Blood & Tacos #1 Read Online Free PDF Page A

down in the fetal position (as close as he could get to a full stretch in this welded-together coop) and thought back to how it had all began.
    He remembered being sick and tired of the city: Vietnam protestors, music gone to shit, the vestiges of Flower Power clinging more tendril than blossom to the culture at large. Concrete so hot it seemed to sweat. Being rousted from shady spots by cops who had more booze on their breath than he did, traces of whores' smeared pink lipstick on their crotches, bad intentions in their baton swings.
    He remembered a brawl with The Silver Dragons, an Oriental street gang from Chinatown who picked on the homeless both for fun and to practice their roundhouses. The ensuing fight, ten-on-one with the one handily winning, was broken up by a big side of beef of a cop who saw the chance to vent some aggression on a stone drunk albino man just trying to get by.
    The back-alley brawl was already won, silver satin-jacketed youths sprawled everywhere, their mean streaks punched out of them, at least for now. The cop saw The Wino standing at alley's end, blood dripping from his skinned knuckles, a butterfly knife stuck clean through a segment of thigh. A filthy circus freak, grubby as a pit fighter, pale as the Angel of Death. The cop went straight for him, nightstick swinging like a rotor blade. Little did he know that The Silver Dragons weren't the only cats in town who knew some Kung Fu. The Wino had learned much in his years on the road.
    The Albino Wino blocked the first attempt at a braining, grabbing the cop's wrist, snapping it, and peppering his body with palm strikes and chops. The cop staggered back, snarled and scooped up the fallen nightstick with his good hand. The Wino grabbed it as it swung towards him. He snatched it from the cop's grasp at the very same moment he pushed the big cop back with a front kick.
    The wino snapped the nightstick over his knee in a hopeful display of don't-mess-with-this-super-whitey and said, "Stop."
    The cop shouted, "Screw you, pinky!" and pulled his gun. The Wino hurled a sharp shard of nightstick – he aimed for the gun barrel, but his aim was off, brain fuzzy from some strikes taken in the brawl with the Dragons.
    The shard of nightstick buried itself in the cop's jugular. The cop cried out and dropped the gun. He pulled the stake-like piece of wood from his throat. Arterial spray graffitied the alley walls and he fell dead.
    The Albino Wino knew he had to split. When the establishment and the anti-establishment were as bad as each other, all a man had was himself, his American know-how, his fists, and his will to survive. The world was going to hell. It was no place for one as distinctively snowy-haired and as alien-eyed as he.
    The wino pulled the knife from his thigh. Just a flesh wound. He bound it tight with two tied-together bandanas and looked around for Chalky.
    Chalky sat on a trashcan, the bloodied-up corpse of an alley rat in his mouth. As usual, when The Wino found action, Chalky had to have some, too. The Wino scooped up the albino cat, who purred at his touch and closed his eyes, one sky blue, the other emerald green, contentedly as The Wino wrapped him up in his bindle.
    The Wino pulled a bottle of something cheap from his mid-size knapsack and took a healthy pull. He came up for air then went in again and drained the bottle.
    It was time to hit the road.

    It was whimpering that woke him. At first he thought it was Bronte Fox, but
even in the half-light he could tell that the beautiful albiness was not the
source.
    It was the man in the third cage.
    Bronte crawled to the cage wall that separated her from the Wino. "You passed out. It's Johnny. They took another piece."
    In truth, all the Wino wanted to do was stare at Bronte, luminous in the moonlight that filtered through the cracks and gaps in the barn. She was unearthly and elven in her beauty, full-lipped and armed with eyes a hypnotising streak of light blue. Her hair seemed spun