Sleepy raced along the back roads desperate to beat the landing of the mother ship. A great shadow filled the sky, the pride of the empire. Clouds blackened into banks of ominous dark swirls by the endless entropy of Night. The wind howled. The gleaming overcities and jutting spires must look so different from up above, Sleepy imagined. Air raid lights filled the sky, spotlights on the stage of the night sky. The dirigible, their Bop Gun, moved with implacable grace, an airborne whale, strident and regal.
“My message is simple. Tonight the Star Child…all of us will be free. By any means necessary. Freedom or death.
“I exist between time outside time. In the between places. I am the voice of truth in these troubled times.”
By the time Sleepy pulled up, a throng of people had gathered, held in check by too few constabularies. The Ave’s tower, impregnable and arrogant, saluted them. Slowly, the ovoid silhouette of the Bop Gun came into full view. The crowd burst into a roar of applause and cheers. As if in response, the behemoth canted forward in a sharp downward arc. Sleepy stared, filled with profound apprehension. The crowd became a pantomime of motion and fury and panic. Knowledge Allah stood before the grand bay window. Backlit, his grand gestures were perfectly visible to the spectators as the ship careened earthward.
He raised a clenched fist. “Vainglorious,” Sleepy whispered.
Everything happened at once, a series of images broken into shards of memory one tried to forget. The roar of the crowd, an exhalation of panic. An explosion. A billowy fire cloud, a phoenix springing toward the heavens. The smell of India rubber burning. Shrapnel of stone. A body, encircled in flames, stumbled two steps then collapsed. Fiery scraps blew about in the night breeze. The injured structure suddenly unable to bear its own weight, the tower collapsed. The terrible crash, thunder flattening the ear-drums. Smoke and flame, thick and choking, burning the lungs with each inhalation.
Revolution
Watching the skeleton of the Bop Gun continue to burn—its tattered shell buckled upon itself—Sleepy waited, carried along by the undertow of the crowd. The constabularies, with their thick night sticks and steel-riveted riot shields, cordoned off the scene. Fear glazed their faces. He spied no one immediately fleeing and prayed that the prisoners had been moved. He feared that they remained trapped beneath the ground, escaping slaves caught in a cave in. Soon, among the wreckage and destruction, black bodies scrambled from the underground, a stream of ants fleeing their hill. Some of the constabularies fired at the escaping prisoners. Something stirred inside Sleepy. The caustic smoke stung his eyes, his vision little more than watery blurs. Soot-tinged spittle dropped to the ground.
The voices rose into a chorus. Knowledge Allah. Deaconess Blues. His father. Lost in the din was his voice. Sleepy felt the anger. The urge to join the fight. To retaliate. Blinking through a haze of pain, he ground his heel into the desiccated earth and punched the nearest guard, a tacit signal to the crowd to surge forward. The horde spilled in every direction, blind fury, pent up aggression in search of a target. A mob of chaos, arms swinging blindly, clubs battering senselessly. Sirens sounded. Bodies clambered through barbed wire. In the ensuing mêlée, Sleepy was arrested. To the chants of “let him go,” the constabularies clapped him in irons, his expression more frustrated than fearful. At the precinct house, the questions came fast and furious. “Who were involved in the organizing?” “How did he get involved?” “How many were there?” “Who were the leaders?”
Sleepy fought his revolutions his own way. And raised a single fist.
Acknowledgments
I acknowledge that Jason Sizemore got me into this.
Thanks to my wife, Sally Broaddus, and my boys, Reese Broaddus and Malcolm Broaddus, for their patience, their love, and their understanding.
Chesya Burke, Brian Keene, Wrath James White, Gary Braunbeck, Lucy Snyder, and Jerry Gordon…you’ve helped me more than I could thank you for in just a few lines.
To my family, and my friends (who are the family that I choose), I thank you so much and love you from the bottom of my heart. And the makers of the television show The Closer and the song “I Can Transform Ya.” I’ve never had stranger muses for a story.
Maurice Broaddus
07/12/2013
Indianapolis, IN
Author Biographies
Maurice Broaddus has written hundreds of short stories, essays, novellas, and articles. His dark fiction has been published in numerous magazines, anthologies, and web sites, including Asimov’s SF, Cemetery Dance, Apex Magazine, Black Static, and Weird Tales Magazine. He is the co-editor of the Dark Faith anthology series (Apex Books) and the author of the urban fantasy trilogy, Knights of Breton Court (Angry Robot Books). He has been a teaching artist for over five years, teaching creative writing to students of all ages. Visit his site at www.MauriceBroaddus.com for more information.
— § —
Matt Forbeck has been a full-time creator of award-winning games and fiction since 1989, designing games and toys and writing stories of all sorts. He has designed board games, collectible card games, roleplaying games, and miniatures games and has written comic books, computer games, magazines, novels, nonfiction, screenplays, and short fiction. His work has been published in over 10 languages.
He has 26 novels published to date, including the award-nominated Guild Wars: Ghosts of Ascalon and the critically acclaimed Amortals and Vegas Knights. His latest work includes the Magic: The Gathering comic book and the Dangerous Games trilogy of thriller novels set at Gen Con.
His projects have been nominated for 28 Origins Awards and won 17. He has also won five ENnies and a Scribe Award. He is a proud member of the Alliterates writers’ group, the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers, the International Thriller Writers, and the International Game Developers Association.
He lives in Beloit, Wisconsin, with his wife Ann and their children: Marty, Pat, Nick, Ken, and Helen. For more about him and his work, visit Forbeck.com.
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The Apex Voices Series
#01 — Plow the Bones by Douglas F. Warrick
#02 — I Can Transform You by Maurice Broaddus
Table of Contents
Apex Voices: What Do You Hear?
Introduction
I Can Transform You
Pimp My Airship
Acknowledgments
Biographies
I Can Transform You Page 12