THE TRIBE 1 (GENETIC APOCALYPSE - THE TRIBE)

by Boyd Craven Jr.

  “Well, this here’s got ta do with somethin’ different Adrian. I hate bein’ the one ta show you this, ‘specially on your birthday and all, but I’ve got to…” It’s a good time to do it, while Sofie ain’t settin’ in. “Since I don’t read real good out loud, why don’t you read this Adrian?” I handed him a page torn out of a news magazine that Wednesday had given me. He took it, looked at it and began to read:

  “…following the lead of other countries that have already enacted such laws, the Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that because hybrids are not one hundred percent genetically human, that they shall be officially classified as human-like, non-human creatures, and therefore considered property.

  Humans giving birth to one, own it by default, but will be held responsible for its actions, as well as any and all harm that it may cause to other humans, should they keep it. Should they not wish to be held responsible for such a creature, they may legally have it terminated at birth, or transfer ownership of it with a proper receipt of sale. Should the owner of one die before transferring ownership of it, it will automatically become the property of the United States Government to be disposed of…”

  The room got real quiet. They all looked freaked out, every one of ‘em. “I bet Matson is lookin’ ta import hybrids from that boat place. I’ll bet that’s why he wants it so bad. He’s an evil bastard, so I doubt he’s up ta any good,” I told them. “Prolly will only want girls, for the strip club and the sex business. Boys would be too hard to handle. They’re too strong. The girls are gorgeous at a young age, cost near nothin’ ta keep, can’t get knocked-up, and can’t catch human diseases.”

  3

  Adrian:

  I was stunned after reading that and hearing what Sunny said. I’m just sitting here for a minute, staring at that piece of paper, trying to get my mind around what it says. I feel like I’ve been kicked in the stomach.

  “How can such a thing be true?” Sarah Mae wails. “That’s way worse than the Negros had it back in the old south! How can they get away with such an awful crime?” She sits down with a thump next to me, and begins to cry pitifully. That sets me on fire inside.

  “Well, none of us are anyone’s property, and we never will be,” I say, thumping my fist down on the table. “From now on, any heirloom that crosses our path is getting treated like an enemy, and a threat to our freedom. They’ll have to convince us that they’re not, or suffer the consequences. If it’s war that they want, it’s war they’ll get!”

  “Damn right,” Donald added weakly. He sounds scared. He has every right to be. We are all just a bunch of kids, our generation. With the oldest of us being ten, what chance do we have of resisting such a law?

  ‘We have me,’ I think to myself. ‘I’ll give us a chance! These guys always depend on me because of my size, strength and mostly my mind. I’m not letting them down this time either, no matter what it takes.’

  The Supreme Court has just supremely pissed me off. I have to get up from the table and walk this one off. The party is over, as far as I am concerned. I reach out for Sarah Mae’s hand, and take her with me. I have some thinking and some venting to do. “Apparently, this Madame V wants to be my friend, sending me these birthday presents,” I think out loud, as we walk. “That’s fine with me, but this Leonard Matson, making threats like that, is automatically the enemy. He needs to be eliminated right away. I wonder if she’ll still want to be my friend, after I kill her head of security.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t kill people Adrian. Even if they are bad,” Sarah Mae tells me.

  “Sometimes people give you no choice Sarah Mae,” I say. “Like that guard that was after Sofie. Some people just need killing. Anyone that thinks they can own any of us, and do whatever they want to us, falls right into that category. That’s just not happening to any of us while I’m alive.”

  “Yeah, I can’t argue that,” she says. “You know I’ve got your back, whatever you do, right?” She moves directly in front of me, and wraps her arms around me tightly, nestling her head against my chest. “You already own my heart Adrian Powell, but that’s all anyone is ever gonna own of me. You’ll make sure of that, won’t you?”

  “Of course I will. Nobody had better ever even think of laying a hand on you Sarah Mae, or they’ll find out what a mean bastard I can be, if I decide to!” She was looking up at me, sort of smiling, and it seemed the most natural thing in the world to kiss her long and deep right then.

  “Mmm… You’re a pretty good kisser for a seven year old,” she teases.

  “Must be instinct then, because that’s the first time I’ve ever done anything like that. Maybe we are more different than we realize, because it would just be silly if my heirloom brother Adam were to do something like that.

  “You and I should probably start taking the kayaks and do some serious sneaking around to investigate everything on that map,” I say. “She might be trying to tell us that there’s more danger around us than we are aware of. We can add our own numbers to the map, and make notes in the book about our plans. I wouldn’t forget, but just in case anyone else in The Tribe needs to refer to it, it’ll be there.”

  “Want to start in the morning, on that?” she asks.

  “Sure. That sounds good. I just wish that we had different colored kayaks. Red and yellow ones stick out like a sore thumb. We’ll have to keep our eyes out for some paint or some way to camouflage them I guess.”

  “I can show you some tricks on making ourselves nearly invisible that I learned from Daddy’s people. We can move around wherever there is the tiniest bit of dry land on foot more quietly than we can in the kayaks. It just takes a little practice. Living with the Seminoles had some advantages, as far as things like that go,” she says.

  “Yeah, I remember the first time I saw you. I didn’t see you, even though I was looking right at you, in broad daylight, until you moved.”

  “That would have been a mistake, if I hadn’t wanted you to see me. It was intentional, silly. I was really lonely. Lonely enough to take a chance on y’all.”

  We head back to the house, and Maya has the iPod playing some hip-hop dance music. She and Sofie are shakin’ their butts on the porch something fierce. Donald and Sunny are watching from the chairs. Maya tries to get Donald to dance, but the dork doesn’t know how. Sunny joins them and boy, can SHE ever dance!

  “No sense in ruining the party for Maya and Sofie. Let them enjoy dancing tonight. We can fill Maya in tomorrow, after our guests have gone home. Sunny was awful casual with her words around us, but I doubt she wants Sofie to know about this yet. Sofie is “legal” according to what that article said. No sense worrying her about it at all. Let her mama tell her, if and when she decides to,” I say.

  4

  Sara Mae:

  Adrian and I are the first ones up again this morning. We’re sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee and reading the directions that came with his GPS out loud, but quietly. We plan to get coordinates for the homestead, my old place, and the bridge today, as a learning exercise. We’ll be doing all of that on foot. We have the GPS unit outside catching some morning rays to charge it up some. There’s a section in the direction book on geocaching that gives me ideas for storing supplies, marking the location of traps and snares, and creating meeting places. One can supposedly guide anyone to within a couple of feet of a hidden cache this way, from anywhere. I intend to learn that for us. Maya is the geek of the tribe, so I have some tech questions on the subject that I hope she can help me to understand later, after she gets up. For the time being, we decide that we’ll go get the coordinates of the bridge and get them on the map. We grab our day-pack waist bags and hang our shotguns over our shoulders, across our bare backs. We pick up the GPS unit and head out into a beautiful, hot, sunny Florida fall morning.

  As Adrian and I stand exactly in the center of the bridge over the Turner River, on the Tamiami Trail to capture GPS coordinates, we hear a sudden burst of full-automatic, medium caliber gu
nfire coming from the east, down the road. It is quickly answered by heavier caliber shots from semi-automatic weapons. We both immediately think of the label on the map for Everglades Airboat Excursions & Kayak Rentals and figure that they are under attack. We don’t know exactly where it is, but we know from the map that it has a driveway off of this road.

  “You up for this?” Adrian asks me.

  “Let’s go!” I reply. We hit the right shoulder of the road at a full run, watching carefully ahead and behind of us for traffic. The driveway is a little over a mile down the road, so I figure it will take us less than ten minutes to get there, if they can just hang on that long.

  The gunfire slows down a bit as we get closer to it. As we get real close, we began to hear voices yelling. There are adult heirloom voices coming from two different locations, quite a ways apart, telling someone between them that they don’t have a chance. If they want to live, they have to throw down their weapons and come out with their hands in the air. Then we hear the voices of hybrid kids refusing, followed by semi-automatic fire from the kid’s location, and followed immediately by full-automatic fire again from the adults’ locations.

  We reach the driveway unseen and pull up short to talk. Neither of us are out of breath at all. This Florida sunshine on our skin is a remarkable thing. It gives us a definite advantage over heirlooms, in that we never get tired while in it, with enough skin exposed.

  Adrian is looking through Donald’s binoculars. “I can see a truck on this side of a building. A big building. There are two men, one on either side, with assault rifles aimed at the building. Further out, on the other side of the building, I can see two more men, facing this way. They must be in a boat, but I can’t see it from here. There’s a waterway going out through the glades I can see, that curves to our right from where they are. It looks like they have the building hemmed in from both sides, but I don’t see anyone else. I’m sure that the other voices we heard were hybrid kids. They must be inside that building.”

  “We need to get a closer look to be sure there aren’t any more of them somewhere,” I whisper. We approach very slowly and quietly, on either side of the driveway, shotguns up. Sure enough, there are two Latino men in the black uniforms like the guards from The Island wear, on either side of a pickup truck, behind open doors. They began firing short bursts at the building again. This is our opportunity to take them! I motion for Adrian to take the one on the right, me the one on the left. Adrian gets that hard look in his eyes that he’d had when that other guard was after Sofie. I know I can count on him to do his part. I raise my shotgun and began walking quickly but silently right at my man. Adrian follows my lead exactly, stalking his man. When we are only about twenty feet away, Adrian scuffs a shoe in the gravel, and my man wheels around, bringing his weapon around with him. I never say a word, and I never hesitate. He never has a chance. The first load of buckshot nearly separates his head from his body. The second load hits the back of his head just as his body hits the ground. I am aware of Adrian shooting twice also, and there is no return fire. Glancing at him quickly, he nods his head and gives me a “What now?” look. I motion to a well-worn path that heads out to the right, towards the waterway he’d seen. We both get low to the ground and ran across the open parking lot for the path. We hear a boat motor fire up and someone yells, “Get us the hell outta here!”

  More gunfire comes from the house, followed by a scream from a man in the fleeing boat. We run as fast as we can go down that trail. Suddenly, Adrian grabs my arm and pulls me down behind a painted wooden sign, just as the boat rounds the bend in the waterway at full speed. We both fire at the same time, and the man that is driving flies right out of the boat. The dead-man switch works. As the dead man leaves the boat, the lanyard attached to him kills the engine, but the boat still hits the bank on our side of the river pretty hard.

  “We need to disappear,” I say, “back the way we came from.” Without question, Adrian turns and we run, retracing our steps. At the parking lot, we get low and run faster still, not knowing if the house will fire on us. They didn’t. Instead, I get a glimpse of a young hybrid boy watching us through binoculars. Neither of us speak. We just run like hell.

  We run down the side of the road unmolested by traffic. There just doesn’t seem to be any, anymore. We run all the way to the gate that leads to the homestead. There we stop. We look at each other, neither of us knowing what the other will do or say. Finally, I break the ice, saying; “If its war they want…”

  “…its war they’ll get,” Adrian finished.

  He doesn’t look upset in the least. He looks proud and defiant, like one of the Seminole hunters who’s just killed a deer, maybe. My heart flutters wildly, not from exertion, but from a feeling of pride in this young man. MY young man! He’s going to lead us to do great things, this one. I know it instinctively. He’s a true warrior!

  5

  Adrian:

  We stand at the gate studying each other. We’ve just killed three heirlooms and assisted in the death of a fourth. It isn’t the first time that we’ve taken a life together, but the last time had happened suddenly, and was in defense of Sofie. This time we had pretty much planned to do it. I’d thought about that the whole way as we ran at a controlled pace, in a defensive posture, the mile back to the bridge, then the mile to the gate to the homestead. I felt no guilt; no shame in what we had just done. I guess I feel about the same as I did after the fist-fight at the farmers market that day back in Michigan. Victorious. Powerful. Superior, but a little scared at the same time.

  I wonder what’s going on in her head. Does she feel like me, or is she going to get all emotional now? Just as I am about to decide that I can’t read her, she comes out with, “If it’s war they want…” which I finish up by saying, “…its war they’ll get.” Then I know that we are going to be ok. I give her a quick kiss, then hop the gate and wait for her to come over too. We walk casually up to the house, smiling at each other, feeling at least a little bit like a modern-day Bonnie & Clyde.

  “Wait, we forgot to take their weapons,” Sarah Mae says, as we entered the kitchen.

  “No we didn’t,” I tell her. “We left them there for the occupants of the house. They must have used up a lot of ammunition in that fire-fight.”

  “What fire-fight?” Maya asks.

  Donald joins us and we all sit down at the table, while Sarah Mae and I take turns telling the whole story to them.

  “Do we need to worry about being attacked now by The Island’s people?” Maya asks.

  “Not at all. The Island won’t even know that we were there. All they’ll know is that their men attacked that place and got dead in the process. Heck, the hybrid kids there that were getting shot at don’t even know who we are, or where we came from. We were ghosts!” I tell her.

  “Were either of you hurt at all?” Donald wants to know.

  “Nope. Not at all,” I answer. “We’re six shotgun shells lighter is all. Didn’t even get dirty.” I have the goofy urge to say ‘didn’t even break a sweat’, but then, we hybrids don’t sweat.

  “Let’s not mention a word of this to Sunny over the radio,” Donald says, making eye contact with Maya.

  “What? Why are you looking at me?” Maya growls. “Don’t treat me like a child Donald.”

  There is a guilty silence for a sec, while everyone kind of looks around at everyone else. Then we all bust out laughing! That’s exactly what we are. A bunch of kids. Betrayed kids, who’ve decided to kick-ass and fight back. It’s kind of funny, but maybe you’d have to be here…

  “So, what do we do now?” Sarah Mae asks me.

  “Exactly what we planned on doing,” I answer. “Does anyone have better handwriting than Donald?” The girls both shake their heads. “Donald would you be the official map writer then?”

  “Sure Adrian, what do you want me to write?” he asks, unrolling the map on the table.

  “The next unused number is 8. Just write a number 8 on the map, the same
way as the others look, right on the bridge. Then in the book, start a new page that looks like the other ones, like ‘8 – Bridge Over Turner River’ at the top and write these coordinates off the GPS in the next line. We can write any notes or anything we want on the rest of the page.”

  “Do you want me to write what happened today underneath?” he asks.

  “Naw, but you know what? You can go to the page for location 7 - Everglades Airboat Excursions & Kayak Rentals and write underneath, that it’s a 10 minute run from location 8 by way of the road,” I answer.

  “That’s good information!” Maya adds.

  “So, how do we get to location 7 by water from here?” asks Sarah Mae, looking at the map.

  “Well, if we were to paddle right down this drain that runs along the far side of Turner River Rd, we’d wind up right here across Hwy-41 from it,” I show her by tracing my finger along the route. “From there, we’d have to leave the kayaks, cross the highway and walk back the long driveway to the buildings and the launch. That would leave us more exposed than just hiking the roads like we did today. If there was any danger while we were on foot, we could just get off the road and hide anywhere. The other way would be to paddle downstream on the Turner River about two miles, then turn back north-east at the first fork to their launch waterway, here.” I tapped my finger on the map where the waterway met the Turner River. “That would be a huge waste of time, unless we had a good reason for doing it,” I say. “The homestead here is better hidden and not as likely to be found, but location 7 is way closer to The Island and an easier, faster trip with a bigger boat. Most big boats wouldn’t be able to get under our bridge, especially at high tide.”

  “I can see why Matson wants that location so bad now,” Maya says. There are more big boats at The Island than small ones, for running offshore up and down the coast. I’m not sure exactly what they do with them, but I saw them every day while we lived there.”