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When the cow reared back, his head was missing from the ears up over, revealing the rest of his brain beneath.

  As he fell back, blood fountaining out, the cows fought over who was going to be the first to sample the brains.

  Miguel watched them eat, seeming pleased that they were sampling the flesh as he had, then he went over to Lopez and began eating his still-warm flesh.

  Gonzalez had watched all of this through wide eyes.

  Miguel had taken a couple of dozen bullets and didn’t seem fazed.

  He had quickly despatched all of Lopez’s men.

  In a way Gonzalez was glad, as he had taken care of one problem for him, but had thrown up a much worse one.

  He called Eddie. ‘You gotta get here now.’

  6

  Eddie’s car came screeching round the corner in a haze of burnt rubber.

  He flung the door shut and ran in.

  ‘What the hell’s going on?’

  Gonzalez was shaking with the after-effects of adrenaline.

  ‘Are you hurt?’ Eddie said.

  Gonzalez shook his head.

  ‘Where’s Lopez?’

  ‘M-Miguel got him,’ Gonzalez said.

  And the penny dropped for Eddie.

  ‘Shit,’ he hissed, racing inside.

  Gonzalez didn’t want to go back in, but he didn’t want to leave his son alone with whatever depravity was going on in the ranch.

  Eddie’s eyes grew wide when he saw the scene.

  The bodies were slumped in pools of blood, pieces of brain and bone scattered everywhere.

  Lopez was already pretty much eaten, Miguel chowing down greedily. Blood was smeared around his snout.

  He grunted and looked round as he sensed their presence.

  Gonzalez gulped again. It was hard to avoid the feeling that Miguel wanted him.

  ‘What the hell do we do?’ Eddie said.

  Something snapped in Gonzalez, the dam of his fear was suddenly shored up.

  And he began to think in a cold, calculated way, as though he was helping Eddie out of this situation instead of vice versa.

  ‘We let them eat the bodies,’ Gonzalez said, his eyes lighting up with excitement. ‘Then we stick those goddamned beasts through the wood pulper to rid every trace of them from this farm.’

  Eddie’s jaw hung open. ‘Why?’

  ‘The feds are gonna be round here asap when they hear Lopez has gone missing. We need this place clean.’

  Eddie gulped. ‘What about Miguel?’

  Gonzalez nodded. ‘You know what we have to do. We’ll wait till he’s had his fill. He’ll be sleepy and slow. That’s when we hit him.’

  Eddie nodded.

  They rounded up the gear they needed; the hose, the captive bolt gun, the wood pulper and the slurry barrels.

  They watched Miguel feast. It took him a distressingly short time to consume the gangsters’ bodies.

  He seemed to sense they were still there, but he had eaten the best part of three people, so he was sleepy. His belly was bloated.

  He lay down, looking over at them.

  His eyes were still that horrendous blood red colour.

  They saw murder in them.

  ‘How we gonna do this then?’ Eddie said.

  Gonzalez glanced over at the beast. ‘He’s docile now, but he’ll still put up one hell of a fight. We need to get in there from behind him. Get as close as we can before he notices us. Then we put him down before he hurts anyone else.’

  Eddie nodded.

  ‘Let’s do this then,’ Eddie said, taking a deep breath.

  Gonzalez’s heart was knocking out of his chest as he stepped into the enclosure. He had a funny feeling that he wasn’t going to be stepping out again.

  Miguel seemed to be in a daze – a meat coma, Gonzalez and his wife usually referred to it as – and was staring idly at the floor, his eyes half-lidded.

  Some of the cows were sleeping, but those on the other side of the enclosure were still glancing around.

  As they stepped closer, the heads of the cows that were awake snapped round to look at them and they began to make a horrendous noise.

  They began to get agitated, charging around, colliding with each other and the walls of their pens.

  They’re trying to alert him, Gonzalez thought with dread.

  The huge beast stirred slightly, making Gonzalez and Eddie take a couple of big steps back.

  But he didn’t wake.

  Gonzalez breathed a sigh of relief.

  He moved in closer, Eddie a step behind him.

  The cows continued their lowing, trying to alert Miguel to their presence.

  They got to within six feet of him without him moving a muscle.

  But then his eyes flicked open and he let out a low, menacing growl.

  7

  Gonzalez thought of fleeing, but knew that this would be signing his own death warrant.

  So instead, he fought every impulse that told him to run, screaming, without looking back, and he hurled himself onto Miguel’s vast head.

  Eddie ran in too.

  Though they were both strong men, they were totally out of their depth.

  Gonzalez put the bolt gun to the beast’s head, but he threw his head to the side, throwing the weapon off.

  Eddie lashed out with his knife, just missing Miguel’s eye.

  The blade skidded across the bull’s snout, scoring a shallow wound.

  The smell of blood seemed to further incense the beast.

  Gonzalez dived on the bull’s back, clamped his knees to the sides of the creature’s neck, clinging on for dear life.

  Miguel threw himself up, doing his utmost to throw Gonzalez off.

  But Gonzalez held on.

  His legs were already blazing from the exertion, but he knew he could not let go.

  He thrust the weapon to the beast’s head.

  Eddie darted under Miguel’s head, trying to sink Lopez’s samurai sword into its throat.

  It sensed his intention and lashed out, knocking him to the side.

  Eddie’s cry terrified Gonzalez and he knew he had to act.

  He squeezed ever harder with his knees.

  His muscles blazed.

  He aimed the bolt gun, knowing he only had one chance. He had the barrel on top of the beast’s brain pan. He took a second to make sure his aim was true and pulled the trigger.

  The bolt shot into the bull’s skull with a titanic spray of gore.

  Gonzalez’s torso was drenched in it.

  The bull’s death throes hurled him from its back.

  He landed in a crumpled heap.

  Even in its last moments, Miguel was determined to take them out.

  Miguel charged.

  They scattered, knowing that one of them at least should survive.

  Finally the beast fell to its belly, letting out a low moan that took Gonzalez back to the days of it being a young creature.

  The beast had long been a part of his life and he was sad to see it go, in spite of what it had become.

  A few tears fell from his eyes as it breathed its last and its head settled into a vast puddle of gore.

  ‘Shh, it’s ok. It’s ok,’ he said, stroking the top of Miguel’s head as he had done when he was distressed as a calf.

  They approached the enclosure of the cows that were contaminated, trying to quiet them before they woke the others.

  Gonzalez was thankful that he’d only dipped his toe in the water of this experimental growth hormone, as it made the job much easier. They only had a dozen cows to put down, instead of a couple of hundred. He’d kept the animals separate too to avoid any chance of contamination.

  You were obviously wary of this, so why the hell did you go through with it? he thought, shaking his head.

  They put down the other beasts without incident.

  Their system was smooth; Eddie opened the gate just enough to let one animal through.

  José helped with this, but was on standby in case one of the co
ws bolted.

  Gonzalez stepped in with the bolt gun and put the beast out of its misery.

  The hard part was going to be getting them into the wood pulper.

  They tried lifting one of the beasts, but it was a ton weight. There was no way they could have lifted it without hurting themselves.

  Gonzalez brought the tractor round.

  They carefully lined up the barrels in front of the wood pulper.

  Gonzalez turned the machine on.

  It made a hell of a racket, but they were out in the boondocks here. Such noises were normal as part of ranch life, so they hoped they wouldn’t draw too much attention to themselves.

  He lined the shovel of the tractor up with Miguel’s bloodied corpse.

  He lifted it.

  Even the heavy duty hydraulic arm of the tractor struggled beneath the weight of the immense beast, but he managed to hurl it into the wood chipper.

  The resulting blizzard of gore and bone shards was nothing short of spectacular.

  They were both covered in it, fine droplets blowing back on the wind.

  The next cow came in.

  Another flying torrent of gore.

  Another cow.

  Another spray of gore.

  Gonzalez would periodically check the barrels.

  When they were full, he pushed the lids onto them.

  Eddie hammered them down tighter, further covering himself in gore when it sprayed out from the edges.

  It would arguably have made less mess submerging themselves in the barrels.

  Finally, it was done.

  The contaminated cows were all pulverised into liquid form; just barrels full of bloody slop.

  ‘What the hell do we do with these?’ Eddie said.

  ‘Throw them in the fucking river. No one will find them there.’

  Eddie nodded.

  They were at the West Pier, the same spot Lopez had advised them to dump Sadie’s body. Gonzalez loved the sweet irony in the fact that Lopez himself was now being disposed of here; albeit in the belly of Miguel’s pulverised corpse.

  ‘How the hell we gonna get away with that?’

  ‘The guys round here are on Lopez’s payroll. They see anything go in the river here, they know not to say anything. Now, let’s get these fucking barrels in the water.’

  They managed to get the barrels of bloody cow sludge out of the truck using ropes to pull them and roll them.

  They’d forced Rivera to help or else they’d tell about the consequences of his illegal growth hormones. ‘You made this mess, you can help fucking clean it up,’ Gonzalez hissed, waving the samurai sword around wildly.

  Between the four of them, they managed to roll the barrels out of the car.

  There was a long pier that led out into the water. The tide was fierce, the waters deep, a fine combination to make just about any problem disappear without a trace.

  The barrels stood, rusted, dark and stinking, on the end of the pier.

  A dried crust of gore sat round the outer edge of them.

  ‘This is the grossest fucking thing I’ve ever been a part of,’ Rivera said.

  ‘Just think yourself lucky you aren’t joining them,’ Gonzalez said, eyeing him, furious. ‘Now let’s get this over with before someone sees us.’

  There was a drop of maybe six feet from the edge of the pier.

  The three men shoved the first barrel with all their worth.

  Just when they thought it wasn’t going to budge, it suddenly tipped.

  Eddie nearly followed it, but Gonzalez grabbed him by the collar and hauled him back just in time.

  The barrel plunged through the darkness, hitting the water hard enough to wet the men even six feet up.

  Gonzalez began to despair when the barrel began to bob up and down in the water, but then it was pulled under by the strong currents.

  He breathed a sigh of relief.

  ‘Thank fuck for that,’ he said.

  The second one went in a little easier now they had their technique down.

  It too sunk within a minute.

  The third one followed in the same way.

  ‘This is a fucking piece of cake,’ Rivera said, seemingly jinxing them.

  The rest plummeted no problem too.

  The final barrel plunged hard, tipping the wrong way up.

  It seemed to hit the water harder than the others, and there was a horrendous metallic thud.

  They realised that it had landed on top of one of the other barrels.

  In horror, Gonzalez saw that the barrel’s lid had come off in the collision.

  The tide was awash with blood.

  There seemed to be much more of it than there had been in the barrel.

  It seemed to be everywhere.

  ‘It’ll be fine, Dad,’ Eddie said, noting Gonzalez’s horrified expression.

  Slowly, the tides diluted the red until there was none left.

  Only then did Gonzalez allow himself a sigh of relief.

  They drove back in silence, apart from Rivera’s dumbass remarks;

  ‘Really feeling the burn off shoving those barrels.’

  ‘My pecs will thank me for that in the morning. Hashtag gains.’

  ‘Might see if Jeannie fancies letting me in the back door again tonight.’

  ‘Say, you guys fancy a beer when we get back?’

  Gonzalez eyeballed him until he took the hint – much longer than it should have taken, he thought – and shut up.

  They dropped Rivera at his place.

  ‘We should do this again,’ Rivera said, but none of the others said a word to him.

  Gonzalez floored the accelerator.

  ‘Thank you for your help tonight,’ Gonzalez said to Eddie.

  ‘You’re welcome. I’d do anything to help you, you should know that.’

  ‘You’re a good son.’ Gonzalez hugged him in close. ‘I love you.’

  They shared a few beers.

  ‘This is nice to see,’ Cassandra smiled. ‘What have you guys been up to? A bit of male bonding?’

  ‘Something like that,’ Gonzalez said with a wry smile. ‘Anyway, we’d best get to bed. We’ve got to clean the place up a bit in the morning.’

  Eddie nodded. ‘I’ll see you then.’

  The following morning, they burnt their clothes, hosed down the entire ranch and waited for someone to come looking for Lopez.

  The visit never came.

  Part 2: Hardcore Prawn

  8

  Three months later

  Ben ‘Bulldozer’ Mendoza was sunning himself on the beach. The warmth was something he’d missed in his last place, but he was pleased to have spent the last few years in California.

  He looked around, taking a moment to admire a truly perfect blonde in a tiny black bikini.

  He glanced away just as she began to look over.

  Might have to move here for real, he thought with a grin.

  His skin was already tanned, but he could feel it crisping up nicely.

  He pulled a beer from the icebox beside him and twisted the cap off. The bottle was cold and sent trails of icy water running down his wrist, carving a path through the sun cream.

  He took a long pull, savouring the taste.

  After another glance around, he pulled his phone from the pocket of his shorts.

  He popped in the earbuds and started the music.

  The sounds of the beach; laughter, raised voices, the rush of the tide hitting the sands, the thud of tanned fists colliding with a volleyball every now and then, all disappeared as if flicked off by a switch.

  He took another pull on his beer, then formed a hole for it in the sand beside him.

  He put his hands behind his head and laid back.

  Mendoza was still partially aware of what was going on around him.

  As a cop he knew he needed to maintain his situational awareness.

  That was of the utmost importance.

  Never knew when a mugger was gonna call.

&nb
sp; Still, he wasn’t entirely on the beach.

  There in body but not in spirit.

  In a kind of trance.

  Rob Halford was cheerfully singing about breaking the law – ‘Not on my fucking watch, bub,’ Mendoza always used to chuckle – when there was a change in the beach’s vibe.

  A cacophony of screams rang out, even cutting through the loud music in his ears.

  He threw the earbuds out and sat up fast, lifting his sunglasses up onto his forehead in order to see the scene better.

  A crowd of screaming tourists was gathering by the water’s edge.

  ‘Shark! There’s a fucking shark!’ the drunken frat boy to his right was shouting, loud enough for even the deaf to hear.

  Mendoza saw the stream of people heading towards the water, cell phones held aloft to record the scene.

  ‘Fucking idiots,’ he muttered. We used to run away from danger, now we run towards it, hoping it’ll make us go viral.

  He stood, approached the situation.

  He was conspicuous in that he was the only one there not holding a cell phone.

  ‘There’s a shark right there!’ someone shouted, terror in their voice.

  The tides moved in a little.

  Mendoza struggled to see what was happening, but then the waves came in a little further and he saw the tip of a shark’s fin.

  The crowd screamed but held their ground, hoping to capture the perfect viral video.

  It was only when the tides sent the creature racing in that they backed off screaming.

  The creature was indeed a shark, but not all of it; a severed head ending in a ragged, bloody stump was washed up on the beach, near the crowd. A thick trail of blood lay behind it in the water.

  The crowd continued to snowball in size.

  More cell phones joining them.

  There were gasps and screams, but still everyone was getting closer to capture the moment.

  Instagram idiots.

  Facebook fucks.

  Mendoza fumed.

  The smartphone craze was one that was beneath him.

  He was too old to indulge in the horseshit. He had one, but only because he had to, for his line of work.

  If it wasn’t for that he’d never have even had a cell phone.

  He much preferred to fly under the radar, remain uncontactable. Less fucking hassle that way.