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He took several deep breaths. The gritty rattle in his throat wasn’t any comfort, but he soon grew steadier and felt the pounding in his chest subside.
Within seconds, the spell was over. Gordian knelt on the lawn, his head clear again. Still, he couldn’t keep on like this. He would have to get himself checked out. He’d call the doctor tomorrow morning, try to squeeze in an appointment for the same day. He was confident as ever that he wasn’t suffering from anything more serious than a nasty cold. Maybe a touch of the flu. But it couldn’t just be disregarded ad infinitum.
He glanced over at the porch. Julia remained involved with her cuts of fish, shifting and flipping them over the flame with her spatula. She hadn’t noticed his little episode. Good. He’d pretty much recovered and was thinking he could mount the rest of the boards in twenty minutes, tops. Close that space. Then he’d quit. Grab one of those lawn chairs, relax in the sunshine. And wait for Ash.
He gathered half the siding boards on the ground, carried them to the fence posts where he’d be working, and squatted to get the lowermost board in place. Then he took the drill from his holster, checked to see that the screwdriver bit was firmly in the chuck, pulled his goggles over his eyes, and reached into his pouch for a screw.
His power tool slugged the screw into the wood easily, its fat motor startling the birds out of a nearby tree with its racket.
The board went on without a snag. Gordian reached for the next one, positioned it, and was about to squeeze the drill’s trigger switch when he heard Julia calling him: “Dad!”
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BIO-STRIKE
“He looked over his shoulder and saw her approaching ss the lawn. She was outfitted in black capri pants, rilles, and a sleeveless blue midriff blouse that pre- r matched the color of her eyes. And Gordian’s eyes well, though it was not something he noticed at that ament.
he was noticing was the tight, controlled ex- ssion on her face. The overdone casualness of her de.
He braced himself as she reached him. ‘Time for a break. We’ll be eating soon,” she said in t-fiat, clipped tone.
“Hey Dad, you’re doing a fantastic job!” Gordian ought. “/ couldn ‘t have expected better from a profes-
il carpenter!” * He raised his goggles and regarded her from his
ch.
“I’m almost finished with this side of the corral,” he ttd. “Your mother hasn’t even arrived yet…” ‘She shrugged. “I thought maybe you’d want to wash ‘ before she gets here.”
“You’re the greatest, Dad! I love you! Jack and Jill 9ve you! We all love you like mad! I honestly don’t
what we’d do without you being around!” Gordian tried not to look set upon. He felt a burr in throat and cleared it to stave off a cough. “Her car just left the airport half an hour ago, and you imagine what the roads are like today,” he said, pondering if his voice sounded as weak and croaky as ; seemed. “We should have plenty of time …” Her gaze flogged him. “Okay,” she said. “Whatever.” Baffled, Gordian watched her turn away and walk
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back toward the house. It struck him to call after her, ask her to help him understand the nature of his current transgression, but he thought it might just provoke an argument. He decided the wisest thing to do was concentrate on his undertaking, keep his distance, and maintain a frail peace until Ashley arrived.
Gordian managed that with considerable success. He attached the rest of the boards he’d carried from the shrinking pile and then brought over the five that were left, all without getting into knots about Julia’s inexplicable attitude.
Then he was on his last board. He aligned it between the posts with a swell of anticipation and squeezed the trigger of the drill. It whined to life in his hand-
And then the dizziness overtook him in a surge that almost spilled Gordian off his feet. He staggered drunkenly, his gorge heaving into his throat, rancid and scalding. His vision went gray around the edges, and then the grayness spread over everything, and he felt his body go loose, the drill jolting in his right hand. He experienced a hot, piercing pain in his opposite hand an instant before releasing his grip on the power tool’s trigger. Just as the gray turned to black, he saw a bright splash of redness gush from the burning spot from the wandering drill bit.
“Dad!”
Julia. Calling him from somewhere at a distance. Her tone of voice so different than it had been only minutes before.
“Dad, Daddy, oh no, oh my God, DADDY-”
Lost in darkness, spinning in a whirlpool of darkness, he felt every part of himself melting away, turning to liquid, rushing into the ground.
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It’s all right, hon, please don’t sound so scared, Gor-
thought he heard himself say. In fact, the words never had a chance to leave his nth.
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FOURTEEN
SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA NOVEMBER 14, 2001
the body of felix quiros did not quite go to
the rodents. Nor was it exactly found by other members of the Quiros clan.
His executioner would later be amused to hear that they split the difference.
First cousins to one another, third cousins to Felix on opposite sides of his lineage, foremen at his auto salvage yard, and low-level functionaries in the criminal family business, Cesar and Jorge were far from quick to attach his three-day absence from the yard to the notion that any harm had come to him, and even slower to associate it with the scuttling, scratching noise they heard down the aisle of junkers.
Every so often, Felix would shoot down across the border to those Tijuana bars where the young putas came three for the price of one, bring them to a hotel room, turn them on to some dope or ecstasy, get fucked up, and drop out of sight for days on end. Cesar and Jorge were well aware of his bad habits and guessed they
BIO-STRIKE
been the guys taking care of the scrapyard’s daily dons ever since Enrique handed it to Felix in an empt to give him a firm set of responsibilities and ep him from running into trouble, but he’d kept on Mng it anyway. Just let him get his hands on a little sh, and you could count on him going no-show until s’d blown every cent of it looking for degenerate kicks. Felix was here, he wasn’t here, Cesar and Jorge didn’t it was of much consequence either way. They ew about their own obligations. They had the keys entry combinations to every part of the scrapyard usually found that it was less trouble to manage ngs without his high-hat bullshit. When he’d asked i to participate in that score connected with the Sal- goods from Mexico, they’d told him he was a and refused. Because Felix was the illegitimate i of Enrique’s sister, Cesar and Jorge kept from voic- their opinions of him except between themselves, ugh the pair had a strong feeling that whatever they ght about the twit was hardly anything that wouldn’t occurred to his uncle a hundred times, and that iy would have faulted them too much for anything |y said. Still, you had to observe certain proprieties. lichen Cesar finally noticed the sounds at around it barely aroused his interest. A dumping ground this, acre upon acre littered with decaying vehicles with half-eaten hot dogs, burritos, candy bars, vinkies, ice cream cones, soft drink containers, and rotting trash people left inside them, a place like J|5 was home to every sort of creature you could name, then some. After a while, you didn’t actually have |see them to know which ones were nearby. You could tify them just by the sounds they made.
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That scratchy rustle, Cesar immediately knew it was a sign of rats. Some people, ones who didn’t have the same experience with them as Cesar, who didn’t spend as much of their goddamn lives around them as Cesar, thought they mainly came out at night, but here in the yard you could expect them to appear at any hour of the day. You got used to them being nuisances, used to seeing them dart between the cars, used to hearing them scavenge for food. They’d crawl in through broken windows or holes in the undercarriages, even climb into the trunks and chew through the upholstery of the backseats to enter the junkers. Bring an egg sandwich from the luncheonette for breakfast, a gray, ugly fucker that was bigger and meaner than a Chihuahua was liable to catch a whiff, come right out into the open, right into your trailer or shed if there was a space wide enough for it to crawl through. Sit there staring at you with the shiny beads of its eyes like it expected you to hand over the food. At a certain point, Cesar and Jorge had got to chucking empty beer and soda cans at the rats to scare them away, but some were so bold they’d stay right where they were unless you caught them smack in the head, rearing up on their hind legs, baring their white needle teeth like they were daring you to take another pitch, give it your goddamn best. Finally, Jorge started shooting them on sight when they got too close … and not with a BB gun, either. Jorge, he’d hit them with rounds from his nine mil, bam, bam, bam. Said that someday he would come in with an Uzi and chop away at the bastards until every last one was blown to pieces.