The cows are screaming, but the air is back to calm, back to cold. I hear Valez shouting. I sink into the tall grass. The dry blades prick at my knees. I’m thumbing through the pictures on the camera, hot breaths coming so fast they’re fogging the screen. Valez has gone quiet. The phone in my pocket starts to buzz—but I can hardly feel it. I’m numb.

Dale always said we might get lucky. He said, in the meantime, we’d make our own luck. Make our monsters until we caught one.

Dale, you always said you’d take care of me—and you have. You have.

My prices have just tripled.

Dead Man’s Curve

DEAD MAN’S CURVE

The first thing we did was dig up the dead coyote. In the deep freeze of winter, the only earth that moves is earth that’s been moved before. So when you need to move a pile of dirt, it’s going to be one on top of a coyote. They’re the only road kill that gets buried. Anything smaller dries up or gets scavenged in a day, and anything bigger—you take it home and eat off it awhile.

And they’re always jumping in front of cars.

The thing hadn’t been buried deep, but it would have to do. It stuck to the frozen hole and came away in pieces, brittle bones punching through parchment skin and fur dust. We crumbled it into a cluster of sagebrush and set it all on fire. Gave it a quick salute. Just in case.

We rolled the limp driver into the second-hand hole. Had to fold him up a bit—knees up by his ears—but he just fit, and we covered him with crumbling, frozen slag, more rock than dirt.

“Well,” Ed said, rubbing at the spot where his prosthetic chafed his thigh, “’bout all we can do ’bout that.”

“Did you check his cards?” I tossed the spade into the back of our squad patrol truck, burying it in a layer of empty cans.

Ed quit rubbing his leg and pulled a ratty Tyvek wallet from his pocket. He cupped a hand over the radio mic on his shoulder, rubbed his thumb over the switch to make sure it was off.

“Benjamin Macey. 34. Iowa. No picture of kids or nothing. No one will miss him.”

“How far you think we are from the last one?” I asked.

“Not five miles,” he said.

I spat in the dust. It froze to the stones. I dragged the heavy-gauge chain from behind the truck cab and hitched it to the back. The metal stung my hands.

The car was beaten in on the driver’s side, broken and twisted. Dry pieces of prairie grass stuck in every seam.

“Taking this one to the usual place?” Ed asked.

“Same as the others.”