Lay of the land, law of the land

By Pedro Cabiya

“No way.”

“I’m not kidding.”

Sasha was very pretty, unbearably so according to her many secret admirers at school. What they didn’t know was that Sasha could turn her pretty up or down at will. Talk about skills.

“Dad!”

She tried anger first, indignation, but Ignacio didn’t bite. Old-school fathers like him did not grant personhood to children—certainly not to their own—so it was nigh impossible for him to even conceive that his daughter might feel insulted by his proposition. Sasha readjusted her aim quickly.

“Dad…,” she whimpered. Now she was aiming for pity. This could sell; after all, for old-school fathers like Ignacio, children—especially their own—are pitiable creatures. It was probably overkill, but as an added safety measure, she turned her pretty way up. It almost worked.

“Listen, missy…”

And she knew all was lost.

She should’ve known.

“The bad grades I could’ve handled. Shit, they’re still better than mine were when I was your age. I don’t care about the smoking; they’re your lungs and you know how to read. But I draw the line at sass and lip. Not in my house. Not to my wife. Pack your bags, malcriá. You’re off to grandma’s.”

“The whole summer?” crying now.

“I hadn’t thought of that, but now that you mention it, sure, the whole summer. And not to laze around. You’re gonna work. You’ll earn your keep. Mami needs a hand with her business and you’re it.”

Reluctantly—for it could backfire with unforeseeable consequences—she took a shot at Ignacio’s sense of responsibility. And very eloquently, too.

“I can’t believe you would put your own daughter in harm’s way just to make a point.”

“Harm’s way?” Ignacio took a step back, stung. “What are you talking about?”

“Don’t play dumb, you know damn well what I’m talking about! How can you send me to that… place? In summer!”

Oh boy…

“I grew up in that place,” said Ignacio, hurt. “Spent all my summers there. I’m in one piece, aren’t I? You wanna know why?”

Ignacio leaned over Sasha’s face.

“It leaves people alone,” he whispered. “And I am people.”

Sasha threw herself on the sofa and buried her face in her hands. Perhaps drama could do the trick. Ignacio towered over her.

“We all were. We all are. But maybe you’re not. And if you’re not, you’re gonna have to learn to be. Aprende a ser gente.”

It didn’t. She again stood up and faced her father.

“I think you’re overreacting. I think Yoli is overreacting. I think everyone in this house is fucking insane!”

“Well, well…” Ignacio smiled malevolently. “How fast do you think that is gonna make me change my mind?”

It was now time to try violence.

“I hate you!” Sasha yelled. “I hate you and your stupid bitch! You can’t make me go anywhere! I’m staying right here! I’m staying right here and there’s nothing you can do about it!”

***

The bucket is heavy. The handle digs into Sasha’s palm—now the right hand, then the other, again the right, now both—and there’s really no way she can carry the thing without getting hurt. Actually there is one, but she doesn’t yet know how to balance burdens on her head and she’s not about to start practicing with a pail full of pig shit.

It’s hot as hell today. Today and every other day. Almost as hot and muggy and suffocating as Orlando gets in July, with just as many mosquitoes, with just as many poisonous allergens, and with just as much Sahara dust. It was the first thing she noticed when she walked out of the airport terminal and hit a wall of compact heat that pushed back as she tried to advance through it, resisting her every step. Like walking underwater.

Her grandma wasn’t there to pick her up; she had sent Tito. It was just as well. Sasha was still smarting from the fight with her dad on her last day at home, and did not trust herself not to carry it on with his mom. Tito was a couple of years older than she, nerdy and silent. They were distantly, unclearly related, like all people in small mountain towns are distantly and unclearly related, sharing, most of them, an unfaithful tatarabuelo or two. He had been short and scrawny the last time she saw him, two months after María leveled her town of Adjuntas, and now, four years later, he was still scrawny, but taller. When her father decided to move the family to Florida, there had been talk of taking Tito with them. But Tito, like her grandmother, was one of them silly hicks you see in the news sometimes, loath to leave their flooded houses, their crumbling houses, their houses about to be consumed by the forest fire, washed away by the mudslide, obliterated by slowly advancing magma, poisoned forever by radionuclides. “My place is here,” they declared mostly, though “here” had been or was about to be erased from the face of the Earth. In Adjuntas here meant ruins and an utter lack of basic services, so of course she found Tito’s showboating ludicrous. Her grandma’s she found suicidal.

Tito shook her hand awkwardly and took her suitcase.

“You don’t have to carry that,” Sasha said.

“That’s okay.”

“What I mean is you can roll it. It has wheels.”

But Tito kept on carrying it, which Sasha found idiotic.

He led her to her grandmother’s blue 1978 Ford pick-up. Tito had to open the doors by actually inserting and turning a key in the lock. Sasha had never seen such a thing. The cabin smelled of heated vinyl and ancient cigarette ash. There was a foldable mason’s ruler on the floor, a blue chisel, a two-pound sledgehammer, and a length of yellow rope. The truck had no air conditioning and the windows had to be cranked down. The sky was hazy with dust particles, giving it a honey-colored overcast. An hour or so later, they started the slow, winding ascent to Adjuntas, and when warning signs started appearing at ever-decreasing intervals Sasha knew she was already firmly inside Chupacabra country, smack in the middle of Chupacabra season.

***

“This is fucking bullshit,” Sasha muttered.

Tito couldn’t help himself. “Well, actually—”

“Ay, Tito, please,” Sasha said, scooping pig shit out of the bucket, “shut the fuck up.”

Carefully, she drew a ring of fertilizer around the stem of the bush. “Not too big and not too small,” her grandma insisted.

“Crazy hippie bitch,” Sasha mumbled under her breath and moved on to the next plant, Tito in tow carrying the bucket. The garden was tidy and symmetrical. The little white hairs covering the neatly pruned chickpea plants made them look frosty in the sunlight.

“We’re almost done,” said Tito.

“Why am I on shit-scooping detail is what I wanna know.”

“Because I was on shit-scooping detail for the plantains.”

“That’s like fifty plants. These are like a hundred.”

“Also your hands are all peeled from the bucket handle.”

“Fuck this shit.”

Next, they had to repeat the procedure for the lemon trees, for the orange grove, for the banana garden, and for the avocados, until there was no more pig shit left in the pen. And when there was no more pig shit left in the pen, they had to gather all the chicken shit in the coops and feed it to the corn, the okra, the acerola, the guanábana, the passion fruits, and the chayotes. “The sacred cycle of crap,” her grandmother called it.

Only then did they have breakfast.

As always, she stormed into the small kitchen and sat at the table only to be unsat almost immediately by a small, girlish, barrel-shaped figure with long white hair, high cheekbones, and skin the color of terracotta, who pulled her up by the scruff of the neck and dragged her back outside.

“Wash!” the old woman screamed. “And ask for my blessing, malcriá!”

Tearfully Sasha met Tito—who knew better—at the water pump, washed her hands and face, and returned to the kitchen with simmering anger.

“Bendición,” she requested with ill-concealed outrage.

“Dios te bendiga,” answered her grandmother and it was all Sasha could do not to choke as she wolfed down the fried eggs, bacon, toast, and yautía coco with olive oil with an appetite she could have never mustered in Orlando.

“Good morning, doña Alicia,” was all Tito said.

Breakfast was the best part of Sasha’s day; it was all downhill from there. After people ate, it was the animals’ turn. First the pigs, then the chickens, then the goats. During the first days of her tenure at the farm, the animals would test her resolve and try to wrest the food from her. Even the chickens. The pigs were especially impatient, and the goats were full of trickery. At first, she would drop the pail and take off running, but later she dared heed Alicia’s advice and administer a couple of kicks here and there.

“They are not pets,” her grandma had told her. “They’re here to be fattened, killed, and eaten. Show them who’s boss, and fast.”

Sasha walked over to the edge of the ranch, close to the river, where the pens were. It never got old, that sign. She’d been there three weeks and still that sign would strike fear into her heart. They say normal is what you see all day, every day, and that might be so for the local townsfolk. But Sasha didn’t think she could ever get used to the Puerto Rico normal, no matter how long she stayed. And it was with eyes shaped by the Florida normal, the Orlando normal, that she read over the wooden arch that framed the entrance to the corral: THIS RANCH HAS BEEN CHUPACABRA-FREE FOR 147 DAYS.

Alicia updated the number first thing every morning. All over town you’d see similar signs. From the basic warnings by the side of the road (“Beware of the Chupacabra”), to more civic exhortations (“Protect your livestock. Report all attacks and sightings of the Chupacabra. Call 1-800…”), to private agitation not sanctioned by the municipality (“The only good Chupacabra is a dead Chupacabra. Buy a shotgun TODAY”). They were written in bold black uppercase type on a white background surrounded by a three-inch red reflective border and displayed a stylized government-issued icon representing the monster.

Alicia’s sign over her ranch was custom-made but followed the same guidelines, which made it very official-looking. Every time Sasha walked under it, she felt an icy finger trace the dashed line of her spine from the small of her back to the base of her skull.

Tito went over to the goat pen, a large, round, fenced enclosure across the river and over a faraway hill—it’s always best to isolate mischievous animals. Meanwhile, she filled a round pan with chicken feed and entered the coop, a long structure housing hundreds of birds; the din of their flapping, clucking, clacking, and foraging became, after a while, the sound of silence.

She was lost in thought and didn’t notice at first.

Then, a sudden quiet; real silence reasserting itself. The animals frozen, looking at her, as if someone had paused a video, a large silence, a silence that extended beyond the coop; even the pigs, who constantly grunted and fought, had gone silent. A silence that encompassed the mountains, a stillness, the sound of absolute nothingness. The paralyzed chickens looking at her; she, also paralyzed, wanting to run, wanting to be back home so bad, wanting to yell for Tito, confused by the hot rivulets of urine running down her legs.

And then the doors of heaven opening to release a torrential cloudburst that did not obey the rules of crescendo but blasted against the zinc roof fully formed, a sustained explosion of rainwater that drowned her scream and put the world into motion once again.

***

Alicia drove the pick-up right up to the chicken coop, drifting expertly to within inches of where Sasha was sitting, soaked and crying.

“Get in.”

Sasha dried her eyes, or tried. Her grandma showed no interest in knowing why she was out in the rain crying.

“What happened? Where’re we going?”

“Just get in, girl,” said Alicia and started honking the horn. Tito appeared out of nowhere, panting. They got in the truck and the old woman floored the pedal.

“Who got hit?” asked Tito.

“Fermín and Paciencia, up in Yahuecas.”

“What’d they lose?”

“Every rabbit in the damn pens and their best milk cow.”

“Puñeta… During the day?”

“I don’t think so. They had a doctor’s appointment in Ponce and just got back. Julito was sick and didn’t come to work today, so nobody had gone up there until now.”

“Can somebody please tell me what’s going on?” asked Sasha.

“You’ll see,” said Tito.

They had to make their way through a crowd. Everybody was there, all local smallholders. No police, no journalists.

“In Orlando the place would’ve been crawling with TV crews and SWAT teams,” Sasha whispered to Tito.

“Chupacabra attacks have not been newsworthy for years now,” he said. “The police don’t bother. They say it’s an animal control issue, so it’s up to the community to deal with it.”

“Fuck…” Sasha laughed. “And how does the community handle something like this?”

“By appointing a task force to assess the claim. There have been pranks. And revenge killings. Sometimes a farmer who can’t collect a debt wants to get even. Bottom line, all attacks must be verified.”

“By a task force.”

“Correct.”

“And where the hell are they?”

“We just got here.”

“Excuse me?”

She watched how the people made way for her grandmother reverentially. Everybody knew her grandmother and she knew everybody.

“You gotta be shitting me,” said Sasha, catching up to Alicia and Tito, who were walking briskly now. “You’re the Chupacabra experts?”

“We do our best,” Tito said.

They were received by doña Paciencia, a slender old lady wearing the long skirt of a Seventh-day Adventist and a long, intricate braid.

“Ay, Lisa,” she said, laying hold of Alicia’s hands with a trembling, powerful grip that drew the outline of her tendons across her parchment-like skin. “We were three days from breaking our own record.”

“There’s too many people here, Pachi,” said Alicia.

“You know how it is.”

“You let anybody in the back?”

“Fermín is there, no one else.”

“Tell everybody to fuck off and close the gates.”

They advanced through a copse by the side of the house and entered a clearing where the ranch was. An old man on top of a ladder was resetting his Chupacabra attack sign to zero.

“Viejo del diablo,” said Alicia loudly and angrily, “climb down from there before you kill yourself.”

The man turned his head to look down at them and made a grimace of disgust.

“I thought I smelled something,” he said, climbing down. “Sure as taxes, comes the ugly witch to claim the dead.”

“Fuck you!”

Sasha cringed uncomfortably, but then the old man stepped down, walked over to her grandmother… and they hugged.

“Show me,” Alicia said. Sasha rolled her eyes.

Fermín led them to the rabbits first. Fifty or so lay inanimate on the straw.

“Luckily I had sold sixty-five in the last two weeks. But these were my best females.”

Alicia and Tito meticulously examined the rabbits’ bodies. One by one.

“What are you doing?” Sasha asked.

“Checking for bites,” Tito said.

“Why?”

“If there are bites, even a tiny one, cause of death was probably another animal, a dog usually.”

“Best females… Ha!” interjected Alicia. “Thank God flea bites don’t count.”

“Shut your trap, old hag!” jeered Fermín.

“Oh, please…” Sasha complained. “A dog is not gonna kill a bunch of fucking bunnies and leave them so nicely laid out. I knew that coming in.”

“What’s your point?” asked Tito.

“None. I just think checking each fucking rabbit to see if they’re bit is dumb, because of course they’re not.”

“Where’s Paciencia?” Fermín asked. “And who’s this girl?”

“Pachi’s crowd control, you’re in the way, and this girl is underage,” said Alicia.

“She’s your spitting image, Lisa. When you were young, naturally. Foul-mouthed, too, just like you. Don’t tell me this is Lourdes’ girl.”

“Yeah, Ignacio sent her over as punishment. For whom, that’s something I’m still trying to find out. So tell me, chula, what else you knew coming in?”

“That these animals were poisoned,” Sasha said.

“That so?”

“Looks like it. You wanna make sure, call a qualified professional. A veterinarian or something.”

“You hear that, Tito?” said Alicia. Fermín burst out laughing.

“Doña Alicia is a veterinarian,” Tito said, embarrassed for Sasha.

The old woman moved quickly, giving Sasha little time to feel her face smolder in shame. Alicia took one of the dead rabbits, produced a small knife, and opened the fat little critter from chin to butthole with a sharp, whiplike movement of the wrist. It was as if she had unzipped it.

Out spilled what looked like shredded cardboard.

“Wrongful death,” Tito declared.

“Write it down.”

Captivated, oblivious, Sasha walked over to her grandmother to see it up close.

“No blood,” said Alicia. “No tissue differentiation.”

“What…” stuttered Sasha. “What is that?”

“A mess,” the old woman answered. “It’s what’s left. Viejo, show me the cow.”

They approached the stables. In one of the stalls, a cow lay kneeling down, dead.

“Your cows lie down to sleep?”

“This one did. She lay down every time she could and loved to roll around. She was a happy girl, gave lots of milk.”

“She tried to get up. Was killed before she could manage.”

“How does she know?” Sasha asked Tito, lowering her voice.

“Cows get up using their hind legs first, as opposed to horses.”

“You gonna cut her up?” Paciencia had shown up out of nowhere, scaring the bejeezus out of Sasha.

“I gotta.”

Alicia slashed the cow on the side. Out came a burst of what looked like dry plaster and dust, almost confetti.

***

On the ride home Sasha was unusually quiet. Between one thing and another, time flew and dusk came. Tito was driving; her grandmother couldn’t see too well at night. Sasha sat by the door.

The headlights caught on one of the many Chupacabra warning signs and Sasha briefly studied the monster icon.

“Mamá,” she said. “What do you think it looks like?”

“What do you want to know?”

“Has somebody ever seen it? Really seen it?”

“There’s never a shortage of people who say they’ve seen it.”

“And?”

“Bullshit,” said Alicia. “Like you kids like to say these days, pic or it never happened.”

“Then, why do people think it’s a monster? Like, with fangs and all.”

“What do you think it looks like?”

“Well, if I had to picture it, it wouldn’t look like that,” Sasha said and pointed to another of the ubiquitous signs that was then coming into view.

“And why is that?”

“If it doesn’t bite, it doesn’t need teeth, certainly not fangs.”

“Poetic license,” Alicia countered. “The image wants to convey the vampiric nature of the monster.”

“I don’t think it has such big eyes either.”

“They speak of the nocturnal habits of the monster, so people can take the necessary precautions.”

“And what’s with the alien vibe? No one has ever seen it but they know it’s extraterrestrial?”

“It tells people that we’re dealing with something outside our everyday experience.”

“God, you buggin’! Got all bases covered, I see. With your crazy doodle.”

“What would you use instead?”

“A biohazard symbol. Because it’s obviously a disease.”

“Arrogant little shit… You think I haven’t checked? You think entire teams of first-rate scientists haven’t checked? The last attack before this one was at my own ranch, five months ago. It got the chickens. I followed protocol, cordoned off the site, took pictures, sent samples everywhere. I pestered the Center for Disease Control until they agreed to come run their tests. Negative. Every result, from every lab. Nothing, no pathogens. You think you cracked the case? Mija, cuando tú ibas, ya yo venía. And just like that, everybody took off: the authorities, the scientists, the news. And after María hit, sons and daughters, grandchildren, couldn’t hold it together without Wi-Fi. What’s left is a bunch of hicks. They don’t know what a biohazard symbol is, but they can spot a fucking alien monster killer a mile away.”

“Whatever,” said Sasha, unaffected by her grandmother’s tirade. “All I know is that if it’s not biting and it’s not microscopic, then it’s getting in through the mouth or nose, or the ears or whatever other holes they got.”

Alicia had said her piece without looking at her granddaughter. But now she slowly turned her head to look at Sasha. It was some time before her grandmother turned her attention back to the road ahead.

Sasha pretended not to notice.

They traveled the rest of the way in silence.

***

Farms and ranches don’t take weekends off. Animals need to eat and crops need to be watered and tended, but since it had rained the day before and Alicia wanted to personally inspect her livestock, she told her wards they could hang out, provided they didn’t stray too far from the property.

Sasha donned her bathing suit, jeans shorts, and an old t-shirt. Grabbed a towel, beers, and snacks, and packed them in a rucksack. She presented herself to Tito, who was waiting in the kitchen.

“I’m ready,” she said.

“Let’s get going,” said Tito, grabbing his own bag.

They plowed through the thick undergrowth for close to twenty minutes before reaching the old cattle path, weaving across the woodland, ascending, descending, snaking along hills, between mountains, ravines, in and out of brooks, sheltered in the penumbra of the forest floor. An hour later they heard the thunder of a waterfall. They climbed a rocky outcrop and beheld the bluest pond ten meters down, roiling with turbulence from the cascade. Sasha felt that everything leading up to this moment had been worth it. They undressed hastily and jumped in, screaming all the way down.

Afterward, Tito rolled a joint and they smoked in peace, reclining on the rocks. While they were playing, Sasha had rediscovered Tito. The boy that she had thought of as scrawny was actually sinewy, wiry, muscles toned and cut from hard work, bronze skin as taut as a drum. And she had caught him inspecting her legs, her breasts. They’d had fun, but now they were tense and expectant, so the weed was indeed very welcome.

“Mom used to tell me about this place,” said Sasha.

“I bet. We were here as children. All of us.”

“Wow… I don’t remember.”

A long silence, and then:

“I’m very sorry about your mom.”

“That’s OK.” Sasha exhaled and passed the joint. “You know what happened?”

“Broad strokes,” Tito said, taking a noisy drag. “Nobody talks about it much.”

“The roof of our house fell on her, killed her instantly.”

Tito searched Sasha’s eyes. She looked away.

“We were all in the shelter already, you know, that underground pit by the side of the house. There was a lull and she went out to the house, said she had forgotten something. My dad didn’t stop her, didn’t try hard enough, I don’t know. The winds picked up in force and that was that.”

“What’d she forget?”

“Who the fuck knows?”

Sasha took the joint from Tito.

“He married a skank from Utuado he met at work in Orlando. I hate her, she hates me. She caught me smoking crippy in the living room and we got into a big fight. Called her a whore. She started crying and told Dad. It’s a wonderful life.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, you said that,” Sasha said, inhaling. Now it was she who searched for Tito’s eyes. He didn’t look away.

“I wanna show you something,” he said.

“Show me.”

They made their way behind the waterfall and entered a large cave. A powerful, laserlike sunbeam shone through a hole on top, illuminating the vault. Sasha was in ecstasy.

“Amazing!” she yelled.

Tito took her by the hand, squeezing firmly. “Come,” he said, and she squeezed back. He led her to a wall full of Taíno pictographs.

“Oh, my God, Tito,” she said, awestruck. Tito gave her a lecture on what each drawing meant.

“This is the sun. This means lovers.”

“What’s this?”

“That means water or rain.”

“And this?”

“That’s Cemí Boinayel, the rain god. Followed by Toa, the frog god.”

“Holy shit, who’s that?” said Sasha, pointing at a gruesome batlike figure.

“That is Maquetaurie Guayaba, the god of death.”

“Is this like a sentence or something?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what does it say?”

“I never thought about it. I always thought of them as pictures.”

“Some Taíno came in here to draw these… What? To practice? I don’t think so.” Sasha caressed the wall. “This is a story. This is a warning.”

“Like our road signs.”

“But better… Let’s go back. I need to use the Internet.”

***

Alicia convened an emergency town hall meeting that night for all smallholders and owners of livestock. They met at the Iglesia Carismática Cristiana Jesucristo Salvador. It was bedlam.

“I guess we’re not following Robert’s Rules,” Sasha said to Tito.

“It’s always like this. Doña Alicia has tried to establish some kind of order, but old dogs can’t learn new tricks, as they say.”

“Tell me about it.”

Old dogs indeed. Except for Sasha and Tito, the youngest people there were around sixty-seven years old. And they all had something to say.

“We should’ve gone with my idea: offer the Chupacabra a sacrifice. Weekly, monthly, every full moon, whatever. You know, like in the Bible.”

“Bait it, trap it, kill it. End of story.”

“It doesn’t kill humans or dogs… That should tell you something.”

“What?”

“Let’s raise dogs, like they do in Korea. Problem solved.”

“I’ve said it a million times: when are we gonna set the media straight? Every channel, every news outlet, every damn newspaper says it’s from Mexico. And we let them. We have no dignity as a nation, no dignity.”

“Prayer’s all we need. And faith in Christ our Savior.”

“I do a rosary every day, never touched my animals.”

“Cats are safe too. And parakeets.”

“Pets have never been preyed upon, this is known.”

“It’s scared of all things religion. That’s also confirmed.”

“My horses all have saints’ names. It got Saint Anselm last February. Don’t give me that crap.”

“I think we should all switch to lambs, you know, like in the Bible.”

Alicia had been calling the meeting to order for a while now, to no avail. Presently, she took the microphone out of its stand and stuck it in a nearby woofer. The horrendous feedback shut everybody up.

“Alright!” she said. “Thank you for being here on such short notice. I’ll be as brief as you let me and once I’m done you can all go back home to your praying and your animal sacrifices. New information has come to light that forces us to reevaluate what we think we know about the Chupacabra. Don’t worry, you can all go on thinking it’s a demon from outer space, with fangs and all that but… I’m here to tell you three things: one, it might be insectlike; two, it probably flies… Be quiet! Quiet! And three, it is very, very possible that it only attacks when certain atmospheric conditions are present. We reached this preliminary conclusion after reviewing every previous attack going back to years before María. Certain temperature, barometric pressure, and precipitation thresholds need to be reached before an attack becomes imminent…”

“Speak Puerto Rican, please!” someone heckled from the crowd.

“It needs to get hot, it has to rain a lot, and there must be no wind. There’s a range for each. Thanks to satellite coverage and computer technology that I’m not gonna waste my time explaining to a bunch of jíbaros like you, we can monitor all sectors of our beloved municipality. As soon as those requirements are met in any of them…” Alicia took out her cellphone. “I’ll get a notification—”

“And do what!”

“—and call the residents of that area so they’re on their guard. To play it safe, we’ll drive over there and spend the night watching.”

“Why are you saying it’s an insect?”

“I never said it was an insect, moron, I said it could be insectlike. It doesn’t chew its food. It drinks it. We’re dealing with a liquivore. A creature that digests its food outside its body and then slurps it in. Things that do that in our world are spiders and flies.”

“Spiders are arachnids, you old hag!”

“Wow! I see you’re watching Discovery Kids with your grandchildren! Keep it up, you impotent drunkard, and next time I won’t have to dumb it down. No! No more questions! Go home! That’s it. We’ll try it out for a while, if it doesn’t work, at least we gave it a shot. If it does work, then and only then I’ll tell you who you can thank.”

They walked out in a hurry leaving behind a vociferous mob.

***

Two weeks later Alicia got a notification.

Conditions for an attack had been initially met at Las Garzas, specifically near El Ataúd river. It was only seven-thirty and still daylight, but if the trend persisted, they could test Sasha’s theory that same night. There were only two properties down that way. Horacio Hernández and his wife Gladys kept goats, Cornish hens, and the reglementary chickens; Edwin Cruz and his brother Gerry tended to hundreds of free-ranging guinea fowl. Alicia made the calls and arranged for them to spend the night. She would go over to the Hernándezes and her wards to the Cruz brothers.

They went over to the Hernándezes first and found seven old men armed with shotguns and revolvers. Don Horacio had called reinforcements.

“What is this? The Nursing Home Brigade?” Alicia said. “This is why I didn’t give out the weather app that night.”

“I’ll protect my stock as I see fit, Doctor.”

“Whatever. Is this all? Or are you expecting more conscripts, Sergeant Senile?”

“This is all.”

“Good. As long as you obey my orders,” she said, turning to Sasha and Tito: “you two, take the truck and stay with the Siamese Idiots. Call me if anything happens.”

As they were heading out, they heard Alicia yell for coffee and dominos.

Sasha was nervous, scared even.

“It’s gonna be fine,” said Tito.

“How do you know?”

“I couldn’t tell you… I just know.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“Me too.”

They both laughed.

Edwin and Gerry were not old… they were ancient. At least a hundred by Sasha’s estimate. They were bald, bearded, ghostly white, toothless, and stooped. They were also very quiet, almost mute. Although they knew Tito, they were as surly as the guinea fowl they raised. Sasha’s presence did not help matters any.

“Ignore them,” Tito counseled. “Let’s go find us a place to sit.”

They grabbed a couple of chairs from the porch and placed them beneath an enormous mango tree that grew in the middle of the property. On its branches, high and low, slept the guinea fowl.

“Guinea fowl are explorers,” Tito explained. “They can roam as far as ten kilometers from their home base but come dusk they return and huddle together.”

“So, we don’t have to go further than this here tree?”

“We don’t have to go further than this here tree.”

Sasha laughed.

They sat and each retreated to their own inner world. After a while, Sasha brought out a pack of cigarettes, lighted two, offered one to Tito.

“Never in my wildest dreams,” she said, “did I picture myself hunting monsters.”

“Hunting? Nah, that entails a whole different set of activities, Sasha. I don’t think we’re hunting monsters.”

Sasha rather liked hearing Tito say her name. He had never said her name. She felt warm and fuzzy and had to fight the smile that was curling her lips.

“What then?”

“Something far more dangerous: waiting for something to happen.”

“If you say so,” she said.

The veil of clouds presently betrayed a gibbous moon. The heat was unbearable. It made their bodies ooze greasy sweat that encased them in a clammy second skin… And yet neither would have abandoned the other for the comfort of an electric fan blowing inside a dry room.

“So, what’s the story with those two?” asked Sasha, feeling awkward all of a sudden.

“Same as with everyone around here,” Tito said. “They were young and then they weren’t. No one is ever sure about what happens in between.”

“I’m sure lots must have happened.”

“Probably. Doña Alicia told me they were both in love with the same girl. Later they were drafted, fought in Korea. Came back, the girl had married some other man.”

“Classic.”

“And tragic. She not only married, but took off, packed up and left with her new husband. Was never seen again. You would think the brothers would have taken a cue from her, but no. They talked about it, apparently, planned it. There was nothing for them here but acreage and heartache. But they never made up their minds. To go, I mean. Always thinking about it and never gathering the nerve. If you ask me, I think it’s the same story all around.”

“Doesn’t that scare you?”

“Shitless.”

“You wanna go, then?”

“Sure. I think. I guess.”

That made both of them laugh.

“Why didn’t you come with us that time? I thought…”

“It was complicated. It is complicated.”

“I bet Grandma held you back.”

“No. Actually, she pushed me to go. But…”

Sasha felt the sharp resistance and did not probe that corner further. They remained silent for a while, stealing glances at each other, and then:

“What do you want to do, Tito?” she blurted out.

“What do you mean?”

“You know… With your life. Have you thought about it?”

“I’ve thought about it.”

“So? A farmer? A veterinarian? A merchant? Oh, I know! Owner of a hardware store!”

“I want to be an electrical engineer.”

“Holy shit! Really?”

“Yeah… You?”

“I don’t know… Not an electrical engineer, that I know. I’m good at math, though, so maybe something in the sciences.”

“After tonight, if this works, if we catch it, I don’t think you’ll have a choice.”

“You think?”

“You’ll be famous.”

“You’ll be famous too.”

“You did most of the thinking. You’re the brain of this whole operation.”

“You linked me up! If I hadn’t had access to the Internet, to the databases…”

“I’m sure you would’ve thought of something.”

Quick as lightning, Sasha got off her chair, sat in Tito’s lap, and kissed him on the mouth. Tito embraced her and kissed back hungrily… And then, as soon as it had started, it stopped. They both felt it. They looked at each other in surprise. But they didn’t get a chance to delve into their fascinating discovery—for that is what it was—because at that moment the cellphone rang.

***

It was Alicia’s number.

They answered but all they could hear was a series of gasps and choking sounds. Thumps and thuds in the background. A hissing sound.

In a wink they were back at the other house.

Sasha got out of the truck, running.

“Wait!” Tito shouted. “We don’t know what we’re up against here. Just… wait.”

“But Grandma—!”

“I know,” he said and walked slowly towards her. “I know.”

Looking into each other’s eyes, they spoke wordlessly. No more waiting for something to happen, we are hunters now, they said. Or rather tried hard, very hard, to believe they were not the hunted.

There was no one outside. And it was dead quiet, impossibly quiet, a paused movie… Tito took Sasha’s hand.

“Alright,” he said. “Let’s go.”

They went inside.

Maybe she should, in fact, aim for a career in science. Presented with the gruesome scene, she became cool and clinical, calm and clear-eyed. She could hear Tito screaming, falling on his knees, puking his guts out… but it was all happening far away, in slow motion, the echo of an echo, and it wasn’t enough to distract her from the task of understanding; it couldn’t hinder the automatic mental processes that gleaned from the disgusting tableau the underlying connections, the biological necessities, the evolutionary strategies, even if she didn’t know that’s what they were called.

In her mind’s eye she saw the logical stages of the organism’s life cycle, an interplay of critical thresholds. Temperature, humidity, and pressure conspired at night, activating the spores coursing through the veins of all locals, but here, too, critical mass had to be reached before the organism could grow: only old people, people who had spent their entire lives taking from the land, and giving to the land, had the required concentration. Old people like the ones lying unconscious in the living room, filaments twisting out of their mouths and ears and finding their way out through the back door, searching for nourishment and finding it, covering the goat herd, entering the animals through their nostrils and sucking the life out of them. Moving, moving, moving, a purplish kudzu from Hell that avoided Tito, that avoided her, snaking past them, ignoring them, tagging them as something other than food, recognizing them as kin…

Of course, thought Sasha, standing in the way of a river of myxogastria mold that melted, advanced, reconstituted itself, and melted again, palpating, even sniffing. A gestaltic being, sentient, predatorial, she was sure. And soon the fruiting bodies became visible, bluish bladders hanging on purple stalks, hundreds of them, shiny, weakly luminescent; they would mature, before sunrise, and they would burst, sending spores far and wide to be breathed by all, to be eaten and drunk and touched, to arrive at safe harbor in all nearby human bodies, including Sasha’s, until their time came.

Before sunrise, the filaments would evaporate and the real Chupacabras would wake up none the wiser, forever oblivious to the fact that the enemy lived within, never without, older than them, older than the land, owner of all.

And all this Sasha knew with the same certainty that she had known, in a sudden flash of insight when kissing Tito, that he was her dad’s son from another woman. She already had inside her the seeds of a monster parasite. She would not tell a single soul about this night and would make Tito swear he wouldn’t either. And she would leave at the first opportunity, never to return, before her parasite instilled in her the inexorable procrastination that kept everyone chained to the soil, before she started making excuses and finding them reasonable and sensible.

So reasonable, so sensible.