Masaru sat barely conscious in the passenger seat, his entire body shivering, even in the heat. Blood-stained sweat drenched the t-shirt matted to his pale skin. Decay’s sour aroma, mixed with disinfectant, lingered in the car. Akira ran a hand over Masaru’s damp hair, whispering hollow comforts to him. She had done what she could do to make him comfortable, but that wasn’t much.
“They’re scared,” I told Laura in German, “people cling to what they know when they’re scared.”
There wasn’t much power left in the car, but it didn’t make any difference. Our path into the US was stopped cold by the border wall.
Akira took her hand away from Masaru’s fevered forehead, letting his lengthening hair fall back into place, and unlocked the doors. She didn’t bother to remove the keys as she got out, quickly putting a thin jacket back on despite the heat in order to cover her mosaic of tattoos. It wasn’t a good idea to give anyone notions of misplaced allegiance or a means of distinguishing you. I followed suit, bringing Yukiko out, the child half asleep with exhaustion. Akira was already waiting for me to hand her daughter back, and I immediately obliged. Laura limped slowly out on her side, opening Masaru’s door. He didn’t stir.
Laura and I lifted Masaru from the seat, attempting to get him out. It took a considerable effort to bring him to some semblance of attention. Both of us grimaced in our own pain as we led him downhill toward the refugee camp.
Escaping Saltillo hadn’t been too difficult. The UAV that had accompanied Jiang Wei didn’t seem to follow us after we’d left the city. During the long drive north, we passed numerous columns of refugees willing to try their luck at the border. Most of them paid little attention to us, but at one point a group of them began throwing rocks at our car, prompting Akira to accelerate around them.
When we stopped on the way north to get supplies for dressing our wounds, we’d learned that Sachi’s campaign had an impact I hadn’t been fully aware of. As we entered the town, we immediately found building walls tagged with graffiti, some voicing support for the dying cartel government, some voicing support for the forty-eights, others decrying both as murderous thugs no different from one another. There was one building wall that had a large, intricately colored mural of what looked like Sachi with her foot on the neck of a cartel leader, gun in hand, clothes the colorful garb of native Mexicans. This celebration of Sachi’s liberation had been desecrated by a crude red X plastered over her face with curses and accusations of butchery spray-painted around it.
We had passed by a church where a crowd of people gathered, pictures of children and loved ones lining its walls with flowers and alters setup before them. An elderly woman was wailing as she knelt in front of the church, looking up at the wallpaper of the missing and deceased.
As we moved further into the small city, we came upon tents and shanties pitched on dry desert lawns, cracked sidewalks and parking lots. Refugees who had decided to stop short of the border or doubled back when they found it blocked off occupied the pitiful encampments. More alters and pictures of missing people lined each side of the street, flowers in various states of decay around them.
Akira had driven us down the main avenue, constantly tapping the brakes as groups of people ambled across the road, looking lost. They had come from all over the Mexico and South America, fleeing the expanding violence and lawlessness, only to find themselves trapped.
Heads had turned towards our car, eyes glazed and distant, shoulders slumped. We passed by a woman lying on the side of the road, not moving, a teenage boy kneeling down next to her. I watched as he grabbed her arm, the skin blackened with necrosis, and pulled something off of her – a syringe – and stuck it into his own arm.
“We’re going to get through this,” Akira had murmured from the driver’s seat, glancing at Masaru as she ran a hand through her greasy hair. “You and me and Yukiko. Everything’s going to be okay. We just need to find a hospital…”
Laura and I had rubbernecked as we passed by three cop cars, lights flashing, surrounding an SUV riddled with bullet holes. People didn’t pay attention to it. Just typical scenery in a city where cops were nothing more than another local gang in a lawless city.
Akira drove cautiously, periodically reaching over to Masaru to feel his forehead, muttering assurances under her breath.
“There!” she whispered after finally spotting a clinic. A long line stretched all the way to the sidewalk outside the building.
“We’re going to be very conspicuous,” I said as Laura and I went to get Masaru out of the passenger seat.
A mild stench of rot surrounded him. He breathed unintelligible mumbles as we lifted his trembling body from the car.
“I don’t suppose they’re going to throw a parade for our arrival,” Laura said.
Akira went to the back of line, holding Yukiko and watching Laura and me struggle to bring him over. Most people in line seemed to have ailments that came from exposure and lack of provisions – dehydration, malnutrition, twisted ankles, broken fingers, dysentery. Others displayed telltale signs of Shift use or withdrawal – putrid flesh over their arms, tremors, frantic gazes, and incoherent babbling. We didn’t dare try taking priority over anyone. We wanted to stay as discreet as possible. Some of the people-
“You monsters!” someone shouted as we laid Masaru on the ground near the back of the line, “where is my son!”
Akira, Laura and I looked to a middle-aged couple a few places in front of us in line. I was the only one of us that could understand.
“We don’t know anything about-”
“He joined your gang,” she hissed, walking away from her husband to confront us, “and now he’s been missing for six months! What have you done with him? What have you done with my Fernando?”
“I…I-”
“Your gang is just as bad as the cartel!” she shouted, pointing a finger at my chest, “so many of our sons and daughters are missing because of your stupid gang war! Go back where you came from!” she spat on the ground near my feet and turned away to get back in line.
But it didn’t stop there. More people stepped out of line to come back near us, some holding up pictures of their loved ones into our faces, shouting at us.
“My daughter was blown up at the market!”
“My wife and baby have been missing for over a year…”
“…the cartel dissolved him in acid…”
“My husband was caught in the crossfire!”
“They can’t find my Riccardo…”
“…burned alive…”
“…addicted to Shift…”
“My daughter is in the hospital with permanent brain damage from the blast!”
Akira and Laura couldn’t understand their words, but I could see that they understood perfectly well what the people meant. The demonstration ended with a crowd pushing us forward toward the clinic, letting us in first. They didn’t want us sticking around.
Even as we moved Masaru into the door, I looked back out. Not everyone was in agreement on this. People in the crowd shouted at each other, pointing fingers. Someone was heard shouting viva los cuarenta y ochos! Some called for us to get driven out of the city. Others yelled for us to spare them.
And then, through the chaos, we found ourselves inside the building. The staff had been just as anxious to get us out as the crowd had been.
“I’m surprised you would show your faces around here,” the clinic nurse said as she reluctantly attended to Masaru, examining his mangled leg.
“I’m not sure what’s happened in-”
“You forty-eights,” she cut me off, “come here from China to take over the drug market, people say. I would have thought that meant all of you were Chinese, but rumor isn’t always trustworthy, is it?”
I looked to Akira, watching her cradle Yukiko while the nurse bandaged Masaru’s wounds, his leg having been twisted and broken in several places.
“Actually, they’re Japanese,” I said, “and we didn’t come here to start a drug market. We came to
stop it.”
“Well, you did a shitty job of getting the cartel out of here,” the nurse said, “It’s been seven years since they started killing us.”
I said nothing, watching her work.
She paused, turning her head to look at me. “You don’t even know what happened, do you?” She shook her head. “For three years the cartel would kill one person every week. They sent the videos to the other Chinese- er, Japanese woman.” She glanced at Akira. “A different one, I suppose. Sachi…” She exhaled. “They said they’d continue killing one person every week until you people left. The woman never even replied.”
“What happened after those three years?”
The nurse looked back to Masaru’s leg. “The hostage killings eventually slowed down,” the nurse said as she wrapped gauze around Masaru’s leg. He let out a low, pained moan when she lifted his leg.
“How?” I asked, already guessing the answer.
Sachi funded an insurgency here.
…and Akira probably knew about it.
The nurse sighed, “A resistance started up. They claim to be pro-forty-eight, but I’d guess most are just anti-cartel. Hell, the young ones don’t even remember what the cartel government was really like. They’re just angry kids who lost loved ones that wanted to vent their anger.”
She paused for a moment, taking a long breath, and then continued. “Either way, they would have gone along with anyone willing to supply them with weapons. The forty-eights simply got to them first. And so, they started walking the streets at night with the guns you people gave them, busting into people’s homes. Taking whatever they wanted. Questioning people…torturing people. They burned down buildings they thought were cartel hideouts, no matter who was in them. They shot people in the streets if they thought they might be cartel sympathizers. And then Shift started showing up…”
“I won’t make any excuses,” I said, “and nothing I say can change what happened. But we aren’t really working with her anymore, and I hope to-”
“I don’t want to hear it,” the nurse broke in, “I’m not helping out of the goodness of my heart. I don’t even want your dirty money. I want to get you out of here – to get you out of Mexico – as fast as possible, before the Brazilians show up and think we’re all working for you.”
As we drew nearer to the refugee camp, it’s sickening odor wafted up the hill like a silent warning. Smoke from cooking fires gave the sky a gray-brown haze and added a thickness to punctuate the smell of decaying garbage and stagnant human feces. Flies swarmed us, especially around Masaru’s bandaged leg.
The look of the wind torn tents and makeshift shanties were next to become salient. There were even more than in the town we passed through. Yet somehow they looked more sophisticated, likely out of necessity. Their walls of wood and corrugated steel stood straighter, aligning better with the neighbors. They made a sloppy grid over packed earth, but the pathways were more defined than in the city. A no-mans-land lay between the sprawling shantytown and fortified wall, dotted with what might be corpses of coyotes or humans. It was difficult to tell from our distance.
The sound came next. Over the incessant buzzing of flies, I could hear low, muffled voices, the unmistakable cries of infants and dogs barking. This was beset with the quiet sound of UAVs periodically passing low over the wall and what was likely vehicles on the other side. The Americans viewed this as a siege.
Our haggard party limped down the hill, Yukiko the only one who seemed to be able to find some peace. Akira whispered quiet assurances to the child. The thin jacket covering Akira’s tattooed arms left her with a sheen of sweat glistening over a permanent look of unease. She seemed to be lost in her own world, worry divided between Yukiko, Masaru, herself, and everyone else.
Probably in that order.
Masaru was dragging behind Laura and me, his feet only weakly putting themselves one in front of the other. The bandaging he had received was still barely more than triage care, although still a few steps ahead of what we cobbled together in our escape. His stench was cut down somewhat by the antibiotics used to treat his wounds and he seemed to be in less pain. But everyone knew he wouldn’t survive much longer exposed to the elements.
Laura’s usual exhaustion was deepened. Dark circles around her eyes were as pronounced as bruises. Lengthening hair displayed blonde roots, matted to her forehead and hanging in front of bloodshot eyes. Cuts, scrapes, bruises, and burns adorned her pinched frame like macabre medals. Her gaunt face appeared sharpened by the bones lying beneath sallow skin. Yet she soldiered on with astonishing fortitude, carrying her share of Masaru’s weight.
My own pain wasn’t as bad as I would have thought. The most noticeable was the pain in my lower back where shrapnel had penetrated.
At least my brain is still unified…for now.
But there was no time to complain. As soon as people saw us – two Japanese people, an African boy and a white girl – looks of aversion became readily apparent. None of us wondered why.
We didn’t bother with greeting anyone or asking for help. Every one of us knew how that would turn out. Trying to arouse pity would only make people hate us more and want to work against us.
Sachi’s staunchly utilitarian strategy and violent tactics had been a disaster for the people of Mexico. But in her mind, it didn’t matter how brutal she was, because she saw herself as right. In her mind, killing just the right people would have some chaos theory effect. That exposing the people leading them toward destruction would rally them around the correct ‘great people’ of history – namely herself. Once enough of the wrong ‘great people’ were taken out – by exposing them, delegitimizing them, or assassinating them – the majority would rally around her own cause.
I knew this wasn’t correct. It had to be a ground up movement, not top down. People have to want to live in peace and achieve it themselves. Liberation cannot be given. It had to be voluntary. And there was only one way of making people care about the future.
If they have the choice to live in that future…
“Where are we going to go?” Laura asked, readjusting Masaru’s weight on her thin shoulders.
“Most of these shanties look abandoned,” I said, “it’d be nice if we could at least get out of the elements a bit.”
Akira looked about with a dumbfounded look on her face. She held her daughter tightly as if trying to hold onto sanity. The traumatized mother was in no condition to lead anyone. And so I shifted our direction toward an abandoned shack, the outside covered in etched graffiti. A lot of the etchings had curses for the American border guards, remembrances for lost loved ones, directions for how to find previous inhabitants, petitions to Jesus and various saints for salvation and protection, warnings about the incoming Brazilians, and of course competing pejoratives for the cartel or the forty-eights.
“How are we going to get across?” Laura asked as we both lowered Masaru to the ground inside the shack, “doesn’t look like people are having much success.”
“There’s always pores in any defense this large,” I said, “I imagine someone has figured out a way. The issue is that we only have promises of money, nothing upfront.”
Akira sat down next to Masaru, holding Yukiko tight, and reached a hand to his head, stroking it gently and murmuring that everything was going to be okay. I moved myself closer to her, keeping my eyes on Masaru.
“How’s he holding up?” I asked her in Japanese.
She turned her head slowly to me, a look similar to my own in her eyes. She’s been through a lot. Having loved ones raises the stakes.
“He…he needs food,” Akira said in a slow, quiet voice, “he’ll heal up much quicker if he has some food. And I…and I…”
“We’ll see what we can find,” I said, signaling to Laura, “You stay here and maybe try to rest a little.”
“Is this what it’s like?” Akira asked as I started climbing to my feet.
“What what’s like?”
“Your past live
s,” she said, looking back down to Masaru, “when you tell me about all the people you loved…about how you had to see them die…all the pain you’ve been through in the past…it was hard for me to really understand what it must have been like,” she looked back up to me, “Was it like this?”
“We’ll be fine,” I gave her a reassuring smile, “I’ve been through much worse than this before. We’ll get through it.”
My assurances actually seemed to make her sadder. “I shouldn’t be complaining then,” she said, “so many people have it so much worse.”
“Let’s not worry about who had it worse right now,” I said, trying to maintain my smile, “we can compare notes once we get Masaru healed up and get across this border.” I turned to Laura and said in German, “Let’s go see if we can find anyone willing to give us some food.”
Probably a fruitless quest, but it’s better than sitting here and watching him die.
Laura limped along beside me over the hard, scorched desert ground. Her lean face winced every once in a while, from some pain she kept stoically quiet about. The shrapnel wound in my back throbbed with a deep ache, but was thankfully not infected.
Yet.
The paths between the crude shelters were well-worn with foot traffic. Broken glass, crushed cans, tattered clothes, wood splinters, rusty nails, and the feces of multiple species littered walkways. Rats and cockroaches occasionally scurried under cover as we approached.
We passed through a clearing where shrines and pictures had been set up. Most were old and weathered, people long since having given up hope. Several makeshift shrine stands appeared to have been scavenged for parts.
A hundred feet north into no-man’s land were a series of two-foot-deep trenches dug for use as latrines.
Clever. The border guards get a nice mooning every time someone has to go take a shit.
As we wound through crooked pathways, I started noticing that there were a lot more men in the refugee camp than I’d seen women or children, most of them milling aimlessly about. I didn’t put much thought into it, though.
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