Phil Williams - 2050 - Psycho Island

“The niggers do. I know the difference between an Italian and a sand nigger.” The Reaper had chuckled. “I know you’re white. That’s why you got the weakest opponents. We wanted two whites in the finals.”

“That’s why they stabbed Jordan.” Derek had glared at The Reaper and his tattooed face.

“Don’t fucking look at me that way, boy. You’re damn lucky we handicapped that big nigger. He would’ve killed you.”

Derek hadn’t responded.

“If the niggers knew the games were rigged, they’d stop coming. They want their team to win, just like we do. Good thing you won too. We might’ve had a riot on our hands.” The Reaper had laughed again. “Dumb niggers believed you were one of ’em. They get rowdy when whites win too much. We try to give ’em some equality.”

Derek had been fed a decent meal of iguana meat and ripe mangos. He’d spent the night alone in the locker room, wishing Jordan were still with him. Derek had had multiple nightmares of being attacked by bloodthirsty demons that looked very much like the men he’d killed.

The next morning, Derek had been given breakfast. The Aryan guards had treated him much better since his victory, but he was still a prisoner, stuck in the locker room alone. Derek had wondered, If I’m an Aryan now, why am I still a prisoner?

Around lunchtime, he was escorted south of the stadium, through what looked like an old park. The Aryan guards still held him at machete point. Aryans by the hundreds had makeshift homes in the park. Some made from salvaged cinder blocks. Others looking more like foxholes and lean-tos.

Derek was greeted with respectful head nods from his Aryan brothers. He saw a few women among them. The women were thin and zombielike and in short supply. Maybe one woman for every fifteen men. He’d even seen a few kids. Not many but they were there, barefoot, dirty, and underfed.

They stopped on a riverbank. Alligators sunned themselves on the opposite riverbank, fifty feet away.

“Strip,” one of the guards said.

Derek hesitated, looking at what he thought were alligators.

“Don’t worry. We’ll watch out for the caiman.” The Aryan guard cackled.

“You need to look presentable for Wade,” an Aryan guard said. “Shit, as dirty as you are, he might think you’re a nigger.”

The guards all laughed.

Derek’s old prison uniform was caked in blood and sweat. He stripped in the summer sun and waded into the river, grime and blood dissolving into the current. He kept his eyes on the caiman across the river. Derek dipped his head underwater. He thought about swimming away from his guards, but then a caiman slipped into the water. Derek stepped from the water, clean and naked as the day he was born.

“See? He’s white. Look at that white ass,” one of the guards said.

They all laughed again. One of the guards handed him some clothes.

Derek put on some obviously used, but relatively clean clothes. Army fatigues and a T-shirt. No underwear but sturdy dry socks. He kept his prison-issued boots.

They walked along the river toward a small island. Two ropes were tied to a tree on the river bank and stretched about fifteen feet across the river to a tree on the small island. One rope was low and near the surface of the water, the other rope about chest high on a man. One of the guards walked across the thick rope, using the upper rope to hold on to. Derek was prodded along.

On the little island, a caiman hissed and splashed into the water. The Aryans didn’t react. They traversed another rope bridge, similar to the first, this one taking the men from the little island to the opposite side of the river.

They walked through more park land and more makeshift Aryan housing. Poverty like nothing Derek had ever seen. Shoeless and shirtless people. Homes made from trash. Everybody gaunt and hungry. They moved into an area with cracking asphalt and the empty husks of houses, their roofs gone, only crumbling stucco and concrete remaining.

As they moved deeper into the city, the houses were larger, better built, and separated by concrete fences. Many of the houses had thick concrete walls that had weathered the hurricanes. The original roofs were gone and replaced with thatch. The thatch certainly wasn’t hurricane proof, but the materials were replaceable.

Two properties stood out above the others. The square properties were situated next to each other and surrounded by fifteen-foot-high concrete walls. Metal gates, large enough for a vehicle to pass through when open, were guarded by Aryans carrying rifles. One house was squat, modern, massive, and made entirely from concrete, the roof flat. It looked like a cross between a bunker and a mansion.

The other house was more ornate, Spanish-style architecture, with white stucco walls, archways, and a mishmash of terra-cotta and thatch roofing. Both houses were sprawling mansions, but only one-story tall, their roofs shielded by the surrounding concrete walls.

“Who lives there?” Derek asked, gesturing to the Spanish-style house.

“The Reaper,” one of the guards said. “Wade Wallace lives in the other one.”

“Who’s Wade Wallace?”

“You’ll find out.”

The Aryan guards led Derek down a narrow alley between the properties, so narrow that Derek could reach out and touch both concrete walls at the same time. Once through the alleyway, they approached the bunker-like house from the rear, knocking on a metal door in the wall. The door opened, and the Aryans guarding the door greeted and bullshitted with Derek’s guards.

“You seen Wade’s new whore?” a guard asked.

“I heard she’s fuckin’ hot,” another guard replied.

“Shit. Best-lookin’ bitch I’ve seen on this island. As soon as he’s done, I’m gonna get my taste.”

“Wade’s been fuckin’ this bitch nonstop.” The guard chuckled. “He got her walkin’ with a limp.”

Derek stood impassive.

One of the guards stared at Derek and said, “The Race War champ, huh? You don’t look like much.”

Derek didn’t respond.

“Time to meet the boss man. Let’s go.” He motioned for Derek to enter the property.

Derek walked through the door and into the backyard. The guards who led him over the river left, handing Derek off to the Aryans who guarded the house. Derek was led through the backyard by three Aryans. A kidney-shaped pool held stagnant green water that smelled like sewage. An Aryan pulled weeds from the flagstone patio. Another clipped the hedges with rusty, manual pruners. The house looked much the same from the rear as it did from the front. A big boxy concrete bunker.

It was slightly cooler inside than outside, and dimmer. Most of the windows were covered with plywood. The furniture was eclectic, like a college dorm, offering no consistent motif or style. A scratched pool table sat in the living room, with plastic chairs along one wall, a wooden bar along another.

The guards nudged Derek down a long hallway. At the end of the hall, one of the guards knocked on the double doors.

“Come in,” a raspy voice said.

The guard stepped inside the room, shutting the door behind him. A minute later, the man returned to the hall and said, “He wants to talk to him alone.”

One of the other guards glared at Derek and said, “We’ll be right out here. You try anything, we’ll cut off your arms and feed you to the fuckin’ caiman.”

Derek stepped into the large room. The door closed behind him. The room smelled like sex and body odor. A large man with a gut lay on the king-size bed, a beautiful dark-haired woman at his side. The woman looked familiar. Where have I seen her before? … The beach . Derek remembered the girl hugging Connor’s friend. Mark’s sister .