by Ramsay, Lex
“… Get your contact with the R.A. on the link, and start the ball rolling. Make it so.”
Patrick gaped open-mouthed at the enormity of what he was watching. In one highly edited, it appeared, but wholly cohesive speech, Woolridge had painstakingly laid out the motive, the crime, the perpetrators and the dupe they were going to pin it on—the R.A.
How could Emmaline Moultry have gotten hold of such a damning recording? If she’d had that much information, why did she wait so long to get it to Olivia? And if it didn’t come from Moultry, then someone within the Assembly was most definitely on his side. On the side of the slaves.
Not that it would save Patrick’s life. The Assembly would find him in a few hours, if that. Patrick wasn’t taking any chances. He needed to act, and at least he had the comfort, chilling as it was, that he had one last parting gift for the world—and for the Assembly.
Now he has to decide how best to preserve his testimonial to these events, his account of the thing, so that it would speak for him after death.
As he attached the video to the text he’d been dictating, he noticed a car that slowed conspicuously at the curb ahead of him.
Darting into the first restaurant he passed, he ignored the loud complaints of the hostess as he pushed his way through the room, into the kitchen and out the back door. Running through the alleyway that backed up to the restaurant, Patrick saw the same car blocking his path at the place where the alley let out into the street ahead.
Frantically looking around him for some avenue of escape, he saw the muzzle of a long rifle thrusting out the open window of the car.
Patrick ducked into a nearby doorway, pulled out his electronic tablet, found the site he wanted and with his last act, sent the file he’d been working on out onto the web.
• • •
Senator Woolridge was not an attractive man, even at his best; but in his current state he was positively abhorrent. He was nearly licking his liver colored lips in anticipation of the mass murder of the slaves, or as he insisted it be euphemistically called, “Project Exodus.”
Preening about the office, gloating assuredly over his seemingly inevitable success, Woolridge had been insufferable all day. Always excessively demanding, Senator Woolridge had been whipping his staff into a frenzy of activity just so that the ambient energy in the office would match his own manic mood.
It was E-Day, October 29th, and while they’d received no word yet of the tragedy, Woolridge knew it was only a matter of time before that fateful moment arrived.
“Lewis!” Woolridge bellowed in his customary fashion, rolling the “L” and ending the name with a hiss.
“Have you written the speech I’ll give when the dead slaves are discovered? Make it a little sappy, but make sure it exudes strength in adversity and all that. And start drafting a bill setting a National Day of Mourning—sometime well before Christmas—wouldn’t want to ruin the usual festive mood of the season.”
Lewis nodded, picked up several files he’d been working on and, placing them in his briefcase, quickly left the office, the very picture of an efficient and dedicated assistant, eager to make real his superior’s every whim.
Lewis took the elevator down to the basement, and hopped a passing intra-capitol tram that connected to the Capitol South line of the high-speed train service. Boarding the train to Tampa, Florida, Lewis found a seat in a deserted section of the car and opened his briefcase.
Inside was a complete set of identity papers including passport, drivers license and several credit cards bearing his likeness, but not the name his mother had given him at birth. He was no longer the Legislative Aide to Senator Alfonse Woolridge, stalwart member of the Confederacy and stealth member of the Assembly; but a citizen of the European Union resident in Wales, engaged in his family’s bond trading business.
Also inside was a ticket to a first-class berth on a Bahamian registered small cruise ship headed for a month long cruise to South America, waiting for its scheduled departure from Tampa Bay. Already on board was his precious wife Valerie, who was his life’s mate and his sole inspiration.
Valerie had been born on the Jasper County Mississippi Protectorate, from a long line of illustrious F.F.C.—well, at least on her father’s side. Valerie’s mother was a slave whose ten-year anniversary with the family was cause for celebration only to Valerie’s father who used the occasion to trade her in for a newer model.
But for the clandestine intervention of a doting uncle who adored young Valerie, she too would have met the same fate, shipped off to the same, or perhaps to a different protectorate, as was her disposable mother.
Valerie, whose birth name was Carlotta, was a quarter-breed, and light-skinned enough to pass for white, which she did with the help of her uncle. He sent her to live in Atlanta, masquerading as his own daughter who had died mere weeks earlier, complete with ancestral papers and a sizeable trust fund.
Valerie was nine years old at the time—old enough to have been exposed to the barbaric realities of the slave system, but young enough to remake herself in the image of a fair flower of the F.F.C. She had been fast friends with the real Valerie throughout her young life and so had a good idea of how to play her new role.
But in her heart she always remembered who she was, and what would have become of her without her uncle’s intercession.
It was because of Lewis’ love for Valerie, and his witness to the daily torture of her living the life of white privilege on the surface, with a roiling emotional cauldron of guilt underneath, that he had done what he had. Guilt at having escaped Hell while so many others remained locked in that eternal agony haunted her every waking moment—guilt at pretending to be the oppressor when all she ever felt was oppressed.
It was for Valerie that he had done it all. He had leaked the memo announcing the transport of S-18 to a known stoolie for Emmaline Moultry. He had put Moultry in touch with Senator Benton’s chatterbox assistant, counting on his inability to keep his mouth shut about his boss’ Assembly affiliation.
He had called Moultry on her cell phone, moments before he knew she was to die, in the hopes that she would relay the Assembly’s plot to put the blame on the R.A. to Olivia Askew, and with her dying act she had not disappointed him.
And he had sent an email to Patrick Edgerton just this morning, posing as Olivia Askew and warning him of the hit squad on its way, while at the same time providing him with the ammunition with which to bring the Assembly down.
Lewis didn’t know if Patrick would survive the ordeal, but at the very least he knew Edgerton would find a way to expose the Assembly—and the S.R.—as the source of the atrocious plot before the court of world opinion.
The recorded voice of the automated conductor announced Tampa as their next stop. Lewis pushed the papers back into his briefcase, stood and joined the line waiting to disembark. Stepping off the train and onto the platform, Lewis walked briskly away from the station and disappeared into the enveloping crowd.
EPILOGUE
Mason sat on a tree stump at the edge of the nursery yard whittling a branch into a little toy soldier for the wee ones and watching his charges playing hide and seek.
The sun was beating down on his shoulders, but being fall, it was the cool kind of sunlight that caressed him gently rather than the sweltering heat of a summer’s day. A light breeze made the wind sing through the trees, and if he listened carefully, Mason thought he could even make out the tune.
As a backdrop to his daydream, he heard the happy squealing of the child who’d been found and tagged “it.” A herd of galloping children ran by, scattering like jack rabbits as a little boy covered his hands over his face and leaned against the nursery door counting “a-one, a-two, a-three.”
Mason looked up from his whittling when he felt a tiny hand tapping him on the shoulder, and saw a little girl before him, holding something at her side.
“What’s this, Mason?” The little girl asked him.
“Whatcha got there, honey
?” Mason asked.
The child raised the hand that was holding her found treasure, and placed on his knee a red case with a single button loop.
DATELINE: November 4, 1982
WASHINGTON, D.C.
THE WASHINGTON TIMES - WEB EDITION 11:06 A.M. UPDATE
A STORY OF INTRIGUE, BETRAYAL AND ATTEMPTED MASS MURDER PLAGUES THE SOUTHERN REPUBLIC AS ESCAPED SLAVES CONTINUE TO POUR ACROSS THE BORDER INTO THE UNITED STATES AND AN EXPOSÉ CIRCULATING ON THE WEB HAS DISCLOSED A SOUTHERN REPUBLIC PLOT TO EXTERMINATE 25 MILLION SLAVES AND BLAME IT ON THE CLANDESTINE ANTI-SLAVERY ORGANIZATION KNOWN AS THE RAILWAY ASSOCIATION. THE THWARTED PLOT IS BEST EXPLAINED IN SOUTHERN REPUBLIC SENATOR ALFONSE WOOLRIDGE’S OWN WORDS, CAPTURED HERE ON THIS AUTHENTICATED VIDEO RECORDING. (Click here to play)
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Read ahead for an excerpt of the next book in the Downriver Triology, Last Class Citizen.
CHAPTER 1
“And what the hell am I s’posed ta do now? They don’ ripped me outta alls I’s evah knowd, and it wadn’t much I grants ya but it was alls I had, and plopped me plum in the middle a white folk land. Where Jesus at anyway, idn’t he the one we s’posed ta be followin’?”
The woman wore the red jumpsuit of the Nursery workers. They were the wet nurses and seniors designated to mind the babies until they turned 6 and their race-grades were used to determine the rest of their lives. But that was back in the Southern Republic, back when they were all slaves.
They were free people now, at least that’s what Jesus said as he appeared like magic out of the little red box that Li’l Bit had found. Jesus told them to wait ’til dark and showed them the way to the trains. Trains that were now filled with people like the woman. All wondering what to do now that the trains had stopped.
“Nadine, hush up that noise, you ain’t never done nuthin’ but grouse. Hush up an’ let these folks tell us whats they want and what we’s s’posed ta do.” Mason shushed the woman standing next to him in the train, the only one bold enough to say out loud what just about everyone, himself included, was thinking.
Mason squinted his old eyes and peered at the sights he saw outside the window of the train, sights he had no words to put to, sights his seventy some years had never prepared him to see. He’d come out of the fields about 10 Jubilee Days ago, meaning he must have been 65 back then, although he couldn’t be exactly sure.
And he would have been pretty near his Final Rest if his figuring was right. That was what the white folk called it when they put an old slave down at 75. Instead, he found himself, along with a couple hundred other slaves in this car, looking out at a world they had only ever heard tales about, and those tales were probably older than Mason was.
He poked his head out of the door that had swooshed open only moments before and turned toward the back of the train car. It looked like there were a bunch of other trains, just like the long one he and his people from the Enrico County Protectorate came in on, lined up back to front in a row stretching as far as he could see.
By the color-coded overalls on the people inside the other trains, Mason knew they held some garment workers in their blue overalls and a few seniors in red, but mostly field workers wearing the yellow overalls that reminded him of the sun he used to toil under for untold years until he became too old to do anything but mind the babies. Some were venturing out of the trains to the platform, but most stood inside the trains, made statues by fear.
And out on the platform, there were all kinds of white folk with uniforms the likes of which he’d never seen; some with red crosses on their white coats and other folks in dark blue uniforms carrying guns and other such battlements. Then down on one side of the platform, cordoned off behind a yellow tape were a mass of folks screaming and yelling and setting off blinding lights aimed at the trains and talking into these baton things with bulbs on the end, then thrusting the batons out at the folks in blue uniforms.
The folks in his train car started pushing against each other, unsure whether to stay on the train or make a run for it. Li’l Bit, the little girl who was one of Mason’s charges in the nursery, held onto Mason’s pant leg to stop from being dragged along with the crowd and looked up into Mason’s eyes with the same hope and fear that was reflected in the faces surrounding him.
Voices from all around Mason called his name, seeking guidance from the one who had led them to the trains in the first place, guided by the image of the Savior.
“Mason, who them folks? Where we at? What they gonna do to us?” The chorus of voices shouted out from every direction. Mason held his hands up and brought them swiftly down together, a signal all slaves knew from the dreaded Apostles and which instantly wrought silence from the crowd inside the train.
“Alright, alright ev’rybody. Settle on down now. We waits here for a spell and I s’pect one of them folks in charge gonna tell us what’s what. Now be ready to ac’ like you got some sense, ac’ calm and seemly-like.” Mason cautioned the people staring back at him with mute pleas of hopeful obedience.
Just then a ripple formed among the bodies filling the platform, as folks moved to the side to let the white coat people through. One of the white coats stopped at the open door to Mason’s train, a young white man about thirty with kind brown eyes and soft hands he held out in front of him as he spoke.
“Hello everybody and welcome to the United States of America. You’re safe now. I’m Doctor Avenall and I’m a member of the Red Cross. We help people who have been displaced … I mean who need shelter … a place to live, food and medicines. We’re going to help you folks off this train and into some … uh … wagons and we’ll take you to a place where you can rest and get some food. Is that okay with you?”
Dr. Avenall had been briefly prepped on how to talk to the escaped slaves in the emergency meeting called after the net was bombarded with news of the escaped slaves’ arrival in the four major border cities.
Like almost all of his colleagues, he had never come in contact with slaves despite living mere miles away from the border with the Southern Republic. And despite having been whisked out of the Southern Republic on high-speed trains, the slaves knew no technology—not even cars or trucks—and so he had tried to use simple words and think of the name of an old school conveyance they would understand.
Hundreds of eyes turned to Mason to speak for them, not sure what to make of the man or his offer of help. It was a first in their experience that a white person offered to help with anything that turned out to be any kind of help at all.
Mason looked at the man standing before him, turned his head to address his flock, and said “Folks we gonna follow Doctah Av’nall now. Come on out this train in a ord’ly fashion and do what he say.”
Nadine sidled up to his left side and whispered in Mason’s ear “You sho’ this the right thang to do?”
Mason turned his head to whisper back, “What choice we got, Nadine?”
CHAPTER 2
Patrick’s back hit the door behind him with a thump and he slid down to the ground as his legs gave out beneath him. He had hid in the doorway for refuge when the car that had been following him appeared at the mouth of the alley. He had seen the barrel of the assassin’s rifle peak out from the lowered window of the car that had him trapped in the alley behind the restaurant he’d run through to evade his stalker. He knew the Assembly had found him, and he would pay for that fact with his life.
He’d heard the report of the rifle and saw the spray of crimson blood and knew he’d been hit, but as he patted himself down to find the fatal wound he realized that the sound he’d heard was the car window shattering and the blood was not his own,
but that of the assassin.
Tracking the trajectory of what had to have been a silenced gun upward to its source, his mind blinked for a moment because what his eyes told him made no sense in the context of this surreal scene. Standing above him on the fire escape was Amani Jordan, outfitted like a curvaceous Ninja in a black jumpsuit and holstering an extended barrel automatic.
He had met Amani through his sister Clarissa at his family home in Ithaca a few weeks before on one of her never-ending quests to fix him up with a suitable mate. Patrick had acceded to Clarissa’s demand only to get her off his back, but he was totally unprepared for Amani Jordan.
Amani had the most arresting face Patrick had ever seen. The first and only other time he’d seen her, she’d been dressed in a flowing batik wrap of jewel colors that almost—but not quite—hid her lush body. Amani had a square, even brow with thick black eyebrows slashing across long, curling lashes and piercing eyes. Prominent, beautifully shaped cheekbones rose over dimples on either side of succulent lips. She had skin that looked like chocolate velvet, and wore her hair in a tightly curled helmet that covered her scalp without concealing her shapely head and graceful neck.
“Come on Watcher, let’s get ghost.” Amani’s husky voice pulled Patrick out of a daze as she deftly alighted from the fire escape and mounted a sleek motorcycle that had been obscured behind a dumpster. Fitting the helmet over her close-cropped hair, Amani took a moment to gaze at Patrick with her bottomless eyes before flipping down the visor that completely camouflaged her face.
“Get a move on Patrick, jump on.” Amani handed him a matching helmet. Patrick scrambled to his feet and straddled the bike awkwardly, still light-headed from both his near death and his unlikely savior.