Free Sloughing Off the Rot by Lance Carbuncle

sun, dehydration, and fatigue combined to make a persuasive argument that the men should lay themselves out on the road and recover from their flight. When it was clear that the plague of munkle flies had concluded, John threw himself down on the red bricks. His chest heaved with a thirst for oxygen. Every inch of exposed skin swelled and burned from the countless and repeated munkle fly bites. The brilliance from the noonday sun scorched his afflicted flesh and blinded his eyes. But John did not care. His body cried out against any further efforts, being drained of strength by chicha and bezoars from the night prior. And the mad dash away from the thousands of biting attackers exacerbated his weakness. Even if he had the will to move, he had not the strength. So John lay out in the sun, exposed and weak and without a care about what happened to him. The sun sizzled him like a piece of bacon on the frying pan surface of El Camino de la Muerte. He lay there, welcoming oblivion, should he be so blessed. Alf the Sacred Burro lay on the ground beside him, heaving raspy breaths and coughing up puddles of mucus filled with dead flies that he had inhaled. Two-Dogs-Fucking and Santiago took positions far apart and collapsed from weakness. And Crazy Talk sat, not far from John, alert and still energetic, scanning the horizon.
    Late in the afternoon, John awoke to the hissing of turkey vultures fighting over the corpses of several dead lunkheads. Crazy Talk sat down beside him and handed John a skin filled with water. John hydrated himself, half emptying the skin without a thought. Crazy Talk nodded toward the lunkie corpses and said, “Word is, man-meat sleeps in open coffins, and it’s happening more often.” Crazy Talk thumped a fist on his leg and flashed a brown-toothed smile. He held up a thick stick with a rock strung to the end of it and swung it around. “I make boom boom,” he said as he slammed the rock-end of his weapon into the ground.
    “You killed those men?” asked John.
    “I make boom boom,” said Crazy Talk, slamming the weapon into the ground again.
    “Thank you. I wouldn’t have woken up even if they were eating me alive. I just didn’t have it in me. You protected me.”
    “Now, don’t go getting all misty-eyed and wet in you panties.” Santiago approached and cat-hissed at Crazy Talk. “Cochise there wasn’t protecting you. That crazy talking albina Injun is just plain screwy. We’re lucky he had lunkies to take it out on or he likely woulda bashed our heads in for game.”
    Crazy Talk continued to look at John and said, “Word is, Unibrow speak with tongue twisted into pretzel. He think he big man. He think he more bacon than the pan can handle. Word is, Unibrow is nothing.”
    Santiago recoiled as if he were smacked in the face with a bag of dicks. His expressions ticked through his full range of emotions and settled on outrage. “Nothing. You saying I ain’t nothing, Geronimo? Well listen up, I’m everything. I do what I need to do to survive. I live in the desert. I live in the mountains. My mind is big. Dig?”
    Tightening his grip on the rock-stick, Crazy Talk stood. He took several steps backward and watched Santiago flap his arms about and pull at his own hair. Crazy Talk said nothing and waited to see if he needed to defend himself.
    Santiago calmed and laughed his nervous titter. He did not approach Crazy Talk. He did not carry on with his rant. He merely squatted beside John and said, “This guy’s gotta go before he kills me. He ain’t helping us here, Johnny.”
    “Well,” said John, “he saved our skins while the rest of us were dead to the world. He stood guard. He stopped those lunkies from getting at us, didn’t he? You’d be a goner, too. So tell me, how is it that you are more important to me than Crazy Talk?”
    “I feed you, don’t I? Without me, you wouldn’t have all those tasty dirt-rats to eat,” said Santiago. “And I cured that nasty infection you had on