It’s hot in Nampa right now. Stoopid hot. And I’m from Texas, so I don’t often complain. Ninety degrees Fahrenheit is not hot, not in Idaho anyway. But 106 is hot. I sat in a parked car in a sunny parking lot yesterday afternoon for an hour (with a mask on) just to feel the sweat trickle down my back and soak my underwear. It’s good every now and then to get so sweaty that you don’t notice it anymore. (Plus I figure its a good way to sweat out any possible “Rona” impurities trying to find their way past my defenses.)
If you’ve never experimented with this before, you’ll be interested to know that all stink in your sweat is expelled after the first quart. The rest just leaves behind the crust and twang of salt. If you don’t believe me, sit in a hot car for an hour wearing nothing but your underwear. Then have someone squeegee your drippings into a quart jar. Of course if you’re going to try this, make sure you’re drinking more water than your sweating out. It won’t work if you pass out and die. And in a big city be aware that you might get arrested for sitting in your car wearing nothing but your underwear. (Unless you’re under 7 or over 70. Then you can do whatever the hell you want.)
When you get bored of sweating in a parked car, you can try out the redneck waterslide. Many say that this activity is even more fun. (More fun than sweating? you ask.) If you’re not versed in the ways of the Redneck, let me explain the rules. To “redneckify” something you simply take any idea or product and recreate it with found items (often times referred to as “pickens”). Then you make the idea/product twice as large as required. Some of these efforts lead to sad yet hilarious memes. I’m sure you’ve seen them. Others lead to epic fun.
At its most simple, the redneck waterslide is simply a long roll of plastic sheeting and a bunch of water. No one has done the redneck waterslide better than my wife’s parents. I’m grateful that every summer my kids (and myself) get to experience it.
Epic Redneck Waterslide Ingredients: The Bitterroot valley. Over 100 feet of 10 mil black plastic sheeting. A nice sloped hillside with a view of the mountains. A groomed, slightly concave track in the grass. An irrigation system capable of pressurizing 6 inch pipe. Cold, spring-fed water. And lots of hot, sunny weather. While a popsicle at the end is technically optional, don’t try convincing my boys of that.
What starts with sliding feet-first and on the butt eventually escalates to sliding head first and crashing into each other. Then there’s the inevitable water fight. Someone drinks a bunch of irrigation water, etc. etc. Until everybody ends up with a towel and a popsicle. Everything is right in the world.
Anywho, for my two cents, on a real hot day nothing beats sweating like crazy and then cooling down with a few runs on a redneck waterslide. The granola half of me recommends moving the slide around your yard so as to water more evenly. And when you’re done you can go back to using the plastic for any number of very sustainable things…not polluting the oceans. (But I know none of us would ever think of such a thing!)
In Case You Still Haven’t Checked it Out…the Lost DMB Files are Streaming!
(The 2nd Season of The Green Ones will start up Sunday!)
During the month of July, this email update will take an intermission between the end of Season 1 of The Green Ones and the start of Season 2 of The Green Ones. I’m using this intermission to expose all of you to my Lost DMB Files series (set in the same Schism 8 universe as The Green Ones). I hope you enjoy these pulpy Western stories!
If you want to read the Lost DMB Files in addition to (or instead of) The Green Ones, you’ll need to sign up for the separate https://lostdmbfiles.substack.com/ substack. After the intermission, this email update will go back to streaming The Green Ones. The https://lostdmbfiles.substack.com/ substack will send out a weekly update for the Lost DMB Files.
Read Del Rio Con Amor, Scene 9 — Scene 14
[Start with the introduction to the series.]
Ah Puch settled onto his stool and adjusted the knob on the kerosene lantern for more light. The rising hiss bounced off the nearness of the rock floor and ceiling, creating the sensation of having been swallowed by a living stone monster.
He plucked an awl from his lips. Gripping it with his nippers, he worked it lightning fast along the seam running up the side of the boot. He stopped for the fourth time to check the placement of the magnetized plate sewn into the back of the heel. Reaching inside the boot, he straightened the ripcord for the chili bomb and continued stitching the seam. “By tomorrow you will own the best pair of boots in the world.”
Chancho looked up from his work on a massive wall of gears. Grease streaked his face and hands. “Better even than your own?”
“Mine were the prototype. I have made improvements since.”
“Incredible. I will keep them for life.” Chancho adjusted the positioning of a long, metal camshaft with a wrench until the teeth lined up with an even larger gear.
“Damn right. And if your life is any less than fifty years, I’m taking them back.”
“I’ll do my best, friend.” Chancho put the wrench down before pounding the shaft further into the heart of the sprawling wall of machinery with a wooden mallet.
“Don’t worry. I’ve put too much work into these boots to let you die now.” Ah Puch snickered at his own joke.
“There!” Chancho tossed the mallet into the corner. He snapped a leather belt with his fingers to test its tautness. “If this machine doesn’t chew me to death when we start it, I’ll consider it a success.”
Ah Puch put down his work to take in the entirety of the contraption. Chancho stood on a metal grate over forty-feet long and ten-feet wide with steel beams connecting it to the roof of the cave every four feet. A series of gears, pulleys and belts covered the entire far side of the cave. The wall of machinery even dipped below the grate and out of view. “And this thing will lift a train?”
“Well, not the whole train.” Chancho grinned. “But enough of it.”
“This is the craziest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Says the man holding gadget boots in his hands.”
“Sure, they have a few special additions, but they are just a pair of boots. This…” Ah Puch indicated the entirety of the room they were in. “None of this was even here two months ago.” His voice echoed off the chiseled rock walls. The light from the kerosene lamp fell short of the distant corners of the cave.
Chancho spoke reverently. “I’ll be happy when we don’t have to work in the belly of the whale any more."
“The whale?” Ah Puch returned to his stitching.
“Oh yes. I forget you are a very bad Catholic.”
“I’m not a bad Catholic. I’m a good bandit. Although many of the Catholics I’ve known have been both.”
“It’s too bad.” Chancho unscrewed a cap from a large tank half-buried in the wall and sniffed its contents. “You should meet the sisters someday. They would set you straight.” He hefted a fuel can from the floor and directed its funnel into the tank.
“Oh, I’m sure they would. But for now I’ve got no problem with being crooked.” Ah Puch stopped his work to take a swig from a clear glass bottle. “So explain to me again how all my digging in this whale belly is going to win the revolution.”
Wind tugged at Chancho’s sombrero. The time had come. The deteriorating railroad ties of the alternate track blurred beneath Chancho’s feet. He cracked the heel of his boot hard on the coupling. Ah Puch steadied Chancho as he twisted the heel 90 degrees, and with a quick yank, ripped the heel from the rest of the boot.
A phosphorus and potassium-covered fuse trailed from the detached heel. The friction of the tug had sparked it to life. After Chancho slapped the magnetized metal of the heel directly onto the coupling, Ah Puch pulled him onto the platform of the armored freight car.
On cue, Emilio and Jorge leapt from the top of the feed and grain car to the top of the armored car. The magnets in their boots clanked onto the metal roof loudly. With one last glance at the burning fuse, Chancho flicked his spurs from their usual resting place until they were underneath the soles of his boots. The sharp tips now protruded out the front.
Quickly Emilio and Jorge laid down on the roof and dangled their arms over the back edge. Clasping at the wrists, they heaved Ah Puch and Chancho up to join them, and just in the nick of time.
The metal door of the armored car slid open. “They’re on the roof!” a voice barked. Then the heel charge detonated, blasting apart the coupling and buffeting the train with a deafening roar.
Chancho perched with the half-moon shape of his magnetic spurs under the balls of his feet until he gained his balance on top of the train car. Finally confident in his footing, he took off at a sprint for the front of the car, his magnets clanking loudly the whole way.
Still at the back of the armored car, Jorge, Emilio and Ah Puch stood in a triangle. With Ah Puch facing the front of the train, Jorge and Emilio latched onto his arms from behind.
“Launch me, boys.” Ah Puch, the smallest of the four, flipped his legs up and over his head.
Moving as a unit, Emilio and Jorge fell to their knees and then flat on their stomachs. With their heads and arms dangling over the back edge of the train car, they slung Ah Puch careening through the opened doorway of the armored car feet first.
With his momentum carrying him into a second backflip, Ah Puch’s left boot struck flesh as his right rotated underneath him more quickly. He caught himself hands-first before gathering his knees underneath him and crashing awkwardly into a stack of vegetable crates. Muffled swearing came from nearby while Jorge and Emilio’s magnetic boots dropped onto the landing behind him. “Siesta’s over.” Ah Puch drove his fist into the gut of a nearby guard.
From the top of the train, Chancho spotted the tunnel approaching fast in the distance. Timing was critical. The wind and rocking motion of the train tried to tug him off the side, but his boots helped steady him. Finally, he reached the front of the car.
Sliding feet-first, he grabbed the lip as he went over the edge and swung down onto the landing. The sudden proximity of the closed door leading to the armored car, as well as the door across the way leading to over a hundred more Constitutional soldiers, sparked an even greater urgency in Chancho.
He gripped his remaining heel and tugged it from the sole of his boot, flicking its chemical-laden fuse to life in the process. As steadily as his nerves allowed, he stepped onto the coupling to place the charge. Before he could reach the joint, the metal door behind him slid violently open.
Plunging downward and out of the line of fire, Chancho latched the magnetic-heel explosive to the coupling as gunfire echoed in the confined space between the two cars. The near miss ricocheted off the passenger car filled with Constitutional conscripts. Flailing for some part of the train that would prevent him from being shot, Chancho grabbed the bottom of the passenger car platform.
A second bullet missed just right of his handhold as his boots bounced off the ties rushing past. Chancho glanced over his shoulder at the burning fuse. If he didn’t catch a bullet first, the explosion would separate his ears far enough from his head to save him the headache. “My friend! Let’s not be—” before he could finish his sentence two bodies collided with a loud grunt. Chancho pulled himself up in time to see Ah Puch heaving the much larger Guzman off the landing.
“Do hurry.” Chancho leapt onto the armored car just as the door to the passenger car slid open. “I’m afraid he had a short fuse.”
Ah Puch’s eyes flashed as he took in both the imminent explosion and the rifles leveled from the back door of the passenger car.
Hooking his friend around the waist as he rushed past, Chancho slung Ah Puch before diving head first through the opened door of the armored car. Simultaneously his heel charge and the powder of multiple rifles flared behind them.
The two friends smashed into a pile of crates as the armored car lurched free from the rest of the train. Seconds later bullets commenced bouncing about the cramped quarters until Chancho shoved the armored door closed with his foot. Swallowed once again by darkness, both men remembered the belly of the whale lurking several hundred meters down track.
Chancho rose to his knees, suddenly aware of a miscalculation in his plans. “How much do you think those geological survey boxes weigh?”
Ah Puch sputtered. “What? Who cares? And how should I know. We don’t have time to—”
“The weight! It matters. Momentum equals mass times velocity. I estimated close enough on the speed of the train, but the car could be considerably heavier than I anticipated!”
“Meaning—”
“We won’t stop in time!” Bullets continued to bounce off the front of the armored car, but from a greater distance as the gap between them and the rest of the train expanded.
Ah Puch stood and helped Chancho to his feet. “One thing at a time. First we have to hit the switch.”
With impeccable timing, Emilio’s voice called from the blackness. “We’re getting close. Jorge! Give us some light.” The back door to the armored car slid open and Emilio found Ah Puch and Chancho tangled in some webbing. “We need to get to the front of the car and hit the switch.” He revealed a heavy metal pipe taken from the livestock car.
“Good man.” Chancho reached for the pipe.
“No.” Ah Puch stopped him. “We’re still in range of their fire. We’ll have to hit it from the back.”
“Okay. But it’ll be harder.” Emilio shrugged.
“Not much.” Chancho untangled himself and flicked his spurs back into their resting position. “I don’t know, my friend. I think we’ve got work to do on these magnet spurs.”
“Fine, fine.” Ah Puch tugged on Chancho. “We can replace them with jet packs. Just get moving.”
“Really? That would be great!”
“Chancho!”
“Okay, Okay, my friend. Keep your magnet boots on.”
Chancho blinked furiously from the combination of bright sun and whipping wind. Ah Puch held him by his bandoliers while the others stood clear of the swinging pipe. “We only get one chance at this,” Ah Puch cautioned.
“Yes, yes. Miss it and the tail-end of the train will be kissing ours goodbye.” Chancho shook tears from his eyes and watched the tunnel entrance rush toward them faster than he liked. “I’m more concerned with the possibility that we may not stop at all,” he cringed, “or we’ll wish we hadn’t.”
“You mean we’ll be sitting ducks when the rest of the train returns with all of its angry soldiers?”
“If we aren’t crushed by the deadman.” Chancho wiped away tears with his shoulder.
“This just keeps getting better.” Ah Puch shifted his grip on Chancho’s bandoliers. In the process, one of them snapped. Chancho dipped forward unevenly, dangling too far over the railing.
“Hold me steady! We’re almost to the switch!” The throw bar, topped with a red octagonal sign, swept into view as the front of the armored car passed it. The whole of the car had already passed the switch itself, but it was the trailing three cars that concerned the revolutionaries at the moment. “I don’t want to throw it with my face!”
Ah Puch swore and clutched at Chancho’s clothing in attempt to yank him backwards.
“Ah Puch!” Chancho held the heavy bar in front of his face in the hopes of deflecting the brunt of the collision. At the last second Ah Puch lunged further forward and gripped Chancho under his armpits. Digging his feet against the bottom of the railing, he reeled Chancho in. With a final bunt-like swing, Chancho whacked the flat portion of the throw bar as the two of them tumbled backwards onto the platform.
“Did you get it?” Ah Puch asked.
“I don’t know. I think so. I hit it anyway.”
“We’ll know soon enough.” For a moment they watched the freight car, the flatbed with their horses, and the caboose clack along the rails several hundred meters behind them. Emilio cleared his throat from the doorway of the armored car.
“The deadman!” Chancho jumped to his feet.
“That’s what we’re about to be,” Emilio shrugged.
Ah Puch continued his pessimism. “We’re going too fast to throw the—”
“Give me a boost,” Chancho cut him off.
“What?”
“Quickly. We’re entering the tunnel. I can trigger the mechanism. Just give me a boost, now!” The sky disappeared as the armored car shot into the tunnel, clipping at over 15 kilometers per hour.
Ah Puch obeyed instantly. Taking a wide stance on the metal grate of the landing, he laced his fingers together and clasped the back of Chancho’s boot at the missing heel. Chancho rested his other boot on the top of the railing and poised himself for the jump.
“How can you even see it? It’s too dark.”
“I know where I put it! Get ready! Three, two, now!”
Ah Puch launched Chancho into the oily darkness of the tunnel, confident he’d just thrust his friend face-first into solid rock.
While shooting outward, Chancho held his defective bandolier in his hand and searched the glimmering darkness for a whisper of light reflecting off the metal lever he had placed in the wall. Responding reflexively to a glint no more than a meter from his face, he used the bandolier like a lasso. A pulse of lightning tore through his shoulder sockets as the bandolier caught and flipped the lever into its recessed position. Chancho ripped free and smashed hard into the wall of the tunnel before crumpling to the ground.
Through the pulsing in Chancho’s ears, he heard a four-stroke, diesel engine pulse to life. A second later, a small explosion detonated the deadman. Cringing, he waited two more seconds for the inevitable collision. Thankfully, the crashing of the armored car into the deadman sounded little worse than overly rambunctious freight cars coupling—no secondary clatter of a car derailed.
He checked his person for major injury. While bleeding in a few places, nothing seemed broken. He gave a second thought to the trailing train cars, but figured they would have run him over already had they been coming. Wrapping his bandolier securely around his waist, he hobbled toward the armored car on heelless boots. “Ah Puch? Emilio? Jorge?” He arrived at the landing on the back where Ah Puch was picking himself up.
“I think I should be a better Catholic, after surviving that.”
“I hope that doesn’t mean you’ll be a worse bandit.” Chancho dusted Ah Puch off.
“By no means. I hear the Church needs a good bandit every now and then.” The two friends allowed themselves a smile before checking on Emilio and Jorge, who were fine despite being buried in lettuce and tomato guts. Ah Puch reminded them of the urgency still at hand. “Chancho, the train will be returning.”
“Right. Everything’s fired up. I’ll start the lift. But after that collision we’ll need to clear the tracks. We can’t leave any evidence behind, or all of this will be for nothing.”
“No evidence. We’ll take care of that. Just make sure the whale is ready for its meal.” Ah Puch and the others scurried to the front of the car to clean up any debris and ensure the deadman would either retract or detach.
Chancho inched along the wall until he found a control box dangling by its electrical wires. He hit the first button. An orange-yellow light banished the darkness as three fixtures in the ceiling, still swinging from the impact of the armored car, flickered to life. The second button caused the floor of the cave to shift. It dropped a centimeter before cranking upwards at a rate of a centimeter per second.
Chancho listened to the creaks and groans, thinking it indeed sounded like a behemoth of a whale slowly rising to the surface. The air in the tunnel tasted like the oil-soaked dirt that had encrusted the fenders of the tractor he had maintained at the orphanage, before he’d left. The memory gave him both hope and guilt.
He waited a moment longer until it was safe to lay the control box on the slowly rising floor of the tunnel. He ran along the rail until he reached the end of the lift and jumped down to the original tunnel level. A sudden dread overtook him as he watched the lower level of the lift rise to assume it’s place as the floor of the tunnel.
Resting on that lower level of the lift, an engine of sorts emerged from its earthly womb. Just born, it was only moments away from its inevitable end—its only purpose in life to be a harbinger of death. Painted dull black, it absorbed the sickly yellow light in the tunnel. Against the starkness of the moment, Chancho realized this contraption of his design was merely a diesel-powered rocket on wheels.
It was gruesome, and he hated that he had built it. But the plan—the life of the plan drove him on. He jumped down to the track that would become the new floor of the tunnel and scooted behind the rocket engine’s controls. Designed for one simple reason, the device took to its role quickly. The motor, surrounded by nothing but a jacket of dynamite and iron plating, fired and pulsed up to speed.
The engine waited for its moment without complaint. The plan now drove itself forward, with or without Chancho’s consent. Momentarily, he glazed over with doubt. But the lift’s gears continued to tug the armored car upward, gradually closing off his only means of exit. In reluctant surrender to the plan of his own initiating, he hoisted himself up to the original level of the tunnel and then jumped to reach the level where the armored car rested.
Dangling from the lift as it rose closer to the roof of the tunnel, Chancho realized he never thought the plan would actually work. He’d seen these last stages of the plan as a vague generality, thus proceeding through the early stages without acknowledging their end.
He swung his leg up and over the edge of the lift. He rolled onto the uneven tracks and remained on his back the final seconds it took for the lift to settle into place, completely closing off the tunnel below. Ah Puch had been right. Chancho played the revolution like a game, but human lives were at stake, many more than just his own.
Chancho heard the rocket engine chug free of its restraints in the tunnel below. The lights in the belly of the whale flickered on automatically now that the electrical connection had been completed by the lift itself. No more kerosene lamps, the fully operational belly buzzed with diesel-powered electricity.
Grinning, Ah Puch reached down to help Chancho up. “You did it. Your crazy plan actually worked.”
Chancho dusted himself off and felt the sudden urge to see the grisly conclusion of what he had set in motion. He needed to see it for it to be real. “Let’s get topside.”
“Good idea. This should be quite a show, and we need to make sure before we celebrate. Who would've thought you’d be the pragmatist.” Ah Puch slapped the side of the armored car as they squeezed past it toward the ladder going topside. “Jorge, hit the latch. We’re going up to see the fireworks. Then we’ll come back down to run our fingers through some of that gold.” He slapped Chancho on the shoulder and laughed.
Chancho reached the ladder first and flew up the rungs. In seconds he reached the trapdoor. Dirt and sunlight sifted through the opening as he shoved it upward with his shoulder. He emerged onto the surface in a daze. Blinking against the sun, he scrambled up an outcropping of rock and followed the distant track with his eyes until he saw it.
The dull black engine chugged forward at an increasing speed. It even looked like a rocket, its huge cowcatcher making up a third of its length. It was an ingenious design, created to derail and incapacitate an object of much greater mass—to create chaos and distraction.
The others joined him on the rock. Chancho spoke to Ah Puch without shifting his gaze. “We did it, didn’t we? I mean, changed the revolution?” The general’s train came into view around the bend, returning to collect its lost prize. “It was worth it, right?”
Ah Puch must have known what his friend was getting at. “Yes, it was worth it. You’ve made Mexico a better place today, my friend. You’ve proven the ideals of the revolution can and will prevail.”
The moment of impact came. The rocket engine slammed underneath the passenger car full of Constitutional soldiers, heaving it upward and derailing it. The rocket continued its forward momentum until it reached the officer’s car, bucking it off the rails as well. Before it could reach the General’s private car, it detonated with an ear-clapping concussion. Flame and smoke burst outward and were then swallowed by a larger surge of destructive force that tossed fragments of steel and iron arching in every direction.
“Aye yi yi yi yi!" Ah Puch and the others waved their sombreros over their heads. Meanwhile, half a dozen riders, one of them Pancho Villa himself, rode around the backside of the hill with the four victorious revolutionaries’ horses in tow.
END of Episode Two
Thanks so much for taking the time to read these scenes of Del Rio Con Amor, Season 1 of The Lost DMB Files. I’ll be publishing FREE daily scenes from The Lost DMB Files until…I die…or something terrible happens. Seriously, I’ve got over 400 scenes written so far, and I’ll be writing more until the story reaches its natural ending. You are totally welcome to read the entire story for FREE! If at any point you decide you would rather finish the story in ebook or print format, just click the buttons below and you can do that as well. If you enjoy reading the serial releases, BUT you would also like to support me as a writer (my kids need wine!) please subscribe to my premium content for bonus scenes, exclusives, and insider access to my process. And of course, I’d be grateful if you would share this post with any of your reader friends who you think would enjoy The Lost DMB Files. Happy reading!