Black and Orange by Benjamin Kane Ethridge Page A

clean this place up. It doesn’t just take money. It takes courage. You don’t want to kill us, Hector. Reducing our number doesn’t help anything.”
    “Fuck that shit,” a bubble of spit popped on Hector’s lower lip.
    Paul sighed and shook his head. He glanced accusingly at Cole before he bolted away with his head down. Cole’s leg flew out behind him and his foot planted in the girl’s ribcage. She pulled the trigger and the gun discharged into the ceiling. Some plaster fell and a cloud mushroomed up from the floor. She grasped her side and charged him. Paul grabbed her from behind, hauling her up. Hector tried to aim through the mess of struggling bodies.
    “What I taught you!” Cole yelled back.
    It was already happening. Paul’s fingers sizzled against the girl’s porcelain neck. Hector fired a shot as Paul fell to the ground with the girl in his hold. The bullet caromed off an exposed plumbing fixture in the hallway and plugged a reedy guy in a wife beater. Another shot fired as Cole spun around and clutched Hector’s wrist. At the pressure the gun popped out Hector’s hand.
    “Back me up!” Hector wailed. The hallway ambled with confusion around the two quickly dead bodies and broiling flesh. Hector’s eyes widened. “Back me up!”
    With a desperate scream the girl twisted around and snapped Paul’s head back with an elbow. He let her go reflexively and put his hand to his jaw. Curdled skin fell from her neck as she scrambled into the hallway. “What did he do to me?” she pled out to everybody and nobody. “What the fuck did he do?”
    Cole felt his own gun slide out of his hip holster. He flung Hector around for a shield. A young man, high school aged, had Cole’s gun drawn. The gun was too heavy for the teen to steady, so it wobbled right to left. Thick beads of sweat pushed out of the teen’s forehead and at the prickly base of a premature mustache.
    Paul tried to stand. The wagging barrel pointed his way. Cole shook his head. “Stay there.”
    “You asshole, you said you didn’t bring a piece,” Paul complained.
    The gun returned to Cole and the kid spoke firmly, “Let my brother go now.”
    “Shoot him, Chuy ! Shoot his ugly ass!” shouted Hector.
    “Put the gun down and step into the hall with the others,” Cole ordered. “We didn’t come here for this, brothers.”
    Chuy blinked at the sweat in his eyes.
    “Do as I say!”
    “Fuck that Chuy ! Dome this motherfucker! Acábalo ! Acábalo !”
    Cole had no choice. Some people wanted fear. Only fear. It was the truest language they spoke. He put his hand at the back of Hector’s neck and gripped. The marrow blossoms in Cole’s chest filled with life from the Old Domain. His bones chilled with their power and he immediately felt every atom in Hector’s neck.
    From the ground Paul Quintana watched, sharing an understanding of the wonder.
    “You shouldn’t have trades guns with the Nomads,” whispered Cole.
    “Fuck you. That’s Ebay shit—” Hector’s tongue stopped and dropped to the side of his mouth as his nerves went limp. Bubbling pockets undulated from the interior of the skull to the surface until Hector’s head was crawling in its own juices. Hair sizzled away like ignited fiber optics. His eyeballs twisted in their housings and evaporated and all bone structure lost integrity before tucking inward. The flesh, spinal cord and esophagus tore away from the vanishing head with a sucking sound. The head was gone.
    The hallway thundered with the sounds of retreating shoes and echoing shouts. Chuy dropped Cole’s gun and backed away, mouth overflowing with shock. Paul took the gun quickly and trained it on the hallway.
    Several blisters popped in Cole’s face, leaving behind bleeding coin shapes, currency exchanged for such power, not the first he’d spent in his long tenure as a Bishop. He dropped Hector’s body with a twinge of regret. The headless form hit the folding table and sent it screeching sideways.