Excerpt
A whistling groan filled the air, a sound like bombs falling.
Alfonso pivoted toward movement that he glimpsed out of the corner of his eye.
A bright red Metrobus came screaming out of the sky at impossible speeds. Alfonso jumped back just as the rapid transit vehicle slammed into the blacktop, ripping up huge chunks of asphalt and hurling them against buildings and cars as it bored into the street and then flipped over, completely crumpled and mangled. Body parts were flung free, landing up and down the block with gruesome, squelching thuds.
"What the …?"
A harrowing, cavernous snarl echoed deafeningly all around.
Glancing up, Alfonso saw—high above the rooftops several blocks over—a massive and monstrous head moving along Insurgentes Avenue. Vaguely reptilian, it was covered in jagged, spiny chitin that continued down over what he could see of its torso. The uneven plating suddenly glinted blue as fire from a passing attack plane spat bright yet ineffective against that impossible flesh.
The plane wheeled through the sky, circling the invading behemoth and preparing for another barrage. But a great taloned fist came swinging in a perilous arc and batted the aircraft into a sprawling music store, where it exploded with a concussion that was quickly drowned out by the beast's bone-rattling howl.
Alfonso's phone buzzed in his hand. A text message. Opening the application with a trembling finger, he saw that there were dozens from friends, colleagues, relatives.
you okay, dad?
answer, dumbass!
condesa under attack! stay away from insurgentes!
reports say moving from coyoacan to cuauhtemoc so be safe!
if you're still in mexico city get the hell out now
amecameca razed to the ground!
seen this monster that came out of the volcano? remind you of something?
That message, one of the first to come through, was from a number he didn't recognize. There was an image attached, a photo of a ceramic figurine from Xochicalco with which Alfonso was very familiar.
The newest text was from a colleague, Ruth Garibay, whose initial work in Toluca was the basis for the new proposed dig.
Alfonso stared at the picture she had attached for some thirty seconds before reading her note.
been sitting on this for a year worried about blowback—not the first one, Poncho.
His mind reeling, he reviewed the previous messages, which provided a patchwork of information that he wished he could confirm on news websites, but the passage of the behemoth and likely multiple calls for aid were overwhelming the nearby cell towers. From what he could piece together, however, the giant reptilian thing had emerged a few hours ago from a huge stone cocoon in Popocatepetl and had since made its way into Mexico City, razing everything in its path.
Alfonso's eyes glassed over as he stared at the wreckage in the street without registering the sheer carnage that the mangled steel and flesh hinted at. His mind was whirring.
Stone cocoon. Reptilian behemoth. Volcano.
"Oh, shit," he muttered aloud. "I think I know what this is."
