The drop, p.2
The Drop, page 2
Detroit was not known as the safest of cities, even pre-Drop. Its reputation had not improved since. The Daily Solicitor had just finished up a series on city-stalkers, the fancy new term that had been coined for the jaded psychopaths that roamed the abandoned cities killing anyone that they came across. Several seemed to operate out of Detroit. I felt the comforting weight of the handgun in my bag, a gift from Sebastian.
"Kid. Someday, you're going to need this. This is America, and there's just not a lot of women your age kicking around in this world. So please, take it." Those were his words before he sent me out on my quest.
The phone rang. It was Peggy with the addresses. I typed them into my notebook, thanked her, and flipped the car around. I had tried to refuse the gun at first, but as I cruised to the next address on my list, I felt grateful that Sebastian had pressured me into accepting it. I hadn't come this far to fall prey to some nutjob running loose in the city.
As I pulled up to the house, I let out a sigh of exasperation. Another busted up house, no windows, a lawn like something you might see in a National Geographic article about the Amazon Rain Forest. I was about to throw the car in drive and track down the final address on my list when I spotted a brown face peering out of one of the broken windows.
I turned off the car and grabbed my bag, making sure the gun was arranged so that I could flip open the bag and grab it in a wink if I so needed. As I exited the car, I caught a whiff of a dead city, a mix of accumulated dust, mold, and remnants of smoke from burned out buildings. I also smelled the faint scent of death. By now, most of the bodies in the city had gone through their juicy stage, but the smell of decay still lingered over big cities, yet another reason why most survivors had chosen to leave.
"Hello?" I called.
Receiving no answer. I walked closer to the front of the house, the overgrown lawn brushing against my legs. I crept forward, my mind trying to figure out the etiquette of gun usage. Should I wait until he makes a move? Should I pull it out now and let him know I have it? Should I use it to demand an interview? Then, it happened. Like a fucking cartoon character, I stepped on the end of a rake buried in the greenery around my feet. Faster than I could react, the wooden handle smacked me in the face. I heard it knock against my skull as it painfully flattened my lips against my teeth.
I landed on my ass, the gun in my bag forgotten. As I shook my head to try and see if everything was indeed alright inside of it, I saw a brown hand extended in my direction.
"Are you ok?"
I looked up to see a handsome man standing in front of me. His hair was trimmed neatly, tight to his head. He had round eyes, a broad nose, and full lips. If it wasn't for the sunken look of his cheeks and the bags under his eyes, he could have been a model.
I flushed at his offer of aid, wondering just how much of my embarrassment he had seen. I took his hand, and we went inside. After an hour of cajoling, comforting, and assurances, he agreed to let me interview him about Travis Lafferty... as long as I kept his name out of the story. I agreed.
****
Transcript of an interview conducted by Katherine Maddox with an unnamed associate of Travis Lafferty
Katherine Maddox: How did you know Travis Lafferty?
Friend: Me and Travis go way back to like middle school days. We played ball together.
Katherine: What was your impression of Travis?
The friend shrugs his shoulders, looking awkwardly at his hands. We sit across from each other on rickety wooden chairs.
Friend: Impression?
Katherine: What did you think of him? Was he a good friend? Did he have a dark side? Did he like to party? Was he the one person that was actually happy to get Good and Plentys on Halloween? Tell me.
Friend: You're not going to mention my name, right?
Katherine: Come on, man. We went over this. Get real with me.
I can tell I'm coming on a little too strong, but he doesn't call me out on it. Instead, he pauses and thinks.
Friend: Travis was an alright dude. When we were younger, we were pretty tight. Like, if I got in a scrap, he would have my back, and I would do the same for him. He was always sort of better than me. You know, I suppose everyone's got that friend that they're secretly jealous of. He was better looking. Smart. The girls liked him better than me. If it came down to it, he could have stomped my ass. I don't think his parents were too keen on him hanging out with me. Me and my family were never what his pops would consider good people, so he always had that hanging over his head when we were together. But I think that's one of the reasons he liked hanging out with me, because he wasn't supposed to or nothin'.
Katherine: It sounds like his pops...
I wince as the words come out of my mouth. They just don't sound right. From him the words sound natural, but from me, I sound like an obnoxious white person in a Mexican restaurant obscenely rolling her r's when ordering a burrito.
Katherine: ...excuse me, his father had certain expectations for Travis. Did he always live up to those expectations?
Friend: You want the truth?
Katherine: You think I'd be in Detroit if I didn't?
I can see my words offend him, but I let him stew on it.
Friend: Travis was phony as a ten-dollar bill.
I let the butchered saying slide.
Katherine: How so?
Friend: I mean... I wasn't no angel. I ain't gonna lie and pretend like I didn't get into some shit. But Travis, man... he was the worst of us. He took it to a whole 'nother level. He was like a mini-Nino Brown or mini-Scarface.
Katherine: Like how?
Friend: You know how some people are just stupid, so they fuck up all the time?
I nod.
Friend: Well that's me. Whatever I did, I got caught. I ganked a forty, I got caught. I got in a scrap, I paid the price for it. Travis wasn't like that. He wasn't like that at all. If Travis did something, he had a plan, and he got away with it. You know that show he went on?
Katherine: Future Stars...
Friend: Yeah, that one. You know how he got the money for the train ticket to Chicago to audition for that?
Katherine: Mowing lawns?
He laughs now.
Friend: Lady, ain't no one mowed a lawn in this place since I was born.
Katherine: Then how'd he get it?
Friend: He ran them hos.
Katherine: Ran them hos?
Friend: C'mon, get with it, lady. He hustled them bitches. Left and right. Turned half the girls in our senior class into high-rent pussy, and he didn't have no problems about it.
Katherine: Travis Lafferty did this?
Friend: Why you gonna ask me questions, if you ain't gonna believe the answers?
Katherine: How come no one ever said anything?
Friend: Pshh. What are we gonna say? We was all happy for him, and like I said, when Travis did something, he did it well, and there wudn't no way the pigs was ever gonna get him.
He lapses into silence. Then he leans forward conspiratorially.
Friend: Plus, on top of that. One month after Whoa-Town's first record drops, he sends me an envelope. Inside... a fat envelope of cash... and something else.
Katherine: What? What else?
He's not talking now. He gets up, his head cocked to the side, and he walks to a beat-up coffee table sitting amid the other beat up furniture. He opens a drawer set in the middle of the table and pulls out a folded piece of paper. He hands it to me.
****
Yo *********,
I thought you could use a little of this. Thanks for always helping me out with the stable. I probably couldn't have done any of this without you, and I won't forget that. But if you take this money, know that this is the end of us. Our past. The things we done, you can't tell none of that to no one. EVER. If you do, it would be bad for me. And then it would be bad for you... and your ma... and your sister. So keep that in mind.
Peace,
Travis
****
The letter itself is folded, the ink faded. It's been handled perhaps hundreds of times before. I can tell by the dozens of fine wrinkles that it had been balled up at one point. The way Travis' friend puts his hand in his pockets, I know there's some pain there. He looks down. He feels guilt. He could have stopped it all. He has to carry that. But then again, we all could have stopped it at some point.
Katherine: Did you ever tell?
He shakes his head.
Katherine: How many people got these?
Friend: A bunch of his old crew. It was like party central around here for a while thanks to the money. But that dried up, and then we were just secret-holders. Sometimes I was tempted to like go to the news and see if I could sell the story, but I didn't.
Katherine: If you never told, then what happened to your family?
Friend: What are you talking about? Travis was one of us. Everyone around here was listening to that Whoa-Town shit, bunch of dudes rolling around in their lowriders, bouncing to boy band jams. It was ridiculous.
Katherine: But you didn't. You're still here.
Friend: Yeah, well, I knew the real Travis, didn't I? I listened to that first record. It was fake as hell. I saw the video, I saw him dancing up there with those other kids. It made me sick. Add in the threat in the letter, and I didn't want nothing to do with him. But he went and killed them anyway.
Katherine: Do you wish you had told?
Friend: Hell yeah.
He pauses and looks out one of the broken windows.
Friend: But I don't think I ever would've. Even though he sold out, he still made it out. He still gave us something to look at and say, "See. It don't gotta be like this."
He sweeps his eyes around the house for emphasis. It is not lost upon me.
Katherine: Why do you stay?
Friend: I don't know.
I can see the tears gleaming in his eyes, and I know why he's not a fashion model now. He could never hide that hurt from the camera.
Katherine: Thanks for the story.
Friend: I hope it helps.
Katherine: Me too.
Even though it wasn't part of the deal, I slip him some cash anyway. He could use the food.
****
In the car, I look at a picture of Travis Lafferty in full Whoa-Town regalia. His hair is teased out, bleached blonde, it falls in crazy curls. He looks like a Dragonball Z character. His face is run-of-the-mill. Many of the fans of Whoa-Town refer to Travis as the ugly one. He has brown skin, like coffee mixed with cream. He has a large mouth with a toothy smile. He wears clothes that are too big and make no sense. When he moves across the stage in his videos, he billows like a sail catching the wind.
I try to see into his eyes. See if I can spot the cold-hearted bastard in those eyes. See if I can catch a glimpse of the type of man that could turn his classmates into hookers for his own benefit and lie to his preacher father so convincingly that even after everything he has done and everything that has come out about him, he still thinks his son is an angel.
I put the picture down. I don't see it. The guy in the picture looks like a moderately attractive man, and even though Travis was the ugliest member of Whoa-Town, I would wager he still pulled more ass than a proctologist.
Chapter 3: The Expert
I am no expert on boy bands. My musical tastes have always skewed in the direction of the rawer, guitar-fueled cacophony of punk rock. This would save my life. While in the initial days of Whoa-Town's career, I was in high school, and it was an impossible task to ignore hearing something from Whoa-Town, it became easier the deeper I slipped into college. I would listen to my own collection of music, MP3's of savage punk, lovingly gathered by my father, once a drummer for the band Murder Babies, a three-piece garage punk band that knew three chords and had no pretensions about them. Nothing I listened to was available on the radio or on music streaming sites... so I didn't listen to any of them. I don't say this to brag. I'm not being all, "Oh, look how edgy I am. I don't listen to the same music as everyone else." I simply say this to give you some idea of how someone from the most adversely affected demographic survived The Drop.
College itself was difficult for me, and I knew the expense of my education was a burden on my parents. But they promised that sacrifice to me, so I put my head down, and I came out on the other side with a degree in journalism. Meanwhile, everyone around me died.
It was a heavy thought. I put it out of my mind as I pulled up to a tall, two-story building in Aurora, Illinois. The red bricks had faded with age, the mortar between them blackened by the soot of a burning city. Though I knew someone lived in there, the building looked like it had fallen into decay, the way so much of the country had. On the horizon, black, toxic smoke filled the sky. It was Chicago some 40 miles away. The wind must be blowing in off Lake Michigan today. Chicago had a firebug problem. No one had managed to catch the person yet, but every time one of the person's blazes died down, she or he would set a new one. No one lived in Chicago anymore; they were all too damn afraid of going up in flames in the middle of the night.
I pushed on an ancient buzzer, wondering how many fingers had pressed the button before me. Inside, a bell rattled on and on, sounding like it was on its last legs. I heard the clomp of boots downstairs, the squeak of rubber on linoleum, and then the creak of the door's hinges. A face appeared, hideous and covered in wild ginger hair that seemed to want to escape the face it clung to. Behind needlessly narrow glasses, a pair of colorless eyes appraised me.
"Mark Souers?" I asked.
"The one and only," he smiled. I supposed he thought he was being charming. He held out a meaty, fleshy paw to me. I wondered if there were even bones in his hand. His skin was pink like an albino's nipple. We shook, as I suppressed a shiver of revulsion, and I was in.
"I'm so happy you came," he said. His voice was high, almost feminine.
"Me too," I lied. This was all Sebastian's idea.
Sebastian had said, "People love experts, especially weird ones, and you should see this guy's facebook page."
I didn't have the heart to tell him that no one looked at facebook anymore. Most of the social media users had gone the way of the dinosaurs. The dark ages had rats carrying fleas; my generation had social media. One Progenitor on your friends list, and it was all over from there.
"Shall we get down to business?" I asked.
****
Transcript of an interview between Katherine Maddox and Mark Souers, boy band expert
Katherine: You are a self-proclaimed expert on boy bands. Is that correct?
Mark Souers: Yes. A boy-bandologist.
Katherine: Let's forget for a second that that's not a word. What is there to be an expert about? I mean, aren't boy bands, with the one notable exception, just harmless pop music?
Mark smiles at me, his face cracking into a malicious grin. He looks like a cross between a human and a Troll-doll.
Mark: That's just what they want you to think. We know differently now. These bands, boy bands, they thrive on our inability to see them for what they are, which is essentially biological exploitation. You think a boy band is just a group of guys put together who happen to sing songs and play music? Think again. A boy band is a design. It's a well thought out attack on, well, initially, pocketbooks.
Katherine: They're just trying to tap into our wallets.
Mark: Well, that's what it started out as. You see, there have always been groups of singers gathering together to sing. One of our earliest examples of this comes in the form of barbershop quartets. We laugh at them now, but they were essentially boy bands on a very small scale. Even these barbershop quartets were wildly successful at making money.
Katherine: Do you think this whole Whoa-Town thing could have happened with a barbershop quartet?
Mark: I suppose it could have, but it's highly unlikely. You see, in order for a boy band to truly pull off the sheer scope and reach of The Drop, they must attain oversaturation, a key component of The Drop's sheer devastation. Their music must be everywhere. It has to be capable of hitting nonfans when they're standing in line at the grocery store or when they're taking a piss in an airport bathroom. In addition, in order to attain oversaturation, they must have a mystique about them, a sort of angelic sacrosanctity. A barbershop quartet in the 19th century was very likely to lack the mystique needed to attain oversaturation. Though the top quartets might make a solid living, they tended to lose any air of mystery when they're singing their ass off on Friday night, and on Monday they're back in the butcher shop tossing ribeyes to your mom. No, in order for a boy band to truly attain that level of mystique, they must take a hold of their fans, hypnotize them... turn them into worshippers.
Katherine: And how do you do that? How do you take a generic fan and turn them into something more, into a worshipper?
Here Mark smiles, fronds of red mustache hair hanging down over his yellow teeth.
Mark: It's all about the mix.
Katherine: The mix?
Mark: Precisely.
****
An excerpt from Mark Souers' essay "The Right Stuff" about the right "mix" of personalities required to elevate a boy band to phenomenon status.
Some pundits, some scientists, think that Whoa-Town was just some sort of freak accident. They think that Travis, Alec, Naoko, Ashton, and Sterling just happened to be put together. It was fate, right? But we know this as a falsehood. We know with 100% certainty that Rick Reaves, the founder of Revelation Records, the founder of Whoa-Town, had a precise formula that he was following.
Rick Reaves didn't put on the Future Stars of America as some sort of goof. He had a plan. He knew exactly what he was doing and what he wanted. And what he wanted was this... the perfect mix, the perfect flavor to enact his horrid little plan.
The earliest iterations of the boy band phenomenon clung to the following formula: four to five young men, maybe one of which could be considered a boy. Anything less than four and you have a recipe for something like LFO or BBMak. Sure, they had some success, but they didn't come close to world domination. Four to five was the sweet spot as evidenced by NSYNC or The Backstreet Boys, the proto forerunners of Whoa-Town. Having four or five members allows enough variation in band members to reach as many people as possible.
