We all tried to digest this piece of news as Martina expertly hauled ass down the lake towards the public dock. Using Extras in the field during military engagements has been going on for hundreds of years, but by and large, anything so obviously different as to be described as a cat on its hind legs was typically…encouraged…to stay the hell out of sight or in disguise if it was going to mix in public.

  The willingness to employ them in public - even at night - marked a substantial change in policy for Broadhead. The gloves were off. It seemed that privacy and deniability were now less important than actually taking us off the board. This was a big deal. These rules weren’t made by Broadhead, they were made by the fucking world governments that all agreed that humans didn’t do too well with the truth and that it was easier to manage things if we didn’t have concrete proof that Hombre Gato was real.

  For us, it meant that we had enemies that were faster, stronger, and better able to see at night…basically a stacked deck against us now. Great.

  We raced down the dark lake using the lights of the houses on the shore and the clear sky as our only aids to navigation. Martina drove with the confidence of someone with long experience on the lake and had us skimming over the lake surface at an exhilarating speed. I swear I caught a small smile on her lips as she turned to Sarah and pointed towards a natural little “bay” in the lake about a mile ahead on the left.

  “That’s the public ramp!” she yelled over the roar of the huge outboard engine.

  “Will anybody be there at this time of night?” I yelled.

  “She looked back at me and yelled, “No, why?”

  “No reason,” I replied with a smile, “It’s just that…you know…you’re naked.”

  She threw her head back and laughed loud and long, looking over at me with a smirk and shook her hips a little, and said, “You’re welcome!”

  Smiling with a fake, yet convincing disapproval, Sarah pointed at Frank and said, “Eyes on me, Mister!”

  Frank chuckled dryly and replied, “I’ll never have eyes for anything else, darling, don’t you worry.”

  Sarah rolled her eyes, and slapped his shoulder, “Sure baby. Sure.”

  We were all starting to feel the euphoria of surviving a dangerous encounter and Martina slowed the boat down as we approached the marker buoy about one hundred meters from the public boat ramp. So naturally, that’s when we were attacked.

  A massive surge of water and a hard slam on Starboard spun the boat around in the water and sent us all sprawling to the deck and smashing into each other, the seats, and everything else that was in the boat. I was on the port side, so I fell across the boat and slammed into a seat that caught me right in the ribs and knocked the wind out of me.

  Frank had already been positioned on the floor of the boat so he simply got bounced around a little bit, but Sarah had been standing in front of him forward of the seats and fell back over him and banged her head on the outboard mounts cutting her head and sending blood splashing out all over the place. She wasn’t moving, and I was pretty sure she had gotten knocked out.

  Martina went right over the side into the lake. I don’t know if she was knocked, dove on purpose, or if it was a combination of the two, but she entered the water neatly and disappeared under the surface on the starboard side of the boat.

  I sat up groaning and trying to suck in some air and levered myself into the seat I had fallen on.

  Frank reached over and grabbed his bleeding wife, “Sarah! Baby, are you ok?” He pulled her unconscious body onto his lap and began inspecting the wound.

  “Is she okay?” I asked.

  “Scalp wound bleeding pretty bad, but not life-threatening. I need bandages or something.”

  As he finished speaking, the boat was hit again from underneath and we surged upwards before dropping back into the water with a loud slap and bang as the hull slammed back onto the surface of the lake. The boat had taken some major damage to the hull and I had been lifted right off the seat and slammed back down grabbing at anything to keep me from falling onto Frank and Sarah.

  “What the fuck is that?" Frank yelled.

  At that moment, Martina shot completely out of the water from the port side and gracefully landed in the boat saying “Shitshitshitshit. There's a Godsdamned horned serpent in the lake!”

  “A what?”

  “That!” she said pointing to a glowing light rising out of the water about twelve feet to starboard. That glowing light resolved itself into an actual serpent with horns like a ram growing out of it’s head and a bright jewel revealed as the source of the glow, placed right in between the horns. Its head was about three times the size of a human head and it’s body seemed to be about two feet thick at the base of its skull. And it didn’t look happy to see us.

  Stretching up out of the water about 5 feet, we could clearly see it was covered with shiny, almost translucent scales that looked more crystalline than anything. Its eyes were hooded and had that snake-like emptiness in them that conveyed a feeling of a big animal looking for prey rather than a thinking, sentient creature looking for us specifically. Not that it meant we’d be any less dead soon.

  Bizarrely, Martina said, ”Oh, thank the Gods.” right before it struck the boat again. Like a ram, it lowered its head and slammed its horns into the boat. This time from out of the water and crashing downward into the front of the boat.

  That was it for all of us. The boat pitched forward onto its bow and threw each of us out into the water. Martina turned her flight into a dive, but Frank flew out with an iron grip on his unconscious wife and I, unburdened with anything other than myself, flew twice as far and landed in the water with a slap and an undignified belly flop.

  As I came up sputtering and spitting out lake water, I saw the serpent find Frank and Sarah in the water and begin swimming towards them. I began to panic. I’m a decent swimmer, but there’s no way I’m faster than a fucking sea serpent. I kicked my shoes off and pulled my shirt over my head, before admitting to myself that there was no way I was going to get to Frank and Sarah before the monster got there. But I couldn’t let them die. I couldn’t let the only people who gave a shit about me get eaten by a stupid fucking water snake, so I only had one option.

  I swallowed hard, I began splashing and screaming, “Hey! Sea Serpent! Hey Big Ugly! Look at me you son of a bitch! Look! I’m thrashing around and all alone! Helpless victim right here! I’m swimming right at you, you stupid snake! Look!”

  The creature heard me and turned towards the disturbance I was making, but my heart broke as the thing ignored my waving shirt and thrashing around, and continued on towards Frank and Sarah. To add insult to injury, the damn thing smashed me with its tail and damn near broke me in half. I went underwater a few feet while exhaling every bit of air in my lungs and thrashed back to the surface in time to take a huge involuntary gulp of half lake water and half air. Choking and retching, I looked towards my doomed friends with despair.

  I screamed, “Frank!” and we made eye contact. I could see the resigned look on his face. He knew what was coming for him, and he knew there wasn’t a damn thing he could do while also trying to hold his unconscious wife above water.

  Martina picked that moment to make her appearance. Rising up out of the water like a mythological hero of old, she had a huge stone from the bottom of the lake in her hand, and she reared up, smashing the stone down hard onto the jewel right between the horns of the nasty beast.

  Three things happened in a most anticlimactic way: the rock fucking broke over the serpent's head, a resoundingly dull yet comical ‘THUMP’ like a hammer on a log echoed out from the impact, and the glowing crystal dulled as the sea serpent literally crossed it eyes and dropped, flopping onto the surface of the lake.

  We all stared at the unconscious serpent until Martina screamed, “What the hell is wrong with you all? Start swimming to shore! It’ll wake up any second!”

  “Martina,” I yelled back “grab Sarah and tow her to shore! I’ll get Frank.”

  “No, stupid, you get Sarah. I’m the stronger swimmer, I’ll get Frank!”

  Oh yeah. Mermaid. Right. Stupid, Dru. So I swam my ass off to Frank and Sarah. Martina was already there and had Sarah in the cross-chest lifeguard carry, waiting to hand her off to me while Frank trod water with his arms. I grabbed Sarah and Martina grabbed Frank and we started swimming to the pier about eighty meters away.

  About halfway there, we heard a thrashing in the water and saw the serpent slowly start to move and swirl around in the water. Shit. We were not close enough to shore. Despite hauling the much heavier Frank, Martina was far ahead of me, but she saw it too. Without comment, she released Frank to float on his own and swam faster, effortlessly, than any Olympic swimmer you’ve ever seen, and raced out past me yelling, “Get them to shore. I’ll draw it off.”

  “Don’t die!” I yelled back and redoubled my own pathetic efforts.

  “Not today, brother! This is my home,” she replied and swam straight at the monster snake in Lake L.B.J.

  The horned serpent came fully to its senses in time for Martina to swim right up to its face and - I really, honestly, sincerely swear I’m not making this up - slap it right across the mouth.

  It reared back in what had to be the horned serpent version of dignified outrage that this tiny Iara would dare do something so outrageous and lifted a full twenty feet of its incredible body out of the water before smashing its head straight down at Martina, who dove underwater an instant before that massive head hit the water and chased after her.

  I turned towards shore and swam as fast as I could towing an unconscious body. Frank had never stopped swimming for dry land and was able to beat me by about thirty seconds to the shore where I caught up to him as I pulled his wife onto the paved parking lot where the boat trailers parked during the day while the public used their boats out on the lake.

  Frank had been dragging himself up the ramp and I could see his wound on his left stump had re-opened a bit as there was blood on his soaked bandages that had somehow stayed on his calf through all of this.

  “Martina will get away from that thing, right?” I asked.

  Frank replied, “Dru, she's fast, but I can’t imagine she’s faster than a water serpent that's fifty feet long.”

  If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  "Can she beat that thing in a fight, do you think?'

  "I doubt it."

  We sat in silence for a minute and saw nothing disturb the surface of the lake. I felt a deep sadness and loss for a woman I had barely met. That blue painted face appeared in my head, looking at me with sympathy.

  Frank pulled himself together first and said, “We need to get out of the open like this. There’s a good chance somebody will come this way looking for us. Plus I need medical gear. Sarah will need some butterfly stitches and a bandage on this scalp cut at a bare minimum.”

  I turned to him and bent down to grab Sarah saying, “Let me move her into that area over there by the bushes behind you.”

  He looked over to the left side of the parking lot where there were some low-lying shrubs and a few scrub oak trees growing right up to the pavement. He nodded his assent as I picked her up gently and moved her over there. When I turned around, Frank was scooting himself over the ground by the simple expedient of lifting his ass off the ground with his arms and pushing backward, dragging his left leg and right thigh on the ground as he went.

  I ran over and stood above him with my hands on my hips and forced myself to smile, saying, “You look like you could use a lift, sailor. Headed my way?”

  He looked up at me and nodded his recognition that I was trying to keep my mind off our missing Iara, “Get me over to my wife.”

  “Anything for a friend.” I grabbed him under his arms and lifted him onto and over my shoulder and staggered upright. I carried him over to the bushes and trees and was setting him down when we heard a small series of splashes by the boat ramp, and Martina came walking up out of the water via the concrete steps, looking bedraggled and exhausted, carrying a large bundle or bag I couldn't make out in the dark.

  As she got closer, she shuffled into the light made by the single lamp in the parking lot and held up the large med kit bag we had snuck out of the house with us, saying “Is there anything in this bag other than medical supplies? I need a Godsdamned drink.”

  I felt a release in my chest I hadn't admitted was there as I ran over asking, “How the hell did you get that!” She shrugged like it was no big deal.

  I brought it over to Frank and he dove in without anything other than a terse “Thank you.” to Martina and I.

  Martina was a little manic, a common reaction to the high adrenaline night she was going through. She explained, “I couldn’t outrace that son of a bitch, so I had to stay close to it and we played quite a game of tag. Damn, that thing is fast! I got him all twisted up and dove deep where we stirred up the mud and took visibility down to zero.”

  Pacing back and forth she continued, “The offspring of Uktena are visual hunters and, in case you don’t know, they don’t normally live this far south. I don’t think this was an accident that we ran into it,” she said with a wide smile on her face that was totally out of place with the moment.

  I laughed grimly. “No, I don’t suppose it was.”

  Still practically vibrating with suppressed energy, she went on. “Then I shot back up into the boat and rested for a few seconds waiting to see what it would do. I think I hurt it enough when I smashed that rock on its head, that it forgot what it was supposed to be doing and swam off after I got away!”

  “So I guess the big question,” I said, “is what the fuck is an Uk…Uk…”

  “Uktena?”

  “Yeah. That.”

  “Oh, mijo.” She walked up to me and put both hands on my shoulders looking me in the eye. “Uktena would have been the death of us. She is a magical and sacred horned serpent that lives in a lake in Georgia. Damn near invincible, smarter than most humans, and the Ulun'suti - the gem on its forehead - is hypnotic. Had we all been staring at the real thing, we would have sat still in that boat until Uktena swam up, killed us with its poison breath, and eaten us.”

  “So what we faced…”

  “Was one of Uktena’s offspring. Much dumber, not nearly so powerful. But big. Basically a beast rather than a sentient enemy. Most importantly, its Ulun'suti is nothing but a housing for it’s life magic. No hypnotism…thank the Gods.”

  “Martina,” I asked, “for years it was my job to hunt down and kill things like Uktena. How come I never heard of her?”

  From back in the bushes, Frank called out softly, “Because Uktena made a treaty with the US Government to stop killing white people in 1836. Uktena is smart, Dru. She speaks the Cherokee and French languages, she plans, and she could see what was happening as America expanded. Also, she’s nasty, and she hated the Cherokee people, who often used her and her offspring as a target in quests for their young, would-be heroes. Under the terms of the treaty, She stopped hunting humans, well, white humans at least, and agreed to work with the US government if we asked it of her. In return, we removed the Cherokee people for her. Of course, we were always going to do that anyway.”

  I sat there quiet for a moment, thinking. “Yeah. The Trail of Tears started in 1837, didn’t it?”

  Frank looked at me. “Yes, it did. I was there.”

  Martina interrupted us to ask, “So does somebody want to tell me how Broadhead was able to get a horned serpent, transport it all the way to Lake LBJ, let it loose to go after us, and…oh yeah, train it to attack us?”

  We all stared at each other, which was becoming a habit we needed to break.

  “No?” She said, looking at us both. Exasperated, she threw her hands in the air and sat down next to Frank and a now bandaged Sarah, saying, “Alright.”

  Frank spoke up as he began attending to his bleeding ankle, “Honestly, we have bigger problems right now.”

  His voice was steady as he worked, but I could tell he was struggling to remain calm while tending to the spot on his left leg that had, until a few days ago, had his left foot attached to it. I could see him working through the process of cataloging all the ways he was fucked now that he had lost his left foot and most of his right leg.

  “We’ll get through this, Frank,” I said

  His head snapped up and he glared at me, “Will we, Dru? I’m a fucking invalid, Sarah is unconscious with a concussion at the very least, Martina is naked, and you are standing in soaking wet jeans and socks! Thank the Gods at least Sarah had this tucked away tight enough that it didn’t fall out of her waistband,” he said while brandishing my pistol.

  With a sense of relief I couldn’t attempt to explain, I reached over and took the gun out of his hand and simply held it by my side. Armed and protected. I pulled the mag and counted eleven rounds, plus one in the chamber. A dozen bullets and a wet pair of socks against an international armed security force that had actual monsters fighting on their side. Yay us.

  Martina said, “I could use some clothes, honestly.”

  “Well,” I replied, “we can take a chance. I do still have my wallet. We can get to a store, buy some clothes, and maybe steal a car or something.”

  “It’s almost two in the morning. Nothing is open, and we’re miles away from anything anyway. Martina, I assume there are some houses along the shoreline this way.” Frank indicated by pointing up the road out of the parking lot we were sitting in.

  “Yes, there’s a few houses along this stretch before we’d get back into a neighborhood proper.”

  Yeah,” Frank continued “It would take hours to walk to a store. It’d be much faster to head back up the shoreline towards those houses, but I don’t like the idea of breaking into somebody's house and stealing their shit at gunpoint.”

  “Well, there’s a chance…” Martina started before trailing off.

  “A chance what?” Frank asked.

  “Well, there’s a house not far from here, maybe a mile, mile and a half, that’s a vacation rental. The owners live in it during the winter and head out to Colorado in the summers. It’s possible it could be empty right now. They don’t usually get back until late October.”

  “But how will that help us?” I asked “We need clothes, money, and a car. Would a vacation rental have that?”

  “They almost certainly have clothes locked away somewhere separate from the rooms they rent. This is a high-end rental. The owners probably have their personal belongings locked up downstairs or in the attic or something. I doubt there’s a car or money, but it’s a place to hole up, get some clothes, grab some sleep, and call an Uber or a taxi in the morning. Sarah is hurt pretty bad and Frank is right, we are all a hot mess right now.”

  We were interrupted by the welcome sound of Sarah moaning and trying to move around next to Frank. He reached out and put his hand on her shoulder gently while he leaned over to her and quietly said, “It’s okay baby, we’re right here. Relax and don’t move. You took a nasty shot to the head.”

  “Wha-what happened ?” She slurred thickly as she started to come to.

  “You got cut and we had to bandage you up. You were unconscious for a bit.”

  Her eyes fluttered open and she stared around at us standing there in the parking lot with a vacant look until she seemed to realize what she was seeing and she frowned, “What on earth happened?”

  I couldn’t resist, I counted on my fingers as I said, “House fire, cat men with guns, Horned Serpent, midnight swim. You know - the usual.”

  She got this confused look on her face and glanced over to Frank and I immediately felt ashamed for putting my foot in it again. “Sorry, Sarah. It’s been a night.”

  “So it would seem,” she replied, reaching up to her head and wincing when she made contact with her bandage. She looked at us all again, her eyes locking on Martina last.

  “Martina? Sweetie?”

  “Yes, Mija?”

  “Why are you naked?”

  We all waited around as Sarah came back to some semblance of conscious and capable and took that time to fill her in on all she missed while she was out of it. She didn't remember any of it, and even had trouble remembering leaving the house. A bad sign that spelled a serious concussion.

  Eventually, she was able to stand up with mine and Martina's arms under hers. A few minutes after that, she was able to walk on her own and we could see her strength returning by the minute.

  As we prepared to take the long walk to the vacation house we were suddenly presented with a pair of headlights slowly winding down the road towards the parking lot.

  In a calm voice, Martina said, “Nobody comes down here at this hour. That is going to be Broadhead.”

  Frank was still sitting at the base of the oak tree and called out, “Honey, get over here and take cover with me in these bushes and tree.”

  He looked around at the parking lot. It was a simple affair. Essentially, it was a road that went straight to the right of the concrete boat ramp, took a long, gentle U-Turn to the left so that trucks could align their trailers with the ramp which sat right in the middle of that “U” , back up to put the boats in the water, pull around completing the “U” and then pulling into large parking spots designed specifically for trucks with trailers that sat in the middle of the pavement.

  However, there was one odd little aspect to this boat ramp parking lot; there was a deep ditch that acted as a rain culvert and drain that was in the middle of the parking spaces and was unpaved.

  Frank looked at me and said, “See how deep that culvert is and get in it if it offers coverage, Dru.”

  I ran over to it and saw that it had lots of scrub brush in it and was about 5 feet deep. I jumped in and lay down completely out of sight, gun in hand.

  Martina ran to a large scrub brush right next to the pier by the ramp and hid behind it.

  The car came down barely crawling along at a walking pace. It was another black SUV. As it came alongside me I popped up to shoot the driver but slipped in my fucking wet socks as I stood and I went down like a sack of potatoes. This driver was fucking good. With cat-like reflexes, he slammed his foot on the gas and shot forward like a rocket.

  Getting to my knees, I swung the pistol forward and fired two shots through the driver's window, but the angle was bad. I winged him twice and was trying to climb out to get a better angle on him when Martina jumped out from behind the bush in all her naked glory, throwing a fist-sized rock she had picked up off the ground and hitting the windshield square in the middle causing a spider web of shattered safety glass to spiral out from the impact point.

  And the driver - the fucking stupid driver - kept his foot down and drove straight past Martina, down to the boat ramp, and tried too late to turn away from the lake. He didn’t make it, and he shot off the edge of the boat ramp, down the concrete steps Martina had walked up not 5 minutes ago, and into the fucking lake.

  I yelled, “No!” as the SUV settled into the lake. The door pushed sluggishly open and the driver - another Hombre El Gato (which explained the great reflexes and made my thought about “cat-like” pretty funny) staggered out holding his wounded shoulder. I furiously put one more round into his head and ran down to the SUV, but it was too late, it was filling with water and going under.

  Nobody else got out of the vehicle, so I assumed he was alone. That was good because we now had nine rounds left in the gun, and we still had to walk to the house. Martina laughed and said, “You should have seen his face as he drove by me! He looked like he had never seen a naked Iara before!”

  I was not happy. “Godsdamnit! Can one fucking thing go right tonight?” I yelled to the sky, stomping on the ground and turning around in a circle.

  Martina kept the smile on her face, but asked, “What’s wrong?”

  From the tree line, I heard Frank call out to me, “It’s alright Dru. Come over here and let's get organized. We’ve got to get going right now.”

  “Easy for you to say,” I grumbled “You won’t be carrying me on your back for a fucking mile and a half. With no shoes.”

  Martina, still smiling threw in, “Uphill both ways in the snow, Dru?”

  That drew a smile from Sarah, and she muttered, “Back in my day...”

  I looked to Frank for help and he grudgingly smiled and held out his arms. I hoisted Frank onto my back and said, “You all laugh it up, but it sure would have been nice to have a car again.”

  “No point in wishing on what might have been, soldier. Let’s get moving,” he said over my shoulder. He was right, but for fucks sake, there was a car in the Godsdamned lake.

  We four started up the road looking like refugees in any war you choose to name. It took damn near an hour to go barely one mile, because I had to put Frank down when he got too heavy for me. A few times I stepped on a sharp rock and almost fell over with Frank on my back, each time letting a little curse out and trying to fall in a “controlled crash” to the ground.

  Jokes or not, this sucked.