Reeferpunk Shorts

  Contents

  Title/Copyright Page

  Introduction

  Reefer Ranger

  Fourth Horseman

  Del Rio Con Amor

  Paraplegic Zombie Slayer

  bio

  Reeferpunk Shorts

  Volume One

  by

  David Mark Brown

  *****

  A Reeferpunk Collection

  Copyright 2011 David Mark Brown

  Art by Cody Hockin

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  All rights reserved. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means without prior written permission of the authors, except as provided by United States of America copyright law.

  These stories are completely works of fiction.

  Introduction to Reeferpunk

  Reeferpunk is a dieselpunk, refried alternate-history that explores the ramifications of an industrial revolution sans cheap oil. But what if instead, brilliant minds devised an early cellulosic ethanol from the wondrous cannabis plant. Mein Hanf!

  What if during the turbulent years of the Mexican Revolution and the grisly war to end all war a sinister and wealthy oligarchy set their minds to control 30% of the world's known petroleum resources in order to bring a global economy to its knees just as it was learning to walk? What if the success of their evil plot relied, in part, on the gumption of a disillusioned Mexican revolutionary turned goat herder ar tPnd hemp farmer, along with his two native American friends?

  Welcome to the pulp world of Reeferpunk.

  Reeferpunk delivers a surge equivalent to a cocktail of 1 part serotonin, 2 parts adrenaline, with a dash of grenadine served over ice. It scratches the urge primeval. Whether experiencing an apocalyptic Dust Zone rampant with zombies, or torching an arsenal of German weaponry in revolutionary Mexico, Reeferpunk delivers thrilling, high-octane action.

  The first in a series of two volumes of shorts per year, Reeferpunk Shorts, Volume One includes four shorts:

  Reefer Ranger: Texas Ranger, J.T. McCutchen, didn't heed the Mexican revolution until it spilled across his border. Soon every revolutionary'll know, you've got to kill the man before you fight the power.

  Fourth Horseman: If the Dustbowl can't erase the regrets that haunt the Fourth Horseman, it's unlikely the tequila will. Besides, what's Armageddon without Death?

  Del Rio Con Amore: This ain't just Villa's revolution anymore and there's a whole lot of gold about to go disappearing. Viva this!

  Paraplegic Zombie Slayer: A neurotoxin transforms the Texas panhandle into a forbidden dust zone where Georgy Founder struggles to keep his three young sons alive and together as a family. It turns out that post-apocalyptic 1928 Texas ain't very handicap accessible, and while zombie-slaying is fulfilling, wheelchair lifts are pretty damn slow.

  The first novel, Fistful of Reefer, is also available.

  A double-fisted, dieselpunk, weird-Western pulp featuring goats, guns and the camaraderie of outcasts, Fistful of Reefer lives somewhere between No Country for Old Men and The Three Amigos.

  Reefer Ranger

  Dark fell quickly and without contest during late winter in Matamoros. Ranger J.T. McCutchen strode across the fetid alley and leaned against an adobe wall, having tracked three men to an unmarked cantina. Once he situated himself to hear their echoing voices, he stilled his breathing. Soon he heard a familiar chorus buoyed into the night air by shots of cloudy mescal.

  “La cucaracha, la cucaracha, ya no puede caminar porque no tiene, porque le falta marihuana pa' fumar.”

  It was a revolutionary verse, one he had heard before. Unclear about the reference to marihuana, he knew the song to be sung often by Poncho Villa supporters. So he waited to discover whether the next verse would indicate something important about the men he sought.

  “Cuando uno quiere a una y esta unad w no lo quiere, es lo mismo como si un calvo en calle encuentra un peine.”

  It was nonsense, a farce. Something about unrequited love being as ridiculous as a bald man with a comb. No matter, he hadn’t suspected these men were Villistas anyhow, nor the rivaling Huertistas. The actions of Villa and Huerta only mattered to him when they spilled across the border, which after three years of revolution was happening more often.

  These were most likely simple bandits, cattle rustlers, but he hadn’t followed them across the border for a good night kiss. Now that he thought of it, it seemed unlikely he’d take the men into custody without bloodshed. For a second he regretted not jumping them before they reached town.

  He realized the singing had stopped and instinctively reached for one of his Colt .45 Flatheads. He turned to confront a crunch coming from behind him, but for the first time in his eleven years of service with the Texas Rangers, he was too slow. The business end of a shovel came down swiftly across his brow, his skull compacting with the force of the blow. Pain shot through his right arm causing him to drop his .45.

  Strange, but he thought first about the condition of his hat, rather than his head. He listed and would have fallen, but another attacker shoved him hard against the adobe wall. He smacked the back of his head against the mud brick, bracing himself and wondering where his hat had gone. His vision rolled left and right as if he pitched on a boat.

  “Un Rinche solitario. Usted debe haber permanecido el hogar, el diablo tejano.”

  McCutchen steeled himself against what was coming. Bloodshed was a certainty now, most likely his own. “Wherever I’m standing is my home, you dirty Mexican bastard.”

  With that a fist came shooting out of the shadows, connecting with his jaw. Briefly he thanked God for the support of the adobe wall. Stay on your feet, he thought. He reached under his duster with his left hand to draw his second Colt Flathead. Now or never. Before he had a clear idea of what he was aiming at, the shovel came sweeping back into view. He forced off a round early as the shovel smashed into his hand. Then he forgot about God altogether.

  “¡Dammit, el tiro híbrido yo!”

  A din of angry voices rattled in his head like bees in a tin can before a fury of blows broke against him. Desperately he tried to whistle, to call, anything, but his jaw had swollen shut. He covered his face the best he could. Finally someone pulled him from the wall and threw him to the ground, where a boot to his temple ended the nightmare.

  ~~~

  Two gun shots brought a sudden end to the violence.

  “La prisa, el Villistas está viniendo. ¡De nuevo a la hacienda! ¡Viva Huerta!”

  Men scurried down the darkened alley echoing the refrain, “¡Viva Huerta!” But the man who gave the orders paused at McCutchen’s body, which looked dead enough. He holstered his gun before stooping to pick up a Colt .45, the second one buried under the ranger’s body.

  “¡Rápidamente!” He followed the others leaving a stillness behind.

  A trickle of filthy water and waste ran down the center of the alley mixing with McCutchen’s blood. A black cat leapt from a stack of crates, chasing cockroaches past where he lie face down in the dirt. An hour later a slumped, old lady exited from the cantina carrying a table cloth full of rags slung over her shoulder like a sack, her stature so diminutive the bundle settled in behind her knees. When she turned, there in her path lie the rinche.

  “Ay, dios mio,” the lady whispered as sh
e bent down to check for a pulse. Her wrinkled face, round eyes peering from deep furrowed caves, was dark and ruddy like blood and chocolate. She straightened, then scuttled away muttering to herself, her sack still over her shoulder.

  Thirty minutes later she returned with two goats dragging a litter. Grunting she rolled his upper body into the makeshift basket of rope and clicked her tongue. The goats obediently tugged the limp body of the Ranger, cowboy hat now resting on his chest, to her house on the edge of town where they pushed through the heavy fabric hanging over her doorway. After a final glance over her shoulder the old woman followed them in. Moments later the goats reemerged into the night to scavenge next door for scraps of garbage.

  Slits of greasy light poured into the street from around the heavy curtain. Inside, the bent lady wrung a rag into a basin of water and dabbed crusted dirt and blood from the Ranger’s face while humming to herself. Unconscious, he rested upright in the basket of the litter. In the flickering light created by her oil lamp the old woman crossed herself in the Catholic manner while growing more rhythmic in her tune.

  She lifted McCutchen’s eyelids, but his eyes had rolled back into his head. She bent close to his face to block the wavering light. His eyes and the corner of his mouth twitched. She pulled down on his chin to open his airway listening intently as his breath came in raspy, labored draws punctuated with irregular shudders. Finally she massaged his face and neck and felt again for his pulse.

  Instead of being slow as it should, it increased in tempo, and his muscles tensed. Nimbly she jumped onto the bed and rummaged on a high shelf tucked under the thatched roof. On finding a small bowl of crushed leaves she returned to McCutchen’s side. Transferring flame from the lamp to the leaves, she breathed it briefly to life before allowing the fire to turn to smoke.

  She placed the Ranger’s hat on his forehead draping a wet rag over its brim to cover his entire face and chest. She sat close to him, holding the bowl, allowing the smoke to rise alongside his neck up into the tent she had created. At first the ranger snorted and coughed, but as she hummed to him and kept the smoke rising steadily with her breath his quaking muscles relaxed.

  “Ah, marihuana sagrada.” Sacred marijuana.

  ~~~

  McCutchen groaned. He felt he'd awoken in the back of a dark, pulsing cave. Was this hell? He wrestled with his senses until he heard a soft chittering, like quail hiding in brush, but the sounds were incoherent.

  He focused on smells, but quickly wished he hadn’t, manure and smoke the only two odors he could distinguish. What the hell was going on? He tried to open his eyes. At first they refused, sewn together, until gradually a thick crusorea thickt cracked and broke.

  For several blinks he saw nothing but a flickering blur. Finally the scales fell away, and he recognized his surroundings as the inside of a chink house. Plaster had fallen in several areas, revealing the wooden structure packed with gravel and mud. It wasn’t a jacal or adobe, common housing for poor Tejanos and Mexicans. It was the traditional housing for Indians.

  The realization caused him to panic. He seized and reached for his Colts, but they were gone. Pieces of memory came back to him in random order. He remembered hearing the chorus to La Cucaracha, discovering the trail of two horse thieves at the edge of a thicket, and finally the dark shape of a shovel cracking him in the skull. He remembered the scrape but had no way of knowing a full 24 hours had passed.

  The chittering sounds returned. He moved to rise, but his arms were tangled, or tied down. He swore, his eye and mouth beginning to twitch. His headache pulsed faster with his increasing heart rate.

  “Usted no debe maldecir tanto, cursing no good por tu health.”

  He flinched as an old woman, bearing no signs of fear or menace on her ancient face, pushed through a curtain that served as a front door. He flashed his eyes around the room, but nothing jumped out at him. Nothing seemed to indicate any sort of danger. His arms had only been laced through the ropes of a rudimentary litter, which, upon closer inspection appeared to be the source of the manure smell that infused him.

  “Pardon my French,” he said as he freed himself and sat up.

  “Français?” The lady looked puzzled.

  “No, no. Never you mind. English will be fine. Now if you don’t mind me asking, where the hell am I? And what happened?”

  “En mi casa. Los bandidos le dejaron para los muertos, pero dios sonrió en usted. ¿Entienda?” The old lady paused to let him catch up.

  “Bandits. Yeah, I understand.” He slowly looked himself over. Everything appeared to be intact. He was cut, bruised and bloodied, but not so bad off, considering. His left hand had swollen stiff, along with most of his face. Two thoughts occurred to him. “My hat? My guns?” She nodded her head, but stood there silently. He tried again, “Mi pistolas? Ah, sombrero?”

  “Si.” She pointed with her lips to his right side.

  He looked down. His hat, his grandfather’s Stetson, rested beside him. Crushed in the front and dirty, it was no worse off than him. He popped his neck, reached down and took the hat to straighten it. As he did so, a cockroach scurried into the shadows.

  “Mi pistolas?” The woman smiled and nodded in the affirmative. He was about to try again when he caught a whiff of something strange coming from his hat. “What’s that smell?”

  “Marihuana.”

  He narrowed his eyes at the old lady and waited for her to continue.

  ~~~

  “Marihuana para sus asimientos y su asma. Leght su asm ayudó a curar. Marihuana, good medicine.”

  McCutchen bolted upright, pain shooting along his spine. “You pumped me full of loco weed? To make me better?”

  “Si.”

  “You crazy old hag! What the hell did you do that for?” He could hear his Grandfather’s words echoing in his brain, lecturing him about the limitations of men who depend on stimulants and alcohol for courage. He’d taken a vow when he first became a ranger to never allow anything stronger than a good glass of wine to violate the sanctity of his body, wine being the only acceptable form of booze during his Scotch-Irish, Presbyterian upbringing. His father may of been a spineless, religious nut, but he made a dang good wine.

  As he started to tear into the old lady again, the muscles in his face jerked and twitched worse than before. “Not now." He put his fingers to his face to steady the twitching flesh. Nervous tics had affected him since youth and were intensified by stress. While studying the latest criminal justice methods in Austin he’d developed successful means to discipline and control his body.

  He tried to stand. "Look, woman. I need my damn guns, and I’ll get out of your hair."

  The woman clucked softly and shook her head, positioning herself to support the Ranger. Struggling to fend the old woman off and stand without her help, McCutchen flopped backward into the litter. Suddenly the old lady shushed him with a slashing gesture across her throat. He didn’t argue, because he heard it too.

  He tried to still himself, to slow his heart rate and control the muscle spasms in his face and throat. Swallowing came hard, and a humming rose in his ears. Relax, dammit. But it was no use. The old lady reached under the mattress to pull out a slick Winchester rifle, lever action, apparently fully loaded.

  “What the—“ She held a single finger to her lips.

  He heard it again, the sound of boots scuffling in the dirt outside the chink house. He tried to get the old lady’s attention, mouth to her the same question from before, "pistolas?" But the old lady stared intently at the heavy curtain hanging in her doorway. A shallow bleat from one of her goats ended in gurgling.

  "Madre santa de Maria." The old woman kissed an amulet hanging from her neck and steadied the rifle. It would’ve been comedic, if his life hadn’t depended on it — the shriveled old lady leveling a rifle longer than she was tall.

  Still trying to steady himself and regulate his breathing, McCutchen scanned the room for his pistols. He heard more movement outside. The edge of the curtain
bulged inward. This is crazy, he thought. I’m being hunted by bandits in Mexico with only a raisin and some goats to protect me, and the only thing he could find within reach to fight with was a kettle. Cast iron, he figured he could do something with it. The curtain moved again.

  A goat poked his head through the opening and bleated, blood dripping from its muzzle. A roar and flash ripped the stillness in two as the old lady pulled the trigger on the .30-30 and worked the lever action to reload.

  ~~~

  “¡Diablo en infiend blo en rno!”

  The shack danced with the impact of hot lead. McCutchen slammed onto the earthen floor, abandoning the idea of the kettle. Plaster ripped off the walls and shattered in clouds of rock and dust in the air above him. “Son of a bitch!” He noticed the old lady still standing in the middle of the room.

  “¡El Senior del cielo, derriba su fuego para quemar Huerta y a sus diablos!” She shoved the barrel of the rifle into a hole in the wall and worked the lever, burning the night air with gunpowder and lead.

  McCutchen pulled himself along the floor turning over everything looking for his Colts, while his throat continued to tighten. His right eye twitched so rapidly he could barely use it. Smoke filled the upper half of the room, and he realized the thatched roof was on fire. In another few minutes the fight would be over one way or the other.

  The woman stomped next to his right hand, and he looked up. “¡Pistola!” She pulled one of his Colt .45’s out from under her skirts, handing it to him.

  “I’ll be a son of a— !” He spun the cylinder. It was fully loaded. Outside, the gunfire lulled as the bandits waited for the flames to do their work. With nimble fingers the old lady reloaded the Winchester. She pulled a tin out from under rubble on her bed and threw it to McCutchen.