“Well, we know there are at least three trucks, so one is out here somewhere. Probably taking their bad-ass show on the road again.” Lutz had a tad of snark in his tone.
“I’d rather know exactly where they.... hey, door’s opening.” I poised the camera, waiting. Sure enough, several men came out of the larger building, walking out into the sunlight. They were looking up, but not at us. That made me stop taking pictures and try to see what they were looking for. “Shit, hang onto the branches.”
Over the opposing ridge the rotors of a helicopter appeared, running silent. I also grabbed branches of our cover, dropping my head behind the ridge. The backwash from the rotor blades hit us and it took everything to hang onto our little bit of cover.
When the turbulence stopped I slipped up to the edge again, switching my camera to video mode. “People are getting out of the helicopter. A lot of people, but from the looks of things they aren’t here voluntarily.”
“Illegals?” Lutz was still holding the branches, but turned enough to see the screen of my camera as I recorded the scene.
I could see the passengers now. “Yup. Looks like they’re rounding them up.”
“For what? They’re not Border Patrol and we took care of all the local vigilante groups.” He stretched to look over the edge too. Just then a woman was tossed from the helicopter, landing on her hands and knees, crying out as one of the uniformed men dragged her to the lineup. “That’s not good.” He looked over the group as they clustered together. “No kids. Where are the kids?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to guess because my mind went to the darkest place ever. I kept recording as the last of the illegals were pushed into the group. That’s when I saw the man from the wash, the Smirker, walking out of the mine shack. His mouth moved, but we were too far away to hear what he said with the helicopter blades still whirling down.
“What could he possibly want with these people? Human trafficking?” Lutz caught his breath as a young man made a break from the group, running for the edge of the plateau, one of the uniforms started after him, but Smirker raised a gun. No warning shot. Hitting the man in the back.
“Shit, shit, shit…” This was definitely no government operation. Lutz looked just as horrified as I felt. The Smirker was yelling now.
I could hear him as he raised his voice. “Anyone else?” His gun was pointed at them. “There’s no escape!” He shouted it in Spanish, making sure they understood.
Just then the door to the miner’s shack opened again. I thought it was going to be more mercenaries, but I nearly dropped the camera at the sight of a large… monster slithered out onto the plateau. A large horned serpent.
“What the fuck is that?” Lutz’ whole body stiffened as if ready to take off, even though we had to be at least fifty feet above the plateau.
I wanted to run too, but couldn’t. That certainty that I had to come here today was vindicated. I was here to prepare myself for something bigger, something of legends. I’d seen this beast in our ancient texts, in myths told to scare children around the campfire. In the stories I’d reread only hours ago. It was alive in front of me.
“It’s a…” Just thinking the word ignited a fire inside me. “It’s a Maxa’xak.”
“A what, a Maxak? How the fuck would you know?”
“A Maxa’xak. I’ll try to explain…later.” I refocused the camera.
The monster undulated across the rock floor, just as a snake would. It was easily the length of a city bus and the girth of two, three large men. Where it traveled there was a path of wet slime, but there was something wrong with the appearance. As solid as it appeared, there was a blurriness, a lack of definition.
I squeezed my eyes shut. Simple logic should have me denying what I saw, but I knew with a certainty this monster was real. I knew this monster deep down in the bones of my people. My blood burned as I reopened my eyes to look at it again. Now my vision was clear.
This was a Maxa’xak!
The beast rose up as it reached the cowering illegals, who screamed in terror, dropping to their knees as the massive horned head hovered over them. It hissed, fangs exposed and dripping as it sniffed at them. The Maxa’xak’s head jerked forward and grabbed one of the men in its mouth.
He screamed in pain and terror as the giant snake carried him away. A woman dared to chase after him, but got the butt of a rifle to her head. Gun barrels started to poke at the rest of the group, urging them to their feet and herding them into the mine.
I stopped recording as the door closed, sliding down the ridge to where Lutz had escaped, throwing up over a boulder. He went into dry heaves as I rubbed his back.
“We got to get out of here.”
“We can’t leave them here, to that… that monster. What the hell was that?” He got his water bottle out and tried to take a drink, a small one.
“The horned serpent. An evil water Spirit.”
“Seriously?” He looked at me as if I was crazy. “It’s got to be alien.”
I could see he was reaching past his own beliefs to come up with an explanation. “I guess you could call it that, but they’ve been here for as long as we have. A lot longer than even my people.” I heard the words coming out of my mouth, but I didn’t know why. I just knew they were true.
“We have to go.” I turned back to the ridge, pulling down the branches and starting to erase our presence. “Bury that.” I pointed to the
