by Sergio Gomez
“Boris, in your expert opinion, do you think Los Noches are monsters or are they something more…I don’t know, like wild animals.”
He was taken aback by the suddenness of the question. He wasn’t prepared for it, although he already knew how to answer. “I’m going to answer your question with a question, which usually drives me bonkers, but it’s the best way to make this point.” He leaned back in the seat and put his feet up on the dashboard. “Take a look at what we just witnessed in the village; a ritual morning feeding that brought the males together, a tradition, if you will.”
Boris looked out into the village. “Children playing with their friends. Babies and mamas cuddling.”
He took his feet off the console and leaned toward Alejandro. “Tomorrow these hairless creatures that come out of big machines on wheels and have sticks that go BOOM-BOOM and shoot them dead will stroll up to their village and ruin it to shit. Killing what we see on sight, lighting their homes on fires, and running the survivors out of town. By tomorrow morning most of them won’t exist, none of this village will exist. This is their last day as they know it, and unless they find the hole in the wall, they don’t suspect anything. We’re going to kill them all, try to eradicated that entire damn village that’s down there. So, amigo, you tell me who the monsters are, why don’t you?”
Alejandro turned the truck on. “I think we’ve seen enough.”
“We didn’t even count—“
“They don’t have a chance, anyway. The mob is likely all of the males and how many more can be in the big hut? Twenty at most?”
Boris shrugged. “Yeah, I guess so.”
Alejandro maneuvered the truck back on to the backroad and started driving back toward the highway. The shadows cast from the foliage that surrounded the lonely road didn’t bother him the way they had earlier. No, the shadows that concerned him now were the ones in his mind, the shadows of regret swooning him to pull the plug on this whole operation.
“Hey, fearless leader, I’m gonna catch some Z’s.” Boris said, and curled up on the car seat. He was asleep as soon as his eyes closed.
This left Alejandro by himself, with only the singing of the cicadas in the thick bushes and his thoughts to keep him company in the dark.
3
Everyone was awake when they got back, regardless of Alejandro’s orders to not stay up for them. Alejandro parked the truck on the yard and climbed out of the car. Boris woke up at the sound of the door opening and wiped drool off his mouth.
“Whew, that was a good power nap.” He swung out of the car and met the rest of the group at the front porch.
They were all gathered around Alejandro waiting their turns to ask their questions like reporters around an MVP of a Super Bowl.
“How’d it go?”
“We know what we’re up against,” Alejandro said. “But let’s go inside to discuss this.”
He shouldered through them and only Charlie followed.
“Pa, you okay?”
Without looking at him Alejandro said, “Just fine, mijo.”
*
Inside the bar Alejandro had loose leaf sheets of papers splayed out in front of him, a pencil in one hand, and a can of beer in the other. Charlie was picking up the crumpled pieces of paper from the ground and unfolding them to see why his dad was so frustrated. Opening the discarded pieces of paper told him they were battle plans on how to attack the village they found.
“I’ve never done this,” Alejandro admitted to him. “I mean, I used to plan out construction sites for the company all the time, but this is different.”
Charlie wasn’t sure if he was talking to him, but he answered anyway. “Why don’t you let everyone else help? Boris can probably come up with something, he’s smart.”
Two reasons he couldn’t: One, everyone was outside asking Boris questions he didn’t want to bother with, and two, because he was the leader, it was on his shoulders to figure this out.
The front door opened and Boris led the rest of the group to the bar. They sat down in front of Alejandro without a word.”
“Alright, bartender,” Boris said, “Give us one.”
“There’s no more and I don’t want anyone drinking the night before the attack, anyway.”
“But you’re drinking—”
“Don’t care, it’s just to get myself to think straight.”
Boris conceded to this. “Alright, then let’s move on to talks of strategy…what is it?”
“I’m thinking we use the vehicles for mobility.” Alejandro said.
“I like it so far, quick and easy.” Boris replied.
Alejandro and Paul had been down to the ammunition room and Alejandro remembered the smoke grenades. “We’ll have to use the smoke grenades to force them out of the huts, but we can’t open the grenades in the cars or we’ll flush ourselves with smoke.”
“Right,” Paul said.
“Which means someone will have to use the scooter and throw them into the west side huts, and someone else will have to be on the flatbed of the truck or on foot.”
“I’ll go on the flatbed of the truck,” Claire volunteered.
Alejandro nodded. “Then we’ll have two shooters in each of the vehicles. Charlie will be one. Who else wants to be a shooter?”
Paul raised his hand.
“Good. So Felicia or Boris, one of you has to be the other driver.”
“Wait, what?” Boris asked.
“Me and Charlie don’t leave each other’s side.”
“Fine,” Boris said, “I’ll be a driver.”
“Okay, then, we all have our roles.” Looking down at the notes he read from them. “Paul, Boris, and Claire will be in the truck. Me and Charlie will be in the SUV…that leaves you on the scooter Felicia.”
She shrugged. “I hope your boy can shoot, Alejandro.”
“He’s good, don’t worry on that count.”
“I don’t like Felicia being the only one by herself,” Paul interjected.
“Dad!” Claire said. She was comforted by the fact that her and her dad would be together, and didn’t want that to change.
“No, Claire, we either do this as a team or we all die together. Alejandro, I’ll volunteer myself to be on the scooter. We all know if Howie was alive there’d be no way Felicia gets the worst position.”
“Fine, Felicia, you’ll drive.” Alejandro said.
Boris groaned. Alejandro put his hand on his arm. “You got this, Boris.”
He rolled his eyes, but everyone saw the grin flash on his face.
“Okay, so Paul rides the scooter and Felicia drives the truck. So, that means me and Charlie in the SUV, Boris and Felicia and Claire in the truck, and Paul in the scooter.”
Claire crossed her arms and let out a breath like a bull. “This is bullshit, dad.”
“Honey, we’ll be fine.”
Alejandro ignored this, because it really didn’t matter to him who was where so long as he and Charlie were together in one vehicle.
There were no shadows of doubt in his mind any more, there was no guilt swimming around in his head, none at all. Boris falling asleep on the drive over here had given him a chance to almost meditate on the situation, and he had flipped a switch on his heart that turned it ice cold.
The question that Boris had asked him back at the village, about who the monsters were, he answered to himself, and he realized that this was the only way to get this done. He had to accept what he was becoming, and shed away his humanity (if only for the time being, if only until it was done and over with) and put his emotions away.
Los Noches were the enemy. The people he had fighting for him were the pawns he had to work with to route the enemy and win the game. All that mattered was victory, and he was going to succeed at all costs, because he accepted what this dark world had forced him to become.
Finally, he had accepted what he had been turned into.
4
It would’ve been a beautiful summer morning if not for the
fact that they were about to massacre several unsuspecting creatures. The sky was a light blue, the clouds looked soft as marshmallows, and the sun shone bright. Every few minutes a cool breeze would blow; the kind that your skin seems to drink from, a perfect Pennsylvania summer day.
They had all awoke before Alejandro, and when he stepped out from the bar into the sunlight he saw his crew ready to go to war. Felicia and Claire were on the back of the pickup with the scooter in between them—the scooter that they gained, in some way, for the price of two of their members from the crazy kid with the gun.
Paul waved to him from the driver’s side of the truck—the truck Alejandro had gained at the price of a man that in a matter of hours he had come to consider his friend.
Boris was standing on the hood of the SUV sipping on some coffee. His face lit up when he saw Alejandro and he gave him a thumbs-up. Alejandro smiled at him.
His son, Charlie, the reason he was doing all of this, came running out of the SUV and wrapped his arms around his waist. “Come on dad, we’re all waiting for you.”
Paul hit the horn on the truck and hollered, “Come on, you lazy son of a bitch! We have a date we can’t be late for!”
Boris slid his hand through the driver’s side window and laid on the horn. Felicia and Claire started cheering, and then Boris and Paul joined in with their own shouts.
Alejandro looked down at Charlie, and despite the danger they were about to dive into head first, Charlie was smiling. The color in his cheeks had returned as much as he had seen it all year, and he knew that Charlie was beginning to find happiness again.
That was enough to light a fire under him and get him going. He brushed Charlie’s hair back and kissed him on the forehead. “Let’s go, mijo!”
Charlie grabbed him by the wrist and took off sprinting toward the SUV, pulling Alejandro behind him.
5
This time they took the road past the trees until they were on the incline overlooking the village. Here the two vehicles came to a stop and they got out. Paul and Alejandro wasted no time and got the scooter out of the back of the truck, and then they went to join the rest of the group.
Everyone was pale, and the look in their eyes was a mixture of uncertainty, fear, and determination. They all knew what was at stake, and they all felt the same way, but they also knew there was no turning back.
“Claire, Paul, you got your grenades ready?” Alejandro asked.
Paul and Claire both showed their bags—two military-style shoulder bags tattered with age—to the group and Alejandro nodded.
“Everyone’s guns loaded and the safety off?”
There was a murmur that translated to ‘yes’. Alejandro nodded.
“Alright, we all remember the plan?” He asked.
“Yeah, I think we all got it,” Boris said. He looked over at the village. “Looks like a lot bigger of a task, don’t it?”
Alejandro’s impulse reaction was to argue with him and reassure the rest of the group so that morale didn’t go down, but when he glanced over at the village he saw Boris was right. The space between the huts were farther apart than he thought, and from this distance the huts looked a lot bigger and the windows where the smoke bombs would be thrown into were up higher. Paul would be pushing the motor of the little scooter and they’d have to drive through the village faster than he thought they would.
“We’ll be fine,” he said, hoping his voice didn’t sound as unsure as he felt about this.
Paul was on the scooter. “I’m ready to go when you guys are.”
Alejandro clapped Boris on the shoulder and pulled him off to the side and down the slope away from the rest of the group. Without the glasses Alejandro could see the resemblance between him and the hard-ironed old man that Howard was. “You’d already have made your dad proud.”
He gulped. “It’s too bad he’s not here to see me, huh? It’s kind of a fucked up thing that sometimes it takes losing someone for you to better yourself—even though they won’t be around to see your progress.”
A wind blew by and a clump of hair fell on his forehead.
“You don’t believe in an afterlife?” Alejandro asked.
“Not really, no. What about you? Do you believe in an afterlife or in God?”
Alejandro thought of his wife, thought of the feeling he sometimes got when he was laying in the dark with nothing but the sound of crickets chirping and Los Noches rummaging outside of whatever shoddy shelter he and Charlie had been using to keep safe, the feelings that his wife was somehow with them and somehow protecting them. His wife, or their guardian angel, or God himself, or maybe just the universe, whatever, but right now he didn’t feel that.
“I’m not sure, Boris. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t.”
“I prayed for the first time last night.” Boris admitted. “I didn’t feel like it was doing anything, but I’m desperate to try anything so we can make it out of here alright.”
“The group would appreciate it if they knew.”
Boris’s lips turned into his signature grin, the grin that annoyed many people but Alejandro had come to like. “Don’t tell them, I have an image to upkeep of a selfish ass.”
Alejandro chuckled and nodded. “Secret’s safe with me.”
“Yeah, now let me get on out of here and be ready to shoot down these fucking monsters.” Boris said, and started back.
“Hey, Boris, can you tell Claire to come talk to me.”
“Sure thing, amigo.”
Alejandro sat down on the grass and looked out into the village. He couldn’t help but feel like a man who was looking at the electric chair that would fry his brain or a man staring at a guillotine that would sever his head. The only difference was, unlike those fictional condemned men he could fight the device that might kill him, that was the hope he carried with him that others doomed to their death didn’t.
The soft rustle of Claire’s shoes walking through the dried out grass made him turn his head. A cool breeze blew by and he had to brush some hair out of his face, and when he did so he smiled up at her. She returned it, but it was forced and Alejandro could see the uncertainty written on her face.
Of all the people in the group besides Charlie, Claire was the one he wanted to—no, needed to—talk to the most.
He patted the grass beside him. “If you don’t mind, would you sit?”
She sat down next to him with the skittishness of a cat. They sat in silence, overlooking the village they were about to ransack until Alejandro spoke.
“I owe you an apology.”
Claire didn’t respond.
“You know the world we live in is cruel, and I had to do it,” he felt like he was talking to a wall. This must have been an inkling of the dreaded teen years all parents spoke about. He hadn’t experienced them with Charlie, and maybe never would, but Claire was giving him his first peek at what to expect. “I have Charlie to protect.”
“I get it.” She said, though tears were building up in her eyes from the flashbacks of Alejandro holding a gun to her father’s face. “It’s the same reason we’re going to have to kill all of those poor creatures down there, even though they haven’t really done anything to us. At least, not anything evil.”
She was looking at him now, and where streaks of tears ran down her cheeks stands of hairs stuck to her face that the wind had pushed.
“Yeah, that’s exactly it, Claire.”
“I know. I understood why you held us up with the gun when you saw us, but that doesn’t make it right…or does it? I don’t know.” She buried her head between her knees and let the crying commence at full force.
“We’ll change it all, though.” Alejandro said.
Claire stopped crying at these words and lifted her head. “Do you really think that, or are we only going to fix things temporarily?”
“Yes, I really do think Howard’ vision is possible. I’m going to be honest, it would’ve been easier with him around, but I’m going to try to do my damn best to get i
t done. The man died for this—and don’t tell Boris this, or anyone else, it’s between me and you—but he was willing to kick Boris out of the base because he saw him as a weak link to the cause.”
She nearly gasped. “What? Really?”
“Yeah, he told me in private. He didn’t want anything to stop or hinder his cause.”
“Poor Boris.”
Alejandro nodded. “It’s unfortunate, but the man was hellbent on rebuilding society. And his death has put that responsibility on my shoulders.”
Alejandro put his arm around her, and he expected her to retreat from it or stiffen up uncomfortably, but she surprised him by leaning into him.
“That must be a lot to bear,” She said in a voice so soft he thought he imagined it.
“Yeah, but we’ll get it done. I know we will.”
In his heart, he wasn’t so sure. But for the morale of the team he said that.
Claire got up. “I forgive you Alejandro. And a friend of my dad’s is a friend of mine.”
Alejandro was standing up, too. “Glad we’re on the same page now.”
Claire smiled, this time a real one. She turned and walked back to the group.
Left alone, Alejandro took in a slow, deep breath. Letting all of the fragrances of summer fill his lungs; the dying grass, the honeysuckles, the smell of hot air that somehow had a different scent than any other air. He held it in for a while, and then let it out.
Which meant it was time for them to go into the village. On shaky legs, he made his way back to the group.
6
Alejandro gave Paul the thumbs-up from the driver’s side of the SUV. Paul returned it and he started down the hill on the scooter. This was Felicia’s cue to head into the village. From the back of the truck Claire stood up and waved to them. Alejandro waved back to her to confirm that he saw, and then she crouched back down.
“I found Boris crying behind one of the cars before you came back.” Charlie said, as if continuing on with a conversation they had been having.
“Oh,” Alejandro managed to get out before Charlie cut him off.
