On Rubber Wings
HE CALLED HIMSELF CAMAZOTZ.
The Bat God of Death. The Savior of the True Americas. The Mayan.
And she was going to kill him. If he was still alive.
Luisa was close. She pushed a damp strand of black hair from her cherry-wood eyes and kept on down the six-lane highway outside of Zacatecas, Mexico. Sweat draped her back like an unwelcome stranger, a different kind of humid heat she never experienced in her part of the country. Her clothes were light, a pale green hoodie with simple tee and cargo pants with the legs rolled to the knee. She had been thin as a rail her whole life, good metabolism, her abuela always said.
Luisa had been an economics student living at the University City campus of UNAM before being displaced. College taught her a lot about the world outside Mexico; college also taught her the lessons of hard work, painful breakups, and the always impending apocalypse. Fortunately for her, she actually enjoyed what she studied. If you knew a little bit about the world’s money systems, the planet’s problems didn’t seem so chaotic. She knew that war, of any kind, changed things. Resources, population sizes, and the land itself. Mexico had changed for her and millions of other people.
Four-hundred and eighty-two days had passed since a fleet of buzzing stinger drones and Humvees with hundreds of United States-affiliated soldiers crossed San Ysidro’s Port of Entry and commenced the Invasion of Mexico. Their mission, according to the reports Luisa heard before complete media blackout, was to ‘completely eliminate the threat of the LPM, the Liberated Peoples of Mexico. U.S. troops and hired mercenaries arrived over smoggy skies and parted crowds of thousands hoping for passage to the States or Canada.
The LPM claimed to be the great revolutionaries of the modern age, combatants of the drug cartels and criminals, even if they were just as violent. Their leader was Camazotz, or Mateo de Leon. The handsome, charismatic pencil-mustached smooth-talker who came into power via a shifty election overrule in 2019. He was thirty years old, taller and less sweaty than his elderly opponent, and made a multi-language speech in Spanish, English, and Mayan about the eventual unity of the Spanish peoples. Like all good tyrants, the Mayan’s speech tugged the heartstrings of good folk who longed for peace and had been beaten to the point of submission.
No one knew where he emerged from. Luisa heard many rumors. Perhaps some hovel in Guatemala. Some swore that documentation proved he was raised in Switzerland by elite world bankers. Or the actual reincarnation of the Bat God of Mayan legend. Of course, it was all a lie. But the people were always desperate for a new one.
The air was full of a soulful electricity in the early days of Camazotz’s reign. The streets of Zacatecas were bursting in twinkling lights, trumpeted fanfare, red and green confetti, and the burning, seemingly true hope of a New Age. News footage of burned cartel trucks and liberated human trafficking dens were plastered on screens and shop windows like celebrated Renaissance paintings. Corrupt operators of the Mexican National Guard were taken from their guarded poolside homes, usually located on a flattened hill overlooking the favelas of formally prosperous cities. All of the guilty were subject to public humiliation by Camazotz and his lieutenants—former cartel members mostly— the mock trial (and eventual execution) of Captain José Montero garnered 2.3 million views before the livestream was shut down by direct U.S. federal intervention.
The tyrant's followers grew quickly. Eight hundred able-bodied men turned to twenty-thousand loyals in a month’s time. He was the first dictator to be publicly sponsored on YouTube, called a ‘freedom fighter’ then. The idea of justice no longer seemed like a dream. It was tangible. If you joined the LPM, you had the entire might of Mexico’s best and bravest behind you. It was an intoxicating call to destiny, one that claimed Luisa’s older brother whom she never saw again.
Luisa had been walking in a straight line for a week, only stopping to hide when a U.S. humanitarian patrol swarm buzzed along the mountain ridges. The last two days however, as arid ground turned soft and full of green jungle plants, had been devoid of civilization. Not a passing car, roving migrant, or U.S. Blackhawk helicopter in sight. The ground was mushy and her boots were caked in a thick shell of crusted mud, weights sewn to her feet. But she had a lead.
After nine months living in Mexico City, shuffled from a storage center to a muggy outdoor camp refuge, Luisa found herself living on the streets once the U.S. humanitarian services reached the end of their contractual agreements. That meant hordes of homeless people were now stripped of their temporary housing and thrust into the alleys and halfway houses like a clogged drain being washed clean. She signed up to receive government-funded housing at the reopened Health Clinic but expected no response. She wanted out of the city, but knew there was nowhere else for her to go. She longed for Zacatecas and the unfiltered sunshine of early morning. And then, just over a year after her family was taken in 2022, Luisa found a ticket out of refugee purgatory: the rumbling rickety bus rented out for a Christian missionary trip.
Rumors swirled like mad in the last year. Was Camazotz really dead? Was he an actual person to begin with? His war against the U.S. ended at Bufa Hill surely, but no one in Mexico City knew fact from fiction. She spoke to street vendors and off-duty humanitarian workers, trying to get any information that would be helpful. Nothing would do.
In the mudbogged town of Luis Moya, about fifty miles from her home city, she overheard several Health Crisis volunteers speaking candidly about the dictator’s whereabouts. A year following the invasion, Camazotz’s body had not yet been recovered, although the U.S. had withdrawn from the region. Apparently it was causing controversy in the States as manhunts were ongoing for him and his loyal revolutionaries who escaped the raids. One of the volunteers, a very tan man eating two enchiladas at once, joked that the dictator’s ghost remained at Bufa Hill, the large rock bluff that overlooked Luisa’s home… the place that Camazotz chose for his last stand against the American enemy.
In that brief moment of eavesdropping, despite all logic, something inside Luisa knew that he was there.
A month into the invasion, two million people were ‘displaced’ from the guarded Mexican cities and pueblos mágicos, taken in massive groups to population centers in Mexico City, Belize, Rio, and the naturalized state of Cuba. The lucky people who fled Zacatecas were moved via cargo copters under the cover of night to a center on the outskirts of Mexico City—most of them. Luisa was sent to the Mexico City-designated center, which was stuffy and full of malnourished people, while her family was last seen boarding a giant black plane with U.S. SPECIAL printed in big white letters on the sides. A plane that was promptly blown out of the sky by Camazotz’s forces, who had recently stolen a hypersonic long-range missile system and wanted to test its power. A hundred people screamed and cried while Luisa stood against the barbed-wired fences at the tarmac, her eyes welling with tears in the fiery light.
To Luisa and half a million people, Zacatecas was home. She loved all of Mexico but the deep history hidden in the pink quarry walls and narrow alleys filled a young spirit like nowhere else. Most magical towns in Mexico were known as World Heritage Sites, places of mass cultural importance. Thanks to a rich vein of silver, Zacatecas was a haven of mining and innovation for the Spanish—and only the invading Spanish—from the 1500s until the start of the 20th century.
Who built the legend of Zacatecas? Her mother told her the brutal truth long ago—all great places are forged by the blood of slaves.
With that memory of her mother’s words flooding back as she reached a fork along Highway 45, she clutched the silver rosary tickling her neck. She was relieved it was still there, rubbing her fingers across the beads and keeping Christ close to the chest. The rosary was all she had left, forged from a hunk of silver mined two-hundred years earlier. The rosary had braved revolution after revolution, the sweaty palms of many thieves, and a greedy soldier or two.
She understood the appeal of Camazotz. He seemed to contain all the hatred, fury, and compassion locked away inside all Mexican hearts. His most famous threat? “They will slash and burn our country! Our landmarks forged by the minds of our ancestors despite the tyrant’s oppression! Our cities are not for pillage… This is our great country, treasure of the world!”
The city’s sand-pink buildings and the still-imposing baroque Church of Our Lady of Fátima had been taken by a glossy blanket of dark green, like the jungle from the Mayan’s homeland. Fingerlike vines curled around the carvings of angels and divine opulence unfurling from the old stone. The orange-red roofs were blackened by soot and ash that coated the larger state of Zacatecas during the final stage of the invasion, where Camazotz and his Final Few made their last stand on Bufa Hill, inspired by Pancho Villa’s own defensive that freed Mexico. Battlefields were awful, but after man had left and nature reclaimed, most become breeding grounds for plants and curious animals to thrive in.
Happy accidents, Luisa thought.
On the radio two weeks earlier, Luisa heard that the proper term for the explosive growth of vegetation was known as a superbloom. Wildflower seeds and invasive jungle roots blown into the air from hundreds of miles away drifted towards the center of Mexico due to the massive heat and flames of wartime. It had transplanted the state with plantlife from lower South America and the Great Plains. In ten years, unless massive and consistent reconstruction intervened, the jungle would take Zacatecas for herself. Maybe that was what Camazotz wanted in the end.
The streets used to be layered with the rich smells of roasted corn, baked taquitos, and peppery spices swirling in the mountain air. Now, it had been replaced with the dense metallic sting of exploded shrapnel, engine oil, and the decaying state of unseen bodies. Passing through narrow stone-path alleys was once comforting as a child, but now, Luisa felt eyes on her at all times.
She walked past a downed cable car, crushed on its side and the orange paint flaking off into a wet mush on the road. Years earlier, Luisa and her mother would go on the cable car every Friday evening after school. Now, the school was buried beneath a mudslide and the cable lines were covered with vines, like a giant green spider was spinning a diamond web to seal Zacatecas away forever.
The air feels heavy… Luisa thought. Which was odd as the city sat eight-thousand feet above sea level. In the old days, the high elevation was good for keeping out of shape, obnoxious tourists away. During the Invasion, even the stinger drones had some trouble with the winds until the cloud seeder bombs arrived, bringing some much-needed moisture and stability to the air. She hadn’t been in Zacatecas when the seeder bombs shot sparkling bits of aluminum across the skies. Weather modification, just like an old science fiction tale. She failed to see the allure now.
Around nightfall, after trudging through grassy patches and nets of all-consuming moss, she arrived at the mount of Bufa Hill. Its main entrance, a winding road that snaked up the mountain, was blocked by several LPM trucks and building-sized cargo containers, all covered in the same hungry vines. She looked up, barely able to see the observation tower that sat on top of Bufa Hill. Her steel-toe boots sunk into the side of Bufa Hill like death-tinged flour, making the climb twice as difficult. Luckily, dozens of downed stinger drones dotted the hill like garden stakes, providing good supports.
The drones were ugly, shaped like a seagull frozen with its wings out and a pointed nose. Made for pesos thanks to 3D printing and a long-lasting Chinese battery, the hornet-like machines needed no operator, hosting a thousand different defense procedures. They were made for the modern age of war. Quick, efficient, and absolutely no qualms about human lives.
After a few minutes of careful stepping and resting once the hill turned steep, she caught something out the corner of her eye. A bird? But birds were not this big. Something was circling the tower. Scalloped wings, flapping slowly. Silent. Except for the tiniest hint of… buzzing. A lone stinger drone, covered in some kind of tarp, was watching over a dead land. She pressed on.
At the summit, past a crude wall of crushed cars and the downed Blackhawk was the untouched bronze statue of a victorious Pancho Villa on reared horseback, hat tilted and rifle raised. The man who would forever be praised in history as both liberator and tyrant. Was there a difference?
BOOM!
Luisa fell to the ground as a black shape collided with the statue, blowing dead cactus stems and pebbles across the road. She didn’t scream. She didn’t wet herself. She only looked at the giant, hulking thing in awe.
The winged creature folded its wings over the bronzed Villa and his horse, draping the statue in darkness. It lifted its long-eared head and breathed deeply, flies circling above him and glinting off the moonlight. The thing emerged from the dark and Luisa’s mind filled in the blanks. It could have been six feet tall or twice that. It almost simply was not real. Then the bat creature spoke with the voice of the Mayan. And Luisa’s heart stopped.
“Hola. I am Camazotz. Welcome to the home of all that is dark, winged, and ragged. The last gasp of freedom sits atop my domed tower. ”
It was him. Even through the darkness, underneath the crinkly wings drenched in the earthy sourness of the rubber plant and the large Mayan-style bat cowl. Mateo De Leon. The vibrant, talkative leader of an angry militia that killed thousands indiscriminately, sacrificing village after village, town after town, all for nothing.
Her blood ran cold, her body stuck in fear and bewilderment. But her hands were shaking. What the hell was he doing? What was she going to do? She didn’t have a weapon. Just her rosary, a few sips of water and a bedroll in her knapsack. She hadn’t been prepared at all.
The wings spread apart, over twenty feet across, with a teeth-buzzing whirl coming from behind him. He reached into the side of his moth-eaten linen shirt and swung a satchel around, pulling out a rusted finned cylinder. With a shrug of the giant wings, a loud pop broke through the thin mountain air and made her jump. A hollow metal tube bounced off the back of Pancho’s horse before rolling across the ground.
The stinger drones. They didn’t fall from the sky while patrolling Bufa Hill. He was using them to patrol Zacatecas. He must have knocked them out of the air and strapped them to his back, using their propulsion for his flights. He had truly risen from the dead. Luisa hated that the term ‘war god’ rang out in her head.
“Would you… dear niña, like to join me?” Camazotz asked, bending down a friendly open hand— layered with dirt and blackberry paint.
Before she could retort, although she couldn’t speak anyway, the stinger drone on Camazotz’s back revved up before fading to a streamlined buzz. The Bat God unleashed his wingspan and launched from the statue. Pancho shook and his rifle snapped off with a bronze, echoing clang. The Mayan flew in an arc over the top of Bufa Hill, busting through a thin humid cloud layer. Luisa peered into the dark, wishing for the full moon to break from the milky clouds—foggy stars made gazing into the night sky a headache.
From a hundred feet up, Camazotz twirled, his cape spinning into a cylinder shape as he shot to ground level. Luisa found herself searching for a hiding spot instantly, like a defenseless deer on the road. The black shape of Camazotz grew bigger and bigger, kicking up loose jungle grass and dirt. Luisa ran for the observatory tower, the closest place with a big door.
It has to be a trap! she said to herself, gripping the doorknobs and standing in place.
The Bat God began to circle the observation tower.
She started running toward him, spotting the stone steps built into the tallest part of the hill. Even from his perch on the faded red roof of the tower, his commanding voice never ceased. He shouted out in an unintelligible mix of Spanish and English, as if he was responding to a voice in his head.
Luisa heaved herself up the flight of steps, finding the tower doors open and the tower itself full of candlelight. As she continued, so did the dictator’s ramblings. Decayed strips of the rubber tree hung from the railing like strips of meat on a grill, as if the Bat God was molting.
How long has he been here?
The curved walls were tracked with scratch marks that sliced through crude renditions of ancient Mayan reliefs carved into the stone. She didn’t know the names of any Mayan deities but recognized them instantly—strong masculine figures with tall headdresses, wide smiles with square teeth, beaded armor, and the intricate blocky symbols from a time no one in the modern age, not even the great Camazotz could completely comprehend.
Everything in this new, reclaimed Zacatecas was a mockery of her homeland.
She reached the top, tasting blood and seeing stars, kicking open the balcony deck doors some two hundred feet from the summit of Bufa Hill. The doors smacked against the stone walls and Camazotz stood, unfazed in a hunched gargoyle stance. He smiled at Luisa and cocked his head, tracking her movement with every deliberately slow step forward. It reminded her of a lion tamer’s firm-handed attempt to escape the cage of a deprived, abused beast who has decided to make a human their dinner.
Perched on the metal railing with heavy tactical boots, the masked man-thing smiled, looking up with open, tattered wings:
“They sent these buzzing birds to hunt me down. Instead… I SNATCH THEM FROM THE SKY AND FLY WITH THEIR BLOOD!”
Luisa couldn’t stomach the theatricality. The Mayan had always been a boastful and enigmatic leader. If only his loyal followers could see him now, she thought to herself. I don’t know if they would be scared or inspired. Nothing made sense any longer. But nothing had made sense for a long time.
She figured she was about to die. So she spoke her truth.
“Mateo de Leon. You took away everything beautiful! I watched my family’s plane go down in flames… my world… my Mexico! And this is all you’ve done?”
“A kingdom of slaves unburdened by their masters will emerge from the ash. If you die and become… reborn… it can be yours too. This is my dominion now.”
“This…” Luisa said, standing tall and forcing her knees not to buckle. “This… is my home!”
She had no gun, no stick, no noose to hang him by the wings over the deck— but she moved forward, powered by an icy shock she couldn’t explain. This was what she wanted. A face-to-face confrontation before she saw him die by her own angry hands. Quenching the thirst of a burning hate that had sunk into her bones. Somehow, the universe had granted her an audience with the tyrant. There was only one thing to do.
Camazotz relented and his wings folded in, his arms shuffling against the rubber tree canvas.
“Get back!” Camazotz screamed.
Luisa slammed into the balcony wall in fear as he reared back. But then, she realized she was holding the rosary out, as if to cast out a demon.
“Away with it, slave!”
Camazotz hissed like a snake and folded a long wing inward, as if to shield himself. He nearly slipped on the rail, stepping on the wing. The stinger drone strapped to his back began to whirl again. A teeth-chattering buzz that proceeded flight. The whites of his eyes broke through the bat cowl, his trembling lips speaking a mangled Catholic prayer. “I said away with it! I beg of you!”
She realized his insanity. And raised the rosary.
He shrieked and uttered a final statement, his voice choked with manic tears. “Voy a mi casa…” and took off to the night sky.
Luisa ran to the unstable railing and watched him ascend like a rocket. The stinger drone ripped away from the decayed wings like Velcro and Camazotz stopped soaring. He fell wings first, solid as a rock. Seconds later, the black shape passed the full moon and vanished into the jungle below. Several crunchy blasts echoed from the ground and the broken stinger drone exploded into a puff of white light and glowing hot embers.
“Voy a mi casa…” Luisa said quietly in her native tongue.
I’m going home.
The word “home” had stretched its definition many times since Luisa left Zacatecas for the first time at seventeen, bound for Mexico City. It was a nostalgic feeling, a sad thought in the middle of the night, a longing like her mother’s kiss. Once the tyrant had stated his claim, “home” became a twisted sour idea, tinged in the blackest part of her soul— a liability and red-hot jet fuel for regretful thoughts. But now? Home was… here. And as the jungle ate the corpses of war and broke down the militarized machines into rust-filled playgrounds for rodents and other critters, life would somehow flourish.
Tomorrow didn’t matter right now. The Mayan was gone, warded off like an evil spirit.
Luisa felt safe. Everything was going to be different. And she accepted that.
She watched the moon waver in the humid night, slumped against the balcony wall, and kissed the rosary.
END
