"Police" for /x/

Police.

They are there to protect and serve.

Some are good, some are bad, but in the end, you know you can trust the police.

Some time ago, I used to think so, after all I lived my whole life in a small town, where everyone knew each other, like a big extended family. Then I had to move over sea.

Working for a mining company digging up gold from the middle of Guyana was not really my first option, but I had ran out of those, so I took it.

I arrived in a late flight and the airport was almost empty, not much worth recalling. A man from the company came pick me up in a off road truck, a old one, not the kind you would hop in happily.

He was quite happy having someone to chat, we were both from the same country, shared the same idiom, and we spoke almost the entire travel, that took hours.

When we were reaching a small village, neighbor to the mine, he went silent, he looked scared.

-“look, this is the closest town to our mine site. But this is not a good place. You can go anywhere you want to when you are not working, but never come to this place.”

I tried to laugh it off, sure he was pulling my leg, the new guy and all, but he kept serious and silent till we left the village.

After that, I started working, and soon I discovery that the rule among all employees, local or not, was to not go to the village, and don’t talk about it, never.

As time went by, I kinda forgot it. When people went to have fun, we all took a van and went to a small city a couple miles further down the road, we had our fun, drink, and returned the next morning.

One day, a new guy came along. Big, built like a bull, and some of a trouble maker:

He was the type of guy who was not only stubborn, no, he had this NEED to challenge people.

And if you told him not to do something… he would do it for sure, just to upset you.

At the end of his first month, he got himself free time, and as anyone could expect, but not quite believe, he decided to go visit the “forbidden village”. That really caused lots of confusion, honestly I did not understand why suddenly EVERYONE went ballistic over it.

In the end, no one explained why he wasn’t supposed to go there, and he, stubborn as ever, decided to go anyway, when the manager came along and told him that if he did that, he was fired immediately, and they would drag his arse back to the airport PRONTO.

The guy got pale, then bright red. You could see he was mad, but also he wanted to keep his job, and in the end he yield.

That night, we all went to take some drinks on the “safe town”, most of the guys just to keep an eye on the stubborn fool.

As the night went by, we all got drinks and girls, and we relaxed, forgetting the simplest fact about that guy: He lived for the only purpose of challenging people.

Some time around what we all imagined to be two on the morning, he disappeared with our ride.

I got pissed and joked about “killing the guy” next morning, when I noticed the other guys were pale and silent.

It was unnerving, and fueled by the booze, I pinned one of them down and asked him why was so fucking important not to go to that village.

-“is the people who live there dangerous or something? Like gangs, drug lords?”

-“no. the people is… fine. The police there… they are… dangerous.”

And they said anything else.

Two days went and no one heard about the new guy….Worst, no one asked.

Once they knew he took the van and disappeared, they just said they hoped he ran to anywhere but that village, and pretend he never existed.

I worked there for a couple months more, then I found something better back home and returned to my old town.

In the way back to the airport, I beg for answers. And the driver told me to keep quiet, eyes peeled, that we would pass in front of the police station, and I would finally get my answers.

Not sure of what to look for, I turn to the police station:

There I saw our van, the one that the guy took that night, months ago.

The whole the driver’s side was completely full of bullet holes.

The unusual thing is that the van wasn’t toed to where it was. It was parked there.