by Ginger Booth
Then a runner from Kat caught Frosty still in the alley.
At the 7W corpse barricade, Kat did not like what she was seeing. She’d been leading the defense at the cars at 6E against Hip Hop, but trotted to this end of the block when a runner reported the Caudillos stirring. In the pitch dark, with drizzle turning to rain, there should be no one out here except a few coughing sentries in ponchos. Instead, it was hard to be certain in the dark, but it looked like tens gathering, possibly hundreds. The Caudillos were a bigger outfit than Hip Hop.
“Eyes front,” she warned PMS and Hairy Whores, two of her steadier teams, nearly 50 girls here. “Light it!”
A 14-year-old behind them set a trashcan ablaze, where it would screw with the enemy’s vision instead of their own. The glow took a few moments to clear the top of the barrel, but Kat saw enough in the first two seconds.
“Three runners!” she demanded. Two came promptly enough, but no one was prepared to supply a third. “You two, to 6E, and Jake. Expect Caudillo attack any minute at 7W. I’m staying here. Need reinforcements. Go.”
The third girl presented herself, looking grim, as the first two sped away. “Yours is complicated. Get to Butch and tell her I think Caudillo and Hip Hop will hit us from both ends of home block. She’ll send you on to Panic, to tell her. Then to Frosty’s position on 25th. Be sure and stop on the way. Got it?”
“Um, where’s Butch?”
Dammit. If Kat was right, she didn’t have time for this. “Who knows where Butch is?” An older girl admitted she did. “You’re now my runner. This one can tell you the message along the way.”
Once they sped off, Kat turned to the problem at hand. The co-captains in place would have to hold at 6E, because no one else could bail out 7W in time. The other barrier had twice as many defenders as she had here. The queen couldn’t leave. She stepped to Fuckette, one of the Hairy co-captains. “Start pouring the fuel oil. We’re on our own.” She winced mentally. Wrong thing to say. “But we can do this. Douse the can!”
27
March 4, E-day plus 86
Frosty listened to the runner gasp out her tale of woe from 7W, and Kat’s urgent plea for reinforcement against the Caudillos. He glanced at the girl Butch selected to send to Panic, held up to hear what the older runner had to say.
Several demanded what he wanted them to do. He held his fist up for Stop, making them shut up for a moment and let him think. He had forces at hand to deploy, none of them strong. He had options, none of them a clear winner.
He could send a runner to Pomelo begging for help at 7W while he hustled to 6E, his current goal. But he still had no reason to believe this Pomelo would alter his plans for the morning, even if a runner could locate him.
He could fly message flags from his ammo dump building. One of the codes conveyed that the Tigers were under attack from 7th Avenue. But like Pomelo, who on 6th Avenue, seeing that message, would break off and run to 7W? Few could even interpret the flags.
Redeploying Panic’s forces was a clear choice. Blocking transit between 24th and 25th Street was moot now. She could redeploy to either 6E or 7W, but the older girls didn’t obey her too well unless Kat backed her. He placed a hand on the head of Butch’s runner. “You stay here. Clawdie,” this was Kat’s runner, “cross to Panic’s position and tell her to reinforce Kat at 7W, my orders. Abandon the north side of 24th. Follow Panic’s orders from there. Go.”
The other question was where to place himself and his guys. He’d intended to reinforce 6E against Hip Hop from the inside. But was 7W a better idea? What would they do once they got there? If he went to 6E, he’d suddenly be ‘in charge’ of defending Kat’s position. He doubted he had any better ideas than the people who’d spent a week thinking it through. This struck him as a recipe for losing face, while gaining little in return.
They needed to win at 6E. Then all sorts of reinforcements could shift to trounce the Caudillos. He hoped.
So he should go to 6E and do what, climb a building and shoot – yes! He even had an ammo dump. The reason they hadn’t capitalized on that route was lack of ammo. But the entire 23rd-to-24th block on their side of the avenue was short buildings, 4 or 5 stories, nearly the same height with abutting roofs.
Frosty’s mouth began issuing orders before he’d even finished thinking it through. “Leave the ammo here, and the spare rifles. Butch, send that with Panic to 7W. Or send it to 7W now, you choose. Guys, we’re headed to the ammo dump, to shoot Hip Hops from above. Let’s go!”
Ava definitely needed another pair of sneakers after today. She carefully crunched through the broken plate glass of a one-time grocery store, Southeast Asian. The place was stripped to the drywall, of course, broken empty shelves strewn on the floor.
She could think of more interesting things to do. When she arrived, she promptly ordered Zoey and one of the other girls to sort the ammo and deal it out. With Kat and Fuckette and Hangnail, she brainstormed possibilities.
Unlike Hip Hop, the Caudillos didn’t colonize 7th Avenue itself, just a couple sunny buildings, and along the next block of 23rd, for the same reason the White Tigers did – warming sun. This intersection was the southeast corner of their turf, which ran from 23rd to 24th, 7th to 8th Avenue. Neither gang held the intersection. The Caudillo barricade, a couple city buses on their sides with shorter ramparts behind, bulged outward into the intersection for visibility. Facing off across the avenue, the Water Tiger’s much-burned corpse piles were repulsive and hard to climb. The sidewalks were left clear, bottlenecks easy to defend.
In theory, the burned-out mid-rise across the street had a commanding position, but Ava couldn’t send children into there. The structure wasn’t sound after the fire. The 23rd Street subway station was intriguing, leading behind the Caudillo lines. But this position had no offensive teams, so for now the subway stairs were another bottleneck, ringed with armed girls.
And for Ava’s troops, it was back to flinging stoneware. She consoled herself that stopping a runner was eminently worthwhile. Because the Caudillos weren’t moving yet.
Ava wished she dared to use a light. But she’d ordered the children to stay dark at this location. They weren’t hiding in a back alley. This was a small 4-story with windows overlooking 23rd and 7th. Any light would be seen, warn people below of their presence, and invite heavy fire. And with middle-schoolers, she knew better than to play ‘do what I say, not what I do.’ She needed to walk the talk. Though in this case, no one could see her.
She placed a hand on the far wall. By distance, she’d crossed the diminutive building, the minimal standard footprint established by miserly Knickerbockers before the American Revolution. By distance, this was either the staircase allowing access up for the tenants, or the firewall to the next building. Judging by the 23rd Street face, she was pretty sure it was a staircase down to 7th Avenue. Trailing her fingers along, she nearly smashed her nose on a jutting corner. OK, that was the staircase stack. She felt up the corner. Basement access. Cool. A dry sponge mop lurked in the corner – even better.
She waded forward into higher-density plate glass, pushing it out of her path with the mop. A little more light showed here, stray photons from a Caribbean trashcan fire. So she saw that there was no access directly to the staircase from inside. The tenants had a separate door.
But if there were a door, it would go here. She bunched her fist back into her coat for padding and tried punching the wall. Lovely, her fist went right through. She tore sideways and found studs right and left, about two feet apart. In a few minutes, she tore a hole big enough to pass through to the mailboxes, and started up the steps.
“I’m at the stairs,” she called back softly. “Follow to here.” Germy could handle that.
“Who’s there!” a guy called down, not enough words to discern accent or age. Not that it mattered, Ava supposed.
“Excuse me, sir, I’m scared,” she quavered upward. “Please let me hide!” She scampered to the second floor. “I’m so scared.”
>
“Don’t hide here! You’ll lead them to me!”
Oh, just an adult. “Screw you, too. Cause us trouble and I’ll kill you.”
A bolt shot home on the door to the left. Ava kicked the door in and rushed him, knocking him to the floor. This was a big deal for adults. They didn’t know how to fall. He mewled about his wrist.
“Did you understand? Say a word, or trouble my kids, and you die. I promise you that. Stay away from the windows, too. The black guys are likely to start shooting at you real soon now.” Meanwhile she patted around but found no weaponry, and hadn’t heard any metal fall. If he possessed a gun or intent, he would have reached for it. Safe.
“I’m a black guy!” He didn’t sound it.
But he’d already exceeded Ava’s interest quotient. “Good for you.” Passive adults might as well be furniture. She kicked open the other apartment on this level, then paused again. The past few months had done wonders for developing her other senses. Rat-hunting especially rewarded her ears and nose. Gleaning, one mastered navigation by feel, by ear, by smell, and that little extra sense of being watched. Somehow she could feel another being’s attention on her, raising her hackles.
The unwashed male who ate curry powder was not this guy. Third floor.
She padded silently up a few steps, then one creaked. So she gave up sneaking and ran full out to the third floor, facing 7th, and kicked the door in. She immediately ducked and rolled in, as a bullet whizzed overhead. Arriving in a cramped living room, her momentum knocked the shooter on his ass, hitting a corner of a coffee table. Ava took advantage of this painful misfortune to kick his gun hand full force, hearing the weapon skitter out of his reach.
Men were so predictable. He lunged for it as she jumped onto his stretching back, landing hard on both feet, then kicking his head as a bonus. He tried to roll over, flailing at her feet. She grabbed his hands and yanked him up to standing, probably the last thing he expected. But she used his momentum to throw him out the window.
Also likely not what he was expecting.
Keeping low in case of reprisals, she scurried out, kicked in another apartment door, and hustled to do the same on the vacant fourth floor.
The staircase didn’t continue to the roof. One of the common alternatives was a ladder with a pull-cord. She positioned herself at the usual spot for this, at the railing end of the staircase, and waved her arm over her head, to send the bobble on string’s end careening to bop her on the forehead. She caught it by the string and started hauling down, to a screech of protesting metal and a rain of musty flakes of rust. But at least it came down.
Playing muscle-man to a bunch of kids was doing weird things to her 5’1” body self-image. She relished being the big tough.
And if there were any other people in this building, she would have smelled and heard from them by now. She could hear the kids taking position on the third floor. “Only a third of you down there,” she called softly down the stairwell.
She clambered up the ladder to impress herself yet again with her mechanical ingenuity and brute strength in forcing the balky hatch open. There was a roof garden up here, for intensive vegetable growing. Outstanding! She made a note to come back and check it out. All fallow for winter, of course, asleep through the freezes.
She stepped over and gazed down on the intersection. Caudillos still milled below on the avenue, with maybe 60 behind their buses, doing not much. She watched and studied their patterns for a bit, harder to see from Kat’s position. Ava’s theory was that they waited for word of the Hip Hops breaking through, then they’d attack, a risk-averse sort of ally. Kat agreed that made sense, but they didn’t know, so it didn’t make any practical difference. Now, none of them seemed interested in whatever they heard from this building. The guy she dumped to the pavement wasn’t moving. The rain was turning to snow in big slushy clumps.
Germy’s voice drifted up the staircase. “Throw now?”
“Not yet.” Ava started clambering down the ladder, securing the hatch closed along the way. “Don’t use the roof. Which apartment is the gardener?” Germy too could use his nose.
“Left, 23rd.”
“Check with me before you throw anything. Unless it’s a runner. Hurl everything you’ve got at a runner.”
Ava amused herself by finding the seed storage. She sorted through packets by the feel of the seeds. Funny how much she remembered. She and Deda hadn’t kept a vegetable patch since Austin when she was 11. But each seed family was distinctive. Ooh, sunflower! Cucumber or squash? Cucumber! Tomato or pepper? Doesn’t matter, can’t grow either. New York didn’t offer a long enough growing season for subtropical veggies unless she had a toasty greenhouse to grow the transplants knee-high. Or who knew, maybe they used to grow young tomato plants in Georgia and truck them north. What she hungered for were the slivers of lettuce seed, and the cabbage family, round like tiny BBs, kidney-shaped beans, wrinkled hard peas, the flat smooth teardrops of cucumbers, and kernel corn. She found them.
A crash of plates broke her reverie. She stashed a wad of seed packets into an inside pocket, shoved the rest to the rear of a top cabinet, and got back to business, down the stairs to visit the grownup’s apartment. She ignored him and strode straight to the window, listening between the crash of plates. His window insulation really sucked, because she could hear conversation below. But she couldn’t make out the words.
“Must they play Barbies?” he complained.
Ava snickered. The kids regressed under strain. The boys already fled to the fourth floor in protest as the girls staged inane family squabbles and dumb dates with their dolls. “Apparently so.” But they were quiet now, back on alert.
She left him and tiptoed down the staircase, settling to a seat in deep shadow a few steps up. Yes, the guys outside were talking about the attack on 6E, standing out of the gently falling snowballs in the next doorway up 7th.
Eavesdropping took patience. So did catching rats for supper.
Got it. She was half right. The Caudillos waited on the end of battle against the Hip Hops. But they would attack whether the Hoppers won or lost. Not allies, then, merely opportunists.
She slipped out and sent a runner, one of hers, to tell 6E, then told Kat and the other captains here at 7W.
By then, Chancy had caught up, and Ava sent her to take a turn enduring the Barbies. Ava trailed Kat, seeking yet again to master by osmosis how she dealt with an older and meaner class of girl. Another 15 minutes persuaded her she liked PMS better than the Hairy Whores, and really preferred boys over either.
Then her head whiplashed as a thunder approached of guys running from the dojo. Frosty and Maz were in the lead, beside a Puerto Rican guy. This one bore serious tattoos and several ounces of steel pierced through ears and face. He wore a tactical vest clanking with ammo. “Make way!”
She and Kat backed up, and Frosty thundered straight past her into the subway, his mixed band pouring down the stairs after him.
28
March 4, E-day plus 86
Not long before, Frosty and Maz emerged onto the roof of the armory at 24th and 6th Avenue, and stayed low. They’d just arrived from Butch’s position in the alley.
“Wait til we’re on the next roof,” he breathed to Hotwire, behind him on the stairs, leading up the rest of their team. These roofs were highly unlikely to be vacant.
And that was fine. They were here to kill Hip Hops. Sure enough, one turned at his voice while his companion was too intent on his sniping at Tigers below. Maz tackled the shooter first at the knees, who screamed briefly as he fell to the avenue.
Delayed by chatting as he so often was, Frosty caught up and side-kicked the other over the edge. And that was roof one. The next was taller. The best friends hopped up a chest-high wall to reach it. But the next two equally small roofs offered no resistance. Frosty crooned his best two-note mournful pigeon call to get his team’s attention. Intent on their shooting, only one caught his wave, but he brought the others forward.
The next roof was larger than the previous three combined. Maz jogged ahead again. Frosty grabbed him as he teetered and almost fell into a yawning gap. The upper floors here had a block C shape, a chunk missing from the middle on the avenue side, apartment windows staring into each other across the void. The far lobe was the one overlooking the cars of the 6E barricade.
“Here?” Frosty breathed. His ears told him there were at least four Hoppers ahead, firing straight down. They’d have to be truly crappy shots if they weren’t killing his girls right now, because their position was superb.
In answer, Maz rose and traced the cutout section in the deep dark, finding a way around it first. Frosty followed silently, still trusting his ears and Maz, his newly claimed rifle clamped in an armpit to keep silent. Maz found the end of the cutout, and continued following its inner lip, while Frosty grew increasingly impatient. By now, closer, with his eyes fully trained on pitch black, he could see the outlines of murdering Hoppers ahead. Every shot they got off could be killing one of his kids – and these days, a bullet injury was as good as a kill shot. It just took longer to die.
But Maz kept going until he found the far edge. Only then did he step sideways away from the edge, drawing Frosty beside him, away from the interior chasm. “Now. I’m left.”
They brought their rifles up and executed three Hoppers with two short bursts. Standing at the edge to shoot straight below, they fell over the little safety parapet. For whatever reason, the fourth fell to the roof instead of overboard. One of his, Maz cautiously walked forward toward the scrabbling noises and gave him another burst. He crouched to relieve the Hopper of his rifle and ammo. Frosty helped him drag the body, still partially alive, to the avenue side. They heaved him overboard to land below.