Walter Mosley - Futureland - Nine Stories of an Imminent World

“Accept your blood, brothers,” he crooned. “Blood brothers, that’s us...”

Bleep, bleep.

“... soon the arks of Africa will arrive on our shores. The colonized and enslaved motherland will come to reclaim us. Do not fight them. Do not deny your heritage. Embrace the new world order.”

Bleep, bleep.

Harold became aware of the tiny electronic alarm. It had been sounding for hours. It was his ID-chip. The small display on the chip was mostly garbage. The date was a line of happy faces. The time was a row of eights. But there was a valid return number, eighteen digits long.

Harold at first thought that it might be a trick of XX Y to find and draft all living black people into his World Africa Army. But when he decided to take a car and see the world for himself, Harold entered the number into the Gales’ kitchen vid. When he was greeted by the aged image of his father he was stunned and saddened.

“Pop,” he whispered.

“Hey, baby boy.” It was his nickname before his ninth birthday. “I thought you got it in New York,” Clarence Bottoms said. “I been pagin’ you for a week.”

Harold had nothing to add. He hadn’t even thought of calling his father.

“How is it up there where you are, son?”

“It’s only me around here.”

“That’s good. We been fightin’ a war down here.”

“Where are you?”

“Florida. They got four groups down here. Two Spanish-black armies, a white — or so-called — group, and then there’s the American blacks. Fightin’ over groceries, guns, and women. Fightin’ over control of the utilities and right-of-way in the streets.”

“Fighting?” Harold said. “Blacks fighting each other?”

“Not everybody’s fightin’. Not even most of us. But it only takes a few fools with guns to mess it up for everybody.

“I found your mother. I came down here lookin’ for her and damn if I didn’t find her. We gonna sneak outta Dade County in a few days and make it up to St. Louis.”

Harold was still wondering why he hadn’t called anyone.

“My friends all died, Pop,” Harold said. “Yasmine and Jamey.”

“White kids?”

“I guess.”

“Don’t worry, Harold. Come meet us at Rand’s farm in St. Louis. We can start over.”

Harold found the keys to the Solaro in the Gales’ garage. He filled five bags with canned and freeze-dried food. He had twelve five-gallon containers of water. He carried it all out to the car and loaded up. Then he sat behind the wheel in the cool darkness of the garage, looking at a wall covered with hanging hand tools.

He turned the key and grabbed the steering wheel, but had no idea of how to drive the car. He cried hysterically for six or seven seconds and then stopped. Climbing out of the car he walked out of the garage and headed for the Gales’ front door.

“Hey, nig!” a man’s voice shouted.

Harold turned to see three swarthy-looking white men. They were dressed in fancy suits decorated at the knees and elbows with brightly colored scarves.

One man raised a pistol.

Harold ducked and ran. All around him branches, windows, and even the walls of the Gales’ home exploded from the charged shells that the so-called white men loosed.

Harold went through the house and out the back window, into the woods and was gone. There was a rhythm to his footfalls and his body through the trees. When Harold realized that he had escaped death, he began to laugh.

The world had started over.