She Is Risen (She Is Risen: The Gun Control Case Studies) (15 page)

            After a few seconds of staring the men down, the
priestess continues her climb up the mound of freshly formed earth toward the
nursery.  As they watch the cryptic, beautiful creature from the grounds, the
two men hear a slight snarl rising up over the sound of the rain.  They look
down to see the Rottweilers approaching them from the front; teeth bared, and
faces set with ominous gazes, their terrible, thin jaws ready to strike.

            When the priestess reaches the top of the earth mound
she hears the final screams of the guards from the yard below.  Her protective
children waste no time in crushing their throats with eager mouths, gnawing and
clawing the men to darkness.

            The nursery is impressive under the majesty of
the bleak, rainy sky.  It is a rotunda of glass and concrete with a cathedral
ceiling that rises over thirty feet from the floor.  There is a decorative
cement railing going around the outside edges of the structure, and a six-foot
wide balcony that nearly makes a complete circle around the massive room.

            The priestess closes her fists in a snap,
watching a four-foot section of the cement railing explode into dust, crushed
by the will of the earth.  She steps forward onto the balcony, her black robe
fully drenched by the storm.  As she moves toward the cylinder of glass and
concrete that makes up the nursery, her small feet leave muddy footprints on
the balcony.  Bearing a dutiful sneer, she reaches out with both hands pushing
her fingertips into the glass with her palms outward.  The ten-foot section of
thick glass begins to respond, feeling the hands of the priestess, the silica
inside moves with her will, bending open in a three-foot section as she spreads
her hands apart.  The mysterious creature steps forward as the glass bends open
around her body, creating a jagged hole in the middle of the large window with
dozens of sharp spires pointing inward at the nursery.

            From the center of the nursery a baby boy begins
to cry, sensing that the room is quickly becoming colder, and an awful mixture
of noise has entered his once peaceful shelter.  The priestess steps toward the
small, gray crib, her body and hair dripping rainwater all over the white,
marble floor as she continues to leave a path of muddy footprints. 

            When she reaches the crib, her electric green
eyes peer down at the child with malice, the dark, black grease that surrounds
them giving of an unusual sheen, accentuated by droplets of fresh water.  The
priestess breathes deeply holding her hands up with fingers outstretched as if
to claw the sky.  High above the estate, the clouds respond to her energy by
sending a powerful pulse of lightning down onto the roof of the home.  When the
lightning bolt strikes the roof, it breaks several Spanish tiles and causes the
glass baby bottles to rattle on a wooden table near the door. 

            The child begins to scream, crying louder as he
is terrified of the powerful sound.  She looks down at the small, brown-skinned
baby, staring with jealous hatred and a yearning from days long in the past. 
The priestess closes her eyes, remembering the horrible pain that brought her
to this place.  She claws fiercely toward the ceiling like a tigress assaulting
the air, and again the clouds respond with another burst of ear-shattering
energy.  This lightning bolt pounds the ceiling of the nursery harder; an
electric missile that smashes through more Spanish tiles causing the roof to
crumble somewhat. 

            As the tiny pieces of roof bounce on the white
marble near her bare feet the priestess indulges a wicked smile.  She reaches
down and grabs the baby by the chest with one hand.  The child is feeble in her
strong grip, almost naked save for a white cloth diaper.  Her mighty right hand
holds the baby upward to the heavens as she walks toward the opening in the
glass, and back out into the storm.

            Miguel is rushing through the darkness,
terrified by the sound of lightning hitting the nursery.  He moves sluggishly
with his cumbersome black, cowboy boots, wishing he had worn his running shoes
instead.  As he moves swiftly through the darkness in the halls of the second
floor, his right knee catches the face of a large cement statue.  He
immediately stops and grips his kneecap in pain, glaring at the concrete tiger
for being in his way. 

            After taking a quick moment to recover, he
stands up straight, and limps the remaining few feet to the doors of the
nursery.  When he reaches the solid, walnut-stained doors, his right hand grips
the pearl handle and Miguel emerges from the hallway into the large room.  His
hands and face immediately detect cooler air in the baby’s room, and he gazes in
shock at the formation of bent glass that opens into a large hole through a
window at the front of the nursery.  The jagged hole is just a bit wider than a
person, allowing the rain to spatter the floor somewhat. 

Miguel looks into the empty crib
with a panicked expression, patting the fabric hard in disbelief.  He shuffles
across the white marble hastily, not caring about the pain in his knee.  The
adrenaline and rage carry him through the large hole in the glass to a broken
section of the balcony railing.  His eyes open wide with amazement as he spies
the newly-formed mound of rock and earth, stretching from the inner wall of the
grounds twenty feet below up to the cement balcony beneath his feet. 

            At the bottom of the mound, the priestess glares
at him with disdain, her painted face and intense eyes full of malicious fury. 
She is holding his son up in the air with her right hand as if just having
claimed a prize in a game of chance. 

            Miguel retrieves the Desert Eagle pistol from
the rear of his pants, pointing it at this ghastly new vermin in his yard.  He
holds it steady for a moment, taking aim at her chest, but realizes that
killing her might hurt the baby.  His hands begin to shake as the betrayal and
pain of this act are like nothing he has ever known before.  Miguel heaves his
chest, breathing steam like a mad bull, and his adrenaline piques as he sprints
forward down the mound of earth, screaming like a fierce warrior protecting his
young.

            Under the sleek, black cowboy boots, the mud
shuffles and slips, and as Miguel tries to stop, his body spins and he falls
off the mound to his left.  Miguel feels a rush of terror after losing his
footing, and he slides a few feet before dropping off the steep side of the
large formation.  His eyes peer down helplessly at the earth as it draws
unmercifully closer.  He is off balance when his legs hit the ground and Miguel
feels an intense snap in his upper left leg. 

            The cartel chief screams as he feels a deep
burning and breaking all at once.  His mind is overloaded with such pain that
he bites his tongue without realizing what he has done.  Miguel rolls on the
ground in agony, giving off a torrent of incessant cries.  He turns with a now
horrified face to look at his left leg as he sees his femur bone sticking
through his blood-soaked pants.  The middle-aged man rolls onto his back with
his hands balled up into tight fists, shaking like an infant.  He looks up at
the sky with despair, feeling betrayed by the world as the cold rain dances on
his cheeks and forehead. 

            After his breathing calms down and the pain is
reduced by adrenaline, Miguel sits up a bit in the mud, cautious about moving
his freshly-broken leg. 

            “Hernando!  Pablo!  Jose!”  The cartel chief
cries out in desperation, hoping that his guards will come to his aid.

            Within a few seconds, as if answering his call,
a Rottweiler approaches, trotting around the mound of earth to his right,
snarling as it gets closer.  He looks at the dog with confusion, wondering why
it is being aggressive toward its master.  Miguel inspects his badly broken leg
and decides that the wound must have triggered something in the dog.  He searches
the saturated grounds desperately for his Desert Eagle, and sees the silver
handle sticking up from the mud just a few feet away.

            The snarling increases pitch as the dog
approaches him with its back arched, head down, and a full set of exposed teeth. 
Miguel crawls slowly towards his pistol, knowing that this is how the dog
behaves before it attacks.  As he drags his broken leg two feet forward, the
intense pain returns, almost worse than with the fresh break.  He grits his
teeth, closes his eyes, and continues to crawl forward, pretending that this is
just a nightmare. 

            His Rottweiler is persistent and approaches with
a bolder stance, still poised for an attack, growling louder now over the sound
of the rain.

            “Fuck you!” Miguel shouts as he retrieves the
pistol from the mud, points it at the dog’s head, and pulls the trigger.

            With his eyes closed tight, he waits for the
blast of a round firing, but all he feels is a wet click as the firing pin
doesn’t strike hard enough to ignite the gunpowder.  Miguel’s heart continues
to throb as the dog closes in on his face.  His hands shake a bit as he opens
the chamber and hits the side of the gun on a rock to get the water and mud out
of the barrel.  He remains on his right side, keeping his neck away from the
dog, but the Rottweiler lunges and bites his left arm, tearing through the skin
like an unforgiving wild beast.  Miguel begins to scream, but quickly regains
his senses, turning over a bit, he swings the Desert Eagle at the dog’s skull. 
The first blow enrages the dog enough to shake its head from side-to-side. 
This causes a painful tearing of muscles and skin that is too much, and Miguel
repeatedly batters the dog with the side of the pistol until it lets go of his
arm.

            He holds his wounded left arm up in the air,
feeling sick at the hot pain traveling through his veins and flesh.  His left
leg is stinging horribly from all the movement and he is breathing visible
steam in the extremely cold rain.  Miguel looks at the muddy ground with
reinforced despair as the other two Rottweilers trot around the base of the
earthen mound in his direction. 

            “Not you, Carlos.” Miguel states with sad eyes,
speaking to the largest and oldest of the three dogs as it approaches.  “I
raised you myself. We’ve been together for years…”      

            The large dog responds to his plea with a short
snarl, and jogs around his legs in a half-circle to approach him from behind. 
After the largest dog takes a position behind him, the other Rottweilers
approach slowly from the front.  Miguel doesn’t appear intimidated on the
surface, but his mind is filled with doubt, terror, and helplessness.  He quickly
pulls back on the action of his Desert Eagle, ejecting a dirty round and
replacing it with a clean bullet. 

            These panicked movements cause both dogs to
attack him from the front, and Miguel fires his pistol at the smaller dog that
bit his arm.  The Desert Eagle explodes with energy, sending a bullet through
the dog’s skull and taking it down with tremendous stopping power.  The second
dog snaps at his face and he lunges backward on the ground, laying flat on his
back to get more distance as he points the pistol at the dog’s head and fires
another round.  The Rottweiler is struck in the left side of its throat by the
bullet, and it backs away instantly, gasping for breath in a sickening manner
through a hole in its windpipe. 

            Just as Miguel tries to locate the larger dog by
turning slightly, a set of sharp teeth clamps down on his throat.  In less than
a second, he feels the hot breath of his demise, a torrent of disgusting
betrayal from a dog he raised as a puppy.  The teeth break his skin and clamp
down to crush his throat; however, the dog releases its grip for half a second,
trying to get a better hold on him.  In that moment, Miguel’s instincts tell
him to fire the pistol frantically at the dog.  He is able get three shots off
before the dog reasserts its grip on his throat.  Miguel feels the hot breath
again as the teeth puncture his skin with crushing pressure on his windpipe. 
His eyes close tight as the Rottweiler’s powerful jaws begin to tear his throat
completely, but then the pressure subsides, and dog’s body goes limp. 

            Miguel opens his eyes again, astonished to still
be alive.  He is breathing in panicked gasps, and his stomach becomes uneasy as
he can still feel the dog’s teeth puncturing his windpipe.  Each time he
breathes there is the slight copper odor of blood mixed with a hint of putrid
vapors from the dog’s mouth.  His chest is pounding with alarm as he gently
grabs the upper and lower portions of the jaw, pulling them apart slowly to
remove the teeth from his throat.  One of the canines has become lodged in his skin,
and he squirms with discomfort as he has to close the jaws a bit, and open them
again to remove the tooth without tearing his windpipe.  Miguel’s patience pays
off as the extra spurt of blood lubricates the tooth enough to get it out of
his throat. 

            He pushes the dog off of him with his right arm,
and then uses his left hand to inspect his throat for bleeding or damage.  As
he breathes, his trachea lets out a small whistle, indicating how close the dog
came to ending his life.

            Miguel lies on his back looking up at the gray
sky and the many droplets of rain pouring down without mercy.  His left hand
shakes fiercely from the trauma of nearly dying by the might of his once loyal
pet.  He breathes the air slowly; feeling like each short gasp is a gift.  The
pain in his leg is raw and deep; a throbbing reminder of his poor decision to
pursue the woman.