Unlike the sparse images in the newspapers, Hal and his two associates were eye-witnesses to the carnage. They found themselves speechless at the blood-soaked, brutal scene.
There was nothing intricate about the drug traffickers' massacre. They descended upon the village, shooting at anything that moved, and then disposed of all the bodies in the sea.
There were no scattered corpses, no splattered blood, just an unnervingly silent village. Farming tools had been abandoned in the middle of the road. From the bloodstains, there had been a farmer, heading to work in his fields, shot dead midway.
Oliver picked up a piece of tile from the ground, his hands trembling. It was smeared with blood and there was a small finger impress on it.
His eyes welled up as he glanced back at the makeshift soccer field drawn in the sand. When the traffickers had invaded, these children had just finished drawing their soccer field, about to start playing. They hadn't even had the chance to drop the tile they had used for drawing before they were shot dead.
Arthur picked up the bloodstained soccer ball from the ground, his lips pursed tight, struggling to contain his sorrow and rage.
Hall jumped down from the eaves of a building with a somber tone. "Let's leave, the journalists are almost here, we can't be photographed."
"No, we need to look for survivors, maybe… maybe…" Oliver clenched his fists, still holding onto a slight glimmer of hope, yet eventually heeded Hal's suggestion and started moving towards the outskirts of the village.
There were no forests here, barely any places to hide. Their chances of escaping the massacre were slim and they all knew it, which is why they did not hope for much.
However, as Hal was airborne, his sight was far better than any of theirs. Suddenly, he noticed a slight movement of a poppy leaf in the field nearby. Being highly alert, he swiftly identified and stopped to investigate the suspicious activity.
Hal gently floated towards the field, landed, and walked over. As he parted a sprouted poppy leaf, a figure suddenly lunged at him with a machete.
Hal instinctively shielded himself with his Green Light Energy. Yet, the sight of the green energy covering him drove the figure into hysterics, crying and begging for mercy. Hal heard him pleading in Spanish: "Devils! Devils! Oh, God, save me, please, save us..."
Oliver and Arthur rushed over too. Oliver said excitedly, "A survivor! He must be from this village! Let's ask him what happened..."
Hal succeeded in pacifying the man, and once he withdrew his arm, Hal was able to clearly see a thin, dark-skinned old man clutching a machete used for chopping poppy stems.
Hall asked him in Spanish, "Are you from this village? Did you see who instigated this?"
Upon hearing Spanish, the old man finally seemed to calm down a bit. He nodded hesitantly, confessing, "No, I didn't see anything, I don't know…"
"We won't hurt you," Hal reassured him as he squatted down, "We are here to investigate the truth. Please tell us, who did this…"
"No, I don't know…" the old man repeated incessantly in a chocked voice, "You'll burn my fields, drive me away, drive us all away. You did it years ago…"
Hal paused for a moment, then asked again, "Who burned your fields?"
"Who else could it be?" The old man's emotions suddenly spiraled out of control, he yelled out crying, "That foolish president! And those congressmen! They bow to the Americans, they burned my crops!"
"But… don't you know what you were growing was harmful?" Hal uttered, perplexed. He looked around at the towering poppy fields and said, "These poppies can be transformed into addictive drugs, and those who sell these drugs commit massacres. Your family and friends... they may have been killed by them…"
Unexpectedly, Hal's words set off the old man's fury. He roared back, "Yes! You all say these plants are poison! Don't I know? But only these plants bring in money, they fetch the most money!"
"If I grow crops, no one would buy. Only these plants sell, I need to sell these in order to prevent myself from starving!"
"But… why?" Hal was very confused. "Isn't the Mexican government vigorously fighting against drugs? Didn't they just launch a war on drugs a few years ago?"
"What bloody war on drugs!" retaliated the old man, "They've burned my fields to clear space for these damn American corporations to build factories!"
"Somebody aimed a gun at me, forced me to grow these flowers, saying that they'll buy it. So I sowed, but then the government declared a war on drugs, thus burned them, drove me out of my land and pushed me here…"
"But these lunatics from Guadalajara said we've capitulated to the government, that we've colluded with government agents, killed their men. They wanted revenge, so they intended to kill us all…"