Free November Mourns by Tom Piccirilli Page B

there soon. But not right at that second. He scanned beyond the cons slopping mashed potatoes, beef patties, and string beans onto the metal plates and saw the insanely abnormal arms of Little Pepe swinging toward him. If he had a shiv, Shad couldn’t see it within those enormous fists.
    Not much time to do anything except bark a cuss, reach over the counter, grab up the tray of burgers, and hurl it into Pepito’s face.
    It was enough to get everyone yelling and laughing and for the bulls to run over. Shad’s luck held as he faded into the crowd and the bulls had no one to grab except Pepito, who was spouting off biblical passages in Spanish.
    They didn’t throw Little Pepe into solitary because he hadn’t really been fighting, but two days later the leader of the tribe had him killed for disobeying orders.
    So now Shad was coming out of Griff’s Suds’n’Pump holding a handful of change and a bottle of engine cleaner when the dead breath whispered and got his hackles up.
    He took two more steps across the parking lot as Zeke Hester’s belligerent presence descended upon him.
    Shad paused, listening to the sudden rush of air swirling behind him. He had compromised his hands, which was a dumb but understandable mistake. You tried to be on guard as much as possible, but you just couldn’t do it all the time. Immediately he dropped what he was carrying and spun to his right as Zeke’s fist plowed forward like a steam engine about to derail.
    Zeke Hester stood six-four, weighed in at about 280, his body solidified from working on road crews since dropping out of school when he was fifteen. He was river bottom swamp scum who never bothered with pulling the legs off spiders or torturing small animals—he went straight to the weakest kids in grade school and started drawing blood. He moved up quickly to intimidating teachers, beating the drunks sleeping at the edge of the trailer park, and troubling girls at the roller rink in Waynescross.
    Jake had been right when he’d said that prison had agreed with Shad. A crazy thing, but there it was. On the inside he’d lost his youthful clumsiness and earned a lissome agility. Working out in the gym every afternoon, honing himself, losing a beer gut and packing on an extra twenty pounds of crafted muscle. Two years with nothing to do but exercise your mind and body and try to keep from losing control. Sometimes it worked in your favor. It felt good to have real speed even when the highway patrol wasn’t chasing you back and forth across the river.
    Zeke did an ungainly dance, trying to keep himself from falling as he overshot and wheeled in a half circle. Shad planted his foot on Zeke’s ass, kicked out, and sent him sprawling onto the pavement.
    Here we go.
    When Zeke looked up his face was filled with murderous frenzy. His cracked front tooth had worn away to a black nub. His gums were already rotted too, and he’d be down to eating nothing but succotash and applesauce by the time he was thirty. The busted cheekbone lay unnaturally flat and angled a little too far back toward his ear.
    What Shad told M’am was true. He could kill this man with a very small amount of guilt. The realization disturbed him a bit, but not all that much, considering.
    “I want to talk to you,” Shad said.
    Zeke hadn’t shaved much or had a decent haircut since he was sixteen. His feral, savage appearance played well with the role he was going for. You had to cultivate your persona, your disguise.
    If he was ever shorn down you’d see a pink face full of cutie-pie chubsie-ubsieness, all the weakness inside him scrawled into his soft, muddy face. When they were kids, the girls used to like him because he looked sort of like a lost puppy, until they got a look at his eyes.
    Zeke scrambled on the ground for something to throw, but all he could find was the engine cleaner. He clambered to his feet and hurled the bottle at Shad like it was a brick. It flew over Shad’s left shoulder and