Chapter Two: La Regla Primera

I didn’t know yet that my Dad was a drug farmer so I didn’t know where he went or what he was doing. All I knew was I was ordered to stay put. I was now the shepherd in charge of a traumatized herd of mammoths. What could go wrong?

So I did what I recommend every rancher’s son do when given such a daunting task: I looked up at the night sky and wondered what it was like to live on other planets. There is this one planet, Apollo. It is called the golden planet, and not cause of the color of the dirt. It is the golden planet cause the tilt of the planet is such that it is always twilight there. The golden hour. Shadows are long, days and nights are no worse than cool, and every day is met with a sunrise and a sunset. Nice, right? I’ve been living on Mala-Mundial since I was eight years old, and I have yet to see a sunset or a sunrise. It’s called the forever night. You can’t even see the moon from here. Mala-Mundial is a binary system, so the moon is forever locked out of view from my side of the planet. That just gives you lots of stars and a small beacon at the center of the solar system.

Since Dad left with Big Bertha, there was nothing I could do about the dead moths. Leche and the others said their good-byes, then moved away from the carnage.

I want to tell you something about mammoths, and I want you to know that what I am telling you can only be told from someone who has worked with them like I have. It is something Boca told me once. Moths are very human. They are complicated creatures full of desires, emotions, and maturity. Just cause they can’t habla íngles doesn’t mean they aren’t capable of humanity. That includes their response to tragedy. They mourn their dead. They bury their dead. And just like when a funeral ends, they have to get away from it, like they can’t stand to be in death’s presence. You won’t find a saber-toothed tiger with that kind of sentimentality.

So I let the herd wander. Besides, I had no desire to work with half-ton woolly mammoths after their family’s just been slaughtered. They might decide to trample me, too, you know? But once they left the area, I couldn’t help myself. I had to see the remains. I’m weird, I know. I don’t like the sight of blood, but this wasn’t about blood. It was about death. Like all boys that age, I had to get my hands in it, figuratively, and try to understand it.

No sooner than I moved towards the dead moths than Cerbie barked at me. His whole body was low to the ground. I followed the gaze of his bright yellow eyes. He had been watching the burial mound while I carelessly had my head in the stars. Two sabers, a male and a female, were plundering the burial site. In the land of the dead, nothing decays.

When I moved towards the site, the male hissed at me. They were magnificent beasts, this young couple. Their bodies rippled muscles like they were waves on the ocean. They had golden hair and thick paws, and when they moved, it was a glorious thing to witness. But when they turned those foul-smelling mouths in your direction and curled back their lips to show just how long those canines extended into their mouths, it gave me chills. I’m told even the scientists in Niflheim, who study and track the ice age animals, even they take a step back when the saber-tooths are near.

It is very different for them to take a step back and get into their hover cars than it was for me because I had no protection. It was me, the wind, and the sabers.

And Cerbie, who growled menacingly at the two sabers. The female snarled while the male continued to gulp down organ meat and blood. The male’s left canine was broken halfway down the middle. I wondered what he did to lose half of his tooth. His face and body, like his tooth, were broken and scarred. This was a mean cat, one who had no problem fighting. A true alpha, if you believe in that kind of thing.

The female was just as impressive. If anything, she had more scars on her golden hide. She had fought a lot of females to mate with snaggletooth. I didn’t want any part of these two, so I backed away from the kill. Somehow, that made the sabers take more notice of me. The female stared at me. The male stopped eating and watched me, too. I saw a tail flick, though I don’t remember which one. Maybe both.

The male dropped the intestines that were in his mouth. Like tandem hunters, the two sabers began to stalk me, stretching their front legs forward should they decide to pounce.

“Cerbie,” I said nervously. “This doesn’t look good.”

The female licked her lips. I felt my heart drop into my stomach. I tried to keep cool though, and keep moving away from them. Cerbie moved lengthwise between me and the two sabers. He looked them each in the eye with his two heads and made a long, low electric sound. It is hard to describe the sound. If a diesel engine can warn you before it is about to explode, this is the sound Cerbie made. It was not enough to give the sabers pause. They knew they had the numbers and the upper hand.

First, the half-tooth lunged at Cerbie’s hind quarters. He was feinting. The male pulled back his paw as Cerbie jumped at it. That’s when the female pounced. Four hundred pounds of ice age monster smashed into Cerbie’s back hide. Like all predators, her goal was not to kill but to mortally wound him. If lucky, she would have tried to drag him down. While she held him down, the male would have stabbed his neck with those giant canines.

But Cerbie was no mammal. He was a cyber dog, programmed for herding mammoths. He knew how to tussle. So as soon as he felt her weight on his hips, his hind legs sprung outward and kicked her in the face. The female yowled. At the same time, Cerbie snapped at the male, warning him to keep his distance.

Enraged, the half-tooth swiped his paws across Cerbie’s metal face. Cerbie rolled with the punch, then countered with two open mouths full of metal teeth. The first bite missed, but Cerbie’s second head got shoulder flesh, and ripped a chunk of hide.

The male leaped back. But by this time the female was back on her feet and jumping at Cerbie. Cerbie’s first head (the one not dealing with the male) turned completely around and flashed his lambent eyes in her face. It was like fireworks going off, and it temporarily blinded the cat.

I was thinking of La Regla Primera, the first and foremost law of the land in Mala-Mundial. Kill no wildlife. See, before Mala-Mundial was settled, it started as a wildlife refuge for ice age animals and for polar wildlife. It was a sanctuary, and these animals could be found virtually no place else. So the Colonies set up Rangers to protect the wildlife at all costs. That meant you would be executed for killing any animal that wasn’t the only source of meat in the galaxy. And it didn’t matter if that wildlife was trying to eat you or your livelihood. La Regla Primera still stood true. That was why ranchers used only tranq guns. Putting a saber or herd of dire dogs to sleep was one thing. But killing one? The Rangers would hunt you down to the gates of hell. And my cyber was trying to defend us against sabers.

As Cerbie backed away, the two sabers tried circling him again. This time, he kept one head on each saber. The two sabers separated to make following them more difficult, but they weren’t prepared for dealing with a two-headed cyber dog. Each one of Cerbie’s heads could rotate 360 degrees. He had no time following them. But battling two sabers had overridden his herding protocols. The half-toothed cat realized I was out on the ice alone with nothing between me and the female. As soon as the male noticed, the female ran for me, paws outstretched. I had nothing to protect me – Dad had the tranq guns.

As the tiger raced towards me, so did Cerbie. I didn’t run cause running would do me no good. I had a wrench though and some pliers in my hands. I would pummel and stab as much as I could. Right before she leaped at me, though, my cyber dog collided with the female. They rolled on the ice and rock, and when they came up, Cerbie was standing and the female was limping on her front paw where he hit her.

The saber knew she’d been beaten. As she limped back to the kill, so did the half-toothed male. She grabbed one of the helados. He reached into the belly of the moth and dragged the fetus of a moth out. They ran toward the mountains, a trail of blood and placenta behind them. I looked at their tracks and the red blood pooling in the white paw prints. That was when I realized that the male was polydactyl. He had six toes on his front feet and four on his back.

I was shaking all over cause of the sabers, and Cerbie was barking excitedly around me and strutting and licking me. I petted him absently. My thoughts were on the fetus. The attack on the herd had been more damaging than I could have imagined. We had lost a calf, and that meant money from the slaughterhouse.

Before I go farther, I need to tell you something. I was told to keep it clean. This material was for youth-oriented distribution channels so that the young people of the galaxy would understand my narrative and why I became who I became. But the only way to know my life is to see it for the dirty, bloody, fetus-and-placenta-filled mess that it was. So this is not a story for the weak-willed. If you cannot stand the sight of blood or the description of people being killed by monsters, close the book, turn off the reader, and find a new something else to read at the library. Feel free to dismiss my account as hyperbole and dark egomaniacal mayhem. I’m used to it and frankly, I don’t care at this point. Entiendes? But if you want the truth, then keep reading.

On the other side of the family property, Dad and his wranglers were still fending off the Doña Muertes. It was a weird scene, I am sure. My dad and his wranglers stood on top of the crater’s ridge. I’m sure Dad was firing his tranq gun from within the truck, using the door to defend himself. Boca and the wranglers were probably sitting behind their metal ponies, doing the same. On the other side stood women dressed in thick, black robes and wearing calavera makeup on their faces. Some had automatic weapons and others wore stinking flame throwers. They looked like angels of death surrounded by flames and mayhem. They were there to destroy Dad’s drug crop because somebody had tipped them off that Dad was raising cragweed, and it was competition against their own supplies.

Dad ran out of tranqs, and the Doñas were standing their ground, but he had to protect the crop. In his mind, this crop would feed his family while the herd was rebuilt. So he dropped his rifle on the floorboards and put the rig in gear.

The rig veered down on the crop. There was a dirt road in the middle of the crater, barely wide enough for the rig to fit. Dad drove the rig between the crops that were on fire and the crops that had not been torched yet. This was also where the Doñas were standing their ground. Dad lowered his head to make it harder to be shot, but he knew he was going to get real close to death.

But then a slew of hover cycles and cyber-wolves came over the crater’s ridge. They were the Nords, another one of the rival gangs on Mala-Mundial. The Nords fired on the Doñas with real bullets. Two of the women were clipped. The flamethrower of another exploded. The flames engulfed the woman’s robes and then her flesh. She tried to throw off her robes, but they were already melting to her skin. She died screaming horribly.

The Doñas got on their hover bikes and their cyber horses, which were tricked out to look like skeletal horses. But another group of Nords on cyber wolves had flanked them. The Doña Muertes were trapped. They dropped their guns.

“Are you okay?” one of the Nords asked Dad.

“The Doña Muertes sabotaged my herd and my crops and shot up my rig. I will probably spend the rest of the day putting out this fire. How the hell do you think I feel?”

He opened the cab door, which was riddled with bullet holes, and saw the Nord. It was Hel.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Hel,” he said.

Her eyes tightened. “Your herd will recover. They always do. And I will see what we can do about your rig.” Then she turned to the Nords and barked orders. The Doñas they captured were tortured for information about the leak and then executed. Their dead bodies would be tied up to old mammoth skulls and placed around the crater as a warning to everyone of the consequences of crossing the Nords.

Crap. I didn’t tell you about Hel yet?

Next Chapter: Chapter Three: Kill the Beast