The New Guard

The New Guard

SILENT LIGHTNING BLARES stiletto sharp as disco strobes as I stare out the window, riding shotgun. Flashes. Freezes blast past, instants frozen in time, frames of photography smashed together into a fractured comic that has no plot, no unity, no sense. A yowling pack of mangy coyotes chases a squealing cur through a bodega parking lot. A drug house next. Then an Aztec pyramid in silhouette against dim city lights. More tourist traps. Thin grizzled men, dried as jerky, dancing drunk round a rippling trash can fire. Hell … maybe the story does make sense; I don’t know, but if it does, it’s a shitty one no one wants to read.

Maria’s got the driver’s seat, beating the wheel with her palms, singing to herself, grooving to some new techno-cumbia dogshit that sounds the same as all the old techno-cumbia dogshit. Even as Steven she rips round a corner, wheels screeching, the two wheels still grabbing ground screeching like an alley cat knifed in the dark. I hang on, trying not to bite my tongue or scream like a little girl. Maria? Humming to herself throughout. Bombs could fall; she wouldn’t blink. Drives like a fucking loon but she knows the city. She knows Mexico City.

“What number?” Maria asks, her head swaying back and forth like a cobra’s, hypnotic and to the beat, eyes focused forward, always forward.

“One fifteen,” I say, yawning. It’s late.

“Where we at?” she asks.

Shrugging, I reach over, flip the switch for the ambulance’s right load lights, and suddenly it’s not disjointed flashes barking through the dark but a harsh white phosphorus blare scouring it burning-clean. I lean outward, focusing, trying to at least, searching for a number as houses blow by in the night. There aren’t many numbers on houses this part of town. And calling them houses … hell. I take a swig from my flask. But just a swig. “Nothing yet.”

Maria’s craning her neck now, scanning my side of the street. She scowls, catching me in the act. “What the fuck?”

“Easy…” I surrender, hold my flask out at arm’s length without looking, wait while she snatches it, cops her swig, swishing it in her mouth like mouthwash. She swallows, hands it back. “Mmmm…” The metal flask presses back against my palm, smooth and cool, ridged round the cap.

“About the old man…” Maria says, wiping her mouth. “Just let it stand.”

I grunt; then I see.

I point.

“Over here. There. The nice house.” I say ‘nice house’ cause it’s got four walls and a roof that’s none of it corrugated metal. I tilt the flask back, sip it, hide it, tuck it away. Game face on. “See him? Waving us down…” I point over again, hold a hand up out the window, offering a half wave, acknowledging I’ve seen him. He doesn’t notice.

“Jesus…” Maria turns the wheel toward him, a man stumbling out into the middle of the street, maniac-eyes wide, a red stain the size of a soccer ball splattered across his chest, cell phone glued to his ear. One hand flails everywhere, karate chopping the air as he screams into his phone. In the side mirror I can see lights, red ones, burning bright, burning fast behind us, but not fast enough. Maria hits the brakes, and we skid to a stop.

“We’re first in, bitch.” I hold out my hand.

“Jackpot,” she says, skinning it smooth.

* * * *

MARIA’S DANCING in the next room to some radio that was old before I was born. It crackles AM style, infecting every song with some metallic tin can sound that reminds me of dinner at my grandmother’s house every Sunday afternoon when I was a kid.

Sleep won’t come, and sleep won’t go. I’m drowsing, and it’s dark, but I can’t sleep. Maria. I can see her through the doorway, spinning and twisting; the old man’s sitting there, too, gawking and making no bones about it. Tooth-missing-grinning, he bobbles his head to what he’s watching, not to what he’s listening. A burrito, plump and glistening as a newborn babe, lies clutched within his knobby claw. He takes a ragged bite, leering forward as Maria dances nearer, the wilted burrito lettuce not crunching, just squishing, hanging there like tentacles from his wizened lips, slopping onto his chin. He reaches out a skeletal hand, and Maria slaps it, dancing away, her shiny black hair flipping, spinning glorious as she waggles a finger. “No, no, no.”

“Hell…” I give up on sleep, toss my sheets aside and stagger out into light, holding a hand against the harsh glare of the bare bulb. Nothing brighter than kitchen light at three in the morning. The old man’s wearing his shades, covering those eyes. He’s jiving along, digging the show. Arianna’s slumped across the dispatch desk, probably snoring, but the music’s too loud to hear. For a moment I stare at her in equal parts envy and amazement then shuffle on.

Maria dances my way, but the light’s too bright, and I just nod, feigning a pathetic little wiggle, then skirt past her for the fridge. I grab a Coke, collapse at the kitchen table, join the old man. He lights up, beaming, slaps me on the shoulder, waggling his eyebrows at Maria. He elbows me, sharing a secret. The secret is he’s a perverted old geezer, and it ain’t no secret. Everybody knows. He holds his cellophane-wrapped-vending-machine burrito aloft like he’s toasting the president. “To late nights with young ladies and old burritos.” He peers close at me, begging for assent. “Eh?”

I stare at his burrito…

It stares back…

“What?” A hand at his chest as he leans back, all mock-offence. “Your pussy hurt?”

“It’s late … it’s loud,” I say.

“Loud can be good,” the old man retorts, nodding, bald head bobbing. “Maria is loud.”

I glance at Maria, grooving softly at the open fridge now, cooling off. “Not really.”

“Loud in the right places, eh?” He nudges me with his elbow again.

I shake my head, noncommittal.

“What?” He grins, glancing at his watch. “I never understand you. You no like girls?” His grin falls, his gaze with it as he shakes his head. “And always business with you. Always the complaining. Always the this. Always the that.” He points with his burrito to Maria. “Never, never the this.”

I shrug, falling into our current argument, a reflex action. “We’re low on equipment.”

“Not low enough to interrupt your beauty sleep, though, eh?”

“When I say we’re low, I mean we have none.”

He deflates a bit. “I just stocked the closet.”

“With what? Towels and duct tape? How about some real stuff?”

“Pfah!” The old man waves a hand. “Use your head.” He taps his temple with a finger. “With towels and tape, you can do much.” He inflates his wizened chest like some anorexic gorilla. “Improvise.” He slaps it like Kong. “Overcome.”

“Oxygen? Improvise oxygen?”

“Oxygen’s free, is it not? And all around us.” He waves a hand mystically about his head. “Ask the scientists, they know. Next you complain about those suction units I got.” He leans in, nudges me with his elbow. “Even you can’t complain about those, eh?”

“They’re jury-rigged penis pumps.”

“You like.” He folds his arms, nodding, proud … somehow.

“Are you fucking serious?”

“They work, no? And why complain so much, eh?” He bites his burrito, pokes me in the chest, talking through the mouthful, flinging chunks. “You no like your work? No like the money…? What?” He pulls those shades off, leans forward, letting his creep factor do the work, those keyhole-shaped pupils glaring hard on me. “I no pay you good enough?”

I look away, bowels dropping inside, and take a deep breath, raising my hands in surrender. “Hell, boss, you got me there.” And he does. He pays me well. Too well. I drink. Coke’s cold. I’m sweating. It feels good all the way down, biting, stinging, but also cooling as it goes. The old man glances at his wristwatch again, then at the clock on the wall, then at the phone on the desk, a sudden look of perplexed anxiety scrunching his mug. He taps his watch, holds it to his ear. I’ve seen this show before…

“Got a hot date?” I clear my throat, trying to recover, to bolster myself.

His look of annoyance darkens to something I want no part of; then the phone rings. His darkness passes like a summer storm, and he’s all grinning, giddy, grotesque. He glares at me, those eyes narrowing, suddenly sly, watching me watch him.

Prickles all over, I chicken out, say nothing. Again.

The old rotary phone nearly jumps off the hook on its second ring, rumbling, and the old man’s mug goes blossoming all gleeful, ravenous.

“Money line!” the old man sings, dancing on tiptoe like some depraved gnome, past Arianna, and greedily snatches the receiver off the hook.

Arianna doesn’t even move.

* * * *

“HOLD ON — wait!” I yell as Maria’s bolting up the hill, toward the house, first-in bag slung over her shoulder, me on her six. We don’t know what the fuck’s going on. Only that someone’s been shot. The stained-shirt guy’s only help is to point and keep pointing then jump, screaming all the while into this phone. I don’t know if the gunman’s still on scene. Don’t know if he’s still shooting people. Don’t know who he is. Where he is. I don’t know how many he’s shot. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. And all I do know is we should not be here, not by ourselves, not till some semblance of cop is holding court, and there is not that. Not even close. Not a twinkle of blue light in fucking sight.

“Maria!” I scream as she hauls on up to the top of the hill, skids to a halt, dropping to a knee in the dust beside a guy. A big guy. She’s talking to him as she cuts off his shirt. The big guy’s sitting propped up against the foundation of the house. He’s talking back, spacing, mumbling. Drooling. He’s gonna code. Soon. His shirtless body’s pale as a corpse and covered in weird splotches and patterns like some Aztec animal warrior or something.

“I … I can’t breathe…” I hear him murmur as I grab Maria’s shoulder. I can hear him gurgle as he says it through blood bubbles.

“What … the … fuck?” I hiss at her, but she’s still working, grabbing burrito baggies from the first-in bag, cheap occlusives, and slapping them onto the guy’s chest. She duct tapes them there, three-sided, one for each sucking chest wound.

Then he keels over.

I don’t do anything. Not a god-damned thing. I just stand and turn, slow as shit, watching as the massive concrete tenement beast across the street awakens, its many-shaded eyelids rising slowly, bright eyes flicking on, black pupils within each eye standing upright like cloaked reapers, judging us from on high.

“We … gotta … go,” I say through locked jaw, pursed lips, teeth gritted hard enough to shrapnel-burst.

But Maria’s still working, still taping. “Trauma dressings,” is all she says.

“Come on.” My feet are dancing as I grab a trauma dressing — a roll of paper towels, in actuality — tear off a bunch, fold them, hand them to her. Repeat. Then repeat again. “Fuck. Hurry.” Doors start opening. “Maria—” I hiss looking over my shoulder.

Maria ignores me. “Guy’s been shot—”

“I don’t care,” I say as people trickle out.

“Eight, at least—”

“I still don’t care.”

The big guy’s hands are quivering across his corpse-white chest now, barely twitching as he looks up and off over his shoulder. He’s seizing. A huge three-headed jaguar tattoo tears climbing up his left side, consuming his chest and neck and shoulder, then crawls down into a sleeve engulfing his whole right arm in a roiling mass of tooth and spot and claw. Every noise I hear, the turn of a dead bolt, the twist of a doorknob, the clomp of feet, the unlatching of chain link gates, to me, sounds like a round chambering in a gun.

* * * *

MARIA CLICKS the radio off, stretches her back, cracking it all the way up to her neck. I groan. Another call. It’s been a hard night, a bad night. Bad even by my standards, and as a point of pride, I keep low standards.

The old man’s on the phone, scribbling, talking so fast between mouthfuls of stale bread, wilted lettuce, and dry chicken that I don’t know what the hell he’s saying. Maria’s hovering now, peering over his shoulder at what he’s writing. Arianna’s still snoring. Maria snatches the paper from the old man the second he holds it up, and she’s out the door, me on her heels, hopping as I pull my boots on, zipping them up.

“See you there,” the old man sings, phone still cradled at his shoulder, dialing now, grinning, crooning to himself.

Maria’s already in the bus, starting it up as I haul into my seat. “What do we got?” I ask, slamming my door shut.

“Shooting,” she answers, eyes aglow. She cranks the radio, pulls the shifter into drive, and we’re moving, moving fast. She loves this shit.

“Another one…?” I sigh. Hell. The fourth one tonight. “Some gang shit going down.” One for the record books. Jesus. I squint, reading the scrap of paper in my hand. “Shit. Gato Street.” Maria nods. “The projects. Bad parts, lady.”

“There any other kind?” Maria asks, lowering her window, her hair whipping, the siren’s full bore and the rush of air washing away my fog. I breathe in, close my eyes, feeling the air, feeling life.

* * * *

I’M PUMPING. Hand over hand downward strokes, a hundred a minute, give or take, sweat coursing down my forehead, pouring onto the dead guy, and he’s definitely a dead guy now. Make no mistake about it. Like some cartoon cat who catches a belly full of lead then takes a drink of water, going all sprinkler, only not quite so funny. That’s what runs through my head. Jesus. And Maria, she’s blowing, forcing breaths into him whenever she can with the bag-valve mask. Eight gunshots to the chest and we’re pumping and blowing, pumping and blowing.

“H-he gonna be okay?” the stained-shirt guy whines, standing over us, his shirt still red, his cell phone still glued to his ear, his hand still karate chopping.

I glance up at Maria, raise an eyebrow. She’s sweating, but not sweating like I am, does that thing with her eyes where they nearly bug out of her head and say, “Is this guy fucking stupid or blind or both?” But the stained-shirt guy can’t see. We both say nothing, offer shrug-grunts, look back down, continue.

Seems it was a drive-by. Nice piece of shooting if it was. No one’s told us specifically, but through some sort of on-scene osmosis I can’t explain, it’s what we gather without asking. We’re too busy.

Old and young are milling about. Dozens, maybe, it seems. I feel naked, exposed, like swimming in deep dark water and wondering what’s cruising beneath. But here you wonder what’s behind you, who’s behind you? And there ain’t nothing like an ambulance lighting up the night sky to gather a crowd. Light-bars flash swirls careening through the dark, spinning red, a block party rave. Young tattooed toughs strut without shirts, guns tucked into their pant waists, watching from behind fences. Their girls lean out windows, half-dressed, recording us with cell phones. Kids dragging teddy bears with one hand, sucking thumbs with the other, watch on. Old ladies’ knobby-knuckled fingers rip prayer through rosary bead. They’re praying for him, praying for us, praying for everybody. And everybody’s waiting, watching, watching what we’re doing, and what we’re doing looks like CPR. It looks like CPR because that’s what they expect it to, but it’s not cardiopulmonary resuscitation. I’m not circulating blood for the guy, and Maria’s not oxygenating his blood. What we’re doing is more important than CPR, it’s PR. Public Relations.

* * * *

WE BURN DOWN THE ROAD, our ambulance swerving and weaving to the music, mirror missing mirror by infinitesimal kisses on the claustrophobic roads, suspension bouncing like a bad trampoline, bald tires burning, squealing on cooked pavement. Maria’s focused on the road, hands drumming the wheel to the beat. I’m mulling it all over about the old man, the phone call, mulling till I near explode.

“So … how’d he do that with the phone?” I demand, finally.

“Who…?” Maria snaps her gum. “Do what?”

“Jesus — the old man. He knew this call was coming in. It was like … like he was expecting it. Checking his watch and waiting and shit.”

Maria shrugs. “Don’t know what you’re—”

“Come on—” I wail, cutting her off. “You saw. I know you saw.”

“I didn’t see nothing.” Eyes on the road.

“Okay…” I stare at her hard and long. “Just have to ask him, then. That’s all.”

Maria mutters under her breath, shaking her head to herself, her ringed fingers white-knuckled suddenly on the steering wheel. “Old man’s in a good mood tonight, Raff. Don’t happen much. So, do me a favor. Let it stand, okay? Just let it stand.” She eyeballs me at length, all serious. “You do that for me?”

“So you do know what I’m talking about?” I nearly pounce, going all ravenous cat.

She rolls her eyes, slow, back to the road, lips pursed as she swears beneath her breath.

“How’s he know?” I press on, deaf and dumb, my natural state.

“Didn’t I just say, let it stand?”

“Maria.” It’s my turn to give her the stare. “How’s he know?”

“How the fuck I know?” she keens, slamming the wheel. “He knows, okay? He knows.”

“And you’re okay with this shit?” I ask.

“I get paid. Good. Too good for this shit. My kids eat. I got a house. My roof don’t leak. What the fuck’s your problem?”

“Are you kidding me? The old man’s connected. In with the cartels or some shit. Drugs? Murder? Wake up. We’re going to a shooting. One he knew about. So he’s in on it. Somehow. Somewhere. That don’t bother you?”

“Ain’t nothing bothers me no more — Jesus!” She slams on the brakes, laying on the horn throughout, blaring at a herd of stumbling drunk tourists, all laughing, spilling neon booze all over the road, their pastel-flowered shirts and bedazzled sombreros offensive in the flashing red night. One salutes us. “Fucking gringos.” She chucks them the finger and a rotten look then serves the deuce up for me. “Look, Raff…” She contorts her neck to the side, cracking it, takes a deep breath, softening as we begin to move. “You’re a good partner. Okay?”

“Okay, but—”

“But nothing. Quit talking. Listen. You’re a good partner. I’m pretty sure you’re a fag, but near as I can tell, a good man. You don’t hit on me. Don’t stare at my tits like the other assholes. Don’t grab at me. Don’t…” She swallows, nods to herself. “Look, I don’t have to lie to my husband every morning when I get home, and he asks me how my night was, okay? And I’d like to see you stick around, but…” She just drives on for a few seconds, the road ripping by in near silence. “But you have no idea what the hell you’re talking about. Not even a clue. Well, you wanna ask the old man that question been burning you? I’m telling you — no, begging you, don’t. Cause, he’s bad, Raff. Shit. He’s worse than bad.”

* * * *

A FOREST OF BROWN legs and torsos lurch toward us from the dark like some zombie-fucking-invasion. Maria’s brown eyes are silent wide across the smooth expanse of tattooed dead flesh lying cruciform on the ground, all shot to shit and back again. The tattooed heads of three jaguars peek snarling from amidst the foliage of clear plastic dressings taped across his chest and abdomen. Their teeth snap at my hands as I work.

A chain link fence shudders anew as bangers hop onto it, fingers curling like hooks through the metal, grasping, toes digging in as they clamber up. It shivers as each one reaches the top, kicks over, airborne, landing, thwomp, in the dirt. Feet crunch in the grit. Close. All around.

I keep pumping. I keep looking. Sweating. Maria keeps breathing, venting.

“We gotta jet,” I manage amidst pumps. “Now.”

With a grunt, a nod, Maria agrees.

“You ready?” I ask.

“For Freddy.”

“I got the head,” I say, rising, sliding to my right, up toward the dead guy, the dead jaguar’s head, while Maria tosses the bag-valve mask ventilator onto his chest. She takes the leg-side without a blink. Two crouching steps around the dead jaguar, and she’s squatting over his pelvis, grabbing his wrists, her crucifix hanging low, swaying gold and shiny, twirling. I blink, focus, nod. With a step back and a grunt, she pulls the dead jaguar up, head lolling, to a sitting position. I scoop in behind him with my body, close, snaking my arms under his, wrapping, grabbing his wrists, locking his jelly arms to his body, giving some structure to the dead mess. Can’t lift him otherwise, just a bag of bones.

Maria grabs his legs.

We lift.

We walk.

We trudge.

An old streetlight hangs limp and low in the sky, casting our collective shadow as something sickly pale, amorphous, shambling.

Someone in the pressing mob chambers a round in a gun. We freeze. I nearly drop the guy, grab Maria by the collar, and drag her off, melting into the mob. Problem is, we won’t melt, not with our white shirts, not at four in the morning, not here, not now. Cause all eyes are on us, and there’re plenty. A fucking carnival. Day of the Dead. And if this dead bastard is someone’s son, someone’s brother? Oh, Jesus, if he’s from a rival gang…

“Whose ground is this?” I hiss, looking around.

“Borderland … disputed … I think,” Maria grunts.

“Hey, move it,” I call out, hoping against all hope I part this venom-sea like Moses on his holiest day. But I don’t. The sea doesn’t move. Nothing moves. They press in harder, leering, hissing. Someone shoves me, staggers me. Maria stumbles, swears, but we both stay up.

An engine revs suddenly, followed by tires skidding to a stop. We’re all a herd of gazelles at the water hole hearing a lion’s roar. Everyone stops; everyone turns; everyone looks, everyone. Another set of bright spinning lights blaring injects me with a shiver of slim hope. The cops? Maria and I, together, stand bent, poised, craning our necks, the hope welling inside our bellies destined for stillbirth an instant later.

“Cops?” Maria strains, looking.

We can’t see shit through the crowd. We’re too low, too bent. It’s too thick.

“Cops? Here?” I ask, incredulous, quashing her and my own hopes dead in that instant, that instant of adrenaline induced pristine clarity that strips away all the bullshit choices and chatter, revealing what we both know deep down. It’s not the cops. The cops don’t ride this side of town, not if they want to live. And besides that, we don’t want the cops here, cause if they were, we’d be standing dead to rights in the middle of a gunfight.

“Be cool,” I say to Maria, but really to myself, cause I’m on the verge.

Heads peek over our shoulders, pressing in close, pressing in tight, asking questions, jostling us, bumping us, and it’s too tight to move, too tight to breathe. I’m nearly shitting myself as I make out the tattoos scrawled across the wall of suffocating flesh.

“Shit,” Maria hisses, her eyes going wide. She sees them, too, reads them, the tattoos, and all of them are of eagles. Feathered wings spread across chest and back. Birds of prey. Blood eagles. Hooked beaks. Burning eyes. Scaled legs run down to long black talons.

From behind me, one of the eagles lays a hand on my left shoulder, digging his talons in. I wince. He says something to me, but my ears begin to buzz, and my peripheral vision goes all wobbly numb the moment I feel the press of metal against my right cheek. I don’t hear what he says. For the sliver of an instant the metal reminds me of my whiskey flask, smooth and shining, comforting cool. But something’s different. Something’s wrong. I feel the smooth barrel of the gun slide along my cheek. It’s not that it’s a gun; that’s not what’s wrong. I know it’s a gun the moment it touches me. It’s that the gun metal’s not cool. It’s hot. Acrid stink singes my nostrils.

I don’t hear what he says, but I know.

So I drop the dead jaguar in the dirt.

* * * *

“WHAT’S WORSE THAN BAD?” I ask Maria. We’re almost there. Less than a mile or so, and she’s finally talking.

“You wait and see.” Maria nods to herself, gripping the steering wheel, black cancer shadows sliding across her pretty face, conforming to it as they go. “I always heard about him, y’know? Ambulance world’s a small one. Especially here. And I know everybody. People move around. A lot. Coming and going. Hired. Fired. People always talking. And I heard about him. You probably heard it, too, right? Sketchy shit. Spooky shit. Urban legend shit. Those eyes and all? Shit, everyone’s got their superstitions. Well, maybe I ain’t heard it all, but I’ve heard enough. And I always chalked it up to all the same old superstitious bullshit. But, I was wrong, cause I seen it.”

“Seen what?”

“The trick with the phone.” She snaps her gum. “I seen him do it. More than once.” She gazes off, suddenly spaced. “Seen other shit, too.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah…” she says, but she doesn’t elaborate. She just sits there, nearly squirming.

“So, how’s he know?” I ask.

“Shit…” She shakes her head, smiling to herself, a cold smile, a smile devoid of any humor. “I don’t know, y’know? Who am I? Just some hood-rat escaped from the projects. I ain’t nothing. But you…?” She glances over. “What was your nickname at your last job?”

“Black Cloud,” I tell her, cause people got a bad habit. They die like flies around me.

“For sure.” She nods. “And it’s true. We all heard about you. That’s why you’re here. Why the old man takes your shit. You got the touch, my man, and it ain’t Midas’s … or maybe it is. Old man pays you double what he pays me. And I’m a shit-ton prettier, ain’t I?” She raises a perfect eyebrow, daring me to disagree.

“You are that.”

“You don’t believe in God, do you, Raff?” Maria rolls the crucifix chained round her neck between thumb and forefinger.

“I don’t know.” I shrug. “Not really…”

“So you don’t believe in the devil, either?” She sucks her lower lip, head bobbing lightly to the tunes again.

“No.”

“You believe in anything?”

“I stopped thinking about that stuff … long time ago.”

“Well, the old man,” Maria shakes her head slow, “he’ll make you believe in something, I shit you not.”

* * * *

THE CAR THAT SCREECHED to a stop is not the cops. It’s worse than the cops. And in Mexico City worse than the cops takes some serious juju.

Dual parallels of burnt rubber slide up beside our ambulance, terminating in a tricked-out low-rider, all gleaming chrome, flashing grim crimson ground lights, engine revving raw, roaring like a calibrated jaguar. Five gang-bangers just sit in there, sit low, just glaring at first; then suddenly they burst out, one clambering out the near window, the others out the far door. One launches himself sliding across the hood, smooth as an action hero. They all have guns. They’re all jaguars, and they’re all armed to the teeth, which means we should all be ducking, dodging, praying right about now.

They level their guns.

The eagles reciprocate.

The choking mire of humanity walling Maria and me in evaporates instantaneously, like magic, a blur of flailing arms and legs and bodies bolting for cover. We’re at the beach, in the water, and someone just yelled, “Shark!” People are running, freaking, ducking, desperate. They’re trampling old ladies, hurling kids out of their way, crushing each other against the fence. Humanity’s finest hour.

Before a shot’s fired, Maria’s on the ground and dragging me right down beside her. She’s fucking nuts. With one hand she’s clutching her crucifix, praying, and with the other, she’s feeling for a carotid pulse on the dead jaguar. And here I’m just trying to shrink behind him, use him for a bullet stop.

The bangers are all yelling, screaming, both sides. It’d be entertaining if I were watching it on the tube. Here it ain’t. It’s fucking terrifying. They’re threatening and posturing, jabbing the air with their steel, insults flying before lead.

Teeth grinding, my eyes squeezed shut and Maria praying next to me, it stops. It all stops. No shots are fired. Not one. Even the insults stop. I look up at the eagle that drew on me, held his piece to my head. Shit, he even looks like an eagle. A long hawk nose hooks down from his forehead, a smooth somber beak. His eyes are fierce, sharp, focused. He seems suddenly older than before, his weathered skin lined now with age. And there’s something else about him. I blink, try to focus. I realize vaguely he’s not carrying a gun. Clutched in his fist now is a long ebony club, gleaming black obsidian teeth grinning up one side and down the other, death’s black smile. A necklace of eagle feathers and striated, tendon-linked bone covers his chest like armor, rattling as he glares down the jaguars.

I peek up and see the tenement across the street is gone; everything I know is gone, replaced by a wide abyssal vista edged in Aztec pyramid. But they’re different, too. They’re not just the same series of stone tourist traps I see every day, not some dead grey fossils wearing away by degrees. They’re things alive in the night. Angry gods of Aztec-old, they sit squat and wide, painted in deepest crimson, flames flickering up their sides, long serpents of burning torch lining the steps rising to their peaks, reaching up into the infinity of starry night.

“Dios mio.” Maria grips my arm, clamps on it like a bulldog, trembling, muttering. I take her hand, squeeze it, tremble myself.

The jaguars, too, have changed. Do they notice? Spears and toothed clubs are in their hands, spotted pelts across their backs, and they stand ready, poised to charge up the hill. Only one thing stops them.

It’s a nightmare. Standing there, between the two groups, two armies now, of Aztec animal warriors, is the old man. I know it’s the old man. In my gut, I know it’s him in a way I can’t explain, but it is him. But … it’s also not him. Gone is the shock of white hair, the tan wrinkled face, stooped shoulders. Before me stands a wraith made flesh, god-strong, its hands raised like some high bestial priest, holding the two armies apart. An obsidian knife gleams in one hand. Loops of animal skin and feather adorn him. Torch flames flicker shadow and light dancing liquidly across his face, his torso. His ribs press outward beneath skin so tight I fancy I see his heart beating within his chest. Even his spine is outlined, in bas-relief, running from under the shadow of his ribcage, disappearing deep down inside his prominent pelvic bones. There is nothing now but skin stretched taut across ridged bone. His face is skull.

He’s talking, a sallow dead drone, hypnotizing, speaking some language I know I should know, but don’t. But the two armies do, and they respond. Screaming eagles, all around, descend upon us with piercing war cries. Strong hands, predator claws pierce my flesh, clutching onto my arms and legs, wrists and ankles, tearing me up from the ground. Vertigo. I’m lost. Cold stars glare down at me from light years afar. I kick and flail, screaming, trying to hold onto Maria’s hand but can’t. We’re torn apart from each other, borne down the hill in a marching procession, the dead jaguar leading, me next, then Maria, down to the old man. Before a heavy slab of ancient stone, he stands, eyes glistening gold, twin pupils in each eye connected by an umbilicus of black. Atop a mound of bones, he watches with those horrible eyes, waiting.

I know in that instant that Maria and I are truly going to die. As one, the eagles hurl the dead jaguar onto the altar. The jaguar army has lined up behind the old man, offering some sort of salute with their obsidian axes and swords raised to their fallen brother. Whispering, hissing, the old man wilts like a dying flower down over the dead jaguar, covering him, soft, gentle, stroking his hair back smooth, caressing his face, whispering. Their faces press as close as two lovers. The obsidian blade flashes, multifaceted, edge sharper than steel. The old man’s cutting now, ripping a ragged trench. The dead jaguar doesn’t move. In under the jaguar’s ribcage then, like slipping his hand into an obscene leather puppet, the old man’s arm disappears to his elbow.

From the stone slab, the dead jaguar lurches up, eyes wide open, electrified alive, mouth gaping, screaming, screaming, screaming. The dead jaguar’s hands scramble ineffectually at the old man’s arm, elbow deep inside his defiled flesh. Horrified, I watch as the eagle warriors bear me toward the altar. I can’t not watch. Slick and viscous, the old man suddenly rips his arm free, a sucking rasp, tearing something from the dead jaguar’s chest, and I realize dimly it’s not the dead jaguar that’s screaming. It’s the thing being torn out of him, the thing being taken from him, that’s screaming. I shut my eyes, trying to ignore the sound and realize I can’t. It’s too loud, too shrill, too unearthly, and I realize I can’t distinguish it from my own cries as they hurl me onto the heavy stone slab.

* * * *

I AWAKEN CLUTCHED in someone’s arms. That someone strokes my hair, whispers in my ear, holds me, comforting me with sounds, not words, amidst eruptions of her own misery. Maria. I can see the whites of her eyes, haunted in our communal darkness. Streetlights roll by, receding back into infinity in waves, one after the other, one after the other.

“He had a pulse…” she whispers, maybe to me.

Another light passes by, recedes even as another one sprouts.

We’re in our ambulance, the back. The dead jaguar’s on the stretcher, lying full out, limbs flailed haphazard, looking all grey and diminished the way the truly dead do. Maria smoothes my hair, sniffs, prays, working the words. She wipes her nose with the back of her sleeve. Her right hand still clutches the crucifix chained around her neck. Dried blood cakes her balled fist.

I wipe my eyes and look into hers. She’s crying, too, black lines of mascara scarring her pretty face horrid as she tries to hold it all back and fails. I can barely move, can only manage a whimper. I cup her cheek with my palm, and she reciprocates, pressing her forehead against mine. She’s quivering. I’m shaking. We sit there, holding one another, crying.

“A black night for my Black Cloud,” says a voice.

Maria moves, but only her eyes.

I struggle up, turning toward front, see the old man driving. He adjusts the rear-view mirror, and I can see his eyes in the thin slit of gleaming chrome, those terrible eyes, pupils like binary black holes swirling in the abyss, locked on me, studying me. Looking away, I see them still, burnt into my sight like the residual afterimage of a lightning strike.

Steeling myself, I wipe my eyes, struggling to sit up, using the dead jaguar for leverage. Maria grabs my shoulders with both hands, pulls me back. “No…” she whispers. I look down at her crucifix, nothing now but a piece of gilded gold religion, bent, twisted, defiled, dangling there on a tenuous chain against her breast.

“Who the fuck are you?” I yell up front.

In silence the old man stares at me through the mirror, considering…

“The old guard,” he answers with finality.

“And what the fuck’s the old guard?” I demand.

“The old guard is the new guard,” he says, those eyes turning back to the road, to the dead pyramids coming on in the distance, coming on strong, rising up alive over the horizon.