AncilChapter 1: The Market Massacre
My Sunday started like every other Sunday before it. However, I was unaware that by its end, my life would have crumbled completely. Time now encapsulated my life before this, preserving a beautiful memory of what life once was. Now, every other day after this day is nothing but death.
***
“I’m so hungry!” My father shouted playfully, his eyes fixed on the road as he steered the rusty old Ford Ranger through Arima’s bumpy and hole-infested streets. “Jed, what’re you feeling to eat today?” My father asked me.
My mind wasn’t there though. It was somewhere else and highly invested. All of my mental capacity was directed to qualifying for the X Soccer Online Champions League on my bio-phone. A task that may have seemed impossible to me, in reality, was more than possible in the virtual world in my bio-phone. Bio-phones, or B-Phones for short, were the new-age phones that everyone had. They were simple, flat, transparent, indestructible, rectangular glass devices that could be folded into any desired shape. The coolest thing about them for me was that they charged every time you held them, capturing energy from biosignals like body heat, pulses, and other signals of the sort. So I could play video games all day without worrying about my battery dying. However, when the device was not in use, its power capacity was quite low.
My father, awaiting an answer, turned to me and said, “What you doing there, Soldier?!” When he realized what I was doing he sucked his teeth and then continued, “Jed, if you keep playing those video games, you’re going to get blind.”
I heard what he said but chose not to answer this time.
“Boy!” My father shouted as he snatched my bio-phone from my hand. “Have you forgotten who I am? I’m your father. Don’t let me have to throw your nineteen-year-old ass out of this van and leave you to the boars! When I ask you a question, answer!” He placed the handheld video game in the small compartment below the steering wheel, then started again, “What do you want to eat?”
The rebel in me rose to the surface of my psyche. I couldn’t help but be pissed off at my father. I was leading by one goal against elonmusketeer75, and the game was almost over. I lost three precious points on the world table. I took a heavy and audible breath out of my lungs, turned my head toward the window staring outside then I said rudely, “I don’t want anything.”
“Well, stay right there and starve then,” my father exclaimed. “I’m going to buy myself some plantains and tomatoes in the market. You better not touch them when I put them in the fridge.”
I didn’t respond.
My father simply sighed.
It was about 11 am when we neared the markets in Arima. Silence enveloped the air, and a pungent smell protruded the van. Something wasn’t right. The liveliness and color we’ve come to associate with Market Day were notably missing. Miss Mavis’s stall, where my father usually bought fruits, was disheveled, oranges and bananas splattered on the floor, not a soul in sight. This situation was the same for the other stalls that lined the market street; all empty and deserted.
“Where is everybody?” I asked my father. My curiosity overshadowed our previous argument.
“I don’t know, son,” my father responded. “I don’t know.”
My father drove through the deserted market, fruits, and vegetables crunching below the car tire. No sign of life made itself visible.
My father slowed down as he entered the central and usually busiest part of the market; a wide-open plaza with hundreds of stalls situated all around and on each side of the main road. The bright Caribbean sun beamed down to the earth at 39 degrees Celsius. Cars were parked haphazardly across the street with no regard for parking etiquette. Most of the car doors were wide open, some of them broken and hanging on by a thread. You didn’t have to be a detective to decipher that whoever was in those cars was in a desperate rush to get out.
I inspected the scene, trying to piece together what had gone on but I was just as confused as anyone would be. My brain began to paint dire pictures of unearthly monsters coming from the sky, or biblical prophecies of raptures and Armageddon.
A large group of corbeaux (black vultures) camping out in the surrounding trees above caught my attention. I then spotted dozens more corbeaux circling the town high up in the sky. Wherever these giant vultures were, death was surely near, very near.
My dad gasped! He caught a glimpse of the carnage before I did.
I positioned myself higher in the seat to get a clear view of what was in front of me. I quickly placed my hand over my mouth to try to stifle my gasp but I was too late.
