PreWar Earth_Volume 1 Read online

  Zyeasha struck her baby brother across the right side of his face. He began to cry, until she pulled the yardstick far back as if to deliver a violent backhand. He froze.

  “Dry your tears, baby brother.” She lowered the stick. “The world cares not about your pain. And you aren’t going to play any longer.”

  She stood as if leaning on the stick in front of her. He turned the console off.

  She nodded. “Good. Now come on, get in the tub. It’s getting dark out.”

  He was just stepping out, thinking he’d gotten away with his two-minute bath, when she walked into the bathroom.

  “Sit back down,” Zyeasha Fitzgerald said to her younger brother, grabbing the washcloth. She squatted onto her heels as she worked the bar of soap inside the rag until the coarseness smoothed and suds came from the creases. “Give me those ears, baby brother.” She worked the rag harshly against his skin, her fingers form-fitting the shape of his head, much as their mother’s fingers had done with hers so many years ago.

  Damian wiped his nose and slung the suds from his hands. “Can I get out now?”

  “Give me those hands.” He apprehensively laid his fingers into her hands. “Tsk, tsk, tsk. Baby brother, you need to look after your body better.” She scrubbed the crusted grit between his fingers, then worked his toes and ankles—all the usual places a seven-year-old boy should have dirt. “There. Okay, dry off and hop into bed. I’ll be in there to tuck you in shortly.”

  Damian patted himself down and put his clothes on, then hopped into bed.

  Zyeasha came in and sat on the edge of his bed, taking the tablet from his hands. He folded his arms in protest.

  She smiled warmly. “Don’t pout, baby brother. It’s unbecoming.”

  “Zyeasha, why you don’t—”

  “Why don’t you…”

  He gasped. “Why don’t you let me play my games?” He struggled to say his words in order.

  She ran her hand across his soft, clean cheek. “I’d like to speak with you.”

  He lifted his shoulders as if to ask what she wanted to say.

  How to say good-bye, baby brother? He wanted his games, and she wanted a world where she could hold onto him forever.

  He gasped again to show his annoyance. A hurt began to rise and she closed her eyes, a moment to let it pass, a moment to take all this in. How to say good-bye…

  She said it the only way she knew how, with the only thing that had ever made any sense to her in her life. She pulled a worn paperback book from her back pocket and handed it to him.

  “Here,” she said. “I’d like you to have this.”

  He took the book, probably wondering why his sister had given him this old, dusty thing.

  “That’s Animal Farm by George Orwell,” she said. “It’s my favorite book. I’d like you to have it.”

  “What’s it about?”

  She took a deep breath, reliving each beautiful, wonderful time she’d read it. “It’s about a farm, obviously.” She leaned towards him, and they both laughed. “And there’s all these animals living there. And the animals start a revolt, and a whole lot of other things happen. But I don’t want to tell you everything that happens, I want you to read it. If I could ask you to do one thing for me in your whole life, I would ask you to read that book.”

  “Okay, I’ll read it.”

  “Pinky promise me?” He offered his pinky finger and intertwined it with hers. “And if you’re a good boy, I’ll make you a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but I’ll make it my way.”

  He shook his head, and mixed the peanut butter and jelly with an invisible spoon with his right hand, holding an invisible bowl in his left.

  She shook her head. “Uh, I honestly do not see how you eat it like that. It must stay separate.”

  She realized it was well dark outside, and the time had come. “Alright, baby brother, it’s time you got some sleep.” She kissed him on the forehead. “I love you, Damian.”

  “Love you, Zyeasha.”

  She kissed him once more, stood, and placed her hand on the old, worn paperback. She walked out of the room and pulled the door shut. “Good-bye, my precious, sweet baby brother.” It was half a whisper. A tear tickled down her right cheek, but she quickly wiped it away. There’d be enough tears shed tonight.

  The sky was dark an hour later as Zyeasha sat listening to Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata when the knock at the door came.

  She opened the door and smiled. “Hello, Travonte.”

  “Heya, Zyeasha,” Travonte said. “It’s time.”

  “Mmm. It is time.” She reached down and grabbed her black duffle bag, exhaled, and closed the door behind her.

  Travonte’s car was old and creaked and stunk of gasoline. The ride to the outskirts of town was quiet. The stars began to come out as the city’s smog cleared.

  “I like it out here,” Zyeasha said.

  “There ain’t no place you don’t like.”

  “There isn’t any place…and that isn’t true.”

  “Name me one place where you ain’t—”

  “Aren’t.”

  “One place where you aren’t happy.”

  She looked into the rearview mirror. “That darn city.”

  He laughed. “Shit, girl, you can’t even say damn? Go on, say it. That damn city.”

  She sat up in her seat. “I don’t want to.”

  He shook his head as he drove. “You and your English.”

  “It’s all I have left… Well, almost all.” She warmed inside as she felt the pistol inside her vest press against her right breast.

  It was another twenty-five minutes until they pulled off the highway, circling around the group before stopping.

  As Zyeasha stepped from the car, their eyes moved from the eighteen-wheeler to her. All those black faces behind that tall chain-link fence, barbed wire, and electric lines along the top, drones buzzing overhead.

  Hermand Johnson stepped from an old truck and met Zyeasha, the two embracing.

  She smiled. “It’s good to see you, Pop.” He didn’t mind when she called him that, but she was the only one.

  His face was weary behind that warm smile. “And you, girl.”

  Her arms stiffened, the muscles hardening, as she gripped his shoulders. Her face became at once serious. “It is time, Pop.”

  He squeezed her shoulders and bobbed his head once, acknowledging.

  Zyeasha turned and made her way to a gate in the fence, behind which stood eight eager, young black faces in front of a crowd of people. The crowd eyed her as she walked. The sound of her boots crunching against the gravel and dirt made her gums and teeth tingle with nervous energy.

  The crowd backed away as two White guards approached. One of them, young, his baby face hardly in need of a daily shave, opened the gate. Zyeasha stepped through and, surveying the young men’s faces, one by one, realized how young these men really were.

  “You there, sir,” she said to the first, “how old are you?”

  The young man did his best to snap to attention. “I’m seventeen, ma’am.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Marcus, ma’am.” Zyeasha suspected his grey Oakland Raiders shirt was the best clothing he owned.

  “Why’d you come to attention like that?”

  He considered for a moment. “I’m a soldier in your army now.”

  Zyeasha nodded. “Soldiers die.”

  The young man looked at her with a sober face.

  She continued. “That’s right. Of course, that’s not what you think about when you’re young. You picture the cops, with all their armor, coming at you, red in their eyes and fire from their nostrils. You imagine yourself running past everyone, a machine gun in your hands, putting round
after round into those pigs, one by one—their dogs, too, those vicious beasts with teeth designed to tear a nigger apart.”

  Zyeasha observed a thin smile begin to form along the upper cheeks of the young man.

  Travonte and Hermand watched through the fence. She nodded, looking to the ground. “Mmm. Of course, they don’t tell you about the dying. About the blood. You ever smelled blood, Marcus? I mean real blood, the kind that once it starts pouring from a person, it doesn’t stop.” She watched his face; if it had been possible for it to turn white, it probably would have.

  She leaned in to whisper. “Yeah, well, it smells sort of like rust. They don’t tell you that part. They don’t tell you how warm it is when you’re covered elbow-deep in it—or perhaps they do, but it’s just that we don’t want to think about those things. I do not know. You don’t ever wonder what it’s like to watch a man mess himself as he begs for his life? You ever wondered what that’s like, Marcus?”

  Marcus shook his head. “N- no, no, ma’am.”

  “Mmm.” Zyeasha smiled. “Is your mother here in this camp, Marcus?”

  “Yes, ma’am. She’s right over there.” He pointed behind them, towards a woman whose face was smitten with pride.

  Zyeasha’s whisper was even lower this time. “And you probably told her how brave you’d be, right?” She toed a bit of dirt with her right foot, feeling a nice strength in her left leg as she leaned her weight onto it. She drew her face steadily back up to meet Marcus’s. “Did you tell her bye?”

  Marcus shook his head.

  Zyeasha nodded. “Mmm. Of course, how do you tell someone bye? I certainly do not know.”

  Zyeasha turned to look at Travonte and Hermand through the fence. It was time.

  She patted Marcus on the back. “Time to go.”

  One by one, the young men walked through the gate, Marcus glancing a smile at his mother as he passed. They piled into the back of Pop’s truck.

  Zyeasha walked through the gate. The baby face guard locked it back, then she hugged him.

  “Thank you, brothers,” she said, closing her eyes for the embrace. “Your sacrifices will not be for nothing.” She embraced the other guard, then they walked away, Hermand patting them on the backs as they passed into the night.

  Zyeasha turned to walk back to Travonte’s car.

  “So, you gon’ let us outta’ here or what, bitch?” The man was maybe 45, dirty, and rags for clothes.

  Zyeasha walked up to the fence. She could smell him from a few feet away.

  “What is your name, sir?” Zyeasha said.

  “You gon’ let us out?” he said.

  “No, I am not. Not tonight.”

  “Then fuck you, bitch.” He spit smelly saliva towards her.

  “Hey, you motherfucker!” Travonte said, running towards them.

  Zyeasha held her hand up, and he stopped in his tracks. “Water, please,” she said, her tone serious.

  Pop handed her a bottle. She poured some onto her handkerchief and wiped her face clean.

  She looked at the man. “What is your name, sir?”

  “Tha’ fuck does it matter what my name is?”

  “Everyone has a name.”

  “Henry,” he said, his head hanging low.

  She reached her hand through the fence and touched his face. He looked up at her, and when he did, she thought of a sad dog.

  “My goodness, what have they done to you, baby?” When he offered no answer, she said, “Why are you in here, Henry?”

  “Cousin… Mah cousin, he…”

  Zyeasha nodded. “Your cousin, what did he do, Henry?”

  “He killed a coupla’ cops. Then they came to mah house and took me.”

  She nodded. “They took you because you are Black. Tonight, I am going to fight for you, Henry.”

  Henry’s eyes filled with life. “Let me come with you!”

  “No, baby, not tonight. Stay here. Prepare for freedom.”

  “How?” the man said as Zyeasha stepped into Travonte’s car.

  “Read, Henry. For your children and theirs,” Zyeasha said, then closed the door.

  The cool breeze whipped past Zyeasha’s arm as Travonte sped towards downtown Los Angeles. The dark, barren countryside, with its hills and undulations and dry shrubs, had its own story to tell. She could read the countryside like she could read a book.

  She could also feel Travonte’s excited nervousness in his driving; she could see it on his face.

  “So, what do you think about tonight?” she said. Her smooth voice seemed strangely in pace with the wind whipping past her window.

  Travonte shrugged. “I think I’m gonna kill me some mothafuckin’ pigs tonight.”

  “That is not what this is about, you know.”

  “Yeah, but it’s a bonus.” He smiled as he drove, his gaze a million miles down the road.

  Travonte could never lead her people. He’d get them all killed, as well as people who had no business dying in the first place. And Pop, he was too old. He wouldn’t know where to begin.

  “It is a pleasant night,” she said. When Travonte didn’t interrupt his happy thoughts of cop-slaying, she realized she was talking to herself. She usually was. She’d been talking to herself her whole life. “I hope the Asians bring food.”

  The words drifted off into the cool, dark, dangerous air of this night.

  The smells of the city struck her nose harshly as Travonte pulled to a stop along the edge of the shopping mall. Pop pulled up behind them, the new soldiers piling out of the truck with adrenaline in their steps.

  A guard nodded once to Zyeasha as she walked inside. The mall had long ago been gutted. Her boots felt the unevenness of the floor with papers, boxes, and toys scattered about. She stopped to pick up a dirty pink and white stuffed rabbit, and kneeling, she caught sight of a young girl sitting against the wall. The girl’s mother lay next to her, a depressing wheeze in her breathing.

  Zyeasha handed the girl the rabbit, and rubbing her thumb down the girl’s cheek, smudged the dirt on her face down in a line.

  “Here,” Zyeasha said, laying the rabbit in the girl’s hands. She turned to Travonte and Pop. “Something for the woman’s cough, please.”

  “Man, Zyeasha, we ain’t got time for this shit,” Travonte said.

  Zyeasha stood, powering back a tear in her right eye. “Is this what we have come to?”

  Pop handed the truck keys to one of the youngsters, instructing him to look in the the glove box.

  Zyeasha turned to the little girl. “You must be strong.”

  She stood and led the way past a carousel, through the food court still faintly smelling of cooking oil, and into a shoe store, a guard pulling the cage door back down behind them. In the back of the store, behind the public area, a door in the floor opened and they walked downstairs.

  The basement was alight with activity. Guns were being cleaned, inspected, and stacked. Boxes of ammunition were being stacked next to the guns. There were flashlights, radios, boots, even RPGs. Night vision goggles, shiny drones, and backpacks. And there was plenty of enthusiastic manpower arranging it all.

  At the sight of Zyeasha, they all stopped and came to attention.

  “No,” she said, “please continue. We’ve a lot to do tonight. Pop.”

  “Yeah?” Hermand said, nearly out of breath from catching up.

  “Get my officers in the conference room, please.”

  Zyeasha looked at them, twenty-six in all, standing around the perimeter of the room. There was a lawyer, a farmer, a former cop, and a janitor. Now they all followed Zyeasha.

  “Brothers and sisters,” she said, “we all know how we got here tonight. We have them on the run. Every one of you has bled for me, and I’m going to
ask you to do so again. This will be our biggest offensive yet.” Zyeasha paced with confidence, eying each one of them as she spoke. “The estimates we have indicate that there are two hundred LAPD officers and fifty FBI agents barricaded against City Hall. The plan tonight is simple: we are taking the building, and tomorrow, we will relieve the city’s administration of its duties.”

  Zyeasha paused, watching each face as that sank in. Most of them nodded, though some nods were of confusion while others were of contentment. In a back corner, Travonte and Pop stood. Travonte found these briefings an unpleasant waste of time. But Pop, well, he was getting too old for this. Zyeasha was racking her brain coming up with a way to tell him that tonight would be his last fight. Perhaps in the end, there was no pleasant way to do so.

  The nods had stopped. It was time.

  “Let us load up and head out.”

  Zyeasha Fitzgerald stood five feet eight inches tall—just tall enough to smell the cologne of a man standing somewhere behind her. Why on earth he’d worn cologne for such an event was beyond her. She looked up. The stars were out tonight, and one of the blessings of power cut-offs was that on nights like this, you could see the stars all up there, dancing with one another, flickering their secret messages between themselves.

  And in an instant, her mind transported to sixth grade. They had made fun of her, the Blacks, for being a nerd. She always had her face stuck in a book, never having any time to play with the other children. Looking behind her, against the wall past Travonte, she wondered how she’d come to be in charge of six hundred Black soldiers.

  She turned forward and peered around the corner. A light patrol of six officers stood at the corner. Cigarette smoke and coffee steam rising from amongst them. She could hear the faint remnants of a conversation, and she found it odd the notion that this would be their last words ever.

  Her left index finger felt the safety button on her shotgun, and pressing it forward, she lifted her left arm. She could hear everyone shuffling into position behind her, then silence. Her left foot lifted to step forward, then went back down.