The doorway to the tunnel became a melee of violence.
Men fought to move forward.
To escape.
To keep the unseen from them.
And to seal their sudden wounds.
The air was a torrent of screams and splattering blood.
Fangs and claws pierced and sliced.
Men wept in horror and in pain.
Extremities were shredded.
Viscera spilled.
God was begged for mercy.
Julio was in front of the violence, the tunnel before him an avenue to salvation.
Ernesto emitted a bloodcurdling howl.
Julio turned and rushed to his older brother.
A white blur of violence shot toward Ernesto’s chest. It knocked him backward and into Julio and the two men crashed to the floor of the cave. Julio gasped as the air was forced from his lungs and he fought to get out from under the heavy weight of his brother.
Julio felt a sudden slam as if he had been hit in the chest by a sledgehammer. Ernesto screamed and writhed in the frenzy of a seizure. Blood poured from his body and onto his brother beneath him. Julio scratched and fought to move but the undulating weight pushing down on him was too great. He screamed with all the force he could muster.
He awoke to see Hunter and another Anglo looking down at him.
“Wake up, Julio,” Hunter commanded. “It’s time to tell my friend here all you know.”
11.
Carlos exited the Porta Potty in a furious mood.
“What the hell is wrong with you guys?!” he called across the haze of dusk to the campfire where his nine coworkers sat. “That thing is nasty enough without y’all not tossing your paper down the shitter or leaving the lid open. All that just attracts flies and it’s bad enough taking a crap in a hot house without a swarm of flies descending down on you!”
The men laughed at Carlos’ complaints and watched in anticipation of his rant continuing.
Mario held out a joint for Carlos then pulled it from him and laughed, “Are your hands clean?”
Carlos ran his hands down Mario’s face and cackled, “You tell me!”
The men exploded in laughter and Carlos ripped the joint from Mario’s hand and took a long toke.
“Are my hands clean?” Carlos mocked. “Asshole.”
Carlos sat next to Mario and handed him back the joint. The laughter died after a time and the men sat silently staring at the fire, watching as the last light of day faded into darkness. The joint was passed around from man-to-man as well was a bottle of cheap tequila and several tall boys of even cheaper beer. All sat contently happy in the moment except for Antonio whose stare was more of a case of worry and concern. Angel saw this and tried to pass him the tequila. Angel passed on the offer with a small gesture of his hand.
“What’s wrong with you tonight?” Angel asked with fatherly concern.
“Ain’t nothing wrong,” Bartoli interrupted. “We got paid to do nothing but wait for most of the day. We got good herb and drink. No wives or girlfriends around to bitch and moan. Life is good!”
The men laughed and when the joy died down, Antonio detailed what was wrong.
“I’m just tired, I guess,” Antonio confessed.
“You ain’t tired,” Mario stated through the firelight. “You’re scared.”
“Scared of what?” Antonio asked.
“You’ve been scared ever since you climbed out of that hole,” Mario declared as he gestured over his shoulder in the direction of the cave in the construction caused earlier in the day.
“Yeah,” Carlos agreed. “You’ve been all kind of weird since you went down there. You see a ghost down there or something?”
“No, it was scarier than a ghost,” Mario said, laughing. “He saw that gal he knocked up down in Piedras Negras down there. She had his kid on her arm and a hand out looking for money.”
All but Antonio cackled in laughter.
“There weren’t anything down there to see,” Antonio snapped. “Just a bunch of old bones.”
“So, you’re scared of bones?” Carlos said.
“Y’all need to lay off the drugs,” Antonio commanded. “You’re all acting crazy. I told you I wasn’t scared. Not scared now. There’s nothing down there.”
The men chuckled at Antonio’s mood and passed the marijuana, liquor, and beer to one another. Antonio stood from his folding chair and intercepted the bottle of tequila going around. He took a long pull and put the bottle back in rotation. He walked from the fire and away from the jokes and the chatter and into the darkness. He made his way past his hammock that hung between two mesquite trees and toward the construction equipment that stood idle in the starlight. He made his way to the edge of the cave-in and stood staring downward into the dark abyss. He unzipped his pants and began urinating into the darkness below.
“Didn’t nothing down there scare me,” Antonio told himself aloud. “Not a damn thing. That was just the wind or something I heard.”
Antonio listened to his urine stream hit the rocks below and looked to the star-filled sky above. The tranquility of the place was suddenly interrupted by faint chattering.
Of a sound reminiscent of castanets.
Antonio scanned the horizon for the source of the intrusive sound. His gaze turned downward and into the hole he was still urinating into. A blaze of motion shot from the hole. Antonio was knocked upward and back. He slammed to the ground and instinctively threw out his hands to hold the terror on top of him at bay.
Antonio screamed as a muzzle of glistening canines thrust forward. His nose was ripped from his face with a blinding shock of pain. Blood and tears poured over his cheeks, into his mouth, and down his neck. He howled in anguish then shrieked as four fingers were bit from his left hand. He wrestled to free himself from the terror, but the beast’s strength and tenacity was too great. He focused the last of his strength into a scream for help, but it was ripped from his throat by the jaws atop him.
12.
“What the hell was that?” Angel asked in a visible state of shock.
The scream he and the others around the campfire heard was bloodcurdling.
Terrifying.
Primal.
From someone or something in the last grasp of life.
Angel stood and the others followed.
“Was that… Antonio?” Carlos wondered aloud.
“Shit ain’t funny if it was,” Mario stated.
“Sure as hell didn’t sound like he was joking to me,” Carlos continued. “Sounded like…like… Hell, I don’t know what it sounded like….”
Carlos trailed off, not wanting to share what evil scenarios were flashing through his head.
Angel pulled a flashlight from his pocket and turned it on. He walked toward the screams and the others followed. Carlos and Mario turned on their flashlights and made their way to the front of the group.
The group marched cautiously past the campsite where their hammocks hung and toward the wide clearing they carved had through the scrub with bulldozers and backhoes in the days previous. Their lights panned over the construction equipment and into the open cabs of each, looking for Antonio.
“Sounded like he was over this way,” Angel clarified.
“Where’s that cave-in?” Bartoli asked. “Maybe he fell in.”
“Hole’s over…” Angels voice went stone dead at the scene his flashlight illuminated.
Three white animals stood feeding on what was left of Antonio’s body. The lead creature raised its head and bared blood-soaked fangs. It growled in warning and the other beasts bared their canines that glistened with blood and viscera. The lead animal charged forward and the men turned in unison and ran in the direction of the campfire.
The scrub brush turned into a maelstrom of violence, of flashlight beams strobing the darkness, of screams and cries, of barks and howls, of men cut down and opened with teeth and claws, and of animalistic strength over human frailty.
13.
“No, no
, no.” Jared laughed in drunken euphoria. He was 11 Lone Star Lights into the evening and feeling rather intelligent and felt that challenging his professor in front of his classmates was the best way to prove such. “Chupacabras are real.”
Dr. Cooke laughed across the campfire. “They’re a myth. No different than Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster.”
“Okay. Back up,” Jared suggested with a laugh. “Bigfoot is more likely than not to be an actual animal but has yet to be proven. The Loch Ness Monster is total bullshit. But chupacabras are real and that my good doctor is 100% true.”
“What’s a chupa…cupa…chalupa?”
The students drinking around the campfire exploded into laughter at Angie’s question.
“A chalupa’s like an open-faced taco,” Aubrey explained to her roommate. “A chupacabra is a Tex-Mex myth. It’s like a kangaroo-looking thing that sucks the blood out of goats. Kind of like a vampire.”
“And according to Jared, they’re real,” Dr. Cooke said with a chuckle.
“If you will allow,” Jared slurred as he stumbled out of his camp chair. “Yes, the chupacabra is said to resemble a kangaroo or a baboon absent a tail comes from a myth—yes, a myth—born in Puerto Rico that made its way here to the Tex-Mex Border. The real chupacabra…”
Jared paused to burp.
“Here we go,” a grad student from Harlingen named Hope scoffed.
“Excuse me,” Jared began again. “The real chupacabra is a hairless coyote. Some say it suffers from mange. Others that it’s a genetic anomaly and others that they are bred that way on some secret ranch. They are found throughout South Texas and make the news every now and again when some rancher or hunter shoots one. They were named ‘chupacabra’ by the press and it has become the official name for this animal.”
“I’ve seen that!” Dr. Cooke joyfully announced. “On the news. Is that really what they’re calling those hairless things? Chupacabras?”
“Yes, sir, that they are,” Jared said. He fell back into a camp chair and killed the beer that sat at his feet.
“Well, then, I stand corrected, Jared,” Dr. Cooke announced. “Thanks for enlightening me and anyone else that didn’t know that.”
“You are welcome,” Jared said just before vomiting.
14.
“I can’t believe Jared puked in front of everyone,” Tom said in disbelief. “In front of Dr. Cooke. I mean, that’s Jared’s doctorate advisor.”
“Yep. He’s an idiot,” Megan agreed.
Tom rolled over to face Megan in the half darkness. Her face was cast in the soft light of the stars that filtered through the open mesh roof of their tent. She was beautiful.
“Quit looking at me like that,” Megan said, giggling.
“Like what?” Tom asked, trying to be coy.
“Like you want to do me.”
“I always want to do you.”
“I’m sooooo flattered but we’re out here in the woods, it’s 90° at 11 o’clock at night, and I smell like absolute shit. It ain’t happening.”
Tom smiled then leaned in to kiss Megan again anyway. She received his affection then pushed him away and joyfully warned, “Don’t get too excited there, chief. I’m telling you, it ain’t going to happen. Not ‘til I get back home to a shower and some A/C.”
Tom smiled and stared up at the sky through the mesh roof of tent. He lay there, enjoying the moment until Megan spoke again.
“Is it true, what Jared said?”
Tom rolled over to once again face Megan.
“Is what true?” he asked.
“That those hairless chupacabra things are out here.”
“I don’t know,” Tom admitted.
“You don’t know,” Megan mocked in an over-exaggerated impression of Tom. “Real reassuring. I feel so safe.”
Tom smiled and replied, “I mean no. No, there are any out here.”
“Now you’re mocking me,” Megan huffed.
“I am not.”
“Yes, you are.”
Tom rolled over to once again face Megan. “I promise. I’m not.”
“Then tell me.”
“Ugh,” Tom groaned. “I have no idea. I’m sure there are tons of coyotes around here…”
“Tons!” Megan exploded.
“Yeah, tons. But I have no idea if there are any without fur around here.”
“I guess it doesn’t matter what kills me when I go outside to squat piss in the middle of the night,” Megan sarcastically exclaimed. “Could be a freakin’ chupacabra or a coyote or a jaguar…”
“Jaguar?” Tom exclaimed in disbelief.
“Yeah, jaguar. You said earlier they used to be here or could be here…”
“There are no jaguars here,” Tom assured his girlfriend.
“You don’t know what’s out here waiting to kill us!” Megan stated. “You have no idea!”
15.
Hunter led Taylor outside the main building and into the darkness. Hunter lit a cigarette and offered one to Taylor who nodded silently in acceptance. Taylor lit his offered Marlboro and stared out upon the desolate ranchland illuminated by stars and a half moon before him.
“You believe him?” Hunter asked, breaking the silence. “Because I kind of do.”
“You believe your men were killed by albino baboons?” Taylor answered with a question, unsure if Hunter was being serious or not.
“I don’t know,” Hunter admitted. “I don’t know if it was baboons. Probably wasn’t. But I do think what ripped his crew apart was animal. Not human.”
“What kind of animal lives down there, deep underground in a sealed cave?” Taylor scoffed.
“Might not have been sealed,” Hunter theorized. “Julio said they couldn’t see the other side. Doesn’t mean there’s not one or that there’s a tunnel that leads up and out.”
Taylor killed his cigarette and snuffed the butt into the sandy earth with his boot.
He listened as Hunter explained that the area of the border the goat ranch sat upon had gone through dramatic changes in the past few years. Deep irrigation canals had been dug outward from the Rio Grande. Quarries had been torn into mountain bases and hills were leveled for earth and gravel. On the American side, construction crews had been pounding steel beams up to 20 feet into the earth in order to construct a border wall. The area has seen fracking by big oil companies, and as a result, earthquakes had occurred and sinkholes appeared. Hunter theorized that one of these activities had opened the cave system Julio and his men tapped into. Animals had traveled downward and become lost in the darkness. They were starving and once fresh meat came upon them, they attacked with fervor.
“What kind of animals are you thinking?” Taylor queried.
“Cougar. Bear. Coyote maybe. Who knows? But whatever ripped apart Julio’s brother was big enough and strong enough to knock his fat ass down and had claws and teeth sharp enough leave him looking like he’d been run through a meat grinder.”
Hunter’s words sent Taylor’s memory back to Afghanistan to a time he and his unit were investigating a cave system in the mountains of the Tora Bora. The cave opening was natural. The tunnel system it led to was not. Taylor and his men had winded their way through 300 meters of abandoned, carved-out terrorist highway when they encountered an Asiatic black bear denned up among the remains of an empty food cache. The animal looked sickly and partially emaciated yet lunged at him and his men with the ferocity of a wild beast. Taylor had put two shots into the bear and it still rushed forward at him as if it had been bit by horseflies. A final shot to the head put the bear down and sent the whole team into fits of hysterical laughter and joking about their Taliban hunt being turned into a bear hunt.
A similar situation could have befallen Julio and his team of diggers. And given that none of them were trained soldiers, armed and ready, it could explain the heavy loss of life. Taylor exited his thoughts to agree with Hunter’s theory that it could have been an animal that took out the tunnel workers then added that whateve
r was down there would be found and killed soon enough.
Hunter agreed and offered, “Come on. Let’s go meet the team. And have some fun.”
16.
The old bunkhouse smelled of beer and cigar smoke, tequila, and cigarettes. Despite these remnants of vice, the interior of the building appeared to be a place of health and preparedness. The room contained weights and exercise equipment, gym mats, and two heavy bags hanging from the ceiling. Footlockers and hard cases of weaponry and military gear were stacked against the wall and at the end of every bed.
The group of six men and women stood and cheered in mock revelry at Hunter’s return, quickly thrusting a cold beer in his and Taylor’s hand. Hunter cracked a few jokes about his absences and how he’d found Taylor living under a highway overpass with a sign asking for work then introduced him to the team. They were:
Mitch Pearce, a former G4S Secure Solutions Agent in his late 30s. He stood 6’2”, sported a five-inch-long bushy, black beard, and proudly wrapped his linebacker build in a skin-tight T-shirt that was cut to reveal his biceps the size of small hams. His khaki cargo shorts were baggy and frayed and looked like they had occasionally been used to clean the filth from the bottom of his long-worn flip-flops.
Tom Nickerson, a 5’10”, slim-built former DEA Agent from Arizona who, after realizing the folly and stupidity of the U.S. War on Drugs, joined the cartel to make money.
Sergio Agüera, a 5’9” Mexican National with the build of a professional soccer player, spent the last year working every hellhole Academi sent him to before coming home to join the Acuña Cartel.
Kerri Ruck, 5’3” of self-proclaimed, “100% Texas born and raised bull dyke that’ll rip you a new one and then some if you call me that and ain’t my friend.”
Marquis Jordan, an African-American from the mean streets of Chicago, who even at 40 years old still sent half his paycheck home to his “momma” while referring to her as his number one gal.
And Louise “Lou” Drake, who was 5’9” of steel-cut muscle poured into a feminine form of curves and dirty-blonde hair.
The Tunnel Page 4