by Martha Moody
“Filled with water up to her eyeballs,” the cheerful nurse on duty had said over the perc-feed. Heart failure, she explained. Pulling through beautifully, she said. Of course, Abba wouldn’t be coming back to the Schoolhouse SafePlace. They’d find a bed for her in Cincinnati, in an Elderkind facility.
Only three weeks before, when they were still in their house, Sharis had been able to plan. Cabbage and tofu for supper. Dig out the last carrots from their root cellar. Finish the Schneiders by dinner. Make Howard explain long division. But now the future had been removed from her: the distant future by uncertainty, the daily future by Marriott, Inc. She heard people around them coping. They told fantastical stories, they gossiped, they entered into casual friendships and romances that blossomed into need. She supposed she could have escaped into the worlds of her editees, but their normal lives disgusted her. Lars was especially odious, prancing around his kitchen like the King of Norway. If she’d had more energy she would have edited them angrily, but as it was she did them in the simplest way possible, trusting they’d never work up the cruelty to fire her. Any money she earned now could sit and grow, she thought, buy them a new and bigger house in some new and distant city. It struck her that her mind was in a sort of hibernation, storing up for the burst of will and intelligence it would take, someday, to push her family back to normal life.
SUNDAY CHAD WAS sitting by himself after breakfast at one of the long tables of the dining tent, sipping on a cup of coffee, when the ’urge lifted a corner of the tent and came inside. All the camp inhabitants used the doors, but the staffers treated the tents quite casually. This morning the ’urge looked excited, as if, Chad thought bitterly, she’d just received a commendation. When she saw Chad she waved; for some reason, maybe Abba’s illness, the ’urge seemed to take a special interest in the Gribbles. As she walked past Chad’s table she hesitated, looked both ways, then sat down. “Wait till you hear this,” she said. “Nenonene’s dead.”
“Dead? How can he be dead?”
The ’urge flashed Chad a look both quizzical and patient, as if she thought he understood life better. “He was flying from Cleveland to the Green House and his plane went down,” she said. “They don’t know what happened. We’re not claiming responsibility. They’re even thinking it could have been a missile shot from the Grid.” The ’urge glanced at Chad’s face to see if he understood this. “Like a coup,” she said. “Don’t tell anyone. It’s not on the media yet. Well, it’s on the media that a plane’s down, but they’re not saying it’s Nenonene. But I got a message from a friend in Defense”—she tapped her wrist phone—“and he’s definitely dead.”
“But what will happen?” Chad said, and the instant he spoke this he regretted it, not for the question but for the way it was directed, because why the hell would the ’urge know, and why had he spoken as if she did?
“You know he’s not their only leader. There’s Colon, and Simon Pumphrey, and Chinua Digges. I’ve heard that Digges is the real brains. So it’s not going to stop their war effort. But in terms of their morale …”
One man. Here they were living as refugees, with Cleveland for almost two years an occupied city, their country fighting for its very existence and way of life, and all this was because of one man. Chad was struck with a pang for the paltriness of his own life, where he reacted to events more than he made them, where even the country of his family had two rulers, where so little, so very little, depended on him. Even the ’urge (look at her)—silly, female, not much older than Sharis—had enough authority that Chad cringed at her approach. What was he? Where was his own dignity? He finished his conversation with the ’urge, thanked her for her information, walked back to Dwelling 12D and opened the door, and all eyes—this was unusual, every member of his nuclear family present—were upon him, their eyebrows raised as if they were asking Now what? Chad knew before she said them that the next words out of Sharis’s mouth would be Did you hear? He knew that it was time for authority, reassurance, a single speaker speaking to a crowd.
Chad went to a bunk and sat down facing them. “I heard the news,” he said, “and I heard from the ’urge that it’s definite that Nenonene’s dead, but what we need to remember is …” He said more, his chest filling with love for them and his mind awash with satisfaction, because he, one man, was saying the right things.
THE ESSLANDIANS HAD shot the plane down.
A difference in tactics. With the exception of Cleveland, everywhere Nenonene had conquered, he had gone first for the locals’ hearts and minds. He followed this with ground troops. The resistance was always less than the existing government expected. The citizens were always happy (or at least relieved) to have the old government gone.
But Dayton hadn’t been prepared well. Nenonene didn’t have good people in the city. The Historical Society there, which he relied on, was less interested in the future than the past. So while Nenonene wanted to wait and watch before taking over the city, the Esslandians were hungry for action. Their sending their pilots in Alliance planes to knock out the bridges had been an independent action designed to force the Alliance’s hand. The Alliance had believed that the pilots, at an airfield near the Green House, were trainees and not combatants. But after the pilots successfully knocked out the bridges, the Gridians had an upper hand. “We’ve got Dayton ready for you,” the Gridians were saying to Nenonene. “Just come in from the north and the whole city’s heading south. You’ll have the nuclear plant. You’ll have momentum.” There had already been a massive exodus from the city; much of the populace, even before the SafePlace camps were up and running, was gone. “What more do you want?” the Esslandian president, Kyle Beerbower, demanded of Nenonene. “This dog’s got its tongue out and it’s showing you its belly.”
Nenonene had no desire to destroy Dayton. He had agreed to the Esslandians’ ideas about taking over the city, but largely as a means of convincing the Americans that God was on his side. He had hoped, once the flood subsided, to enter downtown Dayton in a Mustang car. He wanted people to greet him, to cheer.
The Esslandians wanted destruction. It was the only way, they said, to balance out what America had done to them. This was absurd, Nenonene pointed out: the land they loved, Esslandia itself, would never have become what it was without the demolition of its towns. To be frank, Nenonene said, the Esslandians should be grateful for the Gridding.
Reactionary, they called Nenonene. Deficient in will. Not interested in anything but retaining his own power. Africanist.
On top of that the Esslandians loved their plan, an idea they’d been working on for years. Germantz himself, before his death, had said that the concept was as elegant as a wheat stalk, one of his highest compliments. It wasn’t particular to Dayton, but certain of Dayton’s features made the city a perfect first target. The plan appealed to the Esslandians’ sense of nature, to their very essness, in a way: the element that had made Dayton possible would be the thing to take it down.
So it wasn’t really a missile, the Esslandian president told his advisors, that shot down Nenonene. It was something much more dangerous, a dream.
IT WAS AFTER 3 p.m. that Sunday when the ’urge walked out to meet the last group of arrivals. Above her crows and raptors were circling. The trees were tossing with a heady turbulence, as if a giant hand were batting them back and forth. The day, which had started out beautiful, was changing. The air was heavier, the wind warmer. Weather was coming in.
The arriving APCs crossed a grass field to stop in front of the central hospitality tent. The new entrance procedure—in place for the last week—was to acclimate the new guests with food and movies, then take them to their dwellings. The first guests had arrived sporadically and been basically tossed into their spaces, but the ’urge had seen right away that this led to guest insecurity, and it was she who thought up and implemented the new procedure. She liked the order of it. She liked standing in front of a crowd of a hundred and making each person feel at home. But today was different. A m
emorandum from the Feds said to expect as many as a thousand people in this “final evacuation.” They recommended erecting all available tents, and canceling any staff days off for a week. They recommended disuse of the phrase “back home.”
They don’t think they can hold Dayton, the ’urge realized. They’re worried that the city will be destroyed. Maybe it was the wind that made her see this, maybe it was the tossing trees. She was startled by the clarity of her vision: she wasn’t accustomed to seeing things on a grand scale. Dayton was doomed. No one else realized, she thought. Not the large woman with the odd name (Ginja? Geranium?) destined for Dwelling 123F, raving about how she shouldn’t be here because she was a widow who needed special protection and WHERE WAS THE PERSON IN CHARGE?; not the man quarreling with a sub-’urge about going back to get his car; not the girl who walked around cradling a disturbingly thin cat. These people each thought their tiny concerns mattered. Silly people, the ’urge thought, you’re lucky to be here.
“Come on, folks!” the ’urge shouted. “Let’s look happy! This is the best place you could be!” Several older men turned her way and smiled. People needed encouragement, the ’urge thought. They needed someone to show them how to behave. We’ll sing while we’re waiting for housekeeping, she thought, but the only song she could think of was “The Farmer in the Dell,” which she hesitated to launch into because in the end the cheese stood alone. Instead she tried “God Bless America,” which didn’t get a big response. My God, the ’urge thought, wait until tomorrow. She would have to order extra ice cream in from Cincinnati, be sure every recreational venue was fully staffed.
They were eight miles due south of Dayton, over the Centerville hill. When the Alliance hit the city, the ’urge expected the drone of planes and the thunder of bombs. But all night long it was quiet except for rain. At one point the ’urge was half awakened by a series of muffled thuds, no louder than the sound of a fistfight in the dwelling next door. Still, when the ’urge got up a couple hours later and turned on her perc, she couldn’t say she was astonished at the news.
CHAD ROLLED FROM his bunk and padded over to Sharis’s. “Get up.” He nudged her. A smell of bodies in the room. Amazing how adaptable humans are, Chad thought. “It’s after ten.” The breakfast buffet closed at 10:30, and if the boys didn’t get a bite for breakfast they were miserable by lunch. Leon and Howard, at the top of the two bunks, moaned and buried their heads in their pillows. They slept in their clothes, so it was easy to get them ready for breakfast. Since they’d gotten here everyone slept in separate beds. The thought of sleeping in a heap here seemed impossible. Their scanty living space made each bed seem deliciously private and huge.
“Get up, get up, get up,” Chad said. He unlocked and opened their door as the boys slid from their bunks.
“I’ll check on Abba,” Sharis said, reaching for her perc.
A crowd outside. The air was scrubbed and pleasant, the grass wet, and everyone seemed to be up and wandering. In the near distance Chad noticed a big group around the soccer field monitor, and beyond that a field filled with APCs. Usually the APCs were off on runs in the mornings, but today they were all parked. “What’s going on?” he said to a large young man hurrying past him.
The man turned. “Flood’s going to hit downtown Dayton,” he grinned. He had a long brown beard, one gold front tooth and another tooth that was sickly gray. “They got real-time satellite photos. Everybody’s watching it come it.”
“A flood? Water?” Chad’s mind halted, as if he’d opened and shut a door on an astonishing sight and was standing in the hallway making sense of it. One of the most admired flood control systems in the world. Delegations traveled from as far away as China to see it. “Wait a minute,” Chad said, already knowing the answer, “there was that much rain?”
“Nope, not rain. Guess the Grid’s sending all its water down their rivers.”
Chad’s mind halted again. Something familiar about this young man’s voice. “Derk?” he said.
“Professor Gribble?” Derk’s eyes widened. “You got … you look …”
“I know. I got old. Sharis looks the same, though. You got hairy.”
Derk dropped his eyes in embarrassment. “My wife likes a beard. I’m sorry I never stopped by, we just got …”
“It’s okay. Did you have your baby?”
“Yeah, Enola. She’s great. What dwelling you guys in? I’ll bring her by …”
Chad told him, then returned to the troubles at hand. “So Dayton’s really flooding? That’s terrible.” Part of Chad was truly appalled; another part was thinking how the river was downtown, at least five miles from their house and much, much lower. Their house should be fine.
“Well”—Derk was still grinning—“at least no one’s around. I mean, they got some troops there, but they’re moving them back. And things dry out, you know? Even after a flood, things dry out.”
If the streambed on Custard Lane overflowed, their house was at the top of the hill. Downtown could be inundated, there could be water up to the inner suburb of Oakwood, but Chad and Sharis’s basement would stay dry.
Is this how people think? Chad thought. Is everyone else as selfish as I am?
“We’re in Kettering, we’re high,” Derk said. “I think our place is fine, thank God.”
WATER. EVERY FAUCET and hose in Esslandia turned on, every drain taking water to a pipe that ran into a bigger pipe that took it to a ditch along a road. Wells pumped almost dry. The floodgates of the big reservoirs by Village 49 and Village 131 opened to the south; the southern banks of Indian Lake and Lake St. Mary’s blasted. The drainage ditches filled first, then the streams, and last the rivers. The water headed downstream toward Dayton, Dayton where the rivers meet, Dayton with its watery history.
Around three the next morning the first boatloads of Alliance and Esslandian troops arrived in Dayton, special forces troops armed with rifles and knives. They steered their crafts to the southern shores of the Greater Miami River and landed at Third Street (First and Second Streets were already underwater) and began moving through the night, carrying inflatable dinghies that proved quite useful. The troops slit the throats of two army guards at the old Salem Street Bridge site, overpowered and shot a group of marines holed up in a balcony of the Schuster Center (the lobby and theater were underwater), then rowed and walked up Main Street inspecting buildings. What little defense Dayton had—sentries stationed in and around buildings—fled. The water scared them more than the troops did. In twenty-four hours the Miami River had gone from a brown ribbon they hardly noticed to the dominant force in their lives, and it was still rising. The baby grand piano in the Women’s Club banged against the first-floor ceiling. Squirrels and rats were paddling furiously, and dogs barked from window ledges and rooftops. Forever unclear if an American commander gave an order to withdraw. It didn’t matter: a voice told these soldiers to leave.
The muffled thuds the ’urge had heard the night before were Alliance B-52s—ancient machines, obtained via Chinese middlemen—bombing either side of the Greater Miami River two miles downstream from downtown Dayton. The riverbanks collapsed into the riverbed, making central Dayton a clogged basin with its faucets still running.
The fall of Dayton took sixteen hours. By nightfall on Memorial Day, in a cruel finale, a singing troop of Esslandian women rode in on an old army Duck that had once been owned by Dayton Metroparks. The Duck was a World War II vehicle, designed to be a bus on the road and a motorboat on the river. The swollen waters of the Greater Miami were a bit much for the Duck, and its time in the river was short. By then the remains of the airplanes that had hit the bridges were washed downstream, the debris for the most part lodging at the impromptu dam that the B-52s had created, although one wing was carried south through Cincinnati and into the Ohio River to be found a week later jammed against a lock in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, a turtle basking on an aileron.
“OUR HOUSE SHOULD be fine,” Chad told his family. “I hate to say it, but that�
��s kind of the important thing.”
“But, Daddy …” Howard started.
Chad said, “Our house should be fine.”
don’t shoot me
MEMORIAL DAY NIGHT, Chad and Sharis were awake until 2 a.m., sitting outside in their chairs watching the media on the giant screen over the soccer field.
A funny thing: all mornings were the same. As Chad unlocked and opened the door, the boys were moving in their bunks.
“I’ll check on Abba,” Sharis said, reaching for her perc.
A crowd outside. It was warmer today, and humid, the sort of morning that made Chad’s mother announce that it was going to be a scorcher. Everyone seemed to be up and wandering. Chad headed for the soccer field monitor, and to his surprise found himself in step again with Derk. “Morning, Professor Gribble,” Derk said cheerfully. Today he was carrying a can of paint and several brushes.
“We seem to have the same schedule,” Chad said. “When did you get here?”
Derk, grinning maniacally, seemed oblivious to Chad’s question. “You hear the news?” he said. Before Chad could shake his head, Derk burst out with what he knew. “We got back Dayton! We bombed the Alliance out of downtown and now we got troops heading north into the Grid and they’re just rolling down the highway. Manganero on MediaOne thinks the Alliance and the Grid are gonna surrender in the next twenty-four hours. They’ll have to.” He winked. “We’re burning their fields.”
Chad thought he was dreaming. “I went to bed at 2 a.m.,” he said. “They kept showing all those Grid women in that boat floating around Dayton.”