• Chapter 2
    Option 3






    I sat in my chair and looked at my computer screen blankly. I was thinking about this morning. It was all just so weird; I couldn’t get it off my mind. Next to me, my friend Richard was playing on a game-making program. I’m pretty sure he was supposed to be doing some vocabulary, but then again, so was I.
    “What are you thinking about?” Richard asked me. It’s easy to tell when I have something on my mind, I kind of phase out.
    “Nothing important,” I lied. I didn’t want him to know about my odd experience this morning. Not yet, anyway. Besides, he’d probably think I was crazy. Richard shrugged and went back to his game. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t help but think about Camazots. Then, I got an idea. There was a program on my computer that I could use to solve any problem. I like to call it the Internet.
    I looked around to make sure that that Mr. Snider, my intro to computers teacher, wasn’t looking. I then clicked on the blue “E” that connected me to the Internet and went to Google. Once there I typed in the word Camazots. I looked at the links and went through about two pages when I saw something that caught my eye. The link was called Mayan Mythology. The description is what I really noticed.
    “Camazots, a giant bat-like demon, is said to be much larger than a man…” it said. I clicked on the link and started to read. It said that Camazots was a giant bat demon that lived in the underworld known as Xibalba. Is that a weird name, or what? When the Mayan people refused to sacrifice humans to the gods, they unleashed the demon on them. He destroyed the entire human race and the gods created new humans. Ominous, isn’t it? Camazots is said to control an army of lesser demons, human-sized bat demons. Remind you of anything? According to legend, Camazots could only come out at night, for when he was exposed to sunlight, he would turn to stone until the sun set.
    “If I’m not mistaken, Camazots is not on our vocabulary list,” said someone behind me. I turned around and saw Mr. Snider standing behind me.
    “Uh, sorry. I was just doing some research for a project,” I lied. If I wasn’t going to tell my friend about this, I sure as heck wasn’t going to tell my teacher.
    “Well, you should do what was assigned,” he said sternly.
    “Okay,” I said and opened my word processor. I pulled a textbook off my tower and opened it up. A textbook in a computer class. Am I the only one who sees anything wrong with this picture? I typed a little and kept my eye on Mr. Snider. When he went back into his office, I opened the Internet back up.
    After the gods made new humans, Camazots didn’t want to go back to the underworld. They forced him back into Xibalba, but he didn’t stop trying to get out. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that he got out. I looked up at the clock and saw the time, 3:20, almost time to go. I closed the Internet and word processor and turned off my computer. When the bell rang, I picked up my backpack and left the classroom. I walked down two flights of stairs and out the back door to get to the bike rack. I saw Rob leaning on his bike by the rack.
    “What’s up?” Rob asked as I unhooked my bike.
    “I did a little bit of research on our friend, Camazots,” I replied.
    “So what did you find?” Rob asked me. I couldn’t tell but I think he was just humoring me. I told him all the stuff that I learned on the Internet as we rode toward our houses. We’re next-door neighbors. When I finished telling him what I found on the Internet, he was silent for a minute.
    “What do think this means?” he asked me. I could tell he was starting to get freaked out. Join the club, dude.
    “The way I see it, there are three options,” I replied.
    “What are they?” he asked me as we approached our block.
    “One: our friends are playing some elaborate trick on us. Two: they have completely lost their mind. Then there’s option three,” I told him.
    “What is option three?!” he asked in an aggravated tone. I guess I was stretching out the conservation again.
    I looked at him before I turned into my driveway and said, “The third and most unlikely option is that there really is an army of giant bats somewhere out there trying to destroy the human race.”