"Seismic activity has entered a quiescent phase. There is every reason to assume it will resume anew. Aftershocks continue. Continued survival necessitates seeking stable ground."
"Your followers need rest. They have marched behind you all day. Now they require rest and food."
"I do not require followers."
"But what is a god without followers? It is their secret prayers which have awakened you. It is their unheard yearnings that have warmed the many stone hearts upon your breast."
"I had elected to remain quiescent until my foes had ceased to exist, which I estimate would transpire in approximately 60.8 years at the latest. During my inactive state, I attempted to complete all self-repairs possible. This task is ongoing. The seismic disturbance triggered my self-preservation override. That function is presently being executed."
"Stop, Coatlicue. Stop. You must allow us to sacrifice in your name. It will make you stronger."
One serpentine head rolled to fix him with its weird stone orbs.
"How will sacrifice make me stronger?"
"It is the way of Coatlicue. Your womanly strength comes from human sacrifice. Human sacrifice empowers your hearts, feeds your people and keeps the universe running."
"I must keep moving if I am to survive."
And head retracting, Coatlicue lumbered on.
Lujan skipped around to her side, realizing that if he stumbled she would stomp him into a mass of jelly under her cruel tread. That was why he loved her so. She cared not for her subjects. Her subjects must worship her, not the other way around.
"We are yours to command, O Coatlicue. Do you not understand? Do with us as you please. Break our backs, crush our thin skulls, we will follow you anywhere."
Coatlicue made no reply to that.
"O Coatlicue, Devourer of Filth, do you not know that there is safety in numbers?"
"I am the only one of my kind. There is no other than I."
"Yes. Yes. You are the exalted one. No one is greater than Coatlicue. Not that Aztec Quetzalcoatl. Not Kukulcan. Not even Huitzilopochtli, who is your true son. All are less than fleas beneath your cruel shadow."
Coatlicue walked on, unheeding and unconcerned. It stirred Rodrigo Lujan's passions to see her walk so proud and unmoved.
Then out of the west came a trio of federal army helicopter gunships, Gatling guns and rocket rods hanging off them like barbed scorpion spines.
"Coatlicue! Behold! The chilango army has come to defeat you."
Coatlicue stopped. Her serpent heads lined up parallel to one another until both regarded the approaching gunship stonily.
No flicker of emotion showed in those basalt slits.
"Coatlicue. Listen to me," Lujan pleaded. "They will soon attack. Let us be your shields."
"Yes. Be my shields."
"Command us to be your shields."
"I command you to be my shields."
And grinning, Rodrigo Lujan turned to his retinue. Truly, it was Coatlicue's retinue. But the authority to command them had been conferred upon him.
"Come. Come form a human shield. Coatlicue needs protection from the chilango army."
And they came. The men, the women, the sunbrowned children. They formed a circle that was many people deep. Some climbed atop Coatlicue to shield her stone flesh with their soft brown skins.
"Shoot, army of chilangos!" cried out Rodrigo Lujan. "Shoot if you dare! You will never harm our stone-hearted mother."
And the lead helicopter broke off from the others to make its first clattering pass.
It was armed with side-mounted Gatling guns. The multiple-barreled tubes began spinning. Everyone could see them spin.
The hot bullets came like a hard, remorseless rain.
The screams that lifted from the throat of the army of High Priest Rodrigo Lujan were screams of liberation. Liberation from oppression, liberation from poverty and liberation from earthly toil.
The bodies dropped from Coatlicue's shoulder and head like spoiled fruit. They ran as red as pomegranates, as bloody as crushed tomatoes, their juices forming scarlet pools at the unmoved feet of Coatlicue.
All around her the indios fell. The bodies formed stepping stones for others to scramble to take their place.
"Yes, yes. Fight to protect Coatlicue, the mother of us all. Come and offer yourself. Liberation is ours! Victory is ours. Manana is ours!"
The first antitank rocket left its pod in a bloom of smoky flame. The screaming device sped toward them unerringly. Its speed was breathtaking.
Men forming a human pyramid clawed one another in their heated desire to be the first to absorb the coming blow. They slithered over one another like brown sweaty earthworms.
When the rocket struck, it exploded a vertical cone of human flesh in all directions.
The cone simply vanished, only to reform in a thudding rain of arms, legs, head and separated torsos.
"Magnifico!" cried Rodrigo Lujan. "You have done it! You have saved Coatlicue from the rocket!"
Coatlicue stood as before, her double-serpent head parted, one tracking the overflying helicopter, the other focused on the third one, which hung back, poised to let fly more blood and destruction.
"The meat machines are protecting me," she said.
"Yes. We will all die if it takes that."
"I command you all to die to preserve my survival," intoned Coatlicue in an emotionless and very masculine voice. Rodrigo Lujan loved masculine women. He turned to his followers.
"Do you hear? We are commanded to die. To die is glorious. Let us all die to preserve Our Mother," proclaimed Rodrigo Lujan, who had to jump to one side so the stampede of indios could rush up and take the place of one dead and he would have an excellent view of the slaughter.
It was better than a bullfight. In the bullring, the bull dies or the matador is gored. There is only so much blood. A spot or two. A puddle at most.
Here it was a whirlwind of blood and carnage.