A New Day in America (25 page)

Nos passes his scope along the San Francisco Bay. Waters break on the island shore, and the city stands in the shadows of mountains. Nos is surprised to see Revelation checkpoints on the Frisco side of the bay.
Shit
, if Revelation has already seized San Fran, getting in would be virtually impossible. His heart sinks, and he sits in exhaustion.

“What did you see?” asks Nay.

“Bad guys. Bad guys where they shouldn’t be.”

“That’s where they always are.”

Nos sees the pegs of the Bay Bridge in the distance. Their only hope is speed. Blow around the Treasure Island outpost into the northern most side of the bay. Then there will be no way past the well-patrolled piers.

Nos sits. Thinks. The boat rocks just beyond the range of the surrounding watchdogs. City debris passes them in the idle waters—dead fish and trash bags rippling in the wind. If he were by himself, he could easily swim beneath the patrolling boats to land. Their Revelation vessel has three wetsuits and oxygen tanks in the trap. The problem is getting Nay across with him.

He watches a black trash bag hover in the whims of the water’s surface and it comes to him. He dives in and swims to the bag before it gets away. Nos swims back to the boat with the trash bag, drying off as the raincloud fog thickens.

They abandon the boat. Nos has shaved himself bald. He’d spent the last two hours tying strings of deer tendon from their riverside hunts together. One end is secured around Naomi’s waist, the other harnessed is around Nos’ shoulders. Nos dives into the deep and unspools the yards and yards of tendon. Naomi hovers in her life vest, strapped to the backpack. A dry pair of clothes is inside, sealed with a plastic bag. Nay’s shoulders and neck stands above the surface, completely covered by the black trash bag, pocked with air holes.

Nos swims in the deep with the amphibious rifle as slow and steady as possible, dragging Nay by the chord so she looks like innocuous water debris gradually drifting along the bay.

As they pass patrol boats Nos turns and swims to the surface, watching the enormous hulls and Naomi’s small legs and hands holding still. Nos reads the course of the boats and drags her by the long chord between. Once they are past the first patrol Nos spots the bottoms of smaller fishing boats. Nos has to avoid the long concrete ceilings of rectangular docks jutting into the water. He swims beneath rows of parked boats, weaving Naomi in and out of their narrow spaces. The waters thicken with green as the shore approaches. Land rises to meet the wooden stakes of piers. Nos ascends beneath the cover of one pier and climbs up the shore. He then pulls his girl to him by her spool. He removes the bag from over her head, and she breathes.

They change their wet clothes under the cover of the pier. Nos slides on his overcoat and loads the amphibious rifle and the disassembled Barrett .50-caliber inside the wetsuit and into the trash bag. There is, however, no chance the stretched and hole-ridden plastic could hold all that weight. He also doesn’t want to abandon the oxygen tanks—those could come in handy again.

He shoves the bag in the small nook where the pier meets the ground and builds a wall of seaweed. Should cover it for now, but he will have to come back before the tide rises.

The water dries like a layer of sweat beneath their clothes. They climb to the top of the pier and walk inland toward the promenade. Nos takes out the Motorola that Westbrook had given him and Leila back at Fort Dan. He scrolls through different frequencies that chirp with conversations.
Delivery to Southern Pacific. Vigil at Christ the Savior
. He dials onto Leila’s frequency. “Ghostface Killah, come in. This is the Wolf and Cub. Come in.” The radio is silent.
Long shot. San Fran is a big place. Who knows if she even made it out of the hospital?

Something tells Nos that she had.
She’s a survivor, that one
.

Nos strolls along a red brick alley on 3
^rd
Street, holding Naomi’s hand. They have to blink to adjust to the sun and culture shock. They have spent days alone on the river, living off fiddleheads, morels, wild leeks, and a deer Nos had hunted. The days were long and boring. They would play during their morning swims and then go all day without talking. Naomi would doodle a drawing of three waves with sticks in the wet dirt.
Even when we’re on ground, she sees the river
.

The city has more people than they’ve seen in a while. The afternoon is drowsy with bums on Howard Street, black-suited Hasidim, plaster-stained construction workers, and women watching from second-story windows. An outdoor market buzzes with folks selling simple goods. Some sell guns: AK 47s and semiautomatic Glock 9s. A pastor outside a church shakes hands with a crowded congregation. A few of them sing:
The rapture is getting close, God is shutting the door, tick tock, tick tock, tick tock
. One wears a T-shirt:

They wander back to 3
^rd
Street that evening. An orange awning reads
Grace Hotel
, torn from its skeleton like flesh from the bone. A paranoid Asian in an out-of-place ascot sits at the desk in front of rows of dangling keys.

“No rooms,” he snaps.

Nos tries to imagine what they look like to the proprietor: the layer of bay water on their skin, the residue of wilderness on their clothes, the gradual blending with the countryside until they resembled the colors in which they traveled—the wild, hungry look on Nay’s face, his own bearing, like a mercenary.

“No rooms,” he repeats.

Nos takes his wad of bills and begins piling them on the counter.

“Those keys behind you suggest otherwise. We’d like a room on the ground floor, please.”

The cot is firm, and Nos lays face up as Nay sleeps in the crook of his arm. The feel of the river still courses through them. They are clean and dry. Nos longs for the water. They are so close to the end of land. He knows the Pacific rumbles in the distance, though he can’t hear it.

***

In the morning they walk north toward the Port of San Francisco. Nay watches the blurred city as she awakes and yawns. They pass a patchwork of colors below: some neighborhoods are flat and gray, some are green with small gardens beside re-bricked homes with windmills and solar panels. Where the neighborhoods flourish, men and women busily work their gardens in sandals and Crocs, wearing hemp sweaters. Where the neighborhoods are ruined, underworld hustlers have swagger. On one corner, a pair of cureheads tell one another ‘good night’ and go their separate ways. It’s about noon.

They see no Revelation presence until the seaside port. Revelation checkpoints line China Beach before huge ships, as families line up in mass with their lives packed away in overstuffed suitcases. Some look to hustle trinkets overseas where they can get more value. Some look to relocate for good and bid good-bye to their homeland. All head for Asia.

The line spills from the mouth of a huge municipal building. Revelation Guards stalk alongside the travelers with heavy artillery and hard eyes.

Nos and Nay double back toward the hotel.
We’re wandering. Getting nowhere fast
. He’d talked up a couple guys who were showing rashes so bad they couldn’t hide them: one on his wrist, the other on his neck like Nay. He asked about the Chef, but they didn’t know anything, or hadn’t said if they did. He didn’t bother asking them about a cure: if they knew about it, they wouldn’t be so blatantly sick. Nos works his Motorola radio to Leila’s frequency with no luck.

They pass a group of a dozen Hasidim in a circle beating down some poor soul on the sidewalk. Their black robes lift and wave as they stomp. A police car comes the wrong way down a one-way street with sirens blazing. Nos is impressed—there are real cops in Frisco. Then three more Hasidim jump out of the police car and join in the beat down.

They walk until they see no more Hasidim. They’re in a run down neighborhood when Nos sees it.

Another police vehicle is parked carelessly in the street. He can’t believe his eyes. A van. Not SFPD. NYPD.

Same plates. Dirty and beat down as all New York.

Leila
. She made it.

The van is parked outside of a bar called The Bottom.
When the river is blocked, try the sewer
. He’d tried Leila on the Motorola radio, but still no luck. It’s evening out on the street but feels like three o’clock in the morning in the bar. Eyes scan the father and daughter and return to their idle business. Nos steps in and sees gangsters in booths with their backs to the wall, sipping clear moonshine from snifters with guns on the table.

He sits at the bar, content to wait. Nay sits on the stool behind him, looking exhausted. She doesn’t belong there. Can’t be helped.

He needs a drink. Can’t be helped.

“Double Jamison and a Shirley Temple,” Nos tells the bartender.

“All we got is moonshine,” says the bartender. “You want one or two?”

“Make it two. For me.”

A group of four loud black men walk into the bar behind him. They talk of last night’s fights and last week’s girls and P90 stand-offs. They wear bubble-coats that could hide anything from Teflon vests to mini-Uzi’s, with slim jeans with bright platinum sneakers that seem impervious to the dirty city. The Decepticon face from the old franchise toy line is etched on the backs of their coats. A shudder runs through the bar as Nos leans back with his arms folded and his chin tucked. Naomi doesn’t make a sound.

They talk as if in their living room, until some unseen signal and they shut up, sinister eyes scanning the patrons. They begin to snap noises from their teeth and cheeks—
chit—chit—chic—chit—chitchi
.

The old Transformers sounds
. Nos remembers the noise from the harmless cartoon, but the way the syllables hiss from the gang’s mouths is a dangerous signal. Within moments everyone in the bar has finished their drinks and grabbed their guns and cleared out. Some drinks are half full. Nos and Naomi sit, sipping.

The four Decepticons laugh until they see Nos and Nay. One crooks his eyebrow down in an incredulous smirk.

“Yo, who dis?”

“Yeah homie, get the fuck out,” chimes another.

The other two stand behind them, but seem slightly more hesitant.

Nos is motionless, his eyes nowhere and everywhere.

Four of them.
Street amateurs
.

“Damn, homie is shook—daddy—can’t even move.”

“Don’t piss yourself.”

“How much we could get for the little ‘un?”

“Cop that AR 15 with shell-catchers—been dreaming ‘bout that bad girl.”

One of the kids pulls a gun on Nos.

“You fixin’ to die tonight?”

“Don’t think so,” says Nos, sipping his drink. “Evening seems a bit too ordinary.”

The Decepticons pause and then start laughing.

“Ballsy motherfucker.”

“Little girl, too.”

Naomi sits and imitates her Pa with her legs dangling from the stool.

“Shit—you see how everybody else in here just cleared the fuck out?”

“I did.”

“Why you suppose they did that?”

“Because they’re scared of you,” Nos suggests.

“You don’t think they might be scared for a reason?”

“I’m sure they are.”

“Cause they know—whether they got a kid or not, I’ll fuckin’ erase ‘em.”

“Sounds like
their
problem.”

The kid in charge cocks his gun. “Fuck this dude.”

“Chill, I got some ass lined up tonight.”

“So? Who the fuck is he? I ain’t backing down from nobody, specially some corny motherfuckin’ bum and his skinny-ass little girl.”

“Shut the fuck up, Blaze.”

“Fuck you, Ray!” Blaze shoots back with a fierce stare, made even fiercer with half of his head shaved, the other half in rows.

“That AR15 is old news,” says Nos. “I have a ASM-DT Amphibious Assault Rifle, Omnicorp Special Ops. And I’m looking to make a deal.”

Backing down from a standoff seemed to disagree with something deep inside Blaze, even when confronted with the obscene street value of the ASM-DT. But, business first, he did the smart thing. The party of six crossed the street: four hardened and invincible street soldiers and the morose giant and the quiet, wild-eyed little girl.

“Big man, tell your girl to stop giving me that spooky look,” says Blaze.

“Tell her yourself.”

“Shorty, quit lookin’ at me like that, man.”

“I like your hair,” she says.

The three laugh.

“Can I touch it?”

Blaze grins and nods. Nos picks her up and Nay runs her fingers across Blaze’s close buzz to the knotty ropes on his head.

“You a little ride-or-die chick, ain’t ya?” Blaze smiles.

Naomi tilts her bashful head and bats her eyes.
Odd time to figure out how to flirt
.

They pass the NYPD van in the degenerate streets, with corner crews calling in conversation across the sidewalks. The Decepticons seem to know every last kid and addict on the block. Some they give quiet nods and pounds, some they cut down and call fags. All they pass know their names and blurt them out with respect.

On the other side of the street is a shop with a black awning and the white silhouette of a man’s lion face in an emblem that reads
Big Jaz Tattoo
.

“Wait out here,” Blaze tells them.

They stand on the corner watching a man doing pull-ups on the pegs of a frozen
Don’t Walk
sign.

Blaze comes back out and the man that must be Jaz follows. He’s a good three hundred pounds with a beer belly that looks hard as iron. Unlike the picture on the awning, he has no dreadlocks, his head is shaved bald, and his small, mathematical eyes dart from Nos to Naomi. As Jaz breathes, he makes an oxygen-deprived sound that makes everyone helplessly breathe in and out with him. He wears faded workman pants with heavy keys hooked by chain to his belt loop and a T-shirt with his own dread-lock logo. Blaze looks frustrated: his catch taken by the bigger fisherman.