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Rake Talbot, Lake Tahoe’s resident mercenary for hire, whistled for his boys even as the refugee from a Wes Craven film sauntered past both the now lifeless remains and the three of us to the fridge.

"Now why the hell would some fool name himself after a garden tool? " Danny once asked me, but never to the face of the seven foot even misshapen ex-biker. I never asked either, cept that somebody once mused it was better than Francis, or Sue, or some former handle alot worse for a wicked looking fella such as Rake.

He wouldn’t win any beauty contests, or the Nobel prize, but Rake and a full two dozen like minded dudes did have a valuable talent for the present situation. An impressive stash of weapons, with the ordnance and the eagerness to use them.

"Jesus, Ms. W. Don’t you got anything but this fruity wine? " Rake demanded, pulling bread and fixins out even as two other thugs came in, plopping down onto the thin rail western style chairs.

Carlos Delgado, scarred faced and ornery. I’d heard this whippet thin kid, barely older than me, had been up for serious weapons charges along with possible assault on a cop. But his hearing was postponed indefinitely when other more immediate things arose. He was glancing at the prone body of the maid with idle interest even as Rake tossed a bottle his way.

Andy Cooper, a buddy of Rake’s from way back, oddly cherub cheeked which made the tank of a man even stranger to look at for the fact he’d shaved off all his hair, top to brows to chin. Those tiny gray eyes laughed as Carlos bobbled the bottle with one hand while hangin on to his scatter shot rifle with the other.

But while Danny and I didn’t care much for these bad-asses, nor the others who patrolled the lakeside communities on commission, we never pissed them off either so Rake and his crew actually liked us. But Mrs. Weinstein, her face showing dark fear behind the bluster, hastily wiped her puke stained mouth before letting into them.

"Blood stains on my Mexican style tiling, and I must have paged you boys at least five times ... "

"Yep, Frankie B told me. " mumbled Rake through the Ham and sliced Egg sandwich he was eating. "We had some business at the Wentworth property, musta been six or seven of those fuckers messin around there. "

He gave me a cheesy smile. "You guys shoulda been. There was this fine piece of meat, freshly dead but still slammin in this tiny black tube top and hot pink vinyl mini, ya know? So Carlos sneaks up behind this zombie babe, shoves his shotgun up her hole and airs her out real good. "

Carlos flashed an ‘Aw Shucks, Weren’t Nothin. ‘ grin, measuring up the dead meat on the floor, her body mostly intact except for havin no head. Still, our bullied hostess wouldn’t be put down that easily. "But my husband paid you boys good money ... "

"Which don’t mean squat these days. " Andy interrupted, his angels’ face unreadable even while wastin winks on Carlos. "You know we work piecemeal, Ms W. Like the Wentworth’s? That job earned us a couple of real nice paintings and some fine stogies. What you got? "

"But ... " sputtered the fat lady nervously, even while Delgado gave her the evil eye. "You ... you didn’t do anything. "

"Waste removal. " laughed Rake, loving to see the cow squirm. "We capped this little girl for ya, and we’ll take her off your hands for say, some of your silver? If that’s all right with you boys." he added to Danny who just nodded his head in mute agreement.

Once Mrs. Weinstein had gotten down to settling with Rack’s crew, Carlos and Andy already lugging the body away, the former’s right hand gingerly kneading the corpse’s plump butt cheeks as they went, Danny and I were already out the door back to our truck.

Neither of us said anything about Rack and the boys, we’d rather let those dogs just lay where they may. My own interests were set further down the road at our next stop, as Danny knew damn well with the wicked grin he gave me.

OK, so I wasn’t the hot red-skin stud I was makin myself out to be. But if you ever met Lori Capshaw, you’d forgive me for being whipped. She was long legged and lean, a shiny straight mass of raven black hair falling down between her shoulder, a narrow face with the kinda sea green eyes that a man just fell into.

All that, and she’d also been a top notch anthropology student at Berkley, til her parents pulled her out just before the Dead started actively decimating the student body. The weird thing was that she was only meant to be a summer fling, like those other college girls I might of mentioned before. Unlike the others, Lori saw right through my Injun Joe act, right through to my backside and she still went out with me. Of course I had to work overtime for it.

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