2

Around seven I pulled into the station. I could see the Ranger and the Sheriff were already waiting. I brought my .38 Smith and Wesson and my .22 mag Winchester Chuckster. Drake was already waiting with his long-term girlfriend Jordan. She was there in full army gear, borrowed from her brother. Drake had his .44 H&K and she had a .20 gauge Browning shotgun.

“Pumped and ready! Let’s fuck those fuckers!” she said, then added a “Yehaaa!” She always had a way with words. The Sheriff and Ranger sort of laughed and then we loaded up into the Sheriff’s Suburban.

As we drove along, the tension was thicker than a redneck’s pride. The Sheriff decided to try to break it.

“Ranger Gibson’s been real quiet on this whole thing.” Sheriff Thompson said, looking back at us, winking.

“Because none of the good folk of Midland-Odessa want to believe me. And there’s no way I would ever talk to the Army boys down in Stockton…” He said sourly. “Look, I believed you when you sent me those pictures. Don’t say I’ve never been on your side.” He looked out the window and continued: “Look, whatever we find, we’re gonna kill. From everything you’ve told me and what I’ve seen, you can’t seem to reason with ‘em, you can’t talk to ‘em, and they’re just gonna try to kill you. Right?”

“Exactamundo.” I said. “They’re horrible and wonderful, beautiful and deadly.”

Sheriff Thompson laughed. “Somebody’s a poet.”

“You seen ‘em?!” Jordan asked the Ranger, almost jumping into the front seat.

“Woah girl.” Drake said, pulling her back. “She’s just mad cause one of em tried to do the nasty to me.”

“Hell yeah,” Jordan said. “Nobody touchin’ my man, except me,” she said with a pouty lip, leaning back.

“Yeah we took one in to the jail last week,” the Sheriff said. “I called our Ranger friend out here to give it a good look-see.” The Sheriff laughed. “One look at him, and her clothes were off and she started grinding on the cell bars.” He laughed again.

“What did you do with her?” Jeff asked.

“Well, we tried to draw blood for a sample, but the thing got really weird. She started clawing her whole arm open where we had put in the needle.” He turned to look at us for effect. “It got real bad after that, we couldn’t sedate her… And we had to put her down. There was nothing else to do.”

He didn’t elaborate. We didn’t ask. Real Texas hospitality.

The desert sun was starting to creep higher into the horizon, it was twenty five minutes from Pecos to Mentone and another thirty five to Angeles, up by the New Mexico border… We were heading west, with the sun behind us, out to the Garcia shrimp farm. It might seem weird, growing shrimp in the desert, but the key issue was land… And land was cheap around here. You wouldn’t find the Garcia farm on any map, however. Out here, when you bought the land, you never got any of the mineral or water rights. Oh, sure, everyone drilled for oil, but that was only after you had the mineral rights. It was a separate purchase. The proof that everyone drilled for oil was all around you. Hundreds of thousands of pump-jacks littered the horizon. It was all Pecos had come to be known for – Black Texas Tea.

So the Garcia farm ran on stolen water, even though they had drilled the well themselves, they couldn’t legally pump from it. That didn’t stop them from filling up a thousand and fifty gallons per unit, and making a killing on profit. The Sheriff knew, but since the farm spent their money in Reeves County, he didn’t have any problems with it. Reeves was one of those counties out in the panhandle of Texas, where the lines were drawn by a drunk man. We headed west down one of a thousand dirt roads, this one leading to our destination.