* * *
LORD grant me the strength to decimate into dust your transgressing sons that such sensational cruelty will echo throughout the ages and discourage future transgressors into obedience.
2 This is the kind of illogic Manuel finds escaping his mouth as he grinds himself up the hill in what feels like at most half a body.
3 This is Skull Hill, so named because of the peculiar rock formation at its summit that creates the not just visual impression that a malevolent giant once died there then all but its skull decomposed into the form of a hill.
4 Thing about the hill is that it’s a lot steeper than it looked on approach and he now doubts very much that he will later descend it. Already he has fallen badly twice and each time a dispassionate observer would not have wagered he would rise again as he did.
5 At the top, it is rumored, is a mass grave. Almost certainly not true at the time of the rumors but probably so now.
6 He feels as if there couldn’t possibly be any blood left inside him but also the remarkable realization that he never really needed blood to begin with.
7 The disturbance caused by even silent people is unlike any other so he’s not even mildly surprised when he looks through some jungle and sees the goal he’s suffered for available like ripe fruit fallen from its tree.
8 He cannot see them but they must be there among the group. They are there because he left them alone and when he’s done what he came to do they will likely be alone again because right now to him his life means not next to nothing, goddamn less than nothing.
9 He will deliver it up sacrificially but they will walk away unharmed to resume their lives, his absence rightly weakening daily.
* * *
FIRST sign of trouble came from the human wailing not the sound of gunfire which one grew accustomed to coming from the jungle.
2 The church was close enough that although too late to prevent anything Manuel was able to arrive before any diminution in the screams.
3 For the irreligious, understand that there’s a moment in the Catholic service in which all present are asked to demonstrate peace towards each other usually in the form of a handshake although more is permitted within reason. Coincidentally or not this was the moment they burst in, every opening covered, barking contradictory orders that couldn’t possibly be complied with before bullets took apocalyptic flights through the still air, first disproportionately into the celebrant then randomly into the congregation where Luz smothered Selena in protection willing that all the world’s steel should be embedded in her body rather than reach her daughter’s innocence.
4 One could view the quickly dead as the lucky as dozens of others are forcibly pushed and pulled into the jungle as if tethered to guns still warm from their displays. These are the people whose physical lives have become so suddenly and dramatically constricted that they must retreat into a purely mental existence and it’s a torturous one for the reason that the worst part about a death sentence is the waiting in expectation. Luz and Selena are in this group and before it even seems possible timewise this group is in the jungle.
5 When Manuel arrived he understood almost instantaneously what had occurred. He displayed no emotion but did very little breathing as he walked among the bloody dead, touching them only when necessary to see their blank deanimated faces.
6 When the pointless police and some military arrived he did not look to them for help. Instead he stood unobtrusively by as witnesses spoke so he could gain the information he needed.
7 Then he went into the jungle to get his wife and daughter back, the only two things of value he’d ever had in this accursed world.
* * *
SMILES come in many different forms so the following Monday when Marybeth entered the coffee shop she did smile when their eyes met but it was the kind you might see at a funeral.
2 The explanation? Cancer she said. Spreading through her sister like… Cancer.
3 And probably the thing her sister was worst at, her whole life, was the selection of men so that it took only cancerous rumors for her husband to flee, redounding their two single-digit children into her sole care.
4 She would go and do her best, this wasn’t really who she was.
5 You’ll be who you choose to be he said and his mere declaration made it seem probably true to her.
6 She hoped to return soon. He hoped that too. Wisconsin wasn’t all that far away and really considered the jewel of these united states if he was curious.
7 He could take her to the airport but one thing:
“Just promise you’ll let her partake of conventional medicine in addition to your lemon treatments.”
* * *
IN the beginning was such simplicity. As a child he learned to track human movement through jungle and the movement of so many was particularly simple. They moved, he moved in pursuit, and the distance between them, he knew, closed with each step.
2 Now deliberation is required before the steps. They are ten. Seven of them have guns. They have other weapons but guns are all he bothers to count. They hold probably twenty and of those at least his two will soon be free. He thinks.
3 The layout is good. He is on one side of them but can with relative ease move to the opposite side undetected.
4 He creates an intentional disturbance to the side of where he stands and expects two of the ten to respond. He is right. The two have guns but no real chance. Before they can even begin to understand the situation, their necks are open, they lie in pooling blood, and their emptied guns have been left at their side as last earthly reward.
5 He expects one more and he is right again. Before that one can scream his grim discovery he has joined it.
6 Manuel now moves to the opposite end and waits, won’t be long. He senses an electric tension among the seven, dim at first then rising in intensity as they rightly suspect their cohorts won’t be returning. The seven are at attention, four of them caressing guns like reunited lovers. They stupidly stare in the direction of the disappeared.
7 Manuel identifies the one with the best gun and the first non-human noise heard in a while is the sound of multiple bullets dismembering this individual before he can even turn and face their source. The other three turn and start firing indiscriminately. Man puts one between the eyes of the most dangerous one left but before he can move to the next he receives a bullet to his chest with such force that it spins him away from his targets. Another bullet, this one to his leg, drops him to the ground where he crawls to a rock for cover but not before discharging one more fatal shot with his left hand after his automatic fails.
8 This becomes a bit of a standoff. Manuel firing and being fired upon from behind a rock. But when he hears his opponent instruct his others to go kill the hostages Man rises and walks right to the declarant taking two bullets to deliver the last one needed.
9 The ensuing is even less pretty than what came before as Manuel follows the three until he can establish conclusively that the hostages are not in immediate danger. Then, receiving only a vicious dagger to his side, he eliminates them with his bare hands.
10 His death is almost certain now he feels and there is just one more earthly sight he wishes to see. He is looking through the hostages, now free, and they fear him. He looks directly into the eyes of a familiar girl. Her face functions as a kind of mirror just then and the reflection somehow unsettles him more than what just preceded it.
«¿La niňa? ¿Mi niňa?» He almost describes her smile then remembers they were unlikely to have seen it. «¿Luz y Selena?» They had bonded, of course, and knew each other by name.
11 Luz and Selena were part of a small group, they say, that went ahead to shelter when the storm hit. There is more but they are hesitant to continue and even if they weren’t they aren’t sure of anything.
12 He covers the two kilometers as if he weren’t dying. Towards the end he falls terribly. He melts into the ground as if the universe itself were burying him, one less son to worry.
13 But he rises, he always rises this Man. Problem is he rises into an enervating discovery. A windowless structure, its remains. A scorched fallen tree lies across and blocking what was the door.
14 It takes some time to figure it out. He doesn’t want to. The smoldering remains of a dozen bodies. The structure reduced to random beams of carbon.
15 Lightning. Lightning struck a tree that then lit up as it fell blocking the only possible exit to a box containing three sons of diseased whores keeping twelve hostages there. All were consumed alive in the resulting conflagration that must have felt as if Hell itself had risen up through the ground to make an end of everything. Impersonal lightning. The highly flammable nature of wood. No human will involved.
16 He surveys the dead, the charred bodies. And this is where it gets odd because Manuel makes sure not to make a conclusive identification of any of them although if looking down from above you would witness a great suffering as he stands in the vicinity of what appears to be remnants of a woman enveloping a young girl.
17 He must continue the search for Luz and Selena but first he will demonstrate respect for the dead by burying only the hostages. He has little remaining strength so he buries only this woman and girl, careful not to look at their faces.
18 Luz is like him, made of steel. She will not let harm come to all they have.
19 The woman and girl are together and covered by dirt. Manuel says, in words that enter the air then are diluted by it into silence never to be heard by fellow human, that he will continue his search but first he must rest.
20 He lies on the dirt above them, his face and bullet-filled chest down. He says he cannot be blamed for his own death. He cannot resist anymore. A lifetime of resistance. Flesh famously devolves but so can a soul. His is mortally wounded.
21 The blood from his chest enters the dirt and converts it to soil. It is what the universe unapologetically demands and he deliriously accedes. That our very essence must merge with the dead. That life must continuously arise in response only to meet a violent terminus. It is a story years in the telling, billions, and it is a story without end.
* * *
HERE
he
says
Yes,
maybe
he
always
says
Yes
whatever
the
case
they
stand,
the
three
of
them,
in
church
and
when
the
moment
comes
for
exchanging
peace
Manuel
and
Luz
hug
with
Selena
sandwiched
between
He
feels
this
hug
not
only
as
real
as
anything
he’s
felt
but
somehow
more
real
Nothing
foreign
comes
through
the
church
door
and
Mass
just
ends
Back
home
Man
and
Luz
garden
while
nearby
Selena
plays
benevolent
Queen
to
a
congregation
of
handcrafted
dolls
The
sun
above
them
warms
without
scorching
and
the
air
smells
maybe
slightly
sweet.