Down the Road: The Fall of Austin by Bowie Ibarra

off the jay. She exhaled slowly, the
smoke gently drifting out of her mouth and nose.
    Charlie reached for the joint, still stuck
between her fingers. As he picked it up, he paid no mind to how
cold her hand was. His own body was becoming pretty cold as well,
despite the peaceful warmth the happy tobbaccy was bringing
to his dying soul.
    Hypnotized by the world around them, Mike and
Derek’s minds did not register the snarling growl and crunch of
tissue and tendon until Charlie screeched.
    “Oh, shit!” Mike yelled, turning around and
catching sight of the carnage behind the cage’s wire mesh. He
swerved, sideswiping an adjacent vehicle before regaining control.
Also turning to look, Derek watched the girl with no name biting
into Charlie’s neck. She had grabbed Charlie by the head in a way
that one of her thumbs gouged an eye while the other hand
fish-hooked his mouth, held wide open in a cry of death. Swerving
and distracted by the murder-in-progress in the back seat of his
vehicle, speeding down the highway in excess of sixty miles per
hour, Mike tried to keep control.
    Charlie’s screams died down as the girl moved
to his belly and took a bite. A thick chunk of flesh was removed by
her mouth. And as she gnawed on the flesh and blood, her hands tore
open at the exposed wound, digging into his stomach cavity and
exposing his fluid-soaked innards.
    “Jesus H. Christ! Mike, pull over!”
    “I’m trying!” Mike yelled. He was in the
center lane and traffic was slowing to a crawl.
    “Put the lights on,” Derek said.
    Mike flipped the switch, and the blue and red
lights began to dance on the passing cars like ghosts tripping on
Ecstasy under the dark night.
    “Oh, Jesus,” Derek said, who probably
shouldn’t have looked into the back seat again, but did anyway. The
girl was yanking out cords of intestine and various organs and
their subsequent wastes and fluids. Blood splashed on all the
windows, and even dripped from the cage. Had Mike and Derek paid
attention, they might have noticed little bits of red on them,
making small spots on their midnight blue shirts. A steady haze of
pot smoke still gave Mike hope it was all just a dream, and that he
would wake up in his bed for another day at work.
    As the lights touched the cars around the
cruiser, the vehicles began to make room for it to pass. Some even
pulled over in submission, thinking they were being ticketed. The
cruiser edged to the side of the road. Once the vehicle reached a
complete stop and Mike put the car in park, the cops jumped out
like frightened kids running from a carnival funhouse.
    “What do we do?!” Mike exclaimed. “We can’t
open the back door!”
    “We have to shoot them.”
    Mike flinched. The thought hadn’t crossed his
mind. He had only ever drawn his weapon but a few times, and had
never had cause to neutralize a perp. Even the tazer was a weapon
he had only used twice before until the incident at Riverside
Apartments yesterday.
    “No, we can’t,” he pleaded.
    “Mike, something bad is going on and it’s
spreading. HQ isn’t answering. And this is the second time this has
happened to us today. I don’t want a third.”
    “Me neither.”
    Derek did not hesitate. He opened the door.
Charlie’s body tumbled backward, stretching his already open
stomach cavity wide, like the mouth of a giant beast, or the silly
stomachs with painted faces singing Soul Man that seemed to
always find their way onto America’s Funniest Home Videos. Entrails
hung from the cavity like a tongue, spilling all over the pavement.
The illusion of a face disappeared as the girl fell on the body as
well, head first into the gore of Charlie’s exposed chest cavity.
Still partially in the car, she looked like a cat stuck in a cereal
box, trying to wiggle out of his bloody torso.
    Mike ran to the front of the cruiser and
threw up on the front tire as Derek opened fire on Charlie’s chest
where the girl’s head was stuck. He unloaded his pistol on