Establishing a Rapport

I first fell in with Black October in college. It was the next-to-last year of my doctoral program and, as usual, I was ridiculously drunk at the little beer bar near the university. I was the next thing to completely pissed on imported, Belgian ale bought with grant money. It wasn't common to see superpowers back then; it's not common today, I supposed, but it seems like it because of media inundation. Nevertheless, everyone regarded it as a possibility, the same way people who live in the bad parts of towns regard drive-by shootings as a possibility. The majority of Compton's residents have never been accosted and brutalized by gang members; the news, Hollywood and rap might have you believe otherwise.

Even so, my first thought when I saw the hulking mass bent over the girl at the bus stop wasn't, there's a superhuman over there. It was more like, that big guy is getting up to some kind of fuckery with that passed-out girl. Alcohol makes heroes of us all, so I made my way over to investigate. I want to stress, I didn't seriously think anything would happen, even on a mundane scale. I thought, at most, the appearance of another conscious person on the scene would force the overly desperate homeless man or overly amorous frat guy to move along. When I judged myself in hearing range, I cleared my throat. When the man didn't move, I shuffled closer and asked, "What's going on there, Guy?" I would have liked a more dramatic opening phrase, but I didn't know what the night had planned.

When the thing turned to face me I remember thinking, "He's unfortunately ugly." Then its features clicked into place in my mind. The darkness covering its body was not clothing, but rough fur; the sloping belly, cast iron muscle rather than a beer gut. It's protruding lips pulled back over pointed, curving teeth. The sodium vapor streetlight cast just enough illumination to give the blood on its teeth a red, fresh-strawberries, hue.

Before my body could react, before my mind registered anything but shock, the carnivorous ape had me. One of its great hands clamped down over my shoulder and it lifted me into the air. I am not a little guy. It roared; reverb fed through a child's nightmare. The sound split the world. Tears ran down my face in rivers. My teeth vibrated. Its breath smelled like burning metal and onions. My stomach turned and, bizarrely, I thought a quick prayer to Jesus, asking not to throw up. I hate throwing up.

I kicked out with both feet, steel toed boots catching in the thick muscle of the ape's abdomen. I may as well have been a struggling puppy.

That's when I heard someone call out. I found out later the word was Chimeran, though my buzzing ears translated it to "Cimmerian". The word filled me with an irrational kind of hope. If a monstrosity from a Robert E. Howard story had appeared in the city streets to murder me, why wouldn't Conan the Barbarian appear to save me.

My shoulder dislocated as the ape slammed me into the cement sidewalk next to the bus stop's wire bench. The ground felt sticky, like I'd landed in drying fruit preserves; the girl's congealing blood. Looking up, I saw the baseball size chunks of flesh torn from her upper arm and right breast. It roared again. This time, I heard mad rage in its howl, clearly distinct from the dominance challenge moments before. It feels important to note that there's no way I could know its intent with each roar. I don't know anything about animal behavior beyond what everyone who has cable picks up from National Geographic or Animal Planet; more like something inside me, a holdout from before we ruined the world with carbon emissions and reality TV, caught the ape's intention and bowed down before it.

I tried to sit up, ended up on an elbow, trying to process what had happened through the haze of 9% beers and a likely concussion. That's when I saw the angel. I know, for some, that's a term of endearment or a flowery description of a pretty girl. That's not what I'm going for here. I saw a figure, in the absolute physical prime of his youth, untamed hair blowing in a breeze I couldn't feel; and the glow. He shined, not brightly enough to hurt the eyes, but enough to warrant the descriptor luminous, like looking at the full moon on a clear night.

The gorilla charged in a kind of graceful shamble that ended in a swipe with one forepaw and successive kicks with his feet. All three passed through the glowing man as if he were a hologram in a science fiction movie, his whole visage flickering and going unsteady. He then sidestepped, extended an arm, reaching into the carnivorous ape's barrel chest, and jerked, as if pulling the handle of a slot machine. The monster's legs gave out and it fell back on its haunches, breathing heavily, stunned.

The glowing man walked to me and knelt. He spoke, but by then the adrenaline that had been keeping me conscious was starting to run out. The last thing I remember before waking up in the private room of that same local beer bar, was placing the black, orange and yellow of his uniform. Black October.

Terrorists, huh?

Cheers,

-B.H.

Who Are Black October?

Pop-culture superheroes, the ones that get hours of coverage on the superhero entertainment "news" networks, don't have an agenda. That's poorly phrased; I know this one or that one backs such and such charity, or represents this institution which conducts research about this terrible disease. What I mean to say is, pop-culture superheroes don't have deeply personal, exclusive-to-them agendas. They do good works and that should be admired. But people with true visionary mindsets are, mostly, too abrasive to consistently make the kind of fluffy, feelgood news that is the staple of entertainment televisions.

Terrorist organizations, by contrast, are characterized by fanatical devotion to their agendas. Their agendas are not always clearly defined, or even sane, but it's that single-minded drive to impose their will, fight for freedom, whatever, that pushes them to commit atrocities.

So, what about Black October? The news--major news networks, not the entertainment variety--frequently paints them as a bogeyman. They are a favorite topic for alarmists along all points of the political spectrum and, if everyone is to be believed, they are responsible for everything from various economic crises, to plagues, to wars, to the largest ongoing bill for property destruction the world has ever seen. I don't put much credit in alarmists. In fact, that's an understatement. I feel active animosity for alarmists; especially ones with political agendas. For them, terrorism is a buzzword, the ultimate scare tactic, and Black October consistently tops the chart on their doomsday countdown.

Assuming my previous statement is correct, terrorists are defined by their causes, then I'm confused as to the validity of the claim that Black October is a terrorist organization. They've been known to steal resources from every first world country on the map, regardless of political inclination. They've never attacked a holy site of any of the world's major religions, or even made a religious statement. Come to think of it, since accepting the responsibility for the flu pandemic immediately following WWI, they haven't made a single public statement; even at that time they made no demands, it was more of a blanket apology.

For those of you who forgot your high school history, World War I was bad: 37 million casualties, civilian and military. The superflu that followed took around a hundred million. At the time, that was about 5% of the world's population. 5%, that's one out of every twenty people dead.

Most people have heard that Black October was somehow linked to the outbreak. Some consider this everyday conspiracy-theory trash. Some consider it solemn truth and think it reason enough to hate the organization no matter what they stand for.

This hardline hatred doesn't make sense though. No nation, religion, ethnic group or political preference was wholly safe from the massive viral outbreak.

Scholars, buffs and fanatics on the subject have all heard of a supposed "black gene" and even a connection to the sunken city of Atlantis.

There's too much here for a single article. All articles this month, therefore, will be directed toward a single goal: telling the Black October story, and trying not to get killed for doing so.

Cheers,

-B.H.