by Ginger Booth
An island of buildings rose ahead of us. This particular enclave seemed to have selected a hollow 9-square downtown concept, similar to New Haven’s, with a block-sized giant town green in the middle. Some structures had been torn down even in the outer blocks, leaving gaps.
“Is that safe?” I asked, pointing. One of the empty foundations was filled with water. Kids and adults splashed and played in it as a swimming pool. Not very many kids. Project Reunion had relocated all the orphans, and gave evacuation priority to families with children. But some families chose to stay.
Emmett smiled briefly. “Re-engineered as a pool, Dee. They didn’t just fill a foundation hole with water. It’s sealed. Water pumps and filters, lots of chlorine. Not very deep. We’re just decorating with reclaimed brick these days.”
Indeed, we were approaching new brick structures, built on the outer edge of the sidewalk. These were about 4 by 4 feet square, and stood waist-high on me. My eyes widened as I saw into the first one.
“Romaine lettuce! How handy!” I laughed. “Is this a cold frame?” Cold frames were planting boxes with optional transparent lids, for growing greens in winter. In warm weather, they were simply boxed garden plots, sometimes with cloth covers to keep out the bugs. I used see-through tunnels at home instead, but cold frames were a similar idea.
“Yup. We call them apple boxes. Don’t pick anything,” Emmett warned. “You see that woman? With the green flag? She’s open for business. Picking from this box would be stealing.”
“I won’t pick,” I promised. But I did poke, into the soil, to see what it was made of. This particular one seemed a blend of potting mix, fine-grained pulverized brick, and God knew what else. “Huh. It sure grows well.”
“Yeah, Dori’s one of the best street farmers,” said Emmett. He drew me along. “Hey, Dori! What do you have for us today?” he greeted the green flag woman with a big smile.
“French breakfast radish, Colonel!” the elderly apple replied, with a gap-toothed sincere smile. “Mild and refreshing! Perfectly ripe today. Six a buck.”
The official name of Cullen’s new currency was the Hudson dollar, but everyone called it a buck. Similarly, New England was beginning to retire the tax credit concept in favor of the clam. The neighboring currencies were set deliberately unequal in value. They traded at somewhat over three bucks to the clam at the moment. The currencies were electronic only. There were no coins or paper bills, no untraceable cash.
Emmett and Dori tapped cell phones to complete the transaction, and Dori handed us a half dozen small elongated radishes, with all their leaves. “Be sure to wash the roots,” Dori admonished. “Leaves are fine.”
“You really want to wash all of it,” Emmett confided in me, before I could crunch into a root. He knew I wouldn’t have bothered in my own garden. I just picked ’em and ate ’em, even fresh from the soil. “They use sewage tea for fertilizer.”
That made sense. And erased any temptation for me to eat the radish before washing.
The green inner square showed what the outer rubble belt aspired to become. Several hundred yards on a side, it was already planted for pasturage near the brick walkway we took across it, with plenty of young clover and grasses. My experienced eye spied the starter strips of lawn sod, laid in to help kick start the microbiology. A few young saplings had even been installed by the walkway before the onslaught of summer heat. Further away were garden plots and some chickens. I couldn’t be sure from this distance, but it looked like some buildings facing the square had cucumber vines growing up their south faces. Even the dust abated here in the green zone. They were off to a great start in here.
I slipped an arm around Emmett’s waist, and beamed up at him. “This is really pretty, Emmett!”
“Thank you,” he mouthed, though no sound came out. He cleared his throat, and pointed. “That house is mine. Center one.”
Most of the buildings ringing the green were six to twelve stories or so, many with storefronts at ground level. The group of three Emmett pointed to, however, were classic Brooklyn brownstones, isolated by green lots to either side. Despite the stress on growing food everywhere else, the brownstones grew flowers, bright and cheerful portulaca and nasturtiums in big built-in planters at the top of their broad front steps, and in window boxes above.
I gazed up in awe from the foot of those steps. The brownstone looked perfectly renovated, in loving detail, better than its New York Knickerbocker glory days of centuries past. Three and a half stories high – the lowest servant floor sank below street level – plus crown molding. The front bowed outward to either side of the central stairs, curved to provide bay windows for the interior. There were elegant moldings and fiddly bits everywhere, and a painted cast-iron railing.
The brownstones weren’t actually brown. The set of three were painted in sandy shades of cream, rose, and tan.
“Did you say ‘house’?” I inquired. Before, such a double-wide brownstone would likely have been split into a dozen apartments. Really expensive apartments at that. A whole brownstone…
“Last sold for twenty-eight million,” Emmett supplied. “It’s nice.”
“Nice,” I echoed faintly.
He nodded dismissal to our guards and headed up the steps. A middle-aged apple housekeeper opened the door for us before we reached it, and curtsied us in.
The house was even more gorgeous inside. A golden wooden staircase rose in front of us. To its left, a formal dining room. A formal living room to the right, gleaming with wood from floor to chest height on me. Above the paneling, creamy plastered walls rose to ceiling molding. True to Emmett’s taste, the room capitalized on its polished bare wood floor. An unfussy conversational grouping of beige leather couches and chairs formed a small island around a fireplace.
Emmett immediately kicked shoes onto a shoe rack, and ripped off necktie, jacket, and dress shirt just as quickly as he could peel them off. His undershirt was sopping with sweat, as was his hair and every other part of him, probably. That dress uniform was not ideal for a summer day. And it wasn’t much cooler indoors. The beautiful windows were all wide open.
“Will sir need his uniform again today?” the maid inquired, taking his cast-offs.
“No, thank God,” Emmett replied. “We expect four more guests for dinner tonight, Gladys. Six total. Casual, something light. Out in the garden, I think. They should arrive in an hour. Maybe later.”
“Yes, sir. Perhaps a salad nicoise. And will madam need the dress again today?” she asked.
“Please, call me Dee,” I invited with a smile. I’d never had someone speak to me in the third person before. It was creepy. Especially with a harsh Brooklyn accent. “I don’t have another dress with me. Emmett?”
“Just the Niedermeyers and Camerons tonight,” Emmett explained. “The kids are staying on the yacht. With guards.”
“Oh, nice! I guess I will want my dress then. And salad nicoise sounds perfect. Were you a cook before, Gladys?”
She shot me a look of pure hatred, quickly tamped to pursed lips and eyes cast down to the floor. “I’ll carry this up for you,” she hissed. She grabbed my overnight bag and stomped up the staircase.
“Apples hate it when you ask personal questions,” Emmett observed mildly.
“I think I caught that,” I agreed. “What did she do before?”
“Never asked. She hasn’t volunteered a word about herself. Just, ‘Gladys.’ She does a good job.”
“That is so weird,” I complained.
“Some things take time, Dee,” he murmured softly.
Emmett pointed and led me toward the back of his fancy new house. Beyond the formal living room, through glass French doors, was a beautiful library, turned into Emmett’s office. He had two computer displays on his huge oak desk, in addition to his laptop and tablet, plus a giant screen on the wall that rivaled my living room display. Extra box devices blinked their LED heartbeats.
I did a double-take. “You have full power and Internet!”
“Your library could use some books,” I suggested. Built-in shelves of gleaming wood stretched empty from floor to ceiling.
“Books are easier to burn than trees,” Emmett responded shortly. He continued to the back…garden. Those weren’t just windows at the back of the library. He stepped aside to wave me through another set of French doors, still solemn.
“Oh…” I said, rapt, face breaking into a smile. “You have a tree.”
A strip of deck stepped down into a surprisingly large brick-walled garden. The walls were perhaps 8 feet high. From the deck at the half-story first floor, I could see across the tops of the other gardens filling the core of the roomy block. But Emmett’s garden was fairly private at ground level. It stretched perhaps 75 feet back, as wide as the house, around 30 feet. Near the deck, a modest-sized maple tree cast dappled shade over a bricked lounge area, complete with teak furniture. A narrow lap pool stretched the length of the garden, with plantings in the narrow strip between the pool and the wall on that side. Against the back wall stood a quartet of brick 4x4 planters like the ones on the street, currently barren. I drifted down the long brick walkway to look at them.
“Soil,” I said wonderingly.
“Uh-huh. Not sure I did the right thing there,” Emmett replied. “There was garden soil, but the walls block the sun. Figured higher was better. Maybe room for some chickens, too.”
“It’s gorgeous, Emmett!” I said. I wanted to throw my arms around him. But he remained aloof, leaning with hands on the brick raised planter bed before us. I sat on its edge and looked up at him. “Talk to me, Emmett,” I whispered.
“It’s hot,” he sighed. “Let’s change into bathing suits and get into the pool.”
“In a minute,” I agreed. “What’s wrong?”
It took a minute, and a slow Ozark minute at that. But I waited him out. “Is it good enough, Dee?” Emmett finally murmured. “For you to live here? With me.”
“You want to stay here,” I said, dismayed. “Not just to September.”
“No,” he said. “Maybe. I don’t know. I just want you with me.”
“Emmett, is this an ultimatum?” I asked, eyes narrowed. “Are you breaking up with me, if I don’t move in?”
“No.” He turned to perch on the brick beside me, hands between his knees. “No threats. I love you. I don’t want anyone else. Just want you here with me. Wherever we go next. Please. It’s just too hard alone.”
It cost him to ask, to beg. But if he felt this way, watching Adam’s wedding must have been excruciating. With this house and garden, he’d bent over backwards to please me, to make a place for me, where I wouldn’t hate living in New York. I wasn’t likely to love it anytime soon either. And I doubted I could make friends among the apples. New Yorkers were none too friendly before the epidemic. They seemed downright squirrelly now.
In New York, I’d live under curfews. Never leave the house without armed escort. Socialize with the occupying armed services, separate and above the apple natives, like some bizarre throwback to the British Raj. Enjoy maybe the only tree left in Brooklyn, walled off from the voracious hordes of human tree predators. No more kayaks and beaches, marshes and woods and apple orchards, squirrels and raccoons. Yet.
But there would be. If I can make him do it, I can damn well watch him do it.
I’d been quiet more than a minute. Emmett sighed defeat. “Never mind.”
“Yes,” I said. “Whatever you’re up to, I’ll face it with you. I believe in you, Emmett.” I squeezed his knee. “Partners.”
“You’ll…?” Emmett asked, daring to look up at me.
“Yes. With you. I love you.”
He clutched me tight. I smoothed his back, his hair. I was afraid for a moment he was going to ask me to marry him right then and there. But no. “Thank you,” was all he said.
“We are leaving in September. Aren’t we?” I asked doubtfully.
“If you want,” he promised. “Gotta warn you, though. I’m pegged as a remediation specialist now. Got offers from all over.”
I laughed. “I bet. We’ll figure it out.”
“Together,” he agreed.
“At least the weather is improving,” I said wistfully.
Emmett sighed. “Don’t bet on that.”
“We made changes in time,” I insisted. “Huge changes. This year hasn’t been so bad.”
“Uh-huh,” said Emmett.
“What.”
“You don’t want to know,” Emmett said.
“Yes. I do.”
“I believe God gave us a break. Because we – the whole Northeast – were willing to save New York.”
I shot him a look that said, You’ve got to be kidding me. But what I said was, “It’s better, Emmett. Rain fell in the Dust Bowl. Some.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Tell me.”
Emmett sighed. “We did the Calm Act because we had to, Dee. The facts haven’t changed. We just got a breather.”
My eyes narrowed. “So… Does that mean you’ll choose your next assignment by what you think God wants?”
He grinned crookedly, and whispered in my ear, “You only think that’s not what you love about me.”
“Oy, Emmett!”
“We’ll decide together,” he promised. “And stay together, I hope.”
That wasn’t entirely comforting, I reflected. After all, we’d chosen Project Reunion together.
Welcome to the next new normal.
PART III
MARTIAL LAWLESS
1
Interesting fact: February 2016 was the month the northern hemisphere first exceeded the 2 degree Celsius temperature rise that climate change scientists warned we must not exceed. Beyond that, there was great danger of planetary climate systems becoming chaotic, or even runaway temperature rise warming the planet beyond the ability to maintain liquid water. The UN’s previous goal was to limit temperature rise to 2 degrees C by the year 2100. We crossed that line abruptly, and 84 years early. Of course, a planet is a very complex system indeed. They couldn’t know whether the fateful number wasn’t 1.5° C or 2.5° C.
“Emmett, you need to see this,” I warned. I beamed a video clip onto the big display in our shared office in our Brooklyn brownstone. Mob Murders Resco was the lurid headline on the accompanying breaking news report.
Lt. Colonel Emmett MacLaren, martial law resource coordinator for rebuilding the Big Apple – my partner and lover – kept his eyes on his own computer displays. “Kinda busy, Dee,” he murmured. “Video conference with General Cullen in half an hour.”
“I know that, Emmett,” I said. “And you need to see this first.”
He finally looked up and took in the headline. “Oh, hell,” he said.
We’re a lot alike, Emmett and me. Unlike about 95% of the viewing audience, he digested the whole article before playing the video, just like I had. Our friend Major Cameron once quipped that the two of us really bonded over data analysis. I suspect Cam’s point was that our relationship was peculiar to us, and I should stop asking his opinion. Point taken.
On the news story, what we knew so far wasn’t much. A putative militia member in Pittsburgh had posted the video clip to Amenac, my social web empire, on a public forum. He’d taken the video with his phone, answered a couple questions on Amenac, then went offline. The Resco of Pittsburgh – Resource Coordinator, same position as Emmett and Cam held – had been addressing some kind of rally. The crowd surged forward and back. Cut to a closeup of the Resco where he lay beaten to death on the gravel. And the video ended. We didn’t even know his name.
“Major Dane Beaufort,” Emmett supplied, after replaying the video a couple times, trying unsuccessfully to hear what the Resco said before his death. “I can confirm that much. Yeah, he’s Resco of Pittsburgh.”
“Did you know him? I’m sorry,”
I said.
“Yeah. You going to release this on PR?” Emmett asked.
Emmett looked rattled, but I couldn’t tell whether from grief or very real concern for the consequences.
I sent the item back to the Project Reunion news team with those points confirmed, and signed off on publication. PR was mine, too. The Project Reunion website was powered by Amenac, our social web empire. PR News published official news with high production values, as vetted and sanctioned by us, rather than a social babble of peers on forums. Not unbiased news – created to support the humanitarian relief of New York City, PR was staunchly pro-Resco, and supported the martial law governments.
“Have to publish,” I replied to Emmett. “That video’s gone viral on Amenac, and rumors are flying. PR has to say something. You can bet Indie will.”
IndieNewsWeb was PR’s burgeoning new competition in supplying news to the Northeast. Naturally, since PR was pro-Resco, Indie’s greatest growth niche was anti-Resco, attacking PR as a pawn of the martial law governors. Indie gave voice to another point of view, and not a rare one. In fact, some of Amenac’s staff still probably wished they could change sides. I tried not to take it personally, and often failed. IndieNews’ personal attacks on me and Emmett were hard to stay philosophical about. But on the bright side, Emmett and I were heroes of Project Reunion. Attacking us left Indie shooting itself in the foot, popularity-wise. That could change, though. Indie’s editors were growing smarter. PR’s leadership, including me, needed to get smarter, too. Competition was good for us. And annoying as hell.