Juarez Square and Other Stories (10 page)

Chang looked at Deke’s clothes, his eyes widening. “What the hell are you wearing? Slacks and a dress shirt?” He shook his head and laughed. “Some special occasion I should be aware of?”

Deke swallowed. “I need to speak with your boss.”

“About what?”

“You know.”

They stared at each other for a tense moment, as if waiting for the other to flinch. Then a light behind Chang’s eyes switched on. “What did you do with those bots?” He stepped toward Deke, fists clenched, his gaze cold and hard. “You rigged them, didn’t you? This is all some sort of play, you stupid fat bastard? You’re a dead man.”

Deke’s panic only lasted a second, its brief flare drowned by a flood of anger suddenly surging through him. Like a long-dormant volcano finally waking, he burst forth with a violent eruption, grabbing Chang by the lapels and shoving him hard against the door.

“I’ve had it with you and your bullshit rules,” he sneered.

Chang’s mouth hung open, slack in disbelief. Deke reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a remote control. “In thirty minutes,” he said, his voice shaking with rage, “if I don’t send a code from this remote, every last dump bot in this hellhole is going to crack a vile of acid I put inside its chassis.” Chang looked at the device in horror. Deke said, “You won’t even be able to sell them for scrap. Total motherfuckin’ destruction.”

“You wouldn’t dare—”

“You know how long it’ll take you to get three hundred new dump bots, much less find someone who knows how to make them harvest worth a damn? Months, maybe years. But something tells me you wouldn’t last long enough to find them.”

Deke returned the remote to his pocket. He clinched his jaw, scowling and defiant, and stared down Chang.

Chang blinked twice, then lowered his eyes and slumped. “Fine,” he said, the single word of his surrender nearly inaudible.

It took a moment for Deke to register what had happened. The sight of Chang crumbling, even though Deke had planned on it, seemed unreal. Deke slowly grasped the notion that he’d won. After eight dark and lonely years, he’d finally grabbed the keys to his cage.

“Wait here for a minute,” Chang said, his voice low and subdued. He disappeared from the foyer and returned a minute later. He motioned for Deke to follow. “This way.”

As Deke approached Chang gave him a warning. “Screw me over and you’re done.” Deke ignored him. There was no venom in Chang’s words, no threat in his eyes. The man was defeated.

Chang led him down a long hallway, stopping at the last door on the left. He opened it, looked inside, and said to someone unseen, “He’s here.” Then he motioned for Deke to enter the room.

Deke took a deep breath and stepped through the doorway.

Timo
.

The boy sat on a plastic tarp among stacks of dump bots and a scattering of parts and tools. He snapped together the top and bottom sections of a chassis and added them to a pile. He looked up at Deke, his face expressionless.

Deke stepped forward, his mind racing. “What are you doing here?”

The boy said nothing for a moment, then shook his head and looked to the floor. “Dump rats,” he said.

Deke blinked. “What?”

“Those dump rats that swallow shiny things like rings and jewels,” the boy said, picking up two more chassis sections. “They hafta know they shouldn’t eat them. They don’t smell like food at all, but they gobble them up anyway. Dump rats can’t control themselves. Never satisfied with what they got, always wanting something more.” He snapped the chassis sections together.

Deke stared, trying to make sense of the boy’s words.

Timo wouldn’t look up at him. “I’m sorry, Mister Deke. I tried to warn you. Why didn’t you listen to me?”

Deke’s stomach turned as he noticed a remote control identical to his on the floor next to Timo. “Jesus, what have you done?”

“What do you think he’s done?” Chang boomed from behind him. The Dump Lord’s right hand entered the room, holding a slate and grinning. “The boy sold you out, of course. He sent out your secret code an hour ago, and now he’s cleaning up the mess you made.” Chang motioned to a box full of acid vials Timo had removed from the bots’ innards. Then he looked down and swiped his finger across the slate. “The kid’s a whiz with search patterns. Daily take’s already ticking back up.”

Deke’s heart sank.

Chang rubbed his chin and said, “How long was it going to take to find your replacement? Months, maybe years? Care to revise that estimate, fat man?” Deke had never seen Chang so smugly satisfied.

Deke watched as Timo continued working. “He’s just a kid,” he said. “What did you do, beat the code out of him?”

Chang’s smile widened. “That’s the best part. I didn’t have to do a thing. He shows up at the door wanting to make a deal. Hell, I didn’t even know the kid knew the first thing about bots.”

Showed up to make a deal?

Deke looked at the boy. “Timo?” The boy kept his head down and didn’t answer.

“Timo!” The boy refused to respond. Deke felt as if he’d been kicked in the gut.

A security guard appeared and said, “Come with me.” Deke’s shoulders slumped. Without a word he turned and followed the guard, leaving Chang and Timo behind. He walked with his head down, numbly retracing the path he’d taken only moments before, so sure he was moments away from securing a brighter future. What a fool he’d been.

The guard escorted him to the estate’s boundary. Deke took a last look around the verdant grounds, its lush trees and shrubs, it blooming flowers bright with color.

As they approached the perimeter, Deke wondered how Chang had instructed the guard to do it. Bullet in the head? Probably not. That would be too quick, too painless. A cold sweat broke out on his forehead and he felt ill.

They reached the security station next to the entry gate and another guard joined them. He went through Deke’s pockets, taking away his slate and hand tools. Then they began to beat him. One of the guards held Deke steady while the other pummeled his face and ribs. When the first guards’ knuckles became chafed and red, they switched places and the second man began to work Deke over.

After several minutes of pounding, they shoved Deke, swollen-faced and bleeding, through the gate to the outside. He landed face down on the dirt road, barely conscious. The guards shut the gate, turned away, and left him alone. After a few moments Deke came to enough to realize they weren’t going to kill him.

With his head throbbing and ribs aching, he stood up on wobbly legs. He raised his hand to shield his eyes from the sun and looked to Tijuana, sprawling and smog-blanketed in the distance. He stumbled forward, taking his first shaky steps toward an uncertain future.

Minutes later when he could think straight again, his thoughts returned to Timo. Maybe the boy had made a deal to save his life. Knowing Chang, Deke found this hard to believe, but it seemed to be the only explanation for his survival.

Deke cursed himself for not seeing it coming. He should have known, should have paid more attention to the fear in the boy’s eyes. Should have understood what he was putting him through.

He looked up again at Tijuana, still far away but getting closer. Whatever the city held for him, starvation or salvation, at least he wouldn’t be alone.

Not like the poor boy he’d left behind.

Sanctuary City

“So we’re here, see?” The teacher, Miss Hathcox, pointed to a hand-drawn X on the large map hanging in the school tent. Rafael sat on a folding chair and watched her.

“We’re at Sanctuary City, just south of the Oklahoma border.” She ran her finger left to right along the wobbly line that represented the Red River. “Do you know what country this is, the one on the north side of the river?”

Rafael nodded. “The United States.”

“Good,” the teacher said. “And what’s all of this area, south of the river?”

Hell on Earth
. That was the answer he wanted to give.

Instead he said, “That’s where we live, the Republic of Texas.”

Miss Hathcox smiled. “That’s good, Rafa.” Then she tapped a thin oval that had been crosshatched in red pencil over the river. “And you know to stay away from this area, right?”

Again Rafael nodded. He’d heard about the red zone, where U.S. drones flew high overhead, watching every inch of the border, ready to rain bullets down on anyone who might be dumb enough to try to cross over. You only walked into the red zone if you wanted to die.

“It’s just a few miles north of here,” she said. “So don’t go wandering off, okay? We hear gunshots and sirens all the time. It’s dangerous out there.”

Rafael’s eyes drifted southward down the map. His stomach tightened as he came to the round blue shape labeled Lake Conroe.

“You know something?” the teacher said. “You’ve been here three days already and I still don’t know where you came to us from.”

Rafael fidgeted. “New Caney.”

Miss Hathcox found New Caney on the map, and then she looked at Rafael.

She tilted her head. “And what about your family, Rafa? Where are they?”

He turned away and didn’t answer. To his relief, she didn’t press the issue.

A red-haired woman with freckles covering her nose and cheeks came in and handed Miss Hathcox a paper.

“Ninety-five,” the woman said, smiling. “Highest grade we’ve seen so far.”

Miss Hathcox turned to Rafael. “Did you hear that, Rafa? You’ve qualified to take the test tomorrow. Isn’t that wonderful?” She looked at the paper, marveling at the score. “Ninety-five percent. You must have been your teacher’s star student back in New Caney.”

Rafael stared at the dirt floor. Maybe if he hadn’t been such a good student, they never would have left home.

He tried not to think about it. All he wanted to do was take the test, win the prize, and put this horrible country behind him forever.

* * *

Later that afternoon, Rafael sat cross-legged on the dirt floor of the tent they’d assigned to him. He watched as people milled about, their feet shuffling aimlessly. Refugees stuck in the limbo of an uncertain future.

Three days earlier when he’d arrived at Sanctuary City, starving and dehydrated, they’d rushed him to the camp’s makeshift infirmary, where he’d spent the next couple of days with a tube in his arm. He’d slept through most of his recovery in a deep, black sleep where he hadn’t dreamed. Now that he was fully recovered and once again alone with his thoughts, he found himself longing for the blissful void of his time in the infirmary.

A group of kids, maybe nine or ten in total, passed by his tent. They looked about the same age as Rafael, and their raucous laughter broke the somber air of the camp. They turned and disappeared between rows of tents, and Rafael listened to them carrying on for some minutes after.

Curious, he stood and followed after them. What could there possibly be to laugh about in a refugee camp?

He made his way past row after row of tents, their U.N. labels worn and nearly illegible, the once-white canvases yellowed from years in the sun. Groups of people huddled around fires in ancient, rusted oil barrels, warming their hands as the chill of early evening settled over the camp. Other barrels had metal grates placed across their tops, converting them into cooking grills, roasting what looked like swamp rat parts. Faces stared into the flames, betraying neither joy nor pain,
only the tired expressions of those who’d been waiting, year after hopeless year.

Rafael overheard pieces of conversations as he walked.

“Twenty-five families shot dead down there, they said.”

“I heard it was thirty. Goddamn massacre.”

“I wouldn’t go near that lake if my life depended on it.”

Rafael tried not to listen.

He cut between two trash heaps and spotted the kids, maybe fifty meters ahead. He followed at a distance as they reached the edge of the camp and headed into the woods. He paused, unsure whether or not he should continue. The sun was almost down. In the infirmary they’d warned him about bandits who lurked just beyond Sanctuary City’s perimeter, waiting like wolves for sheep to stray from the safety of the flock.

An hour later, he still wasn’t sure why he’d followed them into the woods. Maybe their laughter had been too much of a temptation, a distraction from his own torturous thoughts.

The sun had set and the early evening was moonless and chilly. Rafael shivered and looked back toward the camp and its barrel fires in the distance. Up ahead the kids had lit torches. Every minute or so, one of the kids would point at something and then disappear into a thicket.

Hunting
, he thought.
They’re hunting
.

But hunting what? And wasn’t it dangerous to be out here, especially at night?

He decided to get a quick look at what they were doing and then turn back. He got closer, keeping himself hidden behind trees and patches of undergrowth. There was something different about their laughter now, something that made Rafael uneasy. He looked back again toward the camp, but the barrel fires were too far away to be seen.