Blood poured from Jennings’s throat. His weight lifted, just slightly.

Lola scooted herself backward, reached for the gun, almost knocked it further away with her knuckles. Her fingers wrapped around the handle and she swung around, pressed the barrel into the ragged hole of his neck.

The force of the shots tossed his body back, but his lower half still had her pinned. He bent backward and hung there and Lola dug her heels and palms into the concrete, pulling and straining until it felt like her eyes would burst from the pressure.

She freed herself from the bulk of her former partner, rolled onto her stomach and wept. Every jerking sob sent shivers of pain through her body and she felt herself getting cold, weaker.

She got to her knees, wobbled in place for a moment, then pushed herself to her feet and looked toward the restaurant.

What used to be the windowed front was a mess of broken glass and blood. The jiggling horde had disappeared into the darkness of the Paradise Buffet.

Lola squeezed the handle of her pistol and spat a wad of thick blood to the black ground. She began stalking across the parking lot, ready to end the night, end everything.

Come and get some, sweetheart.

She stopped, turned, growled. Her feet stomped across the blacktop until she reached Jennings’s—Daddy’s—bent, blubbery corpse. The swollen head of his cock poked through the teeth of his zipper.

“Fuck you.”

Lola pointed her gun and emptied it.

POURING IN

The restaurant filled with the moans and grunts of the pigs it fed. Juan scrambled across the kitchen floor, his hands shaking and bloody. He went for the cooler door, banged on it.

“Manuel! We have to go. Now!” He slapped his palms against the stainless steel, kicked at it. His calf burned and blood trickled into his shoe, oozing between his toes. He pulled on the handle, and the door shifted, but wouldn’t open. Something in his chest popped and Juan yelped and clutched it. Every breath was painful. His eye instantly dried out from the cold air that seeped out of the cooler as he peered into it through the crack in the door.

Manuel sat on the floor, breaking open another box of meat. He pulled out a whole pork tenderloin and dangled it over his face like a dead snake. Pink juice dripped down and Manuel opened his mouth to take it in.

“Open the door.” Juan didn’t know if being inside of the cooler would be any better than staying outside with the others, but he would take his chances. If his cousin didn’t hurry, Juan would have to leave him there. Manuel was his best friend, had been since they were children, but he had his family to worry about. He couldn’t die, they needed him.

Manuel turned and smiled at Juan. “So good, cousin. But it’s mine.” He let half of the tenderloin slide down his throat, looked like a sword swallower.