Apocalypsis 04 - Haven

crowd. “Is this all true?”
    “Yes.” I nodded to everyone who was looking.
    “What was the insult? What got you upset?” asked Trip.
    I thought about it for a second, but decided it was just too inflammatory to say. She needed to be judged on her behavior, not her stupid hangups. “It’s not important.”
    “If it made you angry enough to approach her, it’s important,” said Trip. “I need to know if you were justified in doing what you did.”
    Peter stood. “I’ll tell you what she said. It doesn’t bother me, just for the record, even though it’s as ignorant as cannerism.”
    I shook my head slowly at him, but he ignored me.
    “She called me a gayboy.”
    I glanced at Trip and knew that it was a done deal for him. Gail was a goner.
    “She shouldn’t be punished for being ignorant,” I said.
    Paci stood, putting one hand on Trip’s shoulder and one on mine. “I think I speak for almost everyone here when I say that prejudices are the simple disguises of hate. And we don’t tolerate hate in Haven. Hate breeds negativity and anger and pain. Nothing good comes of it. Gail, you’ve been open with your hostility towards Bryn, Peter, Trip, and many others since the day you arrived. You’ve made no secret of your intention to leave one day.”
    She opened her mouth to interrupt, but Paci held up his hand to silence her.
    “We will take a vote here today to decide whether you stay or go. But before we do that, do you have anything you want to say? I suggest you come up with something that will allow us to show you some mercy.”
    “Mercy? That’s a joke. What I have to say is this: you people are all deluding yourselves. You think you can just hand pick who you want here and who you don’t? Bullshit. If I want to be here, I’ll be here. If I want to go, I’ll go. You can try to kick me out, but I’ll come back, and I’ll bring friends. None of you is safe here. None of you gets to decide for me what I do with my life.”
    Paci raised an eyebrow. “That was your plea for mercy? Interesting.” He looked at Trip and then me. “What’s your vote? Stay or go?”
    “I vote go,” said Trip. “No question. She’s a disease.”
    Gail’s face burned crimson. “Figures. You gayboys stick together, don’t you?”
    Trip’s hands clenched on top of the table.
    “Easy, brother,” said Paci under his breath. “She’s nothing to us.”
    “Bryn? Stay or go?”
    All eyes were on me. Trip was right. She was a disease. She was trouble. She’d threatened to kill me. But I couldn’t just send her out to die, could I?
    I caught Bodo’s eye. He nodded at me and pointed at himself. I will take her, he said, mouthing the words.
    I bit my lip as I considered the option. He was going to leave anyway. And she knew he wasn’t with me, so she had no problem with him. I didn’t worry that she’d kill him on the way to the Amazon’s. I nodded my head at him.
    “I vote she goes. But know this - Bodo has already volunteered to escort her to the Amazon place. I’m not sure if I could have voted for her to go if we were just going to send her outside the gates.”
    Paci stood. “I vote she goes, escort or not.” His eyes swept the room and stopped on Gail. “Gail, you are hereby expelled from Haven for a period of one year. You can ask to come back after that period if you wish, and we’ll consider your request with open minds and hearts.”
    “Fuck you,” she said, right before she spat at him.
    The crowd broke out in angry shouts. Ronald and Jamal closed in, stepping nearer to Gail in a protective gesture. She shoved them away, acting like she was going to make a run for it.
    Flick ended her scheme by tackling her from behind, taking her down and wrestling her arms behind her back. With Derek’s help he snapped on some cuffs and stood her back up.
    Ronald’s eyes bugged out of his head and he pointed at Flick. “That’s it! I remember now! You played that kid cop in that Disney movie! Ha!”
    Gail had a cut on her lip where she’d landed, and the blood was running down her chin and smearing gruesomely across her teeth.
    Flick stood next to Gail, his hand on her shoulder, rolling his eyes at Ronald. “Not now, dude.”
    Gail had zero interest in Flick’s former life. She was practically foaming at the mouth, she was so angry. Blood sprayed out with every word. “Fuck you, Bryn! Fuck you, Paci! Fuck you, gayboy! You can’t send me out of here! You can’t send me out!”
    Flick and