Necro Files: Two Decades of Extreme Horror

They mounted stairs which smelled of beer-piss and smoke. Ramirez’ room smelled worse. La Biblia rested on a nightstand, beside a stained bed. Used condoms stuck to the side of the wastebasket. Ramirez was zipping open a battered suitcase, but Smith’s gaze turned to the room’s only wall painting. The quetzl-feathered head on a plump, squatting body. Its arms outstretched as if to invite embrace. The smile huge yet empty.

“Xipe,” Smith muttered at it.

Ramirez looked up, grinning gold. “The Giver of the Harvest, who protects the faithful. The Great God of—”

“Good Will, I know,” Smith interrupted. Xipe’s eyes were empty as its smile, its fat hands empty. Perhaps it was the mode of the trinket’s emptiness that distressed Smith so. It seemed to him a kind of vitality—a knowledge—hidden deep beneath the black facade. An emptiness that somehow yearned to be filled.

“He brings luck, Meester Smeeth. He guards us from our enemies.”

Smith blinked. A shiver of vertigo, like standing up too quickly after a neat shot of Uzzo, seemed to transpose Xipe’s smile to a momentary hollow grimace.

Smith turned away. He didn’t feel good—bad beer or something. In dismay, he glanced down. “Jesus Christ, you bring the stuff in a suitcase?”

“My people, like yours, we pay.”

“You can’t buy every Customs officer on the line.”

“Of course not.” Ramirez grinned at Xipe. “The rest is buena snerte.”

“What?”

“Luck.”

Smith felt a chill. The painting distracted him. “How many masters?”

“Ten. New faces, all new stuff. And chiquitas—the best.”

Smith carried forty large. He was authorized to pay three grand per master, but only if the production was good. The way it worked, if the larger-formatted master wasn’t excellent, the second dupes would look piss-poor. Ramirez plugged the first tape into the VCR he’d set up on the dresser. Now came the grueling part, having to watch a sample of each. Smith steeled himself, crossed his arms, and addressed the screen.

His eyes bulged when the image formed.

He expected the usual phantom scenes: stark-lighted rooms, hollow-eyed children and sneering spic studs, women gagged and tied and jerking as fingers sunk needles into banded breasts. Instead he saw a grainy black and white of a man getting out of a car in front of a San Angelo warehouse.

The man was Smith.

Next: himself walking down the concourse at the Dallas/Ft. Worth air terminal. And next: himself giving Vinchetti’s Justice plant some pad and a list of phony bust points in a vacant Del Rio parking lot.

Ramirez’ gold grin glowed. “Good stuff, eh, Meester Smeeth?”

“You greaseball pepper-belly motherfucker!” But before Smith could even think about yanking his heat, a hammer cocked behind his head. Smith’s face felt huge as he turned. He was now looking down the barrel of a 3-inch S&W Model 13.

“Good evening. Mr. Smith. My name is Peterson. I work for the Department of Justice. I’m arresting you for multiple violations of Section 18 of the United States Code.” It was just a young punk, the “G.I.” in the bar. He gave Smith an empty smile. “Mr. Ramirez has given us enough documentation to send you up for thirty years. I want you to know that you have the right to remain …

The words melted. Behind him, Ramirez was giggling. All Smith could think was I’m not going down, over and over. Federal time on a kiddie porn rap was as good as a death sentence. He’d be “boy-cherry.” They’d turn him into a cellblock bitch in five minutes.

From the wall, Xipe smiled, seemed to lean over Peterson’s shoulder. Smith made his move. The half-second disarm he’d learned in the Army worked well enough; his hands snapped up, grabbed the revolver and Peterson’s wrist, and pushed. A round went off and burned a line across Smith’s scalp. Peterson’s wrist broke, and suddenly Smith had the piece. He squeezed off two Q-loads into Peterson’s chest. The kid crumpled beneath Xipe like a tossed offering.

Ramirez jumped on his back. Smith tried an elbow jab but missed. The Mexican was clawing at him, biting into his ear. The revolver hit the floor. Smith staggered back, screaming as his right ear was separated from his head between Ramirez’ teeth. The front wall diminished, yet the framed, grinning Xipe seemed not to; the empty smile followed him. Smith meant to slam Ramirez into the back wall.

Instead, he collided with the window, and the window gave.

It was nothing so trite as slow motion. Smith and his piggyback rider fell very quickly, but the hot night seemed to rise more than they seemed to fall. The street greeted them like a brick slammed down onto copulating frogs.