*** Chapter Four: Santos Day 2 ***

“Santos!” a voice whispered urgently in my ear as the person who owned it shook me awake.

My eyes flashed open, the urgency in the voice made me extremely alert. The voice belonged to my father, his bearded face inches from mine. He held a finger to his lips.

“Here son,” he whispered. He handed me a carpenter’s hammer.

“What’s going on?” I asked, keeping my voice down. My eyes quickly scanned the room, it was lit by moonlight and my father was not the only new visitor. Uncle George stood behind my father and I could hear others at the stairs.

“Something is attacking the house,” he replied. “Let’s go.”

My other cousins were already awake and were already on their way down the stairs.

I followed after my father.

The entire troop moved as one, we ran in a closely knitted huddle towards the house, as we moved through the small distance I could hear rustling far beyond my sight. As soon as we reached the house the double doors of the back entrance were securely locked.

“Help secure the windows,” my father said, as he rushed off to do just that.

There were two or three people to every window.

Nothing happened that night, except for the fact that the chicken coop had been utterly destroyed and the few chickens my uncle George once kept were all gone. It was a mess of feathers and blood.

After the house and the entire property were scanned the men gathered at the main table. I decided to be present for this gathering, many of my other cousins not allowed at the main table were also present.

There was small talk, but no one had addressed the table yet, even as the food was being set out. There was fish as expected, but there was also the leftover meat from the new years’ party. The kids and everyone else was eating either at the living room or outside at the porch table.

“Did anyone see them?” Rodrigo asked. He is the oldest of my uncles and Maira’s grandfather.

“Barely,” uncle Ramon replied. “It was too dark, but there were a lot of them. I got woken when they started killing the chickens.”

“I saw them,” Micheal said, standing from the bar stool he sat on. “It was only for a moment, but I saw what they looked like when they got too close to the yard lanterns. They squatted and moved like monkeys, their skin looked really grey or incredibly pale. I couldn’t see more of them, because the lanterns are so dim, but they looked like albino people and completely savage. When they got close to the lanterns they backed off, so I couldn’t see more than that.”

“It makes sense,” uncle George spoke. “It was hard to understand how the animals got into the chicken den, but now that I think about it and with what you said, it makes sense. Some of the posts were pulled out and some of the parts looked like they were ripped apart. I didn’t see any chewing or biting on anything.”

“If they are like that…,” my father spoke up. “What if they are smart?”

“What do you mean?” my uncle Rodrigo asked.

“Think about it,” he replied. “Monkeys are smart. They move in packs too and are smart enough to move like wolves. How big were they Michael?”

“Three feet?” my cousin replied.

“That’s tall enough for them to jump through the windows,” my father stated. “We have to seal off the windows, both on the first floor and the second floor.”

“Why the second floor?” uncle Rodrigo asked.

“If they are like monkeys then they can climb,” he replied. “We have to do it today.”

“What if they attack during the day?” uncle Lucio asked. “How are we going to defend everyone while they are working? We don’t have enough things to arm everyone with. I don’t think that issue is lost on any of you considering last night.”

He was right, everyone was armed with what they could find, the best weapons were obviously the axes and machetes, but they were poor weapons for close quarter combat.

“We have guns,” my uncle George stated.

“But how many?” my father asked.

“A shotgun, a rifle, and two handguns,” my uncle replied.

“I have two pistols in my truck,” uncle Rodrigo added. He was texan.

They began to list off what guns and ammo they had presenting what they had on the table. There were a grand total of eight pistols, one revolver, a rifle, and two shotguns. There were two boxes of ammo for the shotguns, one for the rifle, one for the revolver, and enough ammo to load out each pistol twice.

The oldest uncles were equipped with the weapons and they started to divide up their security tasks among themselves. When a consensus was reached they went back to the topic about boarding up the windows. It was decided that they would use the shelves from every cabinet they could salvage from, the argument against using trees is that there was no way to turn them into planks and that they were far too thick to nail or screw to the windows.

There was nothing else issued out by them so the usual people who worked cutting down trees went back two it. Uncle George and Moses would be the ones boarding up the windows. All in all, it meant that everyone else was basically free to do whatever they wanted.

Since I wasn’t tied down by any tasks I decided to explore the iron sands of the upper river.

*** Cousin Maira ***

“Wachu doing?” I asked Santos after catching up to him. When they men split from the table Santos headed straight for the lake. I thought he was going fishing again, but when I got there I spotted others with the fishing poles in hand. He didn’t even head their way, instead he went up the lake to get above the waterfall.

“Exploring,” he replied, smiling sheepishly once he turned around and saw me. He was clearly up to something.

“Uh huh,” I nodded. “So, where are you going?”

“Follow me and you’ll see,” he replied mischievously.

“So what was that all about last night?” I asked him as we started walking up the river. His eyes kept scanning the river.

Last night a few of her uncles had snuck into the master bedroom and woke everyone up quietly, they told everyone to stay alert. After barricading the only window in the room with a dresser and other furniture from the room they left to do the same elsewhere. Everyone had been on edge the entire night.

“Someone spotted animals near the house,” he replied. “Those things killed all the chickens.”

“Aww,” I pouted. “No more chickens.”

“Or eggs,” he grinned, “closer comes the day you have to eat fish.”

“Don’t remind me,” I scrunched up my nose in disgust.

“Fish is very good you know,” he said, his eyes never turning my way.

“So what are you looking for?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he replied.

“Then why do you keep looking at the river?” I demanded.

“Because,” he said, “I can’t look for what I’ve already found. Look at the river, do you see how the riverbed below is dark?”

“Wha...yeah?” I nodded, once I looked at the river I could see what he meant.

“That’s iron sand,” he said. “If we can harvest that from the river we can make steel and from steel we can make a lot of things we are lacking.”

“Can you make steel?” I asked, wondering.

“Maybe,” he replied. “I’ve never done it before, but I know how to do it theoretically.”

“Uh huh,” I shook my head.

“I mean,” he started. “Like all things, if we practice we can master it.”

“Ok master Santos,” I laughed, punching his shoulder.