by Alex Irvine
“Do you think it’s getting more dangerous, Vi?” That was Shelby again. She’d started treating Violet kind of like a big sister, which was okay with Violet most of the time, but right now Violet didn’t know what to tell her.
“I don’t know,” she said, thinking of the yellow powder and the way the gunshots out over the Mall seemed closer now than they had a couple of weeks ago. There were more JTF soldiers around, too, which was good because they helped protect everyone—but also bad because it meant the JTF thought they needed more protection. “But if we do,” Violet added, “we’ll be okay. We’ll stick together and we’ll be okay.”
After that, none of them had much to say. Pretty soon Violet heard them sleeping, breath regular and deep. She stayed up for a while, thinking about all the things she didn’t want to be thinking about. There were fires burning near the Capitol, and she wondered if those fires would spread in their direction. Where would they go?
She didn’t know. None of them knew. Violet watched those flickering fires and wondered if things would ever be normal again.
8
AURELIO
Aurelio was up early, cleaned up and full of eggs by seven o’clock. He still had the woman and Roger Koopman on his mind. Before heading out, he took in a morning briefing—as usual, things were more or less under control south of Thirty-fourth Street, then progressively more chaotic up to the north end of the Dark Zone and surrounding areas. Scouts were reporting that the northern end of Manhattan Island was fairly secure, largely because it was mostly depopulated. Since JTF resources were concentrated down around the main bases at Hudson Yards and the Post Office, most of the people who survived the plague had headed in that direction.
Having run more than a few missions up into Washington Heights and Harlem, Aurelio thought the last part of that assessment was a bit rosy. But he only had his own experience to go on, and it was possible the JTF scouts, and other Division agents, had better overall intel than he did. So he kept his opinions to himself, and after the briefing he went to find Ed Tran again.
Ed, as usual, was in the operations node up on the second floor, surrounded by communications equipment and computer screens. Heavy power cables ran from his workspace down a hall toward the back of the building, where presumably a generator was grumbling away on a fire escape or rooftop. He looked up when he saw Aurelio coming. “Still looking for intel on whatsisname?”
“Koopman. Yeah.” Aurelio waited while Ed searched through the JTF’s various databases.
“His name pops up here and there,” Ed said after a while. “Mostly as a coauthor or editor on scientific papers that Kandel and her group are using to do antiviral research. I don’t see anything about him being directly involved with . . . oh. Wait a sec.” Ed tapped and swiped some more. “There is a note in operational logs for that address. Something about installing passive security, keeping twenty-four-hour surveillance . . . huh.” He leaned back. “I don’t know what it’s all about. Above my pay grade. But somebody somewhere wanted to make sure this guy was safe even though he was hiding out in the Dark Zone. Anything else I can tell you?”
“Yeah. He’s a scientist. Is he working on something with Kandel and her people?”
“Doesn’t look like it. Not directly. But I can’t access the logs themselves. I do see that he visited a certain Dr. Liu down at the Post Office lab, and he’s one of Kandel’s researchers.” Ed kept scanning, then gave up. “That’s all I got, man. Sorry.”
“Thanks, Ed.” Aurelio checked in on the mission board to see where the day’s hot spots were. The JTF satellite base on the Manhattan side of the Queensboro Bridge was seeing increased hostile action from a group trying to get off the island. The Midtown Tunnel, right down the street, had flooded over the winter. Rumor was that the JTF had done it when they had too many exit points to guard. Same with all the subway tunnels under the Hudson and East rivers, along with the Brooklyn–Battery Tunnel. The Holland Tunnel was still open to keep a surface supply route available. Made sense, since that tunnel’s Manhattan entrance was only a couple of blocks from the JTF’s main Hudson Yards base.
That situation looked under control, so Aurelio kept scanning. Part of his mind kept running over the question of what a random woman had wanted from Roger Koopman that would lead her to brave the Dark Zone by herself. If Koopman was a known JTF asset, that put a different spin on her visit. By the time he got back to the DZ, she would in all likelihood be long gone, but Aurelio was tempted to go anyway and ask Koopman what it was all about. On the other hand, the city of New York was offering him plenty of other high-priority uses of his time. Roger Koopman wasn’t killing anyone. Eventually Aurelio decided to let it go. He couldn’t serve both his curiosity and his mission to save lives. People did all kinds of weird things. He guessed they always had, and now after the virus there was just less to hold them back.
“If you’re looking for something to do,” Ed called across the room, “I’ve got a document package that needs to get to the Lighthouse today.”
“Is it important?” Aurelio didn’t want to spend his day being a courier while other agents were in the line of fire, unless the documents in question were of the life-saving variety. But if the docs were headed to the main JTF base of operations in the Post Office—known as the Lighthouse—they were probably crucial to something.
“Yeah. It’s intel recovered from a mission yesterday. Some of our guys intercepted a paramilitary group trying to get onto the island from under the Triborough Bridge. The higher-ups want to see it pronto, and the agent who brought it in can’t make the trip.” Ed held up the packet, a thick sealed plastic envelope.
Aurelio reached to take it. “Why not?” he asked.
“Died last night,” Ed said. That was when Aurelio noticed the traces of dried blood on the envelope, like someone had made a half-hearted effort to wipe it clean.
“Who?”
“Laila Khan. You know her?”
Aurelio shook his head. “Nope.” He’d known plenty of other agents who hadn’t made it this far, though. On operations with a fire team, ISAC tracked each member’s vital signs and pinged out notifications when a comrade was dying, so the team medic could render aid. Or, if it was too late for that, ISAC also had its way of telling team members one of them was dead. Fatal trauma detected, was how the AI voice usually put it.
Aurelio stashed the envelope in his pack and notified ISAC that he was on-mission headed to the Lighthouse. His contacts’ HUD was overlaid with a high-level map of the optimal route, across Central Park and straight down Eighth Avenue. The base was in the old post office, right across the street from Madison Square Garden, where Aurelio had run one of his first New York missions. There’d been a field hospital there, and when it was overrun by rioters, the JTF called in help to get their medical personnel out. Aurelio had only been in New York for a couple of days then, but he’d helped establish a secure passage for the evacuated personnel to get to the Lighthouse. He wondered if Jessica Kandel was one of the doctors he’d helped get out. By the end of the op, he’d been too exhausted to get any of their names or remember what any of them looked like. He probably wouldn’t recognize Jessica Kandel if he ran into her on the street.
Now that he was thinking about her, Aurelio had half a mind to stop into the medical wing and see what Dr. Kandel would tell him about Roger Koopman. First he’d have to get the documents where they needed to go.
He filled his water bottles, checked his loads, and headed out into the bright spring morning on Ninety-second Street. The JTF presence in the area drew food trucks and other traders, so there was a little bazaar most days around the Cooper Hewitt Museum and the edge of the reservoir. Aurelio strolled through, enjoying the smells of cooking. He caught the odor of fresh bread and stopped at the stall. “Man, smells good.” He dug in his pockets for something a baker might want in return for a loaf of bread. It had been months since anyone in Manha
ttan had used money.
“Ah,” the baker said, looking up and seeing Aurelio’s gear. “A Knight of the Orange Circle.” He picked a loaf and held it out, grinning through his flour-dusted black beard. “This one’s on me. But don’t tell all your friends, all right?”
“Thanks,” Aurelio said, smiling back. He didn’t like taking gifts, but he also realized that it was a strange kind of obligation. When you spent most of your days interacting with people trying to kill you, it was easy to forget that the world was also full of kindness and generosity. People who knew what Division agents did were grateful, and Aurelio had come to understand that it was important to accept their gratitude without abusing it.
“Tell you what,” he said, tearing a piece of the bread off and smelling it. “Next time I pass through, I’ll bring you something. What do you need?”
“Need? Oh, you know. Reliable electricity, ice cream, baseball on TV. But I’ll tell you one thing I really miss. I used to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge every week. But since all this, I haven’t been south of Union Square. If you happen to run across anything that says Brooklyn Bridge on it, like a street sign, anything, I’ll hang it right here.” The baker tapped the awning he had set up over his stall. “And you get free bread forever.”
“Sounds like a good deal,” Aurelio said. “I’ll see what I can do.” He tried to remember the last time he’d been down around city hall, or anywhere near the Brooklyn Bridge. February, maybe.
He held up the chunk of bread as a farewell salute and started chewing on it as he walked around the south end of the reservoir and picked up the Eighty-sixth Street Transverse over to Central Park West. Most of Central Park was a patchwork of mass graves, but here and there people had started gardens. Aurelio even passed by a pen full of goats along the bridle path. Where had anyone gotten goats? New York was full of mysteries.
There was another market in front of the Natural History Museum, and then things got desolate as he got closer to the northwest corner of the Dark Zone at Columbus Circle. He flexed his fingers on the grip of the G36, keeping himself loose and alert. ISAC didn’t detect any hostiles, but ISAC couldn’t see everything. It relied on facial recognition and uniform detection in conjunction with the JTF’s current database of known locations of hostile gangs, cult groups, et cetera. Overall, ISAC did a good job of making an agent aware of the general characteristics of a given area, but in the end nothing could substitute for observation and situational awareness. Eyes and ears.
He ran into JTF patrols just south of Columbus Circle, before the perimeter wall of the Dark Zone bent away, following Broadway while Aurelio stayed on Eighth. Burned buses and hollow-eyed vagrants surrounded the Port Authority. They all took one look at him and gave him a wide berth.
When he got to the windswept plaza outside Madison Square Garden, another big market was in full swing. This was the safest place in the city, with the JTF base of operations right there. All of the buildings in the surrounding blocks were occupied by people who clustered in this area to feel secure. Of all the parts of New York, this was the place that felt closest to normalcy. Even so, almost everyone got inside after dark, and Aurelio knew many of the vendors and wandering pedestrians were armed. The veneer of civilization was very thin, even here.
Seeing his Division gear, the guards at the Post Office waved him in and he went looking for the duty officer, who, according to the guard, was one Lieutenant Hendricks. He found her in the security wing. She was a serious-looking black woman in her early fifties, with short salt-and-pepper dreadlocks and little patience for people who took her away from her current task involving an operational map and some kind of checklist.
“What can I do for you, Agent?” she said briskly, looking him over and then returning her attention to the map.
“I came down from the 92nd Street Y,” he said, showing her the envelope. “Supposed to deliver this to an intel officer.”
Aurelio watched her register the smears of blood. “Somebody got that the hard way,” she said.
“The hardest,” Aurelio agreed.
After a pause, Hendricks held out a hand. “You need to convey in person, or can I deliver it?”
Ed hadn’t said anything about the handoff, so Aurelio gave her the envelope.
“I’ll see that it gets there ASAP,” she said.
Aurelio watched her walk away to an inner office. One of these days, he thought, there’s going to be a memorial to all the Division agents who died holding the United States of America together after the Green Poison.
He hoped he wouldn’t be on it.
9
APRIL
April slept until late morning, the first time that had happened since the quarantine. She didn’t remember having any dreams, and woke up feeling the kind of stiffness that came from lying in one position for hours. Reaching the end of an obsession was like that, maybe. She didn’t know. She’d never had an obsession before.
And she didn’t have one now, not really. She did still have a purpose, though. She was going to go to Ann Arbor and find out the truth about the BSAV, and the truth about Bill if anyone there knew it. Either way, she considered, the trip would be a kind of honor to his memory. She would be closing the circle on his presence in her life by seeing for herself the final product of his life’s work. The decision felt good.
She was in a room that used to be some kind of small office, across the hall from the room where Koopman slept and worked. She stood, stretched, felt joints crack. God, she’d slept hard.
All of her gear was exactly where she’d left it. Just to be sure, she popped the magazine off her Super 90 and checked its load. All good. She didn’t like carrying guns, but the world was what it was. Also, she had an emotional attachment to this gun. She’d picked it up from the floor next to the body of the Division agent who had died saving her. Doug Sutton. Who had he been before the virus? Did he have surviving family, a lover, anyone other than April to mark his sacrifice? She would probably never know.
This was a hell of a train of thought to have first thing in the morning, and April tried to reset it as she walked out into the hall and saw Koopman through the open doorway just opposite.
“Good morning,” Koopman said. “Hope you slept well. Bathroom’s down at the end of the hall.”
Thank God for gravity, April thought as she flushed the toilet. New York’s water supply was gravity fed, so most of the smaller buildings in the city still had water. She couldn’t imagine how people in other parts of the country got their water . . . but she would be finding out pretty soon, now, wouldn’t she?
When she came back into Koopman’s office, he was setting out a pot of coffee and two mugs. “My God,” April said. “Where did you get coffee?”
“I have a connection here and there with the JTF, and some other people in the city who know how to get things done. Once in a while those connections pay off with small luxuries.”
April smelled it, feeling the wash of memories that came with the simple act of letting that coffee aroma drift with the steam around her face. It used to be mundane and precious at the same time, she thought. Something I did every day, but looked forward to every day. Now it’s like a miracle because God knows when it’ll happen again.
She took a sip and almost started crying, because it was good and also because it seemed to her like a sign of everything that was lost because of Amherst and his doomsday madness. But instead of crying, she took another sip and said, “Thank you. This is . . . well, it’s an unexpected treat.”
“I’m happy to do what I can,” Koopman said. “You’ve been through a lot.”
“Not as bad as some,” she said, thinking of Doug Sutton. Also Miko and Drew, all the other people she’d seen die in the past months. And Bill.
“So,” she said. “You said you might know someone who can get me across the Hudson.”
Koopman set down his mug a
nd cleared his throat. “You know this is a terrible idea.”
“I know I’m going to do it one way or another whether you think it’s a terrible idea or not.” April kept her tone level. She needed Koopman for this one last thing, so she had to walk a fine line between standing her ground and irritating him. She sipped the coffee, again lost in the simple sensory delight of it.
“Well,” Koopman said after a while. “What I can do is get a message to the Riverside Templars.”
* * *
• • •
It turned out that when Koopman said he would get a message to the Riverside Templars, he meant he would write a letter for April to carry. “They’re suspicious, but good people,” Koopman said.
“If they shoot me before they see the letter, it won’t really matter how good they are,” she pointed out.
“I promise you they won’t.” Koopman finished the letter and folded the sheet neatly in thirds. He handed it to April. “I know I said this was a terrible idea, and I still believe that. But I also believe that you’re as likely as anyone to pull it off. This note ought to get you started on your way.” After a pause he added, “I’ll also make sure the JTF checkpoint around the corner knows to let you out.”
She’d finished her coffee and it was time to go. Anything she needed, April always had with her. She kept a room downtown, in the back of an old souvenir store on Twenty-eighth Street, but there was no reason to go back there now. She got her pack and settled it on her shoulders. Then before she left she had one last thing to get off her chest.
“Merch,” she said. That was the nickname she’d coined in her head when she was having long internal conversations with the writer of New York Collapse, trying to understand the puzzles in the book and through them the author’s motivations. He’d called himself Warren Merchant, and that pseudonym was one of the final clues. Koopman was the Dutch word for merchant. She’d braved the stacks at the New York Public Library to find that out.