ATTACK OF THE RED SASH.

I was awakened by the blaring of a loud and persistent wailing alarm. I stumbled out of bed and made my way to the door. Alarm? What was going on here? I could hear footsteps racing outside  my apartment door. A distant voice yelled, “Triage, triage!” Where was I? Then suddenly it all came back to me. I was several floors underneath the General Hospital in East Los Angeles in a secret laboratory run by the La Familia zombies. I was here to be tutored on the history of the zombie race.

Vida, the zombie dog, had adopted me and had taken to sleeping in my quarters. She was now urgently whining and scratching at the door to get out.

I opened the door and we ran out. The hallway was full of techs and medics racing toward the entrance to the Mano Poderosa lab.

Then, suddenly, Pearl was at my side, still dressed in pajamas.

“Lazo, What the hell´s going on?” she asked.

“I don´t know, heck I didn’t even know this place had alarms.”

Just then Mr. Nez came hurrying by, followed by a team of medics with grim faces. He turned to us as he hurried passed.

“We´ve been hit! Come along we need all the help we can muster.”

Pearl and I quickly fell into step behind Mr. Nez and his team. We looked at one another, silently mouthing our questions. We´d been hit? By whom?  And where? Suddenly a loudspeaker blared through out the lab.

“Attention, attention. Oñate victims now arriving at the Northeast entrance.”

Then it all fell into place. The Oñate zombies, of course!

“The Friday meeting of La Familia.” Mr Nez barked over his shoulder, keeping us all jogging at a brisk pace. “Someone detonated a bomb of projectiles at head level. Lots of our people were hit.”

We reached the main entrance to the lab and I could see that a makeshift emergency ward had been set up. Bodies of zombies were laid out on cots and stretchers, but they  were alive. Moaning from their wounds, but still alive…er, dead. Sort of.

Off to the far end of the room I could see a large mound of bodies that were NOT moving. These bodies were ghastly pallid and motionless. I could see that each one had been hit once or more in the head by metal projectile, similar to the metal darts with which Pearl and I had been targeted at Olvera Street.

I walked up to the mound of zombie carcasses. Mr. Nez and his group were busy examining the survivors. As I approached the death mound, my stomach wrenched. These were the first “dead” zombies I had ever seen. It made me shudder. It sank into me just how deadly the Oñate threat really was.

“My god, they’re actually dead.” Pearl said quietly joining me. “And I thought we were invincible.”

“Report!” I heard Mr. Nez call out behind us.

We turned to see he was addressing La Señora Falcón who was covered with the grey mucous fluid that passed as zombie blood and looking like she was still in shock. But she appeared otherwise unhurt. She took a deep breath and spoke.

“They hit us this evening at the beginning of the meeting,” she said. “There was an infiltrator who positioned a bomb device on one of the credenzas in the main meeting hall, making sure it was a head level. When the bomb went off, the blast sent these metal darts right into the crowd. “

“Did you catch him?”

“It was a her. We did but she pulled out a handgun and blew her brains out in front of us.”

“Oñate.” Mr. Nex said grimly, decisively.

“Yes, I´m sure of it,” La Señora Falcón replied.

She reached into a side bag slung over her shoulder. She pulled out a piece of a red sash, partially burned and covered with soot.

“Mr. Nez nodded. “The Oñate scarlet sash.”

“Scarlet sash?” Pearl asked.

“It’s the scarlet sash Juan de Oñate wore as a conquistador. He now uses it to identify members of the Oñate clan.”

Mr. Nex turned to the medics. “Let´s finish triage. Sandoval, Melendez, get the injured into the medical ward and see to their wounds. He turned to several techs working nearby. He nodded toward the pile of bodies in the corner.

“Use the tunnel. The furnace is scheduled for six this morning.”

The men moved to the bodies and started loading them onto hospital gurneys.  Mr. Nez saw me staring at the bodies.

“We have a tunnel that connects this facility to the county morgue,” he explained.  “Its right around the corner at Main Street and Mission. We selected this locale because when we do get to the point where we´re ready to experiment with the mutant gene, we´ll need a ready source of cadavers. There are several thousand cadavers there now.”

“And these bodies?” I asked.

“The county periodically burns unclaimed cadavers that have been processed on alternate mornings at 6AM.  Several workers there are members of La Familia. ”

The medics soon were moving the wounded zombies into an emergency sick bay that had been set up in the hospital wing of the lab. Before long Pearl and I were helping push gurneys down the hall and into the emergency room. It was clear that all of our resources would be devoted to helping out our injured comrades and that the research at the lab would be on hold for a while.

After we had helped settle the wounded, Pearl and I went from bed to bed asking if there was anything they wanted. We spent the rest of morning helping out as best we could.

By dinner things had quieted down. Pearl and I were having supper in the commissary. Vida, never far from me, was asleep under the table, when Mrs. Gonzalez came up to us. She looked haggard and tired. The smile I ordinarily associated with her was gone.

“Lazo, Pearl you´re to go to room 27 in the hospital wing at 7Pm tonight.”

“What´s up?”  I asked.

“We’re at war now,” Mrs. Gonzalez said with gravity. “And it’s time you all grew up.”

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

My discussion with Pearl about eating human flesh made me more thoughtful about Vida, the mutated zombie dog, and her vegetarian diet. Vida shadowed me everywhere I went and I had gotten to thinking of her as “my”dog. One night I watched her wolf down a bowl of lettuce, carrots, and celery. When she finished, she licked her chops as if she had just finished off a tasty T-bone steak, then went to the bed I had fashioned her her underneath my bed and promptly fell asleep.

I wondered what might happen if we did find the secret to the mutant zombie gene? Could Vida´s vegetarian proclivities be transferred over to human zombies? Was it possible for us to lose our zombie desires for human flesh?

The next day I decidEd to take this idea up with Dr. Martinez, director of research on the Mano Poderosa project. I found her in the centrifuge corner of the main laboratory. I asked if the research being conducted on the mutant zombie gene included any research into our zombie diet and the lust for human flesh.

“Of course,” she replied. “Mr. Nez started the research with this in mind. It goes back to the Book of Life and Death.” She pointed to a framed 8 X 10 inch quotation hanging on the wall nearby.The framed card read: “Shall I eat then of human flesh? Surely, the Giver of Life will offer me other sustenance.”

She looked down at Vida who settled on the floor at my feet. “Our hope is to find out what makes Vida a vegetarian. Perhaps then we can find out how we can change our desire for raw human flesh.”

“And how is it going? I asked.

“We’ve done a study of the human genome, as much of it as Science presently knows, and tried to find out the key differences between standard human DNA and our own resusitated zombie DNA.The differences are hard to quantify–they seem to vary from zombie to zombie. No set pattern, no commonalities. Frankly, for the past few years, since we discovered you and Pearl, we’ve shifted our focus to what the similarities are between the five…er, seven progenitor bloodlines.”

I was still uncomfortable with the idea that I was the orginator of a distinct zombie bloodline, like that of Mr. Nez and four other members of La Familia and, of course, Pearl.

“You coming to class?” I turned to see Pearl standing by the door.

I looked at the clock on the lab wall and saw it was time for our regular class with Mrs. Gonzalez.

“Yeah, I’m coming,” I replied.I thanked Dr. Martinez for her time and left with Pearl.

That afternoon we spent more time studying the cryptic the Book of Life and Death. Mrs. Gonzalez was intent on making sure we learned about the history of the zombie race that was contained in the book, though not in a particualrly organized way.

For example, we’d read a passage about the resusitated zombie Nezahualcoyotl leading a group of followers to the north of Tenochititlan–all of this after the Spanish conquest. His dream was to find an isolated location where he and his followers could live in peace, away from the Spanish rule. “We seek another Aztlán. A land of reeds and herons, do we seek. Reeds growing in a lake, herons abiding therein.”

Mrs. Gonzalez referenced this passage to the year 1610 after Nezahualcoyotal–Mr. Nez– had regained his sanity and had become a religious leader leading a group of his people to found a “Second Aztlán.” She explained that the orginal Aztlán. had been the original homeland from which the Mexica people had emigrated to later found Mexico-Tenochtitlan.”

“Does the Book of Life and Death contain all the history of the zombie race to the present?” Pearl asked.

Mrs. Gonzalez nodded. “Yes, but it’s a obscure. That’s why I’m here, to help guide you through the history revealed in the text.”

That night, as I lay in my bed with Vida sleeping in her bed underneath me, I couldn’t help thinking of the inscription that Dr. Martinez had on her wall. I realized that more than six hundred years ago Mr. Nez had articulated the basic question that had plagued me for years and that I was certain was on the mind of every zombie member of La Familia, “Shall I eat then of human flesh?”

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

KING OF TEXCOCO.

The news that Mr. Nez, leader of the La Familia band of zombies, was indeed the legendary Aztec poet King Nezahualcoyotl was stunning. It made Pearl and I devoted students of “The Book of Life and Death,” the ancient Aztec manuscript archived at the Mano Poderosa laboratory library

As Mrs. Gonzalez, our new found teacher, had indicated, the English translation of the Nahuatl text as the end of the manuscript made our daily “lessons” if not easy at least manageable.

We spent the next several days totally immersed in a time and place six hundreds in the past. The first passage of the manuscript set down the tone and direction.

“In the year of 3 Rabbit, in the Valley of the Sun, the poet King ruled. Texcoco was his kingdom, the poet King ruled in Texcoco. Nezalhualcoyotl, builder of roads and aqueducts, builder of palaces and gardens, creator of song and flowers. And the great Nezalhualcoyotl did rule with wisdom and justice. Wisdom and justice was the rule of the king of Texcoco.”

Yeah, lot of repetitions. We discovered that 3-Rabbit translated to the year 1430 A.D.

Before long Pearl and I got into a pattern. We would breakfast together in the commissary. Then head for the library where Mrs. Gonzalez would give us our daily assignment and be on hand to answer any question we might have. Then we’d plow through the English translation of the ancient Nahuatl text. We took turns reading outloud to one another.

A week after we started I found myself reading outloud to Pearl from the Book of Life and Death. I had just read several pages extolling the grandeur of King Nezalhualcoyotl.

Then the manuscript translation gave a kind of bio of Nezalhualcoyotl. Turns out when he was only sixteen, he saw his father, then King of Texcoco, assassinated before his very eyes by the forces of neighboring Azcapotzalco. Thanks to the help of a servant, he barely escaped with his life and went into exile until he grew to be a man. Then he organized neighboring cities and went to war with the people of Azcapotzalco. He managed to defeat them and regained the kingdom of Texcoco. He ruled it for the next forty years until he was 71. That’s when he died.

Then the manuscript took a turn. The handwriting shifted from the careful hand of an abstract historian scholar to the uneven and labored scrawl of an old person. It was the voice of Nezahualcoyotl himself, on his death bed.

“Followers and friends, on my beloved family, I lie before you on the eve of my journey to Mixtlan, the Land of the Dead. Hear this and listen, listen and learn. In my living life I wondered about the afterlife. Are we not mortals? Humans within and without? We must all go away, we all have only a small time on earth. I welcome my journey to Mixtlan and look forward to meeting the Lord of the Near and Close. May I rest and may you join me someday.”

And then the narration really took a flip. I skimmed back to the original and saw that the parchment had changed, and the handwriting as well. This was a new document entirely. Now  the writing was precise and determined, the handwriting of someone young and energetic.

“Oh calamity, oh lamentations! Did I not die? Was I not buried? And whence do I come forth anew? I am intoxicated. I weep of my life before. I  wonder at this new life ahead. Am I mad? How I can be alive anew? And what of this young body? Where has age gone? What has the Giver of life given to me? And why? Indeed, I shall never die, indeed, I shall never disappear. I am now where death is overcome. By the most Powerful Hand of the Giver of Life.”

When we got to that part, Pearl stopped my reading.

“Oh my God, Lazaro, ‘Most powerful hand of the giver of life,’ that’s where Mano Poderosa must come from!”

“Of course,” I said. This was really neat getting to know the back story of our zombie ancestors. Wow!

The rest of the manuscript was all in the new handwriting. It went on to describe how Nezalhuacoyotl had gone temporarily insane after his resurrection from the dead. In a methodical and reasoned manner, the narrative described how he lived for years as a begger, hiding from his family or anyone who might know him. How he was so despondent that he tried unsuccessfully to kill himself several times. Then he finally came back to his senses and figured out that if he was alive there must be a reason for it.

“Gone is the smell of flowers only that of death abides with me now. Gone is the color of my father and mother on my skin, only the pale whiteness of death now. But is there not a purpose for me to exist? What task has the Giver of Life set before me?”

And then Nezalhuacoyotl wrote about how his appetite had changed.

“Do I not lust for the taste of human flesh? Yes, it is true. But what of the flower and song that gives to life so much meaning? Can this be only chimera? No! It is flower and song that sustains us all.  Shall I eat then of human flesh? No, truly now rotting beasts shall fill my stomach, truly rotting beast shall give me sustenance. Would the Giver of Life not want it this way?”

This passage, of course, hit home to me in a special way.

I still remembered the thrill I felt when I  tasted the human blood that had been used to write “Die Mutant!” on my apartment wall. There was no denying it. And yet, throughout my association with the La Familia zombies, no one had ever made mention of wanting to eat humans. Yet I knew that this was the driving force behind the Juan de Oñate zombies. And of course I had never even dared speak to Pearl about this.

But I decided that I must.

And so I finally did.

That afternoon, after reading the passage on Nezalhualcoyotl’s resurrection and his declared lust for human flesh, Pearl and I were getting ready to go back to our bedrooms to clean up before dinner. The library was almost completely empty so I took the opportunity.

“Pearl,” I said, “Can I ask you personal questions?

“Lazo, by now you should know that I have no secrets from you. Geez, Lazo, we’re in this together. And it is life or death, you know. What is it?”

“Human flesh,” I said boldly. I figured I might as well get it out there. “Have you ever…wanted to …eat human flesh?”

Pearl was silent for a long moment. She turn her eyes away from me. Was she embarrassed? Finally she looked back and made eye contact.

“Yes, of course. All of us zombies want to eat humans. That’s part of who were are.”

“But no one talks about it,” I said.”Mr.Nez badmouths the Oñate clan for eating human flesh but no one owns up the desires they have for it!”

“You’re right, Lazo, it’s the proverbial elephant in the room. Even though we have gone through the zombie transformation, we are all human being at heart. We know it’s wrong and we, what‘s the word, we sublimate it by eating other things. That’s why Mr. Nez is so adamant about fighting the Oñates. They’ve given in to this dark urge.”

Then I decided to really take bold step. As long as we were all getting it all out in the open.

“So why not eat human beings?” I asked her point blank.

“Lazo,” Pearl said looking into my eyes, “that would make us animals. We may be zombies, but we’re still human! We’re still part of the human race and we have a gift, the zombie gene that resurrected us can perhaps prolong human life. What Mr. Nez said six hundred years ago still holds true. Remember, “What task has The Giver of Life set before me?” The task is here in the Mano Poderosa lab and in our lives. The task is to protect the human race.”

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

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This blog was originally published on April 4, 2013.

SCHOOL AGAIN?

It was first good sleep I’d had in several days. I awoke to the sound of someone jamming a piece of paper, loudly and persistently, under the sill of my bedroom door. For a moment I was at a loss, where was I? Then instantly it all came back. I was in my bedroom at the secret laboratories of La Mano Poderosa zombie laboratory. The lab was located under the General Hospital in East Los Angeles. I picked up the scrap of paper as I glance at the radio clock on the end table next to my bed. It read 6AM.

The note read: “Breakfast is in the dining area at 8AM. Be in the library at 9AM for your first lesson. N.”

Lesson?

I showered in the tiny but serviceable private shower adjacent to my bedroom, and then dressed in the only other set of jeans and t-shirt I owned. I had hastily thrown the clothes into a bag at my apartment in what seemed as a lifetime ago but was actually only three days. For a moment I thought of the attack on our modest El Sereno apartment by the Oñate death squad and then my ‘ama being taken away for her own safety. Mr. Nez had assured me that she was safe, that was all that mattered for now.

I met Pearl at the cafeteria. She was already seated and downing what looked like scrumptious cat entrails.

“Looks good,” I said.

“Oh Lazaro, the food here is great! Try the cat entrails with cow brain waffles! And don’t miss the tripa syrup for the waffles! “

I made my selections from the breakfast buffet and joined Pearl at a long cafeteria table where lab techs, doctors and computer nerds were all eating full blown zombie breakfasts and engaging in lively conversation on a wide variety of topics.

“…the chromosome factor only applies when the body is already dead…”

“…I still think the mice can work as a model…before we move on to cats.”

“…whether we apply binary or traditional, we still have to create a language that can be migrated to new developments–string theory for example.”

For the first time in years I felt truly at home.

“Did you get a note…” I began.

“…about the 9AM first lesson,. Yeah,” Pearl responded. “Wonder what they have in store for us.”

“Beats me,” I replied. We munched in silence for a while.

As I looked at Pearl eating breakfast. I realized how much I really was in love with her. She ate quietly, skimming the front page of the LA Times which she had pilfered from a stack of papers at the front entrance to the commissary. She was really absorbed in her reading and it allowed me to study here and appreciate how really beautiful she was.

I wondered about our future together, as I had several times since Mr. Nez had told us about how we were the progenitors of two distinct zombie bloodlines. Did that mean that my love for Pearl was precluded? Could we ever have a normal romance? Heck, I didn’t even know for sure how she felt about me.

For a moment I wished that neither of us were zombies. I wished that we were not being hunted by the Juan de Oñate clan of zombies and that we didn’t possess the special gene that neither of us really cared about or had even asked for.

For a long moment all I wanted was for Pearl and I to be just to normal human-being-teenagers. So that I could tell her how much I loved her. And so that perhaps some day we might be able to fall in love the way normal humans do. And even…get married.

“That’s not going to happen,” Pearl said abruptly.

“Huh?” I replied. Had she been reading my mind?

“Sez here, in the paper, that the city council is considering an ordinance that would set up drunk driver sobriety check points randomly at undisclosed intersections in the city three times a week.”

“ Oh” I said, catching my breath. “Why do they want to do that?”

“Those fatal accidents last month. Too many drunk drivers. What bothers me is what if one of us gets stopped.”

I got her point immediately.

“The smell,” I said.

“Right, “ Pearl said, “nothing like the smell of death on the breathalizer to let you know this driver is impaired.”

We both laughed at that.

“Lazaro, what do you suppose this “Lesson “is all about?”

“I don’t know, ” I replied. “But I guess we’ll soon find out.”

And a few minutes later we walked into the library and did find out.

The room was really large. Obviously the site of a lot of research. One whole wall was dedicated to computer stations with monitors and on the wall was a giant size super rectangular screen, perhaps twelve by twenty feet. In the middle of the room were numerous wooden tables with chairs, like you might find in any library. Against the other three walls were floor to ceiling bookshelves and large computer storage structures– a lot data was being mined in this room. From the covers of the books on the shelves, it looked like some were really old.

“Right on time for your first lesson,” I heard someone say behind us. We turned to find it was Mrs. Gonzalez, my librarian friend from the Lincoln Heights library. Standing at the doorway with an armload of books and a computer in her arms.

“Mrs. Gonzalez!” I said with a smile. I was really glad to see her.

“And I’m happy to see you, Lazaro, and you, Pearl. I’m even happier to say we’re going to be seeing a lot of each other in the next few weeks. Mr. Nez has assigned me to be your…I guess you would call me your teacher.”

“What exactly are you going to be teaching us?” Pearl wanted to know.

“Well, we don’t want you to get behind on your regular classes–Algebra, History, English–the classes you might be taking if you were back at Wilson. But there’s also a lot of information you need to know about that I think you will only find here.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“Well, let’s start with the this.” She deposited her armload on a table and then walked over to one of the shelves and pulled out an ancient looking manuscript. She brought it back to the table. It was big and thick, about a foot wide and a foot and half long.  The pages, I could see, were not made of regular paper.  They looked like heavy parchment, each page about sewn to the binding with thick leather thread.  The writing on the cover of the “book” was in some language I didn’t recognize.

“It’s called a codice,” Mrs. Gonzalez explained. “It’s one of the ancient books written by the Aztecs.”

“Right,” said Pearl beginning to leaf through the pages. “I’ve heard of this.”

“This one is titled “Teomoxtli nemiliztli miquitli,” Mrs. Gonzales continued. “I guess you could translate it as “The Book of Life and Death.”

“Life and death, wow!” I said. “Nothing light weight about this, eh.”

“What? Are we supposed to read this,” Pearl asked. “And if so, why? And how?”

“This book was originally written in Aztec hieroglyphic writings about 700 years ago. It was written by the very first human being to be born with the mutant zombie gene that resurrects you when you die. It has since been translated into Spanish.”

She indicated the center portion of the manuscript which was also in parchment but I could see Spanish scrawling on the pages.

“And then…” She indicated the back part of the manuscript where I could see normal pages were attached.”…into modern English. We make it easy for you.”

“Who wrote this?” Pearl asked.

“He was a very gifted poet and king of the Mexica people,” Mrs. Gonzalez replied. “His name was Nezahualcoyotl

“Nezalhualcoyotl. We’ve heard that name before, from Mr. Nez.”

Mrs. Gonzalez gave Pearl a quizzical look. Then she smiled broadly and chuckled.

“I guess you guys don’t get it, eh?’

“Get what?”

“Lazaro, Pearl,” Mrs. Gonzalez said patiently. “Mr. Nez IS the ancient Aztec king Nezahualcoyotl. He is the very very first zombie. And this book is a record of our zombie people.”

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

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This blog was previously posted in March 31, 2103

GENETIC RIDDLES.

“A zombie dog?” I asked.

It was a few minutes after our arrival at the underground chambers of the Mano Poderosa laboratory, secretly situated underneath the Los Angeles County USC Medical Facility. Mr. Nez and Mr. Brown had gone off to confer with security concerning the vicious attack on us by the Juan De Oñate zombies. Dr. Martínez had volunteered to show us around the lab and to our living quarters. Vida, the pit bull mix, followed close behind us, wagging her tail and seeming totally in charge of the situation.

“Yes, Vida is our first successful resurrection,” Dr. Martínez explained as she led Pearl and I through swinging double doors into a vast laboratory complex. We walked past lab technicians busy at pristine white tables. Some pored over electronic microscopes, others adjusted  centrifuge settings, still others conducted tests with rows and rows of petri dishes. I could see this was really a full blown operation.

“As you know the Mano Podreosa project is dedicated to finding a viable way of utilizing the mutant zombie gene that both of you, and the five progenitors, possess. We hope to convert it into a way of bringing human beings back to life, ending human mortality.”

“And you’re starting with dogs?” Pearl asked.

“Not exactly,” Dr. Martínez replied with a smile. “Let me backtrack. In the early 1980s we were able to isolate the mutant zombie gene that you two and a few others were naturally born with. This mutant gene that is part of your DNA, it’s unique to you.”

We continued walking among the lab technicians.

“When you die,” Dr. Martínez went on, “that gene contains a “trigger” that goes off and reboots your dead body, bringing it back to life. Of course that comes with the unique zombie properties we’re all familiar with–no heartbeat, the residual odor of death, the ghastly white pallor. Till what we call the “puberty” phase passes. Then you begin to look more and more human.

“Like you,” I said. I kinda of wanted to state the obvious, just to be sure. Dr. Martinez instantly understand what I was asking.

“Yes, Lazaro,” all of us here are zombies. I am a zombie.”

“But you look so human!” Pearl blurted out.

“Yes, but we’re all descendant from one or another of the five family bloodlines. You two are the only ones that have a distinct and unique bloodline of your own. That’s one of the reasons we want you here. To help us solve our puzzle.”

“The puzzle being how to isolate the ”trigger”effect that rises us from the dead.” I ventured.

“How to isolate it, and apply it so it works on human beings who have died by natural causes and have regular DNA.”

“So it can work on just anybody. Right?” Pearl asked.

“That’s our goal,” Dr. Martínez replied.

We had moved from the lab area, through another set of swinging doors, and into what was obviously living quarters. We came into a large living room. It was comfortably furnished with couches, chairs and tables and even a pool table. A few zombies were  seated watching TV while others played a game of chess.

“We started experimenting with the usual lab subjects…mice,” Dr. Martínez continued.

“In this case it was dead mice. We tried unsuccessfully for more than a decade. Oh we thought we had early successes. But the mice that came back to life didn’t last very long. A day at most. Their bodies seemed to overheat inexplicably. They died again and there was no further resurrecting them. Some of them seemed to be in terrible pain before they died again. It made us really consider what we were up against. We didn’t want to try that on humans till we knew for certain all the parameters of the effects of the genetic material we were using.”

There was a moment of silence as we took this in. The idea of bringing dead people back to life only to suffer terrible pain before dying again was unsettling to say the least.

We had now moved into a hallway of what appeared to be a dorm. Each door had a name on the door and some were even decorated with clippings and photos.

“This is what we call the hotel. We all have a room here. We even get a private shower and bathroom.”

“But what about Vida?” I asked, scratching the dog under her ear. She had obviously taken quite a liking to me.

“Vida was a fortuitous accident,” Dr. Martinez replied, leading us further down the hallway.

“Accident?” Pearl and I said in union.

“Her original name was Lucy. She was my dog and I would bring here to the lab to keep me company on days I worked late. One day, she wandered into one of the sample rooms–that’s where we keep various genetic extracts of the zombie gene. She seems to have made a meal of some of the petri dishes. By the time I discovered her, she was dead. I examined her and as near as I could tell it was a heart attack–the effect of the alien material in her system. Of course, I was heartbroken. I thought that was the end of her. And then, an hour after I had pronounced her dead, she popped back to life. As you see her now, a zombie dog. That’s why I renamed her Vida.”

“So now you know how to bring people back to life, right?” I asked.

“Not so easy,” Dr. Martínez replied as she opened a door revealing a modest but quite attractive bedroom. “This one’s for you, Lazaro.”

She indicated the next room down the hall, “That one is your room Pearl.”  Then she remembered what we were talking about.

“We don’t know exactly what it was that Vida consumed that night. There were several experiments in the works at the time and we don’t know how much of whatever she may have drunk. For the past few months we’ve been retracing our steps, trying to figure out what the combination of genetic material may have been that brought her back to life.”

“But eventually you’ll know, right?” Pearl asked.

“We can only hope. The good news is that Vida is living proof that our eventual goal is obtainable. The bad news is it may take us many years before we rediscover the particular combination that makes it work, at least for dogs. Then the much larger question remains, how to make it work for humans.”

Dr. Martínez glanced at her watch and a concerned look came over her face.

“I have to go now,” Dr. Martínez said, “late for a meeting. Dinner is at six–I hear we’re having fresh roadkill. Explore. There’s a swimming pool and exercise room at the end of the hall. And if you have any questions just ask anyone. We’ve all been briefed about you two and how important you are to the project.”

She started to leave and then noticed that Vida had other plans. She plopped down on the bed in my bedroom.

“I guess you have a new roommate,” Dr. Martínez said. “Just don’t offer her any meat.”

“Huh,” I said. This sounded strange.

“Vida is a vegetarian. We’re not sure if it is particular to her or something that applies to any animal resurrected by the mutant zombie gene.”

Copyright 2013 Lazaro De La Tierra and Barrio Dog Productions Inc

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This blog was originally published on Latinopia on March 24, 2013.

VIDA.

“Just remember, you’re here to visit a sick relative. If anyone asks, it’s your uncle José on your mother’s side.”

Having narrowly escaped the bombarding metal darts of the Oñate zombie clan only an hour before, we were walking briskly down a hallway on the first floor of the County/USC Medical Center (everyone in the barrio knew simply as The General Hospital). Mr. Nez was in the lead, followed by me, Pearl Gonzalez and Mr. Brown, the driver of the fake ice cream truck that had rescued us from the marauding zombies. He had driven us to the Eastside medical facility which, I had just been told, was the site of Mission Poderosa. The laboratory conducted experiments on the mutant zombie gene which someday might end mortality and give human beings eternal life.

Hey work with me on this. Just go with it–I had to!

We arrived at the bank of elevators and saw we were in a for a long wait–along with the collection of humanity that accumulates in front of the four elevator doors at the General Hospital. A teenage boy in baseball uniform nursing a broken arm, two pregnant mothers on their way to prenatal care, a tattooed ruquito in a wheel chair, showing the battle scars of years of barrio warfare, and a day laborer, the grime still on his worn Dickies with a very worried expression on his face. But everyone was quiet and polite, all waiting for the elevator that would wisk them to their respective medical destinies.

When the elevator finally showed up, our group quickly crammed in, along with the pregnant moms, the teenage Fernando Valenzuela, the veteran ruco and the harried construction worker. Before anyone could say anything, however, Mr. Nez pushed a button to the basement floor.

“Going down” he announced emphatically.

I could tell everyone was pissed. They were all going up. They looked at each other and decided they’d get out and wait for another elevator. When they were all out, the elevator door closed on our small group as we descended to the basement floor. Mr. Nez, meanwhile, reached into the bag he had been carrying.

“Here,” he said as he handed out cotton face masks. “Put these on.”

Pearl and I looked at each other, nodded our heads. Hey, just go with it remember.

When the elevator door opened on the basement floor we all started get out, but Mr. Nez motioned us back. He pulled a credit card out of his pocket and slid it along the elevator control box. Suddenly a new floor appeared on the elevator gauge.”Lower basement” The damn thing hadn’t been there before. Now all of a sudden a “Lower Basement” floor existed.

Within moments the elevator had descended again and this time when the door opened we found ourselves in an empty sterile hallway with white walls. Adjacent to the elevator a sign with an arrow indicated: “Contagious Diseases- Permit Required.”

Mr. Nez was in the lead again, Pearl and I and Mr. Brown following along. We came to the entrance to a hospital wing. The double doors were closed. Sitting at a desk adjacent to the entrance was a guard wearing a face mask and thumbing through a boxing magazine.

“Excuse me,” Mr. Nez said,” We’re here to visit a relative, Mr. José Buendia.”

The guard looked at us with suspicion. Then he examined the clipboard he held. I could see a long string of names on it. His finger went down and then stopped on a particular name.

“Yes, Mr. José Buendia is here. Go right in.” He looked up at Mr. Nez and winked.

We followed Mr.Nez as he plowed through the double doors and into the hospital wing. Or so it seemed. There was a nurse’s station with two nurses chatting away, a small waiting area with chairs but no visitors, and beyond we could see another set of closed double doors. For all appearances, a typical hospital waiting room.

And then the entire floor began to move.

I suddenly realized that we were not in a waiting room at all, we were in yet another elevator! Except this time, the entire waiting room was the elevator and we were descending once more.

After what seemed like an eternity but was probably not more than three or four minutes, the room stopped moving and came to a stop with a slight jolt.

One of the doors at the end of the hallway opened and what looked like a medium sized pit bull and German Shepard mix came bounding through the door. The short haired dog looked pretty menacing and Pearl and I took a step back. The dog seemed to single me out. She came directly to me jumped up and immediately started licking my face. In a second I was busy scratching the back of his ears, and then, as she slid on her back, scratching her belly. She was hardly menacing, just a delightful little pup.

“She seems to have taken a liking to you,” someone said.

I looked up to see that a twenty-something woman had entered the fake waiting room. She wore black eyeglasses and was dressed in a doctor’s smock.

“I’m Dr. Martínez,” she said, “and welcome to Mission Poderosa. You must be Pearl and Lazaro.”

“Yeah, that us.” Pearl replied

“Well I’m so glad to see you. Especially after the fright you had today. You’re safe here. Consider this your new home.”

“Such a cute dog,” Pearl said, joining me in scratching the dog’s belly.

“She’s a very special dog.” Mr. Nez, interjected, giving Dr. Martínez a knowing look.

“Yes, that she is.” Dr. Martinez replied. “Her name is Vida…Life! And I’ll bet she’s the first zombie dog you’ve ever met!”

Copyright 2013 by Lazaro De La Tierra and Barrio Dog Productoins Inc.

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This blog was previously published on Latinopia on March 11, 2013.

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.

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

RETURN TO COUNTY GENERAL.

The caravan of zombie vans returning from the destroyed training camp in the Joshua Tree desert approached Los Angeles on the San Bernardino freeway; the setting sun silhouetted the buildings of the downtown skyline.

Filomino was driving the lead van, I was riding shotgun, Vida, the only zombie dog in existence, nestled asleep in my lap. Gus, Pearl, Jaime , Jenny and Sally were in the back seats. Throughout the three hour drive, the mood in the van had been ominously dark. We had gotten pounded by Oñate and his villainous zombies and now we were returning to Los Angeles and the Mission Poderosa headquarters with our tails between our legs instead of the conquering heroes we had hoped to be.

We got off Interstate 10 at the State Street exit and made our way to the back parking area on Zonal Street behind the County USC General Hospital. We parked the vans and then made our way on foot to the clandestine headquarters located in secret floors below the massive twenty-story iconic Los Angeles landmark.

“Remember, we’ll go in separate groups–stick with those in your van,” Filomino said.

Whenever we went in and out of the hidden zombie headquarters we took the special elevator in small groups so as not to attract attention. As Pearl, Gus, Filomino and I got into the elevator, Filomino pulled out a card and slid it along the elevator control box. A new floor suddenly appeared on the elevator gauge, “Lower Basement.” Filomino pressed the new button on the elevator and within moments we were stepping onto the lower basement floor and entering the fake reception room for contagious diseases center. As before, once we entered the entire room descended into the ground, the fake room was an elevator taking us to the underground laboratories of Mission Poderosa.

The double doors opened into the main lab complex it. I remembered–it seemed so long ago–that this was set up as a biochemical lab to find the secret of the mutant zombie gene that might save all humandkind . This was not the lab room now. What I saw before me was the central lab complex converted into a massive war room.

Everywhere zombies were scurrying about bringing computer print-outs and faxes from a wall lined with computers and printers to a large strategy table in a far corner of the room.  In the center of the large room, centrifuges, microscopes and other lab equipment had been replaced with two banks of laptops staffed by a dozen zombie techs. On one wall a large video screen, twenty feet across and ten feet high, displayed a map of the United States. Satellite monitors throughout the room, zombies in combat gear and the planning table covered with maps underscored the impression of a busy war room. Heck, that’s what it was.

Filominno left us without a word and made his way to report to Mr. Nez whom I could see at the strategy table, pouring over maps with a half dozen zombies all involved in a quiet but determined debate.

I took the moment to nudge Pearl. We walked over to the wall with the large screen. On the enormous monitor a map of the continental United States, Hawaii and Alaska was displayed. In each state I could see glowing pinpoints of lights, some in iridescent green and others in a deep hued purple.

“I guess that must be us and them,” Pearl said looking over my shoulder at the display.

“But whos who?” Gus Dominguez piped in.

“Not sure it matters much at this stage,” said a voice behind us. We turned to find our old friend La Señora Falcón approaching us. Pearl and I immediately ran up and embraced her.

“Oh, it’s so good to see you kids,” she said warmly.  “For the record, each green represents a hundred La Familia zombies, each purple light a hundred of Oñate’s thugs.”

My eyes went back to the board with new understanding. I looked at Los Angeles, there were easily two or three thousand of us here and a slightly smaller number of Oñate zombies. But along the southern part of the border states –California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas–there was a drastically disproportionate number of  Oñate’s forces, perhaps thousands more of them. The area immediately adjacent to the Mexican border was a pulsating strip of purple that covered both sides of the imaginary line between the U.S. and Mexico.

I pointed to the purple strip,”Why are Oñate ‘s forces so clustered around the border? Look there’s dozens of them here where there’s nothing but desert.”

“Illicit immigrant smuggling. That’s where Oñate’s vermin find the bulk of their victims. They kidnap people for food, women to be used as mothers for the army they are building. The helpless immigrants are ideal victims. No one knows how many cross so no one will miss the unlucky victims of Oñate’s zombie patrols.”

There was a moment of silence as the thought sunk in. By now the rest of the Joshua Tree trainees had entered the war room and had joined our circle and were listening in rapt attention to La Señora Falcón’s words. She looked us over. She could see the evidence of our recent battle with Oñate’s aerial raiders.

“I know you all have been through a lot. But I’m sorry to tell you, there’s much more to come.”

As if on cue, Mr. Nez burst from the enclave at the strategy table walking briskly toward us. He was followed by Filomino and a half dozen zombies, all in combat gear. Since when did we have an army? Among the followers I recognized Mr. Brown, my old Boy Scout leader. Yes, in combat dress.

“Glad you made it back safely,” Mr. Nez said without preamble as he arrived at our circle. “Let me bring you up to date.”

He positioned himself in front of the large screen and pointed to a desert spot in California, down below the Nevada border. It looked to me like it might be near Barstow or even Joshua Tree from where we had just come. As with the border area, this lone single spot was teeming with purple lights.

“There must thousands there. ” I said.

“Yeah, what is that?” Pearl wanted to know. “It looks like its in the middle of the desert.”

“Amboy, California,” Mr. Nez replied. “It was once a thriving town along the old Route 66, the main artery for car traffic between Chicago and Los Angeles. When they built Interstate 40 from Needles to Barstow, the town died. Oñate took over the town and had the few dozen diehards who remained for supper. Then he installed his own fake “residents” for the sake of the occasional lost tourist or history buff. But, in fact, it’s his secretive main base of operations.”

“Well let’s get down there and kick some butt!” a voice shouted from the group–it was Gus Dominguez.

“Exactly what we intend to do,” Mr. Nez said gravely.” And most of you will be part of that assault. As you can see, “ he nodded to the zombies next  to him in combat gear, “we’ve mobilized our forces. But before we do any of that, we have a little housekeeping to tend to.” With that he nodded to Filomino who spoke into his walkie.

“Rabbit snare” Filomino said.

Suddenly we were surrounded by a dozen zombies in combat gear. Each had one of Filomeno’s specially crafted hand guns out and aimed at our heads.

“Take them down below to interrogation.” Filomino said. “if anyone tries to escape, wound but don’t kill. We’ll do that later, slowly.”

Without any further word we were summarily ushered toward a large stairwell located down the hall.  I didn’t  know the stairwelll existed. As I passed by Mr. Nez, a gun nozzle at the back of my head, he reached out and grabbed me by the shoulder bringing the procession to a halt. He looked deep into my eyes. I didn’t detect anger, but rather –to my surprise–concern.

“Lazaro,” he asked me, “How are you feeling?”

“Oh, I’m just fine Mr.Nez,” I replied. “Don’t you worry, you can count on me this attack on Amboy!”

He looked at me again, with that peculiar, concerned almost pitying look.

And that’s was when I felt my throat tighten, my eyes begin to sting and then an intense ringing and my ears. Suddenly the room was swaying. The last thing I remember was Pearl shouting, “Catch him, he’s fainting!”
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Copyright 2013 by Lazaro De La Tierra and Barrio Dog Productions Inc.

AFTERMATH.

The drone of the helicopters driven by the Oñate zombies was still ringing in my ears when I turned to Pearl. We embraced tightly. Vida, whining persistently, wanted to be part of the hug. This was the dreaded battle for which we had prepared for so many weeks and we had survived!

We clung to each other for a long moment.

“When you love birds are finished cooing,” shouted Filomino, our assault leader and trainer, a thick sarcastic tone to his voice, “would you kindly join the rest of us. After all, THERE IS STILL A DAMN WAR ON!

That jolted us back to reality.

“Listen up!” Filomino shouted to the rest of our zombie comrades. They were just now coming out of where they had taken shelter during the copter’s aerial blitzkrieg.

“I just filled in Jerry at the Park Service about the Oñate’s aerial assault on us. He’ll bring a team out here and make it look like a  van full of teenagers, smoking too much grass, accidently set the van on fire. Jerry’ll  handle the clean-up as well . No one will ever know what really happened her today. Jerry’s worried, he says he hasn’t hear from the training camp  for hours. We got to double time it back to the camp and see what’s up. Let’s go!”

Within minutes, we had all scrambling to get back into the vans and were on the road again, headed to our hidden training camp in a secret part of the Joshua Tree National Park.

As we drove along the desert road, bordered by Joshua trees, ocotillo and cholla cactus, I wondered how the Onate helicopters had so easily found our caravan. Had they been following us from the start? And if they knew where we were, did they also know about our secret camp? I could see that a similar thought must be going through Filomino’s mind. He drove fast, with an intensity that revealed his worry. As we got closer to the camp I began to worry about what we might find.

My fears were soon justified. On the horizon I saw a plume of smoke rising from our hidden  boulder enclave.

We soon approached the narrow secret entrance to the training camp. But the dead Joshua tree that usually hid the entrance to the box canyon had been thrown to the side. A beat up VW –not one of our vehicles–was smoldering near the secret entrance.

Filomino stopped the caravan. “Arm up,” he shouted, as he donned his helmet. “They might still be around! Proceed with caution!”

We broke up into three groups as Filomino had taught us and approached the passageway cautiously.

All except Vida that is. No sooner had I opened the van door than the brindle boxer mix shot out and raced through the entrance into the camp. I knew Vida would not have run into danger.

“I think they’re gone,” I said. And walked confidently through the entrance behind Vida.

What I saw brought me to a dead stop. All three of our camp buildings were smoldering, two completely burned and one partially destroyed.  But is wasn’t the burned out buildings that held my attention. My eyes were riveted to three bodies lying face down in the middle of the training area. It was the training camp staff, the zombie cook, his assistant and the techie that kept our computers working. Each had a dart drilled through the forehead.

It took a moment for the rest of the group to assemble before the horrific tableau. No one said a word. We just stood there and stared at the friends we had known who were now dead.

“But where’s Mr. Nez?” A voice from the group asked.

“He’s in Los Angeles,” said Filomino, walking up to the nearest corpse. “There was trouble reported at Mission Poderosa that he had to attend to. Luckily he wasn’t here.”

Filomino looked down at the three dead zombies.

“Listen up! Put their bodies in the fourth van. The rest of you, spread out and look for your personal belongings or any evidence that would link this site to us. Take whatever you find and put it into the fifth van. We head back to Los Angeles in an hour.”

Pearl and I went immediately to the barracks building. There wasn’t much left to it. The roof and sides had burned down and only part of the wooden floor with its cement foundation remained. We picked through the lockers where we kept our personal belongings. Somehow, the metal lockers had survived the fire. We found an unburned box and loaded it with personal stuff belongings to members of our group.

True to his word, an hour later Filomino was driving the lead van out of the now not so secret training compound. Within a short time the caravan of vans brandishing the “Camp Hascawalla Religious Retreat” logo was racing west along Highway 62 toward Los Angeles. We had driven in silence for about twenty minutes when Pearl voiced the question that was on everyone’s mind.

“What do we do now?” Pearl asked Filomino.

“We go back to Mission Poderosa headquarters at County General and regroup. We conduct an internal review and we find out who the traitor is. And then we make him…or her pay dearly.”

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

THE BATTLE OF JUMBO ROCKS.

The drive back to the Joshua Tree zombie training compound was somber. Pearl and I didn’t look at one another, each lost in our own thoughts. Filomino was convinced someone in our group had tipped off Oñate about our foiled overnight raid on their compound. After the Oñate slaughter of so many of our fellow zombies in Los Angeles, the fact that someone might be leaking information was serious and deadly. I wondered how Filomino planned to flush out the culprit.

And then what would happen with him or her?

I surveyed in the others riding in the van with me. Gus Dominguez was riding shotgun next to Filomino who was driving the lead van. Gus was focused on a small notebook in which he had outlined the attack plans. I could see he was trying to figure out what had gone wrong. Pearl, sitting next to me in the back seat, stared silently out the window at the passing landscape. Jenny Mendez and Jaime Mendoza were seated behind us,  in the third seat of the van. Jenny had fallen asleep on Jaime’s shoulder–the two had developed a romance in the recent weeks of training. It was hard to believe that one of them would betray us.

And yet, how could Onate and his zombies have known about our attack?

By the time we returned to the town of Joshua Tree the sun was rising high in the desert sky. As a safety measure, we entered the Joshua Tree Park grounds via the 29 Palms East gate. Jerry, our Forest Service plant, waved us on at the entrance gate.

We had just cleared the Pinto Mountain ridge on our way back to the secret training camp when the attack began.

Vida was the first to notice something wrong. She began to whine loudly and then within seconds was barking toward the rear of the van.

Pearl was the first to hear the helicopters.

“Hey, that’s more than one helicopter I hear, isn’t it. More than one helicopter out here?”

We all looked out the back window to the sky. “There’s four of them!” Jaime yelled. “It looks like they’re headed this way!”

Now I could see beyond Jaime and Jenny as the helicopters rose over the horizon of boulders and Joshua Trees. They has the same sleek, black military look of the helicopter that had attacked Pearl and I on Olvera Street a few weeks ago No doubt about it.

“Oñate helicopter!” Pearl and I shouted in unison.

Filomino, who was driving, immediately got on the walkie-talkie squawker to the other drivers in the caravan.

“Prepare for aerial assault! Helmets on! We’ll make for the Jumbo Rocks campsite. When we get there abandon the vans and take cover in the rocks.”

We were all reacting to the notion that something was wrong when the first Oñate dart came crashing through the van roof, the edge of the sharp point stopped inches away from Jenny’s head.

“Helmets!”

We all quickly put on protective helmets that Filomino had designed for our warfare. I pulled out my dart gun, rolled down the window next to me and lined up my first shot at the nearest copter.

The shot was good, I could see that a dart sticking out of the exterior of the copter dashboard. Two foot higher and the pilot would have had a dart through his forehead.

By now all the vans in the group were racing along the road toward Jumbo Rocks. Overhead the helicopters had split up, two on either side of the caravan, showering darts into the roofs and sides of the vehicles. I could see that our comrades in the other vans were also firing back at the helicopters

Thump, thump, thump.

More heavy duty metal darts were riddling the roof of our van. For a moment, Gus steered the van as Filomino donned his own helmet. Then Filomino was back in control of the van. Throughout it all Vida was barking for all she was worth.

Thump, thump, thump.

We skidded into the turn off to Jumbo Rocks just as the lead helicopter launched a missile. Had we continued straight on the road, we’d have been hit. Instead, the missile blasted a giant Joshua Tree to smithereens which started a small fire.

“They got missiles!” Filomino shouted into the walkie-talkie. “Find cover and abandon the vans!”

By now all the vans had careened into the Jumbo Rocks campground. Thankfully, the place was empty.

Thump, thump.

Filomino brought our van to a halt next to boulder the size of a three story house. We jumped out and scrambled for cover as fast as we could.

Vida led the way, racing toward the shelter of an enormous rock. The campsite got its name for the giant boulders that dominated the landscape–for us it was ideal cover from the helicopters.

Pearl landed next to me and Vida under the shade of a the large boulder. From our vantage point I could see the four copters circling the camp. The lead copter let go another missile which found one of the abandoned vans, blowing it to pieces. But the other helicopters were only raining down darts.

“Only the lead copter has missiles!” I shouted. I  hoped  the others could hear me above the din of the helicopters.

I shouted louder. “Take out the lead copter! Take out the lead copter!”

I shot at the lead helicopter, aiming for the pilot. From the cover of the large rocks, our entire assault team suddenly open up with concentrated firepower.

Within a few minutes we saw that the fuel line had been hit and the helicopter was streaming fuel. The helicopter started to spin erratically and I thought it was going to go down. But the pilot managed to pull it out of the spin and turned it up from its plummet.  As the copter turned away from us, I could see several darts protruding from the pilot’s body. The helicopter’s turning momentum pushed the passenger door open and an Oñate zombie tumbled out, a dart projecting from her head.

Another of the other helicopters was on fire, smoke billowing out of the fuselage.

Suddenly, the copters turned away and headed west. As suddenly as it had begun, the fighting was over, the air was clear of any aircraft.

I was stunned,. This was first time I had been in real battle.

“Lazaro, are you okay?”

It was Pearl. I suddenly realized that I had forgotten about her during the battle. I felt an instant wave of guilt. What if she had been hit? I turned to her. “I’m fine. You okay?”

She nodded.

“Head count. Vans report in now. Casualties?”

It was Filomino on the walkie-talkie.

“Sal here, three of us caught darts but we’ll be okay. Nothing that won’t regenerate.”

“Betty here, Filomino. Jimmy Yazzee’s got one sticking straight through his throat, once we get it out he’ll be hoarse for at least a week. The rest of us are good.”

“Beto and Ronnie?” Filomino asked. He wanted to find out about the drivers of the fourth and fifth van.

“Beto here,” the walkie-talkie squawked. “Scared shitless but all good.”

“Ronnie?” Filomino asked again, with more urgency. “Ronnie?”

There was only the cackling of static on the walkie-talkie.

“That was his van that was hit, “ Pearl said.

“But I thought he had gotten out,” I said.

Pearl shook her head. She pointed to the still burning van and the corpse smoldering on the ground next to it.

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

THE RAID.

We left the secret La Familia zombie training camp at Joshua Tree at two in the morning. Filomino Brancos, our combat trainer, estimated that the drive to the Oñate zombie compound at Big Bear would take about two hours. I sat next to Pearl Gonzalez in the lead van. With us was Filomino, Gus Dominguez, Jaime Mendoza, Jenny Mendez, Sally Irola and, of course, Vida, my zombie dog.

All of us (well, except for Vida) were dressed in combat gear, including kevlar reinforced fatigues and the cranial helmet that Filomino had designed. The metal alloy was covered with black mesh since we knew a bright three-quarter moon would be shining tonight. We were armed with the silent piston-driven dart guns that Filomino had also designed. The plan was just as Pearl Gonzalez and Gus Dominguez had outlined. We planned to initiate the attack at 4:55AM, hoping to catch the Oñate zombies while they were still sleeping.

The route we took  out of the Joshua Tree Park took us West on Twenty-Nine Palms Highway. At the town of Yucca Valley, at the corner with the Chevron station and the Papa John’s Pizza,  we turned North on Highway 247 to the Lucerne Valley. There we would  turn South along route Highway 18, approaching Big Bear from the back route. There were five vans in the caravan. Three carried the raiders, the fourth and fifth van were empty–they were for the young child zombies we hoped to rescue from Oñate and his thugs.

The drive along 247 was through desert terrain, the road ahead was pitch black except for the beam of the van’s headlights on the two-lane asphalt highway. Occasionally, a tumbleweed or  spirited jack rabbit skittered across the road. We slowed at one intersection and I saw Pearl’s face was suddenly illuminated by the lights of the intersection streetlights. As I looked at her I realized how much I really loved her and how dangerous this raid was going to be. At that instant she turned and caught me looking at her. She smiled that Pearl smile, leaned over and kissed me.

As if reading my minds, she said, “Don’t worry Lazo, we’ll both get though this safe and sound.”

We arrived at the road that led to the secret Oñate zombie compound at 4AM. The wooden sign, with a cartoonish finger pointing in the direction of the turnoff read,“Church of Zion Summer Camp.”  A perfect cover for the Oñate ghouls. As we turned onto the dirt road we turned off our van lights and activated the night vision on our cranial-protective helmets.

We stopped a quarter of a mile from the guard gate at a juncture where the East and West roads from the camp joined up with the main entrance road.

“Betty and Sal,” Filomino said over our specially designed walkie-talkies, “you take the East and West roads. Signal when you are in position and remember we move into action at exactly 4:55AM. You know our contingency plans if things get hairy before that.”

“Copy that.” Betty and Sal echoed in unison. The two vans with their raiders drove off.

Filomino turned to those of us in the lead van. “Alright, we’re on foot from here on.”

We bailed out of the van and checked our gear. Filomeno raised his right index finger to his lips. “From here on, its all about the hand signals I taught you,” he said. “No talking.” As if to underscore his point he stopped talking, raised his right hand and pointed up the road. We all set out as quietly as we could.

It only took us fifteen minutes to get within eyesight of the gate. It was a simple structure as we had seen from the arial photos. It was illuminated by a lone china lamp and appeared to be quite empty. Behind it we could make out low intensity night lights illuminating the barracks. Filomino motioned us to take cover. He made a hand gesture to Pearl and Jenny. They nodded in reply and pulled some scarfs and half empty bottles of vodka from their bags. They took a moment to mess up their hair and smear mascara and lipstick over their faces.

It was now four fifty. Only five minutes left, but we were in position and ready to go.

The five minutes seemed like an eternity. Finally Filomeno read the time on his wristwatch: 5:55AM. He raised his arm and pointed for Perl and Jenny to advance toward the guard gate.
With a smile and a hand motion to all of us, they set out, bellowing at the top of their lungs.

“Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall, ninety-nine bottles of beer, if one should slip and happen to fall, ninety-eight bottles of beer on the wall.”

It only took them a few minutes to reach the guard gate. Their version of two drunken sorority girls lost in the woods was quite impressive. We waited for the cue that would mean they had compromised the guards–perhaps thinking this was their lucky night–and that we could now approach and surprise them

But nothing happened.

We could see Pearl and Jenny acting up a storm, but there appeared to be no one in the guard gate and no lights when on the nearest building which for sure would have heard the girls bellowing.

We all looked to Filomeno.

“Could be a trap,” he said. “Let’s approach with caution.”

We quickly traversed the three hundred yards to the guard gate and found that Pearl and Jenny had stopped their singing.

“What’s going on, Filomino” Pearl asked, “Are we really look that bad? I thought our singing was good!””

“Sure about your singing, not sure what happened here,” Filomino replied. “Our latest recon drones taken yesterday afternoon showed guards at this gate. Let proceed according to the plan but with double caution. We’ll move to the barracks where we know the kids are housed. Let’s head out.”

Within moments we were on our way to the moonlit shadows of the long barrack building that, our recon had shown, housed the young zombie kids. These were the poor zombi kids that had been bred for a war the knew nothing about through the rape of human females by Oñate and his ghouls.

Filomino motioned for Gus Dominguez and I to approach the barracks. Without a word we left the group and slowly worked our way to one of the low hanging barracks windows. I pulled out my flashlight and slowly lifted my head over the window sill and peered into the darkness of the barracks. I could not see much, everything was in darkness. The far window allowed a little  moonlight to enter, but not enough to make sense of anything inside. I left my flashlight to the window and adjusted the dial to low intensity. Then I turned it on and splayed it over the scene before me.

I wasn’t sure what’d I d see but what my eyes beheld was certainly something I had not expected. What I saw was a room full of beds, army cots, neatly arranged symmetrically, twelve to each side of the building, with a corridor pathway through the middle. And each bed was empty.

The room, and the adjacent rooms I could see through the connecting doors, were all empty!

I turned to Filomino and shook my head. I mouthed the word, “Empty! I turned and saw that Gus was also shaking his head, mouthing “Nada!”

Suddenly music started blaring from speakers located throughout the compound. It took only a moment for me to recognize the familiar music; it was Philip Sousa’s Stars and Stipes Forever, the orchestral arrangement reverberated throughout the empty grounds of the Oñate camp.

Then, out of nowhere, fireworks starting streaming into the sky. Palms,  Round Shells, Willows, Chrysanthemums and Serpentines–all the fireworks patterns I associated with the fireworks my ‘ama and I had watched exploding over Dodger Stadium years ago–were suddenly going off in the night sky above. The grounds and all of the buildings of the compound were suddenly illuminated with the multicolored flare of the fireworks exploding overhead..

Amid the cacophony of the fireworks and the Sousa soundtrack, I heard Sal break radio silence. “Filomeno, Sal here . There’s no one at the Palatial Suite–the building is completely empty. Please advise.”

Then Betty Hernandez was squawking on the walkie talkie, “Betty here, the central zombie barracks, where the adult zombies are supposed to be sleeping, are all  empty. Completely empty! There’s no one here! What do we do?”

I could see Filomeno’s sweaty face illuminated by the fireworks as he took in all the new information. He was trying to figure it all out. Finally he yelled, as much  to Betty and Sal on the walkie talkies as to those of us standing around him.

“Regroup at the Palatial Suite. Everyone meet up at the Palatial Suite on the double!”

It only took a few minutes for all of us to rush to the Palatial Suite and join up with the other members of our raiding party. Within moments we were all standing in a semicircle as the last of the fireworks abruptly ended.

I could read the faces of my fellow zombies and knew the questions we were all asking ourselves. What had gone wrong? How could Oñate and his minions know of our attack plans? How long had they known? When had they spirited away all the zombie kids? What were we going to do now?

We looked at one another in the pale moonlight. But mostly we were looking at Filomeno. He looked really pissed. As the Sousa recording crackled to a stop on the loudspeakers, a silence enveloped all of us. We remained looking at FIlomeno.

“They found out about the raid,” he finally said, looking at each of us in turn.

“They knew we were going to hit them tonight and they cleared out and set up this welcoming fiesta for us.”

Then he walked to the nearest raider, Sal Duron. He looked at him square in the eye. Then he shouted at the top of his lungs.

“Do you know what this means?”

Sal fidgeted nervously, He shook his head.

Then he walked to the next raider, Jenny Mendez, and shouted into her face. “Do you know what this means?

She, too, was wordless. Looking at once alarmed, dismayed and bewildered.

Within a few minutes Filomino had walked up to each of us and shouted into each of our faces his emphatic and accusatory phrase.”Do you know what this means?”

I was the last one that he addressed. He stood in front of me and for the first time I realized that there as suspicion in his eyes. Gone was the supportive smile I associated with him during our training. Now he looked downright hostile.

“What this means,” he shouted in my face. “is that one of you is a spy, and informant, a traitor to our cause.” He let that sink in, no longer looking at the others, his eyes drilling mine. “And before this week is out, we’re going to find out who that traitor is!”

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

WHO IS MY FATHER?

It took a moment for me to realize that I had collapsed onto a chair in the main cabin of the secret Joshua Tree zombie training camp. The impact of seeing Juan de Oñate’s photo and realizing that his face was the mirror image of my own face was shocking and mind-boggling.  Oñate was our mortal enemy, he had killed my mother, and his goal was the enslavement of humankind.  And yet I looked just like him.

It was my zombie dog, Vida,  whining urgently and licking me in the face, that jarred me out of my shocked reverie. I immediately turn to Mr. Nez.

“I don’t understand.” I said softly.

And I meant it. I didn’t understand how I could look like Oñate but I also couldn’t understand why Mr. Nez hadn’t told me before and why he waited until now, in front of everyone, to spring the revelation on me. What kind of sick cruelty was this? Suddenly I started to get mad.

“What the hell is this?” I demand of Mr Nez. I could feel the adrenalin beginning to flow though me.

“Are you telling me you think I’m his son? And if that’s what you think , why didn’t you tell me before? Don’t you trust me? What’s going on here?”

Mr. Nez took a long look at me and then nodded his head.

“Lazaro, I apologize.” He said. “We didn’t know how much you really knew about Oñate or if…”

“Or if I was a spy? If I was one of THEM?” I was really pissed now. The Oñate zombies had
murdered my mother and Mr. Nez doubted me?

“Lazaro,” Mr. Nez replied, “we had to be sure. Too much is at stake. Too many lives. I couldn’t risk you being planted here by Oñate himself. I needed to see your reaction to the photo. Your reaction was not anything that could be faked. Again, I apologize.”

My mind leaped ahead.

Mr. Nez considered that I might be in cahoots with Oñate.  Did that mean that he knew something about my parentage that I didn’t? My mind raced back to all the conversations I’d had with my ‘ama about the dad I never knew. She always made clear that she hated him. But she never told me much about him except that he was a sinverguenza. I remember when she had tried to get my uncle to play father to me and how he had gotten me drunk instead.

The question facing me was unavoidable: COULD the dreaded Juan de Oñate really be my blood father?  And if so, how did that happen? I suddenly realized that at eighteen years of age I didn’t have a clue who my real father was–anyone in the barrio could be my dad!

The only person who had the answer to all these questions was Mr. Nez.

I looked around at the other zombies who by now were closed mouthed and staring at me as if I had leprosy. Even Pearl hadn’t said a word. Only Vida, my faithful pit bull mix, was at my side, licking my face as if that would make everything alright.

“Mr. Nez,” I said., “is Oñate…” The words were difficult to form. I could hardly get it out. “Is he my father?”

“Lazaro,” he replied, “I honestly don’t know. You’re a unique case. We made overtures to bring your mother into out group so we could eventually ask her about your father. But she’s gone now.”

“But you’ve been spying on me all my life, you’ve been monitoring me all these years. Didn’t you find out anything?”

“We’ve had two private detective firms working on your background for more than ten years and they’ve turned up nothing. You’re as close to a tabla rosa as we’ve ever encountered.”

There was a silence as all of this sunk in. Pearl finally snapped out of her daze and came over and gave me a hug.

“Oh my poor Lazaro,” she said, “I’m here for you,  no matter what.”

Vida reiterated that with a plaintive whine.

Mr. Nez suddenly snapped back to his professional demeanor. He turn to the assembled group of zombie raiders and pointed to the photo of Juan de Oñate.

“Oñate may or may not be Lazaro’s blood father but all of that is irrelevant. Lazaro is one of us and his going on the raid. Oñate is our mortal enemy. He is set on wiping out La Familia and enslaving the human race. He must be stopped. I just need to know that everyone one of you is prepared to kill hm on sight.”

The  zombie soldiers looked from one to another.

“I want to hear it,” Mr.Nez demanded. “Are you prepared to kill Onate and his soldiers, at all costs. Yes or no.”

Gus Dominguez rose from his seat.

“Yes!” he said emphatically.

One by one the other soldiers answered in kind.

“Yes!”
“Yes!”
”Yes!”
“Yes!”
”Yes!”
“Yes!”
”Yes!”

“Yes,” I heard Pearl say, standing next to me.

And then I was my turn. Was I prepared to kill someone I didn’t even know but who might well be my blood father?
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Copyright 2013 by Lazaro De La Tierra and Barrio Dog Productions Inc.

PLAN OF ATTACK!

“Oñate is vain,” Mr. Nez intoned, as he adjusted the display of a power point presentation projected on a large posterboard screen behind him. “It’s a weakness we will exploit.”

His eyes scanned the group of zombie soldiers gathered in the main cabin of the secret La Familia training camp in a remote part of Joshua Tree national monument. It was only three weeks ago we’d been given our attack assignments, and for three weeks we had dutifully planned, drilled and trained. Now we were at the final countdown briefing for the assault on the Juan de Oñate zombie compound, an attack that might well save humanity from extinction.

As usual I was sitting in the front row, next to Pearl, with Vida, my zombie dog, at my feet. Around us the other zombie recruits listened attentively to the wisdom of the five hundred year old zombie.

“It will be his downfall.” Mr. Nez continued. He clicked the computer mouse and an aerial photograph of a wooded campground appeared on the display screen.

“This is the latest reconnaissance photo of the Big Bear Oñate compound. It was taken yesterday by our aerial drones.”

Mr. Nez took a laser pointer and indicated the main driveway into the camp.

“Here, on the south side, is the front entrance to the camp. You can see there’s only a perfunctory guard gate, consistent with their make-believe religious youth retreat. All our recon photos confirm no outlaying perimeter watches, no advance warning system. Oñate considers the compound safe and his pride won’t allow him to think that we could or would ever counter attack after the devastation he brought on us at the meeting hall.”

A flash of sadness hit me as I thought of my mother who’d lost here life during that meeting hall  attack.

Mr. Nez painted to two roads coming from the east and west into the main cluster of five buildings.

“Here are the other two roads that lead in and out of the camp. These three buildings here are the main activity centers. Over here these two long buildings are the barracks for the soldiers. And over here, set apart from the main cluster is what we are calling the “Presidential suite.”

Another slide appeared on the wall. This showed detail of the two barrack structures. Clearly visible was a group of perhaps a two dozen children entering the larger of the two barracks..

“The smaller of these two structures houses the adults. This larger structure here, as you can see from the children seen entering in this photo, is for the zombie children we’ll be rescuing. Remember, their human mothers were killed shortly after their births and they have been raised by Oñate ever since. We don’t know how deep their indoctrination has gone, what he has told them, or who they believe they are. We must be ready for anything.”

Next he pointed to the other three structures on the photo.

“These three activity center buildings here are the kitchen,  mess hall and conference rooms. Surveillance shows there’s no one there at night. Now, I’ll let Pearl Gonzalez and Gus Dominguez explain the attack plan,.”

Pearl rose from my side and went to the computer where she was joined by Gus Dominguez. She clicked on the power point and a stylized schematic of the camp layout appeared.

“Our attack plan is simple. We’ll attack at night. Jenny Mendez and I will approach from the front gate here, damsels in distress. We’ll create a diversion for whatever guards may be present. Filomino, Gus, Sally and Jaime will be our back-up. They’ll stay out of sight here at the main gate, till we put the guards away. Once we’ve neutralized the guards, we’ll move directly to here.”

The slide on the power point changed, showing an elaborate two story structure about two hundred yards from the five main buildings of the compound. Now Gus took over the presentation.

“From out surveillance,” Gus explained, “we’ve determined this is the main headquarters living facility. We’ve not seen any aerial evidence that Oñate himself is present at this compound. But if he is, he’ll be here in this structure. If he’s not in the camp, whoever is running the show will be in this main building. It’s the head of the beast.”

He paused for a moment to read the faces of his comrades.

“Our plan is to take the building and neutralize the leadership within. If we’re lucky we’ll get Oñate.

The slide changed to one showing the camp but highlighting the three roads leading into and out of the grounds, the main gate, the western exit and the eastern exit. Gus continued with the briefing.

“Betty Hernández,  Rudy Cortez and Carlos Ramirez will approach in their van from the western side road. Raul Torres, Sal Duron and Winston Begay will approach from the eastern side road. We’ll be using the night vision on our helmets.”

The power point now focused on the two barracks.

“The first group,” Gus continued,  “led by Betty, will deploy to surround the adult barracks, covering both front and back entrances. The second group, led by Sal, will deploy around the
barracks we think house the children. Again, covering front and back entrances. The third group, that’s Lazaro and Beto, will bring in the two vans we have arranged to ferry the children out. They’ll park the vans here, next to the children’s barracks.”

Pearl now addressed the group. “As I  said the plan is simple but direct. We enter the camp, we neutralize any and all Oñate adult zombies and we leave with the zombie children. Gus and I estimate the whole operation can be accomplished in fifteen to twenty minutes, a half hour max.”

A silence pervaded he room as Pearl and Gus finished their presentation.

Finally a hand went up. It was Sally Mendez.

“I’ll be part of that group that targets the ‘Presidential Suite.’ How will we know Oñate if we run into him? Do we have photo or something?”

At this point Mr. Nez stepped forward. The look on his face and gravity with which he addressed the group immediately shut us up and made us pay attention.

“We DO have a photo of Juan de Oñate, taken at another locale just six months ago. Engrave this image in your mind and don’t ever underestimate him. He is diabolically evil, unbelievably smart and as ruthless as they come. Shoot on sight, shoot to kill.”

With that Mr. Nez took over the power point and with a click of the mouse a color photo was projected onto the presentation board.

It took only a moment for the image to register in the minds of my fellow zombies. Then each one of them let out an uncontrollable, audible gasp.

It took a full minute before the image registered on me. Then I saw it. At first vaguely familiar, and then, wait, a face I knew as well as I knew my own.

As I absorbed the photo and its implications, I saw that everyone else in the room had turned to look at me. More gasps. I looked to Pearl and saw her mouth was agape, shock and bewilderment on her face.

I couldn’t blame her.

The photograph of Juan De Oñate that Mr. Nez had projected on the poster board had an unmistakable, irrefutable and uncanny resemblance to the face I saw every morning in the mirror.

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

BASIC TRAINING.

The last moment of civilized rest any of us zombies got for a while was the Mother’s Day picnic in Joshua Tree. That’s the picnic I didn’t attend because the Oñate zombies had killed my mother two weeks before. I had spent that day walking about the Joshua Tree desert, accompanied only by Vida, my vegetarian zombie dog. I had come to some conclusions about life that would impact everything I did after that.

The next Monday morning we began an intense training program designed to prepare us for the raid on the Oñate compound. Our drill Sargent, painmaker, mentor and confidante, of course, was Filomino Brancos. “If you’re lucky,” the 200-year-old muscled zombie with sharp Indio features yelled at us that morning, “you’ll learn enough to stay alive during the raid!”

We fell into a regular daily regimen. Wake up call was at 5AM, followed by a perfunctory breakfast at 6AM. At 6:30 we were required to line up in two rows in front of the training camp barracks. First up was physical training, exercise and tasks geared to making our bodies strong and capable. This usually involved a six mile run though the desert, followed by a series of jumping jacks, push-ups, sits ups, crunches and some grueling exercises no doubt invented during the Spanish Inquisition.

In the afternoon, exhausted, we were treated to the history of the hundred-year-old Onate/La Familia war and the implications for us today. There was lots on the Oñate attack techniques and fighting styles and how to combat them. It was all intense and demanding.

Three times a week we had arms training. We were introduced to a specially designed piston driven gun that shot out three-inch sharpened darts capable of penetrating an inch of heavy duty metal. The gun was unbelievably silent. The first time I shot it I thought I had made a mistake and not pressed the trigger until I saw the dart protruding from the stand-up Oñate dummy I had shot at.

“This is something new that I came up with,” Filomino explained to us. “It’s dependable and quiet. I don’t think the Oñates have anything like it.”

After the first week I noticed that some of my fellow zombie recruits were missing. I had been so intent on my own training that I didn’t realize that for many of the young recruits, the ordeal that Filomino was putting us through was just too demanding. Each day I noticed one or two fewer recruits present at morning call.

By the end of the third week we were down to fourteen recruits from the original two dozen plus.

One morning Filomino showed at the morning line-up with Mr. Nez at his side.

“Listen up!” Filomino yelled. “You may have noticed that some of your sissy friends have been asked to depart our training camp. We need only the very best for the assault we are planning. Those of you still here have proven you have what it takes. But you may be wondering how only fourteen of you, fifteen counting myself, can make a successful raid on the Oñate compound.”

He sure had voiced what many of us were thinking.

“Well, it won’t be easy. But I’d rather have fourteen trained, committed and capable fighters than three dozen overweight ‘fraidy cat sissies. And we have one more thing in our favor.”

Filomino pulled a metallic helmet from a sack he carried. He held it up for all of us to see. The helmet had a smooth cranial dome that covered one’s ears and came down to the back of the neck. The front of the helmet had a visor that lowered from the top to cover one’s face. Set on the forehead of the helmet were two camera eyes.”

“This is another baby I invented,” Filomino said. “This helmet is made of light weight titanium with a special kevlar lining inside. It’s designed to fend off brain targeted darts, bombs or bullets from the Onate zombies. Each helmet will be tailored to your individual cranial specifications. A snug fit is essential.”

He pointed to the cameras on the helmet forehead. “These two cameras are night vision equipped. The screen is located here,” he said pointing to the visor face, “inside the visor, right in front of your eyes. There’s a built in microphone that will allow you to communicate with the others in the assault group.”

The helmet looked pretty comical.

Pearl, as usual, was standing next to me, Vida at my feet. I tried not to look at Pearl. I knew she must be thinking the same thing. The helmet looked like one of those corny space helmets from some early science fiction movie.

“Space cadet Pearl Gonzalez reporting for duty sir,” she whispered to me.

“Hope you’re wearing you wowie-zowie, super-duper anti-Oñate helmet,” I whispered back.

Of course that did it. We both started to giggle. Pretty soon it caught on with the others in line who had overheard us. Within a moment we were all struggling to keep our composure and not break out in laughter.

All of this was not lost to Filomino.

“You zombies think this is funny? Give me twenty-five push-ups, right now.!”

That quieted it us down. After we had finished with the push-ups, Mr. Nez addressed us.

“As of today you will each be assigned to a specific team of the assault group,” he said. “Jaime Mendoza, Sally Irola and Gus Dominguez step forward.” As the three zombies stepped forward from the line. Mr. Nez spoke directly to them.

“You will comprise the Strategy and Planning team for the assault. Your job is to design, with Filomino’s guidance, a master plan. Your mission is to get us into and out of the clandestine Oñate compound at Big Bear with maximum Oñate casualties and minimal casualties for our side. As you know, our goal for the attack is to free what we think are perhaps dozens of young zombies enslaved and being brain-washed into doing the bidding of Don Oñate himself. Mendoza, you’ll head up the team.”

Next Mr. Nez called out Pearl, Rudy Cortez, Carlos Ramirez, Jenny Mendez, Raul Torres, Betty Hernández, Sal Duron and Winston Begay. They all stepped forward in line.

“You eight will comprise the Attack team. Pearl, you’ll lead the attack and will be responsible for securing the compound, sequestering the zombie youth, and handing them over to the third group of the attack group, that’s the Rescue and Escape team.”

When Pearl stepped back into line next to me, we shared a look. I had always presumed Pearl an I would be fighting side by side. Now it looked like she would have her hands full leading the charge. And what about me?

“Lazaro De La Tierra, Beto Holquin and Ronnie Mendez step forward,” Mr. Nez said. “You’ll make up the Rescue and Escape team. Your job will be to make sure we all get out of the attack alive and you’ll be in charge of whoever we managed to rescue from the Onate compound. I’ll be working with you on this. We’ve never had enemy zombies as prisoners before, and especially young brain-washed zombies. It’ll be a challenge for us all.”

When we had stepped back in line, Mr. Nez walked along the line, staring each of in the eyes as he spoke.

“Tomorrow you’ll begin your serious training for the attack. You may think the helmet Filomino designed is funny looking but this attack on the Oñate compound is deadly serious. The Oñates are expert at targeting us. They can hit us in the head at any time and they know how to do it. Some of you may not come back from this raid. That’s all.”

As the meeting broke up, many of the zombie recruits went over to examine the helmet Filomino was still holding. I turned to Pearl. Without a word, we embraced. I knew she was thinking what I was thinking. Would both of us be coming back alive?

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

MOTHER DAY REDUX.

“All aboard!”

The van was running and ready to leave for the Mother’s Day picnic. The other zombies quartered at the secret Joshua Tree military training camp who were going to meet with their families had already boarded the van. It was just me and Pearl standing by the open door to the van. Vida, the vegetarian zombie dog who had adopted me, was sitting at my side, intently reading the emotions between Pearl and I.

“You sure you don’t want to come and meet my mom and dad?” Pearl asked for the third time.

“Pearl, I told you–I can’t.” I replied. “The mood I’m in I’d just bummer everyone out.”

“Lazaro, I’m real sorry about your loss.”

Pearl leaned over and kissed me. Vida whimpered. Then there was a honk from the van driver.

“Go on Pearl, have fun.” I said, ushering her to the van door. “I’ll meet your folks next time. Hey, I got Vida here to keep me company!”

Pearl boarded the van and it drove off. I was left alone with Vida on the dusty parking area in the secret cul de sac hidden deep in the Joshua Tree wilderness.

It was Mother’s Day and Mr. Nez had decided to bring out the parents of the zombies training for the assault on the Oñate compound for a Mother’s Day picnic. The van would take the zombie trainees to meet their folks at the Jumbo Rocks campground where La Señora Falcón had reserved a space far enough from the other camp sites to assure privacy for our group. It was too dangerous to bring anyone near our secret hideout.

Our cook, Prudencio Ortíz, had prepared special cow brain sandwiches, spicy cat entrail canapes, and a cilantro garlic rabbit eyeball salad he had garnered from the local traps she had set. It would be a great picnic for my friends and their moms.

I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned to see it was Mr. Nez who had remained behind along with some of the camp staff.

“Mijo, your mom’s not gone,” he said. “You’ll always carry her here,” he said. He tapped his chest. “Aqui, en el corazón.”

I nodded.

“I’m going on a hike.” I said.

He gave my shoulder a firm squeeze and turned back to the main camp building. I walked back to the barracks where I picked up a hat and the canteen that had been assigned to each trainee and headed out into the desert. Vida ran ahead, wagging her tail, eager for an adventure.

After an hour of hiking I found myself at a large mountain of boulders. I climbed on one of the rocks, Vida managed to scramble up the rock with me. We sat together in the shade the adjoining rock, looking out into the empty desert landscape. I welcomed being alone. I needed to reflect on all that had happened to me in the past year.

Mother’s Day is what had set it off.

It was only a year ago, on Mother’s Day, that I began this journal I am keeping, my Zombie Mex Diaries. In the past year, I realized my whole sense of self and my understanding of the world had changed radically.

Instead of believing that my resurrection as a zombie was due to some special magic my mother had secured from a mysterious bruja named La Señora Falcón, I now know that I was born as a human being with a unique zombie gene. My resurrection from the dead had resulted when the zombie gene was triggered on my death at age five.

La Senora Falcón was not a bruja, but a watchful zombie emissary of La Familia, a underground society of zombies that had co-existed with human beings for the past five hundred years. She had been assigned to safeguard my childhood until the zombie metamorphosis took placed as I entered puberty.

I now know that the underground zombies are divided into two camps. La Familia is bent on unraveling the mysteries of the mutant zombie gene for the benefit of human kind. The Oñate clan of zombies, headed by the resurrected Spanish conquistador Juan de Oñate, is committed to enslaving human beings and breeding them for food.

And I was now smack in the middle of this zombie war–a war I had not asked for! And so far all I could show for it was that the person I loved the most in my life, my human mother was dead. The Oñate zombies had killed her a week ago in a concerted attack on the La Familia meeting hall.

I poured Vida some water in styrofoam cup I had borrowed form the commissary. She quickly lapped it up, zombie dog or not, she was thirsty. I sipped from the canteen and recalled the cold glass of cow blood my mom always had for me at bedtime during my childhood.

I sure missed my ‘ama. I longed to visit her grave. I was told by Mr. Nez that she had been buried at Rose Hills cemetery but that it was too dangerous for me to visit her now. The Oñate zombies wanted me dead fearing that the secret contained in my mutant gene might help humanity–they would surely be keeping an eye on my other’s grave, waiting for me to show up.

I thought also about the other person that I loved, Pearl González. Like me, she possessed a special mutant zombie gene. Because of this she was also in danger of being killed any time by the Oñate zombies. At any time she, too, might be taken from me. At that moment I wished with all my heart that I was not a zombie, that was a normal person. A normal person whose loved ones weren’t in danger of being killed, a normal person who could enjoy life. It just seemed so unfair!

I don’t know how long I stayed on that rock thinking about my mom, Pearl, my life and the zombie war ahead of me. Time enough to come to some conclusions about who I was and what I needed to do.

The sun was low in the sky when I felt Vida licking the tears off my cheek.

On the trek back to base camp, I reviewed the conclusions I had come to during my afternoon of reflection and meditation. I wasn’t sure if I would be able to pull off all the plans I had come up with, but there was one thing I had resolved that I knew I would do at first opportunity.

I would lay flowers on my mother’s grave.

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

CAMP HASCAWALLA

“Listen up! Everything you are going to learn in the next few weeks is a matter of life and death. YOUR life and death. We’ll soon be heading for the Oñate compound –pay attention and you might come out of the raid alive!”

Pearl looked to me and I looked right back. I could see she was stifling a giggle and I had to turn away or I knew I’d lose it. Part of me wanted to laugh so hard! This guy, Filomino Brancos was right out of one of those World War Two war movies where the drill instructor trains the young recruits and they hate him and at the end of the movie they realize they owe him their lives.

Except this wasn’t an old war movie. Pearl and I and two dozen young zombies from La Familia were beginning our first day of training in a secret zombie training camp in the Joshua Tree National Park. And Filomino, who looked about forty years of age, was 150 pounds of trim muscle, profuse sweat and unrelenting determination was going to make sure we learned all we needed to survive the assault on the Oñate camp.

Filomino was right. We WERE into a life and death struggle and the sooner Pearl and I wiped the smirks off our faces, the better chance for survival we would have. I nudged her and gave her a reprimanding look.

“This is serious shit.”

“Yes, I know.” she replied equally seriously. And then she caught my eye and that was it.

We lost it. We broke out into hysterical laughter which we simply could not contain.

The drill Sergeant was not amused.

“You two think there’s something funny about trying to stay alive? Maybe it should have been you two at that cluster bomb explosion. Each of you. One hundred push-ups! And I don’t want to hear I can’t do them. You WILL do them, however sloppily, one hundred full! ”

Pearl and I settled onto our hands and feet and began to do the push-ups. I gave me time to think about what had occurred lately.

We had arrived the secret training camp that morning after a three hour drive from Los Angeles. The three passenger vans, with a banners on either side proclaiming CAMP HASCAWALLA RELIGIOUS RETREAT, had made only two stops. A pee break at the Cabazon Indian Reservation off Interstate 10 and a stop at the Joshua Tree Visitor’s Center on Park Blvd off of the Twenty-Nine Palms Highway. That’s when we had hit a roadblock.

The delay at the park entrance had to do with our contact at the office, a member of La Familia named Jerry, who was supposed to meet us and usher us through the permit for outdoor camping without raising anyone’s suspicions. But, we discovered, Jerry had gone out to lunch. The banner painted on the sides of the vans made it clear we were a throughly legitimate enterprise. By making it a religious retreat we figured we’d attract less attention. Still we had to wait an hour before Jerry returned. He arrived reeking of roadkill–I had wondered how a zombie might manage lunch around here.

A very chagrined Jerry quickly filled out the paperwork and ushered outside. Then he spoke in whispers with La Señora Falcón who had been assigned to get us to the training camp.

“Get the van drivers to take you on to the main road that runs through Joshua Tree. You’ll pass Hidden Valley and Ryan Campgrounds. A quarter mile beyond Ryan you’ll see a Joshua Tree with a tumbleweed caught in its arms. That’s where you’re to make a right turn into the desert and head due west.”

“Won’t the road give the camp away and invite unwanted guests?” La Señora Falcón asked.

“There is no road there. You’ll be heading out into wild desert. Be sure to cover the van tracks for at least forty feet from the road. Within a quarter mile you’ll run into a makeshift gravel road that will take you to the hidden camp.”

True to his word, an hour after turning off the highway that runs through Joshua Tree, we had found the hidden gravel road and soon had arrived at the secret training camp.

It was not much of a camp. Three sturdy wooden cabins, each about 40 by 60 feet elevated on cement blocks, were surrounded on all sides by giant boulders. A perfect hideout. A narrow crevice between one set of boulders was just big enough to allow the vans through. We camouflaged the entrance it with dead Joshua trees once the vans were in.

One of the cabins would be our kitchen. It was equipped with a sink, stove, a refrigerator powered by an outdoor gas generator and mess tables. A second building contained cots, arranged barracks style on either side of the interior–this would be our sleeping quarters. The third cabin would be our training center. I noted that in addition to the large meeting room, there were two other rooms, heavily fortified with metal braced doors. Completing the camp were two portable toilets, the kind with a sink, mirror and running water.

“That’s it, one hundred!” It was the voice of Filomino, the training coach, snapping me out of my reverie.

I stopped the push-ups but I saw that Pearl was continuing. The other recruits also saw this and started chanting numbers in support. “One hundred-and-two, one-hundred-and-three, one hundred-and-four!”

Pearl stopped at one hundred and twenty five, rose up and gave Filomino a look that said, “so there!”

After settling what few clothes and personal belongings we had into the barracks, we spent the rest of the morning doing a lot of physical exercises–jumping jacks, sit-ups, running in circles around the camp enclosure. Not much fun in the desert sun but I gathered that was why we were out here. Filomino made it no secret that he was there to harden us up.

“I’m going to work you till you can’t walk!” He threatened. “Like it or not you’re gonna be in great shape for the attack.”

Lunch was decaying cat entrails, raw sheep eyeballs and pitchers of cow blood with which to wash it down. Pearl and I sat at a large table in the mess hall cabin with some of our new-found friends.

Marcos García was a twenty-something zombie from El Paso, Texas who could have passed for twelve. The Gómez twins, Maria and Isabel, were two identical sisters who looked about eighteen but, they told us, were really thirty-five years old. All three were descendants of Mr. Nez’s zombie bloodline.

Jimmy Yazzie was Navajo. Living up to his last name (Yazzie means “little” in Navajo) he was short and slight, but possessed limitless energy and had a determined look about him. He too looked like a teenager, but was almost forty. It seemed that Pearl and I and the Caucasian-looking kid I had seen in the alley, who name I learned was Joshua, were the only three bonafide teenagers in the group. All the others were adults.

The anti-aging effects of the zombie mutant gene was clearly evident.

“What about this Filomino guy, eh?” Maria Gómez ventured amid gulps of cow blood. “He’s really something, eh?”

“I’m glad we have him,” said Marcos, his head cocked up as he lowered a cat entrail into his open mouth. “Rumor is,” he continued amid noisy chewing, “that he saw action in World War Two, Korea, Vietnam, AND Iraq! He’s supposed be more than two hundred years old.”

“Well, we’ll need all his expertise, that’s for sure,” said Pearl.

“I just want him to teach us how to kill those Oñate zombies!” Marcos said angrily. “I want revenge for what they did to us!”

Marcos’s anger made me think of what I had avoided thinking about all day, the death of my mother at the hands of the Oñate zombies. I had tried all day to block the image of her mangled body on the floor of the La Familia meeting hall, lying alongside wounded and dying zombies.

I realized that if I had to describe my feelings, I was felt more sad than angry. I was really missing her. The thought of revenge was certainly on my mind. But I wondered if I was really up to killing other zombies. I recalled the closest thing I had ever come to killing something was the mouse caught in the kitchen trap so long ago. I had set the mouse free.

“I hope we’ll all be up to the killing when the time comes,” I said out loud, as much to the group as to myself. They all looked at me, several nodding understanding. I guess they had been thinking same thing. We finished our meal in silence.

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

THE WORSE DAY OF MY LIFE.

At seven on the dot there was a group of about eight of us sitting around a large conference table in room 27 of the secret Mano Poderosa underground laboratory under the General Hospital. I recognized the teenager who I had seen months ago in the downtown alley, and one of the younger kids that had been introduced to us at the La Familia meeting as coming from San Antonio. No one said much. We just sat and waited.

Vida, the vegetarian zombie dog who followed me around everywhere I went,  was on her back, demanding that I scratch her tummy. I complied.  Pearl caught my eye and smiled.

Finally Mr. Nez walked in, looking gaunt and tired.

“Thank you for coming,” he said. He sat down at the table and I could see a sense of relief spread over him as he took a long breath.

“As you know.” he said, “ we have been at war with the Oñate zombies for over a hundred years.  We split with them at the time of the Mexican Revolution. Until now there have been occasional assaults on individual members of La Familia.”

He nodded to me. “Like the ransacking of your apartment, Lazaro,¨ he said.

“But these have been individual cases, isolated. The Oñates have been busy with their prime goal,  the acquisition of freshly killed humans… or living humans. They’ve been so intent on conquering humankind, they’ve pretty left us alone. And this is good. It has allowed us to continue our research uninterrupted.”

“But,” I interrupted, “how can they kill humans and not be found out after all of these years? Surely people must miss relatives or loved ones who have been killed by the Oñate zombies?”

“You would think. But they haven´t stayed below the radar for long by being stupid.” Mr. Nez continued. “They wait for natural calamities and…war. They move in and kill and ravage and then cover it all up by whatever earthquake, fire or battle has occurred.”

There was a moment as this news sunk in.

“Yes,” Mr Nez continued, reading our expressions, “it´s a little hard to believe. But they have developed a sophisticated way of moving around the world. They have key individuals in law enforcement, travel, government. They hear of impending conflict and they move their members to the region where their local counterparts facilitate their murders and abductions.”

“Abductions?” Someone asked.

“They recently taken to kidnapping humans and keeping them imprisoned until its time for them to be…eaten.¨

“And this war with the Oñate zombies has been going on for a hundred years?” Pearl wanted
to know.

“Since the time of Porfirio Diaz,” Mr. Nez concurred.

“Oñate saw that a revolution in Mexico was inevitable and positioned several zombies to push events forward. He had zombies in the ranks of Villa, Carranza,  Huerta….Every battle of the revolution was an opportunity for human flesh. Soon, their numbers began to grow.”

“They can procreate then?”

“Just like us. Except they have a have a full scale proliferation plan. They kidnap human females and use them to breed more zombies. When they are finished with them, they are killed. The children are raised in zombie youth camps. We think we´ve located one of these camps out in the mountains near Big Bear.”

“What about tonight´s explosion?” Someone asked.

“Tonight was the first direct assault on us at our home base. It was brazen but it reflects their keen surveillance of our own activities, where we meet, what we do, and of course…this lab.”

“Do they know where this lab is located? Pearl asked.

Mr. Nez shook his head. “If they knew they would have hit us here long ago. But they do know about our experiments and research and eventual goals for human kind.”

“I wanted you newcomers to know about all of this. In the future things are likely to get rough. We may have to move the lab. For now we´ll be planning a counter attack, were going to hit this youth camp we’ve discovered.  See if we can salvage these kids before they turn flesh eaters. If we can put Oñate on the defensive that will buy us the time we need to move the lab to another location and bolster our security.”

There was silence as we considered what Mr. Nez had told us. He looked thoughtfully from one person to another.

“I had hoped we´d have more time to integrate you all into the group. I had hoped many of you could become involved in the work of the lab. But it´s clear we´re at war now. We need you do your part.”

Signaling that the meeting was over, Mr. Nez got to his feet.

“Tomorrow we move out. We saw this day coming and have set up a training camp in the desert near Joshua Tree. You’ll start your combat training there. You´ll be part of the our attack team on Oñate youth camp. That is all.¨

The group slowly started to dissipate. Everyone discussing the significance of the attack and our new role. Mr. Nez came up to me.

“Lazo,” I need a moment with you. He gave Pearl a “leave us” look. Pearl got the hint and walked away. Mr. Nez took me into a corner of the room. Suddenly I was afraid. What did he have to tell me? The look on his face was somber and serious.

“Lazo” he said, placing his hand on my shoulder. “I don´t know any other way to tell you this.” He paused and looked deep into my eyes.

“You´re mother was with La Señora Falcón at this night´s meeting. She asked to be there, she  told La Señora Falcón she wanted to know your world better, so she could be supportive. Lazo, your mom was standing next to the cluster bomb when it went off.”

I could feel tears welling in my eyes.

The look on Mr. Nez’s face left to doubt.

“She died instantly,” he said. “I´m sorry.”

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

ATTACK OF THE RED SASH.

I was awakened by the blaring of a loud and persistent wailing alarm. I stumbled out of bed and made my way to the door. Alarm? What was going on here? I could hear footsteps racing outside  my apartment door. A distant voice yelled, “Triage, triage!” Where was I? Then suddenly it all came back to me. I was several floors underneath the General Hospital in East Los Angeles in a secret laboratory run by the La Familia zombies. I was here to be tutored on the history of the zombie race.

Vida, the zombie dog, had adopted me and had taken to sleeping in my quarters. She was now urgently whining and scratching at the door to get out.

I opened the door and we ran out. The hallway was full of techs and medics racing toward the entrance to the Mano Poderosa lab.

Then, suddenly, Pearl was at my side, still dressed in pajamas.

“Lazo, What the hell´s going on?” she asked.

“I don´t know, heck I didn’t even know this place had alarms.”

Just then Mr. Nez came hurrying by, followed by a team of medics with grim faces. He turned to us as he hurried passed.

“We´ve been hit! Come along we need all the help we can muster.”

Pearl and I quickly fell into step behind Mr. Nez and his team. We looked at one another, silently mouthing our questions. We´d been hit? By whom?  And where? Suddenly a loudspeaker blared through out the lab.

“Attention, attention. Oñate victims now arriving at the Northeast entrance.”

Then it all fell into place. The Oñate zombies, of course!

“The Friday meeting of La Familia.” Mr Nez barked over his shoulder, keeping us all jogging at a brisk pace. “Someone detonated a bomb of projectiles at head level. Lots of our people were hit.”

We reached the main entrance to the lab and I could see that a makeshift emergency ward had been set up. Bodies of zombies were laid out on cots and stretchers, but they  were alive. Moaning from their wounds, but still alive.

Off to the far end of the room I could see a large mound of bodies that were NOT moving. These bodies were ghastly pallid and motionless. I could see that each one had been hit once or more in the head by metal projectile, similar to the metal darts with which Pearl and I had been targeted at Olvera Street.

I walked up to the mound of zombie carcasses. Mr. Nez and his group were busy examining the survivors. As I approached the death mound, my stomach wrenched. These were the first “dead” zombies I had ever seen. It made me shudder. It sank into me just how deadly the Oñate threat really was.

“My god, they’re actually dead.” Pearl said quietly joining me. “And I thought we were invincible.”

“Report!” I heard Mr. Nez call out behind us.

We turned to see he was addressing La Señora Falcón who was covered with the grey mucous fluid that passed as zombie blood and looking like she was still in shock. But she appeared otherwise unhurt. She took a deep breath and spoke.

“They hit us this evening at the beginning of the meeting,” she said. “There was an infiltrator who positioned a bomb device on one of the credenzas in the main meeting hall, making sure it was a head level. When the bomb went off, the blast sent these metal darts right into the crowd. “

“Did you catch him?”

“It was a her. We did but she pulled out a handgun and blew her brains out in front of us.”

“Oñate.” Mr. Nex said grimly, decisively.

“Yes, I´m sure of it,” La Señora Falcón replied.

She reached into a side bag slung over her shoulder. She pulled out a piece of a red sash, partially burned and covered with soot.

“Mr. Nez nodded. “The Oñate scarlet sash.”

“Scarlet sash?” Pearl asked.

“It’s the scarlet sash Juan de Oñate wore as a conquistador. He now uses it to identify members of the Oñate clan.”

Mr. Nex turned to the medics. “Let´s finish triage. Sandoval, Melendez, get the injured into the medical ward and see to their wounds. He turned to several techs working nearby. He nodded toward the pile of bodies in the corner.

“Use the tunnel. The furnace is scheduled for six this morning.”

The men moved to the bodies and started loading them onto hospital gurneys.. Mr. Nez saw me staring at the bodies.

“We have a tunnel that connects this facility to the county morgue,” he explained.  “Its right around the corner at Main Street and Mission. We selected this locale because when we do get to the point where we´re ready to experiment with the mutant gene, we´ll need a ready source of cadavers. There are several thousand cadavers there now.”

“And these bodies?” I asked.

“The county periodically burns unclaimed cadavers that have been processed on alternate mornings at 6AM.  Several workers there are members of La Familia. ”

The medics soon were moving the wounded zombies into an emergency sick bay that had been set up in the hospital wing of the lab. Before long Pearl and I were helping push gurneys down the hall and into the emergency room. It was clear that all of our resources would be devoted to helping out our injured comrades and that the research at the lab would be on hold for a while.

After we had helped settle the wounded, Pearl and I went from bed to bed asking if there was anything they wanted. We spent the rest of morning helping out as best we could.

By dinner things had quieted down. Pearl and I were having supper in the commissary. Vida, never far from me, was asleep under the table, when Mrs. Gonzalez came up to us. She looked haggard and tired. The smile I ordinarily associated with her was gone.

“Lazo, Pearl you´re to go to room 27 in the hospital wing at 7Pm tonight.”

“What´s up?”  I asked.

“We’re at war now,” Mrs. Gonzalez said with gravity. “And it’s time you all grew up.”

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

KING OF TEXCOCO.

The news that Mr. Nez, leader of the La Familia band of zombies, was indeed the legendary Aztec poet King Nezahualcoyotl was stunning. It made Pearl and I devoted students of “The Book of Life and Death,” the ancient Aztec manuscript archived at the Mano Poderosa laboratory library

As Mrs. Gonzalez, our new found teacher, had indicated, the English translation of the Nahuatl text as the end of the manuscript made our daily “lessons” if not easy at least manageable.

We spent the next several days totally immersed in a time and place six hundreds in the past. The first passage of the manuscript set down the tone and direction.

“In the year of 3 Rabbit, in the Valley of the Sun, the poet King ruled. Texcoco was his kingdom, the poet King ruled in Texcoco. Nezalhualcoyotl, builder of roads and aqueducts, builder of palaces and gardens, creator of song and flowers. And the great Nezalhualcoyotl did rule with wisdom and justice. Wisdom and justice was the rule of the king of Texcoco.”

Yeah, lot of repetitions. We discovered that 3-Rabbit translated to the year 1430 A.D.

Before long Pearl and I got into a pattern. We would breakfast together in the commissary. Then head for the library where Mrs. Gonzalez would give us our daily assignment and be on hand to answer any question we might have. Then we’d plow through the English translation of the ancient Nahuatl text. We took turns reading outloud to one another.

A week after we started I found myself reading outloud to Pearl from the Book of Life and Death. I had just read several pages extolling the grandeur of King Nezalhualcoyotl.

Then the manuscript translation gave a kind of bio of Nezalhualcoyotl. Turns out when he was only sixteen, he saw his father, then King of Texcoco, assassinated before his very eyes by the forces of neighboring Azcapotzalco. Thanks to the help of a servant, he barely escaped with his life and went into exile until he grew to be a man. Then he organized neighboring cities and went to war with the people of Azcapotzalco. He managed to defeat them and regained the kingdom of Texcoco. He ruled it for the next forty years until he was 71. That’s when he died.

Then the manuscript took a turn. The handwriting shifted from the careful hand of an abstract historian scholar to the uneven and labored scrawl of an old person. It was the voice of Nezahualcoyotl himself, on his death bed.

“Followers and friends, on my beloved family, I lie before you on the eve of my journey to Mixtlan, the Land of the Dead. Hear this and listen, listen and learn. In my living life I wondered about the afterlife. Are we not mortals? Humans within and without? We must all go away, we all have only a small time on earth. I welcome my journey to Mixtlan and look forward to meeting the Lord of the Near and Close. May I rest and may you join me someday.”

And then the narration really took a flip. I skimmed back to the original and saw that the parchment had changed, and the handwriting as well. This was a new document entirely. Now  the writing was precise and determined, the handwriting of someone young and energetic.

“Oh calamity, oh lamentations! Did I not die? Was I not buried? And whence do I come forth anew? I am intoxicated. I weep of my life before. I  wonder at this new life ahead. Am I mad? How I can be alive anew? And what of this young body? Where has age gone? What has the Giver of life given to me? And why? Indeed, I shall never die, indeed, I shall never disappear. I am now where death is overcome. By the most Powerful Hand of the Giver of Life.”

When we got to that part, Pearl stopped my reading.

“Oh my God, Lazaro, ‘Most powerful hand of the giver of life,’ that’s where Mano Poderosa must come from!”

“Of course,” I said. This was really neat getting to know the back story of our zombie ancestors. Wow!

The rest of the manuscript was all in the new handwriting. It went on to describe how Nezalhuacoyotl had gone temporarily insane after his resurrection from the dead. In a methodical and reasoned manner, the narrative described how he lived for years as a begger, hiding from his family or anyone who might know him. How he was so despondent that he tried unsuccessfully to kill himself several times. Then he finally came back to his senses and figured out that if he was alive there must be a reason for it.

“Gone is the smell of flowers only that of death abides with me now. Gone is the color of my father and mother on my skin, only the pale whiteness of death now. But is there not a purpose for me to exist? What task has the Giver of Life set before me?”

And then Nezalhuacoyotl wrote about how his appetite had changed.

“Do I not lust for the taste of human flesh? Yes, it is true. But what of the flower and song that gives to life so much meaning? Can this be only chimera? No! It is flower and song that sustains us all.  Shall I eat then of human flesh? No, truly now rotting beasts shall fill my stomach, truly rotting beast shall give me sustenance. Would the Giver of Life not want it this way?”

This passage, of course, hit home to me in a special way.

I still remembered the thrill I felt when I  tasted the human blood that had been used to write “Die Mutant!” on my apartment wall. There was no denying it. And yet, throughout my association with the La Familia zombies, no one had ever made mention of wanting to eat humans. Yet I knew that this was the driving force behind the Juan de Oñate zombies. And of course I had never even dared speak to Pearl about this.

But I decided that I must.

And so I finally did.

That afternoon, after reading the passage on Nezalhualcoyotl’s resurrection and his declared lust for human flesh, Pearl and I were getting ready to go back to our bedrooms to clean up before dinner. The library was almost completely empty so I took the opportunity.

“Pearl,” I said, “Can I ask you personal questions?

“Lazo, by now you should know that I have no secrets from you. Geez, Lazo, we’re in this together. And it is life or death, you know. What is it?”

“Human flesh,” I said boldly. I figured I might as well get it out there. “Have you ever…wanted to …eat human flesh?”

Pearl was silent for a long moment. She turn her eyes away from me. Was she embarrassed? Finally she looked back and made eye contact.

“Yes, of course. All of us zombies want to eat humans. That’s part of who were are.”

“But no one talks about it,” I said.”Mr.Nez badmouths the Oñate clan for eating human flesh but no one owns up the desires they have for it!”

“You’re right, Lazo, it’s the proverbial elephant in the room. Even though we have gone through the zombie transformation, we are all human being at heart. We know it’s wrong and we, what‘s the word, we sublimate it by eating other things. That’s why Mr. Nez is so adamant about fighting the Oñates. They’ve given in to this dark urge.”

Then I decided to really take bold step. As long as we were all getting it all out in the open.

“So why not eat human beings?” I asked her point blank.

“Lazo,” Pearl said looking into my eyes, “that would make us animals. We may be zombies, but we’re still human! We’re still part of the human race and we have a gift, the zombie gene that resurrected us can perhaps prolong human life. What Mr. Nez said six hundred years ago still holds true. Remember, “What task has The Giver of Life set before me?” The task is here in the Mano Poderosa lab and in our lives. The task is to protect the human race.”

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

SCHOOL AGAIN?

It was first good sleep I’d had in several days. I awoke to the sound of someone jamming a piece of paper, loudly and persistently, under the sill of my bedroom door. For a moment I was at a loss, where was I? Then instantly it all came back. I was in my bedroom at the secret laboratories of La Mano Poderosa zombie laboratory. The lab was located under the General Hospital in East Los Angeles. I picked up the scrap of paper as I glance at the radio clock on the end table next to my bed. It read 6AM.

The note read: “Breakfast is in the dining area at 8AM. Be in the library at 9AM for your first lesson. N.”

Lesson?

I showered in the tiny but serviceable private shower adjacent to my bedroom, and then dressed in the only other set of jeans and t-shirt I owned. I had hastily thrown the clothes into a bag at my apartment in what seemed as a lifetime ago but was actually only three days. For a moment I thought of the attack on our modest El Sereno apartment by the Oñate death squad and then my ‘ama being taken away for her own safety. Mr. Nez had assured me that she was safe, that was all that mattered for now.

I met Pearl at the cafeteria. She was already seated and downing what looked like scrumptious cat entrails.

“Looks good,” I said.

“Oh Lazaro, the food here is great! Try the cat entrails with cow brain waffles! And don’t miss the tripa syrup for the waffles! “

I made my selections from the breakfast buffet and joined Pearl at a long cafeteria table where lab techs, doctors and computer nerds were all eating full blown zombie breakfasts and engaging in lively conversation on a wide variety of topics.

“…the chromosome factor only applies when the body is already dead…”

“…I still think the mice can work as a model…before we move on to cats.”

“…whether we apply binary or traditional, we still have to create a language that can be migrated to new developments–string theory for example.”

For the first time in years I felt truly at home.

“Did you get a note…” I began.

“…about the 9AM first lesson,. Yeah,” Pearl responded. “Wonder what they have in store for us.”

“Beats me,” I replied. We munched in silence for a while.

As I looked at Pearl eating breakfast. I realized how much I really was in love with her. She ate quietly, skimming the front page of the LA Times which she had pilfered from a stack of papers at the front entrance to the commissary. She was really absorbed in her reading and it allowed me to study here and appreciate how really beautiful she was.

I wondered about our future together, as I had several times since Mr. Nez had told us about how we were the progenitors of two distinct zombie bloodlines. Did that mean that my love for Pearl was precluded? Could we ever have a normal romance? Heck, I didn’t even know for sure how she felt about me.

For a moment I wished that neither of us were zombies. I wished that we were not being hunted by the Juan de Oñate clan of zombies and that we didn’t possess the special gene that neither of us really cared about or had even asked for.

For a long moment all I wanted was for Pearl and I to be just to normal human-being-teenagers. So that I could tell her how much I loved her. And so that perhaps some day we might be able to fall in love the way normal humans do. And even…get married.

“That’s not going to happen,” Pearl said abruptly.

“Huh?” I replied. Had she been reading my mind?

“Sez here, in the paper, that the city council is considering an ordinance that would set up drunk driver sobriety check points randomly at undisclosed intersections in the city three times a week.”

“ Oh” I said, catching my breath. “Why do they want to do that?”

“Those fatal accidents last month. Too many drunk drivers. What bothers me is what if one of us gets stopped.”

I got her point immediately.

“The smell,” I said.

“Right, “ Pearl said, “nothing like the smell of death on the breathalizer to let you know this driver is impaired.”

We both laughed at that.

“Lazaro, what do you suppose this “Lesson “is all about?”

“I don’t know, ” I replied. “But I guess we’ll soon find out.”

And a few minutes later we walked into the library and did find out.

The room was really large. Obviously the site of a lot of research. One whole wall was dedicated to computer stations with monitors and on the wall was a giant size super rectangular screen, perhaps twelve by twenty feet. In the middle of the room were numerous wooden tables with chairs, like you might find in any library. Against the other three walls were floor to ceiling bookshelves and large computer storage structures– a lot data was being mined in this room. From the covers of the books on the shelves, it looked like some were really old.

“Right on time for your first lesson,” I heard someone say behind us. We turned to find it was Mrs. Gonzalez, my librarian friend from the Lincoln Heights library. Standing at the doorway with an armload of books and a computer in her arms.

“Mrs. Gonzalez!” I said with a smile. I was really glad to see her.

“And I’m happy to see you, Lazaro, and you, Pearl. I’m even happier to say we’re going to be seeing a lot of each other in the next few weeks. Mr. Nez has assigned me to be your…I guess you would call me your teacher.”

“What exactly are you going to be teaching us?” Pearl wanted to know.

“Well, we don’t want you to get behind on your regular classes–Algebra, History, English–the classes you might be taking if you were back at Wilson. But there’s also a lot of information you need to know about that I think you will only find here.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“Well, let’s start with the this.” She deposited her armload on a table and then walked over to one of the shelves and pulled out an ancient looking manuscript. She brought it back to the table. It was big and thick, about a foot wide and a foot and half long.  The pages, I could see, were not made of regular paper.  They looked like heavy parchment, each page about sewn to the binding with thick leather thread.  The writing on the cover of the “book” was in some language I didn’t recognize.

“It’s called a codice,” Mrs. Gonzalez explained. “It’s one of the ancient books written by the Aztecs.”

“Right,” said Pearl beginning to leaf through the pages. “I’ve heard of this.”

“This one is titled “Teomoxtli nemiliztli miquitli,” Mrs. Gonzales continued. “I guess you could translate it as “The Book of Life and Death.”

“Life and death, wow!” I said. “Nothing light weight about this, eh.”

“What? Are we supposed to read this,” Pearl asked. “And if so, why? And how?”

“This book was originally written in Aztec hieroglyphic writings about 700 years ago. It was written by the very first human being to be born with the mutant zombie gene that resurrects you when you die. It has since been translated into Spanish.”

She indicated the center portion of the manuscript which was also in parchment but I could see Spanish scrawling on the pages.

“And then…” She indicated the back part of the manuscript where I could see normal pages were attached.”…into modern English. We make it easy for you.”

“Who wrote this?” Pearl asked.

“He was a very gifted poet and king of the Mexica people,” Mrs. Gonzalez replied. “His name was Nezahualcoyotl

“Nezalhualcoyotl. We’ve heard that name before, from Mr. Nez.”

Mrs. Gonzalez gave Pearl a quizzical look. Then she smiled broadly and chuckled.

“I guess you guys don’t get it, eh?’

“Get what?”

“Lazaro, Pearl,” Mrs. Gonzalez said patiently. “Mr. Nez IS the ancient Aztec king Nezahualcoyotl. He is the very very first zombie. And this book is a record of our zombie people.”

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

GENETIC RIDDLES.

“A zombie dog?” I asked.

It was a few minutes after our arrival at the underground chambers of the Mano Poderosa laboratory, secretly situated underneath the Los Angeles County USC Medical Facility. Mr. Nez and Mr. Brown had gone off to confer with security concerning the vicious attack on us by the Juan De Oñate zombies. Dr. Martínez had volunteered to show us around the lab and to our living quarters. Vida, the pit bull mix, followed close behind us, wagging her tail and seeming totally in charge of the situation.

“Yes, Vida is our first successful resurrection,” Dr. Martínez explained as she led Pearl and I through swinging double doors into a vast laboratory complex. We walked past lab technicians busy at pristine white tables. Some pored over electronic microscopes, others adjusted  centrifuge settings, still others conducted tests with rows and rows of petri dishes. I could see this was really a full blown operation.

“As you know the Mano Podreosa project is dedicated to finding a viable way of utilizing the mutant zombie gene that both of you, and the five progenitors, possess. We hope to convert it into a way of bringing human beings back to life, ending human mortality.”

“And you’re starting with dogs?” Pearl asked.

“Not exactly,” Dr. Martínez replied with a smile. “Let me backtrack. In the early 1980s we were able to isolate the mutant zombie gene that you two and a few others were naturally born with. This mutant gene that is part of your DNA, it’s unique to you.”

We continued walking among the lab technicians.

“When you die,” Dr. Martínez went on, “that gene contains a “trigger” that goes off and reboots your dead body, bringing it back to life. Of course that comes with the unique zombie properties we’re all familiar with–no heartbeat, the residual odor of death, the ghastly white pallor. Till what we call the “puberty” phase passes. Then you begin to look more and more human.

“Like you,” I said. I kinda of wanted to state the obvious, just to be sure. Dr. Martinez instantly understand what I was asking.

“Yes, Lazaro,” all of us here are zombies. I am a zombie.”

“But you look so human!” Pearl blurted out.

“Yes, but we’re all descendant from one or another of the five family bloodlines. You two are the only ones that have a distinct and unique bloodline of your own. That’s one of the reasons we want you here. To help us solve our puzzle.”

“The puzzle being how to isolate the ”trigger”effect that rises us from the dead.” I ventured.

“How to isolate it, and apply it so it works on human beings who have died by natural causes and have regular DNA.”

“So it can work on just anybody. Right?” Pearl asked.

“That’s our goal,” Dr. Martínez replied.

We had moved from the lab area, through another set of swinging doors, and into what was obviously living quarters. We came into a large living room. It was comfortably furnished with couches, chairs and tables and even a pool table. A few zombies were  seated watching TV while others played a game of chess.

“We started experimenting with the usual lab subjects…mice,” Dr. Martínez continued.

“In this case it was dead mice. We tried unsuccessfully for more than a decade. Oh we thought we had early successes. But the mice that came back to life didn’t last very long. A day at most. Their bodies seemed to overheat inexplicably. They died again and there was no further resurrecting them. Some of them seemed to be in terrible pain before they died again. It made us really consider what we were up against. We didn’t want to try that on humans till we knew for certain all the parameters of the effects of the genetic material we were using.”

There was a moment of silence as we took this in. The idea of bringing dead people back to life only to suffer terrible pain before dying again was unsettling to say the least.

We had now moved into a hallway of what appeared to be a dorm. Each door had a name on the door and some were even decorated with clippings and photos.

“This is what we call the hotel. We all have a room here. We even get a private shower and bathroom.”

“But what about Vida?” I asked, scratching the dog under her ear. She had obviously taken quite a liking to me.

“Vida was a fortuitous accident,” Dr. Martinez replied, leading us further down the hallway.

“Accident?” Pearl and I said in union.

“Her original name was Lucy. She was my dog and I would bring here to the lab to keep me company on days I worked late. One day, she wandered into one of the sample rooms–that’s where we keep various genetic extracts of the zombie gene. She seems to have made a meal of some of the petri dishes. By the time I discovered her, she was dead. I examined her and as near as I could tell it was a heart attack–the effect of the alien material in her system. Of course, I was heartbroken. I thought that was the end of her. And then, an hour after I had pronounced her dead, she popped back to life. As you see her now, a zombie dog. That’s why I renamed her Vida.”

“So now you know how to bring people back to life, right?” I asked.

“Not so easy,” Dr. Martínez replied as she opened a door revealing a modest but quite attractive bedroom. “This one’s for you, Lazaro.”

She indicated the next room down the hall, “That one is your room Pearl.”  Then she remembered what we were talking about.

“We don’t know exactly what it was that Vida consumed that night. There were several experiments in the works at the time and we don’t know how much of whatever she may have drunk. For the past few months we’ve been retracing our steps, trying to figure out what the combination of genetic material may have been that brought her back to life.”

“But eventually you’ll know, right?” Pearl asked.

“We can only hope. The good news is that Vida is living proof that our eventual goal is obtainable. The bad news is it may take us many years before we rediscover the particular combination that makes it work, at least for dogs. Then the much larger question remains, how to make it work for humans.”

Dr. Martínez glanced at her watch and a concerned look came over her face.

“I have to go now,” Dr. Martínez said, “late for a meeting. Dinner is at six–I hear we’re having fresh roadkill. Explore. There’s a swimming pool and exercise room at the end of the hall. And if you have any questions just ask anyone. We’ve all been briefed about you two and how important you are to the project.”

She started to leave and then noticed that Vida had other plans. She plopped down on the bed in my bedroom.

“I guess you have a new roommate,” Dr. Martínez said. “Just don’t offer her any meat.”

“Huh,” I said. This sounded strange.

“Vida is a vegetarian. We’re not sure if it is particular to her or something that applies to any animal resurrected by the mutant zombie gene.”

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