The Giant of Santa Rosa

The Giant of Santa Rosa

By

David Turnbull

At first it had been the depth of the silence that had unsettled Virgilio.

The villagers waiting there in hushed expectancy. Not so much as a whisper of wind, or the hint of a rustle in the leaves of the tamarind trees. Had it not been for the occasional flitting of tiny bats hunting flying insects in the night sky it might have seem as if the Barrio was frozen within a single moment.

Worst had been the ominous absence of the chirruping night chorus of the crickets. Usually present in their thousands they seemed to have disappeared entirely from the vicinity of the rice fields. Almost as if they had been annihilated, wiped from the face of the Earth.

Now the racket all around him was so intense he was finding it hard to concentrate.

The cockerels had begun crowing long before the sky flushed pink to herald the coming of the sun. This had set off the dogs; yipping and snarling, snapping nervously at each other. Now the pigs were squealing in their pens and the chickens were squawking as they capered in the dirt.

The cacophony added to the brooding tension that hung over the tiny Barrio of Santa Rosa. Despite the warmth radiating back from the thrumming embers of their fire a shiver ran through him. Something bad was in the air. The animals knew it. The villagers had sense of it. Virgilio could feel it in the tight knot that twisted in his gut

In the early hours of the morning the villagers had sent for them in their forest hideaway, claiming that in the night a giant had been felled by a fierce bolt of lightning whilst traversing rice fields. Now beneath the fat bamboo stilts of the Barrio Captain’s Nipa hut the half dozen fighting men who made up Virgilio’s unit of the provincial battalion of the Katipunan were deep in earnest conversation.

“There’s no such thing as a giant,” said one.

“Something is definitely out there,” said another. “Something huge. We all saw it, lying there under the moonlight.”

“There’s a rational explanation,” interupted Virgilio, raising his voice so it could be heard above the squalling of the animals. “These are simple farmers, full of stupid superstitions.”

The young woman who was gathering the tin cups and plates from their meagre breakfast of rice and fried eggplant rose up and placed her hands on her hips, scowling over quivering glow of the embers. “You think you are so smart, Virgilio Quinnes? I remember you from communion lessons in church. As I recall you struggled even to remember the Stations of the Cross.”

“I was smart enough to know that the priest held more loyalty to the Kingdom of Spain than he did to the Kingdom of God,” Virgilio shot back.

The woman began clattering the tin plates into a pile. “Now you are so smart that you look down nose at poor farmers.”

“Maria Tamayo,” said Virgilio, suddenly realizing who she was. “I thought I recognized you. Always thought you were a cut above the rest of us. So, you ended up married to a farmer, did you?”

“My husband died a year ago,” replied Maria. “I work the fields now. It is my rice that fills your ungrateful bellies.”

“You’re the one who should be grateful,” said one of the Katipunan. “When we oust the Spanish imperialists from our homeland and free ourselves from colonial rule you farmers will have your liberty at last.”

“Liberty?” spat Maria. “What liberty will it be to swap a privileged Spanish landlord for an equally privileged Mestiza one? They are planning to call it the Tagalog Republic, in case you hadn’t noticed. That tells you all you need to know. Ilocanos like us won’t get a look in. The pig shit on the farms will need to be cleaned up whoever is in power.”

“It won’t be like that,” said Virgilio. “We’ll make sure of it. The Republic will be for all Filipinos. Our land, free from foreign rule.”

Maria piled the tin cups on top of the tin plates.

“They have you well versed, you and your boys who play with guns and think they are men. You don’t even have proper uniforms. What will you do when the time comes? Sit there, as you do now? Waiting for daylight before you pluck up the courage to investigate whatever it was fell in our fields last night.”

Virgilio’s face flushed red with anger.

“I will offer no apologies for taking sensible precautions.”

“Precaution or procrastination?” taunted Maria.

Virgilio ground his teeth. The woman had no respect. “We’ll be better able to see what it is we are dealing with when the sun comes up,” he snapped.

“Look,” said Maria, pointing to where the tip of the sun’s morning disc had emerged over the summit of the nearby mountain range. “The sun has already risen. Time to go see what you will see. Time to see whether all that’s out there is the just the superstition of stupid farmers.”

*

Bare footed they headed cautiously out across the verdant rice paddies, ankle deep in mud, little emerald colored frogs leaping left and right on their approach. Virgilio’s men were spread out at either side of him, rifles, for what they were worth, at the ready. Their weapons were old, secretly smuggled across the ocean on a merchant ship from Mexico years before, passed down to Virgilio and his men almost as an afterthought. They had barely six bullets apiece.

He called them his men, but, in truth, Maria’s description of them as boys was far more accurate. Not one of them was older than seventeen and one, who was consistently vague about his age, was probably no older than fifteen. Yet they were brave and unflinchingly committed to the cause of the revolution. If it came to a fight not one of them would waver or break ranks.

Behind the youthful Katipunan unit crept Maria, the Barrio Captain and around ten of the villagers. As many of them women as there were men. All of them armed with Bolos, the Filipino version of a machete. On the bank of the irrigation channel the rest of the villagers, children, nursing mothers, elderly grandparents, had congregated to watch and wait.

The sun was almost fully over the mountains now, turning swiftly from red to yellow, already emanating enough heat to cause a haze of misty vapor to rise from the paddies. Through the thin swirl of the mist Virgilio could make out the outline of the uncanny thing that had fallen there in the night. Maybe a hundred foot in length was his best guess, strangely serpentine legs, twisted in on each other so it was hard to tell how many there were, bulbous shape, covered in a circular canopy, at its head.

He felt his pulse quicken as sweat pricked at his brow. He could see the scorch marks on the canopy from the lightning strike. He understood how seen upright through a rain storm this huge thing could be taken for a giant. It must have been an awesome and terrifying sight striding across the paddies on these elongated legs. Like a Nipa hut given supernatural momentum.

He didn’t think for one minute that this was actually a giant felled by lightning. On the other hand, he was struggling desperately to find an explanation for what it might actually be. This was beyond anything he had experienced before. But as unit commander both his men and the villagers would be looking to him to come up with answers.

A bead of sweat trickled down the side of his face. A mosquito buzzed at his ear. The sun glinted in his eye. When he bowed his head to avoid the glare, he saw hundreds of corpses of dead crickets floating on the surface water. That explained silence that had gripped the fields. When the thing fell it poisoned the water in its immediate vacinity. The surviving crickets would have taken flight.

He took another step forward, mud sucking at the soles of his feet.

“It looks like a squid,” said the man to his left.

“Whoever heard of a squid that size?” sneered one of the other men. “My aunt used to work as housekeeper for a rich Chinese merchant in Manila. She used to cook squid caught in the bay for him. Fry them up. Serve them with noodles. Something that size would never have fit in her pan.”

A ripple of nervous laughter passed through the ranks of the Katipunan.

“It could be a squid,” insisted the first man. “Who knows how big a creature could grow beneath the waves.”

“Then how would it have gotten here?” asked the second. “We are inland. Miles from the coast.”

“A few years back dozens of fish fell out of the sky in Camiling during a storm,” said the first. “People claimed it was a miracle. But it was just fish from a lake sucked up by a cyclone. This could have happed here. There was a storm last night, after all.”

The second man began to protest, but Virgilio held up his hand.

“Enough,” he snapped.

He turned to the Barrio Captain.

“Tell me again what you saw.”

The grey-haired Captain stepped forward. Maria Tamayo stepped to his side, leather belt tightly bound to her waist, Bolo hung in a scabbard at her side. The old man’s lips quivered as he spoke. His hand was trembling around the handle of his Bolo. “We woke in the night because the stilts of the Nipa huts were shaking. We thought it was an earthquake. Everyone ran for the ladders and climbed down for safety. It was raining hard and the thunder was rumbling in the sky. We saw it crossing the rice fields.”

He pointed to the huge thing that lay half submerged in the paddies.

“It was walking upright on three legs.”

“Then it was struck by a fork of lightning,” interjected Maria. “It seemed to spit sparks like a log cracking on a fire. When it fell the ground shook so hard we all fell down too.”

“Then we sent for you,” said the Barrio Captain.

Virgilio turned to the man whose aunt had once worked for the rich Chinese merchant.

“Geraldo, I want you to go and touch one of the legs.”

Geraldo’s eyes popped wide.

“Touch one of the legs?”

“I need to get a better idea of what we are dealing with,” said Virgilio.

Geraldo drew breath and handed his rifle to one of his companions. Then he dropped to his hands and knees and began to crawl toward the strange object, cutting a channel through the blades of rice grass, chin trailing in the muddy, cricket littered water.

Virgilio raised his rifle.

“If that thing so much as twitches I want you to open fire,” he ordered.

The boys who would be men put their rifles to their shoulders and held their trigger fingers at the ready. Behind them the villagers fell to a hushed silence. Geraldo came to halt. Virgilio watched as he stretched out his arm and touched the nearest leg with the trembling tips of his fingers.

As soon as he had done so he rose back to his feet, turned and came splashing back, shoulders hunched. Virgilio lowered his rifled but signaled to his unit to keep theirs raised. Geraldo stood before Virgilio, breathing heavily. He held out his hand and examined his fingers.

“Hard,” he said. “It felt hard. Like the barrel of a rifle or the blade of a Bolo.”

Virgilio blinked, trying to digest the information.

“Metal?” he gasped. “It’s manmade?”

It seemed obvious now.

Geraldo shrugged, dripping water.

Spanish? Thought Virgilio. Some sort of fighting machine?

A sudden heaviness clamped his heart.

It was always clear from the outset that when the Katipunan rose they were going to be outgunned by the Spanish and heavily reliant on being able to engineer a mass mutiny amongst the enlisted men of the Filipino regiments. But if their imperialist enemy was capable of engineering a weapon on this scale the revolution might simply flounder at birth.

Virgilio’s knees felt weak. He swallowed to try and rid himself of the dryness that clenched in his throat. He could feel the eyes of his men, watching him, waiting for him to issue orders. Pull yourself together, he told himself. They trained you to be decisive.

He turned again to the Barrio Captain.

“How many carabao are there in Santa Rosa?”

The old man scratched his grey-haired head.

“Five,” he said, holding up his hand with his fingers spread wide.

“Fetch them,” said Virgilio. “And fetch ropes too.”

“What are you planning?” asked Maria.

“To haul this thing back to the irrigation bank,” replied Virgilio. “I need to examine it further so I can send as detailed a report as possible to the provincial commander.”

“What do you think it is?” asked Maria.

“A weapon,” he replied. “A Spanish weapon.”

Maria pointed to where a thin trail of smoke was rising from the compound of another Barrio around half a mile away. “There are at least three more carabao in Magoan,” she said.

*

Eight carabao, six Katipunan fighters, dozens of villagers; men, women and children, heaving on three logging ropes that had been lashed to the machine’s trio of multi-jointed legs. Heels dug deep into the mud for traction, rope burning against flesh. The carabao, bothered by swarms of fat flies, their sinews rippling as they snorted and bellowed against the strain.

It seemed at first the huge contraption would simply not budge. Barking out encouragement till his throat felt raw Virgilio worried that the task was beyond them. But, as it turned out, it was the mud that was holding it. Once it was yanked free of the suction it glided somewhat clunkily across the surface water of the paddies, crushing the hand packed mud dykes as it advanced.

When they reached the irrigation channel Virgilio ordered them to stop. The machine lay with its limbs sprawled limply over the hump of the embankment, the carriage and its huge, metallic head still half submerged in the field. The legs were so long they stretched from the irrigation channel to the compound of the Barrio. The dogs snapped and snarled at them as if challenging an invasion by unwelcome intruders.

It was while the carabao were being released from their rope harnesses that everyone noticed what been left behind in the space where the machine had formerly lain. A wide blanket of red weeds, floating like blood on the surface water, twisted and interwoven into a briar, reaching out with exploratory cactus-like fingers, as if intent on spreading further.

“It’s smothering the crop,” said Maria.

Virgilio could feel the mid-morning sun bearing down on him. His head began to ache.

What next? He thought. What other surprises does fate have planned for me this day?

If the Spanish had developed some sort of predatory plant that could destroy the rice crop this could deal the final blow to the revolution. The Katipunan were already heavily reliant on the goodwill of villagers from Barrios like Santa Rosa to supply them with food. If the Spanish

engineered a rice famine, then victory would surely be theirs for the taking.

Virgilio cracked his knuckles in the nervous manner his mother had always scolded him for as a child. Dark clouds were forming over the mountains. Another rain storm was brewing. Within the hour it would roll down into the valley. Some of the villagers had their Bolos raised. It seemed they were ready to wade back into the paddies and hack away at the strange red infestation.

He yelled his thoughts out loud. “Forget the weeds for now. We need to see who is inside the carriage.”

“You think someone is in there?” asked Maria.

The Barrio Captain gasped. “A Spaniard maybe? Who was controlling it as it walked across the fields?”

Virgilio nodded. “It had to be operated somehow. A coach requires a coachman. If there is a man inside, he might still be alive. If he is, we can get information from him.”

“How good is your Spanish?” he asked Maria.

“More proficient, I suspect, than your comprehension of the Stations of the Cross,” came her surly reply.

Virgilio ignored the taunt. “If there is a man in there and if he is still alive you will act as my interpreter during the interrogation. You will translate my questions into Spanish and his answers into Ilocano.”

“I will, will I?” said Maria. “You can’t bark orders at me, you know. I’m not one of your toy soldiers.”

Virgilio heaved a sigh. “Will you help me? Yes or no?”

Maria flashed her teeth. “Since you ask so nicely, yes, yes I will help you.”

Virgilio looked down from the embankment to where the carriage lay.

The metal cowl hung over what seemed to be a glass window, beneath which protruded what appeared to be a weapon, barrel much thicker than that of a standard rifle, but not quite the girth of a cannon. Or maybe not weapon at all. Maybe some of seed feeder, designed to sow the field with poisonous red weed and blight the crop.

“How will you get to him?” asked Maria.

“We can use a Bolo to wedge the window open,” he replied. “Failing that we can smash the glass with a rock.”

Maria raised an eyebrow, looking skeptical.

Ignoring her Virgilio slid down the embankment and clambered up from one of the legs onto the carriage. The carriage reeked of fire, as if the lightning strike had ignited something housed deep in its metal belly. Something to do with mechanics which drove the thing he surmised.

He examined the protruding barrel beneath the carriage, wondering what kind of ammunition it might fire. If it was in fact a weapon. He mulled over his other theory of a seed dispenser. Maybe it was designed on the principles of a Gatlin gun, he countered himself, capable raining down endless hails of bullets to slaughter fleeing insurgents?

There were educated men within the upper echelons of the Katipunan hierarchy. Men who had attended university in Europe. Men who had read the works of Jose Rizal and Simon Bolivar. Men who understood science and engineering as much as they understood the theory of liberation. Let them figure out the technicalities of the machine and its odd-looking protrusion. The best he could do would be to get as much information as he could from the coachman.

If the coachman was still alive, that was.

Virgilio hauled himself up to the glass window and peered in. There was definitely something slumped there, but all he could make out was a vague silhouette. He tried using his shirt sleeve to wipe some of the mud away. All this did was spread it and thicken it, obscuring his vision even further.

“Bring me something to clear the glass,” he called down.

One of the village women grabbed a fat handful of grass. Two of his men helped her up onto the lower section of the carriage. Virgilio reached down with his hand and pulled her to his side.

“What your name?” he asked.

“Leticia,” she replied. “Leticia Legaspi. But everyone calls me Letty.”

“Well, Letty,” he said. “I need you just to wipe enough of the mud away that I can see what is inside there.”

Letty nodded, clutching tightly to her handful of grass. She began using the grass in a circular motion to clean the mud away. When she had created a large round space, she leaned in to take a look. Her scream shattered the silence that had once more fallen over the assembled villagers.

“Demonio! Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Demonio! Demonio!”

She jerked back from the glass so violently she lost her balance. Virgilio made a grab for her, but wasn’t quick enough. She tumbled over the edge and landed back in the rice paddy with a loud splash. Gasping from the shock of the fall she staggered to her feet, backing fearfully away from the machine, all the while making the sign of the cross.

“Demonio! Demonio!”

Virgilio pulled himself to the screen and peered into the carriage. What he saw jarred him to the bone, causing him to suck breath and almost lose his grip and tumble from the machine as Letty had done.

The creature that sat inside was the most hideously terrifying thing he had even encountered. Mottled green flesh, wan and gleaming with condensation. Leathery eyelids, closed over the sickening bulge of bulbous eyes. A pointed beak where a nose should be. A cluster of tentacles, hanging limply where you might expect to find a mouth.

Worst of all, no discernible torso or limbs.

Demon was surely the correct word for this monstrosity.

His rationality seeped easily away from him. Where was the logical explanation for what he was witnessing? He turned his head to one side, unwilling any longer to gaze on the horror before him, and saw instead that the red weed had spread wider across the paddies. Even now he could almost sense its movement, spreading those greedy crimson fingers to claim more and more territory.

If this were a nightmare there would be some respite. He would cry out, roll over and wake up, thanking his lucky stars that it had all been a trick of his imagination. But this was reality. The strange machine was hard and solid beneath him. The sun beating down on his back was oppressive. The air was muggy, threatening the deluge that was sure to follow. His eyes knew what they were witnessing, even if they could not fully comprehend.

Down below Letty was still screeching. “Demonio! Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Demonio! Demonio!”. Some of the other women were wailing in distress. Men were muttering prayers, children were crying, the dogs were howling.

His men started arguing amongst themselves. Some saying that one of them should hurry to Camiling and fetch a priest. Others saying that if anyone had the knowledge and capacity to summon a demon to operate a Spanish fighting machine it would have been a priest.

“The Spanish are in league with the devil” yelled a voice he recognized as that of Geraldo.

“I hate the Spanish as much as you do,” interjected the Barrio Captain. “But they are deeply religious and loyal to the Pope. They would never countenance summoning a demon.”

“They might if they were about to face an insurrection by a subjugated people,” countered Geraldo.

The argument intensified as some of the men from the villagers jumped in on the Captain’s side. The women wailed. The children cried. The dogs howled. He could hear scuffles breaking out and insults being traded. Soon blows would be exchanged.

The whole situation was spiraling into chaos. Virgilio knew he should act to bring things to order. But he could not so much as move a muscle. He felt frozen to the carriage of the dreadful machine, drenched in cold sweat, shivering with palpable fear, paralyzed by his indecision.

It was Maria who intervened on his behalf.

“Silence,” he heard her shout over the din. “Be quiet all of you. Let Virgilio Quinnes climb down. He will know what to do. He is the commander of a brave unit of the Katipunan after all.”

He wasn’t sure if she was somehow mocking him. But her words were what it took for him to break free of the fugue. Slowly he lowered himself down and jumped clear of the machine.

*

“It’s not a demon,” insisted Virgilio when he was safely back on the embankment. “It’s just some poor soul, born with terrible physical afflictions. Probably stolen by the Spanish from a circus to man their machine. Perhaps he is even some poor Filipino soul. It’s hard to tell.”

“That’s no Filipino,” screamed Letty. “I know what I saw. It’s not even a man. It’s a demon. Demonio. Demonio.”

She began making the sign of the cross.

Some of the women began to wail.

Children began to cry.

I don’t have time for this, thought Virgilio.

“Fall in!” he ordered his men.

They formed a line and stood to attention, rifles erect at their sides.

“What I want each of you to do is examine the machine,” said Virgilio. “Take mental note of even the smallest detail. Then I want you to do the same with the red weed out in the fields. Everything you notice about it stored in here.” He jabbed his finger against his temple.

The men nodded.

“Then when we get to central command you are each to recount what you observed,” he continued. “Whatever one of you may have missed another may have noticed. That way we will be able to provide as full a picture as possible.”

“We won’t have to climb up and look at what is inside the carriage, will we?” asked Geraldo, nervously glancing back at the massive hulk of the strange machine.

“That will be mine to recount and mine alone,” said Virgilio.

“And if you claim that it is not a demon, then you are a liar!” spat Letty. “This is Satan’s work. We should call for a priest like some of your men said. If we don’t our Barrio will be cursed. Just look at what has blighted our crops.”

The fringe of the colony of red weed was already creeping stealthily to toward the embankment. Seeing this the wailing of the women commenced again, louder this time, setting off the children and the dogs.

“To work men,” ordered Virgilio. “Look carefully at every little thing you see.”

Immediately the men broke formation and began their examination of the craft.

Virgilio turned to the Barrio Captain. “Get your people back to the compound,” he said. “They’re causing a distraction. You sent for us. Now let us do what needs to be done.”

The Barrio Captain nodded, then began waving his arms, Bolo in his hand, herding the villagers back to the cluster of Nipa huts as if they were cattle.

Only Maria hung back. “Is it true what you said?” she asked, almost a whisper. “Is it just a poor, afflicted man inside that carriage?”

Virgilio shrugged his shoulders. “I honestly don’t know,” he told her. “My priority is to get the information to my superiors. It’s for them to decide from there.”

He saw the fear and uncertainty that washed over her face.

“We may not get back here till tomorrow morning,” he said. “I don’t think any of you should stay in the Barrio tonight.”

“I was thinking the same,” said Maria. “I was thinking we should all go over to Magoan till we are sure it’s safe to return.”

“I was thinking everyone from Santa Rosa and Magoan should come with us as far as Camiling,” said Virgilio. “I think that would actually be the safest option all round.”

Maria raised her eyebrows. “Really? Even the old folk and the children? It’s a good four miles into town. We would slow you down.”

“You sent for our help,” said Virgilio. “We are duty bound to help you.”

Her face softened, lips curving to smile.

“You know, I could quite easily change my opinion of you.”

Their eyes met and held for a moment. Her hair was tied back in a bun, accentuating the almond shape of her face and the sun beaten, rustic hue of her complexion. Her neck was long. Her upper arms firm and muscular.

He realized that there was a definite attraction here.

Was that reciprocal affection he saw in her gaze?

There had been a time, back when they were children, that he’d had more than a passing crush on haughty Maria Tamayo. He supposed there might be worse things he could do than rekindle a hankering for her. Even if she still thought she could best him in everything. They were both still young - and she was a widow after all.

Above their heads the skies grew darker as the clouds rolled down from the mountains. A raindrop smacked against his head, snapping his thoughts back into focus. “Send for everyone who is still over in Magoan,” he told her. “Tell people to pack only what they need to bring. Get the carabao hitched to the carts. We leave within the hour.”

*

They waited beneath the stilts of the Nipa huts for the deluge to abate. Virgilio figured that another half hour so would make little odds. The dirt track that led to Camiling was badly maintained, blighted with potholes and cross-crossed with wheel ruts. They were going to be dragging themselves through a mire of mud.

There was little chance of reaching the town before sunset. For their onward journey he and his unit would need to follow the river to Tarlac and Katipunan central command by moonlight. But that suited him. The Katipunan has been harrying patrols from the local Spanish garrison for months now and they hardly ever sent any of their soldiers out after dark.

The villagers from Santa Rosa and Magoan seemed to have gotten it into their heads that they were going to be gone for some time. The carabao carts were full of bulging sacks of rice and empty rice sacks stuffed with live chickens, amongst these, corked vessels of various shapes and sizes, filled with water hand pumped from their well. On top of the sacks lay cooking pots and utensils. The pigs had been lashed by their trotters and hung on bamboo poles. Squirming babies were securely tied to the back of their mothers.

But they were quiet now, subdued into silence.

The relentless sheets of rain bounced from the scorched canopy of the huge machine they had thought was a giant. Its legs had been dragged back across to the embankment. They lay in twisted heap like a sleeping nest of vipers. The rain had somehow spurred the growth of the weed. Its fringe had crept over the embankment to choke the irrigation channel.

Virgilio’s thoughts were firmly fixed on the grotesque image of the monstrous coachman that was rooted inside his head. Every time he thought he had finally managed to convince himself that concocted lie he had spun the villagers was the plausible truth Letty would catch his eye and leave him floundering in doubt.

A cry went up.

“What now? Oh my God, what now?”

Everyone began to look toward the mountains. Steadying himself against one of the bamboo stilts of the Captain’s hut Virgilio followed their terrified stares. Something was gliding down out of the churning storm clouds, slicing swiftly through the sheets of rain.

It looked like a huge bird with outstretched wings. A groan of distress passed though the women of Santa Rosa and Manoag. Virgilio braced himself for the inevitable wailing to commence. But this time the demon caller had a different notion. “An angel,” cried Letty, dropping piously to her knees. “An Angel come to save us.”

The object drew closer, gliding lower in the grey sky. The dogs, sensing its true nature long before any of the humans, began to whimper and whine, digging their front paws frantically in the dirt.

Virgilio saw now that it was not a bird in any sense of the word. It was a machine. To the center of its rigid set of wings sat a carriage, smaller but very similar in design to that of three-legged machine. Both had clearly been constructed by the same diabolical hand. This made no odds to Letty. Before anyone could stop her, she was running headlong from compound to the irrigation.

She made a bold attempt to leap the channel but instead fell awkwardly into the choking red weed, thrashing in panic amongst the twisted crimson tubers. With a fierce determination, however, she scrambled onto the embankment and clambered to her feet to stand with her arms spread wide, lashed by the rain and dripping ditch water.

“Save us, Jesus,” she beseeched. “Save us from the demon. Lift the curse that has befallen our blessed Barrio.”

The flying craft appeared to increase in speed, heading straight for her. Swooping in silently like some bird of prey.

“Bless me Jesus,” cried Letty. “For I am your humble servant.”

It was then that Virgilio noticed that the flying machine housed what might be a weapon. The same type of fat barreled protrusion he had observed on its three-legged counterpart.

“Get down,” he yelled.

His warning came too late.

The barrel hummed and crackled and sent forth a fierce beam of bright light. In an instant the beam hit Letty. For a moment she glowed brilliantly white, before erupting into a gush of fiery flames and crumbling instantaneously to a heap of smoking ash.

Screams of terror pierced Virgilio’s ears as the villagers slumped to their knees. Without waiting for his orders his men began firing off pot-shots. In the sky above the Barrio the craft swerved and easily dodged the skewed trajectory of the bullets.

“Cease fire,” yelled Virgilio. “Cease fire.”

The order was as much to avoid a massacre as it was to conserve ammunition. If the craft fired back on them with its hellish beam, they would stand no chance whatsoever.

His men lowered their guns. All of them watched in tremulous silence as the flying machine circled high over the Barrio, seeming to slow each time it passed the vicinity of the three-legged machine.

This made sense to Virgilio.

To avoid walking into an enemy ambush he had been trained to send a scout ahead if any of his men ever went missing. The flying craft had obviously been sent to locate the fallen machine and assess any potential threat. On its fifth circuit it rose and set course back toward the mountains.

“We need to move now,” Virgilio told his men. “Raining or not we need to get these people to safety.”

*

Thankfully rain had begun to ease.

Virgilio had the villagers formed into a column on the uneven dirt track. Seven carabao, hauling seven overloaded carts. Behind these the Barrio Captain and the farmers, behind them the wives and the children, behind the these the grandparents. The village dogs waiting, tongues lolling in the muggy air that followed the rain storm.

Amongst the villagers the distraught husband of poor Leticia Legaspi. He stared ahead, wide eyed and pale, his three children clinging to him for dear life. He had nothing physical left to mourn. His wife’s ashes had been washed by the rain into the weeds that strangled the rice in the paddies.

Virgilio stationed Geraldo and two of his men to bring up the rear. Another two were stationed in the center of the column, one to the left flank, the other to the right. The remaining sixth member, the youngest of his unit, was with him at the head.

By Virgilio’s reckoning each had maybe three or four bullets left. The men from the Barrio held their Bolos in their right hand and an assortment of rosaries and crucifixes in the other. Prayers and implements used mainly for the rice harvest were going to be of no practical use if they were attacked. Virgilio knew that if the flying machine were to return their only real hope was to try and disarm it. He had told his men that in the event of its return they should only fire if they actually had the weapon in their sights.

Before setting off he went and found Maria amongst the women.

“If you need us to stop or rest then send word to me,” he told her. “But do your best to try and make sure everyone is keeping pace.”

Maria nodded. She seemed washed out and withdrawn. As traumatized by what they had witnessed as everyone else. Virgilio resisted the urge to hug her and draw her close to his chest. If that was to be there would be time enough once they were out of immediate danger.

“Sir.” The voice of his fifteen-year old lieutenant stationed at the front of the collumn, calling out to him. “Sir, you need to see this.”

With a last quick last glance at Maria he turned and hurried back.

Along the dirt track a horse and rider were approaching, the horse galloping at frantic pace, kicking up spumes of mud in its wake. The boy at the front raised his rifle. The horse was filthy, streaked in dirt and soot, bleeding profusely from a deep gash at its rear flank. The rider was equally disheveled, slumped forward, riding bare back without a saddle, clinging the horse’s mane.

The horse reared when it saw the column, kicking up its front legs, foaming at the mouth, eyes crazed and bloodshot. The rider was thrown clear, tumbling head over heels and landing on the track with a loud thump. Groaning, he picked himself up and staggered forward.

“Flee,” he told them. “Run for your lives.”

He was bleeding too, from the nose and from a small wound to the head.

“Flee from what?” Virgilio already knew what the answer was likely to be, but the question had to be asked.

The rider caught sight of the three-legged machine lying in the rice field, red weed now creeping eerily all over its carriage. He began to weep, the horse steaming with sweat and snorting with exhaustion behind him.

“From those,” sobbed the rider. “From those murderous contraptions. They are here in their hundreds.”

“Is it the work of the Spanish?” asked Virgilio, still stubbornly clinging to the notion of a rational explanation. “Have they launched these machines as a preemptive strike to quell the insurrection?”

“Not the Spanish,” replied the rider, pressing the heels of his grimy hands against his tear-filled eyes. “Far worse. The Spanish forts and churches are rendered to rubble. Manila is raised to the ground. The Spanish fleet lies at the bottom of Manila bay. Tarlac is in flames.”

“The British?” asked Virgilio. “The Portuguese? The Americans?”

The rider pointed skyward. “Not of this Earth,” he said. “Three nights ago, gigantic canisters fell from the sky. Last night the war machines emerged from them.”

Virgilio craned his neck, looking to where the rain clouds were slowly dispersing, trying to fathom the gravity of what he had just been told.

The rider coughed and spat a mouthful of bloody spit to the track. “Last I heard Spanish scholars were theorizing that they came from Mars. They are not just here on Luzon. They’re everywhere. Like an infestation on every continent. It’s an invasion. A cold-blooded war declared by one world against another.”

There came a far-off rumble. Toward the mountains columns of thick smoke were rising from the foothills. A beam flashed bright and an eruption of flames rose high. The hillside Barrios were already under attack.

Maria arrived and hurriedly handed the rider a tin cup of water. He gulped it greedily down. Another woman placed a cooking pot of water on the ground for the horse. It shuffled forward and lapped lethargically.

“You have to run,” insisted the rider. “Flee while you still have the chance. The gathering machines always follow an attack by the fighting machines. Rather die in the thrall of one of their death rays than face the horrendous fate that awaits if you are scooped up into a net.”

Far across the rice fields two machines were approaching, walking steadily forward on their three legs. Had it not been for the aura of portentous menace that seemed hang over them they might have appeared like a couple out for afternoon stroll. Behind them a dense black cloud had descended over the hillside Barrios, rolling and billowing as it swallowed everything in its path. Within its churning depth came sporadic sparks of vivid red.

“Get everyone to the forest,” Virgilio told Maria. “Abandon the carts. Take only what you can carry.”

The machines drew nearer, growing larger and more terrifyingly gigantic with each gangling step, the joints of their arachnid legs hissing puffs of some sort of putrid green steam. On Maria’s urging the villagers began to run. With them went their dogs.

The Katipunan, looking more and more like the impossibly young boys they truly were, fell in at Virgilio’s side, rifles pointed valiantly toward the advancing machines.

“Come with us,” Virgilio told the rider.

The man shook his head and struggled back onto his exhausted horse. “I must go on,” he said. “I swore I would warn as many people as I could.” He kicked his heels against the horse’s gleaming hide. Somehow it found the wherewithal to break into a gallop.

The two war machines were so close now that they were wading into the far fringes of the twisted red weed. “Go,” Virgilio told his men. “To the forest. I won’t hold you here to be butchered where you stand.”

Their camp was in a remote gully, concealed from view beneath a densely packed bivouac of branches, leaves and canvas. Virgilio hoped it would provide everyone with a modicum of safety. To reach the narrow forest path they had to run through a grove of banana and papaya trees the villagers had cultivated.

His men ran hell for leather, Virgilio hot at their heels.

Maria was waiting at the edge of the forest, fist clenched around her Bolo.

“Did everyone go in?” he asked.

Maria nodded.

Her eyes went wide, staring at something over his shoulder. Virgilio turned. The machines had reached the irrigation embankment. For a moment they crouched low on their multi-jointed legs, leaning down from their towering stature to examine the fallen machine. Virgilio caught a glimpse of the hideous creatures housed within the enclosed carriages, their tentacles writhing grotesquely as they passed deftly over the controls.

He heard the echo of Letty’s plaintive voice repeating in his head. ‘Demonio! Demonio!’

The machines rose in an uncannily synchronized motion and launched their fiery beams concurrently on the compound of Santa Rosa. The Nipa huts erupted in a fierce ball of flames, collapsing on their bamboo stilts. He saw the carts rendered to kindling from the ferocious backdraft of the firestorm, the bellowing carabao tossed recklessly into the air like leaves.

Engulfed in blistering smoke he grabbed Maria by the arm.

“When we get to your camp we will begin to plan how we will fight back?” she asked.

It sounded more of a statement than a question.

Virgilio coughed out his answer, feeling more certain than he had all day.

“Yes,” he said. “With bullets or Bolos. Whatever it takes. We didn’t arrive at the eve of our revolution only to allow another invader to seize our land.”

Their hands clasped as they passed silently into the forest.