by Gary Sapp
loved his wife. He rudely threw the first man down to where Quincy stood tall and athletic once again.
“Do you seek forgiveness for the indiscretions by your ancestors have perpetrated against people of color?”
The little man slowly looked up and Quincy a look as cold as ice…a look as hot as fire.
And then he spit in the face of the man who was standing in judgement over him.
Quincy snarled, grabbed the man, spun him around and placed two shot in separate sections of the other man’s spine. Seth heard parts of the man’s vertebra shatter, even over his screams of horrid agony. Blood gushed out…but the Gray Man’s long surgical background reminds him that this man will die—but not for hours to come.
Quincy wears s tight smile on his twitching lip, but his eyes are stretched to a vexing level of size and intensity. He knows all too well the damning end that he has brought to this man’s life.
And Quincy looks oblivious to the spit dangling from his chin as he does not wipe it away.
The final man had seated himself in Quincy’s shadow.
After a moment, The Sargent at arms found his focus and his voice again. He is unable to finish as the man launches an unintelligible monologue of cries and begging. He grasped for Quincy’s lower pants and kisses his loafers.
“I’m sure women of color did exactly as you are doing right now when your brood sold her husband or her children while she was powerless.” He said his voice nearly a whisper. “It would have been a mercy for her master to kill her then.”
Quincy placed his gun between the man’s eyes—and blew a gaping hole between them.
“Who would deny that I have not been merciful tonight?”
At the last, it took two beefy Peacekeepers to drag the last victim forward. She was kicking and screaming and crying. The snipers checked the perimeter one last time to make sure the group would not come under a counter or new offensive while they finished up here.
“Silence,” Quincy commanded her as if she were one of his.
She quieted as best as her trembling lip and sniveling would allow her.
“Do you seek forgiveness for the indiscretions that your people have perpetrated against people of color?”
“Oh yes,” The woman put her hands up defensively. “Oh, God, yes, I seek your forgiveness. Please forgive me. Please don’t kill me.”
And then Quincy Morgan smiled.
He ejected the gun’s magazine clip and tossed it and then the gun in the street.
He took less than a handful of steps towards Seth.
“You see, Doctor,” He said as a matter of fact. “Not only am I merciful, I am reasonable as well. This woman has given me what I want.”
“And by doing so, you will let her live?” Seth wanted to know.
“She is worthy of survival.”
And then Quincy Morgan backhanded the large woman with all of his power and strength.
He stomped on her stomach and side again and again until The Gray Man can take it no longer—“
Seth dove at Quincy’s waist. Quincy throws him off as if was a light as a feather. The two Peacekeepers who were closest to where the activity was began stomping and kicking the doctor in his ribs side and chest—
“Enough,”
Dr. Seth Dupree curls up like an embryo, the pain in his ribs and side nearly unbearable as he spits up blood. And yet, he finds his final bit of strength and courage to…he grasp at one of Peacekeeper whose boots had assaulted him so duly just seconds ago.
He raised his face up to feel the dirt of the man’s boot on his face with force.
“No,” Seth spat out. “Don’t tell them to stop now, Quincy. Command them to kill me the way that you’ve killed all the others. I demand that you kill me right now before you force me to endure one more minute of this nightmare.”
Quincy looked to be a study in tranquility.
And then he extended his hand as if to aid him to his feet once again.
Seth looked at the other man wearily.
Is this another of your ruses, Quincy? What fate awaits me when I stand at your side?
Quincy pulled him to his feet as if he weighed no more than a rag doll.
“This,” Quincy addressed with the same guarded respect that he had exhibited when Seth first came to and found himself in the company of the Peacekeepers earlier this evening.
In what seemed a lifetime ago.
“Doctor, your people have been systemically killing innocent black men and women since the day you stole my people from our lands in Mother Africa.”
“I don’t need a history lesson, especially from you, Quincy.”
Quincy laughed. He looked around and couple of Peacekeepers let out a nervous grin.
“Look how the good doctor speaks to me. He knows that I have the power to kill him for it.”
Seth purposely relaxed his tone.
“What I am saying is this: Let’s say that every word you’ve spoken tonight is correct. You have influencer. You certainly have influence. You have the Peacekeepers. You won’t be able to match soul for soul, life for life.”
“You’re right, Doctor. Ultimately this is a hopeless exercise. History has shown us that minorities can never hope to rise up and overthrow the rule of a superior majority.”
Seth frowned; he was truly at a lost.
“Then educate me, Quincy, what is all of this murder and mutilation really about?” Seth pointed at the large woman who was still rolling on the pavement, trying to recover from her near death experience. “You orchestrated the execution of the leader of your House, Xavier Prince in cold blood. You told him that he was a leader for peace times only. This was now a time of war. What did you mean that?”
Percy looks away, ashamed of his role in Xavier’s betrayal. The Peacekeepers look on as if Quincy’s answer would interest them as well. Even the beaten down white woman lifts her head in anticipation of this man’s response.
“When I was a little boy I was raised by my maternal grandmother. My own mother left for work one day when I was two and never returned.” Quincy looked away, the memory stabbing at a tender area of his heart. “Anyway, I remember the day that she set of those Gansu knives she had ordered had finally arrived. To this day, I don’t know, I don’t fully understand why those knives fascinated me.”
Seth felt his own face soften.
If Quincy was about to spring another trap then he had been hook line and sinker.
“I know the ones you are speaking of. I remember the infomercials than ran endlessly about them.”
Quincy nodded.
“She warned me to stay away from them. She told me to let them be.”
“But you didn’t heed her advice did you,” Seth added to the other’s monologue. “How bad did you cut yourself?”
Quincy lifted his left arm up so Seth could view an old gash that was nearly four inches long and at least an inch deep.
It was a very deep scar.
“The knife was so sharp that I barely felt it. It was only a tingle of pain when it happened. All the blood scared my grandmother real bad though.”
Seth nodded—and laughed nervously in spite of himself.
“It was a very deep scar.” The Gray Man muttered.
Quincy pointed a long index finger at him as if the doctor had hit on a very important point.
“Yes, that is it exactly, Doctor. And even to this day, to this very moment, I’m cautious around knives. I am an efficient killer. I can kill you with a gun; I can end your life with my bare hands. But I never let a knife do my killing, even considering all of my professional experience; even considering all of the people that I have had to kill.” He took a deep smoky breath and glared up at the stars. “That scar is always there to remind me of that. It is there to remind me of everything that I have lost…of all that I could still loose.”
Seth nodded slowly...and then shook his head.
“I want to understand, Quincy. I do. You don’t think you can win this conflict wit
h Pandora.” Seth nodded once more. “All of this…all of what is coming is your attempt to…you are going to leave your own scar for the world to see. What has a House in Chains done, Quincy? What are your people going to do?”
The other man stole one last peaceful, silent breath. He smoothed out his bloody shirt and straightened out his pants.
And then he turned his full attention to the area just south of their position right now, back into the suburbs of Fulton County.
“A House in Chains has spent a considerable amount of time and capital hacking into the local telephone assistance database.” He looked at his watch. “Twenty minutes ago thousands of bogus 911 calls are remotely being dialed out to the Atlanta Police Department. As scattered as the cops are surely to be now after the Zero Hour, we’re counting on them to respond quickly to any and all calls originating from predominantly white neighborhoods.”
“What kind of emergencies are these calls—“
“They’re reporting the standard emergencies that would arise during an event like a great civil unrest rising out of the streets of a major American metropolitan city.”
“And what happens when the police respond to these bogus calls?”
“Our snipers, like the ones you’ve seen in action here tonight, will feast upon them. It will be like target practice.”
“Tell me it ends there,” Seth took a dangerous step forward. “I’m begging you, Quincy to please tell me that it ends there.”
Percy chimed in.
“We learned much from what we’ve learned from the riots in Miami, Los Angeles, Baltimore and countless other cities in this country over the years. The authorities expect black folks to do what they’ve always done in the past.