by Ginger Booth
Like an open-air Quaker meeting, there between the browned marsh grass and the bare trees, under a pale blue sky, we fell into contemplative silence until the spirit moved another to speak, K. “I used your markers, Canton. My district needed them. And they worked. That’s all it needs to be, I guess. Thank you.”
Emmett took a turn next. “You were my friend, Canton Bertovich. Maybe I was your only friend here. You pulled away from me our second year at Leavenworth. I understand why. But you were more than a death angel. Canton was born here in the Meadowlands, to cold and crappy parents. He was brilliant, and sad. He became a doctor to do bio-research, and went with the Army to pay for his schooling. He wanted to save endangered species.” Emmett’s voice cracked. “He never got back to that. I know you hated this phrase, too, Canton, but I hate the sin and love the sinner. God bless, and rest in peace, friend.”
I squeezed him from one side, along with John Niedermeyer, A, from the other side. A shared, “I didn’t agree with Canton. No bones about it. I’m here to support Emmett. But if it’s any solace, he was the best of the death angels. The others just did mass murder. Crude. Somehow Canber came up with schemes for volunteers. Selective deaths. Not just wholesale slaughter.”
Eventually B, O, and V found their words as well, and offered them.
The men took up the shovels and turned the good earth back down onto Canton Bertovich. All the men except Emmett stood off, and fired three rounds into the sky. Emmett walked a couple hundred feet away and played a recorded taps from his phone, while they stared out at the view, each with hand to brow, offering a final formal salute to the salt marsh.
We walked back to the SUV’s in silence, Emmett and I joined at the hip, arms around each other’s waists.
At the cars, Emmett let go, and pulled an envelope out of his shirt. “Any volunteer to take over Canton’s responsibilities?” There wasn’t one, but Emmett didn’t pause to see if there was. “Thought not. So we’ll share the load. I made accounts for each of the super-states.” He handed out a double-folded wad of paper to each of them except B, and still had a few left over.
I balked in silence. Can’t you just let this die with Canber? But they probably would, if they believed they could. My part here was to support Emmett. I had no say. Even Cam had no voice with this group, let alone me.
“I can deliver to Florida,” A volunteered, and accepted a second wad.
C looked relieved, and put his hand out. “Georgia.” K and O accepted an extra apiece.
“E, give me yours,” said B. “Penn and Hudson.”
“I do outrank you, you know,” Emmett pointed out.
“Not in this,” B insisted. “E, you’d suck at it. And you’re in the public eye. You can’t move quietly and get the job done. I can. Hell, I can even transfer to Elmira or something, if you back me up with Colonel Nasser.” Elmira was a Hudson town near the middle of the long upstate border with Penn.
“He’s right, E,” A said slowly. “You’re only taking this on because you think you’re responsible for Canber’s death. You’re not. A suicide kills himself.” Emmett looked mulish. “A vote then,” A said peaceably, holding up his hand. “Who thinks B should take Penn and Hudson, instead of E?”
The vote was unanimous against Emmett. He relented and handed over Penn’s death angel access packet to B. He scribbled Hudson’s codes on an envelope, and handed those over, too. I was relieved. Emmett just looked guilty, for handing off a duty he loathed but thought rightfully fell to him.
You didn’t kill Canber, Emmett, I wailed inside. We offered him a way out. And he found he wanted one. Just not the one we meant.
“Alright, maintain the capacity that falls in your turf,” A directed them. “Log your reasons. Honor any markers that fall your way.” Reluctantly he added, “Call me if you need to.”
They all sighed, nodded, and shook hands again in parting. The ones with cars dispersed. B left with one of them. Old friends, perhaps, wanting to visit a little longer.
“Come home with Dee, Emmett,” John urged. The letter names departed with the other SAMS Rescos, the old colleagues of Canton and Emmett and John’s, from vetting the Calm Act. “Bad night to spend alone in Jersey.”
Emmett shook his head. “No, I’ve spent too much time on this already. I need to get back to work.” He paused and added, “I need my work.” He looked to me apologetically, asking for understanding. I nodded and squeezed his ring hand.
John nodded thoughtfully. “Show us, then. I’ll bring Dee home, after. But show us Newark. I’d like to see.”
-o-
“Breathe this in, then hold your breath as long as you can,” Emmett explained, holding an asthma inhaler up. He sat on a building’s concrete step, a black boy seated on the step below him, between his knees. The kid looked about 10, painfully emaciated and wearing rags. From experience with apples, I suspected he was 13. “Ready?” The boy nodded and got his dose.
“Alright, Caleb, relax for a couple minutes, and we’ll do it again. It’s always two inhales, Sergeant,” Emmett explained, to a stout black sergeant who hovered nearby to learn how to deal with the asthma attack. “Two minutes apart. You time it for me, alright, Caleb?” Emmett showed the child the time on his phone, and received a breathless nod. “If the asthma doesn’t respond to two doses, you need a breathing treatment machine. Usually have them in ambulances, fire engines. Need to set the dose by weight, not age. If you’re not sure what you’re doing, there are experienced EMT’s and fire fighters around. Find them and get them into your contact list.” Caleb got his second dose.
“Got it, sir,” Sergeant Janika replied. “I shouldn’t have bothered you sir, sorry.” She’d waylaid us in a panic as Emmett and John Niedermeyer and I drove into this dismal neighborhood.
“Uh-huh,” Emmett said. “No worries, Janks.”
Funny, I’d forgotten how good Emmett was with kids. I liked Emmett from nearly the day I met him. But I think I fell for him when I had a lost little girl for a couple weeks. Emmett would come for dinner and stay afterwards to read to her in bed. She never spoke. He called her Angel. Emmett was great with our fosterling Alex, too, but teenagers are different. Man to man, not man to child. Kids spook easily around a grown man, he’d told me. Especially kids who’d been abused, or not raised with a man in the house. The trick was to talk soft, move slow, be predictable and relaxed.
“Breathing well enough to talk now, Caleb?” he asked the boy, in the same calm unhurried tone he’d used all along. Caleb nodded, still tense. “Asthma’s triggered by different things. Smoke, pollen, mold,” Caleb shook his head jerkily to deny each of these, “but sometimes just anxiety.” Caleb froze.
“Now, the first thing about being anxious, Caleb,” Emmett explained, “is to stop and get safe. Like right here. Nothing going on. Just sitting on a stoop, with safe people. Right?” Emmett continued to gently talk Caleb down, massaging his neck, until the boy’s rigid shoulders started to unwind and drop. Then just as gently, Emmett got the child to explain the emergency that set off his anxiety attack.
His mom was pregnant with another baby. The baby’s dad died, and the mom wasn’t doing anything anymore, just lying around depressed. And then this afternoon he saw his mom doing oxy with the losers, and –
“Shh, Caleb,” Emmett crooned, rubbing the boy’s neck. “Right here and now, remember? Where are your hands? Just focus on that, keeping track of where your hands are. You’re alright.”
“People dying of the oxy,” Caleb argued. But he let Emmett kneed his neck muscles, and bowed his head. “Can’t stop her.”
“Not a kid’s job, Caleb, taking care of the mom,” Emmett said. “Supposed to go the other way around, you know? Just take it easy for a bit. Let the world spin itself.”
He continued gentling Caleb, but turned back to John and me. “Sorry our tour got interrupted. What we’re doing around here is salvage and demolition. These buildings are…moldy.”
Moldy was an understatement for the v
ile surroundings, though no doubt there was plenty of mold. We were in a block of 4-story brick slum tenements, probably a quarter boarded up even before the Calm Act. Now half the remaining windows were broken. The streets reeked of waste. I’d seen four rats just in the few minutes we stood here. A stream of people rotated through the buildings, bringing out salvage, mostly pipes, to load into trucks, then going back for more.
“Pipes?” John asked.
“Copper’s valuable,” Emmett said. “Trade it upstate for the power lines. There’s not much else here to salvage. Some decent electronics. Excuse me. Lady Tiff!” he called out to an older black woman, sort of limping and drifting across the street aimlessly. We were the only whites I’d seen here, even among the Army vets of the militia. Even before the Calm Act, Newark was only 10 percent white, and most of them were gone. Emmett claimed it was a relief not to have race issues, with everyone brown except him.
“Colonel Sanders!” Lady Tiff replied in a floaty tone. “What can I do for you?”
“Is there an Alateen around here?” Emmett asked.
“Just AA,” Tiff said. “But if this young man needs friends, I can take him to Peter Pan.”
“You know the Lost Boys, right, Caleb?” Emmett asked. “Tell Peter I sent you, OK? I’m Colonel MacLaren, actually, not Colonel Sanders,” he added with a wry grin. Caleb took a deep breath, blew it out, and nodded bravely. He walked away, perforce slowly, with Tiff.
“You live in this neighborhood, Emmett?” John inquired. He tried to sound open-minded, and failed.
“God, no,” Emmett said. “The troops and I took a dorm in University Heights. Workers there, too, or wherever for now. No, we’re just stripping these buildings, then blowing them up. The copper brings in a lot of food. This neighborhood’s too low. Flood plain. All needs to turn back to greenbelt.”
He got up from the stoop and brushed his pants off. “I don’t know what else there is to see, John,” he said apologetically. “Early stages right now. Working out methods, building teams.” He looked to me. “I got a message. We’ve got action incoming tonight. Think you should go, darlin’.”
I nodded understanding, as did John, and took another look around.
“Colonel Sanders,” John quipped. “Bet you get that a lot.”
“Uh-huh,” Emmett said wryly. “About a year now.” Ever since the man half from Kentucky got promoted to Colonel, of course. If oil and lard weren’t so expensive, no doubt Gladys would serve us fried chicken.
“You ever think of adopting one of them?” I asked, now that Caleb was far enough away.
Emmett shook his head slowly. “There’s one, Peter Pan. I really like that kid. But the Lost Boys need him. Taking care of them is his life. I’d rather sponsor him, you know? Like we do with Alex. Be there for them when they need us. Lots of people want to adopt little kids. Not so many can handle the half-grown ones, half-feral. And there are a thousand Peter Pans.”
There are a thousand Uriels, Canber had said. Maybe they canceled out, in some cosmic sense. But what Emmett said sounded right, for us. “Is his name really Peter?” I asked.
Emmett snorted. “Doubt it. Hindu kid. Who knows what his real name is. He takes good care of his flock.”
I smiled. “You’ve got that in common.”
“Thank you,” he breathed.
Sergeant Janika – I never learned her last name – hadn’t wandered far. Emmett waved her over, and asked her to drive us back to our boat and bring home the car.
He and John shared a hand-shake and hug at the car door. “Sorry to drag you out here for nothing, John.”
“No,” John denied, sincerely. “Glad I came. Glad I saw. No way I’d miss the funeral. And took care of business. Care about you, man.”
“Same,” Emmett agreed. “Family. Always.” He switched to hugging me, and held me cheek to cheek for a moment, breathing in my ear. “Love you. Call you later.”
“You’d better,” I agreed. “You can tell me about Peter Pan and the Lost Boys. I love you, Emmett. Stay safe.”
Driving away, we caught sight of the orphan gang a couple blocks away, playing in the street. A grinning older boy held court in Never-Neverland, a small oasis of make-believe surrounded by the wreckage of Newark. I waved enthusiastically. Peter Pan led the kids to wave back.
I was glad to get home, when I eventually got there hours later. The ghosts of New York City lay quiet. Dane Beaufort’s death was avenged, for whatever that was worth. I was glad Canber was free of his task, and Emmett released of it as well.
That freed our souls for the next new normal.
From the Author
Hope you enjoyed Martial Lawless! If you want more, I’m writing further installments in the same universe, and I’m eager for beta readers.
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Acknowledgments
As always, I’m deeply grateful to my test readers. This time around, a thankful shout-out to Brett Jarman, Barbara Booth, Beth Grem, and Andy Berry. Of course, any mistakes are my own.
And thank you, for reading my book. Especially if you’re so kind as to post a review on Amazon, or to tell someone else about it, or drop me a line. Books take a long time to write. Feedback means so much to me.
About Ginger Booth
Ginger Booth is a writer and programmer. She's worked in the seismic industry, semiconductor electronics, academic research in biology and environmental science, and online teaching simulators. She lives in shoreline Connecticut, with crops spilling out the balconies and down the driveway. Contact her online at books.gingerbooth.com.
Books
The Calm Act series:
End Game – got a date for the end of the world?
Dust of Kansas – a prequel novelette, the birth of the Calm Act
Project Reunion – the sequel to End Game, saving New York City
Martial Lawless – martial law vs. religion run amok
Nonfiction:
Indoor Salad: How to Grow Vegetables Indoors
E-Cigarettes 101: How to Start Vaping
E-Cigarettes 102: DIY E-Liquid
Table of Contents
Map
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Provisional Constitution of Hudson
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
From the Author
Acknowledgments
About Ginger Booth
Books
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