VIII.
Columnar piles of CS/CN gas eddied between buildings catching a weird coronal haze from the sliver of moon. Popobawa found the streets clear as his teams made their way. He flipped his NVG up to get a naked eye scan of the streets.
“Alright, boys, completely blacked out, our target is two clicks ahead. Keep away from any light sources.”
The fires from the previous arty strikes had died down except for some distant glows.
Masher radioed, “Looks like the CS/CN did the trick; moon-crickets cleared the streets.”
“Just to be clear, see someone, waste ‘em. This is Indian country; no friendlies here.”
Lights traveled down a cross street, cutting through the gloom.
Popobawa’s men grabbed wall, and he strode to the middle of the street.
Flipping the IR filter off his weapon light, he hit the on/off button three times in succession and broke for cover.
The Cadillac screeched to a halt and turned down the street.
Six men armed with Gucci AR pistols and gold titanium Desert Eagles got out.
“Hey motherfucka, you not be fucking around on Black Liberation’s turf!”
Ten different submachine guns opened up on them, suppressors muting the gunshots.
Popobawa stepped over the Liberators’ corpses and killed the head lights and ignition.
Nothing unusual in Black Liberation’s turf; a handful of curious frosty people dared look out their windows a minute later. Nothing to see except faint moonlight glinting off the Cadillac’s black gloss and six crumpled forms.
Any interested spectators quickly turned back to bundling up and slowly freezing in between hacking jags from traces of the gas from outside leaking inside.
XI.
In the distance they could make out Lord Prince Kuwambe’s penthouse; generators kept the heat and lights on. Like some shitheel corporate dictator from a bad 80’s action movie.
“SP 24-2 to Dragon, at rally point San Diego, need H&I on target Kunta Kinte until,” Popobawa checked his watch, “0356 hours.”
The four teams heard the distant booms of the Dragon Guns’ howitzers; a second later, HE shells shattered the lower floors of the sky scraper.
Darkness and drifting clouds of smoke covered their approach.
“Teams 1 and 2 take the basement; 3 and 4 with me to Kuwambe’s penthouse and ops center. Good luck, men!”
Two teams broke for the rear loading docks; Popobawa and his column went straight up the middle and through the front.
Two guards, probably the only two on sentry duty who weren’t fried shit, fired their M4s.
Too late.
A couple of piss-poor bursts into shifting shadows hit nothing before they were cut down.
The gun fire called out the rest of the sentry detail in a confused rush.
Blinged out skinny fag hoodrats ran into the building’s shattered atrium from cover; spraying and praying like a hot date, they murdered the decorative fountain.
After the initial frenzy of fire, the security detail stared out into the swirling eddies of smoke highlighted in the building’s lights.
Twisting tendrils of smoke lapped in and out of the atrium as the night air sucked and spat it out.
Teams 3 and 4 took their time, fanning out in a skirmish line using the approach’s rubble as cover and concealment.
Tossing grenades into the clusters of bunched up spooks, they waited as the taunts poured forth and the confusion of gunshots, explosions, and bitch screams grew.
A blast reverberated from the basement.
The lights died.
“Fuck’s dat shit motherfuckas?”
“Shush yo bitch mouth!”
“No you.”
The currents of smoke filled air were opalescent in the waning moonlight.
Shots were lined up.
“Shit, I think I see some—”
Muted gunshots barked in the dark.
No muzzle flashes.
“Fuck, motherfuck, where’d that come from?!”
No pretense of stealth now, they picked up speed in a rush, unloading their submachine guns into the clueless niggers.
The security detail rock and rolled M4s and AKs. Their net gain was to wound several of their fellows.
In the shadowy atrium, men died spurting blood from lead torn holes.
Popobawa closed in to claim his crimson black prizes.
Some sumo-looking Biggie Smalls fat fuck wannabe charged Popobawa in the middle of a mag change.
Popobawa transitioned to his Springfield 1911 and mag dumped into the fucker’s chest.
Sumo fuck’s last act was to drop a month’s worth of digested Cheetos and Pepsi into his basketball shorts.
“3 and 4 east stairwell now. 1 and 2, secure the ground floor entrances. Leave our mark, show them who was here. And remember fellas, ears and noses are the prizes of the day.”
X.
“Da fuckin’ lights, nigger!” Lord Prince Kuwambe slipped on his Nikes and racked the slide on his gold titanium Desert Eagle .50 cal. His entourage, in various states of undress, ran around brandishing AKs. The cold air was seeping in fast.
Weapon mounted lights bounced off ceilings, walls, and mirrors. Chickenheads and snow bunnies gobbled and clucked in surprise. One coalburner bitched and shouted at Lord Prince Kuwamba, “Dafuq is going on? Does your worthless ass have control over shit. I’m fucking cold.”
Kuwamba shouted at her, “Yo bitch, put some more clothes on if you cold! And everyone shut the fuck up. The white devils are comin’ to take our shit.”
The door blew off its hinges, a hole blew in the master bedroom’s wall.
Lord Prince Kuwamba paused a second, then opened the fray, firing his Desert Eagle into the dark.
His entourage joined the fray, pumping lead into the black beyond the entrances.
Something metallic clattered off the marble floors and a roar ripped through the penthouse.
In the brilliance of the fiery flashes, an image in dream time floated before Kuwamba, snow bunny’s head ripped free from its torso spinning through the air, ragged sinew and muscle trailing behind it.
Shrapnel riddled his guts and he collapsed among the heaps of scattered limbs and guts.
Shots cracked here and there as dark-clad devils picked their way through offal littering the floor.
Boots made a squelching sound.
Darker shapes silhouetted against the closeness.
One of the snow bunnies screamed, “I’m white! I’m white!”
Kuwamba propped himself up on an elbow eyes straining in the dark
Cheri Jo, his redhead party favor, writhed and twisted as a devil yanked her up by the hair.
An explosion of teeth and blood followed the muzzle flash.
A wet scraping sound followed as the shape bent over her.
“Yo! Cantu! Coalburners don’t count. Bwhahaha!”
“Bullshit, Holmes! I’m going for a checkerboard pattern.”
The devil stood up.
“Fucking new guy. I got this one.”
Another pistol shot.
The afterimage burned on Kuwamba’s retinas was of maybe ten black-clad men heavily kitted out.
A demon shape appeared over him. “Well, look at who is alive.” The devil leaned closer, as if to share an intimacy, and in a low voice said, “You’ll get this mercy; you’ll be dead before I make you a eunuch.”
The devil’s submachine gun spat fire and Lord Prince Kuwamba’s shade departed.
XI.
Popobawa clicked his mic, “Teams 1 and 2 SITREP.”
“All secure, chief; our mark has been left, the arrangements made, and trophies have been taken.”
Popobawa radioed back, “Good. Top off your magazines and prepare for exfil in ten minutes.”
Popobawa bent over Lord Prince Kuwamba and put his Marine Raider Bowie to work.
XII.
The night still clung to the sky as the 3rd Kentucky Cavalry rode into camp. Popobawa and his men disembarked at the firebase.
“Yo, butcher!” he called to Capt. Sears, “I want to thank you. That was some fine gunnery.” Then with a smile, he laughed, “Check this out!” And reached into a black plastic bag that looked heavy with fluid.
Lord Prince Kuwamba’s glassy stare greeted Capt. Sears.
An involuntary gasp escaped Capt. Sears’ lips.
“C’mon now, it’s actually less brutal than blowing off their limbs or hitting them with mustard gas, Captain.”
Capt. Sears composed himself.
He stared at the slack features of the now deposed dictator and remembered the brutalization and ethnic cleansing of Cleveland.
WorldStarHipHop unchained for a year.
Reality overcame four decades of cultural conditioning and he laughed.
He found himself wrapped into an uncontrollable fit.
Once it subsided, Capt. Sears asked, “What are you going to do with it?”
“Why, I’m going to keep it in a jar of alcohol. His cock and balls are going to be sent to the UN in the Big Apple.”
Stuffing the head back in the bag, Popobawa strode off to the command tent for debriefing.
All the men in Popobawa’s team carried plastic bags that sloshed as they walked.
XIII.
Capt. Sears was sharing a cigarette with his men as the first rays of dawn’s light reached over the horizon painting the snow and frost in rims of florescent pinks and oranges.
Carrion crows cawed, sparrows and whip poor wills’ piping began.
Outside the perimeter, there was movement.
“Weapons now, movement outside the wire.” The men of the Dragon guns grabbed their M4s and took up defensive positions.
“Radio the command tent,” Capt. Sears told his RTO.
“Wait!” Sgt. Phillips called.
The men held their fire.
Eyes aglow greenish yellow in the glooming trotted past.
Capt. Sears thought to himself, Five years of conflict and starvation and nature returns in all her gory savage glory.
XIV.
The present seemed a dim echo in the face of those yesteryears. Sears’ listener rubbed his bleary eyes and said, “Man, thas some shit, I thoughts the Topeka strike operation’s some shit.”
Sears looked at his listener. “I thought the Air Force just napalmed half the city.”
“Theys did!” His listener said throwing his arms wide. “But us Cav boys went in afterwards, mostlys popping half-dead crispy critters. Sometimes I cans still smells them.”
The man fell silent, looked at his beer, and finished the final gulp.
“Laters, dude.”
“Take care, fella.”
Sears looked around the joint taking in snatches of conversations. Between old vets, between old and young, all men hard, mean, and vicious looking.
“…I remember when the legionaries’ machine-gunned, what was it, 1,500 migrants in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican…”
“Yeah, yeah, they dragged the pope out through all the mess and exiled him to, umm, Mt. Athos…”
“…they changed the Vatican to a Temple of Mars…”
“…we sold off so many the slave markets from Liberia to Libya were glutted for seven years…”
“…the Chinese are flooding India with massive amounts of fentanyl…”
“…100 deaths a day from…”
“…begging for…”
Bit by bit, Sears closed out the voices and looked at his reflection in the mirror; for some reason, he tried to remember the kid his once was 40 years ago.
“A different world,” he said to no one and left.
XV.
On the way home, the rain wracked the sidewalks still. He passed by a shabby genteel low brick building. A low wattage bulb shown behind a discrete stained glass window making the inlaid cross glow. Sears stopped and looked at the cross for a minute trying to recall the feelings it once raised in his soul. In the cold, there on the broken concrete, no soaring reminder came, no come to Jesus moment shown like a light in the dark, no vision of Mary appeared. It was just a sad reminder, like the red, white, and blue some decrepit derelicts plant in cracked flowerpots.
“My son, do you need assistance?” a bent figure hiding on the stoop asked.
In the gloom, Sears could see a Roman collar.
“Not from you, not ever.”
And he turned to the desolate street and disappeared into the slashing deluge.
***
For all installments of “Popobawa,” click here.
Previous installments:
Proteus Juvenalis, of the Lost Generation, is a cynic and misanthrope orbiting Neptune and contemplating his former home. His stream of consciousness broadcasts can be found on Telegram.
