The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove - By Christopher Moore Page 0,57

that Steve had expelled onto the pasture.

"Lactose intolerant?" She wiped her mouth on her sleeve and glared at the Sea Beast. "You have no problem gulping down a paperboy and the closet perv from the hardware store, but you can't eat dairy cows?"

Steve rolled onto his back and tried to look apologetic - streaks of purple played across his flanks, purple being his embarrassment color. Viscous tears the size of softballs welled up in the corner of his giant cat's eyes.

"So I suppose you're still hungry?"

Steve rolled back onto his feet and the earth rumbled beneath him.

"Maybe we can find you a horse or something," Molly said. "Stay close to the tree line." Using her broadsword as a walking stick, she led him over the hill. As they moved, his colors changed to match the surroundings, making it appear that Molly was being followed by a mirage.

Theo

For some reason, the words of Karl Marx kept running through Theo's mind as he dug the machete out of the tool shed behind his cabin. "Religion is the opiate of the masses." It follows, then, that "opium is the religion of the addict," Theo thought. Which is why he was feeling the gut-wrenching remorse of the excommunicated as he took the machete to the first of the thick, fibrous stems in his marijuana patch. The bushy green weeds fell like martyred saints with each swing of the machete, and his hands picked up a film of sticky resin as he threw each plant onto a pile in the corner of the yard.

In five minutes his shirt was soaked with sweat and the pot patch looked like a miniature version of a clear-cut forest. Devastation. Stumps. He emptied a can of kerosene over the waste-high pile of cannabis, then pulled out his lighter and se the flame to a piece of paper. "Throw off the chains of your oppressors," Marx had said. These plants, the habit that went with them, were Theo's chains: the boot that Sheriff John Burton had kept pressed to his neck these last eight years, the threat that kept him from acting freely, from doing the right thing,

He threw the burning paper, and the flames of revolution whooshed over the pile. There was no elation, no rush of freedom as he backed away from the pyre. Instead of the triumph of revolution, he felt a sense of sickening loss, loneliness, and guilt: Judas at the base of the Cross. No wonder communism had failed.

He went into the cabin, retrieved the box from the shelf in the closet, and was beating his bong collection into shrapnel with a ballpeen hammer when he heard automatic weapons fire coming from the ranch.

Ignacio and Miguel

Ignacio was lying in the shade just outside the metal shed, smoking a cigarette, while Miguel labored away inside, cooking the chemicals down into methamphetamine crystals. Beakers the size of basketballs boiled over electric burners, the fumes routed through glass tubes to a vent in the wall.

Miguel was short and wiry, just thirty years old, but the lines in his face and the grim expression he always wore made him look fifty. Ignacio was only twenty, fat and full of machismo, taken with his own success and toughness, and convinced that he was on his way to being the new godfath-er of the Mexican Mafia. They had crossed the border together six months ago, smuggled in by a coyote to do exactly what they were doing. And what a sweet deal it had turned out to be. Because the lab was protected by the big sheriff, they were never raided, they never had to move on a moment's notice like the other labs in California, or bolt across the border until things cooled off. Only six months, and Miguel had sent home enough money for his wife to buy a ranch in Michoacán, and Ignacio was driving a flashy Dodge four-wheel drive and wearing five-hundred-dollar alligator-skin Tony Lama boots. All of this for only eight hours of work a day, for they were only one of three crews that kept the lab running twenty-four hours a day. And there was no danger of being stopped on the road while transporting drugs, because the big sheriff had a gringo in a little van come every few days to drop off supplies and take the drugs away.

"Put out that cigarette, cabrone!" Miguel shouted. "Do you want to blow us up?"

Ignacio scoffed and flicked his cigarette into the pasture. "You worry too much,