She either ignored or couldn’t hear him as she struggled with the can and the yapping dog, so he tried again:
“Hey, Marnie!”
Marnie jumped and spun, frightened.
“I’m so sorry,” he yelled across his yard, “but the trash hasn’t been running in over a week.”
She stood completely still. The look on her face was a mixture of fear and confusion.
“Really?” she finally answered.
“Yeah, but I guess you could leave it there. The news said sooner or later the trash company would be back in business… even if it takes a few more weeks.”
She nodded and bent down to grab her dog. Sparky wouldn’t stop barking at the fallen can. Carlos felt as if he was bothering Marnie. The times of spontaneous social interaction were gone; what replaced them were weary stand-offs of quickly spoken words at six feet apart. It was the new way of interacting in the plague-ravaged world. Her eyes were filled with worry, so he just smiled and started to pull his door shut.
“Wait!” Marnie yelled over the yapping.
Carlos felt himself tense up. He knew she was going to ask for help, and he really didn’t want to refuse her.
“Can you please help me stand it back up?”
He glanced over his shoulder, searching for the face mask and gloves he kept by the door.
“I know, this is a terrible time to ask you that,” she said, “but I can’t, I’m not strong enough.”
“Sure. Hold on just a second.”
Carlos closed the door and began putting on his protective equipment. Something inside of him begged him just to leave the door closed, to abandon Marnie to her fate. He berated himself for being a coward. He wasn’t raised to leave a woman in need all by herself, what would his father say? He felt his lungs constricting as he opened the door once more. The mask felt as if it was suffocating him. His mind already imagining the scenario of him lying in his bed, drowning in his own blood, all alone.
“Step back a bit more and I’ll get that can back up.”
Marnie nodded, a nervous smile on her uncovered face. The sight of her grin was both welcoming and concerning, because she was unprotected.
Carlos kicked the trash can lid closed. She didn’t appear to have much trash but when he bent over and grabbed the handle, he struggled to get it standing.
“Dang, what do you got in there, a dead body?” he teased.
They usually made small talk at the mailbox and joked back and forth before the virus came. She shared his dark sense of humor, but he never guessed his joke would miss the mark so horribly. Marnie stumbled back, unable to talk, and stared at him until his awkward laughter ceased.
“Oh, oh, I’m sorry. This isn’t the time to joke like that. I’m so sorry.” He felt his face burning behind his mask.
“Oh, no,” she laughed and ran her hand through her dark hair, “it’s OK.”
“How’s your husband?” Carlos asked in an attempt to divert her attention to another topic.
“He’s sleeping,” she stuttered.
After a long moment of silence, Carlos decided it wasn’t time for chit-chat and started to hurry back up the sidewalk to his house, “Well, take care. Stay inside, stay safe.”
“Yes, you too,” she said, “and thank you.”
A sudden burst of light exploded in the street, a flash of red flames, accompanied by a deafening sound that caused Marnie to jump and scream. Sparky scrambled from her arms and ran down the sidewalk, yelping. Carlos, frightened and confused, needed a second register the cause of the explosion: a firework.
Marnie chased after her dog, and Carlos followed. He wanted to help, it was in his nature, but the farther he got from his house, the tighter his lungs constricted and the feeling of germs crawling over his skin slowed him. He halted next to the community mailbox and squinted to watch Marnie cursing Sparky as she chased him.
The dim yellow glow of the streetlights revealed his neighbor’s houses, front porches and shrubbery, the windows filled with faces. He froze, glancing around as they filled with glaring eyes and frowns. He began backing away, uneasy at disturbing so many suffering people. The dog’s yelps went silent and so did Marnie’s cursing. Carlos felt his fight-or-flight response kick in. He turned to run back to his house, only to be met by a group of his neighbors stumbling from their houses. He saw Joanna and Ted, Gabby and Steve, little Roxanna and her grandma Kelly. They lived the closest to him; he recognized them easily despite how the virus had ravaged them: Their skin too pale and thin, like crepe paper, fragile and ready to split. Their hair tangled with knots, their eyes deep-set and bloodshot.
The fabric mask covering his mouth and nose was far too thin. So were his latex gloves. The virus would find its way inside of him and make a home in his cells. He was easy prey.
He panicked and held his hands out before him. “Stay back. Six feet, remember?”
The group grew larger. They acted as if they didn’t even hear him; instead they just kept coming closer, their limbs stiff with the atrophy of being confined to their beds.
“I said stay back!”
“We’re all in this together,” Kelly gurgled, sounding as if her throat was clogged with phlegm.
Carlos heard Marnie scream from somewhere in the darkness of a neighbor’s yard. He spun around and ran, slapping away the groping hands of an elderly man who had just moved in three months prior. The touch of old George made Carlos’s skin crawl. He held his breath as much as he could as he ran for his front door. He hadn’t locked it when he left, thinking he’d only be outside for a couple minutes helping Marnie.
These neighbors… hadn’t the neighborhood Facebook group said they were dead?
He ran down the sidewalk, eyes fixed on his front door. A group of bloody-eyed children tried to pounce on him from behind Marnie’s trash can. He stumbled on the wheel of it, falling to the concrete. The bin tipped over again, this time spilling most of its contents into the street. Carlos felt a shock of pain in his wrist as he impacted the sidewalk, and something snapped.
He knew in an instant it was broken, but he was still too terrified to care. The moans of his neighbors were getting closer, and the undead kids were already reaching out to grab him. He got to his feet, hesitating at the mound of garbage spilling from Marnie’s can.
Within that trash, there was something huge wrapped in a purple shower curtain, held together somewhat by strips of duct tape. It wiggled, and the head of Marnie’s husband inch-wormed its way out of its tacky purple cocoon, followed by the torso. He was missing his arms and legs, yet dragged himself along in the same fashion a caterpillar would. His mouth opened and closed like a fish suffocating on dry land.
Mark’s corpse struggled and rolled over, revealing deep stab wounds in his chest. Carlos remembered Marnie’s reaction when he interrupted her. She hadn’t been afraid of him passing the virus to her; she didn’t want him to discover what was hidden in the filthy trash can.
Carlos screamed. He turned to his front door, but a group of men already stood in front of it. He spun in a frantic circle, crying. They were all dead yet alive. Scott Matheson walked stiff-legged, closing in, and his rigid blue hand held a lit sparkler that popped and sent tiny red sparks out before his haggard face; a ghoulish grin split in two. A radio turned on, a patriotic tune filled the night, and a few women began to dance, their bodies leaking fluids down their bare legs. He heard Marnie weeping. He was almost too terrified to look at her. Almost. When he did, he saw she was being forced to kneel before Karen Sanderson, the housewife who held the party that infected everyone in attendance.
Karen began vomiting bloody mucus into Marnie’s face.
Carlos knew he would not make it out of this block party unscathed. No, he would be joining his neighbors in this macabre new form of existence. He would be forced to join the herd at last.
They came for him, bony fingers digging into his skin, twisting his already-broken wrist. They held him in place. From beyond his neighborhood came a
cacophony of sirens, more than he had heard during the whole horrific ordeal of the virus taking over the world, an explosion of noise in an otherwise dead and silent world. Carlos knew the plague was mutating into something unstoppable. Something with a new way of finding hosts. Forced to his knees, he prayed as they baptized him in their infectious fluids.
“Join the party, Carl,” Kelly said.
By V. Castro
The corpses are a bloated, stinking reminder of my station in life. That’s how it is in The Asylum, this new demilitarized zone that separates the living from the dead. When you’re an asylum-seeAsylumker, you take what you get, and we’ve got border duty. What was once America is now a wasteland of disease, hunger, feral animals, and things that were once human.
I think I heard the siren. You ready for lunch? C’mon, we can sit in the communal gardens. It smells of oranges and lemons this time of year. I know you’re scared, but you don’t need to be. You are too young to remember most of it. Even now it remains a surreal dream in my mind. Every day like another page being turned in some cosmic comic book.
You see, a long time ago a wall had been partially built between the two countries. Miles and miles of camps held the line between us and them. Once the virus mutated, the cartels threw all their resources into finishing the wall to keep the Americans out—unless you possessed a useful skill, had enough melanin in your skin to take the harsh sun increasing in intensity year after year, or were a citizen from any country south of the border. When the time came for Mexico and the Cartel of Central and South American Countries to decide which asylum-seekers they would allow in, all the built-up resentment and frustration between the divided countries foamed like poison from a dying man’s mouth.
As you have seen, when the mutants clamor for a way in, they eventually die. Oof, it’s fucking gross up close. The smell is worse with that first blast from a flamethrower, both with the power to knock you off your feet. The stink rises with the smoke, sticks to your hair like cooking fat. Mexico remained unscathed from that damn wall and the heat. We owe our gratitude to the blistering sun.
By the time most of the virus-infected bodies made it to the border, they shuffled half-decomposed and slow as hell. The mutants are only as strong as the sloughing muscle left clinging to their bones. An armadillo could out-run them. Those things weren’t the threat; it was the tiny creature that could not be seen until it was too late. Entire reservoirs of water left no good from decomposing flesh seeping into the ground.
To stave off the infection from spreading, the cartel ordered the bodies collected and burned before whatever’s left of the stray animals had a chance to feast on the decaying flesh and make their way into Mexico. There are men whose sole duty is to shoot down buzzards. The crack of high-powered rifles is almost like a call to prayer here. Animal traps lay in wait like IEDs. The rat poison so strong it stings your nostrils when the wind kicks up. That’s why we all wear bandanas over our noses and mouths. I already know I’m probably in for an early death. Same for you.
Thank Dios for Felicia Garcia, narco queen turned leader of a Mexico that has never done better for this part of the world. When the Mexican government couldn’t pull enough resources together, they reached out to the cartels for help enforcing the closed border. Felicia took this opportunity to strong-arm her way into government with the finesse and sense only a woman could bring to a situation that teetered towards disaster. Like a virus, she took control when the elected officials failed in their political cowardice to make big decisions. Didn’t even see her coming as they squabbled over petty shit to stroke their male egos. It was a bloodless coup that happened before anyone could stop it. With a swift declaration of power, she separated Mexico before the infection had a chance to take root like in America. Locked and loaded, she ordered a complete lockdown.
Maybe I should rewind a bit. I think I’m making it sound too simple. Before you even reached the border, a line of military trucks and SUVs with armed soldiers waited for you to pull some shit so they could shoot. If you looked healthy enough to get past the men in tanks, you would be directed to the doctors in hazmat suits. A simple jab to your palm alerted them to foreign bodies your system. Any traces in your blood, and you were taken to the far side of the desert to be put to sleep on the spot. No questions, no tears. Nada. To be fair, many people accepted this. Nobody wanted to wander around in a stupor, covered in black spots with little things swimming beneath their skin, crushing their veins. The mutants embodied the merciless rot the world had become.
The infection begins like a cluster of blackheads on your face. This is viral waste. It then painfully pushes through the pores and spreads like mold. The waste contains more virus that spreads through coughs, sneezes, bodily fluids or touch. Eventually the creature takes over the brain and gives only one directive to the body: infect others, spread. Within a few weeks the body decomposes as you’re eaten from the inside-out. After a while, you are walking around with half your skin hanging off and insides oozing from your ass. You are a walking virus particle, a mutant.
Mutant bodies and infected animals burn day and night in an area called The Pits. The flames and smoke remind us of the light Felicia has returned to our great nation. Don’t look at me like that. The tales are true. Seen it with my own eyes, with googles of course. Not even the scavengers, human or animal, dare to go to The Pits. You have to piss someone off real bad to be assigned to The Pits. A great number of politicians who didn’t leave the U.S. in time or make it as far as Canada tried to bribe their way into Mexico. Felicia was having none of it. But like a glamorous telenovela villain, she had a plan. Make no mistake, she is no villain; she is a savior queen. These enemies who sauntered in were sent to The Pits for work as payback. Those who opposed her, dictators south of Mexico who refused to cooperate because they cared more for their own pockets instead of their people—pobrecitos in The Pits. Video from the drone over The Pits played in every football stadium for us to watch the worst of the worst get marched to hell. People need entertainment. And the Gods need their sacrifices.
My job these days is to stand in a turret along the wall, looking at far distances with drones. If we spot packs of mutants or the barely living, we alert guards on the ground who ensure whoever approaches doesn’t get too close. If they appear to be living, we meet them and see if they are of any value. You must have value. No family names, bank accounts, companies, business cards matter here. There is nothing but what you can do for the survival of the Cartel of South and Central American States and Mexico. The new superpower of the world I am proud to call home.
I remember the first time I genuinely felt sorry for some of them. The Others.
As I passed through the safe zone, a family begged the guards to be let in. Their pale white skin blistered from waiting for days to get this far into processing. The asshole guards toyed with them. The family had two small children who looked malnourished and dehydrated. One of the guards I knew, Francisco, called me over and stuck an elbow in my rib as he asked: “What you think, mujer? Should we let them in?”
I couldn’t look into their pleading blue eyes. Instead I stared at the scruffy shoes of the children. “Let them in, cabron,” I said. “They have kids. You got kids? Plus, it’s almost harvest time. We will need more workers.” My job wasn’t easy standing in the elements all day, but I did not want to get transferred to harvest.
Francisco sucked his teeth and narrowed his eyes as he scanned the family. “What do you have to trade?”
The little girl (she couldn’t have been more than five or six) reached beneath her sock to unlatch a watch wrapped around her scrawny ankle. As she did, the family tightened closer around her. Her father squeezed her bony shoulder. The guard bent down to look into her eyes, trying to appear friendly (and he mostly is), but I know what sits behind his resentment. He was only a kid when he was separated from his parents. He sat in a camp for weeks watching other kids from all parts of Central and South America die from a flu outbreak. Yea
, the fucking flu. Tax breaks before outbreaks in those days. Anyway, a riot broke out and he escaped. Been with the cartel ever since. Helped me get fluent in Spanish. So, he was still kinda angry.
He said: “Mija, this is all you have for me? Nothing else?”
She began to cry like children do when they have been scolded, even though Francisco spoke in a quiet and calm tone. “Yes. I’m hungry.” It was the voice of a little mouse.
“You aren’t lying to me? I get very angry when people lie.”
Her bottom lip quivered. I could tell she was trying to be a big girl. Save her family. It rested on her ability to convince us they were worthy. “No, sir. Nothing.”
The guard inspected the watch, then faced the parents. “You’re lucky this is a Rolex. Follow the signs for water and processing. The cartel is gonna put you all to work. It’s harvest time soon. Our great nation needs feeding. ¡Ándale! Before I change my fuckin’ mind.”
“Ay, be nice, Francisco,” I scolded him. “Felicia does not approve of children being treated like that.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “You are right. But some things I will never forget, and we shouldn’t forget them.” I stood there, watching them all wait in line, not knowing how to feel. The family scurried past me in a hurry. The woman turned and mouthed “Thank you” to me. I’m not sure I deserved a thanks, because getting into Mexico is just the beginning, you must learn to survive living here. Registration begins your journey. You will be assigned work immediately and found refugee accommodation. Felicia cares for all.
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