Twitch and Die!

Ch.12: Marcon Place

Moving steadily toward the Marcon place, Chancho noted more proof of the suspicions he’d formed from New York Hill. The town had waged war against itself. Doors lay burst from hinges. Bullet holes peppered walls. Barricades barred roads and porches. Occasionally an auto had been driven through a wall as a battering ram.

As the three strode down the center of the road, front porch after front porch, he gradually blocked out the mud, ash and scattered remains of a war waged both behind closed doors and in the open. Instead he began to notice the unexpected. Foremost, the lack of bodies.

Blood stains remained, but nothing fresh. And they hadn’t seen a single body since crossing the fence, living or dead. How could a war be waged without casualties? Where could they have gone?

In the middle of a burned-out block, Chancho spotted five upright oil drums among the charred remains. “Pssst. Angelo.” He called them to a halt. If they were to survive as aliens, they needed knowledge of the rules of the land. “Un momento, por favor.”

Chloe clutched his arm. “We’re coming too.”

Stepping over half-burned timbers and blackened sheets of tin, Chancho reached the first drum. Smoldering embers in the lower third of the barrel cracked and hissed.

Chloe rested a hand on his shoulder. “One of the lights we saw from the hill.”

“They’re in a circle with that one in the middle.” Chancho scrambled over the blackened boards toward the center drum. It also smoldered, but smelled much worse than pine or cedar. The lower half of the barrel was buried in ashes as additional fuel had been piled on top without emptying its contents.

Several feet from the barrel he felt something shatter beneath his boot. Something small and brittle. Something felt but not heard. Stepping back he recognized the jawbone of a human skull. “Madre de dios.” Scanning the ash, he found the remains of several other bones jutting from the pile. He held up his hand for the others to stop. “It’s a funeral pyre.” He backed up, slowly at first. Finally he turned and hurried to the edge of the street where Angelo and Chloe were catching their breath.

Chloe spoke first. “That’s why there aren’t any bodies.”

“You cannot blame them for that. Caring for de dead is a basic human instinct.” Angelo spit and crossed himself several times.

“Maybe, after a war is over.” Chancho remembered the battlefields of Celaya where Villa had charged Obregón’s European style defenses with wave after wave of revolutionary cavalry. He’d returned a month later and the bodies were still decomposing in the sun, three deep. Only their valuables and their boots had been removed.

“But these people are Italian,” Chancho nodded at Angelo, “Polish, Mexican. We do not burn our dead.”

“But under these circumstances?” Chloe gestured to their surroundings.

“Unless there is some reason to fear the dead.” Chancho finished his thought. All three of them stood in silence. “Lo siento, mis amigos. I’ve been in a morbid mood.”

“I cannot image why de hell you would not be gay about all of this.” Angelo grunted as he resumed their pace. “We will be there soon. Marcon’s is on the next block. Then we find what we find.”

The Marcon house remained intact, nestled below the small mound known as Italian Hill. On the other side of the rise, the Black Diamond Rail snaked its way to #7. Avoiding the house, Angelo led them directly into the backyard—a cramped space where the hill met the house. There, built partially into the slope, was the outdoor oven.