by Gary Sapp
I’m sick of the nightly shootings and other violence. Mostly though, I’m sick of good men like my brother Xavier Prince who died to make this world better for your tired trifling black ass.”
“I don’t care.” The Deacon said for his Bishop. “I’m trying to get mine. It’s every man for himself in this world.”
Chris shook his head in exasperation.
“Yea, I guess you’re right. And that might be the saddest part.”
“What have you done? What are you doing?” The Deacon asked him. “Just because you wear a badge don’t mean anything.”
“You’re right again,” Chris said. “In this role I’ve probably done little more than you have to further the cause of people of color. I’m one of those people whose taken their success—and there money to the suburbs. When I’m off duty I was one of the ones who pretended that what goes on in our communities that I left behind doesn’t affect me personally. All of the drugs, all of the suffering, all of the murder fade into oblivion while I move on to a new day.”
Chris raised his weapon.
“Look man,” The Deacon said with a trembling voice. “I recognize you, now. You’re Chris Prince from the FBI. I…he didn’t kill your step daughter.”
“Of course you did, Bishop.”
“She dissed him just like that bitch over there, Grace. He wanted to kill her. He would have but someone beat him to it. I swear it. We found out shortly after that private dick your ex-wife hired found your step daughter in that dumpster in what the Peacekeepers left of Carver.”
“I…I believe you.”
And Chris Prince spun around and showed both of them his back.
The Bishop grunted, nearly incensed.
The Deacon said: “Oh, you screwed up now, boy. Somebody shoot this mother—“
Chris twisted back around and squeezed off a round with the speed and precision that no one, including himself, would have thought imaginable that tore into the Bishop’s skull. He mustered a second and third shot while Martin’s people got the memo and targeted the Choir Boys—picking them off one by one.
When Chris looked again, there were only three Choir boys still standing. At least two of Martin’s men were wounded and didn’t look well.
“I want you to remember back when I told your Bishop that I was sick.” Chris told the last of the Choir Boys. “I am, as much as your leader was. You are still armed so I guess that makes you dangerous in the immediate sense. Perhaps one or more of you will fire off a shot that kills me, that eases my pain. Dying tonight instead of painfully down the road may be a mercy. I really did believe the Deacon when he said that your people didn’t kill Erica Lovings. But you are responsible for scores of deaths and destruction and deserved the death penalty that the Peacekeepers and now…I have served on you. The atonement for your sins has been paid. You three can have a stay of execution but hey it’s been a strange night already. Maybe you three will continue to cheat death but it is my advice that you throw down your arms and walk away. You should walk away and live.”
They throw down their weapons quickly and leave the scene.
Special Agent Christopher Prince holsters his as well and walks to the spot where Tabitha Blue is still lying.
He praised God that she has a pulse, however faint.
“Who will help me get my partner to the hospital?” Chris asked. “You people have heard me; I’m dying of a type of stomach cancer that killed my mother as well. I’m dying but my partner doesn’t have to.” Chris said through the tears that were streaming down his face.
Serena
“Tell me your name, sir.”
The man, whose voice was the buzzing in a hornets nest, shifted his beady eyes back and forth before they landed on Serena Tennyson at last. At least a dozen other Pandora Agents were mulling about the darkened alley avoiding eye contact with her as well. Today she wore the guise of Oracle, the hard and unforgiving field leader that existed before her near assault at the end of Operation Deliverance. Only Danielle Rohm—Shooter—dared to maintain eye contact with her now. And Serena could not decide if the petite woman dressed in black’s gaze was one locked in fascination or contempt.
“Penrose,” The man’s thick mustache rose and fell as he spoke. “My name is Charlie Penrose.”
“Very good then,” Serena locked her hands behind her back and circled Penrose. “Tell me, Operative Penrose, in what capacity did you serve your country before you became enlightened and recruited by Pandora.”
Penrose looked from Serena to his immediate supervisor, Alexander Bolton for any indication of support from the suntanned and fit younger man, licked his lips and watched Serena complete another circle around him.
“Look, Oracle, I—“
Serena hardened her gaze further and planted her nose and lips an inch from Penrose’s right ear.
“I asked you a fucking question, operative,” Such vulgarities were normally beneath Serena, but this was not just an exercise in discipline but in appearance. Reports were coming in from many of her field supervisors that belief, courage and hope were fading—especially after the destruction and death that had touched so many of her people after the earthquake. “I asked you a question and I want a fucking answer to that question an hour ago.”
She heard Penrose swallow.
“I was a contracted agent for the ATF. In fact, now that I think of it, I would have been employed by them ten years late next month.”
Serena grinned…and it startled Penrose. Good.
“You would have served them ten years you say?”
“Yes, Oracle, ten years,”
“Well then, to the matter at hand. Why did you abandon your post?”
She heard Penrose swallow again.
“It was about the earthquake of course,” Serena could see sweat building on his brow and on his thick mustache. “Before our last operation began I moved my family out of Metro Atlanta, you know, expecting the worse in violence and rioting in the city after we passed the Zero Hour.”
“Go on,”
“Well, mam, when the initial reports about the earthquakes started filing in and we learned that the epicenter was 20 to 25 miles east of the city…well…I panicked. That was the same general area where I sent Lizzy—my wife and my boys towards. My in-laws retired in an area near Athens.” Penrose seemed to shrink a little and some of the sting went out of his voice. “I haven’t heard a hair from them since the quake struck; I admit that the situation has shaken me up pretty badly, it’s been difficult to concentrate on anything else since. I needed to know if my family made it. I left here and drove until I found them alive at last.”
“It shook you up; of course it shook you up, Operative Penrose.” Serena said, echoing the man’s earlier statement. She glanced back only at the woman dressed all in black only interested in her reaction to all this…and interested in her words. “Shooter, tell Operative Penrose what transpired during his absence from his post.”
Rohm rolled her eyes and stepped up to the center of the group and planted her small but lethal hands behind the small of her back in as neutral a stance as the younger woman could muster.
“The Atlanta Police Department had split into smaller independent battalions as they’ve struggled with their own breaches of discipline and defections during events in the city over the past 24 to 48 hours. One of these battalions, a group who called themselves Blackstreet infiltrated a position that our people held six miles from here. Operative Penrose was by far our most senior and most experienced man in the area of combat. The others fought valiantly…but were overrun and were forced to withdraw from this vital strategic holding.”
“With all of the earthquake damage between here and there the obstructions caused my roundtrip to take far longer than I would have anticipated. I knew that zone was important to Pandora, Oracle. I know that it was important to you—“
“Operative Penrose,” Serena interrupted him.
“It is my opinion that we wouldn’t have held the zone even if
I—“
“Operative Penrose,” Serena said in a voice that ran both hot and cold. “You abandoned your post. You allowed an enemy combatant to make a successful incursion into Pandora held territory; a zone that cost us valuable lives and resources to claim and then to hold.”
Penrose’s mustache quivered as his hidden lip beneath muttered something incomprehensible. Serena thought she saw tears in his eyes.
“I didn’t do this on my own authority, Serena…Oracle. Operative Bolton gave me permission.” Penrose peered over to where his suntanned superior went a shade of white. “You’ll back me up on this part right, buddy? I got permission. I drove back as quickly as the conditions allowed me to. Please, Serena, forgive me for what happened to my guys while I was gone. We lost good people. I lost good friends.”
“Operative Penrose are you aware of the penalty for desertion?”
“Desertion,” Penrose uttered the word as if it were a curse as his bushy eyebrows shot up.
“We are in a state of war, Operative. What you did amounted to an act of treason against our cause—against me. Treason is punishable by death is it not?”
All of the life went out of Penrose as if his execution had already been commenced and all that was left behind were his bones. Bolton shifted his weight as if he needed to pee. Rohm folded one arm over the other and licked her black lip stick.
“My God, what kind of people are you?” Penrose asked them one and all and then rested his scorching gaze on Serena. “What kind
