She could not believe that she was running across this open space holding hands with this slow little woman. She and the black girl literally carried her over the curb and across the sidewalk between them and into the liquor store. She knew this was terribly risky but had a premonition since she first got on the bus that it would be their death; that they would all die on that bus. She spoke very little English but had picked up enough to get the idea that the women were planning a liquor run. That was good news to her. She had not had a drink since she came to this strange country, and could use one now.

Each of them separated to open their favorite drink. There was no plan, no organization; they just wanted to get numb, to be happy if only briefly. They all said the same thing with their eyes as they separated.

‘Wait a minute. In horror movies the women are always killed when they split up. This is not a good idea.’

‘Nonsense, no one is here—then why was the door open, it is God’s Day. Even the gringos are not such pigs as to—one hundred percent blue agave!’

The nice pretty gringo girl was selecting expensive wines even as she knocked back an entire half pint of vodka. She was staggering under the weight of the bottles sucking down the clear liquid as Flora finally got her fancy bottle of tequila open and took a hit, then another.

‘Ah, so good! But warm—beer, a Corona!’

Flora made her way back to the cooler where the black girl stood in front of an open door downing a good portion of a huge bottle of smelly beer with a horseshoe stamped on the label. Flora broke open a six pack of Corona and began chugging a bottle of the brew while the black girl found a trashcan, emptied the trash on the floor, and began filling it with cheap no-good tequila, and the white girl’s wine.

‘That can is going to take two to carry. Who is going to haul the little drunk girl? She is already staggering.’

The bus driver was already beeping the horn, frantically. So Flora decided to take off her shirt and make a sling to carry three bottles of the finest blue agave. The black girl was dragging the can around speaking with her little lesbian hopeful, who was giggling and dancing, already as drunk as Flora’s ugly Aunt Mesca on the night she married that fat pig Efran.

The bus beeped more frantically and pulled right up in front, scrapping the sidewalk with the tires. They were now taking one last drink before bolting—at least she and the black girl were. The little redhead was dancing in the wine aisle, her little head bobbing up and down as she sang some off tune song. That is when she heard the door open, and knew for sure that it was the loud insane male nurse coming to get them—then the redhead screamed, like a girl in a horror movie that had gotten drunk and separated from the rest!

“Aaaaaaayyyyy!” she screeched, and fell into a stack of wine cases trying to flee from whatever was coming through the front door. Flora looked up to see a tall police officer walking through the front door with a gun in hand, leveling it at the crawling redhead.

‘And I thought Jaurez was bad!’

The black girl cussed and the gun bombed, shattering wine bottles. The white girl was now screaming while the black girl was heaving bottles of wine and liquor at the police man, who now began firing, slowly, and ponderously, at her. Flora had no doubt that those were not human eyes behind the sliver sunglasses worn by the police man.

A second and third shot rang out.

The white girl screaming hysterically as she crawled.

The black girl cursed an entire sentence, every word of which began with an ‘f’, as she heaved bottle after bottle at the robotic police man, all of which missed.

Flora broke off a bottle of Corona and flung it at the police man, striking him in the side of the head, knocking off his glasses and staggering him. The black girl then darted around to grab her friend from the center aisle, and the police man turned to face Flora without his glasses, with a cluster of hideous bugs in each eye socket! As he turned he traversed his weapon on her. Flora was cut off from the others. The black girl was dragging her friend and a few bottles of liquor out the front door. The police man—or the animated corpse of one—was between Flora and the girl.

‘Duck girl!’

As she hit the floor in her jeans and bra the gun boomed and the glass case behind her and some bottles within shattered. She did not bounce back up, but grabbed her shirt full of tequila and speed crawled like a cockroach toward the stockroom. The case next to the doorway burst as another report from the big pistol boomed just as she crawled into the doorway.

‘Run girl!’

Flora leaped to her feet, ran down the short hall, and crashed into the door bar and found herself on the back lot of the strip mall. As the daylight bathed her she noticed a white pickup speeding by on the road behind the mall and screamed, and screamed, as she ran for it.

She ran as fast as she could toward the bank. She could hear the bus firing up out front—‘Those dirty gringos are leaving me!’

Then she heard the door crash open again and knew a bullet would soon be speeding for her back.

‘Run! Do not look around.’

She ran for the embankment, the only sound being the distant roar of the bus and her ragged breath. When she hit the bank her knee buckled just as a shot rang out. She put her hand out above her to help climb. As she did this her two middle fingers burned as a bullet grazed them and buried itself into the bank.

‘Run!’

She ran straight op the hill, hearing another shot ring out, and feeling one of her bottles of blue agave burst. She ran on up the hill between two pines as another shot rang out and wood flew from the pine tree next to her on the right.

Then she fell forward on the grassy bank and rolled onto the sidewalk, where two booted feet waited, still and zombie like. She froze. The firing had stopped. She just stared at the two feet before her, knowing that the horror above would blast her mind if she looked up into its face.

‘Don’t cry. Pray, pray to Mother Mary.’

“Mother Mary, full of grace…”

Then a gruff voice cut her off in Spanish, “Pray later pretty-little-woman—we need to roll!”

A pair of strong hands lifted her and stuffed her and her blouse of tequila bottles [the shattered one and the two unopened ones] into the cab of the white pickup truck. She now found herself between two grass-cutting men wearing goggles, breathing masks and hats. They sped off back toward the mall and around it, and made a right onto the big road, following in the path blazed by the bus through the cars and bodies.

The driver looked at her bra, “Nice tits!” and floored the pickup, trying to overtake the bus.

The man that had saved her tapped her on the shoulder, “Hello, I am Emanuel, from el Salvador’. This place makes our country look like paradise now!”

They all laughed and she opened both bottles, handing one to each man, as they sped across the interstate interchange. As they rumbled through the interchange Emanuel said, “So, those are your friends there, on the bus? Any more nice tits?”

“Yes, yes! We were surviving on that bus, mostly women, big beautiful large-breasted women—catch the bus! The police man with spider eyes in the liquor store came for us.”

Emanuel said, “Yes, a messed up day for certain. By the way, our driver here is—V”

Those were the last words Emanuel ever said, because his head went flying past her and killed the driver an instant before the motorcycle ripped through the cab, tearing her blouse from her hands, and sending the pickup tumbling down into the weeds.

‘No! Mother Mary! I am cursed under heaven!’

The truck tumbled twice, the headless body of Emanuel hugging her hideously, and she was thrown from the driver’s side window, thrown clear, without her blouse, tequila, bra or dignity, but with her life and her mask!

She rose up to scream for the people on the bus, because she heard its air breaks over to the right, past the pickup and ahead some. She just could not see it. She had risen up on her feet, nothing seemingly broken, and then made to scream for help. That is when she saw it there, alighting on her nose, a hideous winged grasshopper with intelligent eyes—looking into hers, as a drill like appendage grew from its mandibles and spiraled toward her eye—“No!”

Continued with The Spicket: First Contact #11, Introducing Little Billy Thomas and his Crossman .760 Beebee Gun