"Right," Alice said. "What first? We should probably try and find shelter -- that or someone's house."
"Well, this is Spain, right?" Jill said. "It's a first-world country. Should be a phone in every house. Maybe we can find some lonely old farmhouse, with a knocked-down telephone pole, and rabbit carcasses impales on a bunch of spikes."
"Where the hell did that come from?"
"That house over there."
"Oh."
Alice stepped over the shrubs and broken wood and stepped into the packed dirt yard. She knocked on the farmhouse door.
"Think it'll be a zombie?" Jill asked.
Carlos tugged at Jill's skirt.
"What?" Jill asked.
"I don't like zombies."
"Well then let's hope it's not a zombie."
The door opened and a large man with a sugar bag on his head peered out. "Ay-yi-yi, you're here already? Come in, then. We've got Lord Saddler to see, remember?"
He turned around and stumbled back into the house, dragging a chainsaw behind him. Alice exchanged glances with Jill. She walked in, looked in the kitchen, where the big man with the sugar bag was sharpening pitchforks, which lay in a pile next to him. In the other room pale thin women with cut-up faces were bandaging their heads.
"Well?" the man with the sugar-bag said. "Damn it, I can't see anything with this thing on. Come into the kitchen. Lord Saddler's orders -- all women are supposed to have forty or fifty knives on them at all time. You'll find them in the cupboards."
"Shipment!" a gruff voice said.
"Arg!" the man with the sugar-bag said, standing up. "Damn you! Why must you always come around here! We don't want no more ammo! We want guns. You got guns. I want to buy one from you."
"These guns aren't for you," the merchant said. "But pretty pistol ammo here -- have you a sweetheart? Place them in your cupboards, or on the table, or behind your bathroom mirrors. Here's some dazzling Red 5 ammunition."
"I don't own a Red 5, gringo."
"Some stranger might come wandering around with one though."
"Look." The man with the sugar bag on his head turned to Alice and Jill. "Get your knives and head out to town. Get in some hurling practice with them too."
"Uh."
"Sweet," Jill said. "Free knives."
Her dress stuffed with a ton of rusty knives, Jill tottered back out of the farmhouse. Alice followed her out, sufficiently bewildered.
A pick-up truck drove by, with lots of laughing teenagers inside.
The man with the sugar-bag peeked out. "Was that a truck full of teenagers here to go camping?"
"Sure looked like it," Alice said.
"'Scuse me." Taking his chain-saw, he ran out after the truck.
"Hm," Jill said. "Maybe we should've asked them if they had a phone."
"I'm sure we can look elsewhere," Alice said, grabbing her arm. "Let's go."
"Guys," Carlos said. "Think I should start a mariachi band?"
"Where would you get mariachis?"
"We're in Spain."
"Doesn't mean there's a mariachi band in the middle of every-"
But sure enough, as they made their way into the rundown village, there was a mariachi band playing their hearts out next to the burning stake in front of the church.
"Awesome," Carlos said.
"Carlos," Alice said. "That's not a mariachi band. That's just a bunch of dirty peasants shuffling from side to side and occasionally tapping their single guitar."
"But I can dream, Alice."
"Bo-shuda, Solo!" one of the peasants screamed, pointing in the opposite direction.
Alice saw a man dressed like a metrosexual leap through a window, shooting down peasants, running into a door, torching another peasant, and kicking another peasant's head off.
"Is that a mariachi?" Carlos said.
"Yes, Carlos," Alice said. "That's a mariachi."
"Really?"
"Should I just kill you now, Carlos? Would that make things easier for all of us?"
The man crashed back out another window, grabbed onto a rooftop ledge, flipped up onto it, cartwheeled, let go of his gun, stabbed a peasant in the chest with his knife, caught his gun and blew another peasant's head off.
"Alice," Jill said. "That guy could be whoever he wants to be."
"Now this is a little ridiculous," Alice said. "He has to get tired eventually."
The man grabbed a peasant's face, tore it off, stuffed it between his teeth, spat it back out in the form of fire, torching another peasant, used that peasant's flaming body to surf down a pile of wreckage, kicking two peasant's chests apart, landing, kicking up a shotgun from the ground, and using it to blow a peasant into a pack of other peasants, knocking them all down, the man's hair still perfect.
"Okay, never mind," Alice said, "but who is he?"
"Harry Potter."
"Does he look like Harry Potter?"
"I never read the books."
"You are aware that the books and the movies had a visual representation that became a major phenomenon in literature and film, right?"
"I don't know what those words mean, but yes."
"You don't know what the word book means?"
"We can't all have gone to college there, Alice."
"You didn't go to college? How did you get your job?"
"Ask Carlos."
"Why should I ask Carlos?"
Carlos looked up and pointed. "Look!"
A church bell was ringing and the peasants started heading for a large building, disappearing through a door, which locked.
The village was deserted.
"Was it something I said?" the man said, looking around. "Wait, even better: Was it my breath?"
"Hilarious!" Carlos shouted.
The man turned and shot Carlos in the chest, who crumpled immediately.
"Oh," the man said. "Shit."
"I like this guy," Alice said.
"Sorry," the man said. "My first reaction when someone comes towards me and says something is shooting them. Repeatedly."