Girl Divided Page 14

  Jada backed up with a shriek and closed the door to the closet fast, slamming it shut, then called for her husband, but no one answered. Jada Jones, who was a decorated officer in Black Liberty's armed forces herself, stared at the door, heart throbbing in her chest, while the entire building shook and the sound of marching drowned out her thoughts.

  She watched as the knob turned.

  "Terrell?" she tried again, but no one answered. Maybe he couldn't hear her over the noise coming from outside.

  The knob was turning again and soon followed a sound so terrifying Jada almost stopped breathing.

  The sound of fingernails scratching on the door.

  Jada stumbled backward, then rushed out of the bedroom, only to find her husband dead on the ground in the hallway, blood gushing from his head. Above him stood a man, knife in his hand, blood dripping from it, a smile emerging on his face, showing off his rotten teeth.

  He wasn't breathing.

  Jada almost fell as she tried to get away, but she got back up and stormed down the stairs, through the kitchen, where she found more dead people, two of them were playing with the chicken carcass that she had cooked the night before over the grill in the yard.

  Jada ran directly into the arms of a big man who looked like he had been a Viking by the way he was dressed. He was smiling, his nose half decayed. Jada whimpered as he lifted his ax and brought it down on her, splitting her in two, both sides falling to the ground.

  Meanwhile, somewhere else in town, Jetta brought her army first to the gas chambers where Amare had been killed, where she took her warriors inside, killing every soldier in there, ripping their heads off, bringing them to their knees first before slaying them. After that, she marched across town to City Hall where she stopped in front of the old building. Screams were heard from every building in town, bodies piling up in the streets, soldier after soldier attacked and killed. Jetta felt herself growing stronger and stronger, her heart growing smaller and smaller.

  She stood for a few seconds and watched City Hall from the outside, listening to the screams coming from inside.

  Then she went in herself. She had her army chase out anyone sleeping and kill anyone wearing a uniform till she reached the door to DeShawn's office and kicked it open.

  DeShawn was already awake, sitting on his mattress on the floor where he slept, staring up at her. For such a big man, he suddenly seemed very small.

  She looked at him, then grabbed her hoodie and pulled it down. Somewhere in the distance, she thought she heard her mother cheer, but she could be wrong.

  "Who…are you?" DeShawn asked, staring at her face.

  Usually, Jetta struggled to answer that very question—especially lately—but not at this moment. Right in this second, she knew exactly who she was. She was done hiding.

  "I am Jetta," she said. "Queen of the Dead."

  Chapter 64

  They said that death swept through the town of Chicago that night, killing thousands of soldiers, leaving very few to tell the tale of what had happened. Many eyewitnesses later reported that they felt the earth shake and that they saw the face of death—shaped as a half-black-half-white girl—march across town, a sight so ghastly many shivered when trying to tell of it.

  The town was then left unprotected and soon the white man's army entered easily and took control of it, chasing out all the blacks and imprisoning them by the thousands. The remains of the black army then attacked several bigger cities on the east coast, blowing up subways, releasing bombs on squares, leaving many thousands of casualties. The entire country soon seemed to be on fire, the hatred towards the other part bigger than ever, with no hope of an end to it in sight.

  Meanwhile, Jetta stayed at the Graceland Cemetery day and night, sleeping on top of one of the graves, listening to the fighting around her. On the second night after the massacre, she woke up to the sound of hooves approaching. She looked at the antelope standing in front of her.

  "Oya?"

  She approached her. "What have you done, Jetta?"

  With an expression that could have been mistaken for calmness, Jetta looked her in the eye and said, "I did what had to be done."

  "How could you?" Oya asked. She spoke with deep sadness in her voice. "So many dead. So many lives…lost."

  Jetta swallowed.

  "Yeah, well, they deserved it. They killed Amare and all those other children. How was I supposed to not act? They wanted me to; they needed justice," she said and pointed at the flock of dead standing behind her, who followed her around no matter where she went. Amare was standing in front of them all, his big eyes staring at both of them. Jetta clenched her fist in anger when thinking about what happened to him. The images from the gas chamber hadn't wanted to leave. She had believed they would once she avenged them, that she would feel better, but she didn't.

  "They were guilty, all of them, all who were killed, if not by hand then because they didn't do anything to stop it."

  "But this is not who you are, Jetta," Oya said, lingering on the words like she wanted to believe them but wasn't sure she did anymore.

  Jetta put her hands to her sides. She was tired of being told who she was and who she wasn't.

  "What if it is? What if this is the real me? What if it is who I have been all along, who I was destined to be?"

  "I don't believe that," Oya said.

  "Well, I do."

  "This is not you," Oya repeated. "This is your mother."

  "Well, maybe I am just like her."

  The antelope shook her head. "No, Jetta. That is not all you are. You are so much more than that. Like your father, for instance. He can create thunder and kill people with lightning. Yet, he chooses to bring happiness and dancing and music. He makes people happy. That's a rare gift. Feed what you want to grow in you and that is what you'll reap. We all have evil inside of us. But we also have good. The side that wins is the side you feed the most."

  "Well, sometimes a dark act serves the greater good," Jetta said, spite in her voice.

  Oya shook her head again. "You don't believe that."

  Jetta turned her head away. "Maybe I do."

  "What about Tyler?" Oya asked. "Don't you care what happened to him?"

  Jetta froze. She turned her head and looked briefly at the antelope over her shoulder. She hadn't dared to worry about him.

  Oya said, "He was hurt, but will survive. We almost lost him; don't you care about that at all?"

  "He was the one who sent Amare away," Jetta said, gritting her teeth.

  A cold wind rushed through the cemetery as Jetta's mother rose from one of the graves. She came up to her, put her hand on her shoulder, and squeezed it.

  When Oya saw her, she backed up, a frightened look in the antelope’s eyes.

  "War demands sacrifices," Jetta said and turned to face the antelope again, now with her mother behind her.

  "That's just the way it is."

  Oya looked at Jetta, stared deep into her eyes one last time, scrutinizing them, searching for any sign that Jetta didn't mean that. Then she said, "If that is really how you feel, then I must go."

  "Go. Shoo. Shoo! Little deer," Loviatar said and rushed the animal away with her hands.

  Swiftly, Oya turned around and disappeared in between the trees, leaving Jetta to stare in her direction for a very long time, a part of her secretly hoping she would regret it, that she would come back, secretly wishing that she could turn back time and change what she had done.

  But that part had to die.

  "I am proud of you, my daughter," Loviatar said and pulled her close. Jetta could feel her mother's coldness and shivered.

  "Together, we are going to do great things, my girl. We'll do amazing things."

  Loviatar moved towards the grave from which she had come. She reached out her hand toward Jetta.

  "Come with me. I'll take you home. Your family is waiting."

  Jetta glanced one more time in the direction where Oya had disappeared, then turned around and grabbe
d Loviatar's hand. As they entered the Underworld once again, this time using the stairs revealed underneath the grave, Loviatar handed Jetta a jar of beer. Jetta stared at it, especially at the frogs and worms swimming in it. Her brothers entered the room, threw themselves at her, and made her laugh.

  With a satisfied sigh, she raised the cup, clanged it against her mother's, then drank it all up.

  Part VI

  Chapter 65

  The underworld was busier than ever in the coming months. Every day, Surma arrived with hundreds, sometimes even thousands of people. Loviatar took Jetta with her to show her how to handle the family business. Every dead person had to be counted and registered, and then she would give each of them jobs to do. That was how it used to be. But now that they came by the thousands, Loviatar simply divided them all into large groups. Most of them became soldiers in her army that she kept ready in the endless cave behind the door marked FITNESS ROOM.

  As the months passed, Jetta started to wonder why she kept them there and what they had to stay ready for. But she didn't ask. She got the feeling her mother was preparing for something but wasn't ready to share it with Jetta just yet.

  In the beginning of her stay with her mother, Jetta missed Tyler, Oya, and Shango a lot. She never even saw Nanna, Kevin, Kevin’s family, or even Mr. Richards anymore. Only Kevin's father, John, showed up every now and then along with Amare.

  But as time passed, Jetta slowly forgot about them all. The more of the beer she drank, the more her entire life up on the Earth became obscure, a fog, a distant image of a time that meant less and less to her. And soon, Jetta couldn't even remember their names if she wanted to. Even the images from the burning ghetto and the gas chambers slowly faded into oblivion. All the pain was gone, all she had felt when seeing the world with Tyler's or Amare's eyes had vanished. She no longer pitied humans nor did she feel mercy toward them.

  She simply stopped caring.

  Instead, she spent time with her brothers, played hide and go seek with them, or hung with her grandparents who would tell her stories of lives lived centuries ago, of the spirits of her ancestors who had done great things and had been very powerful. Some were still around, and she could call them if she ever needed their help.

  Grandma Tu-Tu especially liked to tell Jetta the story of how the family had once not only ruled the Underworld but the entire Earth in what the humans liked to call the Dark Ages. And how Jetta's brother, Plague, had dominated the Earth in the fourteenth century, causing death by the hundreds of millions of people.

  "More than two hundred million dead," she said, her voice impressed. "Those were good years. Your other brothers had their time as well, of course. Cancer has done a fair job over the past fifty years or so, but no one has ever quite matched Plague's accomplishments."

  Grandma Tu-Tu looked up at Jetta, then touched her cheek, causing Jetta's skin to crawl and her hair to stand up on her arm. Something in the old woman's eyes made Jetta flinch. Maybe it was what her grandmother said next, maybe it was in the way she said it, "Until now."

  Chapter 66

  "I am a disease?"

  Jetta was looking at her reflection in the pot in the kitchen. She touched her face, her heart thumping in her chest.

  Of course, she was. Just like her younger brothers. It was all making sense to her now.

  Her mother came to her, soundlessly creeping up behind her. Jetta looked up and into the tall woman's face.

  "Is that why everyone gets sick around me?" she asked. "The people at the ghetto? The people in the attic?"

  Jetta searched her mind to find their names, but somehow, she couldn't quite remember them. Neither could she picture their faces no matter how hard she tried.

  Her mother smiled, reached out her hand, and grabbed her chin. "My pretty, pretty little girl. You are a beautiful creation like none other."

  "But I am a disease?"

  The smile widened. Loviatar's cold fingers almost hurt on Jetta's skin. Her breath smelled like rain, like death.

  "The most powerful one of them all."

  Jetta shook her head, then pushed her mother's hand away. She felt sick to her stomach thinking about all those people at the ghetto dying everywhere, about the man and the boy…

  "Kevin," she said, suddenly remembering.

  Her mother looked annoyed with her.

  "Kevin," Jetta repeated. She didn't want to forget his name again, now that she had finally remembered it. Her mind felt like it was in such a fog these days, and she had been wandering in a haze.

  Loviatar put both her hands on Jetta's face and stroked her cheek, looking into her eyes.

  "You don't need to worry about them, Jetta. Any of them. You belong to us now. You're with your family now. They're just humans, mere mortals."

  Jetta couldn't stop thinking about Kevin and remembering how sick he had been, and now realizing that it was all her fault made her heart hurt. All those dead bodies in the ghetto being taken away every day, people crying and mourning their lost ones. Death had never scared her or even made her sad until she had seen it with Tyler’s eyes. He had taught her the terror humans felt when facing death and losing loved ones.

  "Tyler," she mumbled, remembering him suddenly. How could she have forgotten about him? How could she not have worried about him for all this time?

  "No, no," her mother said, trying to keep her from looking away from her. "You're here with us now, remember? We're your family."

  Jetta looked into her mother's face once again and a calmness fell upon her, as a small still voice whispered inside of her that it didn't matter, none of it mattered, none of them were important to her. You're not human, Jetta. You shouldn't be with them, you shouldn't care about them.

  For a second, Jetta agreed. In her mind, she thought her mother was right, that staying there with her and taking care of her family business was who she was, was what she was meant to do.

  There you go, the voice in her head said. Calm down and just enjoy it. There is nothing to worry about.

  Jetta felt the gentle calmness overwhelm her and the care she had felt for a few seconds slowly vaporizing, filling her with blissful oblivion.

  "Here. Drink this," her mother said and handed her a jar.

  Jetta looked inside at the liquid and was about to drink from it, her mother smiling next to her, as she saw her father's face inside the cup and suddenly remembered him and Oya. She stood for a few seconds, mouth open, not pouring anything into it, thinking about her time with them and realizing she thought she knew who she was, but now she wasn't so sure anymore.

  She didn’t drink from the jar, only pretended to.

  That night, when they thought Jetta was asleep, she snuck out through the gift shop where her aunt was sound asleep behind the cash register, snoring lightly.

  Outside the shop, Jetta found her mother's bike and stole it.

  Chapter 67

  The world seemed worse than ever. No matter where she was or what areas she drove through, Jetta saw dead bodies. People that had been shot, some blown to pieces by bombs, others hung or slaughtered when trying to escape. In the distance, she saw fires and heard bombs go off. The land seemed burned, trees black as coal, bushes and grass nothing but a memory. It almost made Jetta cry. She found it hard to see the world this broken. The further away she got from Stull Cemetery, the more she started to remember the people she had cared for. Tyler, Kevin, Mr. Richards, and Nanna. Not to mention Shango and Oya…Oya, who had tried to tell her, tried to explain to her that she didn't belong with her mother.

  But I do, don't I? I am a plague, a disease, and my presence above ground will only kill more people, won’t it?

  Jetta felt so confused. She didn't know what to do or where to go. She only knew that she couldn't stay with her mother anymore. He heart kept beating hard when thinking about Tyler and she wanted so terribly to find him, to be close to him and tell him everything. He would know what to do. Tyler always knew what to do.

  But he did the wrong t
hing, remember? With Amare? He was the one who gave the boy to DeShawn.

  Jetta accelerated the bike and it soared into the rainy night. She was breathing heavily in anger, feeling so frustrated, so scared and angry at the same time.

  He's nothing but a thief, remember? Stealing from the dead, the voice inside of her said.

  "We all make mistakes to survive," Jetta told it, then rushed through yet another small abandoned town, where the few houses that weren't burned down were shattered with bullet holes.

  She didn't even know if Tyler was alive, she reminded herself, as she spotted a bigger city in the distance, surrounded by tall walls. It had to be Kansas City, she figured. It had been months since she left the world of humans, so she didn't know if the town was controlled by black or by white forces.

  Even if I enter the city, I will only make them all sick, won't I? Kill more people so my mother can build her army.

  There was no way she could do that. Jetta stopped at the top of a small hill and stared at the walls as a car left the city through the checkpoint. Oya had told her that Tyler was still alive after the night in Chicago, but where would he be? Would he be sick if she found him again? Probably, at some point.

  Jetta sighed deeply, then decided not to try and enter the city, or any other city. She turned the bike around and drove into the vast countryside, realizing she would have to stay hidden from now on. Anyone she loved would only get sick from being close to her.

  It was all for their own sakes.

  Jetta drove off, tears streaming across her cheeks, thinking about Tyler and how deeply she had come to love him and how terrible she felt for hurting him, for forgetting about him and for not being able to get close to him again.