Mac helped maintain the old paddleboat and made friends with the crew with his big grin and easy-going personability. Brogan was afraid there might be problems maintaining her male persona, especially when it came to things like going to the bathroom. But Sandra had given her an ingenious artificial penis to fit over her vagina. She pissed over the side of the boat like the other men. For the once a week bath, the men simply jumped into the river with their clothes on, washing themselves and their clothes at the same time.
They traveled for about a week and it was almost dawn. They had merged into the Mississippi River a few days before. Suddenly spotlights shown on the boat.
“Everybody on board. Show yourself or we’ll blow you out of the water,” an authoritative voice called over some type of speaker.
Mac, Herbert and Brogan were just getting comfortable in their bunks on the starboard side of the boat when they heard the noise. They quickly pulled on their body armor, grabbed their backpacks and quietly slipped out the window, over the side and into the water, Mac hanging on to Herbert since he was unable to swim.
“If we get separated,” Brogan whispered, “let’s meet in the rebel headquarters in Laredo or Mexico City, wherever they are by now.”
Trying not to create any ripples in the water, they allowed the current to carry them south, with Herbert floating on Mac’s back. They hadn’t gone too far before the current suddenly became very strong and Brogan got separated from the two men.
“Head toward shore,” Brogan yelled, struggling against the current. She went under as a whirlpool caught her. Unless she made it to shore quickly, she would have to let go of her backpack. It weighed her down. She managed to get her head above water long enough to catch a big breath before a strong current caught her again and she went under.
Somewhere in the fight with the Mississippi she lost the backpack, the gray wig and her boots. The only thing keeping her afloat was her body armor. She finally struggled ashore, collapsed on the bank and fell into an exhausted and delirious sleep. At some point, she must have removed the body armor to dry and wandered away from it, because when she finally awoke from a kick in her side, she realized she had nothing but her underwear on.
“Well, well,” a rough voice sneered, “Look what we have here. A ripe chicken look likes she done been plucked. Little too scrawny for my tastes, though.”
She peered up from where she laid, trying to see her tormenter, but the sun was behind him. She couldn’t make out any facial features, only that he was a very large male. As the man grabbed her arm, she struggled to her feet, too weak to resist.
“What’s your name, missy?”
“I don’t know, sir,” Brogan said shakily, deciding to play for time. “I can’t remember nothin’.”
Now she saw the man wore a law enforcement uniform. Not a good sign. But, since she didn’t have any kind of identification on her, no T-chip, no clothes, he might be less likely to figure out who she was. She’d heard stories about southern law enforcement personnel; some of them were as bad or worse than the emperor’s soldiers.
“Well, guess we’ll just have to take ya somewheres cozy ‘til we can figure out whats to do wit ya,” he said with a grin.
He kept a tight grip on her arm and unceremoniously threw here into the back of a law enforcement robo van, shackling her wrists and legs. Because she claimed to not know who she was, Sheriff Boldegard, the man who found her, decided no one would be looking for her, so he would force her to work in his hidden labor camp, deep in the Mississippi bayou.
It was evening when they arrived at the camp. She was unceremoniously thrown into a hut with other female slaves, a ragged, dirty tunic now her only garment. Facing a perilous future, she knew she had to figure out how to fight a different kind of battle: the battle to survive. She was no longer the White Warrior. She had to find a way to become a slave warrior if she was ever going to escape to her family.
Chapter Twenty-One
Family
Frank was worried. Nothing had been heard from Brogan in over a year. When she was traveling on BL missions, she was meticulous at sending coded messages to the family at least once a week. He was afraid something had happened to her. It wasn’t like her to not contact them. He sent multiple messages to Stephen at the new rebel headquarters in Mexico City, asking if he heard anything. But no word.
Emily was eight years old. She looked so much like her mother. She was lean, tall for her age, with long, black, curly hair. Her emerald eyes were a stark contrast to her dark brown skin. Emily spent her days helping Frank with the vegetable garden, caring for the chickens and reading. She played less and less with the village children, preferring Frank’s company.
“The children don’t like to read so it is sometimes difficult to talk to them about things I am interested in,” Emily told him when he asked why she was not going to the village as much.
Whenever Stephen came home for a visit from his training duties at the rebel camp, he always brought a large stack of books with him for Emily. He’d learned to include a wide range of topics, since Emily’s interests covered just about every topic he could find.
Like her mother, Emily preferred real, printed books to e-books.
“I like the smell and feel of a real book, Pop-Pop,” she told Frank one day. “It makes me feel closer to the author. Plus, the words somehow seem more vivid on printed paper than they do on the e-reader. Why is that?”
“That’s a good question,” Frank replied. “I guess you are like your mother. She always preferred a book she could hold in her hands. I know it is one of the reasons why she started the Book Liberators’ movement. She loved books so much she just couldn’t understand why they should be banned or destroyed.”
“I guess I never really thought about it like that before,” Emily thoughtfully commented. “I did not stop to think until now why an idea was more important to Mother than her family. Maybe I am starting to understand it just a little. Do you think she is okay? We haven’t heard from her in a long time.”
“I hope so,” Frank sighed. “Your mother is a tough warrior. I’m sure if she can find a way to get to us she will.”
That was the last time Emily talked about her mother. She and the aging German Shepherd, Herman, were inseparable. He was her protector when Mateo was not around. Mateo had been like a big brother to Emily. He recently joined the rebel cadets. He spent summers at the rebel camp learning military strategies and defensive techniques.
Although Frank was approaching sixty years of age, he stayed fit with his work in the garden and repairing the villagers farming equipment. He was content with his life, except for his worries about Brogan. He was sure he would know if she was no longer alive. He refused to give up hope. Someday she would walk up the path and greet them; he just knew it in his heart.
Chapter Twenty-Two
A Warrior Becomes a Slave
Emperor Priest was so focused on consolidating his power he was neglecting the needs of his people, who were starving. Consequently, illegal farming and black-market crops were often the only source of food for millions of citizens. The huge domed produce and protein farms in the Chicago Province were destroyed, one by one, as the drones failed to repair them, and they collapsed from the weight of climate-induced, raging snow storms.
Slave labor camps were too good an opportunity for black-market thieves to pass up. By using slaves for planting and harvesting, the camp owners greatly reduced their overhead costs, reaping huge profits on the backs of the slaves.
Brogan was a slave, shackled with irons, planting and harvesting illegal crops of sweet potatoes, grain, and soybeans, sometimes sixteen hours a day, or while daylight lasted. The slave camp where Brogan labored was one of hundreds in the deep south. This camp was located on the Louisiana side of the Mississippi River, across the river from Vicksburg, Mississippi. It was a gold mine of profits for Sheriff Boldegard.
Brogan was weak from her battle with the Mississippi River when she arrived, but th
e camp’s traiteur, the native Creole healer, nursed Brogan with herbs and a broth. The healer and unofficial camp leader, known as Mother Clea, was feared and respected by all, including Sheriff Boldegard. He was a Creole and ran the hidden camp as a sideline to his law enforcement duties.
She and the other slaves were tortured by mosquitoes and burned by the hot sun. Two meals a day of a thin gruel was not enough to keep anyone alive. Brogan learned from the other slaves which wild plants were edible to eat and how to catch and kill the stray rat, snake or rabbit to stay alive. Her white hair grew long, and her body became even leaner, bent over by the constant back-breaking work. Sometimes she would shave her head when the bugs in her hair became too much of a problem.
The sheriff didn’t care about the health of his slaves. He could always kidnap more to replace any who died.
It didn’t take long before Brogan was strong enough to begin thinking like the warrior she was. Tactically, she had to learn more about the camp. Mother Clea said there were close to a hundred slaves in the camp. Men and women were kept separated at her insistence. One day, in the deepening twilight, as the rest of the women in the large hut were drifting off into exhausted sleep, Mother Clea told her how the separation of the sexes happened.
“As you might expect, when the Sherriff set up the camp eight years ago, he allowed the men to rape the women at will. The result was a lot of unwanted pregnancies, causing women to be less productive in the fields. Plus, the men were often brutal in their treatment of the women. I showed the women how to use poison sumac on a man’s penis. The men all started getting terrible rashes after they raped a woman, which meant they were sometimes off work for days. The sheriff was not happy. He came to me to find out what was going on.”
Mother Clea shrugged and grinned, “I just told the sheriff I put a voodoo curse on the men because of their brutal raping of the women. That was when the sheriff decided to separate the men from the women.”
As she learned more about the camp and its occupants, Brogan discovered most did not know how to read or write. Many of the women were kidnapped from small towns in the Mississippi delta when they were young teenagers. Before the separation from the men, women who became pregnant were forced to get abortions, meaning there were no children in the camp.
Mother Clea was a wealth of information, not only on the camp’s residents, but on the guards and the surrounding flora and fauna. Although she could not read or write herself, she had no objections when Brogan suggested starting a class to teach the women. Initial resistance disappeared as the novelty of something different to fill their limited free time took hold.
Although she had no books, her eidetic memory allowed Brogan to recall word for word passages from her beloved books. Mother Clea knew of a tree growing near the bayou with bark perfect for writing. Brogan fashioned writing instruments from sticks burned in the fire. Starting with the basic alphabet, she began teaching the women how to read and write.
Not sure if the sheriff could read, she also taught the women Book Liberator code to communicate secretly when he or any of the guards were around. Within a year of her arrival, most of the women were reading at a basic level. Mother Clea saw how the simple classes were raising the spirits of the slaves, resulting in fewer illnesses and less bouts of depression, so she started taking the classes, too.
During the classes, Brogan used her powers of persuasion to encourage the women. Night after night, she told them stories of how and why the Book Liberators started.
“I remember as a teenager reading a novel, The Shadow of the Wind. It told the story of a bookseller’s son in Spain who came across an ancient, secret cemetery for books. I’ll never forget what he said about that huge library:
“As I walked in the dark through the tunnels and tunnels of books, I could not help being overcome by a sense of sadness. I couldn’t help thinking that if I, by pure chance, had found a whole universe in a single unknown book, buried in that endless necropolis, tens of thousands more would remain unexplored, forgotten forever. I felt myself surrounded by millions of abandoned pages, by worlds and souls without an owner sinking in an ocean of darkness, while the world that throbbed outside the library seemed to be losing its memory, day after day, unknowingly feeling all the wiser the more it forgot.”
“The Book Liberators do not want anyone to forget all the wisdom in all the millions of books the emperor wants to destroy and relegate to a cemetery by the destruction of all books. That’s why learning to read and write is so important.”
None of the women ever again questioned her reasons for wanting to teach them to read and write. They enthusiastically committed themselves to learning.
Stage two of Brogan’s plan was to begin training the women in personal defense tactics. Although the shackles on their wrists and ankles limited their range of motion, Brogan developed exercises and karate style movements they could use. By year two, she and Mother Clea could see obvious improvement in the physical and mental health of the women.
At first, some women saw the efforts as a waste of time. One of the biggest detractors was a tall, outspoken Black woman named Eulalie. One side of her face and body was twisted from burn scars. She was viciously beaten by the sheriff when she first arrived. When he was done beating her, he threw her into a campfire. It was a miracle she survived, thanks to Mother Clea’s skill.
Eulalie had been in the camp for almost eight years; a lifetime, since most slaves died from disease, accidents or overwork within five years or less of their arrival. Obviously, she was a survivor. Brogan knew if she could get her on her side, the rest of the women would fall into line. Eulalie refused to participate in the reading and writing classes and frequently bullied women who participated.
“What good will it do us?” Eulalie growled when Brogan sat with the women one night talking about the idea of defense strategies. “We will die here as slaves. You are just giving everyone false hopes.”
Brogan decided to not say anything, but she knew eventually she would have to deal with Eulalie. Sure enough, the next day while the women were working in the far west side of a soybean field and the guards were looking the other way, Eulalie snuck up behind Brogan, thinking to bash her head in with a rock.
Her training and experience as the White Warrior kicked in. When Eulalie raised the rock above her head to strike, Brogan whipped her legs around and knocked Eulalie’s feet out from under her. With a whoosh, Eulalie’s breath was knocked out of her as Brogan then landed on top of her stomach and firmly planted the chain from her shackles across her neck. Eulalie’s eyes began to bulge as she couldn’t breathe.
“Do we understand each other?” Brogan asked quietly, carefully looking around to make sure no guards were watching. “Don’t ever think you can get away with something like this. I am the White Warrior. I may be a slave now, but I am still a warrior and you would do well to not forget that. Ever.”
Brogan gradually released the pressure on Eulalie’s neck and stood up, her eyes never leaving the woman. She reached down and offered a hand to help her up. Hesitantly, confused Brogan had not killed her when she could have, Eulalie took the hand and stood up. A new respect for Brogan showed on her face. She never threatened her again and was always the first to show support for Brogan’s ideas. Apparently, even folks in the Mississippi bayou had heard of the White Warrior.
Chapter Twenty-Three
A General without an Army
It had been one of the most difficult times of the general’s life. Out of the original 50,000 Book Liberator rebel soldiers who traveled to Missouri, less than 10,000 survived the devastating bombings in the Missouri farmlands more than ten years earlier. And, about a third of those were too wounded from shrapnel and other injuries to ever serve in the army again. Dr. Allison had done a phenomenal job saving lives and patching the survivors up.
Now the rebel army was only 20,000 soldiers, still not enough to defeat the psychotic emperor. They were outnumbered and outgunned. Rebel spies estimate
d the emperor’s forces at close to half a million.
The remaining rebel army limped home to Mexico City, nursing their physical and psychological wounds. General Juan Veracruz struggled every day to push down the terrible guilt of leading his troops into defeat. When they returned from the one-sided battle, the first thing he did was offer his resignation to the BL citizen’s council. They refused it, so he was stuck with a job he not only did not want but one he never really felt from the beginning he was qualified for. And there wasn’t much of an army left anyway. For all practical purposes, he was a general without an army.
His father, Max, served in the Marines during World War III, and was undoubtedly better qualified to lead the army. But he refused the position. He and Stephen, father of Brogan’s partner, Bryan, preferred to train the trickle of rebel recruits who continued to appear.
Without an adequate army, the rebels could no longer rely on numbers to defeat the empire forces. They returned to the guerilla warfare of the early days of the BL rebel army, harassing Priest’s troops wherever they found them and destroying equipment and supplies.
Almost two months after the defeat in Missouri, his aide interrupted his concentration on another stack of endless things needing his approval on his vid-pad.
“Sir, a couple of new recruits just arrived I think you need to meet.”
“Why would I need to meet recruits, Lieutenant? Send them over to Max or Stephen. Don’t waste my time. Can’t you see I’m busy,” he said with a scowl.
Lieutenant Nelson didn’t bat an eye. He was used to the general’s scowls. “Yes, sir. But these two say they have news of the White Warrior.”
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