Tick Tick Tick
48 minutes. That's about how long he had to appreciate his vague grip on his humanity, give or take a few seconds of error. In the time of the average response time from Davis Monthan AFB was under an hour, Border Patrol would be crawling all over the area and he'd be some kind of cryptid that'd make the average National Geographic photographer shit their pants. He wasn't too happy with His choices that'd lead to this point, He let a Curandera from the Reserve get shot to bits around lunch time. He gave her some last rites and a proper burial (at gun point), and took a $1,000 pay cut in hopes that the typically flighty Flock that the Prowling God kept would continue to let them pass. Holy grounds like these are not the places for cruelty and bloodshed, foolish men and their little guns don't really stand a chance against things that can survive going extinct with the power of spirit. That's the kind of shit the Curandera would've said, if she was alive right now.
He shouldn't have taken this job in the first place, but He wanted a life off the Reservation and the Curandera needed a hand cleaning up after the Coyotés and their people-smuggling operations that ever-agitated the Prowling God. He'd gotten them both into the business proper because He didn't want to get on the wrong side of the wrong men, men who worship violence and money, not old Apache Spirits. This many miles north of the border you're free of most of the Gringo patrols, so arguments for pay between the smuggled and the smugglers tended to come to pass just a few miles shy of Flagstaff. The young men come up easy enough for simple pay, they're not product like the young women, and that clarification usually is clarified when people are about to get shot. Can't blame the old lady for intervening with the Coyotés, the girl was barely 12, her parent wasn't ready to part with her as payment for making it to the bus hub before heading East to the job site.
He should've just kept walking, but something angry and hungry watching from just beyond view had convinced him otherwise. He'd never seen them up close, now he wish He hadn't.
45 minutes. The wound one of the Flock left Him is starting to fester, the blood pours readily from the massive bite on his thigh, the first stage of his human impurities being purged. He knows in his heart the hair will start falling out with more changes spreading across his body, followed by the fever, chills, vomiting, then blood out of every pore, his eyes, his nose, his mouth, his ears, and the other holes he was born with. Cracking bones, wailing pain, his flesh sloughing off. The stuff of nightmares. He was chosen to become one of them, a divine punishment from the great Prowling God, its feathers raised with anger. He should have intervened, raised his voice, argued or pleaded with the Cartel men. How do you convince worshipers of the cult of death that adding an old woman's body would not be worth the blood? They didn't respect the land as holy in the first place when they made him walk the trail without pay at gun point months ago, and an old coot from the Reservation is far from important enough to damage their profit margins.
40 minutes. He can't bring himself to weep. The bodies of over 20 men, most of them the young ones who parted with wives, daughters, and sisters at gunpoint now soak the ground. Shell casings and discarded rifles accompany the slain Coyotés, their bodies mauled beyond recognition, effectively gored into naught but chunky red salsa. The pack feasted on the rotten men after their murder of the Curandera and splitting of the group from the girls escalated the desperate madness of the Arizona July heat. The young men were pushed too hard to make up time from the distraction the Curandera made, especially because He refused to move the group along without giving her a proper burial rite. It should have appeased the Prowling God, but instead the cowardice of his inaction riled its flock, sending hungry teeth and claws after the walking human smuggled goods and their handlers.
33 minutes. He shakily pants, the agonizing ache and endless chills rock his body. A small price to pay for an existence in service to divinity, the voice is not His own. His blood trickles at first from his nose, his hair, toenails and fingernails all having shed over the last few minutes, leaving him now quaking in the dirt, shuddering as he is overtaken. Man's blood was never meant for such duties, and He like the rest of mankind was subservient to Mother Nature, or whatever ancestor spirits the Curandera prayed to. He wasn't one for the fireside stories on the Reservation, a trade off was made for what he thought would be a better life with realistic chances. The Prowling God is disinterested in his excuses, Weakling, it hisses behind his eyes, I shall make you strong enough in time. He vomits, again, it is all blood.
29 minutes. He is writhing with agony, spasming, quaking, and yet feeling a serene calm. His skin slowly begins to rot from his flesh, twisting sinews beneath forming into one of the flock. He will be another servant. He will make his crime of ignorance, indifference, and ignobility His burden. Service deserved for fleeing His people, His duties, His nation, His family, His everything. But what choice did He really have? The choice to walk a path of honor, it hisses in response, its talons gently stroking His fleshless form. It is painful, but distant, as-if He is merely floating outside of himself in a void of red agony. He can taste pennies, and the dull cracking of bones is calming. I shall preserve you. For a time. Until you know Honor, then you may pass on from my flock.
20 minutes. He is a mass of quivering flesh, a sexless nothingness, a bloody heap surrounded by the bodies of flawed people. The violence of the flock is like any other cornered animal's from an outsider's perspective. Scalpers and Vaqueros alike would tell of terrible creatures, La Chupacabre and its myriad siblings of legend. He is one of them. You shall carry many burdens for my flock. Another finger on the Monkey's Paw curls. She is one of them. It isn't all that different, formless and crackling, the distinction between sexes as one of the flock is not all that evident from outside of it. The Curandera said the males had brighter plumage, highlights of color to their forelimbs, their tail fans, and were a bit more squat by comparison to the majority of the flock. Had She considered being among their ranks, She would have taken more notice before. She can feel the heat of the evening sun on Her back. It is perfect.
13 minutes. She opens her eyes. Pale blue, like the noon sky when the Curandera was killed. Her bones have not fully set, but she is mostly ascended. Her neck extends, far beyond its previous limit, arching as she lulls her head from side to side, cracking vertebra settling on a final shape in line with her crawl from the void of red and black abysses and back into the mortal realm. She cranes her neck, more literally than first advertised, bending almost like a pivoting cobra, her quivering, blood-soaked mass of feathers and claws, scaled paws approximately protrude where Her feathers give way. Dusty brown, perhaps even Coyoté Tan, It reminded her of the reasoning. She still shivered, felt nauseous, gagged and spat blood from her stomach. Her feathers stood on end as She felt her mind threaten to scream, to run away like the instinct She'd followed until now. Until now.
5 minutes. The two Border Patrol helicopters can be seen approaching the massacre. She stands uncertainly on backwards-bending legs, Her tail doing most of the work balancing. She is otherwise unremarkable, about the size of her peers, who approach from the brush and welcome Her with a series of squawks and chirps approximating various intonations of Hello, Sister. Some voices even sound familiar, perhaps reincarnations of Grand Parents lost just a year or two ago? She didn't have specifics. She glances down at the sad remains of her human life: blood, guts, flesh, hair, shredded clothing, a cracked smart phone, a compass. Nothing remained that could be salvaged except that goddamn Casio wrist watch. You can't pay for the persistence of a $15 watch, it has to be earned.
Beep Beep. Beep Beep. Beep Beep. Beep Beep. For 30 seconds, the Casio chimed its familiar and seemingly timeless chirp. She felt compelled to mirror it. She managed to scoop the watch up, loop it around Her new narrow wrists, and pull it tight with Her teeth. A little something to remind Her that She will choose instead. The sound of distant Helicopters can be heard echoing ever closer to the site of the massacre. This small segment of the Flock has kept the normal wildlife from chewing up the dead beyond the Coyotés who were mulched utterly. The relatively small bite on the leg that She got when She tried to run was definitely the more mild of the injuries. Before following after the Flock into the long shadows cast by the nearby mountains, She surveyed the scene.
She'd make it right, whatever it took, one clawed step at a time. Besides, She might even like the whole Walking with Dinosaurs routine.
It would guide Her through some acts of redemption as She ran the path. To Her credit, She forgot about the offer to pass on, and never asked. She was running the rounds one Winter near the Reserve, crossing paths with a college kid from California one fateful night, following the old couple's Catch and Release rules for Gringos. The girl'll be back, She knew, they always come back.
Disclaimer:
No, my familiarity with the Apache does not extend past the limited histories that trickle into my grasp. I don't even have anyone I currently hang out with who belongs to any of the Reservations within my state of Arizona, my pals from highschool just didn't get far before being lost to dependency, crime, or other reasons. I don't think inventing a cool dinosaur cryptid stalking around the Southwest would terribly offend, but also don't know for certain and am mildly terrified of being shitty about it. I just think dinosaurs and mythologies of Arizona and parts beyond have an interesting synergy in my mind. I've thought about the plights of peoples of the various Native American Nations of Arizona for many years, it remains a controversial topic within the circles of discussion that even bother to acknowledge the rights of Native peoples.
Friends in highschool, former coworkers, and distant peers have expressed a variety of interesting personal stories of life on and off reservation; plus the occasional interest story PBS or AZPM will put out. I claim no heritage, just status as an observer removed from the struggle. Yell at me in the comments probably if this kind of Southwest Border Fiction feels gross. The struggles of people caught up in the illicit industries that move people across the Southern U.S. border are often completely unknown, and I think they make for an interesting flavor of contemporary fiction. During COVID-19's 2020 debut, existing health crises within the Navajo and Apache Nations hit all-time highs as understaffed and underpaid healthcare workers scrambled in response to insane rates of infection amongst the Reservation populations.
Suffice to say, complete histories of Southwest Mythology have suffered due to economic flight from the Reservations as much as loss of key figures to the mundane passing of time. I think the only thing that's come close to touching on this issue in fiction in recent memory is the original videogame Prey (in 2006) which really just touches on it briefly. We never got a sequel to the original Prey, sadly ending that opportunity to tell stories about different slices of Southwest Culture. Next in line in my memory is the canceled Netflix Series Seis Manos that covers dramatic fictional versions of real-life Drug Cartels. We only got a single season, I think that's a crime and we're really missing out on Southwest Mythology in Fiction. Hope the effort to push out the idea in my own way isn't seen as too wonky, I leave Arizona for parts beyond soon after 28 years of residency.
Hope my interest and respect comes across, thanks.