“How long are you planning on watching that garbage?” demanded his mother from the small kitchen. “That trash won’t take itself out.”
Ignacio ignored her, engrossed by the actions of the cartoons onscreen.
Sitting in a nearby chair, his father chuckled as his mother shook her head.
“I guess you would find this amusing,” she muttered at him. “You’re just as lazy as your own son Ernesto!”
Still chuckling, his father put down his cup of coffee and faced his wife. “Don’t stress yourself,” he told her warmly. “You’ll feel better when Arturo and Fausto are born.”
“You mean Yolanda and Margarita,” she said rubbing her distended belly.
“You’ll be surprised,” he said. “We Gutierrez are notorious.”
“And I’m the one in charge,” she said, flicking him in the forehead, “so take out the trash.
…
Benson picked off a speck of residue from the bore brush before resuming his cleaning of the shotgun. Beside him, Timmy was reloading rounds into all of the clips.
“So what’s gonna happen?” the kid asked softly. “We failed.”
Benson shrugged as he ran the brush along the inside of the barrel. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “For now, we head south back into America and figure out a way to meet with our dear commander’s bosses.”
“What about… you know,” the kid querried gesturing at the unconscious body of the boy Ignacio and the dead body of their former leader.
Benson pulled out the brush and looked down the length of the barrel as he talked. “He’s our business, the boy is theirs.”
“We can’t trust them,” Timmy whispered. “They’re monsters.”
Benson said nothing, instead choosing to polish the polish the barrel. The two months in the enemy’s care had been hard on both the boy and his former commander. Scars covered the boy’s half-starved body. Luckily, the girls had bathed him and cut his hair into a respectable length. The commander’s body had been frozen into a solid chunk of ice, to prevent “any unpleasant surprises” as the dog-girl thing had put it.
“This is a good shotgun,” he said admiring his work.
“Good,” said a cold feminine voice that he had come to become more than familiar with. “Once he gets his eyes he’ll need it back if he hopes to survive.”
The one who was called Yolanda carefully stepped around the two humans and their stockpile of firearms to kneel down next to the boy. She brushed aside his hair from his face with a gentle touch.
Benson frowned at her, but resumed cleaning the gun, buffing the barrel.
“Don’t forget,” he said at last, “about our little agreement.”
Yolanda cupped her hand around Ignacio’s cheek. “My sister-mother has your prize,” she said. “Like I told you, it is up to the two of you to claim her.”
“He will,” Benson said.
A dark look in his eyes, Timmy slammed the half-loaded clip on the ground. “You had better not be saying what I think you just meant.”
“Sit down!” Benson demanded forcefully. “It’s time you grew up. Like it or not, we both learned that what she said was the truth. We need power to survive. Guns and nukes aren’t strong enough anymore. They never were. All they did was delay the inevitable.”
“Oh, so you’re gonna take the word of a goddamned Canuk as proof!” Timmy fumed with rage. “How the hell can you even justify that kind of shit? Hunh? Can you tell me that?”
Benson stood up and grabbed Timmy by the collar of his shirt. “So help me God…” he started. “Have you seen anything to make you not believe them? It worked for them, so by God we will make it work for us. I’m a monster and you’ve seen the shit I can do. I’ve killed men for fun and laughed about it. In the end of it all, I don’t have the right or the will anymore to wield that kind of power. So just fuck the fucking bitch!”
Throwing the kid down, he picked up the polished barrel and slid it into the stock of the gun.
“Things like that is probably why the Creator detested you people so,” said the dog-faced woman as she walked into the room, a red and white sphere in her hand.
“What’s that?” Timmy was quick to ask, desperate to redirect the conversation.
“A pokeball,” she said. “Inside is your girl-to-be, a rather displeased Charmelons. Yolanda and my daughter, Margarita as she’s calling herself now, will help you to get her…acceptable to the arrangement. While you kids have fun with that, I will be trying to help dumbshit over here come back to the land of the conscious.”
Yolanda glared at the other one, the air growing cold around her and flames sparking in her eyes. “I don’t trust you,” she growled, “even if you are the mother of my sister-mother.”
“Hell, I don’t trust either of you,” Benson remarked. “The kid’s fate is between the three of you, but for us, a deal has been made.”
…
With a header, Ignacio passed the ball to his cousin, Alejandro, who began to juggle the ball with his knees.
“Man, Chivas suck this year,” Alejandro said as he bounced the ball up high.
“Soccer sucks,” Ignacio shot back. “It’s all about football. Oilers all the way.”
Alejandro gave him a half-grin. “Shit, they suck too. They won’t even make the playoffs. ‘Sides Dallas got the rings already.”
“Bullshit,” Ignacios said as Alejandro passed him the ball, “all they got is “Moose” and Emmitt. They ain’t goin’ nowhere.”
‘Why here,’ she asked the mindscape.
‘Who are you,’ came the response. Beside her own mental image materialized a tall gangly boy with long hair and piercing eyes that narrowed at the sight of her projection. ‘You’re one of them. What do you want?’
She raised her head as if asking the sky why.
‘My daughter and her sister-daughter need you. I will need you in time,’ she answered at last. ‘You fell unconscious during the escape, and it has been quite a few days since then.’
‘So?’
‘So? So wake up! Is this how you want it to end? Killed by some dumb moron of a bug that threw a book at you?’
‘Maybe I deserve it.’
‘Look, this is getting us nowhere.’ She looked down at the young Ignacio arguing with his cousin. ‘Why are we here?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘This is your mind, your memories. What’s so important here?’
A soft smile spread across his face. ‘I guess so. Right here is probably where I was happiest then, when life was still bliss. A wonderful moment before the world turned into hell. That’s me and my cousin, Alejandro.’ He pointed to a pair of young girls playing on a swing set. ‘Those are my sisters, Margarita and Yolanda.’ He chuckled softly to himself. ‘Mom won that bet.’
‘They’re beautiful. Where are they now?’
‘They’re dead, buried beneath the waters of Texas.’
All she could do was gasp, and then the world around them blurred.
…
Cars lined the entire length of both the freeway and the bridge, including the shoulders, all facing the same direction, out of Texas. A sign that read “You are now leaving Texas” had been thrown across the river as a sort of makeshift bridge by someone. Everywhere, people were yelling at one another to move. The few National Guardsmen that were present struggled just to keep people from rushing the bridge.
Inside a small Chevy Impala decorated with the Virgin Mary on the hood, Ignacio and his parents and sisters sat there watching the commotion around them. Through the windows he could see that several of the cars had been abandoned as people gave up waiting and tried to cross on foot.
‘Where are we now?’
He gave her a rather indignant glare. ‘When the news came out on one expected any of this. It was just some backwater part of Canada getting visits from Bigfoot’s little sister. Canada for Christ’s sake! We lived in Texas!’
She shrugged. ‘And I was born in a lab. Big deal. So why here?’
His face was grim as he set his jaw. ‘You’ll see. The living hurricane had already left Africa. When satellites spotted her in the middle of the Gulf, we tried to evacuate. No one knew where to go, so we all ran. My father planned to take us to San Diego where a cousin of his lived.’
He pointed out the window. ‘You’ll need to see this. No, you’ll want to see it.’
A guardsman walked by, his hands clenched together above his head as he headed for the middle of the bridge.
As he pulled them apart, the glint of metal hung between his fingers.
‘I never learned why he did it. Maybe he just snapped.’
Several guardsmen surrounded him, their rifles trained upon the rouge soldier. They shouted at each other, pointing and yelling incoherently.
Someone fired in the air, and silence overcame everyone.
The rouge guardsman merely smiled and unclenched his hands.
The grenade dropped to the ground.
She was grateful as the world blurred.
…
“Are you ready?” Yolanda asked holding the ball in her hands.
“No,” was the immediate response. “What kind of a question is that?”
“A good one,” Margarita said, never looking up from the weathered and torn magazine that she had found lying around. “She is not ready. You will have to be for the both of you.” Margarita turned the page. “Hmm, ten secrets to making him happy,” she said reading. “Well that one’s a lie.”
Timmy shook his head. “Will this work?”
Next to the doorway, Benson nodded. “It has to.”
“Let’s do it,” Timmy said and Yolanda activated the ball.
…
Everywhere, the burning cars spat up thick acrid smoke.
Ignacio gripped onto his father’s hand tightly.
“Go son,” he told his child. “Protect your family.”
“No!” Ignacio protested. “I can’t.”
Inside his hand, he felt the fingers relax.
“Dad, no!”
Nearby, he could hear his two younger sisters weeping over the mangled flesh of their mother.
The world blurred to darkness.
‘That was certainly disturbing.’
‘That was the death of my parents. Of course it was.’
‘What about your sisters?’
He turned away from her. ‘No. You don’t want to see that.’
‘Maybe, but it looks like you need to see it.’ She placed a hand on his shoulder. ‘If just from a different perspective.’
He turned his head towards hers, catching her with his eyes. ‘Once you know, you can never unlearn it.’
‘Life can be like that.’
‘So can people.’
The burning wreckage surrounded them once more.
…
Yolanda pulled the Charmelon’s head out of the bucket of water.
“So,” she asked coldly, “how about now?”
“The Creator will kill you himself,” spat the fire-lizard-girl, sparks spitting out with each word.
“Wrong answer!”
Yolanda shoved the fiery head back into the bucket.
…
“We’ve got a survivor!”
Rough hands grabbed Ignacio and his sisters from the mangled wreckage of the car.
They made their way through the black smoke, struggling to breathe with each step. As they broke free, Ignacio saw the devastation around them.
The bridge was in shambles. Several cars had been flipped into the river, and concrete had been thrown everywhere. What was worse was the cars that had caught fire, either from the blast or the gas tanks that had ignited.
“Are you alright?”
Ignacio blinked hard, and looked up at the young man holding him in his arms a concerned look etched across his face. Behind them, he could see another one step from the flames, his sisters held in each arm.
“Yolanda!” he croaked, “Margarita!”
“Are you okay?” the guardsman asked him once more.
Ignacio nodded, and felt himself relax as his body was placed on the ground.
“Just catch your breathe,” the guardsman said. “Don’t try to move.”
Taking a deep, unsteady breathe, he ran back into the smoke.
Ignacio clasped his sisters’ hands as their bodies were lain next to his.
“Are they…”
“They’ll be alright,” the other guardsman said reassuringly. “I used to be a paramedic. You just need to rest a little bit.”
The man gave him a soft smile and stepped into the smoke.
‘How touching.’
‘If you think so.’
Ignacio lay on his back in the soft grass, watching a flock of birds in flying south in the distance.
He frowned. Birds?
The one in front stretched out its wings fully, revealing the four legs of its catlike body.
“What the fuck?”
…
Benson shuddered as he closed the door behind him.
In the other room, he could hear them as they continued their assault on the creature. He thought he’d seen the worst a person could become on the force, but those women scared him more than anything else in his life. They truly were Monsters.
He looked over at the dog-woman thing and the kid.
She had placed him on top of a full sized table, surrounded by incense and candles and all sorts of stuff that he couldn’t even begin to describe. A pile of sheets thick with dust served as a sort of makeshift bedding. She lay atop him, straddling his body, her head upon his.
Benson sighed and pulled a cigar from his jacket pocket.
He made sure to close the door softly behind him.
…
Feathers rained down from above. Like blasts of condensed energy, they tore through the earth around him. What few cars hadn’t been destroyed by the grenade blast were reduced to nothing more than steel husks.
As he lay huddled over his sisters’ sleeping bodies, destruction reigning around Ignacio.
They were Monsters, nothing like the girl-shaped monstrosities described on the television. They were simply giant cats with wings, howling in the air as the swooped down to the ground.
“Run!” shouted one of the other survivors and everyone scattered.
The beasts tore after them, throwing aside the car frames as if they were nothing more than toys with swipes from their massive paws.
‘Impressive detail.’
‘I remember every second of this moment. I can’t forget it.’
One of the beasts looked at the young Ignacio. The two stared, each reflected in the other’s eye.
‘This was the moment, what you thought you wanted to see.’
“Fuck!” shouted Ignacio, and he ran, jumping into the river.
‘I left my sisters to die just to save myself.’
…
Timmy forced the lizard-girl’s legs apart as Yolanda and Margarita pinned her arms legs and tail down.
Taking a deep breathe, he undid his pants.
…
Once more, they were wrapped in darkness.
She looked him in the eyes. ‘There are some things I think you deserve to know, things you need to know.’
Ignacio laughed, his arms folded across his chest. ‘Like what?’
‘My daughter and her sister-daughter…’
The interjection was immediate. ‘I’ve been wondering how that works for sometime now.’
‘The girl you call Margarita is my daughter in only a very loose sense of the word. My DNA was used when she was first designed and constructed along with several other different types. As a part of me is a part of her she is my daughter. In that sense Yolanda is both her sister and her daughter, while I am at most a grandmother to her.’
‘That makes no sense.’
‘Then I can’t explain it to you.’ She chuckled softly. ‘Do you know what Yolanda’s first words were? I doubt even she remembers speaking them. “I feel nothing. I am nothing.” Nothing. Can you believe that?’
‘She’s not nothing, or at least she wasn’t.’ he sighed looking out into the blackness. ‘I failed her too.’
‘How?’
‘I just let her die, without doing anything to try and stop it. She was helping me, and I couldn’t save her in return.’
‘You don’t shoulder the weight of the world. You’re only human, not to mention blind? What happened to all that strength that you held for those two months?’
‘Did you see what the book that… other one threw at me was?’
‘Did you?’
‘What a silly question. I’m blind! I can’t even see the hand in front of me right now.’
‘Of all the fucking… I don’t believe this shit.’ She slapped hard across the face. ‘Get over it! So you fucked up big. Learn from it, grow stronger. Change who you are and become who you want to be.’
‘That hurt.’
‘When you’re done feeling sorry for yourself, your family will be waiting. I’m tired of babysitting you.’
…
Her body was stiff and sore, tired from staying still for so long as she rose up, looking about the room with heavy eyes.
“You’re up,” said a stern voice. She looked over as Benson pulled a half-chewed cigar from his mouth. “Did it work?”
“Who knows,” she shrugged. “I’m surprised you aren’t watching, great monster that you are.”
“Torture and rape just aren’t my thing it appears,” he replied flatly.
“That’s good,” said Ignacio from beneath the Ding-ho. “Would you mind getting off?”
“No,” she said with a smile, “I think I might like this.”
Benson chuckled. “Guess I’ll leave you two at it then.” He picked up a rifle and put the cigar back in his mouth. “I’m gonna go for a walk.”
As Benson left, Ignacio placed his hands on her thighs. “So, what’s your name, oh great head fucker?”
“How about Rosalyn?” she said ruffling his hair.
“That’s just great,” he cried aloud with a groan.
“What?”
“Rosalyn was the name of the first girl I slept with,” he told her. “And she wasn’t bossy like you.”
“Tough,” she told him. “I like it and you asked. Now to tell Margarita and Yolanda the news.”
“Wait,” he said with a pause. “What was that?”
“Silly boy,” the dog-girl said with a lick to his face. “You have a lot to learn.”
“No doubt.” He smiled as she kissed him on the forehead.