Heatwave

The television forecasters had been calling it a heatwave, but that was such a drastic understatement as to be laughable, according to Alejandra Jiminez. She would have said just that if anyone had bothered asking her, but no one did.

They should, she thought grimly, following the trail towards the sound of voices ahead. Alejandra often thought of her job as a Death Valley National Park Ranger in two ways: protect the park from the people and protect the people from themselves.

The latter was more difficult.

As her smart watch started buzzing against her wrist, she paused to see who would be calling while she was at work and sighed a little. The display read: abuela. No matter how many times she told her grandmother her work schedule, the woman always insisted that Alejandra "just walked around a park all day and had plenty of time for her dying abuela."

She wasn't dying.

The danger in not answering was that the texts and calls would ramp up in volume and speed as her abuela became more and more convinced that her granddaughter had been mauled by a bear (there were no bears in DVNP), kidnapped by a serial killer who happened not only to want to ravish her, but had a taste for human flesh, or once, that a tree had fallen over on her.

The dangers from the heat or taking a bad step were more realistic concerns, but Alejandra didn't see any reason to add fuel to her abuela's already blazing bonfire of imagination. She took proper precautions after all, carrying a light pack that contained a bag of water she could sip from a silicone straw cleverly threaded through the right strap. A few granola bars and bottles of water were nestled in the bottom in case she came across a hiker in distress, and like all park rangers, she was trained in first aid and CPR.

The voices ahead of her were still conversing and staying stationary, though it seemed to her that the tone had changed from light to inquisitive. Probably studying some kind of plant or wildlife. Not sensing an imminent need for her services, Alejandra gave in and accepted the call to her earbud (only the right one, had to keep an ear free, Just In Case).

"Abuelita," she greeted as the call connected.

"Mi ninata," her grandmother returned, the sound of crockery rattling in the background.

A smile pulled up at the corners of Alejandra's mouth. She could picture her diminutive abuela at the kitchen island, hair in the braided bun she preferred as she fixed herself a mug of café de olla. The scent of coffee and cinnamon clung to her abuela like a perfume. She'd sworn to Alejandra that she'd switched to decaf after the doctor warned her about caffeine intake for her heart's sake, but Alejandra believed that about as much as she believed that The Flat Earth Society had it right, or that the moon was made of cheese.

"Carlos and Maria are at it again," abuela bemoaned over the line, a note of disapproving excitement in her tone that she always had when Spilling The Tea.

"What happened?" Alejandra asked, turning her back to the hikers. She thought last week Carlos had squandered the family fortune at a poker game, and Maria's evil father was trying to separate them. Still, it was hard to keep track of the dramatic storylines in abuela's favorite soap operas.

"Lola is back!" came the grimly triumphant reply of someone who had called this particular plot twist and is now waiting for the appropriately outraged reaction.

Alejandra always gave it to her.

She's aware that a large part of the family refuses to entertain these conversations, where her abuela talks about her telenovela characters as if they were real people in her life, but Alejandra has never been one of them. She relishes sharing this secret world with her grandmother, where they are the judgmental overseers and mete out their imaginary justice.

Alejandra made a disapproving noise at this news. "Didn't she die?"

"YES!" her grandmother nearly shouted into the phone, undoubtedly having picked it up from the island where she'd set it on speaker. "But she didn't have SENSE to STAY dead," she continued, her tone making it clear that Lola had no business on this side of the River Styx and was somehow cheating. "AND," abuela charged on, giving Alejandra no time to process what this might mean for the (rather idiotic) Carlos. "She's PREGNANT and says the baby belongs to CARLOS." Alejandra thought Lola must be missing a significant number of brain cells for returning from the dead just to play house with Carlos, but before she can voice this thought, the tone of the hikers' conversation turns to alarm, and she turns towards them.

"Abuela, I'll be over for dinner after work, but I need to check something out," she murmurs, shoulders tensing as she automatically checks her hip for her service weapon and unsnaps the strap holding it in the holster. Just In Case.

Usually her grandmother breezes off the line as quickly as she storms onto it, but this time there's an uncharacteristic pause. "Be careful, my dear. I saw a black moth on the window just as I called you." Despite her rising stress and the temperature, bumps rose across Alejandra's skin. Signs were plentiful in their culture, and her grandmother took them to heart, so Alejandra did as well. Seeing a black moth meant either death or terrible luck. The sign could be intended for either of them or someone close to them.

"I will," she replied solemnly, and then added, as always, "I love you." They never terminated a call or left one another without voicing love. Alejandra had been in too many life-or-death situations with others not to be constantly aware of what a fragile thing being alive was. And without fail, every person who had a close brush with death she'd come across only wanted to reassure those left behind of their love.

Checking the temperature display on her smart watch as she started towards the hikers (it read a brutal 114F/45C), Alejandra kept within the shade cast by the spindly mesquite trees that crowded the sides of the trail. It was only nine o'clock in the morning, but these temperatures were normal in July. It wasn't advised for anyone to be out here walking after ten, and she intended to get these folks moving back towards the parking area.

What she saw brought her up short, however.

It was what she assumed was a couple, a man and woman dressed similarly in expensive outerwear. A decade in law enforcement picked out details about the pair quickly, filtering them into compartments in her mind as they assimilated into a picture. Wide-brimmed sun hats, pricy hiking shoes that were well-worn, and matching hiking canteens on a strap about their chests. These were park chasers, she'd bet money on it -- people who are passionate about national parks and travel the country visiting them. Some of them had amassed huge followings on social media sites like Instagram and TikTok, but Alejandra couldn't be paid enough to take part in any of that. It had always struck her as strangely cultish.

None of these were things that held her attention.

It was the massive hole in front of the pair, which they were busily snapping pictures of with their iPhones fitted with overpriced lens kits designed to turn out professional-grade pictures.

"...nothing alive big enough to have done this," the female was insisting to her counterpart, not even having noticed that Alejandra had joined this bizarre party. She had an educated nuance to her voice and sounded shaken, despite standing close enough to the edge of the hole that the toe of her hiking shoe was hanging over the opening. Because the mind works in the weirdest of ways, Alejandra remembered an article she'd read that was poking fun at the American proclivity to describe sizes of things using objects instead of actual measurement, and found herself doing the same thing.

The hole was roughly four washing machines wide, a near-perfect circle as far as she could tell, and had no discernible bottom.

"Get back," Alejandra snapped towards the pair, startling them out of their fascinated trance.

The man reached out and pulled the woman back from the hole, and they both stared at her with wide eyes before the avalanche of questions came tumbling from their mouths.

"What made this?"

"I -- I saw something moving in there," the man told Alejandra feverishly. "Just before you walked over here. What in all the nine circles of hell was it?" Alejandra was surprised by the reference to Dante's Inferno, especially under the circumstances, but they didn't really have time for comparing literary notes, so she didn't respond directly to it.

More to the point, she had no idea. Her alarm bells were going off like klaxons, but her first obligation was to these people. Holding her hands out in a Let's-All-Calm-Down-Here gesture, she said, "Folks, I'm going to have to ask you to leave the park right now. An investigation is going to be launched shortly, and the temperature is getting dangerous. For your safety, I'm going to need you to seek shelter. Please return to the parking area." She stepped to the side and gestured down the path.

The couple blinked at her as though they were taken off-balance by her calm reply, but visibly gathered up the tatters of their distress. They looked at one another for a long moment, and as though communicating telepathically, they nodded in tandem and started down the way Alejandra had gestured. It was what she'd expected. Park chasers usually had a high respect for rangers, and the badge carried a heavy weight of authority with most.

Once the couple was out of sight, Alejandra snapped a few pictures of the hole herself and sent them to the ranger group chat. Reaching up, she thumbed the walkie on her shoulder and said, "Pedro. Pendajo, check the chat."

Pedro should be on the other side of the park at this time of day, likewise sweeping the popular hiking trails and ushering guests off before the temperature gets too high. He was near her age, pushing mid-thirties, but she'd very rarely ever heard him sound serious. There was nothing out of bounds when it came to his sense of humor, but his voice was laced with dread when he came back to her.

"...I've got two of them over here, Al. Got the guests heading out. I thought at first it was some kind of heavy machinery, but there are no tracks, and -- "

She'd never know what it was he was going to say. It was cut off by a strangled scream and a heavy thud before the line cut off.

Backing away from the hole in a panic that gripped her so tightly that she could barely breathe, Alejandra tried screaming back into the walkie for Pedro, but it came out only in a whisper as dry and scratchy as the dunes that draped the mountains around her like a scarf.

There was no answer.

Shaking, she pulled her service weapon free of its holster and trained it on the hole, aware that she was breathing too fast and too shallow.

Hyperventilating, her helpful brain supplied for her.

Her Sig Sauer 320P compact had fifteen shots. She'd never before discharged her weapon in the line of duty and had heartily hoped to never have to, but still kept her skills sharp and practiced every week, believing it to be the sacred duty of one charged with gun ownership and protection, as she was. Alejandra was a protector. Even her name implied such, meaning "defender of mankind."

Her blurred thoughts glitched as a *thing* erupted from the hole she was steadily backing away from.

There was a brief moment as she watched it emerge in a shower of dirt when she wondered if she was going mad. Extreme heat can cause hallucinations, but she gripped her sanity tightly in the fist of her mind and confronted what she was seeing with teeth gritted and feet planted in the solid shooter's stance of her training. It was insectile in form and hovered stories above her, danger-black and sleek, its segmented parts drifting back and forth in a dreamy sort of weave that gave her a wave of nausea. Her mind had nothing else to compare it to, but a centipede was the closest.

The biggest differences were the wickedly sharp beak that snapped at the air around it and how each of the numerous legs had a shovel-like appendage, which likely helped it burrow through the desert earth. The bubbled eyes seemed to have some kind of film over them that probably protected them from the dust and dirt as it moved, but Alejandra took a wild guess that they wouldn't be able to block bullets and began shooting just as the thing darted towards her with a speed that, before today, she would have said was supernatural.

She didn't move. You were much more likely to miss your target if you were both moving.

Three of the shots *sparked* off the chitinous armor the thing was covered in, but one of them hit a bulbous eye that erupted in a wet slap of inky slime to the stones below.

It screamed in an alien way that drew a violin bow against her nerves, jangling them in discordance. When the thing fell, writhing in the dirt, she took her chance and began running pell-mell down the path towards the parking area. The earth shook beneath her, and unable to keep from doing so, she looked behind her. Yet another of the creatures had broken through the ground and had latched onto the dying one, devouring it even as it continued to scream.

Still shaking, she threw herself into her pickup and peeled out of the employee parking lot, driving onto the shoulder when needed. She was heading to her abuela, even as sinkholes opened beneath the buildings she drove past, memories of watching buildings collapse on the news as a child on 9/11 haunting her.

The same television forecasters who called this a simple heatwave were blatting on the radio about the possibility of alien eggs that had been incubated by the heatwave, but Alejandra reached out and sharply turned it off. She had a stockpile of ammunition there, and if the world was ending, she'd be damned if she didn't find out why Lola had the audacity to come back from the dead.