  “Yeah, he’s Jorge’s. Pendejo’s his best friend,” I said and sat down in the chair by her bed. The dog sat on the floor next to me, and my hand naturally went to pet him.

  “Looks like he’s pretty attached to you, too.”

  “I guess.”

  Mom suffered a lot in her life. My dad was from Mexico City, and he met Mom when he was in the army back in the day. She was from Fajardo, which is in Puerto Rico. That’s right, we’re Mexiricans. Mom used to live right on the beach, she told us. But Dad took her deep into the dusty heart of Texas, I guess, where the skies go on blue forever, but there ain’t no
beaches in sight. I know she had a tough life here on the ranch, with one son a druggie and the other pretty much a gimp.

  But what on Earth could have made her shoot Mrs. Coleman in the head? Mom was too young to be senile, wasn’t she?

  “Where’s that wonderful brother of yours anyway?” she said.

  “He’s—.” I couldn’t think of a lie fast enough.

  “I know. You don’t have to tell me.”

  I didn’t say nothing. I just kept petting the dog.

  She said, “He’s why I hide my money all over the house, you know.”

  “I know.”

  She finished the tea and put down the cup. “I gotta close my eyes for a few minutes. You don’t have to stay.”

  I closed the door behind me and stood there in the hallway, feeling more useless than ever.

  That’s when the dog started wagging its tail. Touching my hand with its nose and then going to the stairs and coming back to do it again.

  “What’s the matter, boy? What’s the matter, Pendejo?”

  The dog led me outside, and then he did the damnedest thing. He found this rope and he nudged it right up to me. I picked up one end and right away he picks up the other in his teeth.

  Dang. My brother was out getting high, and my mother had just killed her friend and now was upstairs sick with Lord knows what, and all this stupid dog wanted to do was play tug-of-war.

  Stupid simple-ass animal.

  And you know what?

  With the heat of sundown on my shoulders, and Old Pendejo pulling so hard I could feel an ache in my forearms, I felt like a kid again, like a boy, better than I had felt in years.

  It was a good feeling.

  Stupid dog. Right there he taught me something important. Enjoy the little things, the small moments.

  And then he stopped.

  He dropped the rope from his mouth and turned toward the western arm of the ranch, where a series of hills lead over to the Coleman property.

  There were three of them coming over the hill. With the sun behind them I couldn’t see their faces. They walked slowly, wobbly, like they had all the time in the day and more to burn.

  The dog started barking, then running toward them, and then running back, behind me. The dog was scared. I thought this dog had the biggest cojones I’d ever seen. But now he was scared and tucked behind me.

  I looked back at the three figures. I was about to call out, when right then another figure ran out from a small grove of trees we had, over to my left.

  It was Jorge, his mouth opening and closing, yelling something. I could hear it like a whisper in my left ear. It took a second to work it out.

  “Marco! Marco! Run!”

  The dog ran to him, jumping up and down on him, barking. Jorge ignored him.

  “Get your guns, bro!”

  The three figures weren’t much closer. But I could see they looked pretty odd. One looked like it had a broken neck.

  There was a Remington 700 in the house, and the M9. I hobbled back into the house and grabbed the rifle.

  “What’s going on?” I yelled at my brother, who was coming up the stairs behind me.

  “Give me the rifle,” he yelled back.

  “You’re getting the gun.”

  “Why not the rifle?”

  In my room, I checked the pistol, then handed it to my brother.

  “Why can’t I get the rifle?” he said. “I have to get up close with this!”

  I ignored him and checked out the window and the three figures were just approaching the front yard. Then I realized there were a few more a few yards behind them. I could see now that there was something wrong with all of them. They were deadly pale, some of them had blood all over their mouths. One of them for sure had a broken neck. Another had a kitchen knife in its chest.

  “Who the hell are these people?” I said.

  “They came to the Cactus,” he said. “At first I couldn’t tell them apart from everybody else. And then they just started eating people. It’s that virus, I tell you, that virus!”

  “Whatever,” I said. “Vamos.”

  You live in the Texas Hill country like we do, with its small towns and big ranches, its oaks and its rivers, and the miles of big open sky, you sometimes forget there is a whole other world out there. You think the world out there can’t touch you. Sometimes you forget. Until you’re forced to face it.

  As I stepped out the door I shot the first one. The bullet went through his chest and he kept coming. Next shot I stood my ground and aimed. Right between the eyes. He went down.

  My brother took aim and shot the ground in front of another one.

  “Aim for the chest,” I yelled.

  He did and shot the next one right in the face.

  “Again,” I said.

  Old Pendejo didn’t have a gun but he was barking his face off. He looked nervous, ready to pounce, standing there between me and my brother. Good dog.

  We had four of them down by the time I had to reload. I could smell them from the front steps. It was a nasty, hot smell, like being upwind of a body dump next to an overused latrine.

  Just as I was reloading, that smell got even more powerful. Coming from my right. Just as I turned, I felt the dog right behind me. I saw him crashing into two of them.

  Before I could react, I saw another one come out the trees, stumbling. I took a breath and aimed and breathed out and shot. His head split open.

  I heard the dog howl. Old Pendejo was ripping and pulling at one thing but the other one was clawing, and sinking its teeth into the poor dog’s hide.

  I fired the rifled but it was empty. So I used it like a bat, swinging and knocking the biter’s head up and cocked to the side. With two more swings I had crushed its skull. The dog meanwhile had made quick work of the other one.

  “That’s teamwork, boy,” I said. And Pendejo, his muzzle covered in blood, barked back.

  “We got those,” my brother said. He was pale and scratched up.

  “You look like hell,” I told him.

  “I’m still prettier than you,” he said.

  “Pinche guey.”

  “Listen, man, we gotta get outta here. There’s more of them coming.”

  “What are those things?”

  He asked where Mom was, and I told her she was upstairs, sick.

  “Sick with what?”

  I told him about what I’d seen at Mrs. Coleman’s, that I’d thought Mom had maybe snapped and killed our old neighbor. But now that I’d seen these things, I didn’t know.

  My brother right there checked his weapon for ammo. “Marco, listen, we gotta…we gotta take care of her.”

  “Of course, guey—”

  “No, we can’t let the old lady go that way.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The virus. She’s probably got the pinche virus. She’s gonna turn into one of them.”

  “Hold on,” I said, but he was running up the stairs. The dog took a look at me and ran after him. “Jorge! Wait!”

  Running up the stairs was not an option for me. But I couldn’t let Jorge do what he was going to do. I took the steps fast as I could, pulling myself up. He was right at her door.

  “Jorge, stop!”

  Then he was in Mom’s room. I forced myself the rest of the way, got to her door. He was aiming at her. “Jorge.” He turned. I stood my ground and aimed. And shot.

  He crumpled to the floor, a single hole in his head.

  I could hear Old Pendejo whimpering on the landing.

  I bent down to check my brother, putting the gun down—and from behind me my mother latched on to my neck.

  She was one of them now. Jorge had been right. She’d been infected.

  She was skinny as a stalk of wheat but strong.

  I clawed around for the pistol on the floor. And then I used it.

  The house was quiet after that. I didn’t feel anything. The world had turned i
nto a crazier place that I ever could’ve imagined. I had fought a war to help protect my people, the people I loved—and I had just killed them.

  I checked the MP. One bullet left.

  Old Pendejo whimpered some more. He nudged me in my leg, but gently, almost caressing it. That’s when I realized. He was all bit up, too, like Mom had been. And those crazies outside.

  Could it turn a dog? I wonder if he was wondering that, too.

  He looked at me with those big, brown blazing eyes. He knew. And he knew what I had to do.

  I had seen some of my best friends killed in front of me, but I never did for them what I did for that dog. I stuck the muzzle of the gun against his hide and pulled the trigger. He was a good dog. A damn good dog.

  “Goodbye, Pendejo,” I said.

  Wasn’t much gas left but I figured I’d take the truck as far as it would go.

  I got a few miles from the house when I saw them. Over two dozen of them, moving on the road that slow, stumbly way they do. There was no way around them. I revved the engine. As I came to them, they looked up and reached out for me.

  I plowed. They were softer than people.

  They flew apart in pieces.

  There were so many of them.

  I lost control of the truck. I couldn’t see where I was going with the blood on the windshield. The engine lurched. Then I hit something. Hard. The truck spun and turned, and turned over. Glass. Metal crunching. Then it stopped.

  I crawled halfway out, got to my feet, reached back, trembling, for the rifle.

  They were coming for me.

  I got partway to my knees and took a position. I started shooting at everything that moved, my rage boiling in my guts.

  “Pinche gringo culero ve a chingar a tu reputisima madre!”

  I shot and reloaded, shot and reloaded.

  “Pinche gringo culero ve a chingar a tu reputisima madre!”

  And then—I thought there would be more. But it was silent there on the road.

  I collapsed on the ground. Something else was broken inside me.