• Home
    • Get the Podcasts
    • About
      • Contact Latinopia.com
      • Copyright Credits
      • Production Credits
      • Research Credits
      • Terms of Use
      • Teachers Guides
  • Art
    • LATINOPIA ART
    • INTERVIEWS
  • Film/TV
    • LATINOPIA CINEMA
    • LATINOPIA SHOWCASE
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Food
    • LATINOPIA FOOD
    • COOKING
    • RESTAURANTS
  • History
    • LATINOPIA EVENT
    • LATINOPIA HERO
    • TIMELINES
    • BIOGRAPHY
    • EVENT PROFILE
    • MOMENT IN TIME
    • DOCUMENTS
    • TEACHERS GUIDES
  • Lit
    • LATINOPIA WORD
    • LATINOPIA PLÁTICA
    • LATINOPIA BOOK REVIEW
    • PIONEER AMERICAN LATINA AUTHORS
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Music
    • LATINOPIA MUSIC
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Theater
    • LATINOPIA TEATRO
    • INTERVIEWS
  • Blogs
    • Angela’s Photo of the Week
    • Arnie & Porfi
    • Bravo Road with Don Felípe
    • Burundanga Boricua
    • Chicano Music Chronicles
    • Fierce Politics by Dr. Alvaro Huerta
    • Mirándolo Bien with Eduado Díaz
    • Political Salsa y Más
    • Mis Pensamientos
    • Latinopia Guest Blogs
    • Tales of Torres
    • Word Vision Harry Gamboa Jr.
    • Julio Medina Serendipity
    • ROMO DE TEJAS
    • Sara Ines Calderon
    • Ricky Luv Video
    • Zombie Mex Diaries
    • Tia Tenopia
  • Podcasts
    • Louie Perez’s Good Morning Aztlán
    • Mark Guerrero’s ELA Music Stories
    • Mark Guerrero’s Chicano Music Chronicles
      • Yoga Talk with Julie Carmen

latinopia.com

Latino arts, history and culture

  • Home
    • Get the Podcasts
    • About
      • Contact Latinopia.com
      • Copyright Credits
      • Production Credits
      • Research Credits
      • Terms of Use
      • Teachers Guides
  • Art
    • LATINOPIA ART
    • INTERVIEWS
  • Film/TV
    • LATINOPIA CINEMA
    • LATINOPIA SHOWCASE
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Food
    • LATINOPIA FOOD
    • COOKING
    • RESTAURANTS
  • History
    • LATINOPIA EVENT
    • LATINOPIA HERO
    • TIMELINES
    • BIOGRAPHY
    • EVENT PROFILE
    • MOMENT IN TIME
    • DOCUMENTS
    • TEACHERS GUIDES
  • Lit
    • LATINOPIA WORD
    • LATINOPIA PLÁTICA
    • LATINOPIA BOOK REVIEW
    • PIONEER AMERICAN LATINA AUTHORS
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Music
    • LATINOPIA MUSIC
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Theater
    • LATINOPIA TEATRO
    • INTERVIEWS
  • Blogs
    • Angela’s Photo of the Week
    • Arnie & Porfi
    • Bravo Road with Don Felípe
    • Burundanga Boricua
    • Chicano Music Chronicles
    • Fierce Politics by Dr. Alvaro Huerta
    • Mirándolo Bien with Eduado Díaz
    • Political Salsa y Más
    • Mis Pensamientos
    • Latinopia Guest Blogs
    • Tales of Torres
    • Word Vision Harry Gamboa Jr.
    • Julio Medina Serendipity
    • ROMO DE TEJAS
    • Sara Ines Calderon
    • Ricky Luv Video
    • Zombie Mex Diaries
    • Tia Tenopia
  • Podcasts
    • Louie Perez’s Good Morning Aztlán
    • Mark Guerrero’s ELA Music Stories
    • Mark Guerrero’s Chicano Music Chronicles
      • Yoga Talk with Julie Carmen
You are here: Home / Blogs / ZOMBIE MEX DIARIES 10.21.13 “ESCAPE!”

ZOMBIE MEX DIARIES 10.21.13 “ESCAPE!”

October 21, 2013 by Tia Tenopia

ESCAPE!

We had been walking steadily for about a half hour. Lazaro De La Tierra, boy zombie, Pearl Gonzalez, the most beautiful zombie woman in the world, were being led by the mysterious Mr. Nez through a secret lit tunnel in the catacombs of the Los Angeles River drainage system. It all had a sense of unreality to me. Finally we came to halt before a metal door.

“Now that wasn’t such a bad walk was it?” Mr. Nez asked.

Neither Pearl nor I were in much of a mood to say anything.

He fiddled with the security box next to the metallic door and once again fed a code into the touch pad screen. The door opened, reveling a hallway leading to the main room of the zombie safe house.

“Which by a comodius vicus of recirculation brings us back to the safe house under Olvera Street!” he said, motioning us in.

“What do we do now?” I asked, taking a seat inside the large room.

“The Juan de Oñate thugs were waiting for you outside the Olvera Street shop. That means we were followed last night.” Mr. Nez replied as he began to hurriedly shuffle documents from a desk in the room into a large leather bag.

“They may not know about the safe house, but they probably suspect it. In any case it’s too dangerous to stay here. It’ll take me a few minutes to close up shop here.”

“Where are we going?” Pearl asked.

“The lab. Its safe. But we’ll have to make sure we’re not followed.”

After a few minutes he had filled the leather bag with all the documents he needed. Mr. Nez then went to the center of the room, moved aside a rug with his foot, and revealed a trapdoor in the floor. He lifted the trapdoor. Inside I could see another control panel.

“Step to the center of the room,” he commanded.

Pearl and I complied. Mr. Nez pushed some buttons on the control panel and then a remarkable thing happened.

The walls in the room began to move!

The walls seemed slide back into a recessed area behind them. Simultaneously, from the sides of the recessed area other walls slid in to take the place of the original walls. Within moments the antique and high tech gear of the safe house were gone, replaced by walls and artifacts that made the room look like an abandoned storage area, complete with spider webs and dust.

“Wow!” Pearl said, “pretty cool!” Mr. Nez smiled as he saw our reaction to the unexpected transformation.

“ If they’re determined they’ll eventually find out this safe house. But if they’re in a hurry, when they come down from the shop upstairs and open this door they may just think it’s a basement storage.”

“Let’s go!” he said.

I started toward the door leading to the upstairs shop on Olvera Street.

“No, not that way.” Mr. Nez said. He pointed to the hallway leading to the Los Angels River tunnels. “We’ll go back through the storm drains.”

I went back to the door that led to the tunnel that had brought us to the safehouse.

“Not that way either,” Mr. Nez said. “We’re going back through a different tunnel.”

He led Pearl and I to another door which opened into yet another lit tunnel, similar to the one we had just been in.

We began walking.

Before long we came to another junction of the storm drains. When we go there Mr. Nez sealed the large metal door behind us and motioned us toward another passage.

“This storm drain will take us back outside but upriver, we come out in a hidden area covered by trees. Even if they are still waiting for us, we should be able to give them the slip.”

We entered the storm drain. This one was bigger than the one we had been in before, we could actually walk on our feet instead of hands and knees. But we still had to hunch our shoulders. It didn’t take us long to come to where the pipe emptied out into the Los Angeles concrete riverbed. As Mr. Nez had said, the opening was covered by overgrown bushes and trees that had taken root. The helicopter that had been raining deadly metal darts at us was nowhere in sight. We scurried down the cement slope to the riverbed below.

After a short walk, we found ourselves under another bridge. We hiked up the slope to a cement path leading to the street above.

When we reached the street level, I could see where we were. This was the Broadway Street bridge that connected my old neighborhood of Lincoln Heights with downtown Los Angeles!
An ice cream vendor’s truck parked on the street near us. Mr. Nez went directly to the back door and knocked. In a moment the door opened, revealing none other than Mr. Brown, my old Boy Scout leader!

“What took you so long,” he said.

“Thanks for coming, “ Mr. Nez replied.

“Lazaro, Pearl, good to see you guys! Mr. Brown said. “I heard about your close call. Get in the cab.”

“Mr. Brown to the rescue!” I said.

“A scout is always prepared,” he replied, indicating the ice cream truck.

The three of us joined Mr. Brown inside the cab of the ice truck. He went to the driver’s seat and started up the engine. Within a few minutes we were traveling north on Broadway, back into Lincoln Heights.

As we drove along I could see the relief in Mr. Nez’s face.

“You can relax,” he said to us.

“Is this lab far from here?” Pearl asked.

“We’ll be there in just a few minutes,” he replied.

Mr. Brown drove the ice cream truck east along Daly Street. Soon we were passing Mission and Daly where the County Morgue was located. Then we continued to Zonal, and suddenly Mr. Brown took a left and headed up Zonal to the USC/County General Hospital.

I knew this hospital well. My mom’s friends were often convalescing here because it catered to the poor. I remember many times accompanying my ‘ama to visit La Señora This and La Señora That. Twenty stories high, it was the highest building visible from Boyle Heights where I had grown up. But what were we doing here?

Within a few moments, Mr. Brown stopped the ice cream truck in from of the main hospital entrance. A series of rising wide cement steps led to the hospital entrance.

It took a moment for it to sink in.

“Mr. Nez,” I asked increduously, “the lab is located here? At the County/USC General Hospital?

“Pretty nifty cover, eh?” he replied. “It’s convenient for us in many ways. Not the least of which is the proximity of a never ending source of cadavers for our resuscitation experiments.”

“You mean…” I began.

“Of course,” Pearl exclaimed, “the county morgue!”

 

Copyright 2013 Lazaro De La Tierra and Barrio Dog Productions Inc.

__________________________

This blog was previously published on Latinopia in March of  2013.

Filed Under: Blogs, Zombie Mex Diaries

TALES OF TORRES 05.25.23 LETS GET RID OF ACTIVE SHOOTER DRILLS

May 26, 2023 By wpengine

Let’s get rid of the presumed need for “active-shooter drills” in our schools Desafortunadamente, we observe a horrifying anniversary this week. A year ago, this country was convulsed by the deadly mass shooting of innocent children at an elementary school in the largely Mexican American town of Uvalde, Texas. Nineteen children and two adults were […]

LATINOPIA GUEST BLOG ANGELA VALENZUELA ON UVALDE 5.26.23 (ORIGINALLY 06.03.22)

June 3, 2022 By wpengine

Reflections on Uvalde by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D. Note: This article was originally published on June 3, 2022. Because of its relevance it is reprinted now, on the one-year anniversary of the Uvalde mass killings. We just got back from Uvalde, my friends. My husband, Emilio and I, took a quick, weekend trip to pay our […]

RICARDO ROMO’S TEJANO REPORT – CESAR MARTINEZ ART ACQUIRED BY MOMA

May 26, 2023 By wpengine

Cesar Martinez’s Art Acquired By New York Museum of Modern Art The prestigious Museum of Modern Art [MOMA] in New York City, in conjunction with the Ruiz-Healy Art Gallery of New York and San Antonio, recently announced the purchase of three paintings by San Antonio artist Cesar Martinez. Patricia Ruiz Healy noted that the MOMA […]

LATINOPIA HERO GLORIA MOLINA – A CHICANA PIONEER

May 20, 2023 By wpengine

GLORIA MOLINA: A CHICANA PIONEER. Like many, many others, I was saddened to learn of the passing of Gloria Molina. She had battled cancer for three years. Accolades poured in from public officials, civic leaders and just plain folks who admired her and her accomplishments. She was, unmistakably, a pioneer in the civic sphere. She […]

More Posts from this Category

New On Latinopia

LATINOPIA FOOD “JALAPEÑO SODA BREAD” RECIPE

By Tia Tenopia on March 14, 2011

Jalapeño Irish Soda Bread The sweetness of traditional Irish soda bread ingredients—raisins, buttermilk, some sugar—are richly complimented by jalapeño heat. Here’s a soda bread recipe from Ireland brought to the USA from Galway by Mary Patricia Reilly Murray and later transformed  with her blessing by her daughter, Bobbi Murray, who added jalapeño chile.  A real […]

Category: Cooking, Food, LATINOPIA FOOD

LATINOPIA EVENT 1966 UFW PEREGRINACIÓN (PILGRIMAGE) MARCH

By Tia Tenopia on March 19, 2013

The effort to organize farm workers under a union contract has been a long and difficult struggle. In 1965, César Chávez and Dolores Huerta created what would become the United Farm Workers Union. From the onset they  faced many obstacles, not the least of which was how to get dozens of California grape growers to […]

Category: History, LATINOPIA EVENT

LATINOPIA MUSIC ANGELA ROA “TOCO DESAFINADO”

By Tia Tenopia on June 22, 2014

Angela Roa is a Chilean singer and lyricist residing in Los Angeles, California. Her songs are about the Latino experience in the United States and in Latin America. Here she performs an original song, “Toco Desafinado” (Out of Tune). She is accompanied by Fernando Losada, Rich Silva and Thiago Winterstein..

Category: LATINOPIA MUSIC, Music

© 2023 latinopia.com · Pin It - Genesis - WordPress · Admin