The Secret Files of Lucky Ford: The Butcher and the Black Tide, Part 11 of 13

Lucky Ford has learned Grease’s fate, and it is worse than he imagined. But before he and the Officials can do anything to find justice, they must survive Doctor Hellbörg’s onslaught of kidnappers and mercenaries.

The Butcher and the Black Tide is now available as a Kindle ebook, in paperback, and as a DRM-free ebook.

This is Part 11 of The Secret Files of Lucky Ford: The Butcher and the Black Tide. If you haven’t read Part 1. Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, and Part 10, check them out before reading any further.

Content Warnings: Violence, Gun Violence, Death, Gore, Body Horror, Mild Swearing, Drug Use, Tobacco Use, Alcohol Use

TUESDAY AFTERNOON, JULY 13, 1943
OUTSIDE LA BATERIA DE LOS ACANTILLADOS
THE SOUTHERN COAST OF SPAIN

“Jones...” Lucky started, but choked on the stink rising from Jonesy's infected flesh. He fell back against the truck’s quarter panel, wheezing to catch the breath that had been slammed out of him.

“I was right, Ford,” Jonesy growled, his cannonball fist trembling. “I was right about everything!”

Jones had been the first one in Lucky’s old unit to see the war change. He’d always had a few screws loose and a softer spot for Nazis than anyone was comfortable with, so when he started screeching about a creature on their wing, no one believed him. Lucky had later learned that the gremlin was real, though it didn’t make Jonesy any less of an asshole.

Only Lucky, Grease, and Jonesy were left from their unit. The rest had been killed to a man. Their new war was ravenous; it chewed soldiers into paste. Lucky had adjusted to it, Grease had been dragged along by it, but Jonesy was still reeling against it. He wanted to control what had long gone off the rails. Reality was no longer something he recognized and he wanted to be done with it.

Lucky put his hands up. He understood. He didn't condone what Jonesy had done after his mind was blown, but he understood. The world was absurd.

Jonesy's fist shot forward like a piston, coming within half an inch of Lucky's cheek to crunch in the panel behind him. Lucky winced, and three bolseteros bolted out from underneath, desperate for a new hiding spot.

Lucky tried to use the distraction and scramble after them, but Jonesy was too fast. He snatched Lucky's ankle and hauled him back, flopping him onto his face in the ash. Jonesy practically snarled as he flipped Lucky over and pressed him into the ground with a bloody fist.

Lucky groaned as the spiked knuckles dug into his sternum.

“I was right!” Jonesy yelled, his hot saliva spraying Lucky's face. “It's all hopeless and I knew it. They're all dead because you wouldn't listen!”

“It's not hopeless,” Lucky grunted. He knew Jonesy wouldn't listen to reason, he never had, but Lucky needed a way to get free.

“I knew,” Jonesy muttered to himself. He held up his transfigured hand. “Look what they did to me. They knew I knew.”

“They're trying to shut you up,” Lucky gasped.

“I'll tell everyone, they all have to see,” Jonesy snarled.

Lucky struggled in Jonesy's iron grip, kicking and squirming and finally twisting around enough to look at Grease behind Jonesy. He’d wandered over to them, but stood silent as he worked the herbal haze out of his head.

“Benolli didn't believe me, either,” Jonesy said, following Lucky's gaze. He called out loud enough for Grease to hear: “But he knows now, too.”

Grease nodded slowly. His eyes almost focused on Lucky.

“Now Ford is telling me that he knew all along, too. And when it mattered, what did he do? He let them take us. That makes him a traitor. And what do we do with a traitor?” Jonesy asked him.

Jonesy wrapped Lucky's shirt around his fist and stood, lifting him easily. Lucky’s heels dragged over pebbles and spent brass, then they were swinging in the air. Jonesy dangled Lucky before Grease like a piece of meat in front of a hungry dog.

Instead of a spoken answer, Grease trudged past them both, over to a flipped truck. He leaned down and wrapped his hand around the rear axle. He grunted and pulled at the rusted metal, popping bolts and tugging it free from the chassis with inhuman ease. Two powerful stomps removed its wheels and brakes. He examined the length of steel, testing its weight like a baseball bat. Grease had told them once that his preferred weapon when he got in scraps back in New York was a Louisville Slugger.

A wide, mean grin sprouted on Jonesy's face.

“This is what happens when you know and do nothing,” Jonesy hissed. Grease stepped up to them with his makeshift club in hand. Jonesy held Lucky higher for a cleaner shot from Grease. “Do it!”

“To your right,” Grease mumbled, hefting the axle above his head.

“What?” Jonesy asked.

Lucky knew what Grease meant. He kicked and lurched as far to the right as he could in Jonesy's grip.

The axle crashed over Lucky's left shoulder to sledgehammer Jonesy right on the top of his head. His helmet folded in under the impact like a deflating soufflé. His grip on Lucky evaporated in that instant and he dropped him.

Jonesy teetered like an old tree in a windstorm. Blood poured out from under the lip of his crushed helmet, covering his face in crimson. He sputtered one last breath, spraying pink, then he was done. He fell hard, and Lucky had to scramble to get out of his way. A cloud of ash puffed skyward when he hit the ground.

Another set of hands grabbed Lucky's collar and dragged him to his feet.

“Holy shit, Lucky, what is going on here?” Grease asked as he set Lucky on his feet. Grease threw the torn-off axle onto his shoulder and surveyed the mayhem around them. He looked up at the hellish sky, then caught a flake of ash on his palm. “What's with this weather?”

Lucky was dumbfounded. Once the drug haze had worn off, Grease was still the same guy underneath all that flesh and armor. Lucky reached out to pat Grease's shoulder but stopped himself. Grease's tortured skin looked inflamed and excruciating.

“Are you all right?” Lucky asked cautiously.

“Buddy, I can run and I can fight and that's all I want to do or talk about right now,” Grease said. He hefted his axle. “That bastard hopped me up enough that I can't feel any of this, so don't even remind me about it 'til we can do something about it. Deal?”

“Deal,” Lucky said.

“So, you're here looking for me?” Grease asked. Lucky nodded. An explosion shook the the ground and sent a couple bolseteros flying. Grease's big grin stretched across the stitches and bolts in his face. “How's the rescue going?”

“We're home free once we get up that rise,” Lucky told him. He peaked around the flipped truck. All along the road, bolseteros were knotted up behind cover, armed to the teeth. They’d had to choose who they feared more, the Gallo Rojo or the I-soldiers. Some ran towards her, others towards them, depending on their preference. The few who stepped out in the open were as likely to catch a comrade’s bullet as one from Bucket and Emilia’s.

Someone’s bullet whipped over Lucky's head, passing so close that it popped his eardrums. Lucky dropped to the ground, squeezing his nose and shutting his mouth, equalizing like they'd taught him in jump school.

“Ow, shit,” Grease muttered. Lucky looked back to find Grease bleeding.

A slow dribble of brown blood oozed out of a hole in his chest and splatted in the fallen soot. The puckered wound was dead center over Grease's heart. Grease dropped to his knee, coughing. Lucky rushed to his side. Grease coughed once, then stuck his fingers in the bullet hole.

“This is unpleasant,” he grunted, his jaw clenched tight. He finally plucked something out of the wound. He rolled the stained mass around in his open hand, a bloody snail trail following it across his palm.

It was a lead bullet, mashed flat.

“Feels like I got hit with a brick,” he grumbled.

Lucky let out a terrified breath. Grease saw Lucky's concern and smirked again, thumping his chest with his steel knuckles. The armor plate beneath his skin pealed softly, like a bell with cloth over it.

“In the last couple days I been run over by a tank, captured by Nazi monsters, and been cut and stitched back together by some talking beef jerky in a fish bowl while I was awake to watch,” Grease told him. He winked and stood up, his metal leg creaking and his grafted muscles flexing as he moved. Lucky scrambled back to his feet. Grease smirked and said: “Bullets ain't nothin'.”

Gunfire started up again, this time directed back up the hill, putting sights on Emilia and Bucket.

“You run, I'll gun. Let's leg it,” Lucky said. For greater emphasis he rounded the front of the flipped truck and blasted off a shot from his trench gun. A bolsetero that was trying to get a bead on Emilia caught a few pellets in the arm and ducked away to nurse his wounds.

Grease overtook Lucky in a second and charged into the fray, bowling through a clump of bolesteros, scattering them like ten pins. He swung the axle back and forth, sweeping them up. A few got off shots, but most just fell or flew. Grease's strikes were so powerful that they lifted the bolseteros off the ground, depositing them in twitching heaps yards away.

Whatever resolve the remaining bolseteros had left dissolved in that instant.

The mercenaries were flanked and outgunned. An armored vigilante was charging from from the front and an I-soldier was tearing through their six. Each buck of Emilia's pistols felled another of them. Bucket's Thompson chattered as it ripped rounds through any bolsetero dumb enough to peek out of cover. Lucky's shotgun and Grease's makeshift mace took out any that stayed back or tried to run into the bunker.

In the midst of the crossfire, a single mercenary stood, waving his rifle above his head. Grease skidded to a halt, and Lucky took his finger off the trigger. Bucket and Emilia stopped firing but didn't take their aim off the lone man.

“Mercê, por favor...” the bolsetero called out weakly. He threw his gnarled rifle into the ash. Lucky didn't have to be a linguist to get the gist.

Emilia had him in her iron sights as soon as he spoke, ready to put a pair of .455's through his canvas mask. She hesitated for a moment, staring him down. Her aim stayed steady, but her fingers slowly moved away from the triggers.

Two more bolseteros gingerly rose to stand with their comrade, throwing their weapons to the ground alongside his. Their pleas spread quickly. Old rifles clattered into splintery piles. Within a minute, all of the addicts still able to raise their arms had followed suit. Three dozen bolseteros remained, their weapons on the ground and their hands in the air.

“Estense quietos,” Emilia growled, inhuman through her voice filter. The bolseteros stood as frozen as they could, trying their best to suppress their crazy gas twitches. Lucky used the moment's lull to feed rounds back into the Winchester M97. The bolseteros looked at Lucky nervously when he racked a fresh shell into the chamber.

“What are we going to do with these goons?” Bucket asked. They didn't have the time to deal with prisoners, but they couldn't just leave them here. If they didn't regroup and attack the villages all over again, they'd succumb to the crazy gas symptoms and tear each other to pieces before starving to death.

“This isn't all of them...” Grease mumbled. Lucky looked around. Grease was right: the bolseteros' leaders were conspicuously absent.

“Where is O'Laughlin?” Lucky wondered aloud. “And Espada?”

Emilia exploded into motion, closing the distance between herself and the closest bolsetero. She knocked the skeletal mercenary onto his rear and pressed her bayonet against his neck. He was shaking so hard that Lucky was afraid he’d skewer himself with her blade.

“¿Dónde está Espada?” she demanded. If any of the other mercenaries had any inclinations to rescue their comrade, these thoughts were immediately dashed by a burst from Bucket's Tommy gun that tore up the ground at their feet.

“Be smart,” Bucket advised them, watching the jittery prisoners like a hawk.

“¿Dónde está él?” she asked again, planting her knee on the fragile man's sternum.

“Sua forja,” he stammered, pointing to the closest building, a tin-walled shanty with a smokestack on the other side of the road. Two great wooden doors faced out. Its corrugated walls were riddled with bullet holes and warped by grenade blasts.

A diesel roared to life with, rattling the loose metal sheeting like a storm.

Emilia dropped to the ground the same instant that a cloud of splinters burst out of one of the doors. A small black object had left a hole the size of a fist in the wood and rocketed just a foot over her head. It collided with a standing bolsetero, launching him from his feet with a shattering impact.

“¡Cobarde!” Espada shouted from inside.

Lucky dropped to a knee and leveled his shotgun at the building. Two bolseteros crawled over to their fallen comrade and took him by the arms in an attempt to drag him to safety. When they lifted him, Lucky could see wooden handle sticking out of his chest: a blacksmith's hammer was buried four inches deep between the dead bolstero's ribs.

“¡Retiren sus armas y maten a todos!” Espada yelled from inside the forge. Lucky could see him moving in there, a shadow behind the fist-sized hole the heaved hamer had left in the doors. A few of the bolseteros began reaching for their discarded rifles, their fresh fear of Espada overpowering the desperation of the suddenly halted battle.

“¡Qué nadie se mueva!” Emilia countered, letting off a shot into the air that again froze the terrified mercenaries.

“¡Cállate, gilipollas!” Espada roared back, still hiding inside the building. Emilia raised her revolvers and began firing through the wooden doors. Lucky and Bucket followed suit, blasting the rickety building into scrap. Their rounds plinked off of solid metal within.

A hydraulic squeal pierced the air, sending Emilia diving to the side as both doors exploded, fragmenting into high-speed splinters by a flying three-hundred-pound anvil.

The forged iron wrecking ball bowled over the bolsetero Emilia had been questioning then crashed through the hammer-felled man and the two mercenaries who held him by the arms. All four men died with the impact.

Emilia was on her feet in an instant, firing into darkness beyond the broken doors. Her heavy rounds bounced off of rolled steel, eliciting only a cruel laugh from Espada.

“Pollito, ¿es así de fuerte picotear?” he called out.

Espada stood in the blasted doorway, fully armored with his autocannon in hand. A propane fireball boiled out of a crumbling forge behind him, bathing Lucky in orange heat from across the road. Black smoke rose in a pillar into the gray sky.

The flames silhouetted Espada's hulking panzerritter armor. He already stood eight feet tall, but his shadow fell over Lucky like he was staring down a skyscraper. The bullet-tattered walls around Espada were covered in hanging blacksmith tools and mounted pieces of hand-forged steel plating. The armor was his life's work.

Espada stepped forward, pistons hissed as his heavy boots settled into the ash. He surveyed the scene behind his grimacing mask's empty eye sockets before finally settling his haunted gaze upon Emilia. She was busy reloading her revolvers, though she knew too well that the pistols couldn't hurt him. Lucky understood: she wanted the satisfaction of shooting him.

The armor groaned as Espada lifted his aircraft cannon up to face her. Pistons hissed and metal grated; the cannon was longer than Lucky was tall and had to weigh over a hundred pounds unloaded.

Lucky could only watch. The shotgun in his hands would be about as useful as slapping Espada with a rolled-up evening paper. Nothing smaller than a milk truck could put a dent in him.

Bucket had come to the same conclusion.

“Over here, knucklehead!” Bucket yelled. He was sitting in the cab of a rumbling, two-ton, hijacked Italian truck. It squealed as he jammed it into gear. He stomped on the gas, sending the roaring rig barreling downhill.

Espada swung his cannon around and let it roar. Three rounds ripped into the road before the truck plowed into him.

Bucket hit Espada at twenty miles an hour. It was like hitting a wall. The hood crumpled and the windshield cracked all the way up the middle. The impact knocked Espada’s cannon away. The back tires bounced into the air for a second as the chassis bent. Emilia's squirreled-away family heirlooms started flying out of the back as the tailgate popped open, throwing pillaged crates of crystal wine glasses and bottles of orujo onto the road.

Espada clawed at the truck's hood as it rammed him downhill. He planted his feet and plowed deep trenches into the gravel road with his heels, barely slowing them. Bucket pressed the gas pedal flat to the floor. The engine roared, then popped. A jet of smoke and flame licked out through the knocked-in grille and into Espada's grimacing faceplate.

Lucky, Emilia, and Grease all dove out of the way as they barreled downhill.

Espada roared, then put his fist through the cracked windshield. Glass flew through the cab, forcing Bucket back to protect himself. Espada grabbed the wheel with his right hand and jerked it hard to the left. As he did, he anchored his feet and lifted the fender with his left hand, slick as a wrestler.

Using its own momentum, Espada flipped the truck past him onto its left side. Bucket only had time to yell as the truck rolled over and over down the hill, flinging silk dresses and shattered tableware into the air with each revolution. It finally crashed through the wall of a burning barracks and came to rest wheels-up in the flames.

“Bucket!” Lucky shouted. He stood and brought his shotgun up.

Espada watched the truck settle for a second, then turned and began plodding back uphill. Lucky fired and fired. He didn’t count is shots. The buckshot rang off Espada’s armor, barely even annoying the murderer within. He just kept plodding forward.

Lucky found his shotgun empty. He dropped it into its sling and drew his Colt. He tried to target the weak spots in Espada’s armor, the neck and at the arm pits. Espada had been studying and modifying the panzerritter design for years. Its weak spots were reinforced, and not one of Lucky’s shots left a scratch. Espada closed the distance between them, then stopped.

“No eres el que quiero,” he said. He glared down at Lucky with his steel scowl, glowering over him and waiting expectantly for the smaller man to cower and step aside.

Lucky looked down at his Colt. The slide was not locked back. He still had some gas in the tank. Lucky lifted the pistol, placed it muzzle flat against Espada's forehead, and fired.

The pistol bucked, and shattered lead peppered them both.

Espada shook the ringing out of his ears, chuckling. The heavy round hadn't so much as put a scar on the mask's forehead. He looked down at Lucky and slapped his Colt aside, then snatched away his shotgun so hard that he snapped its leather strap.

Lucky stumbled, but caught his footing quick enough to return Espada's baleful glare. The Spaniard chuckled and folded the shotgun in half with his hands.

Espada was the kind of bastard who grinned when he hit someone, so he had to have a big smile on behind that eyeless mask when he sucker-punched Lucky square in the gut. Lucky felt like Sugar Ray's punching bag, if Sugar Ray Robinson fought with no eyes and brass knuckles.

Lucky dropped to the ground, choking like Espada's hit had stuffed his insides up his throat. Lucky could tell that at least one of his ribs was cracked.

“Hey!” Grease yelled, thundering out of the ash and smoke. He stampeded at Espada, axle over his head, bringing it down from overhead like he wanted to split the armored man into kindling. Espada watched the I-soldier charge, noting the arc of the incoming bludgeon with a studied eye.

Espada deftly side-stepped the attack. His years in the armor made his movements move quicker and smoother than any of the panzerritters Lucky had fought in Vesuvius. The captain let the axle whip past his face and slam down beside him, then pinned it to the ground with his boot.

Grease realized what had happened in time for Espada to shoot a quick jab into his armored cheekbone, then hammer a steel left onto the back of his neck that dropped him to the ground. Espada flipped the stunned Bronx kid onto his back with an armored toe.

“La fuerza no es nueva para mi,” Espana said, then stomped straight down onto Grease's nose with his steel heel.

Grease collapsed under the blow, limp.

Espada resumed his trek up the hill. He didn't acknowledge the constant barrage of bullets from Emilia's revolvers: his eyeless gaze was locked on his dropped autocannon. A crimson magnesium flare bounced off his chest and popped, sending starfire flying around him.

In one quick, annoyed motion he drew the cleaver from his chest sheath and slung it at Emilia. The heavy blade spun like a buzz saw, cutting through the gritty air. It hit Emilia's head with a loud clang, dropping her. Espada chuckled hollowly.

He kept trudging to his gun. He bent and picked it up, racking back the heavy bolt.

A small canister landed at his feet, emblazoned with white zigs painted over black zags.

“Take that, you brute!” Miller yelled. His M3 grease gun rang out, pelting Espada with fat but useless .45 caliber rounds. Espada forgot about the canister for just long enough. The spinnennetz grenade popped, coating him and his cannon with millions of spider webs.

“¿Ésta mierda otra vez?” Espada yelled, straining against the chemically-treated silk. Miller dashed forward, kicking up ash with each step. The M3 chattered as he ran, pelting Espada. The panzerritter's hydraulics groaned.

Miller was just thirty yards away when he dropped his grease gun to swing on its sling and slid a tank-busting limpet mine out of his satchel.

He flipped the mine’s delay switch at twenty yards, giving him six seconds to plant the magnetic bomb before it went off.

Miller had ten yards to go when the first strand holding Espada snapped, twanging like a sheared high-tension wire.

A hundred more threads broke against the panzerritter armor, freeing Espada's left arm before Miller was close enough to plant the mine.

The Spaniard's hand was around Miller's throat when the mine’s magnets engaged with his chest plate. His fingers clenched his throat like a vice ad didn’t let up. Miller thrashed and kicked, but Espada drew him in close, hugging his squirming body against the bomb.

An M1 clam mine is designed to breach the belly of a tank with a half-pound of shaped high explosive. When that explosion was sandwiched between Espada's chest plate and Miller's unprotected torso, it struck like lightning.

Espada backward, wreathed in smoke, the spider silk burned away. He clutched a bloody crack that split his thick metal chest plate wide open. Charred leather, shredded chain mail, and leaking pistons dangling from the gaping fissure. Blood trickled between the mechanisms and the armored captain fell to one knee.

The blast tossed Miller's unshielded body in a ragged spray of icy water and tattered fabric. He landed in a smoking heap twenty feet away, limp and still.

Espada recovered quickly. He pushed through the pain and began struggling with his cannon. The massive weapon was bound to the ground by the strengthened spider webs.

In their natural state, the webs of the Malay dog-hunting spider could capture mid-sized mammals for slow consumption. Department Three's chemicals further enhanced the webs to the point that they were strong enough to give a panzerritter trouble.

Lucky dragged himself to his feet and limped to Miller's side while Espada was distracted. What he found was beyond the scope any first aid training the Army had given him.

The environment suit was in tatters, and the body beneath it seemed deflated. All of Miller’s gear had been reduced to scrap. His intrinsic sapient current battery was gone. Wires protruded everywhere. Lucky peeled back Miller’s shredded suit to look at the wounds beneath. He gagged at the sight.

Miller was in a bad way.

His chest itself was mangled, his pale skin flayed away, exposing cracked-open ribs and burnt-through muscle. His intestines, stomach, and the rest stared up at Lucky from the open cavity. Miller's organs were cold and pale, with no blood. Condensed cold water beaded on every scrap of waxy tissue.

“Ugh...” Miller groaned through his gas mask. Both glass lenses were cracked. He couldn't see, so he felt at his ragged torso with his hands. His gloves smudged black soot onto every exposed organ they touched. “I am in a bad way.”

“You're alive?” Lucky asked. He could see Miller's organs squirm when he spoke.

“There is some charge remaining in my secondary battery,” he said, pointing to a smaller pouch he carried at the small of his back. “But it will do no good should my core temperature increase any further. Ideally, our pickup should be but a short distance out. I activated the transponder nearly thirty minutes ago.”

Lucky couldn't believe him. He was torn open belly button to Adam's apple and still trying to calm other folks down. He shouldn’t even be able to talk. He wasn’t in pain, he was inconvenienced. Miller would always be Miller.

“Hang in there,” Lucky said, trying his best to sound in charge, to sound like he wasn't about to get shot into sausage meat by a madman with a cannon for a sidearm. Uphill, Emilia was down, out cold or dead with a cleaver embedded in her skull, Lucky didn't know which. Grease had been pummeled unconscious, and Bucket was unaccounted for, buried under a burning truck.

It was then that Lucky heard the ominous twang of spider silk snapping again. The cacophony of threads breaking in quick succession overwhelmed the murmur of crackling flame and whimpering mercenaries. Espada stood, his aircraft cannon freed from the webs. He took one uneasy step, then another, forcing his broken body to carry him up the hill.

“Can you move?” Lucky hissed at Miller. The squirming, exposed organs answered that dumb question for him. He looked around and realized he had nothing. Even so, he got up, saying: “I'll distract him.”

Lucky limped away from Miller to the middle of the road. Every step was agony for his ribs. He didn't take his eyes off the approaching threat. Espada stomped to within ten yards of Lucky. With the incline, their eyes were nearly level.

“He cambiado de opinión,” Espada growled. He aimed his cannon at Lucky. “Tú primero, y entonces el Gallo.”

The cannon's box magazine rattled as a chain of twenty-millimeter rounds shifted inside.

“No lo comprendo,” Lucky mumbled, though he'd gotten the impression that Espada had lost interest in Emilia, at least 'til Lucky was splattered into the ash.

“Qué lástima,” Espada hissed. Blood oozed over his armor as he braced himself against his weapon’s mammoth recoil. His finger moved to the trigger. The inch-wide incendiary rounds, which could take down a Flying Fortress in just four hits, would pass through Lucky like he wasn't even there.

Espada chuckled, then pulled the trigger.

The gun clicked.

He pulled the trigger again. Again, a click.

Espada lifted his cannon to inspect its breach. Lucky could see, even from where he stood, that its every nook and cranny was overflowing with spider silk. The autocannon was hopelessly jammed, which Lucky realized at the exact same instant that Espada decided that its best alternative use would be as a six-foot-long, hundred-twenty-pound warhammer.

He stomped toward Lucky and raised the makeshift weapon over his head.

“Espada!” someone yelled.

The captain stopped in his tracks and looked up the road, past Lucky, past his cowering bolseteros, to see el Gallo Rojo standing, red cloak thrashing in the volcanic wind.

“Gallo Rojo, hola,” Espada said.

Emilia reached behind her head and unhooked the straps holding her helmet together. The cleaver had punched its forehead in an half-an-inch. Blood dripped from its eye slits. She cracked it open and tossed it aside.

Her char-black hair flopped out in limp ropes, heavy with blood and sweat. A split goose egg above her eye ran crimson all the way down the left side of her face. Her emerald glare cut through the red with furious intensity.

“¿Una mujer?” Espada asked, shaken. He almost dropped the disabled cannon on his own head.

“Una hija, y una hermana,” Emilia answered, her voice so cold that it was more menacing than her voice filter's mechanical monotone. Espada stomped past Lucky. He no longer cared about the American in front of him.

Emilia squared up on the advancing titan. She unhooked the bayonets from her revolvers and tossed both empty pistols aside. The blades danced in her hands. She smirked then called out to him, her voice like iron in the fire:

“Hola. Me llamo Emilia Rosales, el último hijo de Eduardo Rosales. Usted mató a mi hermano. Prepárese para morir.”

“¿Su hermano? ¿El gallo que crucifiqué en el bosque?: el cobarde mereció a morir,” Espada taunted.

Emilia's face went blank. She charged.

Espada was ready. He hurled his aircraft cannon like a solid steel Olympic hammer, sending it spinning toward her. Emilia timed her jump perfectly, gliding over the heaved weapon and landing softly on her toes in a full sprint.

Piston-powered punches flew, but Emilia danced between them and got inside his reach, taking quick stabs at his damaged midsection with her twin blades. Their razor points sliced into the cracks in the plating, cut into the leather, ripped through hydraulic tubing, and dipped into his tenderized flesh. They came out out dripping blood and hydraulic fluid.

Emilia weaved between each of Espada’s swings, lashing out over and over, picking away at him. Espada slowed his assault, scarlet oozing over steel and brass.

“¡Quédate quieta!” he roared in frustration. He staggered back, gripping his torso like he had to hold it together. Her attacks were taking their toll.

Emilia smirked and went in closer, getting in two more shallow stabs before Espada’s hand struck like a scorpion. He'd read her attack pattern like an old book, then broken her rhythm with ease.

He caught the top of her chest plate in his mechanical grip, locked vise-tight, knuckles beneath her chin. Pistons hissed as he lifted her into the air. She kicked and punched, but he had reach and she wasn't going anywhere. Her blades clanged impotently against his arms.

“Cálmate, niña,” Espada said mockingly. His free hand snatched her bayonets by their blades then twisted them out of her grasp. They scraped against his armored palm, but they might as well have been carved from pine. He tossed them aside and lifted her higher until her face hovered inches from his eyeless mask. A threat rumbled through his steel lips:

“Tan linda, te desplumaré como un pollo.”

“No es tan fácil que piensas,” Emilia snarled, then placed her right hand on the side of Espada's head. She smacked her left hand down on her shoulder, sparking off a thunderous explosion from her wrist.

Her concealed shotgun roared, and the close-range blast spun Espada's scowling face mask halfway around his head. He staggered backward, blind and thrashing, tossing Emilia like a toy. She crashed down hard on on her right shoulder and tumbled down the hill. Her arm flopped slackly as she with each roll until her limp body finally came to rest near Bucket's flipped, burning truck.

“¿Dónde estás?” Espada yelled, stumbling and flailing.

“Right here, you rusty son of a bitch!” Bucket yelled. He had dragged a piece of plunder out of flipped truck and placed it and himself between Espada and Emilia.

Espada fixed his mask in time to find himself looking down the barrel of Emilia's punt gun.

Bucket grinned. His lip was split where the crash had knocked one of his bottom teeth out, his glasses were missing a lens, ad his right arm hung lifeless. He closed one eye and aimed through the remaining lens, steadied the punt gun on its bipod sled, and pushed the stock into his shoulder. Lucky lurched to the side, rolling behind a pile of sandbags.

Bucket pulled the trigger.

Thirty-two ounces of buckshot exploded from the end of the twelve-foot barrel, blasting into bolseteros, half-collapsed buildings, ruined vehicles, cracked sandstone, and Espada's already-damaged armor at over two-thousand feet-per-second.

The destruction washed over Espada with a roar like thunder and a freight train had a baby. When the smoke cleared, the armored man was left standing frozen, every bit of plating on the front of his body crushed in or peeled away by the scouring blast. Hydraulic fluid poured off of him like he was an ice sculpture in August.

A punt gun’s recoil was enough to push a boat across a lake, far more than it needed to send Bucket’s small frame airborne. He skidded and bounced downhill, stopping only when he plowed into Emilia’s motionless body.

“Bucket!” Lucky yelled yelled as he lurched to his feet. His snapped rib made every word an effort: “You in one piece?”

“I lost my glasses. And a tooth. And hopefully my shoulder is just dislocated,” he shouted back, “But that's my kind of gun!”

“Is Emilia still alive?” Lucky asked as he went back Miller's side.

“She’s breathing,” Bucket called back.

“Good,” Lucky muttered. A dusting of ash had already coated Miller's exposed organs. Lucky ignored the pain and shrugged out of his stained shirt. He draped it over Miller's mangled chest cavity as best he could. He wasn't sure if Miller could even get poisoned or infected, but he wasn't interested in finding out the hard way right then.

Bucket forced himself to his feet and hobbled up the hill, dragging Emilia by her hood. Without his thick glasses, Bucket had to squint his eyes so tight that they nearly disappeared into his face. When he passed Espada’s standing form, he nearly dropped her.

“This asshole is still kicking, too,” Bucket yelped. On cue, Espada’s broken chest inflated and deflated, the destroyed armor crunching like aluminum foil. He set Emilia down gently, then poked Espada’s chest with one finger. The groaning man teetered, then keeled over, crashing in the buckshot-churned dirt.

Bucket dragged Emilia the rest of the way to where Lucky and Miller were. He laid her out and next to Miller. Lucky wrapped her head wound while Bucket collapsed to the ground. Once the bleeding was contained, they checked out Miller. Lucky didn't know where to start. Miller wasn't breathing any more, and neither of them could wake him up.

“His back-up is dead,” Bucket reported after checking Miller's smaller battery with a pocket voltmeter.

“So what can we do?” Lucky asked. Bucket shrugged. He didn't have enough energy remaining in his body to be scared.

“I only know what I've been shown, and nobody ever showed me how to deal with... this. Not in the field anyway.”

“There has to be something,” Lucky said.

“We need to keep him cold. Then we need to get his current back up and running,” Bucket answered.

“There's ice in there,” Lucky said, nodding toward the bunker door.

“That'll be a start. From what I understand, without the current, Miller's just... off. Like a light. Once we get him cold and conductive again, then run lightning through his veins, he'll be up and kicking. For now though, I got to sit a while. I ain't hauling ice with one arm.”

“Is it…” Lucky tried to ask about the injury. Bucket’s right arm was dangling off his shoulder like a Christmas stocking.

“Just dislocated, I think,” Bucket replied. He rolled onto his back and yelped. An improbably intact bottle of orujo had survived being thrown from the truck by landing in this particular pillowy ash drift. Bucket snatched it up then rubbed his side where it had jabbed him right in the kidney. He smiled wide, showing off his missing tooth.

“A long day, huh?” he said, gingerly placing a cigarette in his busted lip. Its white filter soaked through crimson and he threw it away, spitting blood onto the ground. He went to open the liquor bottle, but remembered he only had one working arm. He held it out for Lucky. “Mind popping that open?”

Lucky twisted the cork out but declined a sip. Bucket shrugged and threw one back on his own. The alcohol burned his split lip and broken tooth so badly that he spit it out and threw the bottle. He shook his head and fell onto his back.

“I’m just glad it’s over,” Lucky muttered. Emilia was alive, Miller was whatever he was, Grease was a few yards away, groaning but still KO’d. Every breath hurt but they had won.

“They know it's over, too, right?” Bucket asked. Lucky twisted around to follow his gaze up the road.

The surviving bolseteros had re-emerged and retrieved their weapons. These thirty had formed a loose semi-circle uphill from the officials. None on their weapons were pointed at the broken officials, but they held them nonetheless. They simply stood there, staring and twitching.

Out of nowhere, a giant gray dog tackled one, throwing him into the ash and attempting to take unwelcome liberties with his thigh. The hapless mercenary swatted at the amorous hound, but was too feeble to dissuade him.

“Damn it, Basil! Decorum!” Murphy O'Laughlin yelled, pitching a pebble at the randy wolfhound. The dog hopped off the embarrassed bolsetero and trotted to the Irishman's side.

The bolseteros parted to allow the pair through. They stood taller, gripped their weapons tighter, stood steadier. Having anyone to follow at all emboldened them. They followed O’Laughlin as he made his way down the road, eventually surrounding Lucky and the officials.

“I told ye before, boy-o, the job's not over 'til I get paid,” O'Laughlin said to Lucky. He wiggled his mustache to dislodge the ash flakes that had settled on his wiry black whiskers. Basil bared his yellow fangs and growled as his master leveled his three-barreled long gun at his battered quarry.

Copyright © 2023 Daniel Baldwin. All rights reserved.

Written and edited by Daniel Baldwin. Art by Dudu Torres. Spanish translations by Caitlin Gilmore.