“The entire world?”
“Maybe, or what’s left of it.”
“Wow.” I was surprised to learn that Nearly was the one who said that.
“Didn’t you know what you were drawing?”
“I simply do as the voices say. I take the information and display it. Nothing more.”
“I need you to make a more detailed version, on paper. Shoan, get him whatever he needs.”
“Hey,” she shouted to the others outside the door. “We need paper. A lot of it.”
I kept staring at the map, completely in awe.
“This is amazing,” Shoan said. “I’d never realized what this was.”
For a moment, I was too enthralled to hear what she said. “We’re so small,” I mumbled.
“What do you mean?”
I placed a finger against the tiny shape, less than two inches in diameter. “Everything we’ve ever done, everything we’ve ever seen, everyone we’ve ever known and everything that made us who we are has been contained inside this little speck. All the best and worst things that have ever happened to us haven’t made an impact outside this tiny little pinprick.”
“Fuck.”
Two more Black Jackets burst in, carrying poster board, paper, pencils, markers and tons of other supplies.
“Will this be enough?”
“Ask Nearly,” I told them. “Get him whatever he needs. Can you make me a detailed version of this map, buddy?”
“I think I can.”
“Good. Get to it. In fact, make several of them.”
I left the room, while Nearly told the others everything he needed. I think he was excited by this project, now that he knew what he was making.
I started walking back home, dreaming about collapsing into bed. It had been a long day.
“Hey, Scott.”
The greeting came as the door was halfway open. I stood there for a few seconds, stunned to see Byrd sitting in my favorite chair.
“Come in, please. Make yourself at home. It’s your house, after all.”
I locked the door behind me, and sat down on the bed.
“Nice place. I’m surprised it was available.”
“We had some vacancies. A lot of the junkies left, after we kicked out all the dealers.”
“Interesting.”
“Why are you here?”
“What, am I not allowed to come visit? You stopped by my home just a few days ago, and, now, I’m returning the favor.”
“Get out.”
“You’ve turned so bitter. Was it because of that incident with Frollo, or were you always like this?”
“You stabbed me.”
“Only once. I’m your houseguest, Scott Vale, show a little hospitality.”
“Did you come here to kill me, or not?”
He laughed. “Do you really think I want to kill you? I mean, I know that I stabbed you that one time, but things have changed. I came here as a friend, to warn you.”
“Warn me? Really?”
“Of course. Back in the Sunset District, I thought you were going to be a threat to me. I offered an olive branch, the chance to help me bring those shiners down, and you refused. At that point, I could only assume you were my enemy. That’s a fair assumption, right?”
“I want to kill you so badly, right now.”
“But, you won’t. You’re too good a person to do that, and it’s why I love you. Also because you can’t be sure if I’m armed, right?”
I didn’t answer.
“Now look, ever since that little mix up, we’ve been doing our own things. You’ve been here, playing the role of the heroic thief, and I’ve been back in the Sunset District, being a good leader.”
“How the fuck are you a good leader?”
“I was hoping you would ask me that. You see, what you’re doing is only temporary. You’re giving the people what they need, and that’s great, but it’s never going to be enough. They’ll get greedy, they’ll get angry, or worse, you’ll fail them and they’ll get hungry. When that happens, they’ll eat you alive.”
“Are you done?”
He sighed. “I suppose so.” He got up and started towards the door, but, before he left, he stopped and put a hand on my shoulder. “I really am worried about you. One day, you’ll realize that they don’t want better lives. They don’t want what’s best for them, because average people are just fucking stupid. They want scapegoats, parties and drugs; easy answers in simple terms. How long do you think it’ll be before trade you for a golden calf or a wooden effigy? If you really are set on continuing this crusade, I wish you the best of luck, but you will fail.”
Chapter 35 - Scott Vale
“Should we call Jack to get a second team ready?” asked Mark.
“What? Sorry, I must have drifted off.”
“You look tired, boss.”
“I’m fine. What did you see down there?”
“It’s a little suspicious looking. There’s only six guys guarding the biggest shipment I’ve ever seen.”
“Let me see that,” I said, grabbing the binoculars away from him. He was right, there were only six police officers down there. I was expecting a dozen, minimum, and a much smaller shipment.
“Do you think we should go for it, or call Jack? There’s only five of us.”
“We’ll be fine on our own. Get to your strike points. You know the plan.”
Mark, Jed and Shoan ran to take positions behind the caravan, leaving Tex and I behind.
“Scott,” he said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “We shouldn’t do this. It’s obviously a trap. After we stole from them last time, it doesn’t make sense to send the next shipment with even less people guarding it.”
“I know, but if we don’t take this opportunity, people are going to get hungry.”
“Is it worth risking the Black Jacket’s lives?”
“They’ll be fine.”
In just a few quick moments, Jed and Shoan each took out a guard. The Black Jackets grabbed them from behind and jabbed them with the needles, just like they’d been taught. Shoan pulled out a pistol and the others picked up the officer’s weapons before shouting to catch their attention.
“Put your hands up!” There were now three armed Black Jackets and four armed policemen squaring off. They shouted back and forth for a moment, until Tex and I snuck up behind the nearest two and took them both out.
I whistled, making the last two guards turn and see that their friends were down, and there were two more automatics pointed at them. They quickly surrendered, and submitted to having their hands bound. With all the guards now either tied up, passed out or rolling on the ground without a clue which direction was up, it was time to get moving.
“Let’s get this out of here.”
“Can I have a word with you first, Scott?”
I turned to the voice and saw a lone woman standing out in the cold. She was wearing a thick snowsuit, but nothing covering her head.
“Madam President.”
Tex looked at her with anger, but the eyes of the other Black Jackets were wide with disbelief, darting between President Wilson and myself.
“Why would the President be so dumb as to walk up to a group of armed soldiers?” Shoan asked her.
“Why would a group of armed thugs be dumb enough to point their guns at the President?”
Shoan turned pale.
I turned and put my stolen rifle on the cart, before telling the other Black Jackets, “Take the weapons to the clinic and start distributing the food.”
“We’re not going to just leave you here.”
“I’ll be fine, Tex. I need you to be the leader now. Make sure this stuff gets home safe. Can you do that for me?”
He nodded.
“Good. Now get moving.”
I turned back to the President as everyone else left. “What do you want?”
“I want you to stop stealing our rations.”
“It doesn’t look like you’re equipped to stop
us.”
“That’s because this delivery was never meant to go to the Cages. It was a gift.”
“Really?”
“Yes… well, except for the one thing I want in return.”
“Of course. Everything comes at a price.”
She laughed. “Very true. What I want in exchange is very simple; next time you need food, you come to me and ask for it, rather than stealing it.”
“We tried that once. It didn’t go well.”
“Regrettably, that’s true, but I’ve had a change of heart. I’ll give you all the food you’ll ever need.”
“In exchange for what?”
“You’re so pessimistic, Scott. There may be another favor you could assist me with in the future, but we’ll deal with that when the time comes.”
“Scott, we’re about to set up the dumbwaiter. Are you ok?”
“Fine,” I told Tex over the radio. “But just take it to the ramp.”
“What if the police see us?”
“The police won’t stop you. Right?” I asked the President. She nodded in response. “Yeah, it’s safe. Just take it the long way.”
“You got it.”
“I’m happy to send you a few shipments a month,” she told me. “Life would be much easier for both of us if we just cut out the middleman.”
“I would consider it, if I trusted you. You said we were lazy and that we were poor because we didn’t work hard enough.”
“Look, Scott, I could go through the long process of convincing you of how I’ve changed my ways and how I’ve come to my senses, but it’s cold and I’m tired, so I’ll just give you the raw facts. You successfully stole a single shipment, but only because you had the element of surprise on your side. The next one will be guarded by fifty policemen, all armed to the teeth and told to kill on sight. Trusting me is your only option.”
“Fuck you.”
She smiled. “I’ll be in touch.”
We walked our separate ways, neither of us looking back. I eventually caught up with Tex and helped get the food back home. She untied the cops who were bound and pulled the drugged ones indoors, out of the cold. I knew there was no way we could keep living like thieves, not with over three hundred mouths to feed.
But as we unloaded the food, something occurred to me. If I made a deal with the President, on behalf of the Gray District, I wouldn’t be a vigilante anymore, beating up drug dealers and stealing food. I wouldn’t be an 80 working for the Gray District. What would I be? Would I be the Elected Official of the Gray District? The leader of this dark and depressing place? Would I become a new Frollo? The President of these people? Or perhaps, the King in Gray?
Chapter 36 - Nina Shear
“They will most likely assume you are one of the Truands, so do not fear for your safety. Approach the Temple and inject yourself with the dog serum. Canis will take over from there. Sister, we entrust you to put terror into the hearts of these decadent and obese fairies, and to show them what weaklings they are. The Tribe thanks you for your loyalty.”
It was all a lie. Or, perhaps they did not know?
All I had wanted my whole life was to feel strong; to take back power from those that had stolen it from me, but what could I take from these fairies? They weren’t decadent, they were starving; neon traced skeletons, just like the buildings above them.
I saw that everything here was decayed, now that I was up close. I could see where hundreds of glass panels, along with pieces of stone and metal, had been torn away from the buildings and thrown into the street, leaving only bare frameworks and the lights that still clung to them.
The people walked through the streets without care, despite being malnourished and injured. Three men bashed their heads against a brick wall, until green, pink and orange stains appeared. Several young girls gossiped as if there weren’t chunks of skin missing from their arms and hands, exposing the glowing pink and blue tissue beneath. A mother sang a lullaby to her infant who would never wake up and a group of children piled rocks and dirt onto a stack of bodies.
“Hey, stop that!” I yelled at them.
“Fuck off, bitch.”
I grabbed the insolent brat, ready to throttle him as I told him not to desecrate the remains of the dead, but he turned pale when he saw my face.
“Feral!” he screamed, before running off as fast as he could. The other children followed. Did they know I was from the Cages? They couldn’t possibly know why I had come here, could they?”
Then, I looked closer at the bodies they had been desecrating; all of them were Sapiens, with no signs of Canis’s change, and all had been beaten, burned or cut before their demise.
I sprinted down the road and kept running untiI I was far from there. What had possessed the fairies to kill Truands? Had they done something wrong, or was everyone here completely insane? I needed to get back to the Cages and bring this news to the Shamans, but I quickly realized that I was lost. Having never stepped foot outside the Cages before today, I had no idea how to find my way home.
I searched around the alley for something to cover my face with, and, after several minutes, I saw some clothing stuffed underneath a dumpster. Unfortunately, I couldn’t reach them, and so I tried rolling it out of the way. It didn’t work.
“What’s making this so heavy?” I asked myself, prying off the lid to reveal the Truands crammed inside it. I fought the urge to vomit, but lost. The smell of rotting flesh was too overpowering.
I used a pipe to pull the shirt, cap and scarf out from under the dumpster and quickly walked away. I didn’t want to be anywhere near it.
I kept the hat’s bill pulled down as I walked in the direction I thought was south. I was wrong and soon found myself near a blockade, where a group of fairies were shouting to the police on the other side.
“Let us in!”
“Nobody is getting into this district; those are the President’s orders.”
The police continued to recite that line to the fairies who didn’t have the neon glow, and threatened to shoot the ones who did have it. A mother held her child up to the officers, begging them to allow him over, but, when one of the officers tried to take him, his leader hit him with his baton and reminded him of their orders.
I started to leave, but, just as I was about to, a group of glowing skeletons approached the line. They shouted how those trying to get out were cowards, how the police were pussies and how they all needed to learn how to fly.
“Get the fuck away from here!” the police shouted, but the crazed fairies charged at them. They attacked the barricade, they attacked the group trying to get out and they even attacked each other. They were like animals, bashing each other with stones and pipes, ripping and tearing with their teeth, until finally the police mowed the whole group down.
The only survivor was the child, whom the officers brought over despite their leader’s protests.
Farther along, I found more of the glowing skeletons lined up outside an especially decrepit building. These men and women didn’t have the gleeful looks that the rest of the zombies did. They just looked tired and slow.
Every single one of them carried something in their hands. Jewels, money, microwave ovens… At the front of the line, they were trading them in for vials of liquid. I found this trading to be odd, but what was more odd were the people appraising the items. They were dressed in black armor, traced with neon colors.
Above them, sitting on a throne constructed inside a hollowed out shell that used to be a building, sat a man whose armor glowed bright yellow; so bright that it almost hurt to look at him.
“You’ll get one ounce for that,” one of the men in armor told a zombie, who accepted their payment without question and quickly moved out of line so that everyone else could have the chance to hand over everything they owned for an ounce of the neon liquid, which, I could only assume, held some magic properties.
The man in shining yellow lights stood up and everyone went silent. I knew that something bad was about
to happen, but was paralyzed with fear. Suddenly, his masked face appeared on every billboard, looking down at me.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I think I’ve just spotted a future dog-creature.”
Those in line stayed catatonic, but the ones in armor pulled out rifles, and other zombies suddenly came running out of the buildings.
I sprinted down the street, the man in yellow lights still appearing all around me. Zombies came out of the woodwork, most running out of buildings and alleyways, but many fell from rooftops, too consumed with the chase to realize that leaping at me from ten stories would kill them.
They kept running after me, but were too slow. In between the sounds of men and women smashing into the ground, came the popping of femurs and ribs as the malnourished fairies tried to give chase. I soon outpaced them, but knew that I would only be safe when I made it back home… if I made it back home.
I stopped to catch my breath in the middle of the street, far ahead of the pack, but unable to run any further. I nearly had a heart attack when three more fairies crashed to earth from atop the buildings.
They were approaching from behind, closer and closer. I pulled out the syringe. Time slowed as I thought about what I was doing, and how different things were compared to what the Shamans had said. My biggest regret is never making it back to tell them, but I suppose all the other dogs wished they had had that chance as well.
I jabbed it into my chest, right where the Shamans had told me, and it didn’t take long for me to feel it’s effects. I was angry and animalistic, ready to attack anything I saw, and just as I felt myself start to come back to reality, I died for the first time.
I came back as myself, perhaps having bled the serum out of all the bullet holes. The man in shining yellow lights stood above me.
“You poor innocent girl. What’s your name?”
I struggled, but spoke, “Nina.”
"Why did you come here?"
"To feel power... many walked on me... my husband sold me... the Tribe said I would be strong... and die in glory"
“Well, Nina, I think you’ve just ruined any chance of the Truands living through this ordeal. You shouldn’t have come to my home. Enjoy your afterlife.”
Black Light: The Deplorable Savior Page 14