Whispers in the Night (28 page)

Tenea Johnson

F
or all of the construction committee's planning, some details couldn't be replicated exactly. So the barracoons that housed the senatorial sons and daughters had approximately two more square feet of space than those historically built for transatlantic slaves. As more hooded figures were shoved into the cage, Kristen Burke, ignorant of the inaccuracy, felt no gratitude for this small luxury.

She had been the first. First to be stripped down to her thin cotton shirt and silk leggings. First to be branded with ND just below her anklebone. First to have the tape and hood ripped off before they pushed her into the cage.

That was last night or maybe this morning. There were no clocks or natural light in the warehouse. She knew it hadn't been more than a day since the agent—or what she thought was an agent—led her into the idling car that was supposed to take her to her father. When she woke up, cotton-mouthed and head pounding, Senator Burke was not among the men dressed in military black who hustled her through the cold and into the warehouse door. She'd screamed against the tape over her mouth, but by then she was here with grim-faced people who seemed to expect her screams.

Now three women shared the cage with her, shivering and bleary-eyed. She recognized Margaret Eastland from her parents' dinner parties and Bridget Hardy from her mother's campaign commercials. Kristen couldn't place the young blond girl who leaned on her ankle where they had burned her. Though tears slid down her face, Kristen paid the pain no mind.

The warehouse was loud. Gates slid open and closed. Men yelled a language she couldn't understand. Margaret Eastland kept screaming every few minutes, words garbled behind the tape still on her mouth. Somewhere out of sight, metal scraped against metal. Boxes hit floors, and behind all this more voices rose. Kristen couldn't see where they came from, but they never stopped or even paused in their monotonous roar. More than once she thought her ears had started bleeding from all the noise. She would wipe at them spastically, only for her hand to come back clean, save for the sheen of sweat.

She wished Eastland would shut up. Or that Bridget Hardy would speak again. They'd shared a few words when Bridget first arrived. As soon as they dumped her in, she started asking questions. Her blue eyes boring into Kristen's, she'd asked who she was, where had she come from, how long had she been there? Kristen Burke. Manhattan. She didn't know. Two men had scooped Bridget off the street in front of her Upper East Side apartment with the same story that got Kristen off the NYU campus and into a dark sedan. Everyone who was anyone knew Eastland kept a place in Murray Hill, so they'd probably taken her from there. Kristen would bet on the blond girl too. All Manhattan, all in the last day or two. All senators' daughters.

And sons. Five men filled the second barracoon.

Kristen didn't wonder who'd taken them. It was plain as the brand on her skin: ND, New Dawn. Rumors about the group ricocheted from the news reports to the Senate Floor to conversation over martinis at Saul's Bistro. Of all the groups demanding reparations for slavery, none was more feared than New Dawn. They didn't want educational vouchers or free medical care like the other groups, they wanted everything—land redistribution, financial compensation, and stock in every conglom that had benefited from slavery. And even by 2024, that was all the conglomerations. Worse, New Dawn didn't believe in legislation or picketing or economic sanctions. They believed in results. The one and only press statement New Dawn ever issued said just that: “We believe in results.” Those words perplexed those outside political circles. It worried her father's camp. Like Kristen, they knew what it took to get results.

A man in a black mask sat on a low stool outside Kristen's cage. He'd been staring at Margaret Eastland for the last few hours, the hours she'd spent screaming. Now he looked in Kristen's direction. He turned his eyes slowly, as if measuring each inch between them. Kristen's lip quivered, and her shivers turned to jolts as he turned his full attention on her. Like the dozen other men outside the cages, he was dressed in all black, a mesh mask obscuring his features. It was hard to tell his height, but he seemed big holding a long stun stick. He tapped it on the floor every few minutes, sending blue sparks dancing along the concrete.

Kristen tried to look him in the eye, but the mask stopped her. It had an opalescent sheen, making it seem to float in front of his face. The Mask looked her up and down, stopping at her stomach, her breasts, her bent shoulders and sweaty face. The longer he looked, the more her throat tightened, the harder it became to breathe. She tried to distract herself, craning her neck to look into the men's cage, but her skin prickled with the weight of his stare. Kristen turned back, looked down at the scratches on her hands, the dirt under her fingernails. After thirty minutes, she began to understand why Margaret Eastland screamed.

Somewhere inside the building a door slammed. Kristen jumped, jabbing her elbow into one of the bars. The Mask laughed at her, then fell silent, staring up at the landing behind the cages. From this angle, she could see the man beneath the mask, the reverence that smoothed out the tight lines around his mouth. She followed his gaze.

Phillip Tailor, New Dawn's leader, wore no mask; instead he donned a smile. Like the others, he wore black fatigues. In place of the mask, a pair of opaque glasses covered his eyes. A tall man, he towered over the cages, and Kristen felt a spell of vertigo. Tailor nodded acknowledgment at the man guarding Kristen's cage. Leaning gracefully over the railing, he surveyed the busy warehouse floor. Another Mask, much smaller than Tailor, walked up to him. This one spoke in that gibberish language and pointed Tailor toward the back of the building. Before leaving, Tailor nodded once more at the Mask outside Kristen's cage.

Abruptly, Eastland stopped screaming. The Mask returned to his original posture, leaving a trail of blue sparks as he slowly dragged the stun stick back to his side. Eastland slumped against the bars, fingers twitching the last of ten thousand volts from her system. The blond girl scurried farther away from the prone body, pinning Kristen into the corner. Kristen was grateful for the sweat pressed into her skin, grateful for someone to hold on to, for something to come between her and the apparition who scrutinized her, sparking blue intention across the floor.

Their captors were yelling. Still holding the blond girl, Kristen tried to follow one set of gibberish from man to man. The tone suggested commands, but she couldn't be sure. She looked toward the sound of a bodega gate moving. This gate was much bigger and going up. The whole wall behind the barracoons recessed into its upper reaches and let dawn in. She smelled salt water, heard distant traffic, and hoped for a moment. Maybe New Dawn had gotten their ransom. Maybe her father had arrived. Maybe someone would see them and send agents. Maybe . . . maybe.

Her brain stuttered at the sight of the gangplank. She could hardly take in the ship and the open water beyond it. The gangplank was too much. She opened her mouth to scream.

Hours of sitting hadn't slowed the Mask. He lunged with precision, knocking his stool over. The stun stick passed through the barracoon's bars and touched Kristen's shoulder. Still clutching each other, she and the blond girl shared the strong current.

Conscious, but unable to move, Kristen watched as her hand slipped from the tangle of blond hair receding from her grasp. After New Dawn dragged the younger girl out, they pulled at Kristen's ankles. She felt the silk, then her skin, tear against the rough floor. When her head fell from the cage's lip and onto the concrete, she whimpered.

The Mask hovered close to her face, squinting at her. He reached down and pinched her ear. Hard. Her hand jumped. He made a low noise in his throat, snatched her up by her armpits so that they were face-to-face. She heard him exchange a few words with someone. Another set of hands held her from behind, her head resting against a broad chest. Her gaze followed the other women being dragged out of the door and into the half-light—then out of her field of vision.

The man behind the mask peeled it up from the bottom, stopped just above his lips. A translation patch stuck to the mesh's underside. Now the gibberish made sense.

“Say good-bye to home,” he said, his voice clear and deep without the conversion.

The hands behind her covered her mouth and lifted her away from the barracoon, toward the ship.

 

 

She was trying to remember the diagrams. All her life, she'd flipped past the Black History Month specials, those horrible images somebody should have forgotten by now. But now she wished she could remember. Then at least she would have some idea what the hold looked like. Maybe then she'd know where the blond girl was and where they'd put the men. She could feel flesh, but the heat made it difficult to tell which was hers. The Masks hadn't been back since they'd chained the captives to each other, and then to the ship. And she'd been near unconsciousness then.

Someone coughed. Was that a man's cough or a woman's? Did it matter? Someone was awake. She tried to use her voice. When she heard it, it sounded like she'd been up for days, high on too much Mystique.

“Bridget?” she pleaded into the dark. “Margaret?”

“Matthew.” The voice came from beneath her. “Matt Holleran. From Georgia.”

Kristen saw a flash of a gangly redheaded boy with green eyes beaming out from an “Equality is Now!” poster. Senator Holleran and his family had posed for the short-lived campaign that was supposed to help end the call for reparations. She thought back to the faces in the men's cage. There. The one with the dark red beard. Broad-chested, head bent beneath the cage's low ceiling. Matthew Holleran.

“Blake Denning,” a voice said below her.

“Harry Anderson,” another said.

“Preston Caleb,” one said from above.

“Bridget Hardy,” the skin on her left said.

A high-pitched whisper from above said, “Margaret Eastland.”

“Chuck Lassiter,” the skin on her right said.

“Drew Ellison,” the last one said.

 

 

Captain Tailor watched the infrared images calling out their names. He tapped the screen, then turned down the volume.
Should feed them soon. No, just water
, he corrected himself. He'd been battling how many inaccuracies to allow, trying to find the balance between highlighting their advantages and introducing them to the Middle Passage's suffering, so that they could in turn introduce the white world. Though he and his crew were perpetrating one of the most ambitious experiments in the Rep War campaign, he had to maintain parameters. Already, he worried about the Examples' advantages: a shared language, a smaller group, the faster voyage, and of course, all the moral prerogatives: no rape, no dying, limited physical abuse. But he aimed to get the voting majority into their heads and hopefully their hearts through the body. Identity politics infused with psychological warfare. He knew the formula would get results. He had to remain vigilant if they were to be the right results.

Shireen entered the surveillance room, still talking on her handheld. Moving toward Tailor, she concluded her conversation and slipped the handheld into her bulky jacket.

“Fifteen dead at the Baltimore demonstration, though they're reporting them only as injuries,” she said to him. “Over three hundred arrests.”

“What about Tuscaloosa and D.C.?” Tailor asked.

She sat down in the chair next to him.

“The Representatives in Tuscaloosa never stopped walking, just got in their transports and bolted. And the PFC postponed the March in D.C.” She pulled the rolled-up mesh fabric down to her ears. “It's cold in here.”

“Again,” he answered to both statements. “How many postponements does that make?”

“Three. This time something about one of the organizer's connections to the Court of International Trade muddying the waters.”

He laughed. “Once again, nonviolence proves itself nonviable.”

Shireen fell silent. They'd always disagreed on this point. He knew that she believed a happy
median
existed between the extremes; that she'd signed up for this project to protect the Examples, though “Monitor” was her official title, and, on the ship, “First Mate.” That title must have rankled her feminist leanings. But that was exactly why Tailor needed her: Shireen didn't say yes unless she meant it.

Tailor walked over to the heart and blood pressure monitors that made up the center wall. He tore off hard copies of the latest readings and filed them away, made sure the digifiles were simultaneously saving and transmitting to the processors stateside.

It felt good to stand; he'd been at the monitors for nearly three hours, making notes for the first draft of his press statement. He stretched his arms toward the ceiling, looked out the window at the crew taking in the fresh night air. Latrell shared a cigarette with Two Tone. Their light jackets flapped in the breeze. Good men, those. They knew enough to ask questions. He wouldn't have to worry about them; they would do the job and take the freedom offered in Ghana, leave all the restrictions on felons behind and live as full men again. His attention to the details was just as much for this New Dawn crew as for the nine below. The voyage would change them just as profoundly.

He turned back to Shireen, who sat, jaw tensed, looking at the surveillance monitors.

“Should we feed them now?” he asked.

“Yes,” she answered. “I'll go with Two Tone.”

“I'll go with you as well.” He retrieved a mask from the top of the monitor banks.