Virtual Virgin

fully engaged and clashing like an electric storm, harried into mowing each other down to escape a pincer operation of combined government forces.

The rumbling north of this valley obscured the vibrating chirrs and humming and scale-scrapings of the agitated and silver-armed insect and reptile foot soldiers Ric and Quick had gathered until they were poised like the top curl of a gigantic surfing wave about to wash over El Demonio’s forces.

“Let’s bring up the rear here and put Torbellino’s ass in a silver sling,” Tallgrass hissed in my ear.

A rear in a silver sling. Nicely put.

Tallgrass grinned up at the fading northern fireworks in the sky above one last time.

Then we turned sideways to crest the ridge behind the one Ric held now and maneuver down the steep sides of the earthen gash, our booted feet moving fast to catch up to the advance party of two. We knew that Ric’s showdown with his childhood enslaver had to put him first and foremost in the confrontation and that Quicksilver was the best scout in the party.

Soon we were approaching the quivering and broadening silver band making a do-or-die border like the Rio Grande. The maraca racket of all those metal scales and wings, feelers and legs, quieted and stopped. Like an ice- frozen river, the living shimmer of creatures stopped.

Tallgrass and I hastened to reach Ric’s back, Quicksilver sitting beside him.

The lightning on the horizon ahead of us grew bigger and snapped like a chupacabra twitching its tail. Yet we faced a vastly different scene from last night.

Across the wide valley massed the forces of hell.

Talk about a rag and a bone and a hank of hair. Row upon row of feral zombies, a standing army, twitched and writhed like giant maggots, all white bone and bared red muscle in the moonlight. Only then did I see the black iron shackles that made them into chain gangs.

Any remaining flesh gleamed in the moonlight, reflecting the actual maggots burrowing through what was left, ready to drop off on living prey.

“They’re . . . dancing?” I wondered aloud. Then I got it.

We were confronting an entire army of the new-generation zombies El Demonio Torbellino had created, hop-heads jived on crystal meth, a perfect meshing of the drug and the zombie trades.

“I’m going down,” Ric announced, turning so I could see the lightning flashes reflected in his exposed silver iris. “You two hold the high ground here until I get something going down there. Proceed at your own discretion. Be advised I don’t intend to be heavily into discretion tonight.”

He started down the incline to the Valley of Guadalupe, his every step pushing the silver wave of desert vermin at his feet ahead of him.

I lowered the high-tech binos that read bones, not heat, to my eyes for an ugly, close-up view.

“That’s it?” I asked Tallgrass. “Those are our only marching orders?”

“It’s mano-a-mano now. Our boys are both in the ring.”

Now I could see El Demonio had arrived at the jitterbugging zombies’ forefront. He sat on his traveling throne, the trunk of a black sixties Lincoln Continental convertible, his feet planted on the backseat. He was riding the stalled car like the grand marshal in a grisly parade of death, greed, and utter evil. He also was committing vintage car abuse.

I’d never forget his face as I first saw it in Wichita. At this safe distance I could study it longer. The brim of his flat-crowned black leather hat cut across the satanically arched eyebrows overhanging his hooded gaze. Thin high-flared nostrils made his nose as flat as a snake’s, his lipless mouth a raw slash like deli-sliced rare beef.

Why hadn’t I recognized who Torbellino looked like before? He was the spitting image of the sinister corporate muscleman in Metropolis who was only known as The Thin Man. That reminded me of the film title that had introduced my CinSim friends, Nick and Nora Charles, to an adoring public. Weird that something so innocent and light echoed something so evil.

Two chupacabras flanked the car, their eyes gleaming red with smoke steaming from their scaly hides like a visible stink. This multibreed creature resembled a small dinosaur with leathery gray-green skin and sharp quills down its spine and tail.

Despite the lizardlike quality, its fanged face, smoldering red eyes, and black forked tongue gave it demonic cast. To underline that, I can speak from experience that a chupacabra’s every exhalation broadcast the hellish and overcoming reek of sulfur.

I had reason to know chupacabras weren’t the biggest and brightest monster at the matinee, but they sure were among the ugliest.

Tallgrass was shaking his head at the opposition. “I didn’t believe in chupacabras until I saw that one in Wichita. Just how dangerous are those mythical beasts? It’s not a native Midwest monster.”

“A monster it is,” I agreed, “and mythical for too long. The real ones had a great cover all these years. Cheesy tabloids kept producing what people found and called chupacabras, dead coyotes ravaged by mange. You’d think they’d realize that creatures reputed to suck the blood out of goats and other stock had to weigh more than thirty pathetic pounds.”

“People want to believe folktales that look safe and are in somebody else’s backyard,” Tallgrass said. “The more lethal and unkillable the monster, the less we want to believe it’s really out there.”

“Some of the worst monsters aren’t supernatural.”

“That’s for sure. Look at these cartel mobsters.”

“And we call unhumans inhuman.” I surveyed our immortal enemy on his throne.

El Demonio’s thick bull whip draped the car’s front seat, windshield, and long, shiny hood before it coiled down to the desert floor. The last three feet of thirty—which Ric had often felt the slash of—swayed upright, an animated leather cobra ready to strike. Torbellino was a demon with an exterior tail.

And with every sway of the hypnotically moving whip end, lightning sizzled and danced in the sky, obscuring the stars and stabbing at the moon.

Ric marched closer to the drug lord’s battle line, Quicksilver nipping at the sides of the silver wave to shape it into an advancing U-shape.

“Great strategy,” Tallgrass observed. “We need to move to the ridge Ric left, pronto.”

He slung his bulky new rifle over one shoulder and sent sand chunks tumbling as he hurtled down with a sideways gait.

I followed his example, stumbling and having to abrade my fingertips on the sand a time or two. Getting up the last ridge was easier, and we lay just under the crest, breathing hard.

Apparently it was going to be a battle of words before action.

“How do you like my wheels?” El Demonio’s basso voice jibed across the barrier of stalled silver desert life.

I followed Tallgrass in sticking my head above the ridge to hear the cartel boss’s rant.

“JFK bought it in this car. Jackie crawled where I’m sitting. The conspiracy nuts thought it was the mob, but they had the wrong mob in mind.”

“Wrong,” Ric shouted back. “That car’s a museum piece far away and you soon will be too.”

“Hola, mi niño pequeño,” he taunted in tones of false fondness. “How you have grown. Every inch of height you gained must have stretched the welts from my whip on your back.”

The crude Kennedy car reference had made my blood boil and now it boiled over. I scrambled to my feet and used my strongest voice from when I was at the back of a noisy press conference.

“Those evil marks are gone, you monster,” I shouted. “What monsters make can be unmade.”

“Ah. The Wichita bruja. Maybe the marks on the flesh can fade, but never those on the soul.”

I knew that bruja meant “witch”—and didn’t I wish I had those powers!—but I could use the ones I did own.

I shook out my spread arms. I felt the familiar stretch across my shoulders under my two layers of clothing as it streaked down both arms to escape the big, ugly camo shirtsleeves. Butts of solid silver filled my leather-clad palms with sleek and icy metal power.

Tallgrass muttered in his native tongue to see me holding twin braided silver whips, twelve feet long.

I raised my arms high and gestured sharply down, like a conductor. Narrow whip ends touched earth and snaked up again toward the sky, conjuring an arch of snapping, sizzling blue lightning above us. An electric branch