The Guns of Santa Sangre (13 page)

“You was telling us about what happened in your town and what we’re riding up against.” Tucker adjusted his reins. “Finish your story.”

The peasant girl sat in her saddle, and her eyes darkened as she told them the rest. “The second night, The Men Who Walk Like Wolves came…”
 

I remember back to my village that night, and feel the fresh terror in my bones.

Full moon high.
 

A moon so big like I have never seen. It is like a horrid yellow eye, so huge, a terrible deity watching us, unblinking, full of murder. There is no getting away from it. I see the moon outside when I lock the door and then see it hover in the window when I bolt the wooden shutters and still the bright, horrid light cuts through the slats like fingers feeling through the cracks to seize us. My mother is crying and she prays quietly, clutching her cross. I put my arms around her, and we huddle in our home, but it offers no shelter or protection. We avoid the moonlight and stay in the shadows, as if that would help. The moon casts a light that exposes my people to those who would destroy us, flushes us out of the shadows and gives us nowhere to hide. We pray for sun in vain, for mother moon rules the heavens now, and her terrible children are coming out to play. Those who wait lurking in the hills were born of her, the trickster moon, and the stories of The Men Who Walk Like Wolves have been passed down from fathers to sons in our village long past remembering. You told me they were children’s tales, Mama, but how wrong you were. We were fools to think they were legend. Because now they are here.

The terrifying wolflike baying is echoing from out in the hills. But louder and closer than yesterday. It is deafening and hurts my ears, high howling and deep growling, and there are so many. I cover Mama’s ears, but know she hears. Please God, strike me deaf so at least I will not have to hear these horrible sounds.

A pounding on the door.

They are here.

No, not them. Rodrigo calling for us to come out. Go back to your hut I cry, but he persists. I go to the door and crack it open and see his sweating face and behind him the town square is full of frightened people. My townsmen have all left their homes and are gathered by the fountain, carrying guns, pitchforks, machetes and torches. The old priest gestures with his arms toward the pueblo church on the hill. He makes a prayer gesture with his hands. We listen to the minister. We will hide in our church where God would surely protect us.
 

I am among the crowd, the long black tresses of my hair tumbling over my shawled bosom, walking with my mother. Led by the parson, my townspeople march up the hill, eyes fearfully looking out into the darkened hills as we hear the wolf howls. The priest prolongs our lives by bringing the entire village into the church, leading our people in a long procession up the hill through the open wooden doors. But the reverend makes all of the men leave their guns and machetes outside the chapel. There is fear and reluctance in the men’s faces, but my people are simple and do as their minister bids. Giving up our guns quickened many of our deaths, but those weapons would not have saved us in the end.
 

The full moon rears its ugly head.

The priest gathers his flock and against the protests of the more macho farmers, he cajoles and begs and leads his congregation into the chapel.

Now, he bolts the doors with a heavy wood beam.
 

My people gather in the pews and he takes to the altar and leads our town in prayer. “Oh Heavenly Father we pray…”

From outside the stone and wood church, the roars of the wolves shake the night.
 

We light candles that flicker and gleam on the rows of silver candlesticks and silver plates and silver statues of the Blessed Virgin that adorn the nave. We are a devout congregation, and all extra money of the town has gone into manufacturing these offerings to our Lord.
 

Look, Pilar, see the eyes of the three gunfighters you have enlisted, how they glint with greed as I tell them of the silver. Soon it will be theirs. Have I done the right thing bringing them to it? I believe they are good men, but that silver is such temptation. I am suddenly full of doubt but Tucker tells me to go on with my story so I continue.

The village kneels and prays, huddling together for safety as we hear the muffled howls outside the walls growing ever louder until the stained-glass windows rattle.

Then all at once the windows explode inward and surging wind from the outside snuffs out the candles.
 

In the sudden darkness come the man-sized, hairy shapes leaping through the shattering glass, moonlight gleaming on their furry talons, rows of white fangs and red eyes.
 

The werewolves are too many to count as they fall on us praying villagers, ripping us limb from limb.
 

The priest is the first to die, his head shorn from his shoulders, rolling over and over down the aisle, spraying blood on the pews. A wolfman sinks its powerful jaws into the pastor's decapitated but still thrashing body, digging into his rib cage and chewing out his beating heart.
 

Where is Mama? I can’t see her.
 

I scramble through the pews, searching for my mother, ducking the blood and limbs flying through the air and bodies rushing to and fro, many of them already torn and dying. It is pandemonium. Through the broken windows the ghastly glow from the full moon pours onto the nightmare tableau like stage lighting of a play by Satan.
 

Fangs snap strung with blood and meat.
 

Red eyes glint in the darkness.
 

Huge muscled and tailed hairy figures drag my people to the ground and feed.
 

The women are stripped of their clothes by claws that rake over their nakedness as the werewolves violently ravish the females before eating them.
 

The massive canine haunches of the beasts pound themselves between the girls’ thighs and pulverize their womanhood even as they tear out their throats.
 

Children are swallowed whole.
 

The church is bathed in blood and guts during the unspeakable savagery. Screams and roars and rending flesh and bone become a deafening symphony of death echoing in the recesses of our rural church.

I search for Mama, screaming her name, but do not see her.

A handful of peasant men, cowarded by the carnage, abandon their dying wives and children and pry loose the wooden beam that blocks the door, fleeing into the night. They shame me.

The unlucky few who grabbed their rifles and machetes rush back into the church to shoot or hack the werewolves, but soon discover the uselessness of such weaponry against creatures such as these. Those unfortunates swiftly join the dead, dying and devoured.
 

The others spill through the open doors and run for their lives away from the church and back to the village for their horses. They do not look back but can hear the awful roars and the screams and the ripping of meat and that is enough.

I am among them.

God help me, I am so scared I have abandoned my mother to the mercy of those monsters.

When we reach the stables we find our horses disemboweled, the dead animals submerged in a lake of blackish blood filling the corral. The werewolves knew we would only be able to flee them on foot now, and could not get far.
 

But when we few look back up the hill to the defiled church, we see the big four-legged shapes up on their haunches watching us, red eyes warning us to stay put.

We stayed put.

This night of blood passed as all nights finally must.

The stables were lit by the rosy threatening glow of the pre-dawn sky.

Just before sunrise the werewolves retreated into Santa Sangre and the church doors were closed. Such was our fear, the surviving townsmen and I remained frozen in place in the stables, some soiling themselves, too afraid to budge.

It was the longest night of our lives. We were afraid to abandon the town and our families and afraid to go back so we just waited, wept and prayed.

The full moon waned. A pale sun rose.

As it did, we heard strange and frightening new sounds come from inside Santa Sangre. Howls of wolves became tortured cries of men, as flesh and bones tore and cracked amidst violent thrashing and thumping noises.
 

Those of us huddling in the corral had wondered with desperate hope if the werewolves were dying or dead.
 

By now the sun was full up, and all sounds within Santa Sangre ceased as we stood below in the village watching the too quiet church. Then there was a creak as the doors opened.

The bandits stepped out into broad daylight.

The big men were bearded, long haired, swarthy, scarred and filthy. Their faces and hands were smeared with dried blood and all were naked.
 

The werewolves had returned to human form. Banditos. They commanded two of the village men to walk one mile southwest and bring them the horses with their clothes they had left there. Two cowering farmers hurried down the hill after receiving the bandits’ instructions.

In the corral, I listened on as the fearful men talked amongst themselves. We debated whether to find more rifles and shoot these fiends who now were of human shape. Naked, unarmed and perhaps vulnerable.
 

As if in reply to the question, we heard the anguished sobs of women that my fellow villagers grimly recognized as the cries of their daughters.
 

The bandits dragged out five naked young women through the doors of Santa Sangre, their bosoms and buttocks nude and bleeding from scratches, blood streaming down to their feet from between their legs, the result of unimaginable violations. The wolves who now were men clenched the women in front of themselves as body shields, the animalistic fiends grinning sadistically in the hot daylight. The bandits rubbed themselves obscenely against the hindquarters of the girls, and become aroused lapping their tongues in their victims’ ears.
 

The girls’ eyes begged their fathers to save and not abandon them, tears flowing down their bloody cheeks, and my townsmen below fell to their knees.
 

We knew then because they had our wives and daughters and families that we would do the werewolves’ bidding now and forever. Whatever that may be.

So as the day moved on, I stood alone in my hut, watching a group of browbeaten villagers carrying supplies up the hill under the baking sun toward the bandits waiting by the church.

For the next four weeks after the bandits had taken and occupied the church they now called Santa Sangre, they enslaved my people.
 

We brought the bandits food, clothes and drink.
 

When the food ran out, one brave but foolish man, Pablo, had offered his life for his daughter and walked up the long hill through the front doors of the church and was never seen again.
 

You have their attention, Pilar. These gunslingers’ eyes are wide as saucers as they hear my story. The day is hot as we ride our tired horses through the noon sun burning down, but I swear I see them shiver as if chilled. My town is close now. I recognize the hills. Do these hard men believe me? I think they are at least respectful of what they have come to fight, and they will see with their own eyes soon enough, soon enough. There, I see the distant steeple of the church, a gleam of metal off the bell. We are almost there. I must finish my tale.

When my hut was quiet in the still of the night, I lay awake and wept and listened to the sobbing of my people from the chapel below the shadowed steeple of Santa Sangre. The moon grew fuller night by night. I knew that it would be a full moon once again in two, maybe three days, and The Men Who Walk Like Wolves would eat the last of us. I knew what I had to do.

I sat by my mirror, took a set of scissors and began shearing my long black hair. It was my pride, and I watch sadly as the locks fall to the floor. I make faces in the glass, practicing to look like a man, not a girl, because vaqueros dangerous enough to kill the things that came to our town would not listen to a woman. Well, would you have, Senors? I thought not. I dressed in a poncho and pants I took from my neighbor’s house who was dead and would not need them. The worst part was when I had to steal a horse because it meant climbing the hill to the church and getting close to the sleeping bandits, but luck was with me because the moon was clouded and it was very dark and none of the bandits stirred when I untied the horse from the post behind the cathedral without a sound.

Today I left to find a few brave gunfighters who would help us rout this scourge. I had already named them.