Jan sweat from the inside-out. The guy in the scrubs lifted a foot, mechanically. His arms were out reaching directly for Jan. The mouth opened, but no sound came out of it aside from a gummy squick. His teeth were coated with something dark and shiny.

The gun was steady in Jan’s grip, gleam of the barrel a straight line on the guy’s chest. The wind moaned.

“Shoot straight,” Rick swore under his breath.

The shot snapped through the air, sharp. Definitely a hit, but someone forgot to tell Scrub guy that. He reeled back for a second, absorbing the hit, but unfazed. Whatever he was on, it was serious like gravity was.

Copper taste in his mouth, Jan shot again, and once more. There was blood, but not a lot, underneath the dirty blue cotton. Scrub guy didn’t make a sound. Not a breath.

“Get down, Jan!” Rick yelled.

The target wasn’t that close, but Rick didn’t want to take any more chances. This was gonna be a ratfuck as it was. No need to add friendly fire to his file. He stepped aside to lose the profile shot, planted his feet and drew back.

Three shots. Heart’s on the other side, so aim left. At least one of them should have hit straight on.

The cop’s eyes flicked up, away from the body on the concrete of the service station driveway. “Who the hell is in charge here?” he yelled. He stared back down at the wound, a crusted tear in the neck of some luckless desert nobody. There were a too many of them, drawn by the magnetic pull of Vegas, but somehow never having the strength to get all the way there. They got stuck in towns like this. Too many. Too much. Too much blood, veins emptied into an uneven blob that was already taut and shiny in the heat of early summer.

A pair of ghostlike faces lingered in the window of the AM/PM, between faded ads for chili-dogs and nachos. They watched the body. They’d watched as the DPS cruiser had pulled up, but they did nothing more. Maybe they were the ones who put the call in, maybe they were just there for beer.

Rick pulled himself away, thinking too much that the wound was about the size of a bite, but not an animal bite. He stood up and took a few steps back towards the cruiser. Hard sunlight of midday pounded on the concrete, bleaching the already colorless landscape into unreality. This wasn’t what happened out here. You got chewers who stabbed each other with screwdrivers or flash-fried themselves trying to steal copper out of power lines. Random and uncreative stupidity, that you got. But this was something else entirely.

“Anything else?” he asked of his partner.