Chuy leaves and finds Flor on the street.

“Was it wonderful?” she asks, beaming at him. “I’m so happy you did it.”

It was good, Chuy thinks.

He does feel lighter.

The nightmares still come, but less often, and he knows the reason that he still has them is because he didn’t cleanse what he did with Ochoa that night. Maybe someday, he thinks, I’ll have the courage to say.

Three days after his cleansing, Hugo approaches him.

“We have a new job for you, little brother.”

The Family needs warriors.

—

Because La Familia Michoacana traffics drugs.

Nazario is the chaca, the boss.

But under the Zetas. Just as the Zetas run Michoacán, La Familia is also under their thumb. But the Family has its own trafficking business, mostly in meth, and it’s bringing in vast amounts of money.

La Familia pays a tax to the Zetas, so are allowed to exist. Nazario was good friends with Osiel Contreras, who sent his Zetas to train Nazario’s gunmen. Then the Zetas took over.

Chuy don’t like the idea of working for Forty again, even indirectly, and he tells Hugo that the Zetas are evil.

“In an evil world,” Hugo tells him, “you have to do evil to do good. The drugs we send to America pay for the food for orphans, the water for the villagers. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“God needs warriors in this world,” Hugo says. “You’ve read the Bible.”

Chuy hasn’t but doesn’t say so.

Hugo says, “David was a great warrior. He killed Goliath. The Family needs Davids. Like you.”

Chuy looks at him, puzzled.

“Don’t you see, my brother?” Hugo asks. “All those bad things in your past, those things you were ashamed of, God takes and turns into good. When you fight for Nazario, you fight for the Lord. Your soul shines like the armor of a knight.”

“But I’d be fighting for the Zetas,” Chuy argues.

“The will of God is a mystery,” Hugo answers, “that we humans can’t always solve. Nor should we. We should only listen to His voice, and if you listen, Pedro, you will hear Him calling you.”

Chuy hears the call.

He becomes a warrior of God.

Every night they meet for Bible study or to discuss the Book. They don’t work on Sundays—instead they attend a massive outdoor service at which Nazario preaches.

“Every man needs a cause!” the leader bellows. “A cause, an adventure, and a good woman to rescue!”

His disciples cheer, then sing a hymn.

After the service there’s a large dinner and then silent time—they spend four hours in quiet, contemplating their souls, their mission, the meaning of their lives, the sayings of Nazario. Sunday evenings they meet in the hall and chant the sayings over and over.

They watch videos, listen to tapes, and learn the strict rules—no smoking, no drinking, no drugs. A first offense will earn a beating, a second brings a severe whipping, a third means execution.

Three strikes and you’re out.

One day the leaders bring Chuy a man they snatched off the streets—a child molester, the worst of the worst—and order Chuy to kill him.

No problem.

A warrior of the Lord, he strangles the man with his hands.

Now Chuy has a different job.

Now he doesn’t deliver groceries.

His five-man cell patrols three city blocks. They watch who comes and goes, report anyone suspicious to their superiors, keep things tight, clean, and orderly. They deliver protection money to the local Zeta boss, who hangs out with his underlings in the office of a local auto body shop.

Instead of boxes, Chuy carries a Glock. He gets a salary. It’s not much, but enough to rent a small room where he moves in Flor. They buy a bed at a junkyard, find a little table at the dump, get a lamp from a secondhand store. And Chuy has a different status—as a warrior, he has respect that earns him a right to make a request.

“I want to take Flor off the streets,” he tells Hugo. “Let her work as a waitress.”

“She isn’t your wife,” Hugo answers.

“She’s going to be the mother of my child,” Chuy answers. Flor told him, shyly and not without fear, that she had missed two periods.

Part of him was scared, part of him was thrilled. He took her in his arms and held her gently. “It will be all right. I’ll take care of you.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I will,” Chuy promised. “I’ll take good care of you both.”

Now Hugo argues, “That child could be anyone’s, little brother.”

“Flor is my woman, so it’s my child,” Chuy answers.

That simple.

“I’ll have to ask,” Hugo says.

“The Zeta boss?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t ask,” Chuy says. “Tell him that the mother of a warrior’s child can’t be a whore.”

—

The Zeta boss’s answer comes three nights later.

With four other Zetas, he walks into the restaurant after closing, when Flor is wiping down the tables and setting up for the morning.

“Everyone out,” he orders, then looks at Flor. “You stay.”

The others quickly walk out, their eyes on the floor. One of them, a former whore herself, runs to find Pedro.

“Are you Flor?” the boss asks.

Terrified, Flor nods.

“Take off that dress.”

“I don’t do that anymore.”

“You’re a whore,” he says, “and you’ll do what I tell you. You still owe us money.”

“I’ll pay you.”

“Yes, you will. Right now.”

He nods and the four men grab her, strip the dress from her, and pin her onto one of the tables.

—

“Pedro! Pedro!”

Chuy sees the girl running toward him.

“What is it?”

“It’s Flor! Come quick!”

He runs.

—

Chuy lifts Flor’s body off the table and cradles her corpse on his lap. She’s still warm, her skin is still warm.

People say that you could hear Chuy’s howl through the whole colonia.

They say they can never forget the sound.

—

Chuy stands outside the yonke, the auto shop where the Zeta peces gordos—the big bosses—hang out.

He hears them laughing inside.

The clink of bottles and glasses.

Well trained, Chuy checks the clip on his erre. Then he kicks the door in and sprays the five of them before they can as much as move.

Crouching beside the wounded Zeta chaca, Chuy takes the man’s hair in one hand, like Ochoa did with the man that night. He takes out his knife, like the one the Kaibile handed him that night, pulls the boss’s head back so that his neck is taut, and presses the serrated blade against his throat.

He’s lived this over and over again.

More than the times that the boys hurt him, raped him, made him their girl. More than those things, his nightmares are of that night, when they handed him the knife and told him what to do—

—so now he knows and as if in a dream he saws the blade back and forth as the Zeta boss who raped and murdered Flor screams just as the man screamed that night and the blood spurts out in hot jets as Chuy saws through the arteries, and then the boss is quiet, just gurgling as Chuy saws through cartilage and bone like he did that night, and the bone and cartilage and skin pop as he severs the head.

He sets it down and starts in on the other four. Two are already dead. One tries to crawl away, but Chuy grabs his hair and pulls him back. The last man cries and slobbers and begs but Chuy tells him, “Shut up, bitch.”

Chuy is sitting on the floor with the five decapitated bodies when Hugo bursts in. “Dios mío, Pedro, what did you do?!”

“My name is Jesús,” Chuy says numbly. Over Hugo’s shoulder he sees Nazario, with several men behind him. “Kill me.”

Hugo pulls his gun, ready to oblige. The fallout from one of theirs killing five of the Zeta overlords will be horrific. If they can at least turn over a corpse…He points the gun at Chuy’s head.

“Stop!” Nazario yells, knocking Hugo’s hand down.

“The calf and the yearling will be safe with the lion,” Nazario quotes from scripture, “and a little child shall lead them all.”