by Hill, Travis
“I can teach ‘em how to bend you over and cornhole you, you fucking faggot,” Tommy raged back at his best friend from high school.
The eruption of laughter all around the pit made the prisoners collapse together into a tight knot. Jamarcus Burke clutched his sister with one hand around her bicep, his other arm wrapped around his mother. Uncle James kept his back to them, hoping to shield them from whatever was coming.
“It’ll be all right,” Jamarcus chanted into his sister’s ear, over and over, hoping his words were true, knowing that he was lying to her.
Leesburg, Florida - January 3, 2046
Jamarcus knew everything was not all right within two days after the new year. Reports on the news and on the net came in haphazardly, shaky holo and video being uploaded wherever there was still power and access. At first Jamarcus couldn’t believe it. He’d spent an entire day watching videos from across the world on his H-Vis, stunned at what he was seeing. He’d been hearing about the drug and the big surprise that was supposed to happen on New Year’s Day, but basketball season had consumed his focus. The Yellow Jackets were on top of the 12A conference with only one loss.
Dazed that he’d been missing out on everything that wasn’t basketball, Algebra, and Cindy Mellon’s chest, he sidelined the news in his H-Vis and searched for “Ability.” Ten minutes later, after rooting through dozens of pages of links that led literally nowhere, entire nodes having gone dark from the upheaval that was only getting worse as the days went on, he found a legitimate download of the formula and the video. He waited a few minutes while he passed both files through security filters, not wanting to take the chance on another scamware infection.
The only item he didn’t have was a bottle of Parson’s CleanTastic. The recipe gave him three alternatives, but two them weren’t available on the east coast, the other a product he’d never heard of. Jamarcus had nearly been tackled by his mother when he’d walked out the door to head to the Publix. She’d cried and demanded that he stay home, that it was too dangerous to go anywhere. He reassured her that he would be back within ten minutes.
He’d missed the mark by almost six hours, a wild evening of being chased, hiding, and being chased again by two different trucks, both full of drunken rednecks, one or more of them capable of some of the things he’d seen in the news videos. He’d never been so scared in his life as when the second truck would drive by his hiding spot, one of the men in the bed of the truck lashing out with some kind of electrical weapon at random spots along the street, his absolute fear the only thing that kept him from obeying the voice in his head that commanded him to reveal himself by walking to the middle of the street.
He hoped his adventure had been worth it as he cooked up a batch of the drug. Two hours after taking a dose, he wondered if he’d screwed up during the cooking process. He didn’t feel anything, but according to the panicked news reports, and the various uploaded holos, he was supposed to be hallucinating. A few discussions that he’d found buried in the noise that was devouring the net assured anyone reading it that the drug was not psychedelic, and had no effects of any kind other than preparing the mind for the module. Jamarcus shrugged, queued up the holo for his H-Vis, and watched it.
Within a few minutes, he knew he’d screwed up somewhere during the cook. Within a few hours, he’d already written the whole affair off as a waste of time, almost his life if the men in the trucks had been able to catch him. As the days went by, and the situation across the world became more chaotic, he hid out in the small house with his mother, sister Kendra, and Uncle James. He discussed with his uncle the possibility of running if things got bad in Leesburg, but Uncle James always asked him where the hell he thought they were going run to.
Within a week, most of Lake County had become a war zone. Jamarcus wondered if it was racial violence, or if it was mainly humans being shitty once they’d acquired some new form of power to make others cower or bow down. Uncle James wouldn’t let him leave the house to find out. His uncle would leave every evening, meeting up with some of the other neighborhood men along North Oakland, and they would disappear into the darkness. He’d sneak back into the house around dawn, loaded with food, cigarettes, weapons, and once with a large bag of marijuana.
Leesburg, Florida - January 16, 2046
The men in trucks rolled slowly down North Oakland Street, bellowing through a loudspeaker mounted in the bed of the lead truck for all persons of “African or Orangutan descent” to report to the curb immediately for inspection. Shots rang out as some of the neighbors refused to walk to their certain doom without a fight. Jamarcus wanted to join in, but his uncle held him back, told him to watch and see why it was a bad idea.
A gout of flame erupted from a young white girl’s hand, coating a house halfway down the block. Jamarcus stared, unbelieving, at what he’d just seen, even though he’d spent hours running and hiding from others with similar abilities, as well as watching holo after holo of similar displays.
A motorcycle parked in Dave Treadwell’s driveway lifted off the ground and rocketed through Dave’s front door, followed by four men, all of them hooting and hollering as they ran in through the smashed door frame. Two minutes later Dave, his wife Arna, and their two young boys were marched out of the house.
When one of the captors began to grope Arna’s chest, Dave snapped, attacking the man. Before he could get a second punch in, he flew backwards, landing awkwardly near the front porch. He tried to rise to his feet, but only made it to his knees before the man he’d punched approached and froze him solid. Arna and the boys screamed and tried to run to him, but the man pulled out a pistol and shot Dave’s frozen chest, shattering his body into thousands of fragments.
Jamarcus’ fear threatened to overwhelm him. The truck moved at a crawl down the street, some residents coming out of their houses in compliance, a lot more either pretending to not be home, or pretending to be heroes by shooting at the aggressors. He watched at least four of the street’s residents fall after being hit by stray bullets, none of them moving once they’d hit the ground. A few others were murdered in one gruesome fashion after another, the whites laughing as if they were throwing the world’s greatest party.
“217, you have thirty seconds to comply,” the loudspeaker blared as the truck rolled slowly by Jamarcus’ house.
Uncle James looked through the front window. “Two of ‘em coming.”
“What do we do?” Jamarcus asked, the panic threatening to consume him.
“You got any magic powers?” his uncle asked. Jamarcus shook his head. “Then we’re gonna do what they say, and pray to the Lord God that whatever happens, we won’t suffer.”
Jamarcus felt like he’d been kicked in the guts. “They’re going to murder us. All of us.”
“Probably so,” Uncle James said, looking through the window as the two females turned down the walkway and approached the front door.
“Probably so? They’re going to kill us! After they make us slaves! After they rape Kendra and Mom!”
“Listen up, kid,” Uncle James said in a voice Jamarcus had never heard before. “This is a shit deal. We came out on the bottom, just like we always do. You can die right now, made an example of, or you can wait for your chance and take at least one of them with you. Those are your only two choice.”
Jamarcus began to cry. He felt like a baby for crying in front of his uncle, the man who had raised him after Jamarcus’ father had been “accidentally” killed by sheriff’s deputies during a robbery when he was two. His uncle was normally tough as nails, but Jamarcus could see the fear in his eyes. He watched Uncle James’ hands clench into fists repeatedly as the two girls came onto the steps. The short blonde one knocked on the door with more force than Jamarcus thought possible from such a tiny little thing.
“Ten seconds, or we’ll just burn you and your shack down.”
Jamarcus held his breath. The one that had spoken, a taller redhead, was Cindy Mellon, the girl that sat behind him in Algebra, and
two seats to his left in History. The girl that he’d been dating for the last two months.
“Go get your mother and sister,” Uncle James said, making it clear there was to be no argument.
Jamarcus turned and went into the back bedroom, hating himself for being the one to lead his mother and sister to a life of endless pain and suffering. He didn’t know what the whites were planning to do, but if the scene in the street was any hint, it was going to be worse than unpleasant. A thought crossed his mind that the best thing to do for his mother and sister would be to kill them and then himself instead of having to watch them be enslaved, humiliated, raped, and murdered. The next thought was anger that everyone else seemed to be able to do crazy things like shoot fire or lightning from their bodies, but he’d been denied.
“We have to go,” he told his mother and sister.
“What’s happening?” Kendra asked, cowering in fear behind her dresser.
“We have to go,” he said again, his voice hard and tight. “They’ll kill us if we don’t go right now.”
He grabbed his sister’s wrist and pulled. Kendra obeyed without struggling, their mother following silently behind, tears flowing down her cheeks. When they walked back into the living room, Cindy was standing inside the doorway watching them. He looked past her, watching the blonde girl lead Uncle James to the curb.
“Why are you doing this, Cindy?” he asked.
“Shut your mouth or I’ll melt it shut,” she said, but there was no hate in her voice.
“Don’t do this!” Jamarcus hissed as he came to a stop in front of her. He towered over Cindy, his two meter height making her seem frail and insignificant.
“Shut up,” Cindy said, looking past him at Jamarcus’ sister and mother.
“I thought we were in love!” he shouted. He wanted to add that he was sure of it after she’d let him touch her in mysterious places, places only his eyes had experienced on the net and in holos, but his mother was less than a meter from them.
“If you say one more word,” Cindy said, her voice finally full of emotion, “I’ll kill you where you stand.”
Kendra reached out and grabbed his arm, pulling him away from Cindy. She gave her brother’s girlfriend a look of pure hatred. Cindy began to cry silently, tears streaming down her cheeks. The four stood in the living room for almost a minute until Cindy regained control of her emotions. She stepped back to let the three walk past her. She gave Kendra an apologetic look, getting another hateful glare in return.
The scene outside was chaos. Uncle James was kneeling on the sidewalk, hands tied behind his back. Jamarcus looked up and down the street and saw the same scene playing out, all of the men handcuffed or had their hands tied behind their backs, all kneeling on the sidewalk, facing the street. The blonde girl gave Jamarcus a cruel smile as he walked up next to his uncle. She ran her finger down his chest, then over her own crotch, licking her lips in a seductive way that would have made him hard in an instant if he hadn’t watched the same girl engulf the Williams’ house in liquid flame a few minutes earlier. She gave Jamarcus a squeeze through his pants then motioned for him to kneel next to his uncle. He felt Cindy behind him, half a second before he felt cold metal handcuffs secured around his left wrist.
“Don’t,” she whispered in his ear when he refused to let her pull his wrist behind his back.
Every instinct in him screamed to fight, to run, to do something, knowing the moment the second handcuff clicked into place, he would be unable to stop whatever horrors these people were about to bring upon him. As the second cuff bound his wrists together, the blonde girl stepped forward and ran her hand over his chest again, doing the same to his uncle.
“I’ll get my turn,” she said, her cruel smile turning once again suggestive.
She stepped away when a man approached. He looked at the captives for a few moments before nodding his head and walking down the sidewalk to the next house. Cindy grabbed each prisoner’s elbow and helped them to their feet. The blonde girl collected Jamarcus’ mother and sister, and the six of them marched down the street toward a school bus that had been parked at the intersection.
“Where are you taking us?” his mother asked.
“To a hole in the ground if you don’t shut your goddamn mouth,” the blonde growled, giving the woman’s arm a hard jerk.
Two men with assault rifles stood guard at the bus doors, though from what Jamarcus had seen, the rifles were next to useless against the types of weapons being wielded. The doors opened and Cindy shoved Uncle James forward to board the bus. Just as he put his foot on the first step, a powerful boom sounded from halfway down the street, followed by an intense flash of light that made Jamarcus see spots. A second, even more powerful blast rocked the neighborhood hard enough that windows shattered up and down the street, and those closest to the explosion were thrown backwards.
Jamarcus turned and looked to where the eruption of noise and light had come from. He heard screams, then what he thought was the sound of something crackling, as if it were burning. Seconds later, three more booms in succession rocked the neighborhood, the last one flinging two halves of a body out into the street. His heart began to race, the fear of his situation being drowned out by his fear of whatever insane powers these people had. A high-pitched whistle began to blare, making everyone in the street cover their ears. It cut out seconds later with a final blast, this one accompanied by bluish-purple flashes of light, followed by a massive gout of flame that shot from the ground into the sky.
Three badly burned humans stumbled out into the street, two of them collapsing, the third raising his arms above his head. Jamarcus couldn’t tell for sure if it was a male or female with the amount of burnt skin hanging from the body. A purple ball of rippling fire formed between the human’s hands, growing larger by the second. The sound of rushing air snuffed out the ball of fire the same instant it ripped the body into pieces.
“Get your ass on the bus,” one of the armed men said, shoving Uncle James through the doorway.
His uncle stumbled and fell forward, his forehead colliding with the edge of the driver’s seat. The other guard stepped into the bus, grabbing James’ arm and jerking him up before shoving him down the aisle. Jamarcus followed, keeping his balance when shoved, doing his best to not slip in the blood that coated the floor. He was worried that his uncle was bleeding heavily until he realized that almost every third face that looked at him with fearful eyes was covered in varying amounts of blood.
He sat down next to James, and watched as his sister and mother were seated near the front of the bus. Jamarcus looked around, noticing that only men were in the rear half of the bus. None of them made any sound, all of them too afraid at what might happen if they did. All of them had seen too many unbelievable things already. They waited in silence, the only noise coming from a few of the women at the front that were unable to squelch their sobbing.
Half an hour later, every seat full, all of the occupants black or mixed race, a man in camo pants and a U.S. Marine Corps t-shirt stepped onto the bus. He looked around the bus as if doing a head count. After he’d finished, he stood at parade rest and spoke to his prisoners.
“You’ve seen what we can do. You’ve seen that you are roaches to be exterminated if you don’t do exactly as you are told. Obey any and all commands of your white superiors. Do not touch any of your white superiors. Do not talk to your white superiors unless asked a specific question. Do not talk to each other. Do not attempt to escape.”
The man turned on his heel and ducked out of the bus. The two armed men entered and took up positions at the front. A third man sat in the driver’s seat and started the engine. After a few seconds, the bus pulled into the street and made its way to the next intersection before turning left, then left again to get back out onto US 27. The bus took them north on US 27 until it merged with 441. They headed north for another ten minutes, barely avoiding being struck by a flying projectile that looked like it had been formed out of fire the colo
r of midnight.
The bus turned into the Fruitland Park Auto Salvage and wound its way through a maze of cars stacked three meters high. It shuddered to a stop alongside another wall of crushed cars. The doors opened and the driver and one of the armed guards exited.
“Two at a time, women first, exit the bus and enter the pit,” the other guard said, stepping aside and pointing at the first row of women.
One of the women was almost catatonic. The guard glared at her as the woman next to her did her best to drag her partner down the steps of the bus. The guard jerked his thumb at the next two. Three minutes later, Jamarcus and James walked down the aisle. Both of their hearts fell into their stomach when they looked beyond the doors.
The bus had stopped at an opening in the walls of the a giant circular pit made out of flattened, cubed cars. The pit was barely twenty meters across, with white men and women patrolling the tops of the walls, keeping a close eye on their charges three meters below. The stench of fear and rotting corpses assaulted him as he stepped off the bus and through the narrow opening into the pit. An overpowering odor of urine, vomit, and shit nearly made him lose control of his own bladder and bowels.
“Hold it,” a gruff voice said as he passed out of the passageway and into the pit proper.
Jamarcus and his uncle stopped. The man stepped behind them, and within seconds, the handcuffs were off Jamarcus’ wrists, his uncle’s wrists free of rope soon after.
“Go on,” the man said, giving Jamarcus a rough shove. “Get your asses in there.”
James found his sister and niece, and Jamarcus joined them. His uncle led them into the middle of the crowd, explaining quietly into Jamarcus’ ear that it would be safer until they knew what was going to happen. By the next afternoon, they knew what their immediate fate was to be.
Fruitland Park, Florida - January 17, 2046