by Ryan Schow
“A national response?” Brooklyn asks.
“He’s talking about an end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it response,” I say. “High altitude nuclear EMPs. These EMPs knock out all the drones because they’re all made with solid state electronics. But that knocks out the entire power grid, too. As a society, maybe even a country, this will put us back a hundred and fifty years, easy. No power, no water, no sewage systems, no emergency services, mass chaos on levels you can’t even begin to imagine. That’s a true SHTF scenario.”
“You’re scaring her,” Adeline says. “You know it won’t get that bad.”
Draven starts to speak, then stops. He looks away from Adeline to me, and then Xavier. “Okay. Well if this does feel like it’s happening, we need to meet sooner than later. I’m offering up our house as the meeting point.”
“Well thank you,” I say, showing him the way out. “We’ll take that under advisement.”
“I’m glad to have met you,” he says over his shoulder.
“Same,” I say.
“Nice to meet you, too,” Brooklyn calls out from behind me.
I shut the door, then say, “After my SAC gets here with Orlando—”
Brooklyn looks at me funny. “SAC?”
“Special Agent in Charge. He’s the big boss. He’s going to bring your brother here, but then we have to go out.”
“Why do you have to go out?” Brooklyn asks. “You just got home.”
“There are a few security threats nearby and we’re going to neutralize them, try to eliminate a few threats before they get out of control. After that, for awhile, we’ll be safe. Well…safer.”
“You mean you’re going to kill them?” Adeline says.
I make the look Adeline knows well. It’s the “don’t ask questions you already know the answer to” look.
“When society fails, and this city is failing, violence like you’ve never seen before will break out. Nobody wants to admit that to themselves. Everyone wants to believe in civility. But the second the masses think they’ve passed that point of no return—and baby, this looks like it—there will be spikes in rioting and crime the likes of which this city has never experienced and may never experience again.”
“Who are these people you’re going to—?” Brooklyn asks, unable to say the word.
Xavier clears his throat and says, “These are the city’s worst gangbangers, the cartel that runs this city like a hub for guns, drugs, and crime.”
“And you’re just going to go kill them?” Brooklyn says.
“We’ve already started,” I say, not sure how this will affect her or Adeline. Looking at Adeline, I’m thinking, if she still loves me, even just the tiniest bit, she won’t want me doing this.
“Well be careful,” Adeline says.
My heart drops.
This is real, I think to myself. This is the end of us.
“I’m going to get a few hours rest,” I tell Xavier and Adeline. To my future ex-wife, I say, “Call Orlando please and let him know SAC Ryan Wright will be picking him up in the next few hours and that he’ll be bringing him home.” Then to Xavier: “Text me when you’re on your way. If the phones are down, just come anyway. And I’m sorry about Giselle. I really am.”
I don’t bother waiting for a reaction, I just head back upstairs, pull off my clothes and crawl into bed.
Within moments, I’m asleep.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Diaab Buhari’s driver and head of his personal security, Okot Juuk, pulled the Range Rover up to the curb in front of Brooklyn’s parent’s house and left the engine at an idle. Buhari saw the purple muscle car in front, as well as an older Audi.
His tensions eased.
“Everyone is home, it seems,” Diaab announced first to Okot, then to the sole passenger in the back seat: Eric Wellington.
Diaab was very happy everyone was there.
Eric gave Diaab a brief conciliatory nod. His white skin seemed to pale by the moment. To the Sudanese man, young Eric looked like his stomach had worked its way up into his throat and was now causing his eyes to dance. The kid didn’t want to be there, Buhari knew that. He was weak, a spineless coward.
Diaab softened the boy with a warm smile; he appeared to relax.
“Wait for me here,” he told Okot.
“Yes, sir.”
“Eric, let’s go,” he said, getting out.
“Yes, sir,” he said.
Diaab walked up to the front porch, Eric following behind him like a whipped dog. Diaab looked at Eric, smiled again, then gave the front door a polite knocking. A moment later, a beautiful woman answered, opening the door only enough for her to see the two of them.
“Yes?” she said, looking from Diaab to Eric.
Obviously this was Brooklyn’s mother. The woman was striking. But her eyes bore the weight of her suspicion. Diaab could only imagine what she was wondering about this white boy with his beat up face and his solemn look standing with an older African man.
“My name is Diaab Buhari and I’m afraid I’ve come with some bad news. It’s been brought to my attention earlier today that your daughter, Brooklyn, had a run in with several boys from school who were not…respectful of her, if I may be so bold.”
The woman let the door creep open a bit more as she put her hands on her hips and cocked an eyebrow ever so slightly.
“With a heavy heart, I have come to admit, my son was one of those boys,” Diaab said with sadness in his voice. “He was, in fact, the ringleader, Eric here tells me.”
“You’re Eric?” she said, the turning to the boy with a scowl.
The boy’s eyes fell, his shame so deep he could not look at this woman whose daughter he abused. He mumbled out a weak “Yes.”
“So you brought Eric,” she said, more life and far more edge to her voice, “but you did not bring your own boy, or Marcello? Why is that?”
Diaab took a deep breath, stilled his hurt, saddled his rage, then said, “Both boys are dead. Your husband took them from their classes yesterday morning at gunpoint, as well as Eric, and he drove them to Garfield Park where he put them on their knees, shot them through their hands and then left them to die by drone fire.”
Shifting on her feet, not emotionally moved the way Diaab was, she simply said, “Good.”
A slow, steady smile crept onto his face. A woman like this in the Sudan, with her haughty posturing and her reckless mouth, she would already have her tongue torn from her mouth and fed to her.
“My son is dead,” he said, hoping the implications of that settled in. “He was just a boy, still new to this life of his.”
“My daughter has to live with the things these boys did. She gets to live with that for her whole life, Mr. Buhari. If my husband did what he did to protect my daughter’s stolen innocence, her virtue, then I’m not going to apologize for his actions.”
“Is he here?” Diaab asked. “Your husband?”
“No,” she said. “He’s never here.”
Diaab looked up and down the block, then back to her. In a voice that did not betray his true emotions, he said, “In this day and age, in a city this size with all of its cameras and its law enforcement, I used to think you couldn’t go around killing kids in broad daylight. But your husband proved us wrong. And these drones? There are many of them attacking much of the city. I’m not sure if you know, but there are scores of dead downtown and even here, in the outlying areas. Are you aware that not two miles from here, an entire neighborhood is burning?”
“I’ve heard.”
“It got me thinking, Mrs. Dimas. With all of this pandemonium, have things changed so much that one can now kill children in broad daylight?”
In one swift movement, he withdrew his pistol from the back of his pants and shot Eric in the head. The kid’s head bucked sideways and he dropped in a heap on the front porch.
“I believe they have,” he said, his voice growing dark, gravely and mean. “Think about that while you clean him up. I’ll find yo
ur husband, and then I’m coming back for you and the rest of your family.”
And with that, he turned and bounded down the porch, crossed the walkway and went to the SUV. The second he reached for the door, something ripped apart his right arm, followed instantaneously by a violent explosion. His shoulder lurched forward, spinning his body around to face his attacker. What he saw was an old woman in a wheel chair with a smoking shotgun in hand. She’d taken aim once more. He dove in front of the car as buck shot shredded the front quarter panel of the Range Rover, barely missing him.
“Okot!” he screamed, the searing pain testing his resolve.
The big Sudanese man got out of the car with a weapon in hand just as another huge report cut through the silence. This was not a shotgun. This was a rifle. Diaab peeked over the hood of the SUV and saw the barrel of a hunting rifle in a pulled-open upstairs window.
The rifled bucked again, the second round passing through the Range Rover’s windows and eviscerating the side view mirror beside Okot.
Ducking down, Okot hurried around the car, grabbed Diaab—who was bleeding badly from the shoulder—and hustled him back to the SUV. Two more shots struck the vehicle as Okot climbed inside. As they raced away from the curb, Okot’s foot mashing the gas, Diaab looked back through the broken window and saw a man run to where Brooklyn’s mother was on her knees looking at Eric. Brooklyn’s father.
“Lying bitch!” he screamed, half in rage, half in pain.
They were near the end of the block when one more shot rang out. The round blew out the back window, passing through the seat Diaab was laying on and buried itself into the front passenger seatback. The bullet missed his outstretched legs by mere inches.
“Call Nyanath, have her meet us at the house,” Diaab said. “Tell her I’ve been shot with a shotgun.”
“Already on it, sir.”
Okot glanced back twice, just to make sure Diaab was okay. The African slave trader was sweating, and gripping his ragged arm. Diaab didn’t have the best childhood, and his father was a practitioner of cruelty—something he witnessed first hand on more occasions than he cared to consider—so he was used to pain. But whatever cruelties he suffered growing up, they were nothing like the agony he was enduring in that very moment.
Show no pain, he thought to himself. It was something his father taught him. He said, “A true leader shows no pain. Not in injury, not in defeat, and not at the start of a war.” His father was right.
And this was the start of that war.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Adeline stood there, stunned. She’d never seen someone murdered before. It happened right in front of her eyes! Now her legs were failing her and she couldn’t look away from the dead boy. Inside, however, she asked herself how she could feel bad for this child when he was the one who did what he did to her daughter? The tears surprised her.
Her weakened knees, however, did not.
The second gunfire broke out, her already damaged psyche curled inside itself and she heard herself start to cry.
There was a thundering of feet behind her. Fiyero. He was in his briefs, hair tussled, sleep pulling heavy at his face, gun in hand.
“Are you okay? What the hell?” he asked.
“You know him? This boy?”
“Of course, I do,” he said, moving past Adeline to see out the front door. “That’s Eric.”
“Why are you crying over him?” Brooklyn asked her, strangely unemotional. Adeline hadn’t realized her daughter was there. “He’s the one who filmed me while those other boys were—”
“Did you kill them?” she turned and asked Fiyero.
“The drones did it.”
“But you kidnapped them from the school at gunpoint?” she asked, horrorstruck.
“I did.”
“Why?!” she all but screamed.
“Because I asked him to,” Brooklyn admitted, firm.
She couldn’t stop the surge of emotion in her, and now she saw the boy from next door, Draven, walking over with a hunting rifle in hand. He looked concerned.
“Oh, my God,” he said when he saw Eric.
“It’s okay,” Fiyero said.
“What the hell happened to you?” Draven asked, stopping to look at the landscape of violence all over Fire’s body.
“I spent the night pulling people from a collapsed building. Plus my cover got blown and I found myself on the receiving end of a spontaneously planned murder.”
“Do you know this kid?” Draven asked, stepping onto the porch to get a better look at the body.
“He’s a classmate of Brooklyn’s.”
“Why did that guy kill him?”
“To prove a point,” Adeline said, wiping her eyes.
She couldn’t believe all this was happening. Her heart wouldn’t take it without revolt. And it was revolting! How did this escalate to the point that there was a dead child on her porch?
“What point did he want to prove?” Draven asked Adeline.
“Drones killed his son,” Adeline said, not wanting to put Brooklyn’s business out in the open. “He blamed Fiyero because he was involved in bringing the kid to justice.”
“My work has never visited my front door before,” Fiyero said. Draven simply shook his head, still in shock. “Thank you for doing what you did, Draven. Hopefully he’ll think twice before coming back.”
“He said he was going after you, then he was coming back for us,” Adeline said, the words practically falling out of her mouth.
“Did you get a name?” Fire asked.
“Diaab Buhari,” she replied. “That’s the name of the ringleader’s father.”
“Freddie B,” Brooklyn mumbled.
“Farhad Buhari,” Fiyero said at almost the same time.
“You’ll have to thank my grandmother. She’s a bit of a nosey Nellie, and she loves her guns, so perhaps she happened to be in the right place at the right time with the right weapon.”
“I’ll come over later to thank her,” Fire said. “In the mean time, I think I need to get this mess cleaned up.”
Adeline wondered if he was speaking literally or figuratively.
The two men shook hands.
“If things get…hairy,” Draven said, “feel free to bring your family to my house. We have plenty of space and as you can see, we have the will to defend ourselves and our neighbors.”
“Thank you,” Brooklyn said right away.
Adeline and Fire echoed Brooklyn’s sentiments, then they watched Draven head back home. Eudora was on the porch, shotgun laid over her lap. Fiyero waved and said, “Thank you!” She merely bowed her head in acknowledgment.
“Go put some clothes on, will you?” Adeline said as she hauled herself to her feet.
“You can’t be appreciative for one second, can you?” he barked.
“I didn’t bring this to our doorstep!” she screamed.
“No,” Brooklyn said, humbled, “I did.”
“This is not your fault, Brooklyn,” Fire said, closing the door.
“On that we finally agree,” Adeline replied. “But now I don’t feel safe here, thank you very much.”
“What do you suggest?” Fire asked.
“Maybe don’t take things into your own hands when it comes to our daughter.”
“Someone should,” he mumbled.
“What does that mean?” she asked. God, she hated how much she hated him right now. She almost felt possessed.
“It means—”
She couldn’t take it. There was no way she was doing this right now, not with the city still under attack and a dead kid on her porch.
She put her hand up in Fire’s face and said, “Stop!”
He did, but at a cost. His face turned beet red and he looked explosive. A moment’s breathing, however, drained his face of the bright color his anger produced.
“What would you have me do?” Fire asked, patient, his words lethally calm.
“Make me feel safe in my home again would be nice.
”
“I can’t do that.”
“Yeah, well that’s no surprise,” she said.
“Stop it!” Brooklyn shouted.
Fire didn’t take his eyes off Adeline and she didn’t blink.
“What’s wrong with you two?” Brooklyn shouted.
“Ask your mother.”
“Don’t go there,” she warned.
“Perhaps you’d feel safer at Caelin Boyle’s house.”
Son of a—
“Who’s Caelin Boyle, Mom?” Brooklyn asked, stilled by the mention of another man’s name.
She opened her mouth to explain, but Fire beat her to it.
“He’s the reason your mother didn’t pick up your phone call,” he said, looking not at Brooklyn, but right at Adeline. He knew this would hurt. He knew he was sticking the knife to her and he did it anyway.
“Shut up, Fire,” she snarled.
Brooklyn looked over at her, “Is this true?”
“Your father is acting a lot more emotional about a misunderstanding than he should,” she said, trying to keep this situation from completely spiraling out of control. “And if I can, I have to say this is terribly inappropriate considering what we’ve just been through.”
“That’s rich, you lecturing me about inappropriate,” Fire said. “Why don’t you tell your daughter what you’ve really been up to, Adeline?”
“You first,” she snapped.
“He already did,” Brooklyn said, a tear skipping down her cheek.
“Oh, really?”
“He said he killed some cartel members after I called. That he couldn’t answer the phone because he was basically fighting for his life.”
Adeline found herself short of breath. It was like she was spiraling down inside herself. Could she make this all stop? Was there even a way?
“You admitted to your daughter that you’re a murderer?” she heard herself ask.
“You and I may not be honest with each other, but I refuse to lie to Brooklyn or Orlando.”
Adeline looked back and forth between Fire and Brooklyn, completely humbled now that pieces of the truth were out there. To Brooklyn, she said, “And you’re okay with that?”
