How Long 'Til Black Future Month?

by N. K. Jemisin

  “I still be up in my attic but for you. Maybe dead.”

  “Might’a been rescued by now but for me,” it said stubbornly. “This thing make people so ugly they don’ even want to help each other. You know they ain’ give no food or water to all those people at the Superdome? Just lef’ ’em there.” It shook its head, as Tookie gaped at it in disbelief. “This storm three days gone and still killin’ people. That ain’ right.”

  Tookie set his mouth in a grim line. “Man, people don’ need no monster to make ’em do evil-hearted shit. All it take is a brown face, or somebody wearin’ old tore-up clothes.”

  “This thing make it worse.” The lizard hopped out of Tookie’s boat, dogpaddling easily in the water. “I told you, man, I’m a foot soldier. Y’know—” It hesitated. “Y’know, right? I brought the storm? Me and mine.”

  Tookie nodded slowly. He had suspected that from their first meeting. “Storms gotta come,” he said. “Everybody in this city know that.”

  The lizard looked relieved. “Yeah, but storms gotta go, too. That’s my job, and I been fuckin’ around.” It nodded to him, then turned and began to paddle away. Abruptly it stopped and turned, glancing back at him over its wing. It gazed at him for a long while. “I’ll holla at you later, man,” it said at last.

  Tookie nodded, raising a hand to wave. The lizard flickered up out of the water and away.

  Tookie lowered his hand. He knew that when the waters receded, even if the lizard survived its battle, he would never see it again.

  The day grew hot. With water everywhere, evaporating as best it could into the already-saturated air, the city became a place of sunshine and steam. It took the rest of the afternoon to get back on the barge (Tookie had to climb up by way of the schoolbus, standing in the footsteps of the Hate, which gave him the heebie-jeebies) and paint the word HELP in five-foot letters on the barge’s long flat roof.

  The heat and humidity devoured Tookie’s strength. He fell asleep on a pile of dry sheets he’d salvaged from a two-story house whose upstairs hadn’t been damaged at all. There had been three other survivors inhabiting that house, he’d found; children, the oldest barely twelve. It wasn’t their house either, so they hadn’t protested his scavenging. He’d given them some of his food and invited them back to the barge, but leery of strangers, they’d politely declined.

  Miss Mary called herself keeping watch, walking around on deck. Tookie suspected she just didn’t want to smell him, after four days of funky water and no showers. (To his annoyance, she smelled the same as usual—like old lady.)

  He was deep in a dream of being at a house party over on Elysian Fields, with a pretty red-boned girl checking him out across papers full of crawfish and corn and potatoes, when Miss Mary shook him awake. He sat up, snarfling drool, and looked around. Sundown; long golden colors arced over the sky.

  “I hear somethin’,” Miss Mary said. Her steak knife was out again, and he felt a sleepy species of worry.

  “Hear what?” he asked, but on the heels of the question he heard it, too. A sharp, echoing cough, loud and deep, like from the chest of some beast. A big beast, the size of an elephant maybe, somewhere on one of the streets toward the river. And then, before the echoes faded, he heard a harmony of other sounds: high-pitched trills. Over where he heard it, a small cloud hovered in the otherwise clear sky, growing thicker.

  Tookie scrambled to his feet, searching among the plastic bags. “Miss Mary, you stay in here,” he said as he rummaged. “Don’ go out less you hear a helicopter, or people in a boat. I got to go.”

  She did not ask where. “You got any people you want me to find, once I get out the city?”

  “My mama’ll be in Baton Rouge, with my sister.” There, it was there. Tookie pulled the gun out and checked it. It was fully loaded, but it needed cleaning. He had never liked handling the thing. Maybe it would jam. Maybe it would backfire, leave him blind and handless at the feet of the Hate. He thrust the gun into the waist of his pants.

  “That ain’ no haint,” Miss Mary said. “You was right. It’s somethin’ else.”

  “I hope so,” Tookie said. “Can’t kill no haint. Bye, Miss Mary.”

  “Bye, fool.” But she stayed on deck, watching him, as he swung himself over the ladder and climbed down.

  The noise had gotten worse by the time Tookie paddled near, keeping low in the rowboat and moving the nail plank as little as possible to avoid telegraphing his approach. It wouldn’t’ve mattered if he’d showed up with a secondline band, though; between the roars of the thing, the trills of the lizards, splashing water, and the crash of cars or houses being destroyed, Tookie didn’t have to worry about being heard. And as he paddled, a deeper sound made him look up. The cloud that had gathered overhead was turning darker, thicker. He thought he saw flickers of lightning in its depths.

  When he saw that the porches of the houses nearby were above water—they had chosen high ground for their battle—Tookie parked the boat, jumped onto a dry porch, and began running. His gun was in his hand. He ran low and leapt almost soundlessly across the gaps between houses. One porch. Another half-buckled by water damage. Another that overlapped the third because its house had collapsed sideways … and here Tookie stopped, because the thing was there, it was there and it was huge, its smell was like sulfured asphalt or the thick fermented funk of an algae bog, and instead of coughing, this time it roared like a barge horn gone mad with rage. It was hard to see in the fading light, and for that blessing Tookie thanked a god that he suddenly believed in, because what little of it he could see came near to shattering his mind. Or perhaps that was his own fault, because the thoughts that flowed into his head were so swift and twisted, so wrong yet powerful, that they had to come from somewhere inside him, didn’t they? Some festering boil deep within, tucked under years of apathy, bursting now and spreading poison all through. Got to go kill me some niggers was one of the thoughts, even though he had never thought that way in his life and the cadence of the thought was all wrong; New Orleanians spoke with more rhythm. He tried to think his own thought: Soun’ like some ’Bama mothafucka in my head, what the, but before he could complete it, there was an oily flipover, and then he thought all these people in my city, ain’ done shit to save it, and also gon’ find me some bitches and fuck ’em and then shoot up them white mothafuckas over in Chalmette-maybe-Gretna give ’em somethin’ to be scared of and of course that ol’ lady slowin’ me down, get rid of her. And more, more, so much more. So much that Tookie cried out and fell to his knees on the crumbling porch, the gun clattering on the old wood as he clutched his head and wondered if one could die of pure evil.

  But then a sharp squeal penetrated the hate, and Tookie looked up. The monster had paid him no heed despite his shout, preoccupied as it was with the enemy before it: a sextet of tiny creatures that dipped and wheeled in aerobatic circles around its misshapen head as it turned to follow them. In profile it was even uglier, lumpen and raw, its lower jaw trailing spittle as it worked around a mouthful of something that wriggled and shrieked and beat at it with wings like rusted, ocher clouds—“No, goddamn it!” Tookie shouted. Suddenly his head was clear, the hate shattered by horror. He raised the gun, and something else rose in him: a great, huge feeling, as big as the monster and just as overwhelming, but cleaner. Familiar. It was the city beneath his feet, below the water, still patiently holding its breath. He felt the tension in his own lungs. He had played no music, faked no voodoo, paid no taxes and no court to the chattering throngs who came and spent themselves and left the city bruised and weary in their wake. But the city was his, low creature that he was, and it was his duty to defend it. It had spent years training him, honing him, making him ready to serve for its hour of need. He was a foot soldier, too, and in that breath of forever he heard the battle call of his home.

  So Tookie planted his feet on the rotting wood, and aimed for one bulbous eye with his dirty gun, and screamed with the pent breath of ten thousand waterlogged streets as he blew
it away.

  The creature shrieked, whipping about in agony as its eye dissolved into a bloody mist. As it cried out, something mangled and small fell from its teeth, landing in the water with a near-silent plop.

  “Now!” cried a trilling voice, and the darting batwinged shadows arranged themselves into a strange configuration, and the cloud overhead erupted with light. The thunderbolt caught the beast square in its thrashing head; when Tookie blinked, its body just stood there, headless.

  But then the body lurched forward, lifting a far too human hand out of the water to reach for the hovering lizards. Tookie fired again. He saw the doorway of a sagging house through the hole his bullet opened in the thing’s hand. It flinched, probably nerves since it no longer had a brain, and that gave the lizards another opening. Overhead, the cloud rumbled once more, and this time three lightning bolts came, sizzle sizzle sizzle on Tookie’s vision, the air smelled of burning dog and seared rage, and by the time the afterimages faded and his eyes stopped watering, it was all over.

  Still half-blind, Tookie stumbled off the porch and through the water, groping with hands and gun toward the place where his friend had fallen. The other lizards converged around it, some hovering and some dropping into the water themselves to support a small, bloody body. Tookie reached them—the hovering ones parted to let him through, though they looked at him suspiciously—and then stopped, knowing at a glance there was nothing he could do.

  “Hey,” croaked his lizard. Two of its companions held it up in the water. It tilted its head to peer at him with its one remaining eye, and sighed. “Get that damn look off your face. I ain’ dead.”

  “You look like you halfway,” said Tookie.

  It laughed softly, then grimaced as that caused it pain. “Maybe three-quarters, but I still ain’ there.” It looked past Tookie at the spot where the great hulking thing had been. There was nothing left; the lightning had evaporated it into mist. “That was the way to do it, but goddamn, I hurt.”

  Tookie reached for the lizard, then drew his hand back as one of its companions—another cousin, maybe—hissed at him. He contented himself with a smile instead, though he hardly felt it past the surface of his face. “Hurts worse if you complain.” He had been shot once.

  “Shut the fuck up.” The lizard laid its head across the back of the one who had hissed at Tookie. “That shit ain’ in your head, is it?”

  Tookie knew what the lizard meant. And the truth was, the Hate was still in his head, its ugly thoughts gabbling amid Tookie’s own, maybe because they’d been all his own thoughts to begin with. He’d had plenty of practice with hating himself and others. But the city was in his head, too, all that strength and breath and patience, and it occurred to Tookie that this would not have happened if he had not shaken off the Hate on his own. So he smiled again. “Just three-quarters,” he said, “but it ain’t got me.”

  The lizard narrowed its eye at him, but finally nodded. “You gon’ leave when they rescue you? Run off to Texas or somewhere, settle down there?”

  “I’ll go, but I’m comin’ back.” Tookie lifted his arms, encompassing the foul water, the ruined houses, the stars on the horizon. “This is me.”

  The lizard flashed its toothy grin, though its eye began to drift shut. “Yeah you right.” It sighed heavily. “Got to go.”

  Tookie nodded. “I’ll listen for you in the next big storm.” He took a step back, giving the lizards room. They lifted off, two of them carefully holding their injured companion between them. Tookie kept his gaze on his friend’s eye, and not the ravaged wings or mangled limbs. Perhaps the lizard would live, but like the city, and like Tookie, it would never be the same. The thought filled him with a defiant ferocity. “An’ that son of a bitch come back, you just holla.”

  It grinned. “I will. Next time, man.”

  In a soft thunder of wings, the lizards flew away, leaving Tookie alone in the wet dark.

  The waters receded.

  There was rescue then, and travel to Houston, and a long lonely time of shelters and strangers’ homes. Miss Mary found her daughter, and they brought Tookie to live with them. He made contact with his mother and sister, and let them know he was all right. He did odd jobs, under-the-table construction work and the like, and made enough money to get by. His FEMA check took a whole year to come, but it wasn’t completely useless. With it, he had enough.

  So one evening, when the air was hazy and the sky soft, and something about the arc of sunset reminded him of long days and thick, humid nights, Tookie packed his bags. The next morning he caught a ride to the depot and bought a ticket on the early bus. He let out a long-held, heavy breath as the bus hit the interstate east, toward home.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to all the people who helped make me a short fiction writer.

  That includes the instructors and fellow students of Viable Paradise 2002, as I mentioned in my introduction. It also includes all the writing groups I’ve been a part of over the years: the Boston Area Writers Group (later BRAWL), Critters.org, the Secret Cabal, Black Beans, and Altered Fluid. The great secret of writing groups is that you learn more from studying critiques of other writers’ work than you do from actually having your own work critiqued, so basically every writer in these groups who ever submitted a story for critique became one of my teachers.

  It also includes the publications and authors I studied to learn the basics: Realms of Fantasy (now defunct) and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction each for one year; Strange Horizons and Clarkesworld since then. More recently I’ve enjoyed Lightspeed and FIYAH Literary Magazine—especially FIYAH’s Spotify playlists meant to accompany their issues (great idea)! When I found a writer or topic I liked, I dug deeper via short story collections (e.g., Stephen King, Octavia Butler, Ursula Le Guin, and China Miéville) and various themed anthologies. I’m especially fond of the ones edited by John Joseph Adams (disclosure: I’m in a few, and honored to be).

  I have also learned by teaching and by reviewing. Although I never attended Clarion, Clarion West, or Odyssey, I have now been a guest instructor at all three workshops, and it’s been fascinating to see how the future of the genre is shaping up. Many of those students have since become my professional colleagues, and I continue to be inspired by their perseverance, their personal stories, and their innovation. I was thrilled to be able to include some of their work in the 2018 Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, which I was also privileged to guest edit.

  I have more learning to do, and I’m on it. Thanks, everyone. See y’all in my next collection.

  By N. K. Jemisin

  THE INHERITANCE TRILOGY

  The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

  The Broken Kingdom

  The Kingdom of Gods

  The Awakened Kingdom (novella)

  The Inheritance Trilogy (omnibus)

  DREAMBLOOD

  The Killing Moon

  The Shadowed Sun

  The Dreamblood Duology (omnibus)

  THE BROKEN EARTH

  The Fifth Season

  The Obelisk Gate

  The Stone Sky

  How Long ’til Black Future Month?

  (short story collection)

  * At the time, Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Debra Doyle, James MacDonald, James Patrick Kelly, and Steven Gould.

  We hope you enjoyed this book.

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