by Gary Sapp
shot between the man’s eyes just as he went for his own weapon.
Louis could hear the other children screaming from their secured location in the compound a few feet from here. Moses is himself in a squatted position in the far corner of this room. He is still covering his ears from the explosion of gunfire.
He mutely asks him to be still until he returns.
He knows that there is one guard that remains.
He could hear him charging from the outside. If Louis understood anything about Pandora procedures and protocols, this man had already radioed for backup.
Louis had used a weapon like this today and even before, but lacked the hours of training and competence to outwit his adversary now that his element of surprise was now gone. He knew that he may only get a single opportunity to kill this last remaining man or all was lost.
He did understand that with all of that training and experience the other man had, that there was at least a slim chance that he could be over confident and even arrogant when he finally faced Louis. In the other man’s mind there was no way in hell that a freak like Louis Keaton could have single handily taken out two of his Pandora comrades.
But Louis knew he couldn’t fail.
If he were to fall…if his enemy found and killed him…Louis knew that shortly thereafter Serena would order these children slaughtered—just as the Caretaker had done all of those years ago.
Louis couldn’t afford to fail.
And he does not.
Just as the man bent the last corner to this room, Louis planted a bullet in the man’s temple. He unloaded more rounds in his chest; torso and thigh for good measure even after the solider had fallen on his back.
Louis turned away from the carnage of his creation and his weaponless left hand out to Moses Jackson.
And the boy reluctantly took his hand in return.
They found the other boys crying and huddled together nearby.
“It’s okay,” Louis said to them. “It’s alright now. Everything is going to be fine.”
The boys look from Moses to Louis and back again. None of them take a move forward even after Louis uses one of the dead guard’s keys to unlock the bars that head them caged in like some type of animals. The Zero Hour has passed for him and the city but the clock on a new deadline was ticking. He could guess that at least a dozen vehicles and at least a chopper or two had been dispatched to this location—even in the unlikely event, that a freak like him had overcome three experienced and well-armed agents.
“I know that all of you are afraid. And frankly, so am I. I’ve done some terrible things tonight.” He looked back at the men he’d massacred to the weapon warm in his hand. “And I’ve done far worse without even a gun in my hand in my past. I know that I’ve given you boys no reason to like me and very little reason to trust me. But I need you all to put your personal feelings aside for now—“
Some of the boys cry out louder.
“Please, stop it.” Louis heard the pleading tone in his voice take center stage. “Pandora will be sending someone here soon to hurt us. I need you all to follow me out of here.”
All of his gestures of goodwill seem to be laid to waste. None of the other boys look to be making any strides towards leaving this place. Louis falls to his knees in frustration. He was ever so close to making this right.
And could he hear the other’s voice beginning to whisper in the back of his mind.
He could feel all of the training that Dr. Hicks Dupree was melting away.
Perhaps he hadn’t vanquished Hugh like he so wanted to believe so easily?
Perhaps he was destined—
He heard Moses bark out a command.
The crying stopped.
“I said on your feet, solders.”
The other boys look at Moses as if he is even more crazed than the only adult still left alive in this room…but they slowly begin to rise to their feet. Chills race through Louis shoulder blades.
In a strange way he can understand the pride a father feels for his own son’s accomplishments as he watches his boy grow into a man.
“This man kidnapped us from our homes and families.” Moses said. He looked different somehow to Louis, he looked older, especially the skin around his eyes and mouth. He was Moses from the old Bible stories. He was going to lead his people out of Egypt. He was the general that Christopher Prince had been. He was that special child that everyone in his life knew that he could be. Moses Jackson was the hero that Louis Keaton could never be. “This man put us in considerable danger. He almost did something unspeakable to us. But I am not asking you to trust him. I am begging you to trust me while I follow him out of this place. Let’s saddle up, gentlemen. We are going home.”
Thomas
It has been often said that fortune favored the bold.
So which way would the scales of justice weigh for an audacious act of betrayal?
For the third time in many minutes Thomas Pepper picked up Lucy Burgess’ hotel key and examined it with a keen interest.
He spun the key around his thick fingers. He tossed it in the air and then rolled it around and through his fingers again. Are you safe Lucy? Have the Peacekeepers left you in peace…or in pieces?
Thomas dialed 9 from the bed of his own hotel room’s phone here at the Radisson Inn and keyed in the appropriate numbers of her cell phone that had burned in his memory by now.
Again she’d failed to answer.
He’d left her yet another message on her answering service. He then got to his feet, his footsteps heavy in his own ears and scooped up his cell phone. He texted her again—but this latest message of are you there, would simply exist in line with the dozen or so text that he’d previously sent.
Thomas Pepper knew that she never was far away from her cell. Even if she had taken on a lover for the evening—which was a distinct possibility—she would check her phone between sessions.
She would want to be on top of current events especially with the evening growing late and the Zero Hour fast approaching.
A scratchy but familiar voice on the television uttered something that had finally broken his concentration. Tammy Fields, a woman reporter from local Channel 6 was interviewing common, everyday citizens about the impending passing of A House in Chain’s self-imposed deadline for Atlanta’s missing children to be found by the FBI. Most of the interviewees acted with nervousness if not outright anxiety about would happen in the city over the next few hours. Tammy smiled an honest but futile assurance and a couple of them. Thomas noted that one of his former lovers had grown a small mustache on her upper lip and tried to mask the defect with too much red lip lipstick.
Thomas turned away and walked to his room’s oversized window and peeked out at Midtown from his 8th floor vantage point. He compared this unease that Atlanta’s citizens were feeling to a city that was lined up in the direct path of a major hurricane. You did what you had to in the attempt to protect what was yours. You bordered up the windows of your home. You moved yard furniture that the heavy gust of wind would use as projectiles inside. You checked on your neighbors.
And then you grabbed everyone you loved and got the hell out of the hurricane’s path while there was still time.
Tammy had found more residents to speak on the air. One or two spoke to the camera in far angrier terms. One black woman who wore ponytails blamed the Rooster and his arrogance for the impending confrontation. Thomas was unsure how her blatant cursing got through the time delay but it had. A frame or two later the camera showed a couple of skinheads showing off sawed off shotguns on live television. They whooped and hurled obscenities and racial slurs at any person of color they could find and fired off several rounds into the air.
For a moment, Channel 6 went black.
When it returned four men who’d taken the mark were standing next to Tammy. She looked uncomfortable…if not a little scared in their wake. They vowed to honor Xavier Prince’s instructions not to act until the Zero Hour officially passed. And then the
largest of the men leaned into the microphone and wished the viewers a good night and blew a kiss at the camera.
Channel 6 went to another feed to show a far more panoramic view of Atlanta. Parts of the city were a blur of activity while other neighborhoods looked abandoned altogether. Independent school bus companies were offering charter service to people of color who were desperate to flee—to what most authorities believed—were safer areas of the metropolis in the suburbs. History had taught the country that what was perceived at predominantly Black neighborhoods would take the heaviest brunt of the coming act of civil disobedience as they did in Los Angeles during the Rodney King Riots and the assignation of the country’s first Black president.
Thomas turned the station with the remote looking for a narrative with a more national perspective to it. He found one within a few clicks. Reports and video coming in from Harlem to Washington, DC to New Orleans to Chicago to Los Angeles and countless other municipalities mirrored one another.
America was sitting on a time bomb of racial discord that the world had never witnessed.
And that bomb was set to go off in two hours.
The talking heads were having a field day. They’d hyper analyzed all of the events of the past few weeks—and of American history itself—that had let us to the brink…of this. One man, who was the color of vanilla ice cream, argued that this day had been inevitable since Lincoln had freed the slaves. A woman wearing a black blazer over a dark colored