A New Day in America (5 page)

The landmark is another barrier. He gets off the bike and climbs the rubble. When he gets a decent foothold it seems like he can see forever. Where one could never hope to see the FDR, Nos can see to the highway at a glance. It’s gone, like the Queensboro Bridge behind it. Standing on the Chrysler building roof, Nos can see to Queens. Nos thinks this might be as far as they can go.
There’s no way the West Side Highway still stands
.

What now?

Nos is at a loss. They shouldn’t be heading deeper into the city. The country makes way more sense, anywhere without buildings, without underground subways and sewers to flood, without being surrounded by water. It has never been so clear how much an island Manhattan is. There’s no telling how much of the country is intact, whether the attack was just on New York or if the whole country was ruthlessly bombed. No one answered any of Nos’ short wave radio calls. No one ever came to Manhattan’s rescue, thanks to either the bombs or the disease. The rest of the country can’t be in much better shape, but there is only one way to find out. He has wheels and some fuel. They could be miles from New York by now. Instead they are battling the wreckage based on a rumor. Jake is an unreliable source of intel at best.
Incest
, Nos snorts.
Think I’d prefer a murderer
.

But there is little else to go on. Some rumor is better than no rumor at all. There
is
no intel, no
people
. Barely, anyway. The clowns gave him hope. They weren’t wearing gas masks. He hopes they can at least find another lead. He hopes Nay has time.

Tires roll up behind him with swirling lights—red lights this time, police lights. An NYPD van stops, blocking their way. A cop sits in the driver’s seat wearing mirrored aviator glasses.

No gasmask.

Nos hurries back down the mound heap.

The cop steps out of the van in boots and blues. He struts toward them with his hand on his piece. His tan dark skin is gaunt and emaciated.

“Hello there,” Nos calls as he steps in front of Naomi and the bike.

“This area is restricted,” he says, the tendons in his neck flaring.

“I wasn’t aware,” says Nos, confused.
Who is there to restrict anything
?

“Where are you headed?” he orders.

“North.”

“What’s in the pack?”

“Supplies.”

The cop eyes the pieces of the dismantled rifle. “Hand me that pack, sir.” Everything he says sounds like an order.

“By what authority?” asks Nos.

“The
NYPD
,” he barks, like Nos is the idiot.

“NYPD,” Nos repeats, like he just said
the tooth fairy
. “Shit, you got a big cleanup on your hands.”

The cop draws his gun and holds it on Nos. “Hand over the pack, now!”

“You don’t need my pack, you need a broom.”

The cop turns his gun to Naomi. Nos is surprised.
He’s off—way off
. So desperate.
Better play it cool. You got your baby girl with you
.

“Off the bike!” The cop cocks his six-shooter. “Now!”

Nos’ eyes are trained on the cop, on every flicker of his bloodshot eyes and every twitch of his pulsing hands. He remembers Naomi and the biker. They got to her. He did not protect the hostage. Mission fail.
Thinking like a father, not a Delta Force Operator
.

He lifts Naomi and holds her to his chest and turns, shielding her with his back.

“The pack,” the cop demands, holding out his hand.

Nos unties the rucksack from the rear of the bike and hands it over. The sack is heavy, maybe fifty pounds. The cop takes hold and its weight pulls him off balance.

Nos snatches his wrist and twists the gun away. The cop drops the bag and jacks Nos in his face. Nos pries the gun from his hand. The punch was nothing. He could eat those all day.

Nos tosses the gun and cold cocks him. A right cross—slams the cop on the hard concrete.

Nos sets Naomi down and follows up. Kicks him in the ribs. Nos falls on him and cranks his forearm under his chin, lifting his face up and away from the ground, as he drives his knee into his back.

The cop wheezes. His face turns red. Purple.

“Speak,” says Nos, calm. “Before I choke the life out of you.”

“I’m inoculated,” the cop gasps.

“Inoculated? How? Where?”

“A shot,” he says, and Nos loosens the choke. “A doctor. A doctor. Please, let go.”

“Where?”

“The park. Central Park, they set up tents, inoculations, medicine, please…”

“The way is blocked—how the fuck am I supposed to get there?”

“Broadway… the trains, the water, the trains…”

Nos gets close to his ear and speaks softly so Nay can’t hear. “If you’re lying, I’ll find you and put a bullet in your head.”

Nos tightens his vice grip, turning his wrist into the cop’s neck until he goes completely limp.

Nos lets go and the cop collapses to the ground like letting go a marionette. Nay watches. Nos strips the man and sees the track marks of some ghastly-sized needle. Nay watches as he pulls the keys from the blue uniform pants and yanks the boots from the cop’s feet and loads them all into the van. He rolls the motorcycle and lifts it into the back.

He puts Nay in the front seat and they leave the man naked in the cold.

Courtesy, Professionalism, Respect
, it says on the side of the police van.
CPR
. Reverse the letters, Nos always thought, makes
CRP
. Sounds like ‘
corrupt’
to him.

Driving always makes Nos want to smoke—impossible as long as the mask is on his face. He heads back down a ways until he can make it West over to Broadway. Seems there is a narrow river way that travels uptown, above the N,R subway line.

He drives into the wreckage of the city as far as he can before a crisscross of support beams and rubble blocks his progress. He takes Naomi out of her seat and begins to pile rubble on top of the van—laying beams across the hood and bricks on the roof and covering the windows with handfuls of dust like a sniper in a gilly suit. He picks Naomi up in the crook of his arm and takes a few steps back to look at his work. The van is invisible.

They head uptown on foot. Their passage narrows through the walls of demolition. They’re forced to walk in the water. Nos picks Nay up and carries her so she doesn’t soak her feet.

As they plow through the muck, the slosh and slip of his boots drown out all the noise. Nos periodically stops and waits for the noise to die. He listens. They are on someone else’s turf. The cop made that clear.

These supposed medical units in the park might be a setup. No way to know.
Since Black Sun, everyone is a scavenger
. Nothing would be free—
especially not medicine
. Yet the clowns and that cop weren’t wearing gas masks. They are either inoculated, or the disease is no longer a threat.

Maybe the threat has passed. Maybe Nay isn’t sick
. Nos could taste the relief like a sip of cold water in an Afghan summer.
Maybe she’s OK
.

The water is frozen at the edges, crunching as they walk. The walls of Central Park are up ahead. More than anything he’s seen in the city, the wall looks as it did before the devastation. Each rectangular stone is piled neatly on top of one another like loaves of baked bread.

“The park,” says Nay.

Memories of the park stir him. Leaves falling on Autumn walks, the
ffthunk
of a baseball into a mitt, sweet grilling BBQ sauce, Labradors running, South Americans and West Indians playing pickup
futbol
. He slams the unwanted thoughts out of his mind like a shell casing from a chamber.

The ground is cold. The trees are black and shriveled. Nay is getting heavy, but he can’t notice that. He’s used to one-hundred-pound-plus-rucksacks-plus-communications gear. This is a surveillance and recon mission. If he’s done one, he’s done a thousand.
Only never with a six-year-old girl as a teammate
.

The ground looks trampled. Nos shuffles away from the patch up toward the bushy high ground and takes out his scope.

It’s getting dark. Nos dials the Leupold 10-power scope in at five hundred yards, scanning for light or movement. Six hundred yards. Seven hundred. Eight.
Nothing
.

He makes a mental note of a spot overlooking a pond that looks safe enough. He takes Nay by the hand, and they head back to the path.

“Where are we going?” she asks.

Nos points. “There’s a little pond up ahead and a hill up over it.”

Naomi looks where he points. “I don’t see no pond.”

“You don’t see
a
pond?”

“I don’t see
a
pond.”

“Right. I saw it with my scope,” he tells her. “We can go up there and see even further into the park. Call it ‘Waypoint One.’”

“Waypoint One.”

“Right. We’ll go up there and be very quiet, very careful. There could be more bad guys anywhere. We don’t want anyone to see us before we see them.”

Nay nods emphatically. “I’ll be quiet.”

“As long as we’re quiet and careful, nobody can get us.”

She nods again.

They make way, waypoint by waypoint, through Central Park. They see people come and go, but no one sees them. He sees cops and civilians. Everyone looks run-down and ragged. They are all either going to or heading from Belvedere Castle.

Nos sees it from across a wide, marshy lake. Green algae skims the water and settles at a bank of large rocks. The castle stands on top of those rocks at the highest point in the park. One tall tower stands above. Another tower plateaus beneath and another, wider tower plateaus beneath that, leading down to the flat cobblestone ground. Two black lampposts out front make strange shadows.

Four big white tents bearing a Red Cross shudder in the breeze. Silhouettes sit and stir inside.

“Looks OK,” he tells Nay.

They climb the hill to the castle, and two cops stand in front of the tents with hands on sidepieces. Behind them Nos can now see the two lampposts clearly.

On top of each post are two severed heads. The faces are painted in clown make-up.

Severed heads.

Shit
.

What now?

He looks at the cops. They wear blues, caps, and boots, but who knows whether they were even cops. The days of entrance exams and two-year college requirements are long gone.
Anyone can get a uniform. And these barely fit
.

His knife is tucked beneath his pant leg, his sidepiece under one arm and his daughter in the other. The cops in the security shack spot him and open the door. They are thin. Their skin is yellow and malnourished. One has loose hound-dog cheeks.

“What brings you?” asks the hound dog.

“Nice day outside,” says Nos through his mask. “Be nice to feel it.”

“You want the cure,” says the other.

“And inoculation,” says Nos. “I hear this is the place.”

“Five hundred,” says the hound dog, eyeing Nos.

The cops examine Nos as if they could read his monetary value from the way he breathes in his mask.

Nos nods, figuring the man standing guard isn’t the man to negotiate with. That man is likely inside.

The hound dog flicks his head.

The hound dog turns and gives a thumbs-up to two men in the towers above. He leads them to one of the tents and opens a flap. They step inside and are overcome by the smell and heat of sick people waiting on benches, fidgeting like pigeons in a coop. Armed police guards strut about in yellow goggles.

They follow the guard outside the back of the tent and into the tower room. A toothless man passes them, breathing heavily. He walks with a heavy lurch and seems in way too good a mood.

Naomi turns to Nos. “Gollum,” she whispers. The creature from the
Lord of the Rings
always gave Naomi the creeps.

“Makes sense,” says Nos. “We’re in Mordor.”

A guard steps into the door.

“Inoculation,” he announces.

The castle room is completely covered in plastic. A plump blond man with a thin mustache sits on a stool in the back. He is the healthiest man Nos has seen in a year. He’s fat but strong like a bear. He wears a white T-shirt under a Kevlar vest with an NYPD badge chained around his neck. He twirls a handgun around wide brawler knuckles.

Two guards hold the walls, and a man in a white lab coat and latex gloves plays with vials and syringes beside a sink.

“Inoculation?” asks the blond man on the stool.

Nos nods. “My daughter,” he says, “I think she may have caught…it,” he says, glancing at Nay to see if she registers his words.

She’s just staring off out the window. Inconclusive
.

“Have you seen a
rash
?” the doctor asks. “The rash? Reddish white, like an infected cut?”

“No. Though she was exposed,” says Nos. “A man with the rash took her mask off, touched her.”

“We’ll have a look. You can take your masks off here.”

Nos peels the mask from Naomi’s face, then his own. Both are red from the tight straps. Breathing feels amazing.

“Search them,” the blond man orders.

One guard holds them at his rifle point as the other approaches Nos. Nos has about a foot and forty-five some-odd pounds on the guy.

“Turn around, please,” says the guard.

Nos doesn’t budge.

“This is just how it works, brudah,” says the blond in a thick Brooklyn accent. “Best you go along, Mister…”

“Sergeant Greene.”

The blond man’s blue eyes flicker. “You were a cop?”

“Military.”

“Marine?”

“Army,” Nos pauses, unsure how much to reveal.

The man nods. “Rank?”

“Petty Officer, First Class.”

“Pleased to meet you, Sergeant Greene. I’m Lieutenant Romo. If you could just give up the gun, it’s a safety precaution.”

“I respect your caution, Lieutenant. And I respectfully decline to surrender my firearm,” says Nos.