The Dragons of Popocatepetl

There weren't always dragons in the valley. That all changed three months ago.

"But why were there dragons in the valley of Mexico now, in 2028?" Lorien asked herself. Lorien Duran stood on the hillside looking down into the morning fog covering smoldering patches of Mexico City. Plumes of smoke wriggled their way from under the fog to snake to the sky. The air was cool on her skin. The sky was overcast; it would be raining soon. You could smell it in the air. This was her favorite time of day, the early morning hours when she could get out and smell the dew on the grass and feel the breeze on her face before going back to the confines of the bunker to continue working on finding a solution, now that there are dragons in the valley.

Lorien's dark hair and eyes came from her mother's side while her ivory complexion and determination were traits she inherited from her father. Her slender build and physical strength came from years of rock climbing. Multiple times she had been State and Regional champion and was usually in the top three climbers in all of Mexico in her category.

As Lorien stood surveying the damage in the valley of Mexico she also thought of her personal journey that had brought her to this unforeseen moment. At twenty-eight, she was the youngest of the crew of scientists that the government had assembled to combat the dragon problem. Little more than a year ago, she had received her doctorate from a respected university in Munich, and already she was one of the foremost Bionanotechnologists in Mexico. Her work on designing nanobots to devour waste plastic had gotten international recognition and landed her on this team which brought her back home to Mexico.

No, there weren't always dragons, even though many people repeated stories, old stories, about dragons from the time of the long-abandoned ruins of Teotihuacan. If those stories were true, the dragons had returned to wreak havoc on Mexico City. Or had they returned for some other reason? Lorien wasn't sure.

No one really knew what happened at Teotihuacan. It was a ruin long before the Aztecs arrived. Was it dragons that destroyed the city? If so, what happened to the dragons after that? There were too many questions. The one thing that everyone knew is that there were three large, scaly, fire-breathing dragons terrorizing Mexico City today.

The dragons had appeared after a large eruption three months ago of Popocatepetl. Popocatepetl, the volcano that locals called Popo, sits between Puebla and Mexico City. So far, their destruction had been isolated to parts of the city.

Tepito, an area of Mexico City full of all types of criminal activity was one of the first places burned to the ground. It was said you could buy anything in Tepito from a fake passport to an antiaircraft missile. Drugs and other illegal activities were commonplace in Tepito. Cleaning out Tepito wasn't all bad, reasoned Lorien.

The legislative palace of San Lazaro, the seat of the government of Mexico, located about a mile east of the Zocalo, was the next target. Some congressmen and senators were killed in the fire, and the building was leveled. This event was what instigated project Draco.

The destruction of the Bacardi distillery and warehouse was mostly a tragedy for alcoholics and the Bacardi company. The fire created by the blasts from the dragons was amplified by the alcohol that immediately combusted in flames reaching to the sky and setting off fires in all the surrounding area. People screamed and ran about with their clothes and bodies singed, but no deaths were reported from that blaze. Other areas of the city had been destroyed too. The dragons weren't totally discriminating, and there had been major collateral damage, but Lorien sensed that there was something more going on. Who knew if there was a motive to the madness?

In any case, Lorien Duran had been asked as a Bionanotechnologist to form part of Draco, the project assigned by the government to find a way to neutralize the dragon problem. For their safety and to keep the work confidential, the international team of nine scientists was housed in an underground bunker for the duration of the project.

Project Draco had every conceivable scientific device and creature comfort that the crew might need. Still, Lorien and the others liked to get out in the fresh air now and then to remember their humanity and connection to the earth.

As Lorien wondered if the dragons had a reason to be here, Armando Contreras walked up and stood next to her. Armando was a weapons delivery expert charged with figuring out how to implement whatever solution Lorien came up with to rid the valley of dragons. He was a handsome thirty-something man. With dark wavy hair and green eyes shining out of his tanned mestizo face, Lorien thought he was quite attractive even though he was also something of a joker, which tended to annoy her.

"Buenos dias Lori. How are you this morning?"

"Armando, you startled me! Don't sneak up on me like that."

"Right, I could have been a dragon, he mocked, spreading and flapping his arms like a dragon. Do you believe that they were spewed out of Popo, as some people say?"

"Popocatepetl is one of the most active volcanos in the world, and no one knows what lies at the center of the earth. I suppose it's possible.

Did you know that the Russians tried to drill a hole to the center of the earth? They drilled in the Kola peninsula in the arctic region of Russia. They drilled 7.5 miles into the earth's crust. That's deeper than the deepest part of the ocean, the Marianna trench. Later, they abandoned the project because their drills kept melting from the heat. They found plankton fossils more than 2 billion years old. Who's to say there couldn't be dragons too?"

"Wow, Lori, you never cease to amaze me with all your information. I don't need the internet, you know everything."

"Well, neither one of us knows what to do about the dragons yet. We should get back to work."

"Yeah, I guess you're right."

"I just want to take one more minute of fresh air before I go back down." As Lorien gazed across the valley she thought about something her grandfather told her which had helped her in solving problems before. He always said, "Whatever your mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve." This philosophy had helped her achieve success before in climbing and in school. Maybe she could use this to figure out what to do about the dragons.

Lorien took a deep breath as a cloud seemed to temporarily block out the sun.

"Holy shit, Lori, look!" Armando screamed as he pointed behind her.

Lori turned to see the thirty-foot wingspan of a giant dragon blocking the sun and hovering right above her.