ASSIMILATE OR DIE

1
The Frontier

Benito, Rosa and the rest of the illegals walked through the desert behind their coyote in a single row. They wore long sleeved shirts and bandanas under their caps. Their bag packs held several bottles of water, bags of peanuts, cups of instant noodles and packets of instant coffee. Their shadows twisted around the sand dunes and yellow brush as the sun settled on them. Twilight ebbed to a starry sky but came without the relief of a cool night. The desert hammered thirst in their bodies, but whatever they drank barely slacked their thirst. So they licked the juices from the folds of their foreheads, the salty dew that clung on the hairs of their arms, and sometimes extracted the balmy liquor deep from the wells of their armpits.

Benito and Rosa wondered if they would die in the journey to the Promised Land, leaving their kids-Roberto, Juan and Frida-as orphans at the American side of the border. When their coyote heard this he laughed at them as he flicked the ash off from his cigarette. It was true that people died during the voyage to America but the border town of Jucumba waited at the horizon, and they would have crossed that threshold by tomorrow.

Benito and Rosa said nothing else to the coyote. They did not trust him because some coyotes abandoned illegals right in the middle of the desert, or sold them to kidnappers. Sometimes they abandoned them in the middle of nowhere, packed in trucks and roasted alive until the flesh melted off their faces and piles of meaty pieces pooled on their chests and laps.

Rosa and Benito heard stories like these from their friends and at work. The news also ran pictures of missing people like, Rosa recalled, the girl with pouty ruby lips in the red shirt. The news reported that her coyote sold her to kidnappers who then ransomed her life to her parents. Her parents, who didn't trust the border police, gave their life saving to their daughter's kidnappers, but their daughter never returned. Rosa watched the sun set in the horizon and the twilight fade into night. She hoped that the girl lived.

The coyotes and illegals ate instant noodles and peanuts for dinner. They used the cups from their instant noodles to hold their coffee. Their eyes darted in the dark and at the sand as they watched for snakes and scorpions. They kept the fire from burning too brightly. The illegals barely spoke to each other because they suffered illnesses that came from the heat like exhaustion and fever. When they did talk they complained about being sick or to ask the coyote something.

"When do we get there?" Rosa asked to the coyote.

"Tomorrow," he said, "We'll be free and then someone will take you to San Diego by truck." The coyote then took out a cigarette, light it up with a burning twig from the fire, and smoked as he laid his back on a boulder. He tilted his hat enough to allow him see everyone but also hide from them his face, which was leathery, grimy but angular and handsome at the same time. His cigarette hung on his lips.

"What if we don't survive?" A fat woman asked.

"If the Indians and the Spanish and the Gringos," the coyote said, "could push into the frontier, then we could push in even deeper."

"What are you guys going to do over there?" The fat woman asked everyone. She sipped her coffee. It was slightly salty and tasted like instant noodle. The illegals told of jobs that waited for them, as farm laborers, as janitors, as maids, as construction workers. Then they talked about their family and promised that to return back to their towns with money in their pockets to build their houses and dreams.

"Don't count on that," the fat lady said, "The other side does something to people. You become like a gringo the longer you stay there, especially your children. After a few years, they're almost like White people."

"My kids will never be like gringos," Benito said. "They're dark, short, and love their beans too much for that." The group laughed.

"It's true," the coyote said, not even opening his eyes. "A lot of Mexican kids speak only English. My sister's kids, they don't like speak English, and not even good English. They speak it like the Blacks. They don't want to hear Banda, instead they want to hear Hip-Hop or that puta Britney Spears. And they only want McDonald's and pizza."

"Not my kids," Benito said, "they'll never be like gringos"

"But they'll have to. And all of you too. If you want to live, then you'll need to assimilate with the gringos just a little. Or die." After that nobody in the group said anything else but watched the campfire burn. Then the coyote stood up. His body was spry, and his eyes were alert. He looked something like a coyote in that instant. He kicked dust at the fire, and then the other illegals got up and helped the coyote put it out. They hid in the brush. Several minutes of silence passed, and their hearts pounded in their chests.

"Is it the patrol?" Rosa asked, but the coyote moved a finger to his lips. Rosa held Benito's small and calloused hand. Then they heard something in the desert. A girl moved in the moonlit landscape. The moon illuminated the edges of her body, the border of her thighs, and the fog of wiry hair above her head. Clumps of dried mud clung on her bare legs, her pubic hair, on her genitals. She wore nothing but a red shirt.

"Oh my god, she's been raped," Rosa said, but Benito and the coyote tried to hush her up.
"Over here!" Rosa yelled to the girl and the immigrants tried hush her up. "She's not border patrol. She's lost in the desert. We got to help her!" She then ran to the girl. Benito and some men followed.

The girl in red fell over on Rosa, clung onto her and wouldn't let go. Rosa tried to hold up the girl up. "Don't worry, you're safe," Rosa said, "Your parents are looking for you." Benito took out his bottle of water for the girl. "Drink," he said to her.

The girl wouldn't drink; instead, the girl dug her nails into Rosa. "You're hurting me," Rosa said before screaming as the girl bit into her shoulder and drew blood. Benito then pulled the girl off from Rosa, and threw her into the dust. He flashed his flashlight at the girl's face.

The skin of the girl's face clung tightly to her skull. Her lips, which were supposed to be fleshy and ruby red, were missing from her face and revealed a muzzle of teeth. Underneath her chin was the deep gash of a knife. The jaws of the girl opened wide as she attacked Benito, but he smashed the flashlight against the girl's head. The soft tissue of one of her eyes sunk deep in her skull and viscous juice poured out of her mouth and the slit of her throat. The girl attacked Benito again.

Benito wrestled with the girl, and she bit him on the arms until Rosa bashed a rock against the girl's head. Runny pieces of the girl's brain poured out of her nose and mouth. Benito screamed and threw the girl at a side, and he tried to wipe the brains off his shirt. The coyote then hoisted a large rock and brought it down on her head before the girl could stand up.

The girl's body writhed for several hours with her smashed head under the rock. Benito bandaged Rosa's wounds after he rinsed it out with his supply of water. The immigrants all prayed the Hail Mary and Our Father, except for the coyote. He took out his knife he began cutting the dead girl's limbs and threw them into the fire. Benito also helped too by breaking the limbs in smaller pieces so they could burn better. The fire burned very bright.

The sun was going to rise very soon on them, but never again would the heat of the sun could compare to the heat of that fire.

2
Gringolandia

After they crossed Jacumba, another smuggler brought them to Los Diego where Benito's brother, Carlos, awaited for them. They arrived to San Jose and reunited with their children the next day. The day after that, they searched for work. In a week Benito found work as a janitor at several work sites. Rosa worked at a hotel. Life in San Jose felt like heaven to them. Cleaning restrooms in an air-conditioned business building, no matter how nasty the toilets were, was better than the fields or sweat factories. They never spoke of the girl in the desert.

Their kids struggled in school, and they failed. Benito and Rosa felt happy nevertheless. Eventually the kids would catch up, they believed. Benito reminded them that they had to struggle in school because they left Mexico so they could have a better life. Benito promised to them that if they got A's, he would take them to Disneyland to meet Mickey Mouse.

Within the year, their kids became proficient at English, and sometimes they made honor roll in their schools. That made Benito proud, but at the same time concerned. Benito saw changes in his children that scared him. His kids spoke to each other in English instead of Spanish. They listened music in English, and watched English speaking shows. "They're starting to become gringos," Benito said during dinner while the kids watched Hannah Montana on the Disney Channel.

"That's how it is," Benito's brother, Carlos, said as he pounded on his chest. His heartburn started to become a frequent nuisance. "They got to speak English in order to survive in the world of the gringos-even I have to be a little bit Americanized and speak English." Carlos said to Benito before drinking two Alka-Seltzers in a glass of water.

"Compadre, you should go visit the doctor for that," Rosa said to Carlos, "if your chest hurts that often, you should see the doctors. My uncle once thought he had heartburn, but it was actually a heart attack. It nearly killed him."

"Don't worry about it, comadre," Carlos said, "it's gone."

"But they shouldn't forget about their heritage," Benito took out a cigarette started to smoke. "Do you know how embarrassing it would be for them to speak only English, being so dark and Indian looking? Today I saw a pisa. Dark and short. More Indian looking than me, but he acted exactly like a Gringo."

"But Benito," Carlos says, "do you think the Aztecs spoke Spanish before the Conquest? Five centuries ago, the Aztecs worried about the same thing when their kids were speaking Spanish instead Nauhatl. That's how it is. You need to assimilate a little, you know."
Benito didn't care. They all had to resist, he said.

3
Los Zombis

Nobody knew why it happened or how it occurred, but the dead were rising back again. Benito and Rosa already knew that when they crossed the desert.

Leaders and scientists said that although "Resurrected Being"-that was their term for the zombies, or los zombis, the way Benito and Rosa pronounced it-were gruesome and highly aggressive, they couldn't deal damage because they were too decomposed. In any case, they advised people to not approach zombies because they had diseases.

"They do not eat or sleep, and despite of what you have seen at the movies, being bitten by a resurrected being does not turn you into one," President Obama said on TV, dubbed in Spanish, "unless you die from your wounds." Rosa and Benito touched their shiny bite shaped scars. Then the president said, "We suspect that this may be a new epidemic."

Through out the entire world, people reported of moaning cemeteries, of zombies trying to break out of their burial places. Their moaning and knocking on their coffins drove the living crazy. For Benito, who had to pass by Calvary Catholic Cemetery to and from work at least twice day-once in the morning and again at night-hearing the zombies groan and knock about drove him crazy too. Their coffins were too strong for them. By the time a zombie broke out, it had lost most of its appendages, so they stumbled in the cemeteries stupidly, dripping juices, and dropping maggots and worms. Often times, zombies came out of unexpected places. They came out of sewers, backyards, and from the ocean. In San Francisco, tourists took pictures of the zombies that floated on the beaches, or on the docks.

Extremely decomposed zombies were the least dangerous. The ones that people worried were the zombies of the recently dead. They weren't like the rotting shambles that escaped from their graves. They were strong, fast, and potent.

It didn't take much time before the dead started to outnumber and overwhelm the living. And people had to barricade themselves in their homes. There wasn't anything else they could do but to wait out this plague and hope to survive, or die and stay dead.

3
The Day of the Dead

Zombies showed no conscious, no memory, or no fear. They were like babies, Benito observed. People were safe enough to live in their homes with the doors locked unless they attracted the attention of a zombie. Still, Rosa couldn't feel comfortable knowing that at night, a zombie could enter in their houses as they slept. So she took everyone, and a heavy metal baseball bat, to the loft of Carlos's house at night where no living person or zombie could reach without using a ladder. Even if zombies broke into the house, the family slept in the safety of the loft until morning. For this reason she didn't think much on Carlos' sounds in the early morning. Rosa was a light sleeper, and Carlos woke her up more than a few occasions. His heartburn persisted, and at nights he woke up to drink a glass of water with Alka-Seltzer. She fell back to sleep as soon she heard the sounds of the bloop and the shhh. But this time, she woke up hearing glass shattering on the floor.

"Carlos, what's wrong? Did you break the water glass?" She called in the dark, but Carlos did not answer. Instead, he fell down and made a large thump that woke up everyone. She turned on the light and asked, "What's wrong Carlos?"

Carlos looked up at them from the floor, with unfocused eyes and a pale complexion.

"Carlos?" Rosa said, startled by his listless expression and white face. "You don't look well." As soon she spoke Carlos listless eyes snapped into focus, and his face became something like a predatory animal. Carlos screamed as he pounced on Rosa, pinning her down in her sleeping bag. "No, Carlos, no!" She screamed. Her compadre Carlos, the godfather of her children, tried to bite her face. She pushed against him as she screamed, "Run, kids, run!"

The boys, Roberto and Juan, tried to pull their godfather off from their mom, but Rosa screamed, "Get away from them!" Then Benito pulled Carlos from her, slamming him to the wall. Carlos stood up again, and his unfocused eyes darted on Frida. He bolted to his youngest godchild, and she screamed, "Mommy!"

"No!" Rosa cried, and with all her force swung the metal bat to Carlos' head. His neck cracked, and he fell down to the floor.

"Run, Rosa! Take the kids!" Benito grabbed the metal bat as the zombie of Carlos stood up. Carlos's head dangled on the side. The bones of his neck made an unnatural jagged slope, and the neck bones tried to pierce out the skin. Again Carlos ran to attack Benito, and Benito cried, "No! Stop, brother!"

Carlos screamed but it came out in a loud gurgle as blood spurted out his mouth. Carlos tackled Benito again, but this time biting into his shoulder and then into his neck, close to the jugular vein. Benito pushed Carlos away first with his arms and then with his legs. When Carlos came off him, Benito grabbed the metal bat and swung it at his brother's head.

Carlos fell on the floor, and Benito dropped the bat and begun to cry. Benito should have escaped at that time before Carlos could attack him, but Benito lost a lot of blood and he felt weak. He didn't want to fight Carlos anymore.

Carlos stood up, but his head hung upside down on his chest on an elastic tube of skin filled with broken bones. His face was mangled. Carlos set his unfocused eyes on Benito, and blinked. Benito thought that Carlos would kill him, and he wanted to cry, "No, please, brother." But you can never reason with a zombie. Benito tried to speak, but only a loud burbling moan came out of him.
The zombie of Carlos acknowledged Benito for a few seconds, and then walked away before falling down. It did not attack Benito.

"What happened?" Benito wondered, and then he tried to say something, but instead a loud, "uhhhhhh," came out of him. The zombie moaned in return and did not attack Benito. Carlos bumped into things and wondered around without any direction or concious.

Benito began to walk aimlessly too. He moaned just like a zombie, and Carlos moaned back. Blood spurted out of Carlos's mouth, and Carlos realized something. Zombies could be fooled. Zombies couldn't tell the difference between another zombie from a living person acting like a zombie. Benito spent several minutes acting like a zombie, and he worked his way to the basement door. When Carlos had his back turned, Benito escaped out of the loft. He locked the door shut.

The first thing that Benito did was to push a rag against his neck and shoulder to stop the bleeding. He cried out for Rosa, but she did not answer back. Then he started to panic when she didn't return his call. He wondered if they ran out in the night, out there in the real danger. He decided that she had to be somewhere in the house. He went looking under beds, in closets, and then finally in the shower. His wife and kids screamed when Benito pulled the shower curtain open. Rosa hit him with the broom.

"No, Rosa!" He cried, "I'm alive!" But he fell down. He lost a lot of blood. She started to kiss him, crying at the same time but Benito started to black out. He prayed to God, "Please, don't let me die in the same room with Rosa and the kids," before he blacked out

4
The Man of Mictlan

Benito walked under the shadow of a giant sand-colored temple stained red. Everything looked red, even the sun setting behind the temple. At the very top, somebody banged on the teponaztli, the Aztec dancing drum. Benito wore a loincloth, and a cape adorned in feathers, shells, and gold. He wore a thick gold choker, gold necklaces, and gold rings-so much gold that they weighed him down. He looked up at the temple and saw his wife and kids, crying out to him.

Benito started to climb up the steep steps of the giant temple. Higher he climbed, feeling tired-but he needed to reach to the top because Rosa, and their kids needed his help. Sweat stung his eyes. He ripped the gold chocker and necklaces from his neck, and threw off the heavy cape as he ran up.
There they were, Rosa and their kids, sleeping next to each other, naked and painted green and blue with white stripes. Looking above them was the drummer, who was wearing a green feather headdress. His face was pained like a skull.

Benito cried out to Rosa, but she didn't answer back. He walked closer to her and saw a hole in his wife's chest. The drummer sacrificed her, and his kids too. On a stone offering plate next to the drum were their bloody hearts, piled carefully together like a basket of apples. Benito cried. His tears stung his eyes and face. He turned to the drummer who opened his mouth to reveal a bloody obsidian blade for a tongue. The obsidian tongued drummer then grabbed a mirror that laid next to his drum, its surface smoking and cloudy, which then swirled away to clarity to show Benito's face. Benito's lifted his hand to where his face should have been, and touched the bones instead. His face had been flayed, except the part around his eyes. Gold pieces, jewels, shells and flowers studded the bones of his face. Benito then broke the mirror, and screamed. At the bottom of the temple were the undead who shuffled around in Mictlan, the Land of the Dead, and the drummer was the Lord of Mictlan, who played his drums for his subjects.

"Benito," the Lord of Mictlan said. His blood stained obsidian tongue flicked in his mouth. Benito went to tackle the Lord of the Dead, but the sun settled and covered the world in darkness. Again, Benito heard his name, but in the voice of his wife.

"Benito!" she cried again, and he tried to move, but he couldn't move because he was bound. Rosa said his name one more time, and this time he opened his eyes. She stood next to him, holding a knife. He tried to turn his neck, but it hurt too much. He saw that Rosa tied all his limbs to the bedposts in strips of bed sheets.

"Rosa," he said, "this is so sex." Rosa started to cut his bonds and kiss him when she heard him say those words.

"I didn't know if you were going to live," she said, "so I had to do this. When you were moving around, I thought you died and came back as a zombie."

"And the kids? Where are there?" He said.

"I locked them in Carlos' room, and told them not to leave there for any reason until I told them."

Rosa said the name of Carlos, and Benito tears welled up in his eyes. He began to cry for his brother, who died from a heart attack when he slept. He cried for the man who gave him love and money, the man who was his children's godfather. He cried for the man who believed in the American Dream.

5
The Assimilation

Benito spent several weeks healing in bed and on the couch. Rosa feed him the most food so he could heal. Everyday she changed his bandages and put herbals salves and tinctures derived from plants with long Aztec names. She always lit a candle at night for Carlos.

"Rosa, how are we on food?" He asked her while she fed him beans.

"We'll survive," she said. A loud thump came from the loft, where the zombie of Carlos remained.

"I'm healthy enough. If you keep giving me a lot, we'll run out of food. It's time to ration things out just in case."

The house still had electricity and water, and TV still ran the news and their kid's favorite TV shows. Benito felt happy because of that. TV kept their minds occupied, but Benito believed even those things wouldn't last. "Lets start saving water, just in case," he said. They filled all the containers they could find with water. Rosa found an old gas tank in the garage and she almost emptied it out, but Benito stopped her. He said that they might need it one day.

"We need water, not gas," she said, but Benito took the gas tank and placed in Carlos' closet.

"Just in case," he said.

The news showed pictures and videos of zombies stumbling through neighborhoods, through downtown, and through malls. The news reported that people were starving in their homes, and Benito looked in the refrigerator and pantries. There was enough food to last for a few weeks.
Benito's wounds healed, and a shinny keloid formed on his shoulder and neck. Benito knew that, some how, he needed to bring food from the outside. Grocery stores still probably had cans of food, and he knew that he had to get them before Rosa and the kids starved.

Rosa came in with a can of salve and said, "Time to put on medicine." She scooped some of the oily and fragrant salve on her fingers, and messaged it in his healing wounds.

"We're running out of food, aren't we?" He asked, but Rosa kept her silence in a way that confirmed his fears.

"You're healing up really fine," she said and then kissed his dark brown back. She hugged him around his chest and said, "What would we do with out you?"

"I think my shoulder is good," he said, "and the wound is almost closed. It won't get infected."

"But you're not healed completely yet," and she tried to put more salve on him.

"I keep thinking, Rosa. What's going to happen to us? And I scare myself because I don't know the answer. What if we died? We would attack the kids. And what if they died? They would attack us."
He felt something warm and stinging fall in his wound. Rosa's tears fell in his wound, and he turned around to her to kiss her.

"Zombies are like babies," he said, "we can fool them. I fooled Carlos up there by pretending to be like a zombie and he didn't know any better. When he wasn't looking, I snuck out. Rosa..."

"No." Rosa said.

"I can fool them, I know that I can. Its easy to pretend to be a zombie."

"You'll be killed. Think of our kids."

"I am thinking of the kids," and Benito got up. "I don't want to starve, and I don't want them to see us starving either. Rosa, I think there still may be food in the stores and I can get it. All I have to do is act like a zombie."

"And what if there isn't food out there?" She said.

"There has to be."

"And what if you don't come back?"

"Then the last bit of food will last longer." He rubbed his face with his hands. It was slick, and then he remembered his dream when he looked into the mirror and saw his flayed face.

"And in case if I don't come back," he said, "then I want you to use this." Benito went to the closet and took out the gas can. "Because, I don't want you guys to suffer, and I don't want you guys to come back as zombies if you die."

Rosa stared at the gas can for a second and became angry.

"Do you think I can kill my babies?" Rosa said, and then she threw her fists at him. "I'll never hurt them, ever!"

Benito grabbed her wrists and said, "You got to."

They kissed for a very long time and then he said, "It's time for me to go."

"Do you at least want to say good bye to them?" She said, but he nodded no.

"They would never let me go."

Rosa dressed Benito in the same blood stained clothes on the day when Carlos attacked them. He rubbed dirt on them and tore holes in them to make it look ragged. Benito wanted to look as much like a zombie possible. He found an old bag pack that belonged to Carlos and put it on his back.

"How do I look?" He asked Rosa.

"Like the most handsome zombie in the world," She said. Rosa tried to hold in her tears when she kissed Benito.

Rosa did the sign of the cross on his head, and said the Lord's Prayer and the Hail Mary. And before Benito snuck out through the patio, he blew her a kiss and mouthed, "I love you," to Rosa before hanging his head low and shuffling away.

He looked for zombies before he unlocked the gate stepped out. He didn't see any zombies in his neighborhood, but he knew that he would see them soon. Then he began to groan like a zombie and shuffle. When he veered into King Street, he saw the zombies. There were many men, women and children in various stages of decomposition. Some zombies looked like they were recently dead. Benito fooled them all.

Benito shuffled to the direction the grocery store. It would take a very long while to get to the store at a zombie's pace. He hoped that he could return home before night, but he knew that wouldn't be possible.

There were many zombies of all ethnicities. The Indian girl zombie wore a bright red sari with a pink edge. She didn't have any wounds. If there was such a thing as a beautiful death, then she had one. A zombie of a Vietnamese girl wore something very pretty, a purple colored ao dai, but it was stained red. It looked like she died from slashing her wrists. Benito thought that had they been alive they would have been beautiful women. Their presence comforted him because they looked like they died in America but not Americanized.

Then he remembered his children, who spoke English most of the times and sometimes they forgot certain words in Spanish. He feared that someday they would lose their heritage and become like Gringos.

Some how, they had to remember where they came from. How could they look so ethnic, but not know how to speak Spanish? But that was possible. So many Latin looking people sometimes only spoke English. Benito called those people pochos, which meant rotten in Spanish. They didn't celebrate the traditions and holidays of their forefathers. But if that Hindu woman could die as a Hindu, and that Vietnamese girl could die and still keep her Viet identity, then why not his children?

Then he remembered something that the coyote said to him in the desert. You either assimilate, or you die.

That meaning suddenly took a different and cynical meaning for Benito. He almost snorted, almost laughed, but he didn't. Had he done that, the zombies would have noticed that he was living. He shuffled to the direction of the grocery store, the sun started to fall into the west. The sky was a bright red.

Log in to comment! | Share this!