Date with Death

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The shack was made out of bits and pieces. Cardboard mostly, plus the remains of several packing crates and a couple of dented tin signs stolen from a nearby construction site. The floor was hard-packed earth covered with a patchwork of fraying straw mats. There were no windows. Just an opening that served as a door, and a fist-sized hole in the roof to ventilate the smoke from the kerosene lamp.

Inside the tiny shack, seven people were sitting cross-legged around a makeshift table. Six of them were members of the Madera family. The seventh, the one nearest the door, was their honored guest. The guest's name was Wally Donner, and at the moment he wasn't feeling well. In fact, if he didn't get some fresh air soon, he was going to be sick, violently, eruptively sick, and that didn't fit into his plans at all.

Donner's face glistened under a sheen of sweat, and his sopping stay-press shirt was permanently glued to his back and shoulders. Along with the heat, his legs were starting to cramp up from sitting so long on the floor. But the worst of it was the smell, the almost indescribable odor of six unwashed bodies packed into a space not much bigger than his walk-in closet back home.

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