Rapture: Where are our Children (A Serial Novel) Episode 3 of 9

by Gary Sapp

feet and it took a minute for him to unlatch the door from all of its locks. He opened up the door…

  …and a White man walked through the threshold.

  There was a White man walking through the front door at Carver Street Housing Project…here…now.

  Roxanne Sanchez said blankly: “You’re a White—“

  “Champion,” And he put his white hand out for Roxanne to shake it. “My name is Joseph Champion actually not White. A dozen rounds of gunfire passed nearby. Roxanne thought that a couple of the bullets struck the front door where this…Joseph Champion had stood only seconds earlier. “Andre was supposed to explain to you who I was.”

  Joseph Champion:

  Roxanne thought that he was average height, weight, but he seemed smaller with his face buried underneath an overabundance of unruly brown hair, bush eyebrows, and a meaty goatee.

  “I’m not interested in anything about you beyond what you can tell me about the disappearance of Erica Lovings.” She was interested in everything about this man in fact, and how he came to Carver, but she neither had the time or patients to pursue such an investigation.

  Two more shots strike the apartment next door to this one. A third shot shattered the glass by the window sill. All three of them duck for cover behind the dining room table, Champion using his wits, turned the table over to shield them better against anymore bullets that could pop through that opened window.

  Roxanne stood just enough to see…the three wheelers driving up with the white vans and the school buses slowly bringing up the rear. They’re here. She thought nearing panic. She spied the shadows of figures growing larger as they approach their position. The first rider off of a three wheeler was a loan man wearing a black tee shirt and cursed with a long scar running the length of ear arm from the palm of his hand to his elbow.

  The Scarred Man had unsheathed his machete.

  Champion was still talking. “I might be able to do more than just tell you about Erica Lovings, Roxanne. I may call you, Roxanne?”

  “What in the hell are you talking about?”

  Before Champion can answer a handful of shots strike the apartment above them. All parties accounted for push their selves as low to the floor as their individual frames allow. She makes herself larger—and more vulnerable to gunfire, so she can scoot over to where her old classmate was covering his greasy head.

  “Andre…Andre, I need you to think harder than you ever have before” Roxanne said.

  “What?”

  “We know that A House in Chains sent the Peacekeepers to root out the Choir Boys. We know that many of them live here in Carver. We also know that many of these units are used in the production of crack cocaine.” Roxanne spoke slowly to Andre as if she had grown up but had left him back in elementary school. “There are no fools running the Circle. Just like you told me when you walked in here they are killing people out there. The Peacekeepers must be using some barometer to flag where their enemies are. They knew exactly where the combatants and the crack houses were before they even boarded those buses and crashed through that front gate.” Roxanne grabbed Andre Knight one last time. “I need to know what they are using to identify these enemy positions, Dre, and I need to know right now.”

  Andre looked to the heavens in thought.

  He blinked rapidly…his mind processing everything he’d seen…and anything he might have seen.

  And then he had her answer.

  “I saw red stripes painted on the front doors of the units. I’d never seen them there before.” Roxanne got to her feet, danger be damned, and sprinted as fast as her long legs would take her to the window sill. “I thought they were marking them some for a paint job down the road or something.”

  Something is right, She bent as far as she could…nearly falling out of the window. A bullet sailed by her and struck the wall nearby.

  And then Roxanne saw it.

  There was a big red slash on the door where the three of them were hiding behind.

  She was all the way back inside…and on top of Andre in a flash. She finally had her Nine pointed at him now.

  “Andre, why is there a red painted stripe on your door?”

  “There isn’t one.”

  She hit him in the chin with the pistol.

  “I just looked out of the door, Andre.” She said in a voice that far more patient and calm than she felt. She could feel Champion looking on, wanting answers from Andre as well.

  “That ain’t my door, girlfriend. This ain’t my crib.”

  “What?”

  “Man, we were talking about Erica Lovings and her potentially having something to do with an Usher. Everybody down here knows you been asking questions about that girl. I couldn’t have anyone seeing you—no matter how fat your ass is—walking out of my place whiles you asking about that dyke. So I stole—I mean, I found this key and used this place only for show, until I could hook you up with old Stoney here.”

  Roxanne helped him up partially. Then she crawled through the apartment that wasn’t Andre’s after all, and made it to the bedroom.

  One hell of a large crack lab stared back at her.

  “Son of a Bitch,” She yelled, nearing tears.

  Andre Knight and Joseph Champion, thunder and lighting, ran into the room as well.

  “I didn’t know, Roxanne.” Dre said. “I swear I didn’t know.”

  “Let’s get the hell out of here.” Champion looked at her.

  “No,” That single word drew both of their silent ire after she said it. “We’re not going anywhere yet. Roxanne was hot with Andre, but she at least understood why he did what he did. More shots rang out. Someone sounded as if they were right outside the front door. She drew her Nine on the other man instead. “I take back what I said to you earlier…Joseph Champion is it? Yea, sure, you can call me Roxanne if you like. I do need to know you. I need to know if I can take your word at face value and I need to know right this minute. First, what is your story, Champion? Tell me the extra short version.”

  There was a cry from someone outside the door for God to save them but two gunshots later left the man heading towards eternity without an answer.

  “I may die tonight, Champion.” Roxanne choked back tears. If she was going to join the man outside—and the many others who died in Carver today, she damned wouldn’t go weeping like bitch in front of a punk like Andre and some stranger who needed a shave and haircut.

  “I am with Pandora.” His lip quivered beneath the hair. “At least I was.”

  She cocked the hammer.

  “Whoa,” Champion put his hands up. “You asked a question and I answered. Roxanne, I was a mole…I am a mole. I’m in hiding from Serena. You won’t need that gun…at least for me.”

  Roxanne processed the information as fast as her brain allowed her to. She considered her limited options. She knew her time was nearly out. “Alright, Champion,” Roxanne said, but she kept her Nine trained on his forehead all the same. “If you truly are a mole, I can’t think of a better place in the world to hide from everyone…Pandora, A House in Chains and the FBI. I can buy that. I don’t buy why you are connected to Erica Lovings.”

  “I know where she is, Roxanne. I can take you to her.” He said. “I’ll be straight with you: I didn’t have any reason to come forward to you or anyone else with this information before.” Champion peered over his shoulder when he heard a voice say, I am an Admiral in the Peacekeepers. In the name of Xavier Prince, I demand that you open this door and admit me…or I will have it torn from its hinges. “But as you can see, I will no longer be able to hide here. Even in the unlikeliness that we survive whatever is on the other side of that door, Carver will be filled with police and FBI and reporters for weeks to come. I will be discovered.”

  Champion stepped close enough for Roxanne to see that there was plenty of salt to go with the cinnamon in his beard. “Give me your word that you will continue to hide me when we—“Roxanne heard the door knocked down in the front room. “If we survive t
he night and I will take you to Erica Lovings.”

  “How do I know I can trust you?”

  “How do I know I can trust you, Roxanne?”

  Andre Knight kept a small pistol for the times his punk ass mouth wrote checks that his scrawny ass couldn’t cash. Roxanne gave Joseph Champion her .22 that she kept strapped to her shin in case she had exhausted her clips for her Nine in a pinch.

  She turned towards the living room area again.

  The Scarred Man had said at the top of his voice not so long ago: Our adversaries proclaim themselves Choir Boys. They have Ushers…they have a Deacon…I even hear that they are blessed with the presence of a Bishop. And when his troops had quieted enough to allow him to speak into a setting sun, he said: If there is a Bishop and a Deacon and Ushers and Choir Boys…then this must be Paradise.

  Then he said that the Peacekeepers should storm Heaven.

  Roxanne sprinted around the corner…gun in hand…and rushed to meet him there.

  And then she let God have His will.

  Angel

  Make sure you secure the crime scene.

  Special Agent Nicholas Sheridan’s instructions still resonated inside of Angel’s head nearly an hour after he had stated them to Christopher and her before they left the field office for North Desert Drive. Or is it the banging inside your skull from a whopper of a hangover you’re really feeling. Angel had retired early last night after some Jack Daniels, or was it that she had passed out?

  Anyway, she now threw the newer rental car into park and buried her thoughts