been bitten, but I dared not. Any movement that was not that of a muerto would doom me to the same fate as the sicario and the Americano.
So I lurched to my feet again, using the press of bodies to propel me upwards and forward. My head ached, and my eyes felt dull. One of the packets had fallen loose and now hung free from my body, occasionally slapping my side as I stumbled onward.
Soon the steel walls were replaced by the sandy dirt embankments of the arroyo that rose up to twice the height of the tallest man. During the monsoon seasons the rain collected and rushed through the natural channel, seeking low ground and washing everything away in its path. Then it was dangerous, but not as dangerous as it was now. Now the water was replaced by the muertos, who were no less a natural force than the storms that filled this conduit.
I noticed a change in my stride. My legs felt like they were no longer my own. The dull ache that had gripped them a day ago was now gone—to be replaced by a feeling of weightlessness, as if the limbs were no longer there.
Suddenly a gunshot rang out from far ahead. I knew it to be the beginning of the end, and the most dangerous part of the trek. The Border Patrol were taking aim at us, using their high-powered rifles to shoot us like chickens locked in a coop.
My hands lost their feeling as well. It was as if they belonged to someone else.
More gunshots followed the first. Although I could not see what was happening, I had witnessed it before on my first trip. Bullets were ripping through heads. Blood and bone was flying everywhere as marksmen found that sweet spot in the brain of the muertos that caused instant—and permanent—death. The fear I had was the fear only a living person could have. I had to hope and pray that I would not fall into the sights of a trigger-happy border guard.
I lost the feeling in my arms around the same time the minefield came into view. More than a hundred small rectangles were placed in the ground facing upwards. I knew that they were called Claymores and fired thousands of ball bearings towards their targets, ripping them apart in an instant.
As the first ranks of muertos shuffled forward, night became day as a row of mines was triggered, shredding dead flesh. The surge halted for a moment as the flashes of light blinded the muertos. I think it scared them a little, too.
Yet still we pressed ahead.
I could no longer feel my body. It felt like I was walking in a dream where I moved but did not know how. A thought began to form in my brain, but it was hard to concentrate on such things.
I groaned and for the first time realized that I was hungry. The muerto in front of me had long ago rotted away, scraps of grey and green skin flapping as it moved. It did not appeal to me, but then I remembered the woman. I knew that she was somewhere forward and to the right of me. I willed my body to move in that direction, and began to jostle and push my way through the pressing mass of dead flesh.
The front ranks continued their forward momentum. This time they were allowed past the next two rows of mines until there were hundreds of muertos in the field. Then, as the mines were detonated, a supernova of sound and fury tore them apart, sending them skyward only to rain back down in a shower of body pieces and bone fragments.
I groaned again.
Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew I still had a son to save. I remembered the far-away words of mi esposa when she told me to do what I had to do. But I was becoming insatiably hungry. Instinctively, I sought out the woman I knew to be alive. Had the muertos known about her, they would be looking as well. But it was my secret, and she was mine.
When she came into view, the realization finally struck me. A burst of rational thought sparked through my dying brain cells as I now understood that I had somehow been bitten, perhaps when I was down, perhaps when I was not looking. A tiny part of me—that part that was still animado—screamed for the change to stop. It begged for