Sigh. I like this story. Well, I like parts of this story. I think this has some of my best attempts at imagery to date. Unfortunately, I never managed to make the point clear (which likely had to do with the fact that *I* wasn't sure what the point was). And again, this is a much earlier example of my writing, and I didn't like it enough to rewrite it from scratch. So, trunked.

"Little Green Gods" (November 2003)

by Julie Winningham

That song - the one about Jesus on the dashboard - blared from the radio as Ned twisted the dial. He chuckled, but kept moving up the scale. He liked the big guy well enough, but it was the Benjamins that got the job done.

They were going to be his salvation.

One of his little green saviors sat on the dashboard, little origami arms and legs akimbo, the face of the colonial inventor regarding him with Buddha-like serenity. Ned's grandfather taught Ned to make the intricate paper dolls out of dollar bills, folding and tucking in a blur of gnarled joints. Worry dolls, the old man called them. It took many years before Ned understood the layers of irony to that.

He liked to tell Ned the story about Jesus feeding five thousand men with a little bit of fish and bread. The old man always thought that what he had would be enough, even when he couldn't save his home. He accepted it with grace. The son of Man must suffer, he told Ned: in suffering we are born anew, and know better how to make do with what God gave us.

Ned, though, wasn't so big on suffering, and no miracle of loaves and fishes was going satisfy Ronnie, who wasn't much inclined to make do with what he had. Ronnie was more of a God helps those who help themselves sort.

Flipping over to the AM band, he scanning through the drone of talk radio and baseball announcers. Nothing on the news stations. He wished he had a CB or police scanner, but the whole point was to think optimistically, after all.

Ahead, the sky burned, fading from crimson to a shadowed rose as the Charger's big engine ate up mile after mile of cracked and patched asphalt. Ned resisted the urge to open her up on the flat empty stretch of road. No use in tempting fate, not now.

He turned on the headlights as the shadows lengthened, rushing down the remote highway to meet him. It wasn't long before the greenish glow from the dashboard and the incandescent pools of the headlights were the only illumination in his world.

It explained his completely surprise when a wracking thud shook the car. He stomped on the brakes out of instinct, fighting to hold the car steady as the brakes locked and the tires squealed against the pavement.

When the Charger finally shuddered to a stop he slammed the gearshift into park and threw open the door, rolling out and reaching for the gun he kept under the seat. The dome light did little more than distort the darkness outside. Peering into the night he strained to hear something beyond the frantic rasp of his own breath and a disturbing rattle in the Charger's engine.

Reaching into the backseat, Ned grabbed a flashlight and surveyed the damage. There was something drastically wrong with the axle; he'd felt it when the car struggled to a stop. He found the left front tire bent out at an awkward angle, and there was a smear of something dark on the crumpled edge of the front bumper; the tang of iron tainted the air. He swung the light out behind him, widening his view. There was nothing but a scatter of broken glass and the occasional hardy weed growing though the cracks in the asphalt.

Swearing under his breath he made his way back down the road, following the trail of skid-marks he'd left. Thirty-five feet later he stood in the place where he'd hit whatever it was.

Away from the Charger's complaining engine he could hear the sounds of the scrub desert night. Above that he heard a rhythmic whimpering whine punctuating a low drone. The flashlight's beam picked up a spatter of something dark against the dividing line, trailing across the road into the scrub on the side.

Panning the light in that direction Ned saw something move, an amorphous piece of the night sky undulating just above the ground. The buzzing was louder now; he could feel it crawling under his skin as his shoulders tightened and he ground his teeth. Checking to make sure the safety was off on his gun, he picked up a chunk of rock in his left hand and threw it awkwardly.

His aim was good enough; the air burst apart. Part of it fled past him; his flashlight cut across it, and he saw the flies. Enormous black horseflies wallowed through the air off across the highway and vanished into the night.

"Well, fuck." Ned stared after them, a shiver tingling along his skin even though the sound faded. The whining caught his attention again; softer now, undercut by wet panting gasps. When he reached the place he'd seen the flies, he found a crumpled shape on the ground. A dog? There was something feral about it.

He raised the gun to put it out of its misery but couldn't bring himself to pull the trigger. Without understanding why, he shrugged out of his jacket and carefully rolled the injured animal into it. It was a lean rangy creature that he managed to cradle in his arms with little difficulty.

Not sure what to do next, Ned started back down the road toward his car. He decided to abandon it and try his luck walking down the road when he remembered the money. Setting the dog on the hood of the Charger, he reached inside and killed the engine. Peeling the duct tape from the driver's seat revealed seven rolls of hundred dollar bills, one hundred bills in each roll, wrapped in plastic and tucked among the seat's springs.

Ned dug the hiking bag he'd bought, the sort that nestled against the small of the back, out of the trash that had accumulated in the backseat and began transferring the money to it. He glanced over at the dog every once in a while hoping it would expire on its own and save him the extra burden. Each time, though, he saw the erratic rise and fall of its chest, and once the flashlight reflected back from wide-open eyes that watched him, steady despite the obvious pain. Ned quickly went back to his task, strapping the bag around him when it was full.

Almost as an afterthought, he grabbed the little Benjamin doll off the dashboard, crumpling it into a pocket. Hefting the dog again, he juggled the flashlight and trudged on into the night.

###

Ned lost track in the darkness, but guessed he'd gone a couple of miles. The dog was heavy now and his shoulders burned with the effort of carrying it. He thought about abandoning it, but then saw a squat square shape just back from the road.

It was an old adobe church, a tall cross perched on

the roof above the door. Which, he noted with some relief when he staggered up to the building, was unlocked.

Once inside he set the dog down on the floor, shrugging his shoulders to relieve the ache. It was quiet; the only sound was the dog's pained whines. Ned played the flashlight around the room until he saw a switch on the wall. He flipped it and the room lit from a lamp hanging over the altar. He hadn't noticed any power lines during his drive out here, so there was a generator somewhere outside.

He guessed this place was a Catholic church, this close to the border, but the room was bare of the trappings he vaguely remembered from his youth. Wooden benches marched the length of the room, the windows were plain glass. The altar too, was bare, but for a relatively simple-looking crucifix.

The only other adornment was a paneled fresco that hung behind the altar, seven panels, floor to ceiling. Incoherent images shifted and surged in the dim light, sending an uncomfortable thrill down his spine. Resolutely, he turned his back on it, returning his attention to the dog.

Ned remembered pictures in a National Geographic about the small scrawny Mexican wolves, all but extinct due to human encroachment on their habitat. Great, he thought. Armed robbery and killing an endangered species.

It had lost a lot of blood from a gouge in its side and probably had some broken ribs. A few minutes of searching revealed a bathroom with a full medicine cabinet. He grabbed a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a roll of gauze.

The wolf remained still as Ned crouched near it, twisting the cap off the bottle of alcohol. Stretching, hoping to avoid teeth and claws, he tipped the bottle over the gash. The wolf only whined loudly, almost on the edge of a howl as its paws scrabbled weakly on the denim jacket. Yellow eyes followed his every move.

He sat back on his heels, listening to the wolf's labored breathing. A pinpoint throbbing in his temple threatened to develop into a full-blown headache. Ned crawled over to one of the pew benches. Just a few minutes, and then he'd go.

###

Something woke Ned from a sound sleep. Pushing himself up, he groaned; the sharp pain in his temple had faded to a dull ache that spread across the back of his head and down into his neck and shoulders.

Pale light streamed in through the windows. Dawn, or just after. Rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands, he glanced around. There was no sign of the wolf. Only his blood soaked coat in a pile on the floor.

And an older man with a white collar staring at him.

Cursing, Ned staggered to his feet as the priest edged in the door.

"Is there anything I can do to help you?" The priest's voice was almost steady, eyes flicking from Ned to the bloody coat on the floor.

Ned debated drawing his gun. Common sense told him to kill the man, but thievery was one thing. Cold-blooded murder opened up a world with which he wanted nothing to do.

"I'm just getting on my way." He pushed past the priest, picking up his coat. "Wait. Are you hurt? I assume that was your car on the highway." The man was pale as the dawn light creeping across the floor.

"I'm fine." Ned paused in the doorway. "You didn't see a dead wolf out there, did you?"

The priest shook his head. "Just the car. Is that what you hit?"

"Yeah. It was still alive when I brought it here last night, but it was gone this morning when I woke up."

"A rare kindness shown to servants of Mammon. Such a good deed is rarely rewarded by greed." At Ned's puzzled look he laughed, gesturing to the fresco behind the altar.

"Mammon, the demon representing the sin of Avarice. See, he rides a wolf up out of the underworld. Though our local variety hardly look the part."

Ned stared at the fresco. Even in the soft light of morning, it still made his skin crawl. The second panel and the fifth depicted familiar, though grossly exaggerated images. "What about that one," he pointed, "with all the flies?"

"Ah yes. Beelzebub, Lord of Flies. Gluttony incarnate and quite the match with Avarice." Warming to his subject, the priest pinned Ned with a pointed look. "It's not unusual for the one to lead to the other."

Ned thought of the cloud of flies from the night before and shuddered.

"Anyway, I'm sure the wolf is fine. Most people would have just left it."

Most people are smart, Ned thought, but said nothing more than, "Yeah."

"You're sure-"

"I'm sure." Ned cut him off, not wanting any further

inquiries into his health or his plans. "But thanks," he added, stepping across the threshold and pulling the heavy door shut behind him.

Once outside, Ned wondered if he shouldn't have left something. He fingered the Benjamin doll in his pocket. He'd taken a lot of risks for that money, and he was going to need every bit of it. He was already late, and Ronnie wasn't in the habit of making exceptions for extenuating circumstances.

He slung the ruined coat over his shoulder and trudged out toward the highway when a glint of sunlight on metal caught his eye. There was a pick-up parked alongside the church building. He found the keys still in the ignition.

He didn't hesitate more than a moment before sliding behind the wheel and driving off, the church obscured by the cloud of dust he left in his wake.

###

Night fell before Ned thought about finding a place to stop. He crossed the state border a few hours before, and while he was still out in the middle of nowhere, he felt better about his chances to save himself from this near-disaster. He'd stop and call Ronnie, work out how much extra it would take to appease the relentless little bastard, and hit a couple of small places to make up the difference. He could still be back home in a couple of days, all this behind him.

It took him a moment to find the button for the headlights. They sprang to life, racing ahead of the shadows that crept up from behind him. The soft glow of the dash light haloed the crumpled worry doll perched there.

The radio sputtered into static and Ned fiddled the tuner to AM. Baseball, local news, some sort of sermon delivered in a rapid-fire banter of Spanish and English.

Glancing up, he caught a glimpse of something in his headlights, standing in the middle of the road. He rammed his foot down on the brakes. They squealed and locked, and as he fought for control he over-corrected. The pick-up heaved over.

In the moments after he remembered the screech of metal sliding along asphalt, the popping shatter of glass, the sensation of his stomach dropping out from him as the truck rolled.

And then he felt the pain. There was something warm and wet under him and he could only manage to breathe in shallow gasps. It burned, like the strain in his shoulders the night before, but this time in his chest; it got worse when he tried to breathe deeper and made his vision fade and dance with little pinpoints of light.

When he opened his eyes he was staring up at the passenger seat. The window next to him had shattered out completely. Fighting to stay conscious, he pulled himself out of the car; the small sharp prickling of broken glass scraping along his side was a welcome distraction from the fire in his chest.

The truck had rolled down a slight embankment, coming to rest against a stand of brush. He could barely see the road from here, which meant that anyone driving by wouldn't see him after the battery drained and his headlights went out. Not that he'd seen another car on this stretch of road since he'd left the church that morning.

There was something up there now though, watching him. Yellow eyes glowed in the headlights. It howled when he looked up at it, and with a tongue-lolling grin it loped off down the road.

Ned heard a low droning buzz as the howl faded, and where the wolf had been standing the dark had begun to seethe and roil.

END