Die Pridengard Chapter Four: God Emperor of Houston

Grayson

It was hot and hazy, like a New England IPA served in the preferred style of the future (which is the present in this story). Jackie looked back at the sand-covered charter plane, mostly intact except for the important parts, and checked on her team.

As she moved down the line, she adjusted each member’s desert suit – known as a “full kit” – as necessary. She was aware that, in the before times, a “full kit” was something that only the most devoted and admirable supporters wore to matches. Jackie knew from school that they had been called “full kit wankers” – “wanker” being some sort of honorific, whose meaning was lost to time.

But in the post-crisis Houston Desert Maintenance District, the full kit was a necessity. Designed for performance and comfort in the heat, the kit was also engineered to preserve the body’s water and allow it to recycle into the body’s pores. The high socks, when worn properly, were chemically treated to pull humidity from the air. Padded guards, worn under the socks, absorbed and stored the body’s sweat. Cleats underneath the shoes were necessary to grip the more solid layer of ground under the ever-shifting sand.

Once she finished making sure everyone was appropriately equipped, Jackie pulled up the map from her watch.

“It’s this way,” she pointed, and the group followed. Ope, Change, Khaleesi, and PBIII. Brenner Standish was left at home, after his behavior in the Emerald City away game marked him as unreliable. Jackie worried about leaving him to supervise a watch party on his own, but he would be far more dangerous getting the jump on her in the treacherous climate they now faced.

Even then he was on her mind, though, as Jackie wondered how much the plane crash owed to the sudden sandstorm and how much it might be attributed to human intervention.

But surely, she pondered to only the omniscient narrator, he wouldn’t risk hurting the rest of the Board.

Sure, he wouldn’t.

After about 20 minutes of marching, the ground began to shake. The sand around them – already making visibility difficult beyond a few yards – swirled and hit them in the face, forcing them to shut their eyes and mouth.

“Hold position!” Jackie instructed, “Let it pass!”

“You are Jackie?”

Jackie held up her hand to shield her eyes and saw the silhouette of a figure that must have been their local guide, the desert master Lefty King. The ground then stopped shaking and the sand, more or less, settled.

“Sorry about the drama,” Lefty continued, “but our carrier makes quite the commotion.”

Behind Lefty was a strange vehicle like Jackie had never seen before. It was round in shape, and in a dozen or so sections, like giant tires lined up in a row.

“Our sand here is contaminated with fossil fuels. The carrier absorbs the sand, extracts the fuels, and spits out the sand clean. You might say it runs on desert power. It is a good process, but it requires a lot of sand and can be a little messy.”

Lefty offered her hand, and Jackie accepted. Then Lefty turned to the rest of the group and started inspecting their kits. She turned, puzzled, back to Jackie.

“You have worn full kits before?”

Jackie shook her head. “It seemed the best way.”

She skipped a beat.

“And I watched a ListenUpYallTube video.”

Curious, Lefty thought to herself. She will know your ways as if born to them. The one to unite the SGs. The First Counsel.

“Well,” Lefty said, “we detected your crash and thought it would be easier to meet you. Load yourselves onto the carrier, and let’s roll.”

As they were loading, one by one, Lefty muttered to herself, “Don’t get too comfortable. You’ll likely not be on long.”

******************************************

“Hi Tom.”

In 2020, Prentiss Foster (Jackie’s grandfather, remember) had walked right into just about the person he least wanted to talk to right before this supporters’ council meeting.

“Foster,” Tom returned dryly.

“Anything I should know about heading into this meeting?”

“You know what people say. Surprises are the presents we didn’t know we wanted.”

“People say that?” Prent asked.

Tom, the wealthiest of the supporters, looked Prent up and down. “Well, maybe not your kind of people.”

Prent bristled. “Well, some kind of people need to be the ones who get things done. Those must be the other kind.”

“Ah, yes, you certainly had your moment. But where I’m from – Indian Hill, by the way, in case you forgot – we like to ask, ‘What have you done for me lately?’ And speaking of that, any idea what happened to the banners?”

“I’m sure they’ll turn up.”

Prent excused himself, got a beer, and found a seat next to Landon.

Tom stood up and – noticeably injured still from Prent’s attack during BannerGate – walked slowly to the front.

“Great job, everyone,” Tom started. “BannerGate was a success, and it will go down as a great moment of supporter unity to remove the banners and motivate the team to its big win over Austin.”

The room clapped. Landon, confused, started to speak, but Prent stopped him.

“And I think after my stumble,” Tom continued, “we can be sure that safe standing will be installed in the new Bailey in the West End.”

Those gathered clapped harder, with a few cheers and whistles thrown in. Prent realized, then, that things were worse than he thought. The gathered SGs, while nominally separate, were a hivemind, captive to groupthink. Everyone in the room knew that the SGs had no intention of removing the banners before the Austin game. A half dozen or more of them had seen two men – Prent still wasn’t certain that he and Landon had been identified, but he had begun to suspect so – knock Tom into a bleacher while making their escape. But they had all already apparently agreed, before Prent and Landon arrived at the meeting, to pretend like none of that happened.

It was in that moment that Prent knew that the only way to save supporter culture was to break it. He had to take the SGs down. But before he could formulate a plan, reality came back knocking.

“And now, our point made, it’s time to show the lads we’re still behind them,” Tom said, gesturing to the back of the room, “and put the banners back.”

Prent in the direction of Tom’s gesture and saw a few SG members pushing dollies toward the front. On each dolly was a sack – the same sacks that Prent and Landon had used to carry the banners out of Nippert.

But how? Prent thought to himself. He turned to Landon, who just stared toward the front of the room, unable – or unwilling – to look Prent in the eye.

******************************************

After that riveting chase (NOTE: You didn’t miss anything. This is just one of those situations where your imagination can conjure a better action scene than whatever we’d write here), Jackie fled from the burning carrier, with Khaleesi holding onto her shoulder and hobbling along. After about 15 minutes of walking, Jackie set Khaleesi down and set up her pocket shade umbrella, to give them a moment to plan their next action.

“Leave me here,” Khaleesi suggested, “I’ve enough shade and water, and you can collect me on your way back.”

“Nonsense,” Jackie responded. “Who, if not you, is going to lead the chants?”

Jackie opened the map from her watch and pinged the locations of her crew. They were scattered, but not far. Jackie absent-mindedly opened a couple of rations that Lefty had given her, handed on to Khaleesi, and continued to plot their course. The others, she could see, were heading in her direction but, unfortunately, probably not quickly enough for the group to make the game. And she knew that it was only a matter of time before more HDMD supporters found them.

Khaleesi moaned and closed her eyes. Jackie wondered if Khaleesi was injured worse than she seemed, but then she began to feel woozy herself. She rubbed her eyes and shook her head. She glanced at the wrapper from Lefty’s rations, started to put the pieces together, and passed out.

She woke standing in a room. Maybe. Is this a room? She wondered. She felt confined, certainly, but could not make out any walls or ceilings around her. She started to walk – forward? Hard to tell in this directionless place – and her steps echoed as if she were in a wet cave.

“Jackie.”

The voice echoed and felt as if it was coming from all around her.

“You found my book.”

She looked left, right, and behind her. She could still make no sense of where she was, or how she had gotten there.

“Why did you write it down?” she asked.

“What I did… it couldn’t be forgotten. I thought it was necessary, yes,” her grandfather’s voice responded, “but I am accountable for it. If I have a legacy of any kind, it has to include the good and the bad.”

“I didn’t understand when the spirit showed it to me,” Jackie said, “but now I see. You had to do it. It was us or Columbus.”

“No, Jackie,” Prent said. “I was wrong.”

“How were you wrong? The MLS told you – help them move the Crew and you get a team.”

“You don’t have to take the first offer, Jackie. You can get where you want to be without losing who you are. You just have to know yourself, and to be undeniable.”

Jackie thought for a moment, not fully understanding. Or maybe she understood, and things just weren’t that complicated.

“So,” she said, “what am I supposed to do?”

“Reclaim your identity. Reclaim the club, the city’s identity.”

“How?”

“Use the book.”

Jackie sat up. Suddenly, she was back in the desert, no longer standing. Khaleesi was still asleep next to her.

Lefty arrived, unable to hide her surprise that Jackie was awake. She will see when others can’t, Lefty thought to herself, remembering again the prophecy. Lefty then collected herself.

“Jackie, the rest of the group is behind me in a new carrier,” Lefty said. “We can still make the game, but I am afraid the group will not be 100 percent.”

“No,” Jackie responded. “Let everyone rest up. We won’t be making the game.” Jackie knew that Brenner Standish and his faction would come after her for missing the game, but that would be a fight for another day.

Lefty was shocked. She had never known an SG leader to put the health of her members above the game. Jackie stood up, walked to Lefty, and handed her the empty rations wrappers.

“I hope you can do something with these. I don’t like to litter.”

******************************************

Back at Jackie’s apartment, on her nightstand, Prent’s journal flung itself open. The pages fluttered back and forth, until they settled where they wanted. On that page was Prent’s description of sabotaging the striker’s car, preventing him from making the U.S. Open Cup game against Columbus. If anyone had been looking at the journal in that moment, however, they would have seem something strange.

The words on the page, written in permanent black ink, disappeared. Then they reappeared, but flickering, as if they were deciding whether to stay or go. Before any decision was made, the book slammed itself shut.