The Savage Dead by Joe McKinney Page A

hand.
    “Enough!”
    Pilar kept the weapon trained on the man’s forehead.
    He glanced back toward the warehouse door, where Ramon Medina was standing with several of his personal bodyguards. The man turned back to Pilar, and she could sense his uncertainty, his damaged machismo. What would Ramon Medina think of him now, beaten by a girl they’d had outnumbered and outgunned? That’s what he’s wondering, Pilar thought.
    He looked at the two men behind her. Both were still writhing and coughing, unable to get up.
    If he had any self-respect at all he’d try to slap me, Pilar thought.
    She smiled at him, inviting him to make the next move.
    He didn’t take the bait. Instead, he muttered, “You fucking bitch.”
    Pilar had been dealing with jerks like this little man her entire life. As a child, she’d run from his sort, men who leered at her with dirty faces and bad teeth, their intentions and desires plain on their faces. For years, she’d lived in terror of what such men would do to her when they caught her. But that was a long time ago, and she wasn’t a little girl anymore.
    She wasn’t running anymore.
    And she didn’t take insults from anyone anymore.
    Pilar closed on him before he could react and slammed the butt of her gun down on the bridge of his nose, shattering it with a sickening crunch. The man wilted below her, but Pilar wasn’t about to let him go. She was no whore. She was nobody’s bitch. The nerve of the man. Who the hell did he think he was?
    A red curtain of rage dropped over her.
    The blood rushed in her ears. She let the rage fill her.
    She knelt over the man and brought the gun down on his face, slinging blood everywhere, smashing teeth and sending them skittering across the pavement like spilled coins.
    The man’s eyes lost focus. His hands dropped to the pavement. But Pilar didn’t stop hitting him. The rage was too strong in her, her need to crush this son of a bitch too powerful.
    She slammed the gun down on his mouth. “Bastard !”
    And again.
    “How do you like that?”
    Again.
    “Tell me I’m a bitch now.”
    Again and again and again.
    “I said, enough! ”
    Ramon’s words cut through the rage that had momentarily blinded her. He was the only one that could do that to her, pull her back from the edge.
    She looked down at the man she’d just attacked. He wasn’t moving anymore.
    Pilar’s chest was heaving, the gun was still raised above her head, blood dripping down her arm. Every nerve felt raw from too much adrenaline.
    “You’re done there,” Ramon said.
    Pilar lowered the weapon, and was about to get up when the man groaned through his busted teeth.
    She slammed the gun down one more time.
    Then she looked up at Ramon Medina. “Now I’m done,” she said.
    Ramon sighed. He was wearing a dark blue tailored suit, a white silk shirt with a gray tie, and crocodile skin boots. When she’d first met him all those years ago he’d looked just like every other street thug trying to carve out a section of Ciudad Juarez for his own. But the years, and more lucky breaks than any ten men deserved had polished him. Just like they’d done her. These days, Ramon Medina looked more like the wealthy playboys of the Mexico City club scene than the leader of the largest cartel in Northern Mexico, and despite the rage still simmering within her, Pilar remembered again why this man had held her in such sway for so many years.
    She stood up, blood dripping from her face, her clothes, her hands.
    “I see you’re trimming off some of the deadweight from my staff,” he said.
    She smiled. “Isn’t that what you pay me for?”
    “I pay you for all kinds of things, Pilar.” He put his hands in his pants pockets and studied her. “How was your trip?”
    She shrugged.
    “Would you like to get cleaned up before we talk?”
    “I thought you said it was urgent.”
    He nodded. “Always straight to the heart of the matter, eh?”
    “You should know better than anyone.”
    His