Free Indian Country Noir (Akashic Noir) by Sarah Cortez;Liz Martinez

the strength it
took for those left to keep living another day.
    The monster, it watched me like it couldn't decide if it
was time for me to die yet. So I did the only thing there was
left to do.
    Sat down. Not so hard, carrying that weight. Waved a
hand at the space in front of me. All I needed was a pipe to
share a smoke with a monster.
    "Why her?" I asked, like I had something to trade of equal
value.
    The monster grumbled and clicked. Tree trunks snapped
somewhere inside it. I think it was laughing. "Medicine."
    "Yeah, everybody wants medicine."
    "Yes."

    "She doesn't know me, doesn't even like me. You've got a
long wait coming."
    "No."
    The thing became its stubborn resolve, standing by the
rusting iron gate to a shadowy set of stairs, arms by its sides,
blond hair and coal-fire eyes fading, until it was just a part of
the background-another ruined, incomplete part of the city's
foundation. Trains rumbled in the distance. Traffic sounds
from the street above filtered through air vents. I watched a
water bug dart in spurts around me.
    Then she was there. Standing next to me. Out of nowhere.
    "Get out of here!" I yelled, and then I cursed, because if
the monster had been sleeping, he was awake now.
    Of course, it had always been awake.
    It rolled great shoulders and shifted forward like a
landslide, its porcelain mask of skin breaking, shattering the
illusion of humanity. The brooding muscle man became a
mountain of broken stone, an avalanche of pebbles that might
have been the calcified souls of the dead, on which floated a
thatch of pale wood that, if alive, would have been a badge
of life in a cold and forbidding world, but since the wood was
bare and brittle, could only be a sign of death.
    And I waited for her to fold its out of there, or produce a
magic gun, or call on some other kind of moving monstrosity
to do her dirty work, but no, she just stood by my side and the
monster took her in both its great paws and lifted her high
overhead until she screamed.
    Her voice cut into me, clean and fast, a saber slice through
the heart, and my blood ran ghost cold and my muscles stiffened hard as roadside dead and my brain sizzled like a ball of
dough in burning oil.
    And I saw, as clearly as the city spread out under me from the high steel, that Medicine Spirit Woman wasn't there to
save me. No. She'd come to see if I could save her.

    And I wanted to. With that need, I was alive, more than
I'd ever been. Everyone I'd ever known and left behind-from
my quiet and steady foster parents to my scarred, bony mom
to that asshole whose ass I kicked in junior high and even that
Taliban bastard whose head I opened up real wide with four
from the 9mm when he came at me through a window-was
alive, inside, welcoming me back to my own life with arms
spread.
    Where are you, Grandpa?
    No answer. No words of wisdom. Again. But I thought I
understood. Fighting was for the living, and that's what I had
to do for her. No gun, but I was a warrior. Maybe I should have
brought a knife.
    Jump in. Just do it. That's what warriors do.
    I tackled the thing low and from the side, wrapping arms
around hips in a solid tackle. Figured Medicine could take the
fall. But I grabbed a crumbling pile of debris and landed flat on
my face. It stomped on my back once before I rolled and kicked,
ducked a sweeping arm that managed to clip my knee.
    The good news when I got myself standing was that Medicine was free. But she wasn't running away. No, she was standing there, watching. Waiting for me to be all I could be.
    The monster's first punch sent my flying into solid rock
wall. The second broke a couple of ribs. The third spun me
into a heap that fell through rotten boards and left me hanging ass high halfway down a pit, a horn screaming in my ears
and an earthquake rocking my head. That one brought me
back to the war.
    The thing dragged me out and whipped me into tile work
hard enough to chip teeth and