83
Summer Goes on a Scavenger Hunt
They were inside the fort, Gavin’s map open on a card table, a single candle illuminating the darkness.
“Where are we going?” Summer asked.
Gavin looked up from his tattered map. He tapped his index finger on a cluster of city blocks. “These blocks used to be hotels and shops in Old San Juan, less than a mile walk from here.” It was one of the few nearby areas on the map that hadn’t been marked with an X.
Roger handed them black ponchos. “Be careful.”
“We’ve never had any issues in the rain,” Gavin said.
Javier knocked on the table. “Knock on wood.”
“That’s plastic,” Eliza said with a smirk.
They put on their backpacks, then the black ponchos, so the colored backpacks would be hidden and protected from the rain. Gavin and Eliza concealed handguns. Summer and Javier had no experience with guns, and the group didn’t have the ammo to teach them, so they were given knives to carry for protection. The four of them left the fort, the guards at the entrance giving them a serious nod on the way out.
Summer was a bundle of nerves. This was the second time she’d been scavenging, but she understood the risks. She’d only been on the island for six days, but she’d already seen more horror than all her years as a nurse put together.
A wide concrete walkway led them away from the fort. The walkway was wide enough for a car and over three hundred feet long. A steady rain pelted their ponchos. The jungle encroached on both sides, branches hanging over the cracking concrete and obscuring the black sky overhead. They didn’t have flashlights, but Gavin knew the way by heart. He’d scavenged nearly every block of Old San Juan.
The walkway eventually connected to a small parking lot, which connected to the streets of Old San Juan. They passed the remnants of museums, a hospital, restaurants, churches, and hotels. The architecture of Old San Juan was very Spanish colonial: ornate, with archways, balconies, and bright colors. The pinks and lime greens and reds had faded, and many of the buildings had collapsed. A few still stood, dark and lifeless, the occasional human lurking in the shadows.
The Black Liberation Army had expanded into Old San Juan a few years ago, but the lack of bridge access or fresh water, plus the proximity to enemy gangs, had caused them to abandon the area. Now it was home to transients and the occasional scavenger.
It was eerie, the rain muffling their hearing, the darkness nearly blinding them. Gavin led them through Old San Juan, walking tight to the buildings, cutting through alleyways, every now and then throwing up his fist to stop, then crouching to listen before continuing.
Summer was third in line out of four, behind Eliza and in front of Javier. She heard footsteps sloshing in the water. In the confusion of the rain, she couldn’t tell where the sound was coming from. Maybe it was one of them. Maybe their steps were echoing off the crumbling buildings. Gavin held his fist in the air and stopped. He must’ve heard it too.
Then he waved his hand, signaling them to follow. He ran, and they ran after him, their boots and water shoes splashing the puddles and smacking the asphalt. Gavin turned a corner, down a long and narrow alleyway. They ran down the alley about halfway before Gavin stopped and turned around. He ran right past Summer, going back the way they came.
Summer turned to follow, but three men walking from the far end of the alleyway toward them stopped Gavin in his tracks. Two of the men had rifles pointed in their direction. Summer turned from those men and saw four more men at the opposite end of the alley, two of them with machetes and two of them with rifles. They were stuck between the proverbial rock and the hard place. Summer searched the crumbling buildings for an opening. A broken window offered a way in with no guarantee of a way out.
“In here,” Summer hissed, climbing through the window frame.
Her friends followed her into the dark building, at least she thought they did, but the rain was noisy, and time was of the essence. The inside of the building was decimated. Three floors of debris and furniture and appliances had collapsed in a heap on the bottom floor. Two of the upper walls had collapsed inward, creating a haphazard roof—or maybe a generously sized coffin.
Summer climbed over and ducked under debris. She crawled through tight spaces, moving what she could, squeezing around what she couldn’t, all in complete darkness. She heard rustling and voices behind her, but she didn’t look back, adrenaline pushing her forward. Summer finally crawled from the building, into the street, her poncho covered in dust and drywall, the rain immediately washing her.
Summer peered into the hole she’d just come from and said tentatively, “Javier? Eliza? Gavin?”
A pale hand reached from the hole. Summer grabbed Gavin’s hand, and he squeezed from the building, coughing. Javier came through immediately afterward.
Summer stuck her head in the hole and called out for Eliza, careful not to be too loud. She cocked her head, listening, but heard nothing but the constant drumbeat of the rain. Summer turned to the guys and asked, “Where’s Eliza?”
“I thought she was with you,” Gavin said to Javier.
“I thought she was with you,” Javier replied.
Summer put her index finger to her lips. Male voices could be heard in the distance, maybe a block away.
“It’s them. You two stay here,” Gavin whispered, then ran toward the voices.
Javier and Summer followed despite his command. They followed the raucous voices and laughter, the celebratory sounds getting louder. They peered around the corner of a building, and there they were. Seven men and Eliza.
One of the men looked familiar to Summer. The one wearing a plastic bag as a poncho. Maybe her mind was playing tricks on her. It was dark and rainy, and the men were walking away from them, but something about the man’s walk, and the way he held his machete, reminded her of Derek. The man who had killed her fiancé.
“What are we gonna do?” Summer whispered.
Gavin shook his head. “What can we do? It’s one gun against five.”
84
Naomi and Politically Motivated
Naomi pressed her fingertips into his muscular back. She watched his face as he reached his climax, hoping for eye contact. But he didn’t look in her eyes. Instead, he looked at her naked body as he grunted and satisfied himself. Vernon rolled off Naomi, a thin sheen of sweat along his hairline.
He sighed. “I needed that.”
Naomi wondered what she needed.
They lay in the king-size bed of their hotel room at the Mandarin Oriental. Naomi snuggled close, her head on his chest.
“Are you happy with Katherine?” Vernon asked, referring to Naomi’s campaign manager.
“Are you interested in a threesome?” Naomi replied with a smirk.
He laughed and said, “You know what I meant.”
“Are you happy with her?” Naomi asked.
“I think we can do better. I think we’ll have to do better if we’re gonna win.”
“You have someone in mind?”
“Fletcher McClure.”
“Corrinne’s campaign manager?”
“He’s a winner.”
“Why would he leave Corrinne? She’s the front runner.”
“We need to find a way to change that.” He grabbed the remote from the bedside table and flipped on the OLED television. The translucent screen came to life with breaking news.
The coiffed man said, “The shooter has been identified as Davis Sedgewick, a twenty-year-old University of Oregon student. Sedgewick interrupted a summer session history course, fatally shooting two professors and nine students, while injuring eight other students.”
“This is awful,” Naomi said, sitting up in bed.
The newscaster continued. “Minutes before the shooting he posted the following message on You Share.” The message appeared on the screen. The newscaster read it aloud and skipped the swear words.
“America. The home of the brave, the land
of the free, what a ****ing joke. We’re not free. We don’t deserve to be free. We’d rather have a ****ing nanny state. These ****ing Marxist professors and their socialist agenda are destroying this country. They’re leeches on hardworking Americans. Most of my classmates are socialists too. They make me sick. They’ve never worked for anything. That’s why they want socialism. They don’t know what it’s like to work for something, to create something, only to have someone take it from you. They’ve been brainwashed to think that the rich owes them, that the government owes them. To be free, we must be able to stand on our own. These socialists must be destroyed before they destroy the world.”
They cut back to the newscaster. A picture of an AR-15 carbine appeared over his shoulder. “Davis Sedgewick used this assault rifle, capable of firing thirty rounds without reloading. Over the past forty years, law makers have tried to ban these weapons of war. When we return, Washington insider, Grant Jackson, joins us to discuss the possibility of sensible gun control.”
The news went to a commercial break.
Vernon muted the television and turned to Naomi. “I’m not sure if this is good or bad for us. Gun control’s positive, and the targeting of socialists is bound to garner sympathy for our cause, but I worry that this violence is a harbinger of things to come.” He paused, gazing into her eyes. “I worry about you.”
Naomi couldn’t help but beam, her stomach fluttering at his sentiment. She kissed him on the lips.
They disengaged and Vernon said, “This has to be the first school shooting we’ve had in years.”
“They’ve been able to control the populace with the Social Credit System and the island prisons,” Naomi said.
“And the surveillance.”
Naomi nodded. “This school shooting is different. He’s not some bullied kid looking for revenge. This is politically motivated.”
“We need to go to Oregon and talk about gun control.”
85
Derek and the Prize
It had been a long trek back from Old San Juan. At least five miles. Derek wore a plastic trash bag as a poncho, but he was still soaked to the bone. They’d stopped for breaks every mile or so—not so much to take a rest break but so the Aryans could rape and fondle the woman. The first time she had screamed bloody murder, but she was subdued now, passive and broken, the men still taking her with the same excitement. Derek wasn’t sure which was more horrific, her screams or her broken acceptance.
The other men looked at him sideways because he hadn’t participated. They weren’t sure if Derek was really one of them, which was why he carried a machete and not a rifle, even though he knew how to shoot. Thor had been the most suspicious of Derek. He was the highest ranking Aryan in their group and looked exactly like you’d expect him to look, based on his nickname. The perfect Aryan specimen: tall and built and blond.
Thor and the other Aryans had wanted to surround that building, to root out the others, but Derek had told them that the people inside were men with guns, even though he hadn’t seen a gun and even though he was pretty sure one of them was a woman. The mention of guns had been enough of a deterrent for the Aryans to call it a night. Besides, Thor and the others had been eager to party with the woman, so it wasn’t a hard sell.
Derek had felt weak and powerless and sick to his stomach about the woman. He’d wanted to intervene, to kill them all, but he carried a rusty machete, no match for the rifles carried by his Aryan brothers. Still, he’d watched and waited for a chance to make it stop, but the Aryans had been watching him too.
Wade met every new Aryan, and that included captives, so they took the woman to his house, the concrete bunker. They entered from the rear, the guards letting them through the backyard. On their way to the house, they encountered two guards carrying a lifeless naked body.
Thor said to the guards, incredulous, “Another one?”
One of the guards frowned, but they didn’t stop. They hauled the body toward the exit. Derek recognized the woman as the same one he’d seen in Wade’s bedroom. Mark’s sister.
“Damn, I wanted a piece,” Thor said. “Not enough women as it is without Wade chokin’ ’em out.”
“Don’t let him hear you say that,” one of the other raiders replied.
“I’ll say whatever the fuck I want.”
Inside, Wade and a few Aryans played pool by dimly lit LEDs. A few smoked marijuana and drank from wine bottles.
“What have we got here?” Wade said, holding a wine bottle by the neck and approaching the woman. “You look familiar.”
The woman looked down at the floor.
“We followed a group from the fort,” Thor said. “Snatched her when she was alone.”
“How many men did they have?”
“Ten. They had rifles and pistols.”
Wade turned from the woman and narrowed his eyes at Derek. “That what happened?”
Derek nodded the affirmative.
“How did he do?” Wade lifted his chin to Derek, then looked at Thor.
Thor hesitated for an instant. “He’s green, but he’ll be all right.”
Wade held up the wine bottle and said, “Let’s party, boys.”
The Aryans drank some sort of fruit wine from the old wine bottles. Derek smelled it, faked drinking it, and passed it on. The woman quickly became the life of the party. At Wade’s command, Thor put her on the pool table.
Wade said, “Strip and make it sexy, or I’ll kill you.”
“He’ll do it too,” one of the Aryans said, laughing. “You saw the other dead girl.”
The woman did her best to give the men what they wanted. She’d already been stripped of her poncho. One of the other men had claimed it hours ago. She removed her rain-soaked T-shirt, and the men ogled and cheered her small breasts.
“Not like that. Dance while you strip,” Wade said.
The woman moved awkwardly, tears in her eyes, dancing without music. She kicked off her water shoes and fumbled with the button on her shorts, still swaying to the music in her head. Blood stained the crotch of her tan shorts. Her legs were hairy. She slid her shorts down her legs, slowly, much to their delight. She wasn’t wearing any underwear.
The next few hours, the Aryans got drunk and high, all the while they took their turns raping and sodomizing this woman in full view of the group, some going together. Blood and semen ran down the woman’s legs. The woman was compliant, like a rag doll.
With slurred speech, Thor pointed to Derek and said, “Your turn?”
The woman was in the corner of the room, naked, huddled in the fetal position.
Derek showed his palms and said, “I’m too drunk.”
“Are you a faggot?” Wade asked, glaring at Derek.
“No, but I don’t think …” Derek trailed off.
“You know what I did to the last faggot we picked up?”
The Aryans laughed, collectively remembering what had happened to the last faggot. One of the Aryans took a pool cue and mimed inserting the fat end into his buddy. Everyone laughed again.
“She takes it, or you take it,” Wade said.
Derek stood from his seat and walked to the corner of the room where the girl lay in the fetal position. Derek grabbed her under her arms and said, “On your knees.”
The Aryans cheered.
She struggled to her knees, Derek standing in front of her, his back to the Aryans. Derek bent down and said into her ear, “Just pretend. For them. Don’t do it.” Derek grabbed her hair, not hard, and lifted her head so she was even with his crotch. Derek opened the button fly of his pants and moved his hands as if he were pulling out his penis. Derek put his hands on her head and moved her forward and backward, miming the sex act. The Aryans offered encouragement and commentary. Thankfully, they were all too tired and wasted to stand from their seats to get a better look.
“Get some!”
“Suck that cock.”
Shortly after the performance began, Derek groaned, feigning an orgasm. The men hooted
and hollered, laughing at Derek’s quick “climax.”
“That’s it?” one of them said.
Derek let go of the woman’s head, and she slumped back to the floor. He buttoned his fly and returned to his seat. He wondered if survival was worth the price. He thought about grabbing a rifle. He’d probably kill of few before they killed him. But then he saw a way out.
One by one, the Aryans passed out. Some on the floor. Some on the chairs. Some wandered to the bedrooms to sleep it off. But not Derek. Eventually, Derek was the only one awake. He stood from his chair and retrieved the woman’s clothes and shoes. He shoved her shorts and T-shirt into one of the large side pockets on his fatigues. He put the water shoes in the other pocket. He tiptoed to the corner of the room where the woman slept.
He whispered into her ear, “I’m gettin’ you out of here. What’s your name?”
She was unresponsive.
“I’m Derek. Just act dead. I have your clothes, but I need to carry you out naked, so the guards will think you’re dead.”
She was still unresponsive.
Derek picked her up and threw her over his shoulder. She groaned in response. “Act dead, okay? Don’t say a word or make a sound. Do you understand?”
She nodded.
Thankfully, she was thin and light. Derek carried her to the backyard. It was still dark, but the rain had stopped, and the moon and stars provided dim light. As Derek walked toward the rear exit, he whispered to the woman, “Be still and quiet.”
The two Aryan guards, who guarded the rear exit, stood from their chairs, watching Derek’s approach with interest.
Derek said, “Fuckin’ Wade’s crazy. He killed this one too.”
The guards cackled.
One of them said, “That ain’t no surprise.”
The other one said, “You takin’ her to the grill pit?”
Derek had no idea where the grill pit was but said, “Yeah, the grill pit.”
2050: Psycho Island Page 30