Tasìa reached into her fanny pack and slipped five flashbangs into her palm.

"Cover your eyes," she yelled.

Carefully, she tossed the grenades in an arc in front of Annebél. The brawler spotted the motion and put her forearm up across the bridge of her nose.

As the ground lit up white, Tasìa stared upward and launched herself off the roof with a summersault. By the time her feet were planted back on solid ground, she had twisted around to face away from the Jeep, and she had replaced the Ruger Vaquero .357 with the Magellani .22.

Her plan appeared to be working.

The controlled chaos of the flank of lèmures moving forward split apart with the groups butting into one another.

Tasìa called out to Annebél, "Get the flaregun from your emergency kit!"

She had excellent side profiles of several of the beasts, now.

Tasìa aimed for the jugular veins curved along the side of their necks with two taps administered to each beast. Arrays of blood bursts in a dazzling spectral display as the lémures writhed on the ground before her boots.

Is that liquid vitae technically blood, she wondered.

While sidestepping to find a clearing, Tasìa brought the Vaquero back out and finished off the beasts in her immediate vicinity.

The flaregun went off, thricely. When the gently streaming arcs grounded in bright red embers, the duo got a better idea of the challenge ahead of them.

The fields in the distance were dense with the creatures, and ribboned streamers still spun new ones.

"Lord," Annebél exclaimed. "From the loins of Santa Muerte, deliver me now."

"Plow me in my culo roto," Tasìa whispered in exasperation. "Impossible."

A set of beasts rushed upon each of them. Tasìa one-shot her pursuer with a tap to the center of its forehead.

Annebél pendulum kicked the other lémur up in the air, retrieved the shotgun, and blew its guts to ribboned shards. When it landed, it hobbled away.

"At El Hoyo, I kill a couple of them every time I help my boys bush hog. We never could find their habitats."

"Do you keep a machete in the tool bin in the back," Tasìa asked.

"In spite of all my verve and sophistication, I'm still a woman of my time and place, so, of course, I do."

Annebél finished off the last of the trio of beasts that came at them in the immediate wave.

"Why're you asking? You've figured something out?"

Tasìa nodded as she crawled up the side of the Jeep to retrieve the machete. She cleared out her spoils of liquor, vinyl records, and the Enigma device to get to it.

"Yeah, I'm starting to think that the purpose of this attack is not to kill us. Whatever is behind this wants us to be depleted of our ammunition."

Annebél's brow lines were wrenched from the calculations occurring inside of her head. She nodded at the machete.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

"Physical exhaustion will overwhelm you before you've even made a dent in that pack."

Tasìa wiped her face with the front of her tank top.

"That the puppet masters behind this want to deplete our stock of ammo means they are vulnerable to our weapons. That factor may possibly be the only hope we have at the moment."

"Tasìa, if you have a plan what do you want me to do?"

"I need you to get in the driver's seat, drive very slowly in reverse while I clear a path behind us, and we'll edge our way back out of here."

Annebél agreed with a curt nod. With a hard-gripped change out, the brawler went back to her .38 carbine bush rifle to deal with the next trio of lémures. She blocked the one beast gunning for Tasìa and lined up her aim to spread fire on both creatures.

It still took three shots to dispense with them.

"Now," Annebél began, "I get why they only flank us with three of them at a time. They need to attrite our ammo. Otherwise, Roja María would take out five at a time."

Tasìa smiled when she realized Annebél had already named her shotgun.

The brawler's eyes squinted in a survey from one flare in the distance to the next one.

"There does not appear to be a reason that whatever is behind this would need to conserve its load out of lémures. It has more than it needs to throw at us if all it wanted to do was overwhelm us."

Waving both hands, Tasìa motioned her to hurry up.

She grimaced as she shot into the next trio that approached. Frustrated her insights were not gaining her a tactical advantage she could exploit, Tasìa cursed out a long string of expletives.

"Our stupid asses are going in circles like a fucking pajero trying to figure out what they are up to; there has to be a reason for this shit?"

Her father enjoyed a linear exactly a century old about a space captain who was always able to take advantage and exploit the tactical insights that he gained from any situation. Why couldn't she be more like Kirk?

In the seat, and with the ignition on, Annebél asked her, "Do you think this is going to work?"

Tasìa shrugged and chuckled as she loaded the Vaquero, once more.

"The fuck if I know. I'm more interested in what it does to adapt to a change of tactics."

"Now I think I see," Annebél's voice drifted off as she responded.

The Jeep began to back up. Tasìa shot the next trio of beasts when they rushed forward as she kept up the search for that change of tactics that she expected.

Several seconds passed before she noticed - There!

She could not make out the shape of any individual lémur but the tearing movement in the wild wheat of the field suggested the beasts that lay in wait there were now moving as a singular column.

Tasìa holstered the Vaquero, pulled the machete from the earth where she secured it rigid, and sprinted towards the rear of the vehicle.

Two lémures attempted to rush up and nip at her heels. Their sudden burst of speed was unexpected. She pushed up into a backflip, landed on the bumper behind the beast, and jumped down. With a slugger's sideswipe, she gutted the first one as it turned to face her.

It pulled back with a tightly spun bounce that gave Tasìa a clean strike to take its head.

When she caught sight of movement from her left, Tasìa grabbed her stiletto from her boot and pulled both blades with her knuckles turned upward while the blades were turned to face downward to protect her head and torso.

The lémur pulled its head back. Otherwise, it would have caught a double set of blades thrust into its throat.

She quickly discovered it was deft in its defenses.

She jumped back as it became apparent it was about to use its taloned back limbs to swipe at her feet. That maneuver prevented her from stabbing it in the back.

With the quick pullback, she avoided the impelling that would have occurred if the talon had met its mark. Nevertheless, it followed through after the attempted side swipe with a back kick that she was not able to entirely avoid.

It grazed with quite a bit of force against her left shoulder blade.

Tasìa lost her footing and fell on her back. Two more lémures rushed up on her before she was able to turn herself back around. The one on her left clamped down her forearm, and the one to her right did likewise to her right forearm.

The pit of her stomach wrenched as if the Modality was trying to force itself into action. Though with a chill that coursed abruptly through her, she felt the helplessness that she vowed to never feel again, Tasìa refused to let the Modality loose.

Instead, she watched the lémur that kicked her turn back around.

What the hell! Did they plan this?

It leaped at her legs and dove its head down with jaws curved open. Its teeth grazed the side of her shin just above her boot.

Tasìa feared she was going to lose the leg like her asshole buddy, poor Parro, did the previous evening.

If the beasts so chose, they could have drawn and quartered her right then and there. She was left wondering why they didn't.

Instead, the one beast at her legs ripped the Vaquero and its holster from the polished black leather buckles that had held them firm and hidden. It clenched the items tightly down between rows of massive teeth and took off in a mad sprint.

"My gun," she yelled. "My beautiful, beautiful gun!"