The Billy Club Bastard Case Files: The Night of the Nagual, Part 1 of 2

Walter Ortíz, reeling after a wild summer dodging monsters, maniacs, and murderers, has gotten himself exiled south for his association with Mickey Malloy.

While searching a smuggling tunnel found at the U.S.-Mexican border, he runs into something horrifying, the last thing he expected.

This is Part 1 of The Night of the Nagual. It is the fifth story in The Billy Club Bastard Case Files: Old Dogs Still Got Teeth and is a stand-alone story. This part features some familiar faces, such as Walter Ortíz from The Case of the Calcified Costumer, as well as Caleb Union from The Case of an Old Dead Guy.

Content warnings: violence, gun violence, animal violence, death, gore, creeps, mild swearing.

THURSDAY NIGHT, SEPTEMBER 9, 1943
THREE J'S RANCH, SOUTH RANGE
EAGLE PASS, TEXAS

Walter Ortíz dangled on the end of the cable like a worm on a hook. The only light oozing into the void was coming through the goat-sized hole above him, soft and lunar, the only sounds were the voices of the men lowering him down into that abyss.

“What do you see, Walt?” Ronaldo Fernandez asked. His voice echoed off the tunnel's reinforced earthen walls.

“Nada,” Ortíz reported back. He wanted to whisper, but that ship had sailed as Fernandez's question bounced bounced away into oblivion. Ortíz's reply chased it down: “This is the biggest tunnel yet, they could be driving Panzers through this one.”

He couldn't see either end of the tunnel. The flashlight taped to the barrel of his shotgun wasn't strong enough to reach beyond a couple dozen yards. To his north and south, the beam was swallowed by deep darkness.

“Dinos que ves,” Abarca shouted down in español. Ortíz winced; Efraín Abarca's voice careened down the tunnel, loud as a dropped pot. The federales the Office were coordinating with were gruff men who had no patience for dealing with what they'd thought was nonsense. It was only after they found the first tunnel, the in-progress excavation beneath Laredo, that they'd started to take the Abwehr threat seriously.

“¿Hay nazis?” Robledo shouted. Of the two federales, Yair Robledo, the old hand, had gotten on Ortíz's nerves the most. He was always complaining, always talking jurisdiction when it came to arrests. Instead of getting smart back at him, Ortíz braced himself for landing. The tunnel's dirt floor was smooth and packed solid as rock. He leaned on his crutch, let his shotgun hang on its sling for a second, then unhooked the rope from his waist. He kept the uncomfortable harness strapped up, just in case the tunnel wasn't as deserted as it seemed.

“Estamos limpios,” Ortíz called back. Fernandez started helping the federales put on their harnesses as the rope slithered back up and out of the tunnel.

“What? English, please!” Inspector Union shouted. He was their assigned archivist and wasn't doing much more than following them around, grumpy and hungover. He pushed between the others and stuck his head over the edge of the hole, sunlight gleaming off his red bald scalp to reflect strange patterns in the darkness. His nasally voice ricocheted off the walls in an even more energetic and pervasive manner than anyone else's had. New echoes chased the old away.

“We're clear!” Ortíz repeated in English. It was too late to keep it down anyway. When Union wasn't on call as a Congressionally mandated snitch, he was the regional inspector charged with keeping an eye on Texas and northern Mexico and he couldn't speak a lick of Spanish. Union's name was pronounced like the English word for cebollas, and he smelled just like them.

Abarca and Robledo chuckled, catching a glare from Union which they promptly disregarded.

“This is my operation, and we'll talk how I want to talk,” Union huffed. He'd had a chip on his shoulder since Mickey Malloy had run a Heartland Heroes operation in Houston without Union's okay. And it was well-known that Ortíz and Malloy were close, thus, he transferred ownership of whatever bone he'd decided to pick to Ortíz.

“It's a big tunnel, biggest we've found yet,” Ortíz repeated for Union, trying to take the high road. Whatever he thought about the stout, sunburned man, they were on the same side.

“We'll see, I found a tunnel in Nogales that was wide enough to drive a Jeep through,” Union retorted.

“This might be larger,” Ortíz said.

Union leaned down through the hole, up to his gut. He looked around upside-down, shaking his head.

“I don't know, I have collapsed many, many tunnels, and this one looks average at best,” the inspector said. Ortíz bit the inside of his lip to keep his mouth shut.

“Orale, culero,” Robledo barked at Union.

“English,” Union snapped.

“Are we going in?” Abarca asked, rolling his eyes at his partner. The federale was holding a rope for the inspector to take. Union pushed himself up out of the hole and grabbed it.

Together, the four of them lowered a cart into the hole. They'd packed enough plastic explosives in it to bring down the whole tunnel.

Ortíz turned around in the dark. There was no sign of the tunnel's architects, Nazis or otherwise, or even of the wayward goat who'd fallen through the hole. All the farmer wanted when he'd called the police was his goat back. Ortíz didn't see any sign of the animal, even though it had to have fallen four yards or more. There had to be a limping billy somewhere close.

The cart full of charges touched down followed by Inspector Union. The stocky man probed the darkness with a Colt Detective Special in one hand and a Franklin torch in the other. Its bioluminescent glow did little to stave off the darkness.

“This tunnel is fairly large, in diameter, anyway,” he said, “But the Nogales tunnel was longer.”

Ortíz walked off rather than respond. They had no way of knowing where the tunnel began or ended, only where a Texan herder's prize billy has fallen through. Ortíz clomped ahead on his crutch, swinging his shotgun around on its sling. The rubber ball shells he'd packed would wreck havoc in the tunnel, though he'd left his usual load of concussive drum grenades up top. Their sonic blasts would deafen everyone at best, and bring down the roof on their heads at worst. He wasn't too comfortable with either prospect.

Abarca and Robledo slid into the tunnel in quick succession, followed by Fernandez. Each was armed: the two federales with hunting rifles, and Fernandez with an M1 carbine fitted with a captured Vampir infra-red scope.

“Limpio al norte,” Fernandez reported.

“English, God damn it,” Union snapped.

“The north is clear,” Fernandez repeated.

“South, too,” Ortíz added.

“No people,” Union said. He holstered his revolver and began inspecting the tunnel. He let the fungal blue light play across the reinforced walls and high ceilings. “Plenty of room to drive a Panzer.”

“No está huellas de orugas,” Abarca pointed out, his flashlight beam highlighting ruts worked into the floor

“No tread marks, though,” Union said. “Only from regular tires.”

“Deuce-and-a-half trucks, or larger, two-wide,” Ortíz said after examining the distinct grooves. He began following their trail slowly, watching for trip wires and buried ordnance.

“They're just pouring into our country,” Union said. “Dope, killers, who-knows-what.”

“¿Que esta diciendo ahora?” Abaraca asked.

“Los disparates del gringos,” Robledo told him.

“Where are they?” Union wondered aloud, ignoring the two snickering federales. “A tunnel this big would need dozens of men to maintain it, much less operate it.”

“That hole in the roof is very conspicuous,” Fernandez said. “Maybe they abandoned the tunnel when they were exposed.”

“Nazis do not spend the time or money it takes to construct something like this to just leave,” Union countered. “At the very least they would do one final push and set traps before they left.”

“Like Vesuvius,” Fernandez replied. They all nodded. Somehow, none of them had missed the blood red band of volcanic haze staining the eastern horizon every morning. He pulled a strange device out of his duffel, a contraption that looked like a radio combined with a bellows. With the flick of a switch its nozzle began whirring and it drew in the tunnel's stale air. It beeped like a carnival game until he twisted a switch and it calmed. Its dials ticked off different readings as it analyzed the particles hanging in the tunnel's dank air. After examining the readings, Fernandez was able to tell Union:

“Other than the haul we brought, the Explosive Substance Indicator picked up traces of TNT and more, but in such low quantities that no live bombs have been in here for weeks.”

“So the krauts and their buddies have been rolling bombs through here?” the inspector asked.

“Either not many or none in a long time,” Fernandez confirmed. “Point is, the tunnel is not rigged.”

“Mines are the least of our trouble,” Ortíz called from up ahead. His voice was uncertain, a quality none of the team had every heard him. He urged them on: “¡Ven aca! Mira esto!”

They hustled, weapons loaded and safeties off.

Ortíz had found a small alcove carved into the wall of the tunnel, no larger than a phone booth. A dead man was curled up in the bottom, his desiccated corpse torn ragged and folded over itself backwards. What was left of his clothes made it clear that he was a member of the Silver Legion: a silver shirt with a bold 'L' stitched onto the chest.

“Rope Men,” Ortíz said, identifying the Legion cell the man had come from. He showed them the noose that the dead man carried on his belt and the remains of the white hood that had covered his face. If anyone was going to get mauled and snapped in half in a desert tunnel, he couldn't think of a better candidate than a former Klansman and eager lyncher.

Abarca spit on the corpse, cursed, then said:

“Ningún mexicano trabajaría con esta escoria.”

“Mexicans would not cooperate with this man, or him, them,” Fernandez translated for Union.

“That's true. But the krauts have money,” Union pointed out.

“They recruit hombres like him with... la creencia, no dinero,” Abarca said.

“Conviction, not cash,” Ortíz said.

“I agree,” Union said. “I've seen many like him. Arrested and interrogated them myself. They are tough sons of bitches.”

“¿Quién hubiera hecho esto?” Abarca asked.

“No lo sé, pero necesitamos encontrarlo,” Ortíz replied.

“No debe escapar de aquí,” Robledo agreed.

“What are you talking about?” Union demanded.

“We have to find whoever did this to him,” Ortíz told him.

“He is very dangerous,” Robledo explained.

“I don't care who did this to him. More power to him. He can keep killing Nazis,” Union said.

“Up there is not Nazis,” Abarca objected. “Families, niños, farmers.”

“Whoever did this is long gone. Look, it's disgusting.” With that, Union kicked the corpse. It was so dry that its paper-thin neck skin cracked and its hooded skull popped right off and bounced onto the floor. It picked up speed and rolled into the darkness to the south.

“The floor is sloped,” Fernandez pointed out.

The two federales whispered to each other in a furious argument.

“Hey! Enough!” Union shouted, shutting them both up. His voice barreled down the tunnel into the blackness. “This is my operation, mine. You are here as a courtesy. We are going to leave this sorry sack right where he died, and keep searching and planting charges. When we have seen everything I want to see, we leave and we bury everyone stupid enough to still be down here.”

Union left the four of them and stalked ahead. Fernandez shrugged, then collected the cart. It had a squeaky wheel, and the intermittent whine sounded like a whimpering dog when it echoed. Abarca covered his six while Ortíz and Robledo followed Union.

“¿Por qué escuchas a este hombre?” Robledo asked, pointing at the inspector's back.

“Tengo que seguir órdenes,” Ortíz told him.

“Sabes que tenemos que encontrar esto ser que mató a ese hombre,” Robeldo insisted. That, at least, Ortíz agreed with. A killer on loose was not something he could abide, especially one so brutal. “Si es un asesino o un monstruo.”

“¿Un monstruo?” Ortíz asked.

“Ni siquiera un carnicero puede hacerle eso a un humano.” The look in the older federale's eyes told Ortíz that Robledo genuinely believed a human incapable of that kind of carnage.

Ortíz didn't have a response quick enough for the old mestizo investigator, so Robledo stomped away, cursing under his breath at Union's back.

Fernandez caught up to Ortíz and spoke in whispers.

“We are dealing with Nazis, Walt. Could be Vargulf, or mannessers.”

“The Vargulf are dead. And mannessers wouldn't have left that much for us,” Ortíz said. Too many officials had died dropping Eberkopf on the Vargulf's heads for any of them to be left.

“¿Escuchas eso?” Abarca whispered. He stopped in his tracks. “¿Respiración?”

Ortíz and Fernandez froze in place and listened. They heard it too, a deep breathing sound. It thundered inside the ceiling, the walls.

“El Río Grande,” Ortíz realized. The distance they'd walked, plus the tunnel's slope, would put them right at the right spot. If his guess was correct, the bend in the huge river that divided the US and Mexico west of Eagle Pass was directly above them.

“That means were are in Mexico. Welcome, amígos,” Robledo said.

“They poured concrete here,” Union called from up ahead, ignoring Robledo. “Like I said, this is the largest, most advanced tunnel I've ever discovered. It must run for miles.”

“¿A poco?” Abarca asked, dumbfounded by Union's flip-flop. He slicked his long sweaty hair back and shook his head.

“I must have taken a thousand men to build this, and right under our noses,” Union continued. He scratched his graying beard with his revolver. Ortíz had to bite his tongue to keep from saying anything.

“Ay, díos mio,” Abarca said. His light was no longer watching their six. Instead it was pointed at the ceiling. The concrete flew above them in steel-reinforced buttresses. The river rushing overhead was held on the shoulders of intricate, gargantuan architecture.

“How did you miss this?” Union demanded. He was asking the Mexicans.

“¿Nosotros?” Abarca snapped. “Un túnel tiene dos salidas, tonto.”

“Calmate, calmate,” Robledo soothed.

“You. Need. To. Speak. English.” Union seethed, his every syllable deliberate, loud, and distinct, as if he was talking to toddlers rather than two armed and experienced investigators.

“They said that it would take more than just Mexican resources to build this tunnel,” Ortíz interjected. “And I agree.”

“Do you?” Union demanded.

“Look at these beams,” Fernandez said. He pointed his light at the closest vertical support. It was stamped with the US Steel imprint. The I-beams had come straight from Pittsburgh.

“Probably stolen. Keep looking for suspects,” Union snapped. “I need someone to question.”

They walked a while longer, eventually reaching the low point in the tunnel. The slope went positive again, drawing the squad upwards again. Ortíz estimated that they'd walked about two miles to get halfway, and they hadn't even started at the end. The whole thing had to run at least four miles, if not five or six. It was an absurd undertaking.

They were ten minutes into the long walk up the upslope before Ortíz heard Union start cursing.

“Shit,” Union was saying. “Shit, shit, shit.”

Ortíz double-timed it on his crutch, almost keeping pace with Robledo. They found Union standing stock-still, staring at a dripping mess of blood, guts, and fur.

“You found the goat,” Fernandez said.

The animal's remains were shredded, and spread across the wall like thrown paint. Fluids were oozing down the wall, dripping in rivers down the sloping floor. Something had split its bones and drained the marrow.

“Jesucristo,” Abarca said.

“What is that smell?” Ortíz asked. There was a nauseating sulfur stink hanging in the air.

“Goat guts,” Union answered.

“No, is worse,” Fernandez said. His fished his treated handkerchief out of his pocketed and clamped it over his nose and mouth. The Office issued them to filter poisonous gases; it would do the job against the stench.

“The killer's still down here,” Union stammered.

“It is not a man,” Robledo snapped. “We must go, now. Come back with poison and traps and hunters.”

“Of course it's a man,” Union snapped. “And we have bullets.”

“Conozco este olor,” Robledo insisted. He repeated it in English for Union: “I know this smell. Es una comadreja. See? See!”

The old federale was pointing to a mark in the pooled blood.

“Oh. Oh shit,” Union stammered. It was paw-print, larger than a baseball mitt. Long claws extended from each of the five toes. He spun around to make a break for the hole they descended from, putting the carnage behind him. His light swept past Fernandez and the explosives cart, illuminating two freakish emerald eyes floating in its blue glow.

“No!” he yelled. He backed away, raising his revolver to fire. The congealing trickles of blood were still slick, and his heel slipped out from under his as he pulled the trigger. His bullet hit the ceiling, but in that flash of light Ortíz could see what had been follow them. It had a head the size of a bear's, filled with needle-sharp teeth. White fur coated a long, serpentine body that twisted in ways that should have been impossible for an animal with bones. Scarlet gore stained its face from its pink nose past its round ears.

The muzzle flash faded as quickly as it ignited, and the creature loosed a shrieking hiss, then charged.

Fernandez fired first, missing as the thing snaked around his shot. Abarca shot wide, then it was on him before he could rack his rifle again. He shrieked, then wheezed and went silent as the creature clamped down on his neck.

Ortíz fired round after round into monster's body. Each rubber ball hit with the force of a sledgehammer.

It neither noticed nor let go of Abarca. Instead, it shook the struggling man in its jaws, snapping bones with each thrash of its head. His body went limp before it dragged him away into the black.

Robledo fired again and again down the tunnel, but there was no way to tell if he'd hit anything but shadows.

“We have to go!” Ortíz shouted. Fernandez was huffing up the incline, dragging the cart behind him, and Union was long gone. The remaining federale stood stock still. “Robledo! Està muerto. Tenemos que correr.”

“¡Su esposa esta embarazada!” Robledo shouted. He took a long breath, then whispered in broken English: “He is father, soon.”

“I am sorry, lo siento, pero we have got to go!” Ortíz said, unsure which language he was speaking. He grabbed a fistful of Robledo's shirt and dragged him in the direction Fernandez and Union had run.

A low hiss emanated from the darkness downhill.

Ortíz did not know how long they ran, it could've been five minutes or fifty. By the time they found Fernandez and Union, his shoulder ached where the crutch had dug into his armpit. The pair of officials was standing in the middle of the tunnel. Their lights illuminated a pile of dirt and rock that blocked the way, floor to ceiling.

Underneath the rubble, Ortíz could make out the shape of an overturned deuce-and-a-half truck. Southbound skid marks showed where it had swerved into the wall. Several barrels had tumbled out of its bed. Blue stains ran from where they'd emptied into the packed earth floor. Union had just finished testing it with a Hostile Substance Battery. He examined the testing strip, then spoke up.

“It's safe to breathe,” he said. He and Fernandez folded their filtering handkerchiefs and pocketed them. “They tried to trap it down here.”

“What is that stuff?” Ortíz asked.

Fernandez tugged at the closest barrel, hauling it out of the dirt. The emblem painted on its side was one Ortíz didn't recognize: a green cross with a white crown inside. It was empty and shredded, its steel peeled open like an orange rind. The barrel hadn't burst from the impact, it had been ripped open from the outside. A huge paw print, matching the one they'd seen in the mutilated goat's blood, stained the barrel next to the logo.

“Chemical weapons headed to our cities, no doubt,” Union declared. “Smuggled within Crown Pharmaceuticals packaging.”

Ortíz wasn't so sure. The truck was facing the wrong direction to be headed into the States, and he recognized the name from a dozen other incidents. Crown wasn't a victim in all of whatever was happening.

“¿Cuán hondos somos?” Robledo asked.

“How deep are we?” Fernandez translated for Union.

“If we assume that the incline is equal on both sides, there shouldn't be any more that three meters of earth above the ceiling,” Union said. “We could blow the ceiling then climb the rubble out.”

“You can climb out,” Ortíz said. He lifted his crutch to waggle it at the investigator.

“We will come back for you,” Union promised.

“Do what you have to do,” Ortíz said. “Just get us out of here. And don't bury us in the process.”

“You up for it, Ron?” Union asked. It took Fernandez a second to realize the inspector was talking to him. He scratched the fresh scar on his chin, just a few days removed from getting his stitches out after surviving a Chickenhawk crash in Tallahassee. He shined his light up and spent a long minute examining the ceiling before giving his answer:

“I can do it if you keep that thing off my back while I wire it.”

“Give me your carbine, and get to work,” Union ordered. Fernandez's handed over his long gun and got to it, pulling four plastic explosive charges off their cart. He began the treacherous climb up the rubble pile.

Ortíz and Robledo took their places next to Union and readied their guns.

“Did he say he knew what that thing was?” Union asked Ortíz from behind his sights.

Ortíz translated the question for Robledo.

“I speak a little ingles, you know.” Robledo grunted.

“Well what was that thing?” Union snapped.

“Its smell, like un comadreja,” Robledo explained. “I do not know the word.”

“What's a comadreja?” Union asked.

“I don't know,” Ortíz said. “It's not a word we use in Baltimore.”

“Es como una rata, pero muy largo, y se come ratas,” Robledo try to explain. “My father, he like have them on his farm. To keep rats y snakes away.”

“It's like a long rat, but it eats rats,” Ortíz said.

“A weasel?” Union asked.

“¡Sí, sí!” Robledo said.

“That thing was the size of a Rolls Royce limousine. It is no weasel,” Union objected.

“What about this stuff?” Ortíz wondered, pointing at the broken barrels and their spilled contents. “Could they do that to a weasel?”

“We don't even know what was in those, but nothing can do something that drastic that to a living animal,” Union said.

“There are six-legged sharks running around Europe and owls the size of fighter planes at Zoo Base that would say otherwise,” Ortíz countered.

Union looked horrified to see Ortíz talking about classified item in front of a non-official, but he couldn't pass up the chance to correct a subordinate.

“Well actually, those are very different cases, Official Ortíz. Trench sharks are subjected to years of surgeries in addition to chemical treatments, while the titan owls increased in size through generations of selective breeding. You're suggesting a mammal grew to nearly two-hundred-thousand percent its typical mass from a sip of some mystery concoction?”

“We've seen stranger,” Ortíz said. “We need to figure out where those barrels came from.”

“We need to survive this day and find whoever dug this death trap,” Union said. “They cannot be allowed to send these creatures into our country with impunity.”

They watched the darkness in silence for a while, watching for the man-eater while Fernandez worked above. The river's roar was quiet where they were. Each of Fernandez's movements at the ceiling, setting det-cord, tamping plastic explosives into place, twisting his body for a surer grip on the unsteady rubble, sent echoes into the black.

Ortíz kept his flashlight blazing. It seemed as if the weasel only attacked when its prey was distracted or vulnerable. If he never gave it the chance to get one over on them, it would not attack. He hoped.

“Eso no es una comadreja,” Robledo muttered to himself. He sat in the dirt and stared at nothing.

“¿Qué?” Ortíz asked him.

“Es un nagual,” Robledo said. “Mi abuelita me habló del nagual.”

“What's a nagual?” Union asked. He saw Ortíz staring and added: “I'm from Texas, I know a little Spanish.”

“His grandmother told him about them,” Ortíz said. Robledo kept blathering, and Ortíz struggled to keep up with him.

“He says they're... witches, who can turn their bodies into animals. They have... sex with the Devil. And they turn into monsters. His grandmother saw them in Oaxaca. She told him she had never been so scared. The priest told her not to worry and he died two days later. A... what? An angel broke the curse and took six men to chase the naguales north and none of them was ever seen again.”

“Well,” Union said, looking flabbergasted. “That is malarkey. I'll trust my carbine over an angel any day”

Robledo looked exhausted and even more unnerved after having told him story. He set down his rifle and laid out onto his back. Union was about to object, but Ortíz grabbed his arm and shook his head. Robledo let out a long, meditative breath, let it go slowly. He kept his eyes closed, and started to talk.

He and his family had just had dinner with Abarca and his wife three nights ago. Her name was Idoya, and she cooked a full spread even seven months pregnant. Abarca had helped prepare the tortillas and chopped the vegetables.

Ortíz smiled. He had fiance of his own. She would not be cooking meals anywhere. She was an official herself, and as much as he worried about her, he'd be more worried if she wasn't out there knocking the molars out of spies and traitors with her brass knuckles. He wished he could keep her safe, but the truth was that she probably did a better job of it than he ever could. He told Robledo all of that.

The older man smiled as well, then talked about his wife. She was older than him, and when he had married her he had adopted her son. He and the boy did not see eye to eye, until one day when a gale wind blew their roof off. The time he and Tadeo had spent fixing their home changed everything. He had written his stepson's letter of recommendation for the Heroico Colegio Militar just a month prior. They were still waiting on his acceptance letter.

Robledo sighed and opened his eyes. As they adjusted to the darkness, they went wide.

“¡Nagual!” he shouted. He scrambled for his gun, but a thousand pounds of furious weasel dropped the five yards from the ceiling. Robledo rolled out of the way. The monster smashed his rifle under its paws.

Union opened up with the carbine, sending a stinging barrage into the beast's flank. The nagual whipped around, hissing and spitting. The stink was almost overpowering; Ortíz blinked tears out of his eyes and raised his shotgun. He pounded rounds into the nagual's rib cage until his shotgun ran dry.

“Down!” Union shouted, but Robledo wasn't quick enough. The nagual slashed out with a huge paw, catching the federale across the chest. Fresh blood splashed across the tunnel wall, and Robledo went flying. When he touched down he stayed down. The monster scampered over to where he landed, its jaws open wide to snatch him up.

“Back off!” Union shouted. He stood and cooked off the rest of his carbine's magazine into the weasel's side. It hopped away, snarling. Union dropped the M1A1 and pulled his revolver, firing with both hands. Its fat rounds managed to tick off the nagual even more. The creature seemed to coil up on its long body, then stood to its full height. It towered over Union, nearly reaching the high ceiling. It reared back as if to strike the portly man like a cobra. The light made its eyes glow a sickening green. It hissed eagerly, then squeaked as its hindquarters were yanked out from beneath it.

The explosives cart, all couple hundred pounds of it, rammed into the nagual's gut and knocked it onto its can. The cart disappeared into the darkness, careening off to the lowest point of the tunnel, under the river.

“How'd you like that?” Fernandez shouted at the sprawling nagual from the bottom of the pile of rubble. The monster twisted around and regained its feet, yowling at the tiny human who had hurt it. It charged him, but Ortíz had a fresh shell in hand. He fed it directly into his shotgun's chamber and fired from the hip. The steel-cored rubber ball nailed the nagual right in its pink nose.

The monster squealed and stopped in its tracks, swiping at its wounded snout with a paw.

“That's what I thought,” Fernandez said. He held up a radio transmitter and pressed a green button on its face. Four charges in the ceiling burst, deafening everyone and sending a wall of dust roaring through the tunnel. Rocks and shattered concrete fell around them. Ortíz covered his head and neck. Shards cut him and pebbles bounced off his skull, but most of it missed him.

When the dust cleared, Ortíz could see the stars. Fernandez had blown a coffin-sized hole in the ceiling. He was standing in the rubble, brushing dust and dirt out of his hair. Robledo and Union were nowhere to be found, and the nagual had disappeared into the dusty darkness of the northern end of the tunnel once more.

“¿Dónde están?” Ortíz asked. He scrambled across the rocks to where he'd last seen them. Fernandez joined him in frantically turning over concrete slabs.

“¡Aquí!” Fernandez shouted. He was pulling rocks off of a groaning mound. Ortíz helped him shove a cracked stone aside and discovered Union on his belly, bloody and muttering. A stone had split his head open from behind his ear to his nose. The ragged wound was black with dirt.

“Is he okay?” Union spat. He kept asking: “Is he okay, is he okay, is he okay?”

Fernandez managed to move Union, inch-by-inch, until they found Robledo. Union had thrown his body over the unconscious federale's just as the blast went off. Robledo's chest had been left in ribbons by the nagual's claws, but he was still breathing.

“He's okay,” Ortíz told Union. The inspector sighed, then passed out.

“Tenemos que moverlos,” Fernandez said. He sounded desperate, which he'd have to be to try to move anyone with these injuries.

“If that thing shows up again, I'll put a bullet through its eye,” Ortíz said, so mad he was speaking English.

“No estoy preocupado por el nagual,” Fernandez explained. “Me preocupa el rio.”

Ortíz looked down the tunnel, where the nagual had gone. It was also where Fernandez had sent the explosives cart. His jaw dropped.

“How long?” he asked.

“I thought we'd be dead already, keep that in mind,” Fernandez said. He checked the glowing radium numbers on his wristwatch. “Nueve minutos, trenta segundos.”

They had less than ten minutes to carry two men up a mountain of rubble and get them to the surface before the waters of the Río Grande came rushing though, washing away everything in the tunnel. And they only had three good legs between them to do it.

Fernandez went to work wrapping a thick bandage around Union's head, while Ortíz did his best to cover Robledo's wound. The nagual had opened four parallel slices in the federale's chest, down into the white meat beneath the fat. Ortíz doused the wound with coagulant spray and a dash of sulfa powder from his Office field kit, wrapped it up as well as he could, and tied the bandages tight.

“Him first,” Ortíz said, pointing at Robledo. Union had thrown his own body over the man when the charges burst. He'd be a son of a bitch if he'd done all that then came to to find that they'd just let Robledo drown.

They threw Robledo's arms over their shoulders and struggled up the steep pile. Ortíz used his crutch to balance, trying his best not to bring all three of them tumbling down. Fernandez took the lead, hauling Robledo upward while Ortíz shoved up from beneath. It seemed like forever, but they finally reached the top. As soon as they had the federale halfway out of the ground, Ortíz left Fernandez to it and descended the rubble alone. His uncertain steps dislodged rocks with every movement. He had to carry most of his weight with his arms; the knee that the Nazis had put a bullet through eight months back didn't count for much any more. By the time he touched down, his shoulders and biceps were burning.

He hooked one arm under Union's and began the awkward process of dragging a limp body with only one working leg. Using a combination of jerking heaves and ill-balanced hops, he managed to get Union to the foot of the pile by the time Fernandez sent down a dimly-glowing wormline. The silk rope weighed nothing but could pull hundreds of pounds, another Office tool. Ortíz looped it under Union's arms and around his chest then tied it off.

“¡Jale!” Ortíz shouted. Fernandez hauled upward while Ortíz pushed from beneath again. The going was slow, but they were getting there.

“¡Treinta segundos!” Fernandez called down.

“Mierda,” Ortíz cursed. He gave Union one last shove then tried to climb around him. A loud flash lit the deep dark of the tunnel. “What was that?”

“It was an estimate!” Fernandez yelled. A wall of solid noise rushed up the tunnel, bringing airborne tons of shattered stone and pulverized concrete in its wake. The wave hit the rubble pile and reflected upward, dragging Union, Ortíz, and a supersonic avalanche with it.

When Ortíz came to, he was laying on his back in scrubby brown grass. His clothes were soaked; he made sure it was water, not blood. The moon was hanging overhead. Fernandez was standing over him. He was talking, but his voice was lost to a persistent ringing permeating the world.

Ortíz looked to his left. Union and Robledo were laid out next to him. Both were breathing, both wrapped in clean bandages. He sat up. Straight in front of him, a dozen yards from his feet, the hole they'd been blown out of was overflowing with brown river water.

Ortíz groaned. He could hear that. He wasn't deaf.

Beneath the groan, he could hear the water gurgling, Fernandez murmuring, and a jarring hiss. He tried to shake the water out of his ear, but it didn't help.

“¿Qué es ese sonido?” he asked. His own voice sounded like he was shouting on the other side of bulletproof glass, but the hissing was coming through clear.

“Eso es lo que he estado tratando de decirte,” Fernandez said, grinning. He pointed to Ortíz's right.

The nagual was laying there, soaked through. Its white fur was matted to its thin, skeletal body. The thing had to be fifteen feet long from its swollen nose to its thin tail. It hissed and snapped, thrashing in the muddy grass like an earthworm after the rain.

“The water blew it right up out of the ground, knocked out cold,” Fernandez said. “So I wrapped it right up with the wormline. No fue feliz cuando despertó.”

Ortíz could imagine the monster had woken up grumpy, if the way his head felt was any indication. Fernandez had lashed the nagual's small legs to its body with the unbreakable silk wormline. The bonds would take a blowtorch to get through. Not even the creature's bone-piercing needle fangs could hope to fray it.

“¿Qué hacemos con esto?” Fernandez wondered. Ortíz shrugged. It was like the start of a bad joke: what was he supposed to do when he was stranded in Mexico with a half-ton weasel?

“¿Necesita la Oficina una mascota?” Ortíz asked.

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Copyright © 2025 Daniel Baldwin. All rights reserved.

Written and edited by Daniel Baldwin. Art by Tyrelle Smith.