He swings. Cracks Mookie in the elbow. Pain glows bright, radiating down to the wrist, all the way to the shoulder. And as Mookie is reeling back and waving his arm like he’s trying to shake loose a bunch of ants, Burney takes another step back and pops the motorcycle helmet off the back shelf. Mookie bellows, an avalanche roar, then charges the dead man just as Burnsy drops the helmet over his own head.

The two of them go crashing through the wall and back out into the town of Daisypusher.

Skelly’s not sure what to do.

The two men – one living, one dead, one a human bulldozer, the other a microwaved chimpanzee – kick king hell out of one another on the stone thoroughfare of Daisypusher.

Mookie’s big, powerful, and slow. Burnsy doesn’t have much power, but he’s quick – and, being dead, he doesn’t have much to lose. He fights like a rabid weasel.

The fight is a constant give-and-take, push-and-pull.

The big man’s boot on the dead man’s chest. The tire iron against the side of Mookie’s skull. Burned face smashed into broken plywood. Dead man on Mookie’s back like a rodeo man on the back of a Brahma bull, clinging to life for five, six, seven – oh, sorry, not eight seconds; dead man, meet big hand; dead man, meet hard stone.

They take the fight all around the octagon. Pummeling and spinning, hitting and kicking. Out back of the house is something bulky under a tarp, smaller than a car but bigger than a generator. Skelly doesn’t have time to think about it because there they go again – stumbling and punching around the other side and back into what passes for the street.

She wonders if she should stop it. When her girls have a problem, she doesn’t let them fight out in the open. For them, the battle is either on skates or doesn’t happen at all.

Just the same, the fight sometimes needs to happen.

The girls. She hopes they’re OK. Way they scattered after the attack on the warehouse – they know where to go. They know where to hide. She told them what was up: Boss is sick, a whole rain of shit could come down on everybody’s heads, but it means opportunity, too. Back the right bitch – in this case, Persephone – and they might find their standing in this city to be greatly improved by the time the dust settles.