by Sergio Gomez
“Yeah, this is supposed to be recon, Felicia. Don’t get all trigger happy.” Boris said. Both he and Felicia seemed to be in better spirits and accepting Howard’s death since the news broke to them, but it was still clear to Alejandro and Paul that they still weren’t all there.
“Fuck off.” Felicia spat back.
Alejandro hit the gas and the truck’s tires crunched through the remains of the wall. It felt like they were venturing in to a different world—and in some ways that was true. The others had only been beyond the wall, before its completion, once. And even then, they had only gone a mile and a half into the first town they saw. The town had been scarce and lacking in resources, and after they found the naval base a month ago no one had been back since. Not until Paul and Claire had gone exploring the day Alejandro had found them.
So, yeah, in some ways they were entering a different world. The world of Los Noches, perhaps.
The truck came through the other side of the wall, and Alejandro stomped on the gas without being sure why he did it. The sudden shift in momentum launched everyone forward and then back again in their seat.
“What the hell, Alejandro, you trying to give us whiplash.” Boris complained, rubbing his neck.
“Yeah, Alejandro, what’s up?” Paul asked, gripping the rifle.
“Sorry guys, foot slipped.”
He didn’t want to tell them that a weird energy had shot through him as soon as they crossed the wall. Maybe it was psychological in nature, but he felt like he was marching them all to their deaths. The suddenness of the feeling had shot through his veins like cold water, and he had jumped on the gas pedal.
The thing was, he didn’t need to share this with them, they all had felt the same sensation. And all was forgiven about the shift in momentum, because the creeping feeling of being surrounded by a dread palpable in the air, the kind that could be felt on the skin, overshadowed everything.
The truck continued moving forward, no faster than 20 mph because Alejandro felt like Los Noches were lurking (despite it being day) behind every car on the highway or inside of every crevice. Ready to jump out at them.
They didn’t have to drive far before they found it. If they would have gone three miles past the first town in their first venture to this side of the highway they would have found it.
“Holy mother of ghost, look over there guys.” Boris said, holding the binoculars with one hand and pointing with his other.
He diverted their attention down below to a field on the side of the highway. In the days when the high way was a link between people’s homes and their work and not a haphazard junk yard of bombing remains, the field they were looking at would have been nothing but grass and some trees here and there. Instead, what they were looking at was a monolithic village.
There were several huts, at least eight of them, facing one another. At the furthest point of the village was a single hut that faced the rest of the village and dominated over it like a watchful king on a throne. All of the huts were structured the same; walls made from thick branches bunched together holding up a roof made of small sticks bunched together.
It wasn’t anything neither of them had seen before, be it in a magazine or a TV show, but it was far more advanced than they thought Los Noches were capable of building.
“Jesus Christ,” Felicia said.
Alejandro slowed the truck down and brought it to the edge of the highway so they could have a better look.
“Do you think the night creatures made it?” Boris asked to no one in particular.
“Any of you ever been to Mexico?” Alejandro asked.
“Cancun, but we never left the resort.” Paul said.
“So no.” Boris said, and snickered.
“Well,” Alejandro took the pair of binoculars Felicia was handing to him. She had taken them from Boris seconds after he had pointed to the village. “The ingenuity in these things is pretty similar to the ingenuity the Indios down in Mexico use.”
“You’re suggesting that other humans built it and Los Noches just took it over, right?”
No one wanted to answer the question in fear of being wrong. Or, perhaps in fear of being right that Los Noches had built the village, because that would mean these were more than mindless monsters they were up against.
“We found what we’re looking for,” Alejandro said.
“Yeah, but how the heck do we get down there from here?” Boris asked.
There was a road to the side of the field; Alejandro could see it just beyond a thin row of trees west of the village. He traced it with his eye until it was lost on a bend, and then he used his mind’s eye to imagine the road continuing on and connecting with the highway. It made sense that the next exit would somehow take them to that road.
“Just look at the map.” Boris said, answering his own question. It was one of the many things that added to his charm, asking questions and then answering them himself.
Alejandro unfolded the map in his lap and looked at it, but the signs on the highway had long been blown to pieces and there was nothing else to indicate where they were on the map. Traveling through the highway required good old memorization of which off-ramps lead where. The only major landmark was, of course, the rock wall with the hole in it. And this village. Anything else would be guess work.
“No help.” Alejandro said. He looked back at the road near the village. “I’m pretty sure I can get us there, though.”
“Let me see, I’ll figure this out.” Boris grabbed the map, and within seconds he put it down. “Yeah, this thing is useless on the highway.”
“Alejandro, want to see if you’re right?” Paul asked.
Alejandro hit the gas in response and went down the off-ramp half a mile down the highway, which lead them to an intersection where they had to go either left or right.
“Don’t get us lost now, fearless leader.” Boris said.
Alejandro went right and followed the windy road. Trees and overgrown bushes the size of small vehicles surrounded them, and there was nothing else. More than one wrong turn and Alejandro would get them all lost. He tried to imagine driving down this lone road in the dark, and gulped, because if his hunch was correct that’s exactly what they would have to do.
The road came to a fork, left or right.
“Decisions, decisions…” Boris said from the backseat.
Dios mio, this esquinkle is actually having fun with this. Alejandro thought, then made his choice and went right.
The road became mostly dirt, it winded left and right on sharp turns, and then finally the village came in to view through the thin row of trees west of the village. Alejandro had gotten it correct, and for some reason he heard Olmec’s voice from Legends of the Hidden Temple in his head say “YOU CHOSE CORRECT.” He wasn’t sure if that was actually a line from the show, but it sounded correct, and was oddly comforting that a character from his childhood was reassuring him in such a dire situation. He smiled.
“Good job, capitan!” Boris said, and slapped him on the shoulder.
“What stops us from going in there and shooting all of them while they sleep?” Paul asked.
…I’ll kill myself if you don’t come back…And Claire said she would kill herself too… Charlie’s words came back to him and froze him for a second. A chill ran down his spine and he felt his hands and feet go ice cold.
“We don’t really know what we’re up against. Howard’s numbers were just made up.” Alejandro said.
“We have dynamite, we could just surround the huts with it and blow the whole village to bits. Look at what it did to the wall in a matter of seconds.”
“These things will smell us,” It was Boris speaking, but Alejandro had thought of that too. “We’re probably too close as it is. Not all of them have an amazing sense of smell, but all of them had at least a great sense of it. I can show you my charts—”
“That’s alright, Boris, we believe you.” Felicia interjected.
“He’s right,” Alejandro
said, and started making a U-turn. “I’ll take us out of here before any of them wake up from the smell of us.”
The truck made the turn and now Alejandro was heading back to the highway. He was driving slowly to keep the engine to a purr. Not only did Los Noches have a great sense of smell, they also had a great sense of hearing, but the road was far enough from the village for them to have approached it in the truck, or else Boris would have objected, Alejandro was sure of that; the guy had no qualms telling you you were doing something stupid.
They rode in silence until they got back on the highway and went through the wall, once crossing over they had the reverse sensation of going through the opposite way, it was as if they were now on the ‘clean’ side again. That looming feeling of being inside of a sleeping monster’s jowls had lifted from their minds like a fog clearing away.
“Okay, so now what’s next?” Paul asked.
“I drop you and Felicia off—“
“Wait, what?” Felicia protested.
Alejandro pressed on. “I drop you and Paul off, Felicia. Then later tonight when they’re awake me and Boris return to observe the village.”
“Alejandro, you can’t be serious.”
“I am. Hear me out on this. If me and Boris don’t make it back then this is all up to you guys. Turn away from town and go look for other survivors or try to take on the village, but if all four of us return tonight and none of us make it, Claire and Charlie will be left alone.”
Paul took in a deep breath. “With four of us we’d have a chance if we get spotted at night. With just you and Boris—“
“We’d have no chance, I know. I’d rather cut our chances in half during a failed recon than put all our chips on the table in one go. It’s better this way, trust me. We can’t take big risks, not yet. Not until the final step, not until we attack them. When we’re at that point, then let’s risk it all.”
Paul wanted to argue, if only because he knew he’d be biting his nails and pacing back and forth the entire time Alejandro and Boris left for recon, but what he was saying made too much sense. “Alright, fine.”
“Felicia?” Alejandro said, and looked at her through the rearview mirror. She was leaning back on the seat, her arms crossed. What her body language suggested was different than what the glossy eyes in the rearview mirror suggested.
“Fine,” She said.
“Then we have a plan, for now let’s get back to base and have dinner. It’s been a productive day, and we have a few hours before night, so let’s chill out until then.”
No one had any objections to this plan.
12
Claire and Charlie had finished whipping up the surprise ‘fancy’ dinner for the crew for when they returned. They had made roasted potatoes and cooked up a pork loin over an open-fire. They were sitting on the porch steps sipping on cold water, sweating from the extra heat from the fires they had been cooking over.
“I told my dad everything,” Charlie admitted it to her with the tone a boy uses in a confession box.
Claire’s eyes grew big in alarm. “What do you mean?”
But she knew.
“I told him about our plan to kill ourselves if he didn’t let us come with him.”
Claire didn’t say anything, but the incredulous look on her face told Charlie everything she had on her mind.
“I had to Claire! He was being real stubborn.”
“Jeez...” She took a long sip of her water, “Okay then.”
“He said we can go.” Charlie added, hoping that was enough to win back her trust.
That was good, except she still didn’t like that somehow the man who had held a gun to her and her father’s face was now the honorary leader of the group, but besides that it was good that he had been convinced to let her join them when they attack the village. As little experience as she had in shooting things dead, she wanted to be there when it happened, to be at her dad’s side, because he was the only thing she had left in this world. She knew Charlie felt the same way about his dad.
“Are you scared?” Claire asked.
“I’ve been scared every day since we had to leave New Jersey.”
“Why did you have to leave New Jersey, anyway?” Claire asked.
“It got declared a war zone, and an hour later me and my dad left. A little too late, but still.”
“Why too late?”
“By the time we decided to leave…soldiers were fighting everywhere…”
An hour after the news broke that Vorhees was a war zone Alejandro knew they had no other option but to abandon their home. They had been holding out for as long as they could, their bags already packed, but they couldn’t hold out any longer. Choppers and jets had been flying over their house for the past two hours, but now they could hear the explosions in the distance. It hadn’t started in their specific part of town yet, but it was coming any moment. It was time to say goodbye to the town they called home.
Charlie ran out of the house with his bag as instructed.
Alejandro followed, but stopped to look over his shoulder one last time when he was at the front door. He could see into the kitchen from here, where he and his wife had spent countless hours talking and laughing over huevos con chorizo. There were dirty dishes and pots on the counter that they had never cleaned, cans of food littered the grimy floor, and all but one light bulb in the room had burned out. Next to the kitchen he could see the living room, where he used to watch soccer and reruns of his favorite tv shows with a cold Tecate in one hand, a bag of pork rinds in the other. There was also a mess of clothes and blankets—the items that he chose not to pack in his bag. They had been living in this filth for at least a month, when things started getting bad he didn’t see a point in tidying up a house they would be abandoning. But now that they were leaving the house behind for good, he felt bad that he hadn’t kept it up.
Like he was somehow slighting the house he had gathered so many treasured moments in.
More than likely the house would be destroyed in a matter of days, but he still felt a pang of sadness that his final image of the house would be a mess. He closed the door and locked it behind him (old habits die hard).
He met Charlie, who was halfway down the lawn looking up at a fighter jet flying in the sky. Alejandro grabbed his wrist.
“Don’t leave my side, you hear?”
Charlie nodded. He had been more innocent back then, and there was no way he was going to leave his dad’s side for anything. As far as he was concerned he was glued to his dad’s hip.
The ground began to tremble underneath their feet as a fleet of army tanks rolled down their street. Alejandro and Charlie ducked behind the fence that surrounded their lawn and watched the tanks roll by.
Soldiers with big AKs strapped to their shoulders sat on the tanks smoking cigarettes and drinking out of flasks. One of them had his helmet in his lap and his head down while he muttered a prayer.
Alejandro could feel his heart thumping in his chest. If one of the soldiers spotted him they were as good as dead and their getaway would have been cut short—real short.
Down the street, from a fourth story window, a man with a sniper rifle took aim at one of the soldiers on the tanks. He was one of the fighting civilians, the “Freedom Fighters” as the news called them, but more than half of these people didn’t know what it was they were fighting for. They just wanted to act on their violent impulses, and fighting for freedom seemed like an OK reason to get behind if it meant finally firing your favorite weapon into a person.
That’s what the man in the fourth story window was thinking when he had the soldier in his scope, this was for freedom, this was for his rights and for the rights of the people. He pulled the trigger, and the soldier’s head burst like a cherry bomb, the rosary in his hands exploded beads all over the tank. All of the soldiers grabbed and readied their weapons, looking for the culprit.
The sniper tried his luck and aimed for another soldier, but he was spotted before he could lock on to
his next victim. One of the soldiers yelled his location and then bullets whizzed through the sniper’s body like a swarm of bees.
The tanks continued to storm down the street, but now the soldiers were on their toes for any more loonies like that.
When the last tank went by their house, Alejandro grabbed Charlie by the wrist again and they sprinted down the opposite way.
13
Charlie stopped to take a drink of his cold water, his lips hand gone dry reliving this. It was memories that had always been there, but he never thought about them until now.
“So then where’d you go?” Claire asked with the curiosity of a camp-fire audience member.
“We ran for a while, and there weren’t any more army-men. But we COULD hear gunshots in the distance, and bombs going off, and more airplanes flying over us every minute or so.
We ended up going into an abandoned warehouse in one of the bad parts of towns. My dad said we’d be safe there cause it was in a half built gated community. There wouldn’t be any places for people to hide and shoot each other, he said.”
“Well, was he right?”
“Yeah, sort of…”
*
From the top story window of an abandoned warehouse Alejandro watched the military jeeps go in and out of the gated community. The military was using the gated community as a rescue point for their wounded men. Helicopters touched down on the ground as paramedics carried wounded soldiers out from the jeeps and transported them into the helicopters. Then the helicopter presumably took them to get medical attention, or maybe to a place where they secretly killed the wounded. Who knew what regulations were in place.
The white sheets thrown over their bodies did nothing to hide the carnage. The blood soaked through, exposing where the damage had been. Blotches of red where limbs were meant to be meant that a soldier had lost a leg or an arm, or both. The red bumps and crumples in the abdomens of the soldiers were their exploded entrails. The ones whose heads were covered were the least lucky of them all, they were the soldiers who had been shot in the head and survived.
