56, Chicken

“I’m gonna catch that chicken and barbecue it when this is over!”  Bullets flew everywhere.  Bits of concrete and brick went flying as bullet holes perforated the walls of the buildings in the Mexican compound.  Special agent Trent Murdock was curled up behind a retaining wall with a stolen automatic rifle held tightly to his chest.  He spoke to the open air, knowing the mic in his ear piece would transmit his voice to his friends.  “Did either of you bring barbecue sauce?”

An explosion rocked the compound as a van went up in flames.  “Lorenz brought diarrhea medication.  I think that’s about it.”  Special agent Miller was having the time of his life.  He was an eighth of a mile away from the action safely positioned behind some rocks.  He watched the carnage through his sniper scope without blinking as his heart pounded out of his chest from excitement.

Smoke bellowed from the burning van as the sliding door opened.  A half a dozen mean Texas biker gang thugs fell out with hand guns and rifles.  Bullets flew, bodies dropped, and carnage was everywhere.  Special agent Lorenz looked through her sniper rifle from her own vantage point and said, “Murdock, there’s two narcos closing in on your location.”  

Murdock could barely hear her voice in his ear piece over all of the shooting, yelling, and noise from the destruction.  “Which direction?”

Lorenz pulled her trigger twice.  Murdock heard the gunshots from her rifle in his ear piece, then heard her voice.  “Never mind, I got ’em.  That’s eleven for me, and… how many for you again?”

“You’re a fucking animal, Lorenz.”

Miller joked in their ear pieces.  “Murdock, I could’ve told you not to bet her at the cantina two days ago, and I could’ve told you to not bet her today, dummy.”

“This party is just getting started, Miller.  I’ll catch up!” Murdock said enthusiastically.

Lorenz was all business as her voice filled their ear pieces.  “Forty bucks is forty bucks, mother fucker.  Suck one, Murdock.”

Moments earlier, four vans containing mean biker gang members from Texas had crashed through the gates of a Mexican compound that housed roughly seventy five men who belonged to a narcotics gang known as Los Serpientes (The Snakes).  Agent Miller was happy as fuck because he’d always dreamed of seeing a Mexican shootout.  Today was his day.  There were bodies everywhere, and the amount of lead flying though the air at high velocities was dizzying.

Murdock was known for being indignant, but he was also a man of his word.  “The day’s not over yet, Lorenz!”  He popped up from his position and ducked back down immediately as bullets whizzed over his head.  “Shit,” he muttered.

Again he heard Lorenz fire her sniper rifle.  “Make that fourteen, Murdock.  You’ve got some catching up to do.”

While crouched down behind the concrete retaining wall, he saw the chicken again hanging out by a trash can.  It was clearly freaked out from all of the noise and activity of human conflict that was going on around it, but it instinctually pecked at the ground occasionally.  Murdock said, “Well Lorenz, I’m not holding my breath that I’ll catch up today.  Going back to that chicken, do you think that it would taste any good if it’s been running around, scared?”

“I don’t know if chickens have adrenaline like other game animals.  Hell, I don’t know shit about chickens now that I think about it.”  Agent Miller relayed some information about the fight to his girlfriend.  “Two men running towards Murdock by the brick building, eighty yards and closing.”

Lorenz snapped her high powered sniper rifle in the appropriate direction and saw them immediately in her scope.  Without pausing or breathing, her finger had pulled the trigger twice as she said, “got ’em.  Thanks honey.”

Murdock poked his head back up to try and see anything.  “Lemme guess…” he said but he couldn’t finish his sentence.

“Sixteen confirmed to your zero.  You’d better stay alive down there, mother fucker.”

“Damn, Lorenz, you think I’d let myself get killed just to get out of a bet that I’m gonna lose to simply save face?”  He joked, “I may be broke but I don’t run from my bets!”  Murdock couldn’t help but stare at the lone chicken.  “I’m serious about eating that mother fucking chicken.”

“For fucks sake, Murdock.  How’re you gonna cook it?  And how do you know that it won’t be tougher than shoe leather?”  Lorenz was still looking back and forth through her scope to clean up anyone who might make a push on Murdock’s location but the action had moved to other parts of the compound.  

“I’d slow cook that bird until the meat fell off the bone.”  Murdock could hear occasional breaks in the never ending shooting and wondered how many bad guys were left to kill.

“If it’s an old hen, you could boil that thing for eight hours and it’ll still taste like you’re eating a pair of leather gloves, bud.”  Lorenz spoke with authority in his ears.

A second explosion rocked the compound as another van went up in flames.  The shock wave smashed windows and the sounds of broken glass could be heard all over.  “Even if I marinade the thing in a good sauce for twenty four hours?”

Lorenz spoke with a stern tone.  “Even if you prayed to every god you’ve ever heard of while marinating it in the most acidic solution you can imagine, that fucking meat will be like you’re eating a sofa.  Old hens are good for two things.  Feeding the dog or fertilizing the rose bushes.”

“Well fuck me running and call me Sally,” Murdock said randomly.

“This is awesome.”  From Miller’s view point, he could see most of the action in the compound.  “The remaining shootout is happening around that brick building from you, Murdock.  I don’t see anyone in your area anymore.”

“Dammit Miller,” Murdock interrupted, “can’t you see that your girlfriend and I are having an important chat over here!”

The two other agents could hear Miller’s laughter.  “Sorry about that, I was out of line, of course,” he said sarcastically with a chuckle.  “Carry on.”

“Thank you, kind sir.  Now, where was I, Lorenz?”

“You were talking about eating an old hen, which is the equivalent of going down on your grandmother.”

The joke caught Murdock completely off guard.  “Jesus, Lorenz!”

“Dryer than a desert and tougher than chewing through a Carhart jacket.”

Miller’s voice was pure laughter, but he spoke plainly.  “This is the best day of my life.”  Miller had always wanted to witness a Mexican shootout, and today was a dream come true.  “We’ve got a handful of bad guys moving down that alley.”

Lorenz was sharp with her eyes.  “I see them.”

Murdock had given up on the shootout by now and was enjoying the ridiculous conversation about chickens.  He tried to recover but Lorenz had a wit to her that he couldn’t keep up with.  “Fine, then I’ll catch that chicken and keep it as a laying hen.  We’ll just have scrambled eggs everyday for breakfast.”

Miller and Murdock could hear Lorenz shoot a few more times.  “Got ’em all, honey,” she said to Miller in particular even though Murdock could hear too.  “Nineteen confirmed, fellas.  And Murdock, that hen has been done laying eggs for a year or two, I’d wager.”

Murdock was realizing he didn’t know shit about chickens.  “I thought they laid eggs everyday or some shit.”

“Unfucking real, Murdock.  Even the best layers only crank out four or five a week!  Then again,” Lorenz paused, “I could be wrong.  The hens that are fed corn and raised in cages might be able to lay like that, I don’t actually know.”

“How do you know so much about chickens, Lorenz?” Murdock asked indignantly.

“I was raised on a ranch, asshole.  Where do you think I learned to shoot like this?”

“I knew you were a crazy good shooter but I didn’t know you knew shit about poultry, for fucks sake.  Damn.”

A third explosion boomed through the complex as Murdock covered his ears.  The agents could hear the boom in their ear pieces before the sound wave caught up to them in real life.  It was surreal, but they knew to cover their ears.  The shock wave of this explosion was every bit as destructive as the last one.

“That was a big one,” Murdock said of the explosion.

“That’s what she said,” Lorenz joked instantly.  She was in the zone, both with her rifle, and her wit.  

“God damn, I handed that set up to you on a silver platter,” Murdock said while shaking his head.  “You were raised on a fucking ranch?  How did I not know this?”

“It was a small grass fed operation, and my family are a bunch of red neck, duck farming, hippie libertarians who loved weed, guns and good pasture raised meat.”  

Murdock couldn’t be mad at this new info.  “They sound like my kind of people.”

“My parents home brewed beer for the grown ups and made kombucha for the kids. Mom taught us how to shoot and dad showed us how to grow our own food, fiber and medicine.  If the refineries ever get bombed and the supply chains go to shit, me and my siblings know how to live off of the land, mother fucker.”

The shooting had slowed down considerably.  There were only a handful of bikers left fighting a few dozen narcos.  The compound was a war zone, complete with the telltale signs of modern battle.  Buildings and vehicles were full of bullet holes while the corpses of bad men were everywhere.  The scene was gruesome, but the three members of Team Whiskey had no remorse for dead bad guys.

“Murdock,” Lorenz warned, “I see a two men leaving that closest building.  They’re headed your way and I can’t get a clear shot on them through the smoke bellowing from that burned out van.”

“Roger,” Murdock replied.  He popped up just high enough to see two men with rifles running towards a building close by.  They weren’t running for Murdock’s position, and they gave no sign that they even knew he was there.  “I finally get a chance to get a few kills!” Murdock said with excitement.

The two narcos looked angry.  They weren’t good runners, and they spoke in fast Spanish.  “Andale!”  (Move it!)  One man looked like he was in charge and was barking orders at the other.  Murdock could see, it was the leader of the narcos.  This leader was the same thug who’d threatened to kill Murdock fifteen minutes earlier before the shootout had begun.  

Special agent Trent Murdock checked the clip on his rifle and saw that it indeed had bullets.  He checked the safety and noted that it was in the off position.  “Finally,” he thought, “I’m gonna get some action.”  He popped up instinctually and dropped the first bad guy, leaving the leader shocked and confused.  As the bad man looked around to see where the shooting had come from, Murdock placed a perfect shot that knocked the automatic rifle out of the bad man’s hands.  The momentum of the bullet colliding with the rifle knocked the leader down.  It took several seconds for the narco to regain his composure.  As he popped back up to his feet, Murdock was standing twenty feet away with a gun pointed right at him.

“You!” the leader hissed.

Murdock gave the thug a big shit eating grin.  “Today doesn’t look like it’s a good day for you, amigo.”  The bad guy had said those same words to Murdock less than fifteen minutes earlier, and now this time Murdock was the guy holding a gun.  

The thug defiantly spit on the ground and gave Murdock a death glare.  Murdock had to admit, he liked this asshole’s style.

“Any last words?”  Murdock couldn’t remember the exact phrase that the narco had said to him earlier, but he knew it included that sentiment.  The narco didn’t say anything.  He glared with pure anger.  Murdock was annoyed since he wanted a story to tell his buddies back home.  He dropped his air of nonchalance.  “For real, fucker, any last words before I send you to the void of sweet oblivion?”  Murdock realized that the thug might not know any of the English words he’d just said.

The thug started to swear in Spanish but fell dead before he could mutter anything of importance.  The smoke from Murdock’s rifle lightly trailed off on the breeze as a tumbleweed went rolling by.  The lone chicken looked from side to side, then continued pecking at the ground.

Agent Miller had seen the whole thing.  His calm but excited voice rang out in Murdock’s ear.  “This is seriously the greatest day of my life.”

The shootout lasted a few more minutes on the other side of the compound, then Miller and Lorenz sniped the remaining bad guys with ease.  In all, just under a hundred bad men lay dead in the small walled compound.  Murdock gave up his obsession with the chicken and simply went to work piling the bodies by a wooden building.  The work was tiring and took a few hours, but when it was done, Miller lit a fire and set the area ablaze.  The smoke billowed out into the desert as the sun set, and the sound of a rattle snake shaking it’s rattle could be heard out in the hills.  

Somewhere in the distance, a small American family raised livestock animals on a rotational paddock grazing system based on improving soil health and maximizing grass growth while concurrently brewing tasty fermented beverages for human enjoyment at large gatherings.