But there is little else to go on. Some rumor is better than no rumor at all. There is no intel, no people. Barely, anyway. The clowns gave him hope. They weren’t wearing gas masks. He hopes they can at least find another lead. He hopes Nay has time.
Tires roll up behind him with swirling lights—red lights this time, police lights. An NYPD van stops, blocking their way. A cop sits in the driver’s seat wearing mirrored aviator glasses.
No gasmask.
Nos hurries back down the mound heap.
The cop steps out of the van in boots and blues. He struts toward them with his hand on his piece. His tan dark skin is gaunt and emaciated.
“Hello there,” Nos calls as he steps in front of Naomi and the bike.
“This area is restricted,” he says, the tendons in his neck flaring.
“I wasn’t aware,” says Nos, confused. Who is there to restrict anything?
“Where are you headed?” he orders.
“North.”
“What’s in the pack?”
“Supplies.”
The cop eyes the pieces of the dismantled rifle. “Hand me that pack, sir.” Everything he says sounds like an order.
“By what authority?” asks Nos.
“The NYPD,” he barks, like Nos is the idiot.
“NYPD,” Nos repeats, like he just said the tooth fairy. “Shit, you got a big cleanup on your hands.”
The cop draws his gun and holds it on Nos. “Hand over the pack, now!”
“You don’t need my pack, you need a broom.”
The cop turns his gun to Naomi. Nos is surprised. He’s off—way off. So desperate. Better play it cool. You got your baby girl with you.
“Off the bike!” The cop cocks his six-shooter. “Now!”
Chapter 12
Courtesy, Professionalism, Respect
Nos’ eyes are trained on the cop, on every flicker of his bloodshot eyes and every twitch of his pulsing hands. He remembers Naomi and the biker. They got to her. He did not protect the hostage. Mission fail. Thinking like a father, not a Delta Force Operator.
He lifts Naomi and holds her to his chest and turns, shielding her with his back.
“The pack,” the cop demands, holding out his hand.
Nos unties the rucksack from the rear of the bike and hands it over. The sack is heavy, maybe fifty pounds. The cop takes hold and its weight pulls him off balance.
Nos snatches his wrist and twists the gun away. The cop drops the bag and jacks Nos in his face. Nos pries the gun from his hand. The punch was nothing. He could eat those all day.
Nos tosses the gun and cold cocks him. A right cross—slams the cop on the hard concrete.
Nos sets Naomi down and follows up. Kicks him in the ribs. Nos falls on him and cranks his forearm under his chin, lifting his face up and away from the ground, as he drives his knee into his back.
The cop wheezes. His face turns red. Purple.
“Speak,” says Nos, calm. “Before I choke the life out of you.”
“I’m inoculated,” the cop gasps.
“Inoculated? How? Where?”
“A shot,” he says, and Nos loosens the choke. “A doctor. A doctor. Please, let go.”
“Where?”
“The park. Central Park, they set up tents, inoculations, medicine, please…”
“The way is blocked—how the fuck am I supposed to get there?”
“Broadway… the trains, the water, the trains…”
Nos gets close to his ear and speaks softly so Nay can’t hear. “If you’re lying, I’ll find you and put a bullet in your head.”
Nos tightens his vice grip, turning his wrist into the cop’s neck until he goes completely limp.
Nos lets go and the cop collapses to the ground like letting go a marionette. Nay watches. Nos strips the man and sees the track marks of some ghastly-sized needle. Nay watches as he pulls the keys from the blue uniform pants and yanks the boots from the cop’s feet and loads them all into the van. He rolls the motorcycle and lifts it into the back.
He puts Nay in the front seat and they leave the man naked in the cold.
Chapter 13
The Big Apple
Courtesy, Professionalism, Respect, it says on the side of the police van. CPR. Reverse the letters, Nos always thought, makes CRP. Sounds like ‘corrupt’ to him.
Driving always makes Nos want to smoke—impossible as long as the mask is on his face. He heads back down a ways until he can make it West over to Broadway. Seems there is a narrow river way that travels uptown, above the N,R subway line.
He drives into the wreckage of the city as far as he can before a crisscross of support beams and rubble blocks his progress. He takes Naomi out of her seat and begins to pile rubble on top of the van—laying beams across the hood and bricks on the roof and covering the windows with handfuls of dust like a sniper in a gilly suit. He picks Naomi up in the crook of his arm and takes a few steps back to look at his work. The van is invisible.
They head uptown on foot. Their passage narrows through the walls of demolition. They’re forced to walk in the water. Nos picks Nay up and carries her so she doesn’t soak her feet.
As they plow through the muck, the slosh and slip of his boots drown out all the noise. Nos periodically stops and waits for the noise to die. He listens. They are on someone else’s turf. The cop made that clear.
These supposed medical units in the park might be a setup. No way to know. Since Black Sun, everyone is a scavenger. Nothing would be free—especially not medicine. Yet the clowns and that cop weren’t wearing gas masks. They are either inoculated, or the disease is no longer a threat.
Maybe the threat has passed. Maybe Nay isn’t sick. Nos could taste the relief like a sip of cold water in an Afghan summer. Maybe she’s OK.
The water is frozen at the edges, crunching as they walk. The walls of Central Park are up ahead. More than anything he’s seen in the city, the wall looks as it did before the devastation. Each rectangular stone is piled neatly on top of one another like loaves of baked bread.
“The park,” says Nay.
Memories of the park stir him. Leaves falling on Autumn walks, the ffthunk of a baseball into a mitt, sweet grilling BBQ sauce, Labradors running, South Americans and West Indians playing pickup futbol. He slams the unwanted thoughts out of his mind like a shell casing from a chamber.
The ground is cold. The trees are black and shriveled. Nay is getting heavy, but he can’t notice that. He’s used to one-hundred-pound-plus-rucksacks-plus-communications gear. This is a surveillance and recon mission. If he’s done one, he’s done a thousand. Only never with a six-year-old girl as a teammate.
The ground looks trampled. Nos shuffles away from the patch up toward the bushy high ground and takes out his scope.
It’s getting dark. Nos dials the Leupold 10-power scope in at five hundred yards, scanning for light or movement. Six hundred yards. Seven hundred. Eight. Nothing.
He makes a mental note of a spot overlooking a pond that looks safe enough. He takes Nay by the hand, and they head back to the path.
“Where are we going?” she asks.
Nos points. “There’s a little pond up ahead and a hill up over it.”
Naomi looks where he points. “I don’t see no pond.”
“You don’t see a pond?”
“I don’t see a pond.”
“Right. I saw it with my scope,” he tells her. “We can go up there and see even further into the park. Call it ‘Waypoint One.’”
“Waypoint One.”
“Right. We’ll go up there and be very quiet, very careful. There could be more bad guys anywhere. We don’t want anyone to see us before we see them.”
Nay nods emphatically. “I’ll be quiet.”
“As long as we’re quiet and careful, nobody can get us.”
She nods again.
They make way, waypoint by waypoint, through Central Park. They see people come and go, but no one sees them. He sees cops and civilians. Everyone looks
run-down and ragged. They are all either going to or heading from Belvedere Castle.
Nos sees it from across a wide, marshy lake. Green algae skims the water and settles at a bank of large rocks. The castle stands on top of those rocks at the highest point in the park. One tall tower stands above. Another tower plateaus beneath and another, wider tower plateaus beneath that, leading down to the flat cobblestone ground. Two black lampposts out front make strange shadows.
Four big white tents bearing a Red Cross shudder in the breeze. Silhouettes sit and stir inside.
“Looks OK,” he tells Nay.
They climb the hill to the castle, and two cops stand in front of the tents with hands on sidepieces. Behind them Nos can now see the two lampposts clearly.
On top of each post are two severed heads. The faces are painted in clown make-up.
Severed heads.
Shit.
What now?
Chapter 14
The Cure
He looks at the cops. They wear blues, caps, and boots, but who knows whether they were even cops. The days of entrance exams and two-year college requirements are long gone. Anyone can get a uniform. And these barely fit.
His knife is tucked beneath his pant leg, his sidepiece under one arm and his daughter in the other. The cops in the security shack spot him and open the door. They are thin. Their skin is yellow and malnourished. One has loose hound-dog cheeks.
“What brings you?” asks the hound dog.
“Nice day outside,” says Nos through his mask. “Be nice to feel it.”
“You want the cure,” says the other.
“And inoculation,” says Nos. “I hear this is the place.”
“Five hundred,” says the hound dog, eyeing Nos.
The cops examine Nos as if they could read his monetary value from the way he breathes in his mask.
Nos nods, figuring the man standing guard isn’t the man to negotiate with. That man is likely inside.
The hound dog flicks his head.
The hound dog turns and gives a thumbs-up to two men in the towers above. He leads them to one of the tents and opens a flap. They step inside and are overcome by the smell and heat of sick people waiting on benches, fidgeting like pigeons in a coop. Armed police guards strut about in yellow goggles.
They follow the guard outside the back of the tent and into the tower room. A toothless man passes them, breathing heavily. He walks with a heavy lurch and seems in way too good a mood.
Naomi turns to Nos. “Gollum,” she whispers. The creature from the Lord of the Rings always gave Naomi the creeps.
“Makes sense,” says Nos. “We’re in Mordor.”
A guard steps into the door.
“Inoculation,” he announces.
The castle room is completely covered in plastic. A plump blond man with a thin mustache sits on a stool in the back. He is the healthiest man Nos has seen in a year. He’s fat but strong like a bear. He wears a white T-shirt under a Kevlar vest with an NYPD badge chained around his neck. He twirls a handgun around wide brawler knuckles.
Two guards hold the walls, and a man in a white lab coat and latex gloves plays with vials and syringes beside a sink.
“Inoculation?” asks the blond man on the stool.
Nos nods. “My daughter,” he says, “I think she may have caught…it,” he says, glancing at Nay to see if she registers his words.
She’s just staring off out the window. Inconclusive.
“Have you seen a rash?” the doctor asks. “The rash? Reddish white, like an infected cut?”
“No. Though she was exposed,” says Nos. “A man with the rash took her mask off, touched her.”
“We’ll have a look. You can take your masks off here.”
Nos peels the mask from Naomi’s face, then his own. Both are red from the tight straps. Breathing feels amazing.
“Search them,” the blond man orders.
One guard holds them at his rifle point as the other approaches Nos. Nos has about a foot and forty-five some-odd pounds on the guy.
“Turn around, please,” says the guard.
Nos doesn’t budge.
“This is just how it works, brudah,” says the blond in a thick Brooklyn accent. “Best you go along, Mister…”
“Sergeant Greene.”
The blond man’s blue eyes flicker. “You were a cop?”
“Military.”
“Marine?”
“Army,” Nos pauses, unsure how much to reveal.
The man nods. “Rank?”
“Petty Officer, First Class.”
“Pleased to meet you, Sergeant Greene. I’m Lieutenant Romo. If you could just give up the gun, it’s a safety precaution.”
“I respect your caution, Lieutenant. And I respectfully decline to surrender my firearm,” says Nos.
“We’ll give her right back to you when we’re through. We don’t expect people to have to walk around without protection.”
“I’m here to pay for treatment,” says Nos.
“There’s no danger here, officer.”
“Then you won’t mind if I’m armed.”
“These are lawless times, ya understand me—we need rules here to maintain our services. We got valuable resources. We had the clowns running raids on us. Savages takin’ hostages. We can’t have people shootin’ up the fuckin’ place.”
“If you don’t want the place shot up,” says Nos, “It’s best you don’t take issue with my firearm.”
That got under Romo’s skin.
“If you’re looking to intimidate me, you’re more of a dumb-ass than you look. ‘Specially with that lil’ sweetheart of yours.”
“What kind of dumb-ass would disarm himself to a man that decorates his lawn with severed heads?”
Romo is quiet. He wears his grin with less patience.
“These are lawless times,” continues Nos. He offers a roll of hundreds to Romo. “Now you want my gun? Or my money? Full disclosure, the gun comes with a full clip.”
Romo counts the money with his fat hands. He looks to the doctor and nods.
“Take off your shirts, please,” says the doctor in an even tone. He has a quiet face, and his expression hasn’t changed at all. He examines Nos and Naomi: a standard check up he mindlessly performs—throat, ears, chest, heart, reflexes. He shines a fine blue light into Nos’ eyes and then Nay’s.
“I’ve got good news and bad news,” says the doctor through thin, scrunched up lips, as though his features are fingertips pressed close together.
Nos lets out a long exhale. Please, let her be fine. Let her be fine.
“You daughter was exposed, but the strain has yet to metastasize. After a series of inoculations, she will be OK.”
Nos’ face brightens. The smile feels strange on his face. He looks to Naomi with a wave of relief.
“The bad news is you. You have not only been exposed, you are infected.”
Chapter 15
Infected
Nos tries to remember when he possibly could have been exposed—at some point during the fight? Or when he washed off Nay? When installing the window bars? The disease is treacherous.
Two syringes full of a clear liquid sit on the counter. The doctor presses a third, ungodly-sized syringe into a vial. He draws back the plunger and fills the tube with a thick pink fluid. He sets the pink syringe beside the other two, nearly twice their size.
“Where did this medicine come from?” Nos asks.
“Some kind of air drop,” Romo answers, though he’d asked the doctor. “We found crates under parachutes all over the park. The vaccines, the cure, treatment, antibiotics, the tents, instructions. Someone was watching out.”
And then you snatched up all the supplies and hoarded the medicine. Now you make people pay to save their own lives.
The doctor swabs Naomi’s shoulder and pricks her skin with the small needle. She winces but makes no sound. She looks fearfully at the doctor, and he doesn’t smile. He removes the needle and h
olds the swab in place for the Band Aid.
He then takes the pink syringe, turning to Nos.
“I have to administer the cure before I can inoculate you.”
He swabs Nos’ arm, pricks him, and presses the fluid into his vein. The cure runs through Nos, and he feels his whole body expand. Then the pain is gone, and he is euphoric. He feels good. Damn good.
The doctor then injects the clear inoculation fluid into Nos’ shoulder, though by this point he barely notices.
“We need to quarantine you two.”
“Quarantine? How long?”
“Twelve hours,” says the doctor. “In twelve hours you get another shot, then another twelve-hour quarantine, and your third and final shot.”
“You’ll be just fine,” says Romo. “Lucky we caught it when we did.”
Quarantine. Vile word, Nos thinks. But he feels good.
And Nay is OK.
Lucky.
The guard leads them to a white tent and unzips it Four others are inside. One deadbeat in a dirty overcoat and rags paces, angry, muttering about how he isn’t sick.
“Just give me my motherfucking shot, stop taking my shit, I got a house, a mortgage, a fly-ass car. I got a house, a mortgage, and a tricked out M6 with the crazy whip-appeal. Give me my shot. Let me go. I got a house…”
He is annoying, but he addresses no one, so no one has to bother with him. Another sits on the bench, sleeping, and another is asleep on the floor. The fourth is Latino and awake. He wears a filthy linen suit and smells of cheap cigars, Black and Milds maybe, like burnt sugar. He has a tan Taino face and thick, round stubby fingers with gold rings. A hard, shining metal cigar case sticks up from his jacket lapel pocket. Roughneck Ricky Ricardo, thinks Nos. The suit is crusty and his shirt is untucked, but he still wears it with pride. He rakes the newcomers over with his eyes, nods to Nos, and smiles at Nay.
Nay looks tired.
“You sleepy, sweetie?” Nos asks softly.
“I can stay awake,” she insists. Still, she can tell there is a different kind of safety here that they haven’t felt since they left home. Even at Jake’s they didn’t sleep. Despite the decapitated heads mounted outside the tent just yards away, Jake and his daughter were somehow creepier. Nos doesn’t expect Romo will hold a grudge about the gun. If he’d given it up, he might never see it again, and without the gun there would be nothing he could do about it. They are captive enough as is.
A New Day in America Page 4