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“I could go in with you,” Caleb offered. He looked around at the others. “No offense to you guys, but the rest of you wouldn’t be able to pass for a Harvester.”
“No offense taken, mate,” Nigel said.
“But if there are any of them in there who were at the fight last night, they will definitely recognize you,” Kopano said. “There were a bunch of you.”
Caleb frowned. “I guess you’re right.”
“It’ll be easy,” Isabela said. “I’ll sneak in there, find out if they’ve got Taylor or the little bitch who shot me and if not I’ll ask a few questions. Find out what they know. You all watch from the woods. If I get in trouble, I’ll send a signal.”
“What kind of signal?” Ran asked.
Isabela shrugged. “I’ll have to improvise. So, just keep an eye out.”
“If you’re gone too long, we’ll come in looking for you,” Caleb said.
Isabela stroked her blubbery man-belly in a way she hoped was disturbing. “Give me some time, cowboy. This is a slow-moving body I’m in.”
Caleb chuckled and looked away.
“Ugh,” Nigel added.
“We should try not to kill any of them,” Kopano said suddenly. “These people should be brought to justice for what they’ve done . . .”
Ran and Nigel exchanged a look. Caleb said nothing, just stared out the window.
“Okay?” Kopano pressed.
“With any luck,” Isabela said, “they will never know we’re here.”
The five of them left the Escalade behind and hiked downhill through the trees. They moved cautiously and Nigel used his Legacy to muffle the sounds of their approach. As the lights from Apache Jack’s appeared, they realized their caution had been pointless. The Harvesters didn’t have any guards posted. Most of them were too busy getting drunk. The Garde huddled in the shadowed cover of the trees and watched them.
“They must think this is a safe place for them,” Ran observed.
“Well, the madmen don’t lack for artillery,” Nigel said, pointing out a number of armed Harvesters milling around on the bar’s back porch.
“These types of guys always carry guns with them,” Caleb said. “It’s their thing.”
“What are they doing with that?” Kopano asked.
He pointed out the wooden structure that Isabela had noticed from the road. It was a twenty-foot-high snake in a ready-to-strike S shape, the thing made out of thin slats of clapboard and wicker. The snake sat atop a mound of sand. At its base—right at the snake’s belly—there was a small door secured with a padlock. A few Harvesters milled around the snake, stuffing rags in between the wooden ribs. The wind picked up and carried the smell of gasoline to the Garde.
“That, my friends, is a good old-fashioned effigy,” Nigel said. “The nutters are probably gonna light it up and dance around it naked before commencing the orgy.” He glanced at Isabela. “Have fun with that.”
Her biker’s face contorted in a very uncharacteristic moue of disgust. “Nasty.”
“That is a cell,” Ran observed, pointing at the locked opening. “They are going to put someone in there.”
“Our kind are the snakes in their stupid bloody metaphor,” Nigel said.
“Taylor,” Kopano whispered. “They would . . . they would burn her?”
“Still want to go easy on them, mate?” Nigel asked.
Kopano said nothing. The five of them remained still for a few more moments. Finally, Isabela stood up from her crouch, dramatically knuckling the broad back of her biker body.
“I’m going in,” she announced, her voice now gruff enough to match her costume.
“Be careful,” Caleb said.
Isabela strutted out of the woods. She walked the way she had seen some of the older men move around the Rio beaches; like her balls were too big for her pants and constantly getting in the way. Belly thrust forward, knees pointed out, shoulders back. When the first Harvester noticed her, she made a show of zipping up her fly as if she’d just returned from pissing in the woods.
Before leaving her friends, Isabela took the pamphlet that Nigel had swiped from one of the defeated Harvesters. If anyone questioned her slovenly alter ego, she planned to use that as her invitation. None of the Harvesters hanging around the back of Apache Jack’s paid her any attention. Most of them were too busy putting the finishing touches on the effigy. A pair of scrawny college-age boys with matching sets of cauliflower ears nodded at her as she climbed the porch’s rickety staircase.
“You ready for tonight, old-timer?” one of them asked.
“Hell yeah,” Isabela replied.
“Can’t wait until they light that bitch up,” said the other, raising his beer bottle in Isabela’s direction, then throwing back the contents.
Isabela grunted a response—that’s how these types communicated—and made her way to the bar’s back door. A woman in her fifties sat on a stool next to the entrance, smoking a cigarette. She wore ill-fitting leather, her neck swimming in beads and charms.
“Haven’t seen you before,” the woman said as she tapped some ash off her cigarette.
“First time,” Isabela said. She tried to move past the woman, but she wedged her foot against the screen door. Was this old hag flirting?
“Picked an interesting night to join the movement, honey.”
Isabela paused. She sensed the two drunks behind her were now watching her exchange with the woman. She took the pamphlet out of her pocket and handed it over.
“Jimbo asked me to ride up here,” she said in her scratchy voice. “Where’s he at?”
Isabela detected something wrong immediately. An uneasy silence fell across the back patio. The older woman’s face fell and she traded looks with the two men standing behind Isabela.
After a moment, the woman spoke. “You ain’t heard?”
“Heard what?”
“Reverend Jimbo’s dead,” she said. “Killed by those abominations.”
Oops, thought Isabela and stifled a smirk. Instead, she clenched her fists.
“When did that happen?” she growled. “How?”
“Last night,” the woman replied. “Probably while you was making your way here.” She shook her head. “We’re going to pay them back, though. Promise you that.”
Isabela nodded. “Who’s in charge now?”
The woman jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “You want to talk to Darryl. Big guy. Skull tattoo.”
Isabela grunted her thanks and was finally allo
wed to step inside. The smell of gasoline struck her immediately. The back hallway of Apache Jack’s was cluttered with canisters of the stuff. Up ahead, she heard heavy metal blasting and men and women shouting at each other. She lumbered in the direction of the barroom.
She passed by a pair of bathrooms, the stink rolling out of them unacceptable. Isabela kept the disgust from registering on her face; she wasn’t alone. Up ahead, two men with shotguns stood guard in front of a metal door. They were both thickly built, scarred up, with the Harvester symbol branded into their forearms. They weren’t day-players like some of these people; they were real killers.
Isabela made note of them. Unusual to have a couple of badass dudes guarding the bar’s freezer. She nodded as she walked by them. They nodded back.
She emerged into the bar proper. The screaming and thrashing music was worse than the garbage Nigel listened to. The room was crowded, nearly every seat filled. Mostly men, but a few women—an assortment of bikers and cowboy types, all of them with that same stupid tattoo. They guzzled beer and shouted at each other about conspiracy theories that Isabela couldn’t make sense of—chem trails, sovereign citizens, Loric anal probes, blah blah blah.
A huge photo of a greasy old man sat on the bar surrounded by wilted flowers and shell casings. The Harvesters kept coming over to dribble beer or liquor in front of it. She assumed that was the deceased reverend.
No one paid Isabela any undue attention. She bellied up to the bar and surveyed the crowd, looking for a skull tattoo. Finally, she noticed the bartender, the sleeves ripped off his flannel shirt, had a skull with a dagger plunged through the eyehole inked on his bicep. She waved him over.
“Everything’s on the house,” he said, “on account of the funeral.”
“Get me a beer,” she said.
The bartender went and came back with a frothy mug. Isabela resisted the urge to wrinkle her nose at the glass, which had smudges all over the rim.
“You Darryl?” she asked.
The bartender squinted at her. “Nah,” he replied when Isabela simply stared back at him. He waved towards the guarded freezer. “If you want him, he’s in with the creature.”
