Keith’s face darkened. “Whose idea was it to come here?” He looked pointedly at Maria.
“Don’t look at me like that, damn you!” she spat. “I told you to leave town when you first walked in the cantina!”
Joe jabbed the padre’s shoulder with his thumb, causing the old man to wince. “Come on, Padre,” Joe snapped. “Get your stuff and let’s get into the chapel.”
Father Tom grabbed two bottles of whiskey from drawers in his desk and slipped a shot glass into his cassock. “I am ready. This is all I need.”
Joe looked at the bottles and smirked. “You are a man after my own heart, Father.”
Father Tom smiled and cradled the bottles like a newborn baby. “Man does not live by faith alone, my young friend.”
Joe smiled wryly and guided him out of the room. As he was turning to lock the door, the boy ran up. “Señor, señor, wait. I have to get Rolando!”
“Who is Rolando?”
“He is my dog. Open the door so I can get him, so the monsters don’t eat him.”
“I didn’t see a dog in there.”
“He was hiding. He’s not a brave dog, but he’s mine, and I love him.”
Joe cracked the door. “Okay kid,” he said. “Go get him.” The boy ran into the room and knelt down to look under the bed. “Rolando, Rolando, come here boy. We’re going into the other room.”
Whimpering came from beneath the bed. The boy crawled under and scooted back out with his arms wrapped around a small cream-colored mongrel. Joe impatiently motioned with his pistol. “Hurry up, kid. We got monsters running loose outside.”
The boy scurried past him into the chapel. Joe called out for his brother and when Keith joined him he said, “Give me a hand. Let’s block the window with this bed.”
The two brothers flipped the bed up against the wall and slid it over the window. Keith grimaced when he looked at it. “This is not going to do much good.”
“Better than nothing,” Joe replied.
“If you say so.”
They walked back out to the chapel and Joe closed and locked the door behind them. They found Carlos sitting on a pew with Maria, his chest wounds oozing dark, sticky blood. Joe frowned when he saw him. “You okay, Carlos?”
“No. I feel like shit. I hurt all over.”
Ramón joined them. “We need to get you bandaged up and stop the bleeding. You took quite the mauling back there.”
Carlos winced. “It slashed me up pretty good. But poor Vinnie! At least they didn’t take me like they took him.”
The padre joined them with the boy trailing him and Rolando close behind, tail wagging. Father Tom clucked his tongue at the sight of Carlos bleeding.
“Chico,” he said, turning to the boy. “Go and get the first aid kit.”
Chico ran off with the dog yipping at his heels. Maria helped Carlos remove his shredded guayabera shirt. He winced as he struggled loose from the bloody fabric, and the others whistled when they saw the extent of his wounds. There were deep slashes running diagonally across his chest, from his shoulder to his stomach.
“Do these things have rabies?” Carlos asked, turning to the old priest and gritting his teeth against the pain.
“No one knows,” said Father Tom. “You’re the first one to survive an attack. Normally all we find are corpses drained of blood, or bodies that have been ripped apart, completely unrecognizable.” He grimaced. “The chupacabras sometimes go into a killing frenzy.”
After inspecting the wound, Maria stood up, hands on her hips, and announced, “One of you will come with me and we’ll get some water from the kitchen.”
Joe stepped forward. “I’ll go.”
Maria moved off. “Come with me.”
She led him to the small kitchen down the hallway to the right of the altar and set some water on the stove and lit the burner. Dark, scurrying shapes moved around in the gloom behind the bars of the windows set in an alcove above the tiny sink.
“Get the linen napkins and towels for your friend,” Maria instructed him.
While Joe checked the cabinet on one side of the room, he asked over his shoulder, “How long do these goatsucker things roam around?”
Maria turned away from the stove and watched him poke through the cupboard. “As soon as the sun comes out they go back to their caves in the mountains. They don’t come out during the day. No one knows why, but they don’t.”
Joe suddenly noticed the old rotary dial telephone on the wall next to the cupboard. He snapped his fingers and pointed to it. “Look!” he cried.
“It’s a telephone,” Maria said.
“I know it’s a telephone, you dippy broad. We can call for help.”
Maria shook her head. “No one will come. No one who lives here will leave their house after dark. Anyone else is too far away to get here in time.”
Joe picked up the receiver and put it to his ear. “It works. There’s a dial tone.” He turned and shouted down the hallway. “Ramón! Ramón, get in here.”
“You’re wasting your time,” Maria insisted. “No one will come. You should help your friend. The nearest hospital is almost a hundred kilometers away. If we survive the night, we will be okay.”
In his excitement, Joe ignored her, and soon Ramón was there, his face desperate and confused. Then Joe showed him the phone.
“Thank God,” Ramón breathed, picking up the receiver and hearing the dial tone.
Maria tapped Joe on his shoulder. “Give me a hand with the water, it’s boiling.”
Joe grabbed the bucket of boiling water, using linen napkins as pot-holders, and they went out into the chapel to see Carlos. Ramón dialed a number and waited for someone to pick up on the other end of the line.
««—»»
In the chapel, Father Tom stood before Carlos and Keith with his bottle in his hand. Slinking figures prowled outside the building, bumping and pushing at the door.
“And who might you laddies be?” Father Tom asked Keith.
Keith jabbed his thumb at his own chest. “I’m Keith Gifford.” He pointed to the hallway. “The guy in the kitchen is my brother, Joe. This is Carlos, and the other guy is Ramón. Who are you? Are you American?”
The padre paced up and down the aisle between the pews. “I’m Thomas Murphy. I’m Irish. I’ve been doing the Lord’s work in Mexico for the past thirty years. I’ve been here in La Esperanza for twenty years now. Just in time to see Satan’s minions overwhelm the town.”
“When did the chupacabras start attacking this place?” asked Carlos.
Father Tom shrugged. “It was several years after I arrived when we first started finding cattle drained of blood.”
“These things drink blood?” Keith’s face crinkled in disgust.
Father Tom nodded. “Their tails have a stinger on the end that contains a paralyzing neurotoxin which they use, I suspect, to immobilize their prey so they can suck their blood. At first they were shy around humans and only preyed upon animals like goats, sheep, cows, horses, pigs—dogs and cats even—but they lost their fear of man very quickly. They have grown progressively more ferocious. Sometimes they seem to kill for reasons other than hunger. I am not sure what motivates them.”
“Maybe they like the way we taste,” Keith cracked.
“Why have you not tried to get help from the authorities in eliminating them?” Carlos wanted to know.
Father Tom gave him a dubious look and said, “I can see you have no experience with these creatures. They are not exactly easy to kill. Their skin is remarkably tough and they can move with astonishing speed, both on the ground and in the air. They are very formidable.” He stopped pacing and stared at Carlos. “And besides, who would believe us if we told them we had a chupacabra infestation?”
Carlos could understand what he meant; most people were not prepared to accept the existence of monsters. He had ridiculed the notion of chupacabras until one attacked him.
Maria and Joe arrived with the water and towels just as Chico
returned with the first aid kit. Keith took it from him and opened it up. “Not much in here.” He looked to the padre. “Where is the closest hospital?”
“About ninety kilometers away, but you can’t leave here until morning.”
Maria soaked a linen napkin in hot water and began to daub the wounds on Carlos’s chest. He winced in pain and gritted his teeth. “The cuts are deep but no arteries were cut,” Maria told him.
He smiled a tight smile. “It’s enough to hurt real badly, but I will survive. I am tough.”
««—»»
In the kitchen, Ramón dialed a number on the phone and leaned against the wall, with his back to the window. Shadows flitted back and forth, just outside the stained glass.
“This is Ramón,” he said when Paco Rodriguez, El Jefe’s number two lieutenant, picked up on the other end. “Let me talk to El Jefe.”
“He’s not here.”
Ramón sighed. “Well, listen carefully: we’re in a town called La Esperanza, it’s off the main road—”
“You got the stuff?”
“Yeah, we’ve got the stuff. Listen, Vicente’s dead and Carlos is hurt pretty badly. We have two flat tires. We’re going to need an ambulance for Carlos and a tow truck.”
“What? What the hell happened?”
Ramón wiped his face with his free hand and then said, “We got attacked by chupacabras.”
Silence on the other end. Then Paco said, “Say again?”
“I said chupacabras attacked us.” Ramón pulled the phone away from his ear as Paco’s boisterous laugh filled the earpiece. Ramón put his mouth close to the speaker. “Stop laughing, damn you! I’m not joking. I’m dead serious. This town is filled with these monsters.”
“Bullshit. Are you high?”
“No, I am not high. Chupacabras are real. I’ve seen them with my own eyes.”
“Chupacabras are a folk tale.”
“They’re not a folk tale—they’re real. I killed some myself.”
“Vicente is a tough old hombre.”
“Yeah, Vinnie is a bad-ass. They swooped down and snatched him like a hawk taking a mouse!”
“Ah, come off it, man,” Paco protested. “Stop this foolishness.”
Ramón ignored him. “We’re in the church in the main square in the town of La Esperanza. I think we can hold them off until sunrise. We need a tow truck and an ambulance right away, with plenty of firepower.”
“Well, I don’t know, man,” Paco protested. “Like I said, El Jefe is not here right now. He’s taken his new helicopter to Vera Cruz for the night. He’ll be back tomorrow.”
“Don’t bullshit me, this is for real!”
With a crash of breaking glass, the window behind Ramón shattered. A thrashing arm shot through and clawed at his back. He jumped away from the window and raised his pistol. A sour smell assaulted his nose, like swamp water mixed with spoiled meat. He saw a hissing chupacabra face silhouetted in the shards of broken glass between the bars. He aimed his pistol at one of the gleaming insect eyes and pulled the trigger. The eye erupted in a shower of incandescent goo. The shrill screeching of the beast echoed through the church as it tumbled backward into the darkness, ripping the phone from the wall with its grasping hand as it fell.
Ramón looked in dismay at the trail of wires where the phone had been, almost as if the creature had been aiming to destroy their only means of communicating with the outside world.
Joe burst into the kitchen, gun drawn, ready to shoot. “What happened?”
Ramón pointed to the window. “One of those things tried to kill me, but I’m okay. It’s dead, I think.”
Joe looked at the wires dangling from the hole in the wall. “What happened to the phone?”
Ramón shrugged. “Well, as you can see, the phone is now fucked, but I spoke with El Jefe’s flunky. He thought it was a joke. I don’t know if they’re going to send help or not.”
“A joke? How could he think we’re joking?”
“Because Joe, most people don’t believe in monsters, just like we didn’t until an hour ago.”
Joe grabbed the kitchen table and began dragging it to the window. “Give me a hand with this. Let’s block the window.”
They lifted the table up and leaned it against the window just as Father Tom walked in, frowning. “What’s going on in here?”
Ramón pointed. “One of those things broke the window and tried to kill me.”
“The bars will keep them out,” Father Tom replied firmly.
Joe shook his head and adjusted the table against the window. “We don’t want them reaching in. Do you have any hammers and nails around here?”
Father Tom placed in hands together in a gesture of prayer. “There’s really no need to make a mess.”
“A mess?” Ramón gasped. “We are trapped in here and you are worried about us making a mess?”
“We are safe in here, young man,” Father Tom assured him.
“I am not so sure,” Joe chimed in and turned to Ramón. “How much ammo you got left?”
Ramón popped the magazine from his pistol, checked it, and slapped it back in. “Three bullets left in the gun.”
Joe looked at the old priest. “How many of those things do you think are out there?”
Father Tom held up his hands in a grand shrug. “Who knows? No one has ever counted them.”
Joe narrowed his eyes. “What are we going to do if they bust in through the doors or tear the bars off the windows?”
“Bah!” snorted the old man.
Joe poked him in the chest with his index finger. “Hey, you’re the one that said they would stop at nothing to get in here now that we’d capped a few.”
The padre wilted in silent agreement.
Joe went to the shattered window and peered out. The night was inky black and pregnant with menace. All around here could hear the shrieks and croaks of the strange creatures. “If there are more of them than we have bullets, we’re fucked. Pardon the French, Padre.”
Father Tom shook his head and pursed his lips. “We’re safe in here. All the windows have iron bars and the doors are sturdy.”
As if in response to his statement, the front doors to the chapel began to rattle on their hinges. The sound echoed down the hallway. Joe and Ramón shared a quick, horrified glance. “Have they ever tried to get in here?” asked Joe.
“Well, no,” Father Tom sighed. “I’ve never antagonized the beasts, much less killed any of them.”
Ramón holstered his pistol. “So, for all we know they could be ready to bust down the door and eat us?”
“Trying and doing are two different things, my son.”
“I don’t want to bet my life on that.”
“At this point, you don’t have much choice in the matter.”
Joe gave him a hard look. “We can always improve our chances by getting more guns and ammo. We’ve got a fuckin’ arsenal in that car out there.”
Father Tom looked at him in alarm. “And that car is surrounded by hundreds of chupacabras.”
Ramón scratched his chin and said, “We will have to distract them somehow.”
Joe nodded. “Yep. That’s what I was thinking.” He looked at Ramón and smiled tightly. “I’ve got an idea.”
««—»»
In the chapel, Keith hovered near the front doors and watched anxiously as they rattled and threatened to collapse. The sound of the creatures outside was like the ocean, rising and falling. Hiss! Scratch! Boom!
Joe, Ramón, and the old priest walked in and Joe called out, “How much ammo you got left, Keith?”
Keith frowned and patted his combat jacket, checking its multiple pockets. “I dunno, a few spare mags.” He directed their attention to the front doors. “I am worried about these doors.”
“I know,” Joe said. “I am too. We are going to deal with it, don’t worry.” Joe sought out the boy and asked, “Can you find me a hammer and some nails? If you can’t find a hammer, anything will do. One of
these brass candleholders will work.”
Chico smiled at him, glad to be of assistance. “Yes, señor.” He ran off with the dog at his heels. Joe shouted to Carlos, “How much ammo you got?”
Carlos checked his pockets. He had one speed loader for his revolver left. “Not much.”
“Okay, that settles it.”
Keith joined them and asked, “Settles what?”
Joe looked at his brother and said, “We need to get the guns and ammunition out of the car.”
Keith took an involuntary step back. “What? Are you crazy? There are a million of those things out there! Can’t you hear them? They’re probably all over the car.”
“We are going to distract them.”
“How?” snorted Keith. “Send somebody out as bait?” He looked pointedly at the old priest.
Joe ignored him and addressed Father Tom. “Padre, do you have anything that will burn? Gas, kerosene, lighter fluid, anything?”
Father Tom nodded. “There’s kerosene in the kitchen. We use it for the stove.”
Joe found Maria next to Carlos in the pews. “Maria, you go find a bucket and I’ll meet you in the kitchen.” As she got up to leave, Keith wandered over anxiously and asked, “What have you got in mind?”
Joe smiled thinly. “We’re gonna have ourselves a chupacabra barbecue.”
Keith’s eyes were full of fear. “You’ll never get the front doors open. As soon as we crack the bar, they’re gonna swarm in here and get us!”
Joe ignored him and turned to Father Tom. “I am going to need those bottles, Padre.”
Father Tom clutched the bottles to his chest protectively. “Not these bottles. I’ll show you where I keep my empties.”
Joe pointed. “Ramón, go with him and I’ll meet you in the kitchen.”
“This will never work,” Keith insisted.
Joe turned to Carlos. “Carlos, cover the door. Give us a holler if it starts to break.”
Carlos heaved himself to his feet, but didn’t argue. Wincing and breathing heavily, he went and stood near the doors, which continued to shake as clawed hands tore at it. The creatures were growing angry, insistent. Their sibilant hissing made a steady background sound like white noise on a TV.
Fury of the Chupacabras Page 4
