Wendy has a very nice house. It is two stories and her bedroom, and two guest rooms are on the second floor; the first floor has the kitchen, dining, and living rooms, and she has a large office space where she has her computer and her yoga mat. She lived alone in the house from the time she moved in, up until Aile moved in about a year ago when she left the IBF. Her parents tried to get Aile to move with them in upstate New York where they were retired, but Aile didn’t want to leave the south for good and after she visited with them for about a month, she was happy to return to Georgia.
Wendy enjoys having a roommate. She likes coming home to someone and Aile likes to practice recipes that her and Wendy’s ancestors teach her and lately, she has been experimenting with a fusion of the flavors and techniques to delicious results.
When Wendy arrives back home from her conflict at the CZS, she is with Stephanie, the ghost of Aile’s sister, and a car full of strangers, and Aile is happy to have an excuse to cook the food in their overstuffed refrigerator. Not everything in Wendy’s fridge is edible though; Aile has also been training in the ancient arts of elixirs and potions and she labels everything very clearly so she and Wendy avoid ingesting various animal body parts that aren’t chicken or beef, and other unsavory ingredients, some poisonous, others just really rare or very expensive.
Aile watches the woman and three men follow Wendy and Stephanie inside and she can tell from their faces that they had a hard time at the CZS. She smiles at Stephanie and hugs Wendy as everyone sits in the chairs of the living room.
“We lost,” Manuel says. He is a handsome man in his thirties, but he has dark bags under his eyes, they are almost black against his light brown skin, and it’s obvious that he can use sleep.
“We always lose,” Adam says. He sits on the arm of the chair where Manuel sits and he has similar bags under his eyes. He closes them and massages his temples with one hand.
“We didn’t lose,” Paul says. “Manuel, you got to burn that building to the ground.”
“Yeah,” Manuel says, “with nothing in it. We all saw that ship take off. We were too late.”
The woman Falon is standing next to the couch where Aile sits with Wendy and the man Paul.
“I feel good about what we did,” Falon says. “I did what I came here to do.”
Everyone is quiet and Aile looks around at them all, curious why.
“I hope that fire took him,” Paul says, “for his sake.”
Falon nods.
“We did something,” Wendy says. “We all came together and we made our mark. The ancestors are so impressed with how you all handled yourselves. Tin wasn’t exactly what he seemed either. He said he will find out where Ivan and Clay are for us, and I believe him. He is not our enemy.”
“What do we do from here?” Adam asks. “We could all just go home, but the last time we did that, the problem was still there.”
“I want to do that again,” Falon says. “I want to make them pay for what they did to my daddy. Wendy, if Anesuishe will have me, I am ready.”
“But what exactly are we fighting?” Paul says. “Do you know what the Consortium of Human History is? I saw something at that building with the logo on it. It’s like a research group, a nonprofit, they sponsored community outreach between police and low income communities all over the south back in the nineties as part of some research project. They interviewed me for it. Why would the Consortium of Human History have anything to do with a place like that zombie factory?”
“I’ve never heard of them,” Wendy says, “but when I see Tin again, I’ll find out. You’re all welcome to stay here. I have plenty of room. But don’t feel obligated to stay. Adam, Manuel, I understand you two have been away from your loved ones for a long time.”
“Yeah,” Manuel says and looks at Adam who nods along with his words in agreement. “But it don’t feel right to leave this like it is, if we ain’t really safe. It’s been a couple years, but I think it’ll be worse to pop up, just to leave again. When we go back to our families, we’ll finally have a win.”
“Hopefully,” Adam says.
“It’s nice to meet you all,” Aile says. “Things seem bad, but we can turn it around. I feel the strength in this room.”
The women agree with her, but the men seem less optimistic.
Meanwhile, at the CZS
Tin came to as the fire at the main building of the CZS campus was being extinguished. He woke on a gurney and he saw what looked like firefighters working to control the flames and prevent it from spreading to nearby buildings, and even though the fire raged, they had it under some control.
Before he could stand from the gurney, Dr. Lynnette Jones surprised him.
“When did you arrive?” Tin asked her, letting his feet dangle from the side of the makeshift bed.
“While you were unconscious,” Dr. Jones said with a hint of hostility. “How did this happen?”
“We underestimated the Brave Chimutengwende. I should have known, she was the only one of them that I couldn’t subdue. I brought you the couple, I brought you the others, but the Brave Chimutengwende isn’t like them. She draws power from her family, and they showed up in force.”
“The woman and the three men with her were her family?” Jones asked skeptically.
“They were possessed by the ghosts of her family. I may have learned a lot about prehuman magic and soul energy manipulation from the annals, but the Brave is doing very interesting and unheard of things with the magic that her ancestors teach her. She is a real wonder and this was doomed from the start. We should not have provoked her.”
Jones eyed Tin, and her scrutiny reminded him of the airs she adopts when she is called Rhodium, the head of the COHH Board.
“The launch was successful,” she said to him, moving on from the bad news. “Dr. Worthington will be happy to know that, when we find him of course. Osmium is happy with his army and things are well on the other side of the universe.” She looked at the dying flames. “This is a problem. It seems we have not stamped out our resistance after all. There’s a car waiting for you. The board will meet tomorrow and we want your official account of what happened here before then.”
She left without saying anything else. A car pulled up and she got into the backseat, and he wondered if she suspected him of anything.
PRL Serials 