Reeferpunk Shorts

by David Mark Brown

  The metal door at the rear of the armored car slid open, tentatively at first, before eventually opening wide. “They’re on the roof!” A voice barked. Without warning the heel charge detonated, blasting apart the coupling and buffeting the train cars with a deafening roar.

  In the wake of the explosion Chancho gained his balance, perched with the half-moon shape of his magnetic spurs under the balls of his feet. Their harness now locked them firmly into place pointing forward rather than back. Clanking loudly, magnet on metal, he darted for the front of the car.

  Jorge and Emilio stood and latched onto Ah Puch’s arms. “Launch me, boys.” With Ah Puch facing toward the front of the train they moved to the back edge of the roof while Ah Puch lunged forward and flipped his legs up and over his head into a backflip. As he swung full circle Emilio and Jorge fell to their knees and then flat on their stomachs. With their heads and arms now dangling over the edge, they sent Ah Puch careening through the opened doorway below.

  With spurs jutting from the tips of his boots and his momentum carrying him into a second back flip, he felt his left boot grab flesh as his right rotated underneath him more quickly. He caught himself hands first before finally gathered his knees underneath him and crashing awkwardly into a stack of vegetable crates. Beside him he heard muffled swearing. Behind he heard Jorge and Emilio’s magnetic boots drop onto the landing.

  From the top of the train Chancho could see the tunnel approaching fast in the distance. He knew that timing was critical. At a full run he reached the front of the car, the wind whipping past him, and slid feet first over the edge. Grabbing the lip as he went over, he swung down onto the landing. The sudden proximity of the closed door leading to the armored car and the door across the way leading to over a hundred more Constitutional soldiers sparked an even greater urgency in him.

  Gripping his remaining heel he twisted it 90 degrees and tugged it from the sole of his boot, flicking its chemical laden fuse to life in the process. As steadily as his nerves allowed he stepped down onto the coupling to place the Ah o placecharge. But before he could reach the joint the metal door behind him slid violently open.

  ~~~

  Plunging down and forward Chancho latched the magnetic-heel explosive to the coupling as gunfire echoed in the confined space between the two cars. The bullet ricocheted off of the hitch in front of his face. Flailing, he grabbed the bottom of the passenger car platform and dangled with his boots bouncing off of the ties as they rushed past.

  A second bullet missed just right of his handhold. Chancho glanced over his left shoulder at the burning fuse. He would catch a bullet before it went off, but even if he didn’t, he was too close for comfort. “My friend! Let’s not be —“ but before he could finish his sentence he heard two bodies colliding, followed by a grunt. Pulling himself up by the railing he turned to see Ah Puch heaving Guzman off of the landing.

  “Do hurry.” Chancho leapt across the gap back onto the armored car just as the door to the passenger car slid open. “I’m afraid he had a short fuse.” Ah Puch’s eyes flashed as he took in both the eminent explosion and the pistols leveled from the back door of the passenger car. Chancho hooked his friend around the waist as he rushed past, tugging them both toward the opened door. Simultaneously the charge from his heel and the powder of a few pistols flared into the echoing compartment, buffeting steel and flesh on both sides.

  Chancho and Ah Puch bounced off a pile of crates and crashed to the ground as the armored car lurched free from the rest of the train. Seconds later bullets commenced bouncing about the cramped quarters until Chancho shoved the door closed with his foot. Swallowed once again by darkness, both men remembered the belly of the whale lurking several hundred meters down track. Chancho rose to his knees, suddenly aware of a miscalculation in his plans. “How much do you think those geological survey boxes could weigh?”

  “What? Who cares? And how should I know. We don’t have time to—“

  The weight! It matters. Momentum equals mass times velocity. I estimated close enough on the speed of the train, but the car could be considerably heavier than I anticipated!”

  “Meaning—“

  “We won’t stop in time!” Bullets continued to bounce off the front of the armored car, but from a greater distance as the gap between them and the rest of the train expanded.

  “Ah Puch stood and helped Chancho to his feet.” One thing at a time. First we have to hit the switch.”

  With impeccable timing, Emilio’s voice called from the blackness. “We’re getting close. Jorge! Give us some light.” The back door to the armored car slid open and Emilio found Ah Puch and Chancho tangled in some webbing. “We need to get to the front of the car and hit the switch.” He revealed a heavy metal pipe taken from the livestock car.

  “Good man.” Chancho reached for the pipe.

  “No.” Ah Puch stopped him. “We’re still in range of their fire. We’ll have to hit it from the back.”

  “O.K. But it’ll be harder.” Emilio shrugged.

  “Not much.” Chanchohei.” Ch removed himself from the tangle and flicked his spurs back into their resting position. “I don’t know. I think you still gotta’ work on these magnet spurs.”

  “Fine, fine. I’ll replace them with jet packs. Just get moving.”

  “Really? That would be great!”

  “Chancho!”

  “O.K. O.K., my friend. Keep your magnet boots on.”

  ~~~

  Chancho blinked furiously from the combination of bright sun and whipping wind. Ah Puch held him by his bandoliers while the others stood clear of the swinging pipe.

  “We only get one chance at this. Miss it and the tail end of the train will catch up to us before we’re ready for it,” Ah Puch cautioned.

  Chancho shook tears from his eyes, watching the tunnel entrance rush toward them faster than he liked. “I’m more concerned with the possibility that we may not stop at all.” He cringed. “Or we’ll wish we hadn’t.”

  “We’ll be sitting ducks when the rest of the train returns—with all of its angry soldiers.”

  “If we aren’t crushed by the deadman.” Chancho tried wiping away tears with his shoulder.

  “This just keeps getting better.” Ah Puch shifted his grip on Chancho’s bandoliers, but in the process one of them snapped. Chancho dipped forward unevenly, dangling too far over the railing.

  “Hold me steady! We’re almost to the switch!” The throw bar, topped with a red octagonal sign, swept into view as the front of the armored car passed it. The whole of the car had already passed the switch itself, but it was the trailing three cars that concerned the revolutionaries at the moment. “I don’t want to throw it with my face!”

  “Dammit, your bandolier.” Ah Puch clutched at Chancho’s clothing, scratching for something solid to yank him backwards by.

  “Ah Puch!” Chancho attempted to hold the heavy bar in front of his face in the hopes of deflecting the brunt of the collision. At the last second Ah Puch lunged further forward gripping Chancho under his armpits. Digging his feet against the bottom of the railing he lurched back. With a final bunt-like swing Chancho whacked the flat portion of the throw bar as the two of them tumbled backwards onto the platform.

  “Did you get it?”

  “I don’t know. I think so. I hit it anyway.”

  “We’ll know soon enough.” For a moment they watched the freight car, the flatbed with their horses and the caboose clack along the rails, already several hundred meters behind them. Emilio cleared his throat from the doorway of the armored car.

  “The deadman!” Chancho jumped to his feet.

  “That’s what we’re about to be.” Emilio shrugged.

  Ah Puch continued the thought. “We’d planned on throwing it by hand, but we’re going too—“

  “Give me a boost.” Chancho cut him off.

  “What?”

  “Quickly. We’re entering the tunnel. I can trigger the mechanism. Just give me a boost, now!”
The sky disappeared as the armored car shot into the tunnel, still clipping at over 20 kilometers per hour. Ah Puch obeyed instantly. Settling onto the metal grate of the landing he laced his fingers together and clasped the back of Chancho’s boot where the missing heel would have been. Chancho rested his other boot on the top of the railing and poised himself for the jump.

  “How can you even see it? It’s too dark.”

  “I know where I put it! Get ready! Three, two, now!” Ah Puch launched him forward into the oily darnkess of the tunnel confident that he’d just thrust his friend face first into solid rock. Chancho shot forward searching the glimmering darkness for whispers of light reflecting off of the metal lever he had placed in the wall. Catching a glint no more than a meter from his face he flung his defective bandolier toward it like a lasso as he rushed by. With a jerk and pulse of lightning to his shoulder sockets the bandolier caught. Flipping the lever into its recessed position, he ripped free and smashed hard into the wall of the tunnel before crumpling to the ground.

  ~~~

  Through the ringing in his ears Chancho heard a four-stroke, diesel engine pulse to life followed by a small explosion detonating the deadman. Cringing, he waited less than three seconds for what he knew was coming next. Thankfully the crashing of the armored car into the deadman sounded little worse than overly rambunctious freight cars coupling—no secondary clatter of a car derailed.

  He checked his person for major injury. While bleeding in a few places, nothing seemed to be broken. He gave a second thought to the trailing train cars, but figured they would have run him over already had they been coming. He tucked his bandolier securely around his waist and hobbled toward the armored car on his heelless boots. “Ah Puch? Emilio? Jorge?” He arrived at the landing on the back where Ah Puch was picking himself up.

  “I think I should be a better Catholic, after surviving that.”

  “I hope that doesn’t mean you’ll be a worse bandit.”

  “By no means. I hear the Church needs a good bandit every now and then.” The two friends allowed themselves a smile before checking on Emilio and Jorge, who were fine despite being buried in lettuce and tomato guts. Finally Ah Puch brought them back to reality. “Chancho, the train will be returning.”

  “Right. Everything’s fired up. I’ll start the lift. But after that collision we’ll need to clear the tracks. We can’t leave anything behind, or all of this will be for nothing.”

  “No evidence. We’ll take care of that. Just make sure the belly is ready for its meal.” Ah Puch and the others scurried to the front of the car to clean up any debris and ensure the deadman would either retract or detach. Chancho inched along the wall until he found a control box dangling by its electrical wires.

  He hit the first button flicking to life a orange-yellow light cast from three fixtures in the ceiling, still swinging from the impact of the armorerd f the ad car. The second button caused the floor of the cave to shift. It dropped a centimeter before beginning to crank upwards at a rate of a centimeter per second. He stood still listening to the creaks and groans, thinking it indeed sounded like a behemoth of a whale slowly rising to the surface. The air in the tunnel tasted like the oil soaked dirt crusted on the fenders of the tractor he had maintained at the orphanage, before he’d left. The memory gave him both hope and guilt.

  He waited a moment longer until it was safe to lay the control box on the slowly rising floor of the tunnel. He ran along the rail until he reached the end of the lift and jumped down to the original level. Turning back to the lift he watched with a sudden dread as the lower level rose to fill the tunnel. An engine, of sorts, emerged from its earthly womb. Just born, and yet Chancho knew it was only moments away from its inevitable death—the harbinger of death being its only purpose in life. Painted dull black, it absorbed the sickly yellow light. Against the starkness of the moment Chancho realized the contraption was merely a diesel-powered rocket on wheels.

  It was gruesome, and he hated that he had built it. But the plan—the life of the plan drove him on. He jumped down to the track that would become the new floor of the tunnel and scooted behind the rocket engine’s controls. Designed for one simple reason, the device took to its roll quickly. The motor fired and pulsed up to speed, surrounded by nothing but a jacket of dynamite and iron plating.

  ~~~

  The engine waited for its moment without complaint. Having set the wheels in motion the plan now drove itself forward, with or without Chancho’s assent. The lift’s gears tugged the armored car upward, gradually closing off his only means of exit. In reluctant surrender to the plan of his own initiating, he hoisted himself up to the original level of the tunnel and then jumped to reach the level where the armored car rested.

  Dangling from the lift as it rose closer to the roof of the tunnel, Chancho realized he never thought the plan would actually work. He’d seen these last stages of the plan as a vague generality, thus proceeding through the early stages without acknowledging their end. He swung his leg up and over the edge of the lift and rolled himself onto the uneven tracks just as they pushed past the roof of the tunnel and settled into place. Ah Puch had been right. Chancho played the revolution like a game, but human lives were at stake, many more than just his own.

  He heard the rocket engine chug free of its restraints in the tunnel below. The lights flicked on automatically now that the electrical connection was completed by the lift itself. No more kerosene lamps, the belly of the whale buzzed with diesel powered electricity.

  Ah Puch reached down to help him up, a grin stretching both corners of his mouth. “You did it. Your crazy plan actually worked.”

  Chancho dusted himself off and felt the sudden urge to see the grisly conclusion to what he had set in motion. He needed to see it for it to be real. “Let’s get topside.”

  “Good idea. It should be quite a show, and we need to make sure before we celebrate. Who would've thought you’d be the pragmatist.” Ah Puch slapped the side of the armored car as they squeezed past it toward the ladder going topside. “Jorge, hit the latch. We’re going up to see the fireworks. Then we’ll come back down to run our fingers thrd a fingerough some of that gold.” He slapped Chancho on the shoulder and laughed.

  Chancho reached the ladder first and flew up the rungs. In seconds he reached the trapdoor. With the mechanical lock having been thrown from below, he could see faint cracks of light around its edges. When he shoved it outward and upward with his shoulder dirt and sunlight sifted through the opening. He emerged onto the surface in a daze. Shielding the sun he scrambled to the top of an outcropping of rock and followed the distant track with his eyes until he saw it.

  The dull-black engine chugged forward at an increasing speed. It even looked like a rocket, its huge cowcatcher making up a third of its length. It was an ingenious design, created to derail and incapacitate an object of much greater mass—to create chaos and distraction. Finally the others joined him on the rock. “We did it didn’t we? I mean, changed the revolution?” Chancho spoke to Ah Puch but kept his eyes on the rocket engine. The General’s train came into view around the bend, returning to collect its lost prize. “It was worth it, right?”

  Ah Puch knew what his friend was getting at. “Yes. It was worth it. You’ve made Mexico a better place today, my friend. You’ve proven the ideals of the revolution can and will prevail.”

  The moment of impact came. The rocket engine slammed underneath the passenger car full of Constitutional soldiers, heaving it upward and derailing it. The rocket continued its forward momentum until it reached the officer’s car, bucking it off the rails as well. But before it could reach the General’s private car it detonated with an ear-clapping concussion. Flame and smoke burst outward before being swallowed by a larger surge of destructive force that tossed fragments of steel and iron arching in every direction.

  “Aye yi yi yi yi!" Ah Puch and the others danced about waiving their sombreros over their heads. Meanwhile, a half dozen riders, one of them Pancho Vil
la himself, rode around the backside of the hill with the four victorious revolutionaries’ horses in tow.

  Paraplegic Zombie Slayer

  The color red. I close my eyes to picture the sun the way I remember it from six years ago in 1922, before the world turned red. Nearly midday, I’m burning precious heat for me and my family by remaining in bed. Last night had been my watch, but still, I should have gotten up almost an hour ago. The wind ripples the sheet stapled over the window, reminding me the outside world is always just a membrane’s width away.

  Opening my eyes, I prop myself up and stretch for the grab bar above my bed. The electrical tape wrapped around the metallic surface is sticky and comforting. Dangling from the bar, I jerk twice, shifting my weight until I feel the familiar grooves fall in between my fingers.

  Each contraction and expansion of my muscles operates like a bilge pump. Daily I awake drowning in a rancid gall—a bitter caldron of regret cooked by the fires of the dust zone and coursing through my veins. Five reps, I gulp down the first fresh b of4reath of the day, but still want to die. Ten reps, I curse the helium plant and the gates of hell they opened on us all.

  Fifteen reps, I stop clenching my teeth and cursing under my breath. Twenty five reps, I remember my Rosalyn—asleep before the hearth, Brothers Karamazov open in her lap. Twenty six reps and I remember her pitching forward into the dirt, blood spatter and brains caught in her fair hair like bracken and foam on a river’s shore. “Georgy Founder,” I curse myself, “it should have been you that day.”

  Thirty reps and the tears course through the forest of bristle on my face. Mingling with sweat from my brow, they drip onto my lifeless legs. I keep rising and falling. Thirty five reps, I blame myself for selling out, for accepting handouts from the plant. Forty reps and I feel my heart begin to surface as the poisonous brine dips lower. I keep breathing.