Empire City

by Matt Gallagher

  “Mmm.” Pete was near sleep. Sebastian closed his eyes and breathed in night air. I’m going to figure out what happened to us, he thought before he drifted away, too. Somehow. In life, it’s important to understand why.

  CHAPTER 14

  GENERAL JACKIE COLLINS had devoted her life to country. She deployed to war zones ten times over the span of her career, for surges, for counterinsurgencies, for occupations and invasions, too. She’d spent the entirety of her adult life thinking through the intricacies and human terrains of those war zones. She possessed a gift for strategy, and through successes and failures, had honed that gift into a mental blade. She knew how the enemy would think before the enemy thought it. Jackpot had turned American special operations into the world’s greatest killing machine by demanding it be the world’s smartest killing machine, the world’s most precise killing machine. In ways known and others not, she was one of the finest generals to ever serve the republic. She was tough, and resilient, and thorough. More than anything, she planned. Nothing was done without knowing possible effects, and the possible effects of those effects. Jackpot didn’t react. She anticipated.

  The American citizenry didn’t care about any of that, though. War, peace, generals, privates, army, legion, it was all the same, obscure and faraway, foggy and notional. Service. Sacrifice. Et cetera. They paid the war tax, mostly. They knew kids who went to battle and came back, sometimes. They remembered kids who went to battle and didn’t return, sometimes. They watched the news to learn Something Had Happened Again, less than they should have. General Jackie Collins: credentialed, yes, impressive, yes, knowable, not really. And, in star-spangled truth, lady generals threatened some who’d never gone and borne the battle themselves. What did she know that they couldn’t intuit from the stories, from their being, from the testicles hanging between their legs? Through many decades of foreign war, the citizenry had been told not to concern themselves, not to scrutinize, not to engage or peer too deeply. Clap, yes, believe, yes, care to question, no. The people were good patriots. They met that duty.

  How to bridge the divide, then? How could someone of Jackie Collins’s exacting background and worldview earn the everyman vote? It mattered in a democracy. It mattered a lot.

  * * *

  Knights Stadium was either half-full or half-empty, Mia thought, a full-scale Rorschach test. The afternoon sun halved the stadium into shadows and light, remnant heat sludging the fall air. Fans ambled through the bleachers with the vigor of sloths. They’d been lucky to get the general this ceremonial first pitch. The Yankees hadn’t returned any calls, and neither had the Knights until someone on the Council of Victors contacted the owner. The Council wasn’t supposed to get involved in political races—it was in their charter—but Roger Tran had told the staff not to worry about it.

  “Worry about everything else,” he’d advised. “Especially money.”

  Twenty games out of the pennant race and in their season’s final home stand, the Knights players lined up for the anthem, mirroring the fans’ torpor. From the owner’s secondary box, they looked to Mia like outsize children—cartoon uniform colors, big heads and long arms that didn’t fit the rest of their bodies, a strange inability to remain still for even ninety seconds. That many of the players were younger than her only occurred to Mia as she watched them fidget.

  She’d always found professional sports bizarre. It was tribalism without purpose, expression for the sake of nothing but itself. Both the soldier and athlete in Mia felt separate from those standing beside her in the box, and beneath her in the bleachers. It was more distance than disapproval. Why devote so much to something you couldn’t impact?

  Her hand lay across her heart as the anthem droned. Mia looked down at the clean green field and tried to understand. Was it the guise of fairness? That’s what Jesse said. That sports provided equal opportunity, or at least the possibility of it, in ways that life never would. But of course that was false. The Yankees’ payroll was three times that of the Knights. The Knights’ star was a brawny Cuban outfielder. He’d quintuple his current salary in the off-season, either moving uptown to the Yankees or far beyond to one of the California squads.

  And he’ll deserve it, Mia thought. Because that’s how the game works.

  Knights Stadium sat in a soft basin in Ash Valley, built in the sixties on land Mia’s grandfather remembered as dumps and mechanic shops. The franchise had served as a redheaded stepchild for the community since; it belonged to the outer districts and lower denizens, to anyone who objected to the empire in Empire City or scoffed at the City in the same. It’d made the World Series three times, won it zero times, and missed the playoffs twelve years running. Mia’s family were Yankees fans, of course. She could recall visiting that baseball cathedral many times growing up. Had they ever trekked out here? We must have, she thought. At least for a concert. But she couldn’t place one memory. It was like it’d never happened at all.

  The anthem ended to subdued applause and a few lost shouts. Mia exchanged looks with the other staffers in the box and focused on the bottom of the diamond, where General Collins was walking out to the mound, back straight, hand aloft. She looked settled on the jumbotron, not too detached, not too friendly, either—she’d spent the morning finding that balance with a consultant. She wore a navy-and-gray Knights windbreaker with suit pants, and white high-tops the consultant had suggested.

  “Please give a big Knights welcome to retired major general Jackie ‘Jackpot’ Collins!” The PA announcer sounded like he was calling a kid’s birthday party. “General Collins served thirty-five years in the army and the Agency, deploying multiple times across the globe for America. She’s been decorated for valor under enemy fire in Vietnam and Beirut! Praise to the Victors!” Scattered applause emerged from the bleachers. “She’s now running for Senate with the American Sacrifice Party.”

  I can’t even, Mia thought. Service. Not sacrifice. How do you get that wrong?

  “Go General Jackpot! Go Knights!”

  Mia joined the other staffers in the box and clapped. More scattered applause emerged from the bleachers. She watched a woman below yawn into her pretzel. Three rows beyond, an overweight man struggled with a divider so he could get into his seat. Across the way, a pair of early twentysomethings kissed like the other had a lemon drop wedged in the throat.

  The military called people like this citizens. Politics knew them as voters.

  General Collins reached the mound and began kicking at the dirt, like the consultant had showed her. A large, milk-brown mitt enveloped her left hand and wrist. The general was a rightie with little physical grace. Mia had spent the previous two afternoons in a parking lot near campaign headquarters, helping the general practice. The throws had improved, in fits and starts, though not before a dented car and an upset feral cat. They’d considered tabling the pitch until the spring but couldn’t be certain the chance would still be there. Odd as it was, a militia of disaffected veterans seizing their inaugural had helped American Service’s reputation.

  Or American Sacrifice. As the people prefer, Mia thought.

  A round, smiley young Knight trotted out to shake the general’s hand, then took his position behind home plate. General Collins stared into his mitt like it had violated a direct order. She rocked her body back then forward, and slingshotted her arm out and away. It was more push shot than throw, but it’s what had worked in the parking lot.

  It did not work on the field.

  Mia held her breath as the ball dropped ten feet in front of home plate, dribbling to a leaky halt. Someone behind her cursed. Anyone in the crowd bothering to pay attention shrugged, as did the round, smiley Knight, who began jogging toward the general with the ball in tow.

  General Collins raised her mitt. No self-conscious smile dared speckle her now. She remained unmoved and pounded into the mitt with her free hand. She said something to the player, who asked her to repeat it.

  She wanted the baseball again.

  Th
is wasn’t supposed to happen. This didn’t happen, as far as Mia or anyone else in the box knew. But with the general refusing to move, ironic encouragement rose up from the crowd. They’d seen plenty of poor first pitches before, but they’d never seen anyone demand a second try. They loved it, or were at least amused by it, and when the Knight threw back the baseball, genuine cheers broke out at Knights Stadium for the first time in months.

  General Collins stared deep into the catcher’s mitt. She rocked her body back. She rocked her body forward. She slingshotted her arm out and away.

  This throw was a rocket, though an errant one, sailing well beyond the outstretched glove of the young Knight.

  The general raised her mitt again, pounding her hand into it. The player rose from his crouch, no longer grinning, and looked to the edges of the field, hoping for intervention. Then the crowd started up.

  “Jack-Pot.” The refrain began somewhere behind first base, where a group of day-drinking frat boys had taken nest. “Jack-Pot!” It moved through the crowd like an electric current. General Collins remained on the mound, unmoved, mitt raised, calling yet again for the ball.

  She got it again. The crowd stood en masse now, shouting, whistling, chanting. “Jack-Pot! Jack-Pot! Jack-Pot!”

  General Collins stared into the player’s mitt once more. She rocked her body back. She rocked her body forward. She slingshotted her arm, out and away.

  The ball fired into the Knight’s mitt like a bullet. A perfect throw. A perfect strike. As the fans reached fever pitch and the players trotted out to shake her hand, General Collins raised a fist to the sky.

  It’d all gone as planned. Someday Mia hoped to anticipate this precisely. To form stakes from nothingness. That more than anything impressed her. The act of creation from a void. The triumph of will over expectation.

  * * *

  Mia left after the second inning for midtown, citing a meeting. In the subway station, just beyond the body scanners, she passed a cluster of wanted posters. Veteran Zero had been hospitalized and arrested after being shot in the ballroom—by Sebastian, of all people—but he was only a lieutenant. The true leader of the Mayday Front remained at large. Jonah Gray’s mug shot leered at her, long, sloped chin and cloudy eyes seeming to rise from the grainy black-and-white photograph. He looked like someone Mia had once known. From her youth? From the army? It pricked at her, like a hangnail, but try as she might, she couldn’t place him.

  “Should be considered armed and extremely dangerous,” the posters read in big red print. “If you have any information concerning Jonah Gray, please call 911 or your local Bureau office.”

  Her fiancé still spent most of his waking hours at a local Bureau office, the hunt for Jonah Gray his everything. They’d been able to sneak away for dinner the week before, their first date in weeks. In a taxi home, he’d pulled her over to him, wrapping his arms around her body, an open smile and a distant, starry look gobbling up his face.

  “Can’t promise I’ll be much more than mediocre,” Jesse had said. “But you’re going to be an incredible mother.”

  Her tell? She’d poured herself a small glass of wine but hadn’t touched it.

  He hadn’t asked, he hadn’t prodded. He’d just figured it out, and was overjoyed. Jesse’s reaction contrasted so sharply with her own that she’d almost resented him for it. Then he started talking names and Mia let herself get lost in his enthusiasm. By the time they fell asleep that night, Mia had decided she’d be one of those moms who loved her own child fiercely while remaining indifferent to children as a whole. That seemed doable. An incredible mother? She doubted that. Would an incredible mother have needed to super-fly her child from a ballroom to get away from gunfire? No. An incredible parent wouldn’t have put them in that position to begin with.

  Semper Gumby, she’d reminded herself. I can do this. I will do this.

  The general’s campaign headquarters lay in the northern reaches of midtown, a prewar walk-up shaped like a loaf of bread, close enough to Asian Harlem that they used it as a media talking point. They’d occupied the third floor, above an agency that represented professional animals and below a comedy website geared toward college students. It was a long way from Wall Street. On her first day, Mia had shared an elevator with a golden retriever in a cardigan and a degenerate Santa.

  A man in rags sat in front of the building, head between his knees. Mia first took him for a maven addict but as she neared the entrance he looked up, his eyes both clear and probing.

  “With the campaign?” he asked. His voice was lucid, too.

  Mia nodded.

  “Where’s the general on the colonies?”

  Mia considered the question, and why this man would be asking it. They’d discussed the rehabilitation colonies a lot, of course. How could they not after what had happened in the ballroom? It seemed an opportunity to lead, to separate General Collins from the pack. But the national party had advised caution. Vets’ issues didn’t play with voters.

  “We’re seeking out a few subject-matter experts,” Mia said. “Internal reform seems necessary. But what those reforms look like, we’re figuring out.”

  The man in rags stared at her. And stared at her. And stared at her. He didn’t respond but Mia seemed to have disappointed him. She asked if he needed money. He didn’t respond to that, either, so she walked into the building.

  She rode the elevator by herself. The golden retrievers and drunken Santas were already gone for the day. Their floor was humming: news of the general’s success at Knights Stadium had already reached cable sports. It’d make the news channels by hour’s end. She high-fived a couple of volunteers and assured them that yes, it had been even more impressive in person.

  Mia pushed close her office door, the din falling away with it. She’d been with the campaign for just over a month, and still found the tempo unsettling. Finance moved as a river, a constant force that could swallow up the careless and excitable alike. Politics seemed more like traveling with family. A lot of sound, a lot of fury, bursts of weary idleness in between.

  At her desk Mia took off her flats, rubbing the sole of her left foot. She wasn’t quite showing yet, but one of her favorite blouses hadn’t fit that morning, something she knew shouldn’t have frustrated her but still had. Her skin kept breaking out, too. It wasn’t all bad, though. The prenatal vitamins had turned her fingernails into wonders. They were long and thick and while she’d never been a nail woman, it seemed a waste not to be now.

  Her phone rumbled on the desk: a voice mail from Linda. Her stepmother kept calling, wanting to pregnant-talk. Mia did not share in that desire, at all. How would her real mom be handling it? She wasn’t sure. Leaving her alone, at least. Her mom had been different, always marching to the beat of her own drum. Not many scions of Old Greenwich had spent five months in a peacemonger camp, refusing her family’s legal connections out of principle. If ovarian cancer hadn’t taken her when Mia was six, her only daughter joining the military might have.

  She’d had courage, Mia knew. A lot of it. That’s where her own came from. It had little to do with the Tucker blood. It was pure Roosevelt.

  Mia pulled out her to-do list, the additions outpacing the strikethroughs. Purchase the train tickets to Babylon—done. Confirm the rally venue there—not done. Register the radiation detectors with the homeland marshals—done. Look over the press release about drug companies’ testimony to Congress on maven treatments—not done. Red-pen the speechwriters’ latest attempt at the Service-for-All platform—not done. They hated the “New America” line and were trying to quash it. They weren’t wrong, Mia thought, but it didn’t matter. The general liked it.

  Mia had joined the campaign as a fund-raising coordinator. By the end of her first week, she was running the finance team. By the end of week three, she’d been made a deputy campaign manager. Turnover had proven a constant; General Collins demanded a lot from her staff. Small as it was, Mia had remained in the same office throughout the staff shakeups.
It had everything she needed (a door, four walls, a little window that provided slivers of gray light) and none of what she didn’t (a whiteboard for feedback loops, word clouds and doodles from feedback loops, people who used terms like “feedback loop”).

  A knock came, then a voice, then the sound of the door opening and closing: Mia looked up to find Roger Tran stepping into her office.

  “You’re here,” he said. Tran wore his customary navy slacks and power Windsor. “Superb.”

  “Just got in,” Mia said. “Was at the first pitch.”

  “She’s a genius.”

  Mia nodded. It had struck her as cynical, at first, but she’d warmed to the idea over time. “We could unveil a new Marshall Plan for the entire Near East and get a tenth of media play this will. Crazy world.”

  “Three kids. I think that every day.” Roger Tran’s voice never rose and it never fell. He carried the vague title of senior strategist, which meant he was involved in everything. The staff called him “Mr. Fix-It” behind his back. Sometimes as a compliment. Sometimes not.

  Mia’s predecessor had left partly because of Tran. He was as demanding as the general, but twice as meticulous, and uninterested in the rah-rah talk frequented on the trail. This wasn’t another job for him. It was the only one.

  “Wanted to follow up with you.” Tran shook off Mia’s gesture to take a seat. “Yesterday’s meeting.”

  “Which part?”

  “The security plan. You disagree.”

  “I do, but it’s not my call.” Mia smiled while keeping her lips pressed together. She had no interest in suggesting she wasn’t still bothered. “That’s your lane.”

  The morning after the inaugural, the security team had been fired in entirety. The question of who to replace them with became an issue. An upstart senatorial campaign didn’t have the coffers for elite contractors. Tran’s solution was fiscally sound, if nothing else: the Sheepdogs would do it. They were cheap, they were loyal, ex-military and retired police who had lived American Service themselves. No ragtag vets from the outlands would get through them.