“This probably isn’t anything new to you, is it?” Laura asked, her pallid gaze to the ground, red ends of hair dangling in front of her face.
We walked a few steps before I said, “I’ve been in similar situations before.”
“How have those usually turned out?” she glanced to me.
I sighed, “The last time I was in a position this dire was in nineteen forty-five. I had been living in China since nineteen eighteen…I was twenty-seven. A woman in that lifetime. Named Yi Qiang. We had been living under Japanese occupation in Shenyang. Some people called it Mukden back then. It was only a few months after the German surrender.” Laura looked up at the mention of her home country, but said nothing. “We hadn’t known at the time that Germany had surrendered. It didn’t matter that much to us, anyway. Or at least that’s what we thought.”
We continued on in quite for a few moments, then Laura asked, “what happened?”
“You never learned about it?” I asked.
Laura shrugged, “my dad was…when he got older and started getting crazier, he didn’t let me leave the house. I was homeschooled after primary school. I had a tutor for the last few years of my life, and he didn’t really follow any normal curriculum.”
“I see,” I said, wiping sweat from my forehead with the back of my arm, “what curriculum did he follow?”
“One my dad made,” Laura said, “he said it was to cleanse me and prepare me for my destiny. The tutor had to wash up and wear special clothes when he came into my room. He would clean everything he touched.”
I looked to Laura, eyes wide.
She grunted, “I didn’t really understand anything the tutor was talking about, and I don’t think he did, either. But my dad was paying him a shit load of money, so I don’t think he cared.” She shrugged. “He followed my dad’s curriculum no matter what I said or did.”
“I imagine someone like your father was able to get away with that,” I said.
Laura shook her head, “he was…” she paused a few moments and then said, “what happened to you in nineteen forty-five?”
I glanced over, seeing Laura in her usual gait, eyes to the ground, hair tumbling down her forehead, arms dangling listless. There was something even more horrifying imagining a life so short where everything was madness and pain. At least I had been able to find periods of relative normalcy in my many lives.
And yet…
“After Berlin fell and Germany surrendered to the allies,” I continued, “the Soviets invaded Manchuria. China. To help the Americans in the Pacific Theater.” I paused a few steps, “Well, it went about as well as the Soviet’s invasion of East Prussia. I didn’t survive.”
Laura looked to me again. I could see that she wasn’t aware of any of this history, even in her own home country. But she could understand the grim tone of my voice and didn’t push for further elaboration.
I forced a reassuring smile, “I think we’re in a better position here.”
She gave a sideways smile back, “not a position I ever would have imagined myself being in.”
We continued on for much of the afternoon, getting a better scope of the place. It was mostly empty. After talking to some of the refugees, we discovered that a lot of people had gone back south, or went east or west to try and find other places to cross. Some said it was possible to get across in California where flooding prompted abandonment of that portion of the wall. Most said there was no such luck no matter how far people went in either direction. Others said Brazil had begun setting up refugee camps down south in Chiapas, where they were setting up military installations, and that was where most people were headed.
As was expected, it was difficult to find anyone charitable with what little food was available. There apparently used to be occasional food drops from Benecorp, but that had ended about a year ago when Brazil began making noise about occupying Mexico. Some people around the shanty town seemed to hate us. Many seemed to fear us. But even the people that were polite just didn’t have much food to share.
“I’m sorry, but we don’t have much food here,” a man I’d asked explained to me, running a calloused hand over his thick beard stubble, “we try growing food, but the sun is too hot and the sand too dry,” he squinted up at the sky as the sun lowered toward the horizon.
“I don’t suppose you know anywhere that does?”
“Across the border,” the man signaled to the fortification, “I’ve heard that some people have gotten across.”
“Where might I find out about that?”
“Don’t think most people will talk about it,” the man said, “but I can maybe help you out,” he smiled.
“Why would you do that?” I asked.
“You misunderstand me” he grinned, “most of these people have bought into the propaganda, you see. The cartel. The failed Mexican government. The U.S. governments. They all want to sully your name. But there are those of us who know what you’ve done for Mexico.”
“Yeah?” I asked, glancing at Laura. Her bloodshot gaze was down at the man’s feet, unable to understand a word he said.
His grin broadened, “Not everyone in Mexico used to be an ignorant peasant,” he said, “I was a professor of international relations before joining the forty-eight movement.”
He sounded sincere, but something about the way he looked gave me a bad vibe.
Maybe spending half a decade as a refugee does that to someone…
“The cartel was the imperial branch of corporate interests,” he said, “throwing off the yoke of imperialism isn’t always neat and pretty. It wasn’t for Benito Juarez or the Zapatistas. But it’s a necessary evil.”
“You’re comparing us to Benito Juarez?”
He laughed, “Different times and different tactics. Do you still question my loyalty?”
I sighed, “Where to then?”
“Follow,” he said, turning to walk down one of the zigzag paths between the shanties.
I signaled for Laura to come with us and we followed behind him. Grim faces watched as we walked by. Tables were setup outside people’s shacks, trinkets, tools, and meager foods displayed out on them. A few people began clearing away their wares when they spotted us coming through the haphazard bazaar.
“He is bringing us to food?” Laura asked without taking her gaze from the ground.
“He says he knows someone that might be able to hook us up with a way across the border,” I said in German, “I think we’ll have better luck finding people who don’t hate or fear us there,” I said, watching a woman guide her children into the scant protection of her shack as we passed by.
“Yeah, I’m sure we’ll be greeted as liberators,” Laura said.
The man stopped in front of a rather large tent setup at the end of the bazaar and waited for us to catch up. Laura shared my wariness as we approached. The tent stood quiet as wind flapped its canvas near the ground.
“You want us to go in there?” I asked the man.
“These people don’t hate the forty-eights,” he said, a wry grin on his face, “They don’t really hate anyone if they can profit from them. But that doesn’t mean they trust everyone. I think they’ll be more willing to listen to you if they know its forty-eights they’re dealing with right up front.”
I gave Laura a look and then continued to the tent entrance, hoping the healthy fear the refugees seemed to have of us would keep us safe. It wasn’t like there was much choice anyway. If we didn’t find food – which was looking more and more hopeless – or cross the border, Masaru would die and Akira would probably be lost forever to despair. Chances needed to be taken.
Inside the tent sat eight more men and two women, forming a semicircle facing the entrance. Maps and papers lay splayed out on a rock in the center of the room. A couple people wore old AR glasses.
“Who the hell are you?” someone asked, scrambling to his feet.
“These are forty-eights children,” our guide said as he came in behind us.
“For
ty-eights?” the other man asked.
“What did you bring them here for?” another asked.
“We’re looking for a way across the border,” I said, seeing a small amount of surprise in their expressions at my fluent Spanish.
One of the other men chuckled, “you and everyone else.”
“Your guy here said you might be able to hook something up,” I said.
“You have tech?” the man who had stood up asked.
“No.”
“Money? Food?”
“No.”
“Then you’re useless to us,” he said, sitting back down, “get the fuck out of our camp.”
“We know people who do have tech,” I said, “and money. We have a lot of money that we took from the cartel.”
“Blood money,” one of the women said, spitting toward my feet, “the CSA already think we’re all gangsters and terrorists. Why would we want to willingly interact with you and prove them right?”
“What about gene doping?” I asked.
Everyone was silent for a moment before our guide said, “You’re offering to make us more forty-eights so that we’ll help you?”
“Here’s what I want,” I started, “I want to help. I want to make up for what happened here. This chromosome treatment…it’s the only gene doping that doesn’t have a high risk of sterilization or other unforeseen side effects. It’ll help you cope with the changing climate. It’ll give you a biological leg-up on even the CSA, who’ve outlawed it. Helping us across the border will get you this as well as getting a few terrorists out of your hair.”
“Your ‘help’ has already cost us so much,” the woman said, “now you offer us promises? In exchange something that so many have died or been captured trying to do?”
“We’re refugees, just like you,” I said, “from the forty-eights that have caused you all this grief. The longer we’re away from them, the more likely they’re going to come looking for us.”
“If you’ve run from them, then how can you get their money and tech?”
“The woman who ran with us is the one who was in charge of the entire network,” I said, “but the longer we wait, the more likely our former comrades will take it away from us.”
“Her?” the man said, signaling to Laura, “She looks like she’s about to die.”
“No,” I said, “a Japanese woman who came with us to the camp.”
My interlocutors exchanged nervous glances at the mention of a Japanese woman.
“Not the leader,” I said, “not Sachi. A different Japanese woman.”
The man sighed and stood up again, giving Laura and me another long look before saying, “go back to her. We’ll talk about this amongst ourselves and see if we can come up something. It may be a week or so before we contact you again.”
“Thank you,” I said, turning to walk out.
Laura continued standing there for a moment. I gave her a tap on the arm and she came plodding along after me. Our guide came out of the tent with us, flashing another grin.
“So, how did that go?” I asked.
The gin faded. “Not so well, I think. They don’t trust you will deliver on any of your promises. Your best hope is that their desire to get you out of here will win them over. If you stick around long enough, that might convince them,” the grin came back over his face as he said this.
“Well, thanks anyway,” I said, looking back to Laura, giving her a nod.
Our guide did not follow us as we started back through the bazaar. Laura yawned, then put her gaze back to the dusty, packed earth. People peddling their meager wares weren’t as quick to retreat as before.
They watched us go into that tent, so they probably don’t think we’re here to screw them over.
“I take it things didn’t go so well,” Laura finally said.
“Not really,” I said, “he told me to wait around and hope for them to get sick of us being here. Maybe then they will find a way to get us across the border.”
“What should we do then?”
“Honestly? Probably pick a direction and just walk that way. Maybe see if some opportunity comes up.”
“Masaru probably won’t survive that, either.”
“The only other option would be getting back in touch with Sachi,” I said, “but even if we wanted to do that, we don’t have any tech.”
“Dying isn’t so bad,” Laura replied, “but I guess I don’t have to tell you that.”
“Dying can be bad,” I said, “but you would be the expert on what being dead is like.”
Laura began laughing, surprising me.
“What’s so funny?”
After a moment she said, “We make quite a couple. A black boy who is reincarnated when he dies, a white girl who was resurrected and is incapable of sleeping. Both of which have forty-eight chromosomes with a bunch of genetic engineering. And here we are, looking for a way to get a bionic transsexual who gave birth to an impossible baby and her dying boyfriend across a goddamn siege defense into a country that thinks we’re terrorists.”
I started laughing too. The idea that this could have ever been a situation was absurd to even someone who had been witness to all of humankind’s insane past. Yet more absurd was that this might not be the strangest thing I’d ever see. The path of human progress made much more outlandish situations a possibility.
Both of us continued down the path, turning once we exited the bazaar. The sun was beginning to set in the horizon, darkening sky already leaching warmth from the dry, dusty air. The low murmurs of our fellow refugees grew quiet in concert with the dying light. UAVs overhead could still faintly be heard over the distant howling of coyotes. The wind was falling to a-
Something grabbed my hand.
Shit…split brain?
Looking down, I saw Laura wrap her hand around mine. Our fingers linked as we continued back toward the shanty. Even in our desperation, I couldn’t help but smile.
Chapter 2
I wrapped the last of a roll of tape around my torso. Dull pain sprang in fresh waves from the shrapnel wound on my back for a moment as I held my breath. Finally, after several minutes, it died back down.
My wound seemed to be healing, only a small spot of blood on the tape I had taken off. The pain still felt deep.
Pieces of the shrapnel are probably still there, embedded in my body.
I exhaled, leaning back against the splintering wall of the shanty, looking out into the bright night, illuminated by lights from the border wall. Several fires crackled in the distance as cold settled in. Our neighbors had received a windfall by killing an injured coyote for food. The smell of their cooked meat made my stomach growl.
Akira had finally succumbed to her fatigue and fallen asleep, Yukiko swaddled and laying on the dirt floor right next to her. The exhausted mother tossed and turned, jacket cover slipping away to reveal colorful tattoos in the dim light. The flower petals and waves of water that usually looked so colorful appeared grey and forlorn in the cold desert night. Her hair, the only pillow she had, looked like a greasy rat’s nest that seemed to project the chaos of her nightmares above her head.
Masaru slipped in and out of consciousness, mumbling from time to time. He had one of the only two blankets we’d gotten back at the clinic, the other on Yukiko. His shivering had lessened, but his forehead still shined with sweat.
Laura sat near the corner, leaning her back against the wall, head nodding forward as if she were just about to fall asleep when something startled her awake. I let myself slide down onto the ground, rolling onto my side on the packed dirt, Masaru between Akira and me. I lay for a while, unable to fall asleep.
“How much longer do you think he has?” Laura asked quietly after some time, looking to Masaru. Her bony face was a silhouette in the light shining through the opening, a tattered jacket wrapped around her small frame.
I glanced at Akira a moment before turning my head to look at Laura, “I don’t know. Hopefully he doesn’t suffer too long.”
“There is a way we could make it,” I said, hesitating a moment to look back at Akira as she slept with worry plastered to her face. “We could turn ourselves in. They see us as terrorists and would probably imprison us,” I gave a shrug, “might be better than dying like this.”
“They’ll torture us, I think,” Laura said, “They’ll want us to help them get the others.”
“Probably.”
“You could probably just kill yourself,” Laura said, looking down at the ground near her feet.
She’s still afraid of me leaving her.
“I’m just spit balling,” I said, “nothing-.”
A pained cry startled both of us. I looked to Yukiko, seeing her eyes wide open, just as surprised as me. Masaru still lay on the hard ground, eyes closed, sweating, yet probably in the deepest sleep he’d been in all night. Then I noticed movement.
Akira was writhing in pain.
I crawled over to her. “What’s wrong?”
She let out another pained cry. I quickly grabbed Yukiko away, handing the blanketed infant back to Laura, then leaned in closer to Akira. Her breaths were coming in shallow gasps. She must have been ignoring an injury from the attack or something. I couldn’t see anything wrong with her, but her eyes stared back into mine, wet with tears.
“What happened?” I asked, holding a hand over her shoulder, unsure of whether to touch her or not, “Where are you-”
“Look,” Laura said, a hint of surprise in her usually deadpan voice.
She was pointing towards Akira’s legs. I crawled closer, looking down, seeing blood covering the sand. I reached over and lifted the twisted-up jacket. Darkness spread down the inside of Akira’s legs, black in the ghostly light from the wall.
“Was she hit with shrapnel?” Laura asked.
“No,” I said, “I think she’s having a miscarriage.”
Yukiko was starting to whimper in Laura’s arms, seeming to empathize with her mom’s pain. I crawled back over to Akira, putting a hand on the side of her face. Her skin was hot to the touch, damp with sweat, eyes searching about the rotted shanty for salvation. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t give that to her.
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