by Chris Weitz
My boys will slow them down, but there’s only so much they can do. It was definitely time to abandon the old HQ. The Bazaar is done.
I don’t care. The way I see it, this was just small potatoes, just a stepping-stone. All that matters is me and the nukes and the deal I’m going to cut with the Reconstruction people so that I don’t make a deal with the Resistance or the Chinese or the Russians. Or maybe I will make a deal, if they have a better offer. Somebody’s got to have something better than what that bitch Chapel wanted. I’m not going to hand over control to some Resistance so they can let a bunch of losers and mud people come in and ruin the country even worse than it’s been ruined.
I kick open the door to the stairwell that leads up to the street level. And I ponder my next move.
What this place needs is a straight shooter like me in charge. And if people aren’t smart enough to see that, I’ll have to make it apparent myself.
See, yours truly is not as much of a dumbfuck as his teachers used to say. All those fuckers who said I wasn’t meeting my potential? Turns out, I can do the reading when it’s something I’m interested in. Like, for instance, the section of the football’s documents headed Strike Option Packages.
It took me a little while to work out, but the tl;dr is this: You can’t just launch a nuclear missile like it was a video game or something. There were some military guys who, like, simulated a whole bunch of scenarios and then programmed in shortcuts so that you could respond with a code, depending on what places you wanted to nuke. Those are the “packages” they’re talking about. Like a meal combo at McDonald’s.
Except, instead of ordering Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese Meal, you’re ordering St. Petersburg and Vyborg, or Beijing and Tianjin, or whatever. All you have to do is know the activation code and have the biscuit to do it.
The door opens onto the street. I hear the rattle of gunfire from inside the terminal. Some kids are fleeing out the front doors. Good. More cover for us. I heft the black briefcase along.
The shit is kind of out of date, and the entry process is slow, which I guess they did so that fools couldn’t launch a strike by accident like they were butt-dialing or whatever.
Anyhow, after a suitable period of study, I’ve decided to dial in a strike, just to show people that I mean business.
This probably sounds like I’m some kind of shitty James Bond villain—like, they were always threatening to nuke Paris if you didn’t pay up or whatever. But what’s different is (a) I’m cutting to the chase and actually blowing the place up and (b) I’m not stupid enough to blow up Paris or London or something. I mean, if you did that, they’d definitely have to take you out.
No, I’m going to blow up someplace so they know I’m serious about killing people, but someplace that the Reconstruction Committee clearly don’t give that much of a shit about. So after much consideration, I have settled on Damascus and someplace called Homs. Nobody really cares about a bunch of Syrians, which is obvious enough from, like, world history. I mean, people might even thank me.
At the very least, they will know that I am not a guy to fuck around with.
Yes, I know that there are loads of, like, innocent people and women and children and whatever, but I’ve been getting along just fine without them, so I don’t see why this should matter. And really, is it any different from how everybody else acts? I mean, if people cared more about the little kids and everything, at least more than all the other shit they care about, they would have done something about them already. Sure, when they die, they’re all, like, boo-hoo. But up till then? Nothing.
I’m going to have to delay the launch, though, because I’m still waiting to hear back from the Reconstruction people. After I told them Chapel wasn’t in charge anymore, they freaked out and said that they had to form a response, which I guess is their term for slow-playing and hoping that some of their commandos are still alive to try to kill me. I know they’re going to reject my demand, which is to be acknowledged as the acting US head of state. Probably because of some bullshit like I don’t command the allegiance of the populace or something. Which is true, except give me a second.
Uptown may be going through some hard times, but we’re gonna stage a Bieber-level comeback. It’s like when my man Adolf was back to the wall, hanging out in the bunker, and everybody was like, The Führer has a secret weapon he’s just waiting to use! It’s gonna turn the whole war around! Well, just imagine if he actually had nukes. Yeah. When people see that I brought the world powers to heel, you best bet they will kiss my ass.
Why else would that dude Kim Jong Whatever have made it as long as he did? He had a shitty haircut, he had zero charisma, but he had the nukes.
Now that I know I’m willing to kill, like, millions of people, it really puts everything else into perspective. I mean, what does it matter that I killed maybe twenty, thirty people personally, that my boys killed a lot more? It’s refreshing to shake off any little vestiges of guilt that might have been floating around like toxins in my system. I mean, it’s not like I ever really cared, but it’s hard to shake the prejudices of your upbringing, right? Like the whole tiny-little-voice-that’s-your-conscience bullshit. And maybe that’s what growing up is: learning to be just who you are, not who other people want you to be.
Which is my way of saying that I don’t feel bad about my plans to kill Chapel and the gay dude from the Square. Just satisfied that he came back for his little boyfriend. And I figure it’s asking too much to bait the trap a second time, like expect to catch Jefferson the same way. So at this stage, the two ’mos are just an encumbrance.
But when I went back for them? They were gone. Bonds cut, no sign of them.
And I couldn’t even take it out on the hides of the guys I left to guard them, because they’re dead.
I’d like to do something about it, but it’s not efficient at this stage to worry about how it all happened and how it’s going to play out. I’ve got to keep my eyes on the prize. I can hear some kind of propaganda broadcast from inside the terminal, in English but with a telltale foreign accent.
“Put down your weapons. We mean you no harm. We have come to administer the Cure and restore order.”
Yeah, right.
Me and my posse—my top twenty soldiers, who’ll be, like, my Praetorian Guard in the New Order—cross Lexington, and over to the Chrysler Building.
It’s all fortified and rigged up for power on the sixty-seventh floor. They called it the Cloud Club, and I figured the name was awesome, so I didn’t call it anything new. When they built this building in the olden days, they made a special spot for the ballers and shot callers, because if you could build the tallest building in the world (at the time), you know you would put in a nice place to get your drink on with other rich white people.
The old place is pretty cherry, with cool murals of Pre-Sickness New York seen from the air, marble columns, granite floors, and velvet chairs. A year ago, I had it stocked up with canned food and lots of booze so we can chill here for quite a while as the hoi polloi duke it out below. We even have an elevator powered by people, which is probably a major bummer if you have to spin the giant hamster wheel to get it up and down (not my problem).
After about half an hour in the damn elevator, we wedge open the doors to the club and breathe in the clean air, high, high above the burning and pillaging and rotting corpses. My chief mechanic, Tucker, sparks up the generator, and we set the champagne to chill in the fridges. I know people say you shouldn’t celebrate in the fourth quarter, but they’re all dead and I’m alive.
Chapel’s phone thing beeps. I pick up.
“Yyyyello?” I say.
“Where is Chapel?” they say. It’s the Reconstruction peeps.
“I told you, forget about Chapel. You’re dealing with me.”
“Is Chapel dead?”
“Honestly? No. At least not yet.” No need to tell them much more than that.
There’s a pause on the line. Then: “We will only
negotiate with Chapel.”
“So you’re saying you reject my deal.”
“We never considered any kind of deal with you. There is no negotiation.”
I’m wondering why they put it this way, and I figure that they’re keeping an eye on the PR side of the thing, like, How will history look at it? If it all goes to shit, they won’t want to get caught having negotiated with a sociopath.
(Yours truly.)
But so what? Like empathy is such a good thing? I read this book once (okay, I skimmed it) that said that lots of CEOs and stuff were sociopaths. But the author acted like that was a problem. The fact is that to get things done in life, you need to keep from having your viewpoint contaminated by other people’s feelings. Would America have started if, like, George Washington was worried about how the British felt? No way. So I don’t feel what other people are feeling. So I have to guess based on other factors. So I don’t find emotions contagious. Does that make me a thing, the way Mom said it that last time? Fuck that noise.
However, the Reconstruction dudes clearly have no plans to deal with me. So as I expected, I’ll have to convince them of my bona fides.
“Guys, I’m sorry to hear that. Looks like I’ll have to demonstrate my goodwill or whatever. I’d check the news feed in about an hour or so if I were you.”
They think they have room to maneuver. But their soldiers are dead. And nobody else can get to me up here.
So I hang up. And I fetch out the football. And my magic satphone. And I get to raining death.
THERE ARE PEOPLE RUNNING FROM THE Bazaar, and people running toward the Bazaar, and the snap-crackle-pop of gunfire tells me that the running-awayers are afraid of dying and the running-towarders are afraid of missing out on free shit they can loot.
I hope that Evan is okay.
If he’s dead, I won’t get to kill him myself.
When we enter from Vanderbilt Avenue, the first thing that hits us is the smell of gunshots. I look down onto the Grand Concourse from the balustrade. There’s a battle going on between two squads of oldies—I think they’re the Chinese and the Russians—and people are ducking and crabbing in the detritus. Bodies are scattered everywhere among the abandoned stalls like Death is scattering seeds. Around the edges, randoms and scavengers are scampering.
We watch as the two squads destroy each other. Finally, they drag their wounded off, down the ramps to the lower levels.
“Well,” I say, “it’s over.”
“How do you figure that?” says the black girl. Oh, okay, Imani.
“Uptown’s gone.”
“That’s not ‘over’ in my book. That’s just a start.”
Then out of the shadows below, a crew of weirdos in long robes filters in.
They walk up the stairs toward us, as Imani’s girls level about a hundred rifles at them. The leader reaches up to his hood for some kind of video-game-trailer-type reveal.
Imani orders the guns down when she sees that it’s Peter.
“Relax, y’all,” he says. “It’s just me.”
Donna puts her gun down and goes over to hug him.
Peter laughs and says, “Check it out, I’m a prophet! The Ghosts saved me! And they gave me this cool robe.”
Donna says, “You’re famous, Peter. Congratulations.”
I raise my hand. “Um, ’scuse me, but are these people who I think they are? Don’t they, like, eat people?”
As I’m saying this, all the “Ghosts” seem to peep Jefferson for the first time because they go down on their knees and bow.
Dude. What the Actual.
“Lord…” One of the Ghost guys—their leader, I guess—dares to look up at Jefferson. “Lord, forgive us. We were mired in evil. We lost the true path… We were deceived by the enemy. We—”
“Get up,” says Jefferson sharply. He doesn’t seem that thrown by the way they’re talking to him. Maybe it’s because of how he got treated at the Gathering. Peter told me everybody was totally kissing his ass.
They get to their feet.
“Look,” says Jefferson. “There’s nothing special about me. I don’t know much more than anybody else.”
The Ghosts look confused. They were expecting more of a religious experience or something.
“Listen to me,” he says. “You did wrong. We all did wrong, more or less. But you have a chance to do right now. We need your help. Then maybe you can get started on a better life. Understand?”
They stand there and sort of let that sink in. Then the leader nods, which I guess goes for all of them.
Meanwhile, one of the robed dudes has been standing the whole time.
“Good speech,” he says. “My thoughts exactly.”
That’s when Chapel reveals himself, and up go the guns again.
He and Peter spend a long time explaining some mumbo jumbo about how Chapel might be a devious sack of shit, but he has the best interests of humanity in mind or something. Which is not 100 percent convincing, if you ask me, but it appears that there’s not much time to make fine moral distinctions.
To cut to the chase, it turns out that Evan is alive and kicking, holed up someplace called the Cloud Club and up to his usual mischief. I mean, I guess it’s more than his usual mischief—more like thermonuclear war.
The Ghosts mostly keep to themselves, conferring in hushed voices. Occasionally, one of them will do this weird thing where they run up to me, turn their back, and make this sort of squeezing motion with their fingers. After a while, I realize it’s what we used to call taking a selfie, except with no camera phone. Like it’s become this weird little series of ritual motions that don’t end up in an actual photo because it doesn’t need to.
Meanwhile, Imani announces that she’s done her piece now that the Bazaar is liberated and the power of the Uptowners broken.
“The slavers and Uptowners beaten in a day,” she says. “I think I’ll win the next election.”
Donna says, “We can’t ask you to go any further…”
Imani says, “Then don’t.” But she smiles.
Jefferson puts his hand out to shake. “Thank you,” he says.
“Not good enough,” Imani says. “This is how you can thank me. This thing rolls your way, me and mine need a seat at the table. Understand? If not, we’ll be coming for you.”
“I understand,” says Jefferson. And Imani shakes his hand.
So it looks like we’ve lost most of our muscle. Imani and her girls set to clearing out the Grand Concourse, securing the building, and sending messengers up to Harlem to spread the news.
I get a funny feeling in my chest, like the feeling when you want something really bad? But know you won’t get it. Missing somebody.
Which is weird, because it’s not like me and the Harlemites have ever been on the best terms. It’s probably because, without the girl soldiers on our side, we don’t have a fighting chance against the rest of my brother’s posse. All we have are some half-starved slave girls and ex-cannibal freaks.
The rest of us set out for the Chrysler Building, spiky top glittering in the winter sunlight.
I feel a familiar presence at my side, and I turn and see Theo walking along, his eyes on the ground. He’s left Imani and the Harlemites to lock down the Bazaar.
My face flushes, which is weird.
“You didn’t say good-bye,” he says.
“Looks like I didn’t have to,” I say.
Behind me, I hear giggling. It’s the twins, who seem to be enjoying some kind of private joke. They keep looking at me and Theo and whispering.
We walk along some more, rounding the sandstone corner of the building, and it’s really annoying because something is going on health-wise, too. My heart is like DunDUNdunDUNdunDUNDUN. Like I need a heart murmur on top of all this crap.
I turn to Theo and say, “Why did you come?”
He laughs. But then he looks back down at the ground, kind of angry.
“You know the answer,” he says. And he looks back at me.
I remember the first time I met him. We were walking through Harlem, hoping to make our way to the East River Drive without getting shot. A full-on police car pulled up, sirens blazing, and we had to Assume the Position. In the patrol car on the way to headquarters, hands cuffed, I looked at the back of Theo’s head, a long horizontal scar across his bunched neck. And I told him to just go ahead and do what he was going to do.
But it wasn’t like that.
Theo wasn’t like that.
He was quiet and fierce and almost shy, his voice so low you had to strain to hear it.
Then later the twins and I found him tied up in a hangar on Long Island, and we got him free, and we boosted cars and road-tripped back to the city. He saved my life right back, in a pharmacy someplace on the Montauk Highway.
I figured I’d never see him again after we arrived at the UN. I was off to find Jefferson, and Theo was spreading the word that there was a whole other world, with electricity and food and running water.
And he was back to Harlem, and I was back to whatever it is that I think I’m doing.
But why is my heart doing that?
Mom and Dad would not approve.
Mom and Dad are dead.
What if everything—the running and killing and starving and surviving the Sickness, even falling for Jefferson—what if it was to get me here? And now. With Theo.
My heart is still going DunDUNdunDUNDUNDUN.
This could be a bad idea. He could change his mind. He could walk away. He could get killed. He could get me killed. This could be a bad idea.
“I’m glad you came,” I say, and I reach out and put my hand in his.
I’M LOOKING UP at the shining eagles and giant winged hood ornaments studded around the top stories of the Chrysler Building, light winking down from the off-white sky.