"I didn't see it."
"No? Shit was all over the news, brother. He's talking about tearing down the government. Shaking up the system. He's talking about giving America back to the Working Man—but you can bet he's not talking about you and me."
"All that guy does is talk. Somebody needs to shut him up."
Billy winked. "You said it, not me. Things is he's using the right words directed at the right people. Those people know who they are. His words strike them as if he's speaking right into their ears. Dictators rise to power because of their rhetoric. Use the right words and you can bend the world to your will." Again his eyes clouded. "For good or evil."
"So why'd you ask me back here, Billy? And how do you know so much about me?"
Billy set his boots down beside the chair. "My people know a fair piece about you, Marcus. Born and raised in Queens to an aircraft mechanic and a nurse. Graduated top of your high school class in science and mathematics. You could have been anything you wanted, but you fell into your daddy's footsteps. You flew for a private jet company for ten years before landing a gig with Morning Skies." Billy sat, cracked his knuckles. "Nine years ago you landed a 747 in the Hudson River, saving four-hundred-and-twelve passengers and eleven crew members, not including yourself. Three passengers in the tail section of the plane died, through no fault of your own. The bigwigs at Morning Skies tried to pin the crash on you with those two magic words absolving them of any blame: pilot error. It wasn't until you'd already been out of work—what? Nine months? A year?—when they finally admitted it was a faulty bolt that caused that big motherfucker that had no business being up in the air to drop out of the fuckin sky. By then you were six months deep into a binge that's lasted since. You shouldered the blame even after they exonerated you."
Marcus's head had begun to throb midway through Billy's speech and the mention of alcohol gave him an easy out. "Yeah, you know I'd really love to talk more about how I've been drinking myself to death for no damn reason. Can I buy you a drink?"
"I'm clean." Billy Wonders drew out a necklace from under his t-shirt and flashed the medallion. "Coming up on my sixteenth year of sobriety."
Marcus resisted the urge to sputter he felt when a fellow alcoholic mentioned the program. "Speaking of magic words," he said.
The magician grinned. "Hey, it works if you work it. Look, Marcus." He tented his fingers against his lips. "We could use a man like you on our side. An inside man. We know you're carrying briefcases for Americo Morales but what we don't know is why, or what he's got in 'em."
"Who is we?"
"We call ourselves the Resistance."
Marcus couldn't help but sputter this time, and Billy chuckled good-humoredly.
"I know. For people who use words on the front lines we kinda phoned that one in. But the name doesn't matter, Marcus. It's what we do that counts."
"Which is what?"
"We stand for truth and justice. There are nefarious forces in this world, Marcus, that wish to enslave us. Not just black folk like you and me but every man, woman and child in America who isn't them or theirs. They've enslaved us with poverty, with drugs, with television, social networks, and blind consumerism. They've pitted us against each other, all so that we're too distracted to see the hands pulling the strings. This is a war, Marcus. And we are the Resistance."
The magician's eyes gleamed with excitement.
"Men like Morales don't have our best interests in mind. Work with us, Marcus. If not for yourself, for the good of your country. For the good of humanity."
Marcus gazed at the man through narrowed eyes. Nothing about this made sense to him. Would Morales really have sent him to see a man who appeared to be his enemy? Had someone else sent him the text? And if so, how did they get his cell number?
"I've got a job to do, man. I'm not gonna jeopardize that for a load of bullshit."
Billy Wonder's jaw dropped.
"What?" Marcus said. "I'm supposed to believe in some kind of Illuminati shadow government conspiracy theory from a dude who just told me he's a real life wizard? Get the fuck outta here."
Marcus turned for the door.
"I know what it sounds like, Marcus."
He rounded on the magician. "Then prove it to me. You gotta give me something."
"Okay, man, okay. What'll it take for you to believe me?"
"Make me fly."
The magician chuckled. "Brother, you already so fly you about to take off in y'own damn shoes."
"Levitate me. If you're really are a wizard, you can do that for me."
Billy began shaking his head.
"If you can do that, I promise I'll try to take you seriously."
"It's not that simple, Marcus."
He spun on his heels. "Then I'm out."
"Fine."
Marcus turned back to see the magician still shaking his head, looking down at his silly sequined loafers. Finally Billy Wonders nodded.
"But what happens here—"
Marcus held up a hand. "Don't say it."
"I know where the fuck we are," the magician said. "I was gonna say it can't leave this room. If my people knew I did this for you—"
"I won't say a damn thing. Not that anything's gonna happen," he added quickly.
Nodding, Billy stood up from behind the chair and began rubbing his palms together in a circular motion, making light swishing sounds, like a man warming himself over a fire barrel. Once they were sufficiently warmed he brought them to his mouth as if he were going to blow on them.
Marcus watched in fascination as Billy Wonders made strange guttural noises into his cupped hands. No words were distinguishable. He could have been speaking in a foreign language or throat singing for all Marcus knew.
Billy Wonders rubbed his palms together. Made the strange sound into them.
Marcus's vision tunneled in on the magician. The rest of the dressing room blurred, and his hazy reflection in the mirror seemed to rise before he felt his own feet leave the ground. He watched, in stunned amazement, as the man in the mirror lifted two inches, six inches, a foot, before he dared to look down at his own feet.
Christ, I'm flying…!
The toes of his sneakers pointed toward the dirty vinyl tiles, his heels a good two feet from the floor and rising steadily. He held out his hands to balance himself.
This isn't happening. Uh-uh. It's a trick.
But it was happening. Billy Wonders had lived up to his name, and he was smiling.
No. It's bullshit, man. Haven't had enough to drink. Must've got the DTs. Gotta be hallucinating. Something.
The moment he thought it he felt his shoes on solid ground again, even as Billy Wonder continued his chanting, almost as if he'd never been levitating at all.
The magician stopped speaking into his palms with a look of disappointment. "Goddamn, I did it, Marcus! You felt it, didn't you? You saw it?"
"I didn't see shit, man. You said it yourself, today's the most sober I've been in nine years. All that says to me is I need to up my dosage."
"You can't deny what your eyes have seen, brother. The scales have been lifted."
"The only scales I see are the ones on your jumpsuit." Marcus returned to the door. "Thanks for the show, Billy. I'll see you around."
"Marcus," Bill Wonders called after him, following him into the dim hall behind the stage. "Marcus. Don't deny your true self, brother! The only way you're gonna come out of this with your hands clean is if you let yourself fly, goddamn it!"
Without turning back, Marcus flapped his arms like a bird and rounded the corner.
5 – THE BROTHERHOOD OF KEK
MARCUS WOKE WITH a furious hangover. After his encounter with Billy Wonders he'd gone directly to the bar and had proceeded to get shitfaced. The rest of the night was a blur. Flashing on vague snapshots of skewed hotel hallways and the faces several confused and angry guests up-close and personal, he supposed he must have been searching the hotel for his own room, or the Adder kid's. The last memory came
in soft focus. It was his own reflection in the full-length closet mirror, dressed from head to toe in the white tuxedo he still wore, as he pounded on the door between his room and the next. He was giggling madly and squealing like a pig.
"Jesus…"
No nightmare though. At least there was that.
Suddenly nauseous he leaned over the bed and vomited on the carpet before he could stop himself. Holding back the next wave of sickness, he ran to the bathroom and puked up everything else into the tub. The tux lapel was crusted with old vomit. He peeled his sweaty body out of the monkey suit, dropped it on the bathmat and stepped into the shower.
Cold water pounded on his smooth scalp and shoulders, blasting him awake. Chunks of what little he'd eaten yesterday sucked down the drain. He pushed the rest down with his toes.
It works if you work it, he thought out of the blue. He remembered seeing his feet lift off the ground and dismissed it as just another illusion, like everything else Billy Wonders had offered him.
"True self. True bullshit is more like it."
He washed the drunk off himself with scalding water, could feel the alcohol leaving his system through his pores. This was the worst hangover he'd had in months, maybe years. He shouldn't have drank so little.
"Go big or go home," he said to himself, and chuckled.
He dried off and hit the minibar. A bottle of gin hit the spot, killed the craving temporarily. It would be back and raring to go if he didn't get back on the road soon.
The cell phone was flashing on the nightstand. Somehow in his drunken stupor he'd managed to get it out of his pocket and set in neatly beside the bed. Maybe he'd even meant to set an alarm. The digital clock blinked 12:00. He thumbed the power button and saw it was past eleven.
"Shit!"
He had two texts, both from Morales.
VIP cabana, 10AM. Leave package in room.
Followed by:
Where are you?? Adder says no show!
Marcus slipped on his clothes from yesterday that he'd strewn across the floor, texted Morales a quick excuse and slipped the phone in his pocket as he headed for the door.
The Brotherhood of Kuk, or whatever they called themselves, were already several drinks deep into a day drunk, about a dozen white boys who looked like they belonged in a frat house, most of them were lobster red from the sun. The token Asian kid sat sipping a girlie drink in the shade of the cabana and an additional layer of protection with a large sunbrella. Techno music pounded from speakers independent of the rest of the poolside, and most of the white boys were bobbing their heads or pumping their fists to it. They drank shots and watched women in skimpy bikinis pass by the cabana from a safe distance.
Marcus spotted Adder among them, dressed in Hawaiian shorts, a loose chambray short-sleeved shirt and a white fedora with a black stripe. Adder saw Marcus and clapped the back of the muscular bro to his right, dressed in shorts and a too small t-shirt with a cartoon frog on it.
"Marcus! What's up, my dude?"
Marcus had a strong feeling the kid was only calling him "my dude" because he was too scared to call him "my nigga." The kid probably called his friends the latter when they weren't in mixed company, aside from the Asian kid.
He waited for a slim tanned white woman in a skimpy black one-piece bikini to pass and followed her progress with his eyes before noting all the men in the cabana were doing the same, a couple of them lowering their Ray Bans in unison like a ZZ Top video.
These boys could make appreciating the nudes at the Met feel sleazy, Marcus thought.
Adder gave him an awkward, complicated handshake and clapped him on the back before ushering him under the canopy. "These are the Brothers!" he shouted over the music.
"You don't look like brothers!" Marcus said, and after a drunken moment spent parsing the comment they all laughed.
"I told you he's funny, didn't I? Brothers, this is Marcus! He's Mr. Morales's protégé!"
"I wouldn't call myself that!"
"Aw come on! Don't sell yourself short!"
Marcus shrugged. The repetitive booming wah-wah-wah of their music was already drilling into his skull. "Do you always listen to this shit?"
"What?"
"I said do you—" He shook his head. "Never mind. Sorry I'm late!"
"Island time, bro," the musclebound meathead said. "I work with some Jamaicans in security. I know how it is."
Marcus squinted at Adder. "Who the fuck is this guy?"
Adder put an arm around Marcus's shoulders and directed him toward a table littered with red cups. "Have a drink with me. Wanna pound a shot?"
Marcus slipped out from the kid's arm. "Look kid, I don't want to be an asshole but I've had a rough night. I just want to get this over with and get back on the road."
"What's the rush? Come on, have a drink." The kid pouted. "One drink? We got bottle service! Come on come on come on."
"All right, one drink."
Marcus wiped off a seat and sat at the table. He hadn't noticed the bar in the back with the middle-aged Hispanic man sitting behind it until Adder held up two fingers to the man. "Dos tequilas, por favor!"
"Two tequilas, coming up," the man said in perfect English, as if to spite the kid.
Adder drummed the bar to the music while the man poured, then scooped up the amber shots and brought them over to the table. He handed one to Marcus and held his own up for a toast.
Marcus clinked it grudgingly.
"Fuck the haters!" the kid said, and slurped his shot.
Marcus drank his. He'd never been a fan of tequila but it went down smooth and soothed the beast. Must have been top shelf stuff.
"So tell me a little about yourself, bro."
"Is this a date?"
Adder laughed and squeezed Marcus's bicep. When Marcus gave his hand a narrow-eyed gaze Adder pretended he'd been feeling the fabric between his fingers. "Weren't you wearing this yesterday?"
Marcus just watched him.
Adder let go of Marcus's shirt. "Look, I just like to know who I'm dealing with before I get into bed them, you know? For my own protection."
"There's nothing to know."
"Where did you meet Morales?"
"In San Francisco. Where I left my heart."
Adder scowled. "Is that a reference?"
"What do you need to know and I'll tell you. But I thought I was just here to deliver a briefcase."
"I thought you were fun, man." His eyes lighted. "Let me show you something." He slipped his phone out of his pocket and fiddled with it. Grinning, he turned it for Marcus to see. "What do you think about this?"
It was a red, white and blue image meant to look like Barack Obama's HOPE poster, but in place of the 44th President of the United States was a humanoid creature with a beard made of squid tentacles. The word below was HOPELESS.
"Isn't that the dude from Pirate of the Caribbean?"
Alder scowled at him. "It's the Elder God Cthulhu."
"Cthulhu who?"
Adder's frown deepened. Then he grinned. "I see what you did there."
Marcus grinned. "You like that one, huh?"
"Cthulhu is a character created by a horror writer named H.P. Lovecraft. It's a Great Old God, symbolizing chaos and destruction."
"So you people are nihilists."
The kid gave him a dead serious look. "You people?" When Marcus didn't bite Adder grinned. "We're not nihilists, no. We just think chaos is preferable to the current system where the only people who benefit are the ultra-rich elites."
Nefarious forces wish to enslave us, Billy Wonders had said. They've pitted us against each other so we can't see the hands pulling the strings… This is a war, Marcus.
Was it possible Billy Wonders and his Resistance and Adder's Brotherhood of Chex were on the same side? Marcus said nothing. He wasn't ready to show his cards just yet, not when he wasn't sure who he was playing against.
"From out of the chaos new wealth will arise," Adder was saying, "and Kek's word will spread
across the world!"
"PRAISE KEK!" the meathead shouted on the dancefloor, pumping his fists. The other kids echoed his words, raising their hands in "okay" gestures.
These kids are out of their damn minds, Marcus thought, already planning his retreat.
Adder scrolled through some pics on his phone—several Marcus caught were of the same doe-eyed blonde woman having sex with various black men—and turned it to Marcus again. This image was the same Thooloo guy only it was more stylized, less detailed, red on a white background. The blue text below spelled out NO LIVES MATTER, obviously a play on the BLM movement Marcus had seen popping up in posters on construction site barriers and in protests in the Bay Area streets.
He couldn't help but notice both images had coopted black culture and wondered if the kid had some kind of weird obsession.
"This image is our most popular. I think it's the one that spoke to Fox Wentworth the most."
"So this is what you do all day? Draw little pictures with words on them?"
"What we used to do, yeah. Now we're running Wentworth's online campaign. All the energy we put into memes we're pouring into getting Wentworth into the White House."
"Looks like you're pouring it all on your liver."
Adder chuckled. "Well yeah, that too."
"You said something about magic yesterday…"
"Oh." Adder picked up a red cup, checked its contents, and downed it. "Well, it's not magic, really. Just a series of coincidences kept happening on the internet once we started joking around about getting that shitlord Wentworth to run for President that it was hard to dismiss them as just coincidences, you know? That's why we call ourselves the Brotherhood of Kek."
"After the Egyptian frog god."
"You remembered," Adder said with a pleased smile. "Kek is the bringer of light. In hieroglyphs he looks sort of like someone making weird magical squiggles from a computer." He held up his phone to show Marcus the image, which only vaguely resembled his description. "Technically this symbol belongs to Kek's female counterpart Heqet. This little figure is a woman and the squiggles are supposed to mean knotted flax or some shit, not magic. But that's not how the internet works, and shitposters on the message boards started to think maybe Kek worked through us to make meme magic a reality. When you add that to the idea that ancient Egyptian creation myth—"
HARBINGER Deliver Us to Evil Page 6
