“Relax, hon. You can sleep.”
“It’s cold.”
“Yeah.” Nos knows it is cold, but he doesn’t feel it. Could be worse. Could be wet and cold. Ask any BUD/S trainee in hell week.
He takes off his coat and spreads it on the cold ground. Nay hesitates and then lays down inside. Nos folds the big coat over her twice. She smiles at him with her eyes before they shut. She is off to dreamland.
“Beautiful niña,” says Ricky in a thick Dominican accent.
“Thanks,” says Nos, guarded. He thinks of Jake and how Nay’s pretty face in this ugly world could mean trouble. He won’t sleep, he decides. He doesn’t feel like he needs to.
He feels fine. Better than fine. The feeling is familiar. Too familiar.
“Where were you when it happened?” Ricky asks.
“Brooklyn. You?”
“Washington Heights,” he says.
“Still stands, then.”
“Fort Washington survived the revolution. Si, it survived this, too, pero the people were not so lucky. The blast spared the buildings, but the inferma was not so charitable.”
“You lost your family?”
“Everyone. Three daughters.”
“I’m sorry. I lost two sons, my wife.”
“I’m sorry, too. But grief will not keep us alive, will it?”
“Won’t it? There is life in grief,” says Nos, almost to himself. “It’s apathy that kills us.” Even as Nos speaks, he thinks of his father’s skeletal corpse dangling from the piano chord.
“Ah, a warrior and a philosopher,” says Ricky.
“Death makes us all philosophers.”
“Not all.” Ricky nods to the silhouette of police guarding the tent. “So grief has brought you this far?”
“And a basement overstocked with imperishable foods and a small weapons cache.”
“Ha! You were prepared. And people thought you paranoid, si?”
“They did. But I wasn’t preparing. Just how I lived. I liked to put food in my body as quickly as possible. Living on military rations ruined my appetite. I would have lived on an IV if I could. I never felt like sitting and eating. Waste of time.”
Ricky is incredulous. “Was your wife’s cooking so terrible?”
“I’d lost the taste for it. Now I’d kill for some roast pork.”
“Don’t speak such words—saying ‘roast pork’ while men starve. You are yelling ‘fire’ in a crowded theater. That is unconstitutional.”
They share a laugh. Feels like a lifetime since he’s shared a laugh.
“How did you survive?” asks Nos.
“I’m a doctor. When I saw so many people dying so quickly I took the necessary precautions. Gas mask, isolation. Like they tell you on the airplane—when the masks drop, secure yourself, and then your child. I secured myself. For mi familia, I was too late. And now, I fail to secure even myself.”
Ricky removes his jacket and shows Nos a horrid rash that creeps up his arm and grows bigger as it disappears beneath his shirt.
“They say they have a cure. I gave them my last dollar, the last of my wife and daughter’s jewelry, all my gold but these rings. They eye my rings like these will be theirs soon as well. They have given me two shots and I await the third. My rash has not stopped growing. I do not feel the pain any longer. For that, I am thankful. They have cured the agony of dying, if nothing else.”
Nos also does not feel any pain. Nor cold nor hunger nor care.
Chapter 16
The Three Deaths of Nostradamus Greene
It was 2008. Utterly alone and wounded and hunted in the impossible Afghanistan mountains of the Hindu Kush, Nos would consider this his second death.
Everything had gone to shit. He had been shot in the shoulder and caught the peripheral blast from an RPG. He had fallen so many times he’d nearly broken his neck, and he was bleeding badly. He had no radio, no medical gear, and the trauma of watching his teammates massacred was still fresh. The Taliban was tracking him with way more terrain savvy than he could hope to learn. There was no flat ground. His shoulder made it near impossible to climb. He tumbled down escarpments and hills and made an easy trail to follow. He would glance down long drops to the abyss below. He was sure the Kush would soon kill him. The mountains cut huge prehistoric shapes into the backdrop. Damn, if it didn’t feel like of the End of the World.
He could hear them following with that slow, methodical walk of theirs. Nos had his M4 and his Sig Saur nine and his knife, plus three magazines and one grenade. It was time to make a stand.
He retraced his last fall, laboring up the mountainside. There were two large rocks that sat together in such a way as to make decent cover. He climbed inside and crouched.
His body knew how to deal with shock, even if his mind never would. Training kicked in. Calm down. Stay alert. Control your breathing. Don’t move a fucking muscle. Maybe you won’t die.
The Afghans approached, quiet as mountain goats. They did not speak to each other, but their footfalls gave away their position.
He pulled the pin on his grenade and tossed it. If they did react, they were too late. The frag blew, and Nos popped up and gunned down the last two standing. Two lay motionless on the ground. They had taken the brunt of the grenade. Another two writhed in the dirt, and Nos drew his pigsticker knife and opened both their throats.
Nos exhaled. The Taliban soldiers were no help as far as clothes. Way too small for him. He took a shirt to reset his bandage, and took a canvas pouch and stuffed it with four more Russian grenades. He took a cloth pakol hat and fit it on his head sideways. He then tossed the bodies off the farthest side of the mountain and watched each one tumble and plunge off the same precipice that once seemed his destiny. Felt pretty fuckin’ good.
Nos searched the canvas Taliban pouch, hoping to find some kind of food. He was starving. What he found instead was a bag with what looked like green bread dough inside. It smelled like tobacco and earth and some sort of odd chemical. He knew what it was: the opium that sustained the Afghan economy, the stuff they gave suicide bombers to get them high enough to blow themselves up.
The pain bit like a savage fang in his shoulder. He was weak and light-headed from the massive amount of blood he’d lost. He took a pinch of the tobacco opium and slipped it inside his lip.
The wave hit him first in the back of the legs, then his neck. The pain was gone. Its juices immediately spread through his mouth and got inside him quicker than any kind of relief he’d ever felt. Better than the morphine he’d had at hospitals. It was the moment after a freefall, when the clatter of the rotary and the scream of the upshot wind stops, his chute springs and he is drifting to the warm mother earth.
Almost as quickly the feeling shrank, and the outlying spaces became terrifying. The horror was just beyond his field of vision, and no matter how he turned his head he could not see it. A series of pictures flashed through his head like an old reel movie, a red-roped sky lounge overlooking all of New York City, a ditch dug deep in the dessert and piled with uncountable burning corpses, a male lion tearing at the hindquarters of a bison with lionesses clung bloody to the prey’s belly and throat. He felt the looming crush of death.
Nos slipped another pinch of opium inside his mouth.
Chapter 17
The Opiate
Ricky Ricardo died during the second night in quarantine. Nos told the guards, and they took his body away. Nos realized he had never asked him his name.
Nos has known for some time that their cure had some powerful opiate in it. Makes sense to give morphine to people who are suffering, though he wonders how effective this cure can be. The three people that were in the tent when Nos and Nay arrived were all dead, replaced by four more. Nos keeps to himself. He’s learned his lesson about befriending the terminal.
He is worried about himself. He knows Nay will not survive if he dies. But the cure maintains him with that feeling of wholeness in the Hindu Kush. He has not developed any sort of rash. H
e doesn’t get as high, but the comedown is easier, and he soon gets his second shot, then his third. They keep him quarantined for another twelve hours before they call him back into the lab.
Romo somehow looks fatter. The doctor examines Nos and confirms that he has no rash and appears healthy. He is cleared to leave.
Romo then offers Nos another shot, if he wants to pay.
“If I’m clear, why would I need another shot?” asks Nos.
“We find patients grow accustomed to the pleasant feeling of the medicine,” says Romo with a twinkle. “Some experience withdrawals—an unfortunate side effect, but a small price to pay for your life, no? So you can take more with you and cycle down.”
It’s been twelve hours since Nos’ last shot, and the offer is extremely tempting. The cure suddenly seems way more essential than the cash in his pocket.
Then he has a vision of himself mainlining opiates with some dirty, dull needle in a back alley by a drum-can fire with Naomi watching.
“I’m good,” says Nos.
He’s kicked before, he’ll kick again.
Romo seems a bit surprised. “Be safe,” he says. “Though I’m happy to let ya suit up here if you want some work. Could use another strong cop. We can feed ya, and the little ‘un. We got medicine and safety in numbers. It’s dangerous out there.”
“I appreciate the offer,” says Nos, thinking of the clown gang. “But we’ve got to be on our way.”
“’K. You know where to find us.”
Nos leads Nay away from the rubble of the city and toward the highway where they can look out at the water. The skyline is beautiful. Jersey is off to the west like America still exists. A glow brims from above and streaks into blue uncoiling clouds. Nos has never cared much for great views. Just something else to look at. But something about that view just now is, well, inspiring.
“Feel better?” he asks Nay.
“Yeah.”
Cement pillars line the promenade. The pillars had protected the ground from the blast. They make light outlines in the burned asphalt. Nos sits on a railing and takes Nay in his lap.
“I feel better, too.”
“It’s pretty.”
“It’s beautiful,” says Nos, with sudden appreciation for the natural wonder of it all.
“We’re going to be OK” he tells Nay.
She nods with her chin to her chest.
“You believe me?”
“I believe you.”
“I love you, sweetheart,” he says, and then cannot remember the last time he told her that.
“I love you, too, Pa,” she says with a tiny-toothed smile and squeezes her arms around his neck. “I miss Mommy.”
“I miss her, too. But she’s here,” he says and nods to the sunset, now blushing pink. “Do you see her?”
“No.”
“Can you feel her?”
“I don’t know.”
“She’s rooting for us.”
***
As night falls, the city is cold and dark. Street lamps hang unlit, some crushed and bent under the weight of the rubble. Nos burns a drum barrel fire. Nay eats from a can of beans, but Nos is not hungry. He wants a drink. Some Jameson. Some Jamie. Or something. Bullshit, he wants a shot of the cure. He’s scared to admit it, but all he really craves is another hit of that cure.
He tries to make a plan, but his brain is fuzzy. Tommy, he thinks. His half brother. The drunk. The base hobbit. Nos has a yearning to see his family. He deserves to know about his parents.
A shriek blazes through the crackle of their fire. Somebody yells help me. Dogs bark back and forth in a long-distance conversation and then suddenly stop. Please, he hears again, closer. A girl’s voice—he glances to Nay to make sure it isn’t her.
Small feet tumble from the piled concrete—a brick follows and hits the pavement. A figure emerges in shadow, one leg trailing lame behind. It’s a young girl. The firelight reveals half of her face. She’s pretty and covered in soot.
“Help me,” she says.
Nos keeps his hand on his gun and watches the dark. He hears the sniff of dogs.
“Help me.”
As her body drags closer, Nos sees the lame half of her is covered in the rash. It consumes her in a crisscross of pink and white that bubbles to a boil and swirls and froths. White maggots crawl in and out of her pores. Where her leg isn’t covered by the rash, it’s gouged with the teeth marks of a dog.
She moves to the fire, and Nos and Nay stay still and watch. The girl seems blind. Her eyes quiver and focus on nothing. She’s barely there.
“I want to give her some beans,” says Nay.
Nos nods and hands Naomi the can of beans.
Naomi takes the beans and hovers, unsure how to approach. The girl reaches toward the fire and slumps to the ground. Nos gently stops Naomi with his hand. A wheeze comes from the girl.
Her last breath fights its way from her lungs and she deflates. Her face falls forward, hits the scalding hot barrel, and stays there. Naomi jumps behind her father and grabs his leg. The girl’s skin fries and sizzles against the tin.
Nos moves to block Naomi’s view. He peels the girl’s face from the barrel, stretching away remnants of welded flesh. He picks her up in his arms. She is maybe two years older than Nay. Her head falls backward and stretches her mouth. He takes the girl out of their cove of firelight and climbs the rubble.
He doesn’t go too far and doesn’t leave Naomi’s sight. He moves some debris aside, sets her down, and covers her back up. A shit poor burial.
They will sleep in the van tonight. Tomorrow they will make a plan to get out of the city. Indiana. Tommy. Tommy always has a good time. Maybe even now.
Back at the fire, Nay climbs in his lap, and he holds her for a long while. They hear dogs bark and growl over by where Nos laid the body. They hear frantic tearing and yapping and biting and chewing.
Chapter 18
The Creature
Nos lights a cigarillo. He tastes the leaf and earth and blows away from Nay. She never liked the smell. As it burns he begins to cough. The coughing starts out slow and then turns to harsh hacks. Nay frowns. He hacks away into his fist and his chest convulses with a sharp pain. He looks at his hand and sees blood. He wipes the blood on the backside of his jeans and hopes Naomi doesn’t see.
When the coughing subsides he feels a cold rush of sweat. His clothes are quickly soaked. His vision blurs in the darkness and he tosses his cig into the fire. He senses are dimmed and his hair rises. He feels blind.
“Pa, what is it?”
“I don’t know, honey.”
“Are you OK?”
“I’m OK,” he manages, but he knows he is unconvincing. His nose begins to run.
“Pa,” she says, her eyes swirling. “Pa,” she repeats. She mouths the words I’m scared, but she won’t say them.
His limbs go limp, and he feels an overwhelming desire to lie down. He’s sick? But he has no rash. How can I be so sick?
He drops from his concrete perch to the ground and Naomi screams.
“Heh heh heh,” comes a chuckle from the dark.
The wretched man from the tent. The one Naomi called ‘Gollum’ crawls into the firelight.
“Got cured, did ya? Only one cure for the cure, and that’s the cure.”
Nos tries to pick himself up from the ground, but his abdomen goes loose. Naomi backs up to her father’s side.
“How was that sunset? Saw you watchin’ it like you never seen the sky in your life. Beautiful, wasn’t it?”
We’ve been followed. Stalked. Since the castle. How could he have missed it? He realizes he is a novice to the terrain. Or I was high as fuck.
“The Chef’s cookin’ up some marvelous candy. Inoculate you, sure, but pump you full of so much junk and poison they’ll own your soul. Get you to scavenge every last gem from the city and bring it to him on a tray. Got you good. Nice bike.”
The creature crawls closer and slides into the back of the police van. No
s reaches with everything he has to the piece holstered beneath his arm.
“Ah, goodies,” says the creature. He opens Nos’ pack and dumps everything out. He sifts through.
Naomi helps her father lift his arm. He takes hold of the gun. His hand is rubber.
“Get…the fuck…out of the van,” he manages.
“Ah, tough guy,” says the creature. “Go easy on me, homie. You got your mouth watering for that cure, and you got enough here to keep you cured for a good month yet. Sell the bike and stay cured. You’ll be OK. Me, I’m day to day. Another hour and I’ll be like you. Tell you what, let’s make this a tandem. Get you a good shot for now and then lets go digging. Big fella like you could move a ton of crap. I know where to dig, dig me?”
The gun feels steadier now, though Nos isn’t sure he could manage to cock it back and pull the trigger.
“Run along,” he says.
“Let me hold that piece there, and I’ll bring you back some of that good junk and get you right.”
“Run along. Before I cure you,” says Nos, trying to sound like he isn’t so hurt, like he’s in control.
The creature chuckles. “What you think, you gonna kick? Nah, homie, it’s not like that. Ain’t heroin, this is something different. Evil, devilish. The Chef cooked up some marvelous shit to get your mouth watering. They can get you right. It’s not withdrawals, the cure makes you sick.”
“Get on out of here,” says Nos.
“Go away,” says Naomi, surprising both of them.
The creature nods, and his Cheshire smile turns to a frown. He suddenly seems half-sincere.
“You gonna kick?”
Nos stares at him.
“Well good luck, homie. Goin’ to be a long night. Make sure you eat something, no matter how bad you don’t want to. And whatever you do, don’t trust your dreams.”
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