She should just keep on walking down to the local diner for a hearty breakfast. Or she should just call a cab back to her apartment so she could finish sleeping off last night. But the trailer was just sitting there, and she had already stolen the keys. She would never have a better shot at getting answers than right now.
“I better not regret this,” she muttered to herself. She approached the towering vehicle and climbed onto the rear bumper. The trailer had two door panels, each with two steel locking bars running vertically along the length of the panel. Each bar had a handle bent at 90-degrees, and each handle was affixed to its respective door by a hefty padlock. The middle two locking bars were connected by a formidable hunk of steel, like a bike lock on steroids. Four padlocks and a cargo lock—someone really wanted to keep anyone from looking inside this trailer.
After a great deal of fumbling with the various keys and locks, Demi managed to unlock the left door panel. She pulled one of the locking bar handles until it was parallel with the bar, and she did the same for the second.
The hatch swung open, and Demi gasped. Twenty or more young women were crammed into the trailer. They looked to be in their teens or early twenties and wore nothing but filthy rags. Most of them were sleeping soundly, but a few stared groggily up at her. Demi reached for her phone, but something hit her from behind, and the world went black.
***
Demi woke with a shudder. She was lying on her back in a puddle of sweat. She gasped and sat up, head spinning. It was pitch-black and sweltering, and the air stank of sweat. Every move put her in contact with various body parts, but the owners remained still, ignoring her while she scrambled to orient herself. The room around her rattled violently. She was no doubt in the trailer and on the move.
Her hands shot to her jeans to find her phone, and she realized she was no longer wearing pants. The clothes she’d been wearing had been replaced by a rough burlap poncho that fit loosely over her body and smelled so horrible that every breath left her gagging. The only articles of clothing she still retained were her shoes.
“Help me,” she groaned, reaching for the closest hand she could find in the dark. Its owner stiffened and said nothing. “Help,” she repeated in the broken Spanglish that was all she could muster of her mother’s native tongue. “Por favor.” Still no response. She reached for the next available hand, and the next, begging them to answer her.
“Somebody!” she shouted, standing on shaky legs. She could begin to make out the outlines of other women sitting silently in the dark, but the only thing she could see with any clarity were the colorful spots flashing across her vision.
“Sit down,” a woman said, grabbing Demi by the wrist. Demi resisted, but the woman was strong, far stronger than she would have expected, iron fingers digging into her flesh. Demi allowed herself to be pulled down into a fetal crouch. “Stay calm,” the woman said. “Don’t get yourself killed.” Her English was clear and unaccented. She sounded young, perhaps about Demi’s age, with just a touch of smokiness to her voice.
“What the hell is this?” Demi demanded, panting heavily.
“A slave caravan,” another girl said from Demi’s opposite side. Her voice was higher pitched and accented, and Demi imagined her to be younger than the smokey voice. “How else do you think Daga Blanca moves slaves into America?”
“You’re wrong,” Demi said. “There’s no White Dagger. And slaves? Get out of here.”
“Sure,” the accented girl said. “Keep telling yourself that.”
“Caravans like this cross the border every single day,” the smokey-voiced woman said. “Daga Blanca is more powerful than you can possibly imagine. And yes, they sell woman as slaves. Men too, but not in this shipment. The Americans don’t even try to stop them, not really.” She spoke of Americans like they were foreign to her, but she certainly sounded American herself.
“I’m… I’m a soldier,” Demi said. “I’ll stop them.”
“No,” the accented girl said. “You’re a puta, just like the rest of us, and you belong to Daga Blanca. The sooner you accept that, the better.”
“Don’t worry,” the smokey-voiced woman said. “You were working for them anyway. California’s been in Daga Blanca’s pocket for years. Don Hernandez kept the governor on the payroll, and nothing’s changed even now that El Cucaracha is out.”
“This isn’t happening,” Demi said, banging the back of her head against the side of the transport. “Where are we going?”
“Vegas,” the smokey-voiced girl said. “They’ll put us to work in brothels there or sell us at auction.”
“They have slave auctions in Vegas?” Demi asked, closing her eyes.
“Uh, yeah,” the accented girl said. “Where else would they have them?”
“This is happening,” the smokey-voiced woman said, patting Demi across the back. She had a small hand, her fingers thin and spidery. “If you’re lucky, they’ll take you back to a slave factory. If it’s a good one, by the time they’re done with you, none of this will bother you anymore.”
“That doesn’t sound lucky at all,” Demi said. “We’ve got to get out of here. We can escape.”
“You won’t like what they do to you if you fail,” the smokey-voiced girl said. “I don’t think you’re up for it.”
“I’ve gotten out of tougher spots than this,” Demi insisted, though none came readily to mind. “We have to try.”
The truck lurched and slowed abruptly, and after a few moments they came to a complete stop and the engine died. “My name’s Demi,” she whispered. The sound of men’s voices grew clearer from outside. The rear hatch flew open, and moonlight flooded the cramped trailer. Thirty women were huddled together in identical burlap rags, nearly all of them Latinas except for the smokey-voiced girl that spoke English like an American. She was Asian. Demi didn’t know enough to say which kind.
“What’s happening?” Demi whispered.
“Rest stop,” the Asian girl said. “We’re worth a lot to them. They don’t want us dying on the way up, so they let us get a little exercise and fresh air when they can. We won’t be far from the border yet, not if they haven’t picked up our papers yet.”
A lean man with a military bearing but clad in civilian clothes appeared at the back of the trailer with another guard. “Let’s go, putitas!” he yelled in Spanish. “Come on out. Keep it moving.” Demi stared hard at his companion—Eduardo.
One by one, the girls stood, and the guards helped them climb down from the trailer. When it was Demi’s turn, Eduardo grabbed her arm and hefted her down to the ground. Her skin bristled at his touch. The moment she was free of his grip, she drove her fist into his gut and pulled her knee up against his groin. He doubled over, but his companion pulled a gun and held it to the back of her head.
She cursed herself. She should have waited, found an opportunity when her captors’ guard was down. But the anger bubbling up in her stomach right now wasn’t something she could tuck away. A day ago, she’d been a soldier. What made these pricks think they had a right to come into her country and treat her like this? What made them think they could treat any of these girls like this?
“Pinche pendeja,” Eduardo swore, straightening himself with a wince. “You still got a lot of fight left in you from last night, huh?”
“Try me, you son of a bitch,” Demi spat. “People are going to look for me.”
“What people?” Eduardo asked with a laugh. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a cellphone. He held it out to her, showing her an article from the local news station entitled “Decorated Veteran Slain in Midnight Border Crossing”. Beneath the title was Demi’s service picture. She barely recognized that girl anymore. There was a light in her eyes back then she hadn’t seen in years.
“That’s fake,” Demi said. “I’ve only been missing a few hours. How could there be a story about it?”
“The reporter owed me a favor,” Eduardo said. “No one is going to come looking for a fallen hero. They’re
going to give her a full military funeral and the works. You? This is you now,” he said, shoving a Mexican passport into her hands. She opened it and saw her picture next to a name that wasn’t entirely hers—Demi Mondaine.
“What the hell?” Demi asked. “Mondaine? That isn’t even Spanish, puto. And no middle name?”
“I didn’t pick the name,” Eduardo said, rolling his eyes. “But you’re Mexican now, just like the rest of us. Don’t worry, you’re legal, so they probably won’t deport you if we get caught.”
“This… this isn’t possible,” Demi said. “The military has my fingerprints, my DNA.”
“Things have a way of going missing,” Eduardo said, patting her on the shoulder. “Better get used to it, puta.”
“Don’t call me puta, puto,” Demi growled, slamming the back of her head into the chin of the man behind her. His gun jerked to the side, firing a shot past her head that grazed Eduardo’s arm and left Demi with a deafening ring in her ears. She grabbed the man’s gun arm and twisted it towards her, hearing the snap of bone when she pried the weapon free from his fingers.
She spun away from his grasp and pulled the trigger three times, each bullet hitting him center-mass. He collapsed into the dirt, and the other slaves froze. Two more guards pushed through them, but Demi fired twice, hitting each of the men between the eyes, and they went down. To her surprise, the trafficked girls only winced at the sound of gunfire in their midst. Not a single one of them screamed.
Something hard struck her across the back of her head once again, and her vision went blank.
***
“You don’t listen very well, do you?” a distant voice asked, and Demi’s eyes fluttered open. She was lying in the back of the trailer again, her head cradled in the Asian girl’s lap. “I told you what would happen if you tried to escape.”
“I couldn’t just sit back and—”
“You don’t get what this is, do you?” asked the accented girl. “There’s no escaping this. They’re going to break you, it’s just a matter of when, and it’s going to hurt like hell until they do, so why fight it?”
“She’s right,” the Asian girl added. “You’re the only one that’s here against your will.”
“What do you mean?” Demi asked, afraid to sit upright due to the pounding on the back of her skull. “You said you were slaves.”
“That’s what they call us,” the accented girl said. “But these women believe there’s honor in submission—that it’s the only path to true freedom.”
“What a load of crap,” Demi said, forcing herself to sit up and instantly regretting it. “What did you say your names were again?”
“The first thing they make you give up in the slave factories is your name,” the Asian woman said.
“Okay,” Demi said. “Then how about this? What’s an Asian girl that speaks perfect English doing as a cartel slave?”
“My parents were professors from Taiwan,” the Asian girl said. “I was born in America. We were on vacation in Mexico right when White Dagger took over. We got grabbed early on.”
Demi frowned, remembering the stories that had been all over the news back in 2009. Dozens of tourists had gone missing, and it had all been blamed on a “super-cartel”. The name White Dagger had been thrown around for a few years, but eventually most reputable media outlets had labelled the entire thing a hoax. Apparently not.
“I’m sorry,” Demi said. “Do you have any idea where we are?”
“More or less,” the Asian girl said. “We won’t be far from the border yet. We have at least a few hours before Vegas, then they’ll auction us off. Not you though.”
“Damn straight,” Demi said. “They’ll have to let us off at another rest stop before Vegas. That will be our shot at getting out.”
“Not likely,” the accented girl said. “They’re going to be watching you. After they drop us off, they’ll be taking you back to Mexico. They think you’ve got too much fight, so they’re sending you to a slave factory.”
“I’m not a slave, and I’m not a victim,” Demi declared. “And that ain’t gonna change. We’re getting out of this. I just need your help convincing the other girls.”
“They won’t help you,” the Asian girl said. “This is what they want. You need to try to understand that. There’s no way out of—”
Her words were suddenly cut short by a deep horn blasting outside, followed by the squeal of tires and a tremendous impact against the side of the vehicle. If they hadn’t been in complete darkness, the world would have been spinning around them. A second impact followed the first, and Demi was thrown across the trailer with the rest of the women. She heard the sound of metal groaning and giving way, and the trailer began filling with ice-cold water.
Before she knew what was happening, Demi’s body was completely submerged in the frigid waters. She held onto the last breath of air she had, and panic shot through her when she struck the wall of the trailer. There wasn’t going to be any escape from this padlocked box. She tried to count while she hung submerged, frantically searching for any way out. A minute passed, then two. Her lungs burned.
Just when she was about to admit defeat, a flash of red light up the darkness, and a current dragged Demi towards a gaping hole in the trailer. Lifeless fingers brushed against her as she swam, but she didn’t stop. After nearly three minutes without air, she would be lucky to survive this herself.
Her head broke through the surface, and she found herself in shallow water at the bottom of a fifty-foot gulch. She stumbled forward, crawling on her knees to the river bank. High above in the distance, she could see headlights passing over a bridge across the ravine.
Demi’s legs suddenly began to tremble, and she fainted against the rocky soil.
***
“Come on,” a voice said in the darkness over Demi. Her eyes fluttered open. “Let’s get out of here before she wakes up.”
“Too late,” Demi groaned, sitting upright on the river bank. The Asian girl and her Hispanic companion were standing over her, but there was no sign of any of the other women or their captors—except one, she realized when someone moaned in pain. She turned to see Eduardo lying on his back, his entire left side caked with blood.
“What happened?” Demi asked. Eduardo kept groaning.
“This pendejo drove us off a cliff,” the accented girl said, glancing at the badly wounded soldier. “So congratulations, somehow you survived a fifty-foot plunge into shallow water. Now we’ll just be on our way.”
“Wait,” Demi said, her body trembling. The only clothing she had was the rough burlap poncho and her shoes, and they were soaked from the river. “Don’t leave me here.”
“Sorry, lady,” the accented girl said. “We’ve got our own troubles. You’re better off on your own.”
“How did both of you manage to survive the fall?” Demi asked. “I don’t see any of the other girls. I only barely made it. There was some sort of explosion.” An explosion—her throat tightened as the memories returned. The child. Her lieutenant. Fire and sand.
“We got lucky,” the Asian girl said.
“I don’t believe that for a second,” Demi said, blinking away the past. Now wasn’t the time to freeze. She rose to her feet, her joints creaking in protest. “I’m going with you.”
The two girls exchanged glances for a moment, and the Asian girl turned back to Demi. “One condition,” she said, looking over at the wounded soldier. “Kill him.”
“No,” Demi said, her limbs going stiff. “I’m not a killer.”
“You killed three men tonight,” the Asian girl said.
“I’ve killed a lot more than that,” Demi said, her eyes wide and distant. “But I’m not an executioner. Not anymore.”
“Then good luck to you,” the Asian girl said. She and her companion began to turn away from her.
“Stop,” Demi said, and both girls fell still, slowly turning back to face her. Demi closed her eyes, and she could hear the screams that haunted her
nightmares, taste the sour cold sweat of fear in the air, feel her hands slick with blood. This wasn’t who she wanted to be, she thought, opening her eyes and looking down at the bloodied face of the man that had tried to reduce her to a piece of property. But regardless of what she wanted, this was who she was.
She dropped to her knees, grabbing the closest rock, a ten-pound chuck of stone worn smooth from the river. It was cold in her hands and slippery, but she held it firmly and brought it crashing against Eduardo’s head. She swung it back behind her shoulders and slammed it against him again, and again, and again, until his face was completely obliterated.
“I said I’m coming with you,” Demi said, rising to her feet, her face drenched in more blood than she wanted to imagine. To her surprise, neither girl seemed taken aback at her violent outburst.
“You guys really don’t have names?” she asked, desperate to break the silence.
“I’m Cynthia,” the Asian girl said. “This is Mariela.”
“Guess you’re one of us now,” Mariela agreed.
***
“So, what’s the plan here?” Demi asked. About an hour had passed since they’d decided to join forces down in the ravine below, and the three women had climbed out of the gorge and started a fire with some dead scrub. Cynthia had wandered off towards the road and returned with a battered suitcase packed with jeans, shirts, blankets, and water. The jeans were a few sizes too small for Demi, since both Cynthia and Mariela were slimmer than her, but she managed to squeeze herself into the pants anyway. Luckily, they seemed to wear the same size shirts.
“Those definitely aren’t standard issue,” Demi commented when Cynthia changed in front of her, exposing breasts far too large and symmetrical to have been natural. “Does White Dagger sink that much money into all the girls they traffic?”
“Shows what you know,” Mariela said. “Some of the girls back in the truck were worth more than a house.”
Demi Mondaine: Volume One Page 2