This is a perverse resurrection, not George Romero's Dawn of the Dead, these are cursed people, not shuffling corpses, but damnation incarnate.

It's a much more sophisticated story than that, but just to give you a broad picture of what you're getting yourself in to, there it is.

With Santa Anna being an immortal, one who has assumed many names over time, with vanity somewhat like Dorian Gray, his painting drawn daily because he casts no reflection (he's never called a vampire, but he is kept more vital than the other cursed by drinking the water of life, blood. An atonement that never satisfies fully and has to constantly be quenched). In fact when he has not had sufficient blood his hideous true reflection is cast, and like Dorian his image wilts.

A NUANCED TALE

There are vampire and zombie attributes to the enemy but they truthfully aren't either, they are a new mythology, one based on Adam's curse and the desire to be gods ourselves and the horror of those left in unredeemed status had God mercifully not thrown Adam and Eve out of Eden but instead allowed them to continue to taste the forbidden; which basically these poor unwitting cursed soldiers do. Glowing and dripping the elixir that made them.

It is implied Santa Anna was perhaps even Cain, history's first murderer and he had first revisited his father's curse upon himself in double dose by sneakily partaking of the tree again, thus making him immortal at this terrible price. He took to hoarding fruit from it that would have haunting implications later when it bore a replicate tree outside the boundary of Eden, and he continued to use it for his own wicked purposes.

It is suggested that he hung out in France during the French Revolution and was enthralled with the the self serving spirit of the age and the absolute blood shed of it. Equally smitten with Napoleon, who he mimicked as the the West's finest general. Historically there was a man named the Count St. Germain in the era that claimed he held the secret of immortality and an elixir of everlasting life, so odd and wonderful were his stories and knowledge that many began to believe he truly was living in the annals of history he could describe with first person account. I make him Santa Anna's identity in France as it fits so splendidly into the tale.

He returns to Mexico to avenge the overthrow of his Aztec empire by the West and their Christianity with the tactics of the greatest conqueror of the century, he himself now the ambitious Conquistador. Historically Santa Anna did dub himself the "Napoleon of the West" and the Mexican army was adorned in surplus Napoleonic uniforms and weaponry, which lends a fun flourish to the tale.

Making this particular exposition even more intriguing is that it isn't contrived to tell it as in reality one of the Alamo defenders was a man named Moses Rose, who had been a conscript in the true Napoleon's army. Stranger than fiction this real life man survived the invasion of Russia in winter, and survived Waterloo only to end up at the Alamo later in life. He provides a natural character to explain how he sees Napoleon in Santa Anna's methods.

One of my favorite scenes I've written has a meeting between Santa Anna and Colonel Travis at the gates of the Alamo one dark night on the eve before the final siege, it is there where we learn of some hinted satanic qualities to him as well as a good gauge of his ancient existence. He taunts Travis in their exchange, mocking his broken life, seeking to rile and shake him with such strange intimate knowledge, and scoffs at Travis' defiance of him with the following words as he points up to the sky: 

But he goes still further and turns his back to Travis, himself now stargazing "You are not the first adversary to announce himself under a star." ( An implication most will understand as alluding to Christ)

When addressing a frightened child (there were children at the Alamo) about whether or not he fears death Travis replies in somber honesty that he does, but not without great hope, because you can't have any courage or certainty to utter the words "Victory or Death" unless you believe that there has already been victory over death. It's a flourish with a theological twinge but not an esoteric one that alienates a pluralisitc audience, I get away with hinting faint theological themes because they lend credence to the mythology of the story and the people within this last stand, and frankly they keep things interesting.

The story of course ends with the Alamo being overwhelmed, but not before an Indiana Jones style thrill ride where we exposit the before things and have adventure watching the Alamo defended against an onslaught of the cursed on the battlefield and beneath the catacombs of San Antonio.

And so our tale fades to black, the audience entertained...and maybe even a little edified.

WHERE YOU CAN HELP

If this story floats your fancy please pass it on and let's make it a produced reality as a graphic novel...one that perhaps one day may even be a motion picture.

Cheers,

Travis Speegle

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