In the drawing the creature faced outward, showing an oval-shaped head with a long jaw and pointed chin. Huge eyes stretching across the upper half of its forehead rested above two tiny nasal slits. A mouth of jagged fangs was hissing a silent warning.
“Damn, looks like some kind of mutie,” Ryan said in a soft tone, speaking more to Krysty and Dean than the two Puerto Ricans at the table.
“No such animal has ever existed in nature, my friend,” Soto said.
“So, what’s the problem?” Dean asked. “If this thing was running around more than a hundred years ago, how can Dad help you out?”
‘ ‘Got a triple-bad feeling El Chupacabras is back, Dean,” Ryan told his son, before turning to Soto and Jorge.
“That’s why you’re telling me all this, right?”
“Yes,” Jorge said. “El Chupacabras is back, only he is no longer content to kill our animals. Now, he kills our women, our men and our children.”
“You called it a ‘mutie.’ I know of mutants. Do you think El Chupacabras was created by man, Senor Cawdor?” Soto asked.
Ryan nodded, sipping at the mug of cool water. “I do.”
“Why? You have now seen a picture of the beast. Do you not agree it looks as though it is the spawn of hell?”
Ryan scratched the stubble on his chin while pondering an answer. “First, all I’ve seen is a drawing. And yeah, it’s butt-ugly, but I think we can leave the red-faced bastard with the pitchfork and pointed ears out of the game, Soto. I’ve seen this kind of shit before. Screamwings. Stickies. Dwellers. Swampies. All kinds of muties, some of them humanoid and others throwbacks to a world before man ever came crawling out of the muck. Back in Deathlands, we brought hell down on ourselves. From what I’ve learned in recent years, we’re the ones responsible for most of the horrors that now walk, crawl and slither on the surface of this mudball.”
Soto looked at Ryan with a thoughtful expression. “The world has always been a most dangerous place, Senor.”
“Mebbe,” Ryan agreed, wiping the sweat from under his chin. “Wish Mildred was here, she’d probably be doing a better job of explaining about mutations.”
“Is there more than one?” Krysty asked.
“Oh yes,” Jorge answered, and then shrugged. “Ten? Twenty? One hundred? I have no way of knowing for sure how many. I would say the number is low due to the rarity of earlier sightings here, but now it must be growing, since the attacks have increased. Little is left in the way of livestock, so they have gone the extra step of killing men for the needed blood. Seventeen of us are dead so far. A little girl was attacked and drained just a few days ago.”
“I would hope the number of El Chupacabras is low. A few of us here have seen them, but I must wonder at the truth of what witnesses have said,” Soto mused.
“You think they’re lying?” Ryan asked.
“No, they have indeed seen something, but stories conflict. The truths do not match. One young boy said the two chupacabras he saw were floating in the air in total silence. The spines along their backs were vibrating at incredible speeds, and all of the colors of the rainbow were generated in an aura around their bodies, which in turn caused him to blank and fall unconscious.”
“Triple crazy,” Dean commented.
“So why haven’t your men gone and killed the things? Don’t you have a group of sec men to enforce the peace?”
“There is no government or police force here. People are trying to survive the best way they know how, and we do so together. All is shared,” Soto said.
“But there are few willing to fight what many think to be a creature from hell, Sefior Cawdor. I and Soto are the only two who will take up weapons,” Jorge said. “But we have little experience in such affairs.”
“And you think I do?”
“Yes.”
“And all I have to base my decision on to help out is a yarn about a blood-sucking demon and a pencil drawing of an overgrown bat. Not much to go on.”