Conchi Santiago and Mutation Matthias rode north, hoping for cooler days after a week in Texas. They’d caught wind of a few Mutations up in Oklahoma who could stand to taste lead.
Conchi didn’t sleep so much as stare, because she didn’t trust the gabacho Matthias as far as she could throw him; it infuriated her to watch him sleep, because he always seemed to be giggling. His unconscious motions made her think he dreamed a lot about sex, killing, and dancing like a white fool.
After a week spent almost completely wide awake, Conchi was irritable as hell and rethinking her decision to team up with this idiot. But if she tried to leave him, who knew what he would do?
They came to Waco, where Conchi considered that they might actually have enough money to sleep in a motel. Then they caught sight of posters displayed in various places, advertising a meeting of an Anti-Mutation Militia. They exchanged interested glances.
“I wanna go check it out,” Matthias told her, and he was off.
“Matt--” she realized it would be too late to stop him, and she was far too tired regardless. The meeting wasn’t until the following night anyway, so the stupid gabacho could make a fool of himself while she got a room and a bed.
It wasn’t until the following day that Matthias found her, by walking into the same bar as her. She had a feeling he wasn’t looking for her when he walked in, but when he did, he made a beeline for her.
“You ditched me!” he accused her, sounding genuinely hurt.
“You’re the stupid white fool who rode off without me.”
At a loss, he said, “I hadda sleep in a barn.”
“If you had something inside your skull, you’d do what I did and get a room. Don’t tell me you spent all your money back in Houston.”
He lowered his head. “Maybe if you’d stuck with me to say ‘rent a room’ I wouldn’ta had to sleep in a barn. Anyway, you gotta come see this guy! He’s got all kinda fancy doodads n’ guns, an’ he’s real serious!”
Conchi drained her beer glass and paid her tab, taking her time just to spite him. “How many people came to see him last night?”
Matthias was crestfallen. “Wasn’t nobody there but me.”
“That’s because he wants people to show up tonight, you donkey. So let’s wait and see how many more people want to be a part of this.”
People were looking at them and smiling, to Matthias’ chagrin. Theu must have believed Conchi and him were a couple having a tiff. And as with any couple, a tough wife usually got her way.
Matthias, sullen now, was like a dog on a leash. He didn’t like it, but he followed her around town, either deliberately being very silent or barking that he wanted to kill something, or go inside the general store, or just find some good opium and pass the day in peace.
“Fine!” Conchi exploded. “You know what? Go leave me alone and do what you want! Just find me before the meeting so we can go, okay? And don’t do nothing stupid.”
He grinned like a child and took off.
Between him and the oppressive sun, Conchi’s head ached. She went looking for some water, and happened upon a little stream outside of town. With complete and utter privacy for the first time in weeks, she took the time to bathe herself and savor the moment. The night would be all business.
Matthias was glassy-eyed when she found him, chatting up—or trying to chat up—a lady outside a tavern.
“Nah, look, I ain’t askin’ for business, I’m askin’ for pleasure. Yours and mine. None o’ this money talk. Aw, come on...!”
“Come on is right,” she said, grabbing him by the sleeve and tugging until he followed her. They got to the place around the appointed time, not sure since neither or them had a pocketwatch, and uncertainly entered the dimly-lit barn.
This barn had no horses and no hay, but in the light of several strategically-placed lanterns, they could see that it was in fact a vast warehouse. Guns of all varieties hung on the walls, and on the tables in front of them were samples of the ammunition they took, ordered from smallest to largest. The back wall had blades: sabers, cutlasses, even pocket knives, each arranged by measurement.
Their host, a black-haired man with spectacles, hunched over a table at the center of the room, leaning on it as he watched them enter. He had a look of fever to him.
“Two people, two is a good number,” he said. “Even, but uneven because she is...hm, I can do it by sight, yes, she is four feet and nine, and he is five feet and nine. But it’s normal...it’s normal. Their proportions are fine, hm, yes.”
Conchi was immediately uneasy in this man’s presence. She glanced at Matthias out of the corner of her eye, but he had the same goofy grin as always. He chuckled once, throatily, a “hyuk”, and marvelled. “I don’t know how he does that!”
“Numbers, dear friend, numbers are the most important thing in the world. They dictate our bodily structure, the times we sleep and rise, the number of volumes in a set...hm, numbers determine numbers, that requires a bit more thought...” He abruptly shook off his reverie. “Welcome!”
Conchi jumped.
“There’s no need to be afraid,” he assured her, suddenly calm again, but this time intensely focused. “You’re evenly formed.”
“That’s what all the boys say,” she quipped flatly, nervously.
“Nevermind. So you’re here for the meeting, that’s good, though I didn’t think a woman would want a part of this, hm, well, good. Even. Good. Two is an even better number than one. I thought it would be one, but it’s two. With me, three. Three makes a triangle. Triangles are good shapes, that’s why they wore tricorner hats. So this is our militia.”
“Come again?” Conchi was alone with these two.
“You’re one hour overdue. Or,” he checked his pocketwatch. “One hour, three minutes and twenty-six...twenty-s—well, nobody else will probably show up now.”
“That’s too bad. Maybe next time--”
“Come on, Conch, ya ol’ squirt!” Matthias interrupted. “The man ains to have a meetin’, and like he said, two’s better than one!”
“That’s correct,” their host agreed. “Three is more than enough to corner and kill any Mutation. They have to be eliminated, you see. It doesn’t add up, the equation, not with then in it. There’s no symmetry to their design, they don’t make sense!” He pounded the table. “I have all the equipment we’ll need right here, and a target, if you’re interested in joining me.”
“What, right now?” Matthias beamed.
“Right now. She’s like a spider, but with five legs.” He shook his head. “Wrong. It...it’s uneven.” At that point he seemed to go catatonic. Conchi and Matthias exchanged glances. When nothing happened for a while, Matthias said, “Ain’t he a piece!” with admiration.
They armed themselves with pistols and rifles, filling the former with exploding rounds, and crossed town to the last known location of the famed spider woman. Along the way, Matthias shot a chicken; they stopped and waited for him to stop laughing as bits of flesh, blood and feathers sprayed everywhere. Conchi considered doing the same thing to his head, but why start all over again trying to put this group together?
They came upon the place at last, another barn—this one otherwise abandoned—and Conchi told the others to stop. She grabbed Matthias’ bicep hard and said, “If you want to keep your cojones, you’ll listen. You get too excited going into a dark barn and who knows what could happen to you?”
“We should have light,” Stephen, the new man, offered. “Yes, light, and go three different ways. Three ways for three people, so...so I’ll go straight to the back, bisecting our angle, and you both go different ways, left or right.”
“Fine,” Conchi nodded. She didn’t like taking orders, but they were easier to take from Stephen than from Matthias. “Whenever you want to.”
The huge barn door swung slowly open, and Stephen’s powerful gas lantern penetrated the darkness to a range almost covering the walls, though it also cast eerie shadows which one could hide in, and created an illusion of movement where none existed. There were bales of hay in the barn, but there wasn’t much else. Mice scampered for the darkest corners.
Conchi crept in right behind Matthias, and found that she was actually apprehensive. This Mutation had the advantage. She knew the layout of the barn, she knew they were coming, and she could probably already see them.
Conchi took the left and Matthias went right, listening for once in his life. When she had crossed halfway to the wall, she spotted a mouse carcass on the floor, and realized that it had been half-eaten. The spider woman’s diet wasn’t a fancy one.
A swift-moving shadow caught her attention and her head snapped up in time to see Stephen get tackled by a mangy-looking girl who dropped from the rafters. His lantern hit the ground and shattered, and the ensuing blaze cut his form off from her as he grappled with his assailant. They heard her shriek as Conchi and Matthias moved to help. Conchi moved to flank her, going over to the wall and following it, but Matthias charged straight toward the fire. He hit a tripwire, and a bale of hay dropped down from above, pinning him.
“God damn it! Hey Conch, howzabout a hand here?”
She ignored him, pistol at the ready, and now began to eye the floor ahead of her for more traps.
The blaze expanded wildly, thanks to hay scattered across the dingy floor. Conchi would be cut off from the entrance in a matter of seconds, but she and Stephen would cross that bridge when they came to it.
From where she stood, she saw a deep gash in the spider’s side, and one of Stephen’s arms was pinned by one of her legs while he tried to fend off two of her arms with the one that remained free. The hand that was pinned held a bowie knife.
The spider looked up, bared her teeth at Conchi. With regard for Stephen’s safety, she didn’t waste a second. She brought up her pistol and squeezed off a shot, aiming high and praying for luck. The ensuing blast removed the Mutation’s head, as bits of skull and brains sprayed all over the floor and back wall. Stephen threw off the carcass, then blew off one of its legs as Conchi ran over to him.
“We have to find a way out!” she screamed over the roaring fire. He bleakly scanned the area and seemed unable to think of anything. Impatient as ever, Conchi turned around and shot at the wall. She blew a hole just big enough to escape through, then showed Stephen and had him follow her.
“Where is Matthias?”
“He got stuck under a bale. Crazy fool’s gonna die.”
“We’ll need him,” Stephen said, “or three will become two...”
The roof of the barn collapsed with a crushing finality, and then they heard, “Man alive, I coulda brung a couple steaks to this here shindig!” Matthias stood beside them, staring at the blaze with uncanny reverence. Conchi slapped him.
“You stupid fool! The next time you wanna kill something, make sure it’s safe! I’m not risking my neck for you, so you better be more careful!”
“Glad t’know you care, Conch.”
She exhaled deeply through her teeth and turned to Stephen. “So, do you want to come with us?”
“Come with you?” He looked like he was trying to calculate it in the air in front of his face.
“Sure. I’m gonna need you in case Matthias gets himself killed walking into a bullet. We’re crossing the country, killing things that are, uh, uneven.”
“Won’t never get even, either,” Matthias put in, for the reward of an elbow to the ribs.
“We’ll take a bunch of your stuff, load it into a wagon...”
“It wouldn’t all fit.”
“Just take one of each size. Keep it even.”
She seemed to have him figured out, even though she was still confused as hell by him. He agreed that this was the best approach, and definitely the most efficient way to go after Mutations. Efficiency was far from his watchword, however, as it took him three days to load the wagon in a way that made him comfortable.
Finally, they were off. Texas alone probably had its share of pests, big as it was, but striking out for the north, where rumors abounded...this held more promise. Before long they entered Oklahoma, and they sniffed out a new trail.
Conchi didn’t sleep so much as stare, because she didn’t trust the gabacho Matthias as far as she could throw him; it infuriated her to watch him sleep, because he always seemed to be giggling. His unconscious motions made her think he dreamed a lot about sex, killing, and dancing like a white fool.
After a week spent almost completely wide awake, Conchi was irritable as hell and rethinking her decision to team up with this idiot. But if she tried to leave him, who knew what he would do?
They came to Waco, where Conchi considered that they might actually have enough money to sleep in a motel. Then they caught sight of posters displayed in various places, advertising a meeting of an Anti-Mutation Militia. They exchanged interested glances.
“I wanna go check it out,” Matthias told her, and he was off.
“Matt--” she realized it would be too late to stop him, and she was far too tired regardless. The meeting wasn’t until the following night anyway, so the stupid gabacho could make a fool of himself while she got a room and a bed.
It wasn’t until the following day that Matthias found her, by walking into the same bar as her. She had a feeling he wasn’t looking for her when he walked in, but when he did, he made a beeline for her.
“You ditched me!” he accused her, sounding genuinely hurt.
“You’re the stupid white fool who rode off without me.”
At a loss, he said, “I hadda sleep in a barn.”
“If you had something inside your skull, you’d do what I did and get a room. Don’t tell me you spent all your money back in Houston.”
He lowered his head. “Maybe if you’d stuck with me to say ‘rent a room’ I wouldn’ta had to sleep in a barn. Anyway, you gotta come see this guy! He’s got all kinda fancy doodads n’ guns, an’ he’s real serious!”
Conchi drained her beer glass and paid her tab, taking her time just to spite him. “How many people came to see him last night?”
Matthias was crestfallen. “Wasn’t nobody there but me.”
“That’s because he wants people to show up tonight, you donkey. So let’s wait and see how many more people want to be a part of this.”
People were looking at them and smiling, to Matthias’ chagrin. Theu must have believed Conchi and him were a couple having a tiff. And as with any couple, a tough wife usually got her way.
Matthias, sullen now, was like a dog on a leash. He didn’t like it, but he followed her around town, either deliberately being very silent or barking that he wanted to kill something, or go inside the general store, or just find some good opium and pass the day in peace.
“Fine!” Conchi exploded. “You know what? Go leave me alone and do what you want! Just find me before the meeting so we can go, okay? And don’t do nothing stupid.”
He grinned like a child and took off.
Between him and the oppressive sun, Conchi’s head ached. She went looking for some water, and happened upon a little stream outside of town. With complete and utter privacy for the first time in weeks, she took the time to bathe herself and savor the moment. The night would be all business.
Matthias was glassy-eyed when she found him, chatting up—or trying to chat up—a lady outside a tavern.
“Nah, look, I ain’t askin’ for business, I’m askin’ for pleasure. Yours and mine. None o’ this money talk. Aw, come on...!”
“Come on is right,” she said, grabbing him by the sleeve and tugging until he followed her. They got to the place around the appointed time, not sure since neither or them had a pocketwatch, and uncertainly entered the dimly-lit barn.
This barn had no horses and no hay, but in the light of several strategically-placed lanterns, they could see that it was in fact a vast warehouse. Guns of all varieties hung on the walls, and on the tables in front of them were samples of the ammunition they took, ordered from smallest to largest. The back wall had blades: sabers, cutlasses, even pocket knives, each arranged by measurement.
Their host, a black-haired man with spectacles, hunched over a table at the center of the room, leaning on it as he watched them enter. He had a look of fever to him.
“Two people, two is a good number,” he said. “Even, but uneven because she is...hm, I can do it by sight, yes, she is four feet and nine, and he is five feet and nine. But it’s normal...it’s normal. Their proportions are fine, hm, yes.”
Conchi was immediately uneasy in this man’s presence. She glanced at Matthias out of the corner of her eye, but he had the same goofy grin as always. He chuckled once, throatily, a “hyuk”, and marvelled. “I don’t know how he does that!”
“Numbers, dear friend, numbers are the most important thing in the world. They dictate our bodily structure, the times we sleep and rise, the number of volumes in a set...hm, numbers determine numbers, that requires a bit more thought...” He abruptly shook off his reverie. “Welcome!”
Conchi jumped.
“There’s no need to be afraid,” he assured her, suddenly calm again, but this time intensely focused. “You’re evenly formed.”
“That’s what all the boys say,” she quipped flatly, nervously.
“Nevermind. So you’re here for the meeting, that’s good, though I didn’t think a woman would want a part of this, hm, well, good. Even. Good. Two is an even better number than one. I thought it would be one, but it’s two. With me, three. Three makes a triangle. Triangles are good shapes, that’s why they wore tricorner hats. So this is our militia.”
“Come again?” Conchi was alone with these two.
“You’re one hour overdue. Or,” he checked his pocketwatch. “One hour, three minutes and twenty-six...twenty-s—well, nobody else will probably show up now.”
“That’s too bad. Maybe next time--”
“Come on, Conch, ya ol’ squirt!” Matthias interrupted. “The man ains to have a meetin’, and like he said, two’s better than one!”
“That’s correct,” their host agreed. “Three is more than enough to corner and kill any Mutation. They have to be eliminated, you see. It doesn’t add up, the equation, not with then in it. There’s no symmetry to their design, they don’t make sense!” He pounded the table. “I have all the equipment we’ll need right here, and a target, if you’re interested in joining me.”
“What, right now?” Matthias beamed.
“Right now. She’s like a spider, but with five legs.” He shook his head. “Wrong. It...it’s uneven.” At that point he seemed to go catatonic. Conchi and Matthias exchanged glances. When nothing happened for a while, Matthias said, “Ain’t he a piece!” with admiration.
They armed themselves with pistols and rifles, filling the former with exploding rounds, and crossed town to the last known location of the famed spider woman. Along the way, Matthias shot a chicken; they stopped and waited for him to stop laughing as bits of flesh, blood and feathers sprayed everywhere. Conchi considered doing the same thing to his head, but why start all over again trying to put this group together?
They came upon the place at last, another barn—this one otherwise abandoned—and Conchi told the others to stop. She grabbed Matthias’ bicep hard and said, “If you want to keep your cojones, you’ll listen. You get too excited going into a dark barn and who knows what could happen to you?”
“We should have light,” Stephen, the new man, offered. “Yes, light, and go three different ways. Three ways for three people, so...so I’ll go straight to the back, bisecting our angle, and you both go different ways, left or right.”
“Fine,” Conchi nodded. She didn’t like taking orders, but they were easier to take from Stephen than from Matthias. “Whenever you want to.”
The huge barn door swung slowly open, and Stephen’s powerful gas lantern penetrated the darkness to a range almost covering the walls, though it also cast eerie shadows which one could hide in, and created an illusion of movement where none existed. There were bales of hay in the barn, but there wasn’t much else. Mice scampered for the darkest corners.
Conchi crept in right behind Matthias, and found that she was actually apprehensive. This Mutation had the advantage. She knew the layout of the barn, she knew they were coming, and she could probably already see them.
Conchi took the left and Matthias went right, listening for once in his life. When she had crossed halfway to the wall, she spotted a mouse carcass on the floor, and realized that it had been half-eaten. The spider woman’s diet wasn’t a fancy one.
A swift-moving shadow caught her attention and her head snapped up in time to see Stephen get tackled by a mangy-looking girl who dropped from the rafters. His lantern hit the ground and shattered, and the ensuing blaze cut his form off from her as he grappled with his assailant. They heard her shriek as Conchi and Matthias moved to help. Conchi moved to flank her, going over to the wall and following it, but Matthias charged straight toward the fire. He hit a tripwire, and a bale of hay dropped down from above, pinning him.
“God damn it! Hey Conch, howzabout a hand here?”
She ignored him, pistol at the ready, and now began to eye the floor ahead of her for more traps.
The blaze expanded wildly, thanks to hay scattered across the dingy floor. Conchi would be cut off from the entrance in a matter of seconds, but she and Stephen would cross that bridge when they came to it.
From where she stood, she saw a deep gash in the spider’s side, and one of Stephen’s arms was pinned by one of her legs while he tried to fend off two of her arms with the one that remained free. The hand that was pinned held a bowie knife.
The spider looked up, bared her teeth at Conchi. With regard for Stephen’s safety, she didn’t waste a second. She brought up her pistol and squeezed off a shot, aiming high and praying for luck. The ensuing blast removed the Mutation’s head, as bits of skull and brains sprayed all over the floor and back wall. Stephen threw off the carcass, then blew off one of its legs as Conchi ran over to him.
“We have to find a way out!” she screamed over the roaring fire. He bleakly scanned the area and seemed unable to think of anything. Impatient as ever, Conchi turned around and shot at the wall. She blew a hole just big enough to escape through, then showed Stephen and had him follow her.
“Where is Matthias?”
“He got stuck under a bale. Crazy fool’s gonna die.”
“We’ll need him,” Stephen said, “or three will become two...”
The roof of the barn collapsed with a crushing finality, and then they heard, “Man alive, I coulda brung a couple steaks to this here shindig!” Matthias stood beside them, staring at the blaze with uncanny reverence. Conchi slapped him.
“You stupid fool! The next time you wanna kill something, make sure it’s safe! I’m not risking my neck for you, so you better be more careful!”
“Glad t’know you care, Conch.”
She exhaled deeply through her teeth and turned to Stephen. “So, do you want to come with us?”
“Come with you?” He looked like he was trying to calculate it in the air in front of his face.
“Sure. I’m gonna need you in case Matthias gets himself killed walking into a bullet. We’re crossing the country, killing things that are, uh, uneven.”
“Won’t never get even, either,” Matthias put in, for the reward of an elbow to the ribs.
“We’ll take a bunch of your stuff, load it into a wagon...”
“It wouldn’t all fit.”
“Just take one of each size. Keep it even.”
She seemed to have him figured out, even though she was still confused as hell by him. He agreed that this was the best approach, and definitely the most efficient way to go after Mutations. Efficiency was far from his watchword, however, as it took him three days to load the wagon in a way that made him comfortable.
Finally, they were off. Texas alone probably had its share of pests, big as it was, but striking out for the north, where rumors abounded...this held more promise. Before long they entered Oklahoma, and they sniffed out a new trail.