A New Day in America

by Theo Black Gangi

  The observation bird isn’t observing. It’s trying to kill him.

  Nos keeps driving into the shots as they come, one at a time. The ping against the gun, spinning the turret around. They slap at the hull of the boat and splash into the black water. Nos accelerates toward the shots, the one direction his every survival instinct tells him not to go. Instinct doesn’t know shit.

  If Nos has learned anything about helicopters, it’s that as dangerous and scary as they are, they have that one crucial weakness. The Achilles tail rotor. He was in one bird that went down at Ft. Dan, and he shot one down in Wyoming. Why not one more?

  The whole bird is a faint trace against the sky. Moonlight catches the main pounding rotor. The tail is just a couple clicks off.

  Nos ditches the wheel and crouches at the turret gun. He won’t have much chance to get it right. Once he starts firing, it’ll be harder to aim the gun as it rattles, and he’ll give his position away. The sharpshooters in the bird would take him out easily.

  He lines up the sights with the dark spot where he guesses the tail should be. He has to hypothesize based on the way the moonlight hits the bubble-front glass and the gleam on the legs. A wing and a prayer. Could be the last trigger he ever pulls.

  Still. The anxiety before is always worse than the pain after.

  He fires. The gun rattles through his arms as he forces his aim to steady. He hears bullets hit metal, but he doesn’t know where. Shots hiss back at him. His boat pops with holes. The bird is on the move. Nos slashes shots across the body. It keeps moving. And then hacks, coughs, and hiccups.

  I know that sound.

  The bird tails into a rush of wind. It’s a short fall. A tremendous splash thunders through the water. Nos’ boat is first sucked toward the splash, and then massive waves force him back away.

  His hits the floor and clings to the boat, trying to even his body weight. The waves pound the hull and send him airborne, just slapping back to the surface by the nose. Another wave sucks him under and sends him flying again, nearly capsizing.

  He holds on. The ocean steadies.

  He clicks his boat lights on and drives toward the crash. The lights hit the half-submerged bird. Soldiers are clawing their way from the open doors. Nos jumps over to the turret and cranks the gun, and bullets crush through three of them, hurling their riddled bodies into the water. Nos then fires into the cockpit so thoroughly that the pilot and copilot couldn’t possibly survive.

  He waits and watches the floating corpses. He waits behind the gun to see if there’s something that isn’t dead. A body floats out from under the bird and hangs facedown in the black water. The pilot.

  Nos gets back behind the wheel and drives off toward the yacht. He feels a thunk as he hits something—he looks behind and sees another body float out from underneath the boat.

  He thinks of Iron, the pilot whose life he’d saved at Ft. Dan. What if he had joined the Revelation, not knowing any better? Maybe saved a life to take a life. Even if it isn’t him, these boys look just like the men I trained with, fought with, almost died with. I left my own family for the brotherhood of men just like them. Now I’ve killed countless.

  They had been trained to watch each other’s back, to operate as a team, and to never leave one man behind. Yet they had also been trained to kill. You can’t train a man to do something and then not expect him to do it. They had all been trained to kill, and they ran out of others to kill, so now they kill each other. For what? Fanatics?

  He turns his attention to the yacht just up ahead. Can’t see it yet, but he knows Nay is there. Leila. Whatever family he’s got left. Almost. He wonders if he’ll see Tommy again. He survived the End of the World. Maybe he’ll survive America.

  The boat flies out through the wine-dark sea. Grey clouds rumble and curl above. A faint dark blue line on the horizon separates the dark blue of the Pacific from the dark gray of the trembling sky. The boat cuts a frothing V through the waters.

  A hand grips his ankle.

  The fuck?

  His leg is ripped out from under him, and he collapses to the floor on his chin. An arm pulls him to the edge of the boat, using him as leverage. A man emerges from the side. A soaking wet, shit-eating grin.

  Lawlor.

  “Hey, stranger.”

  He was in the observation bird. No wonder they started shooting.

  Nos kicks at him as he yanks his other arm out from the side of the boat with a chunk and pulls out a knife. He was riding with me by that knife in my hull.

  Nos scurries to his elbow and reaches for his Sig, but Lawlor attacks. The knife stabs into Nos’ hand. The Sig goes flying.

  The knife is stuck. Lawlor tries to pull it back out, and Nos’ elbow cracks him across the chin. Lawlor falls to his back. Nos stands in the wobbly boat, braces himself, and yanks the knife out from his palm. He wants to howl with pain, but he holds it in and stares at Lawlor. Let the blood drip.

  “You really want to do this again?” Nos asks.

  “Gladly. Though if you’d prefer surrender, I’ll kill you quickly.”

  “What makes you think this will end any different then the last two times?”

  “I thought we understood each other, Nostradamus. This will end in death. Mine or yours. I told you my intentions back at the base. We are vying for destiny’s favor.”

  “Good news is, Laws, I hear that once you’re dead, you don’t mind it at all.”

  Lawlor pops open the trap and yanks the anchor from the floor and hurls it. The heavy metal throng spins toward Nos, and he ducks out of the way. The chain hits his shoulder, and he stumbles as Lawlor powers into him, lifting Nos off the ground and slamming him on his back. Nos slides his knees up Lawlor’s chest and flings him against the turret. Nos pops to his feet as the gun swivels toward him and bursts as he dives out of the way. The heavy gunfire wrecks the hull and breaks through the bottom. They tilt hard to the side as the boat sinks fast.

  Nos sidesteps the gun and cracks Lawlor with an overhand right. He’s wobbled. Lawlor reaches to the upshot railing. Nos pops him again, drives heavy shots into his gut and slams a left that breaks his eye. The water gushes from the sides, and their boots slog through.

  Lawlor grabs his throat with both hands, and Nos peels one back by the finger and bangs his chin with another elbow. Desperate, trying that bullshit street move.

  The floor of the boat is submerged completely beneath the water. Lawlor backtracks, water at his ankles, and Nos races after him. Lawlor reaches for Nos’ Sig as Nos trips on the anchor chain, falling on top of Lawlor and splashing to the floor. Lawlor shoves the gun from under the water at Nos. Nos crams his forearm into his wrist, and the Sig fires a deafening bang by Nos’ ear. Nos fingers the chain in the water beneath them. Lawlor pulls the gun back down with both hands and shoves the gun to Nos’ head.

  He doesn’t notice the chain. Nos wraps the chain around Lawlor’s wrists and yanks the gun aside, flying off with a plunk, and then Nos pitches the chain back around Lawlor’s throat, once, twice, and makes a chain link necktie.

  Lawlor gags. His face goes purple, his tongue hanging out of his mouth. He drops under the water, and Nos yanks him up by the chain and cranks Lawlor’s wrists and neck all at once, dropping him and pulling him back up with a splash. The veins in his head bulge as he sucks for air and swallows salt water. The water level grows higher, up to Nos’ waist. Nos holds Lawlor up above the rising surface.

  “Kill me,” Lawlor groans. “You have to. You know you have to.”

  “Tell me,” says Nos with a growl. “About the necklace.”

  “I left it,” says Lawlor. “I took it off, once. I think it was when she asked me to take a shower.”

  Nos shuts his eyes. Yvette. She would always ask him to take a shower. First. Before…

  “You knew,” says Lawlor, the water thundering in the boat around them. “You had to know. That’s why I had to kill you. You knew. You would have killed me first.”

  Nos stares at the
bound man, quiet. Did I know? He remembers the tortured nights in Brooklyn watching Yvette on the TV. Hi camera. He was tortured. But for what reason?

  “You didn’t know?” asks Lawlor. “You had to know.”

  “You never know,” says Nos, unsure exactly what he means.

  “I had to kill you. I couldn’t risk it, you understand. You would have come for revenge,” he chokes. “I couldn’t have you living on base. Guys on base knew. You’re too dangerous.”

  “You should have taken the shot,” says Nos. “Back on the Ft Dan battlefield.”

  “So I’ve told myself a million times,” Lawlor answers. “Funny, how the girl was wearing the necklace? I wore it for over a decade.” He tucks his chin to the necklace on his chest.

  The vial is just submerged in the water. Nos takes it in his fist and snaps the chain off Lawlor’s neck. He holds it up and looks at it, flakes just visible in the clear vial.

  “Those there tiny flakes of shrapnel should have killed me,” Lawlor explains. “They pulled each and every one of them from my heart.” Water pours into Lawlor’s throat, and he hacks it back up. “Did she just pick it out?”

  “She did.” Where is he going with this?

  “She wore it, all by herself?”

  “Yes.”

  “Seven years ago. Six-year-old girl,” he laughs, choking on the chain and water. “Like she knows,” says Lawlor.

  Nos feels Lawlor’s leg kick beneath him. He hears the scrape of the anchor against the submerged floor.

  No. Impossible.

  The anchor slides off the edge of the underwater railings and plummets down the ocean depths. The chain unwinds, tightening on Lawlor’s neck and Nos’ fingers.

  “She knows,” Lawlor says with a bloody smile, before he is whisked away.

  Lawlor’s muscular frame barrels down after the anchor, legs flailing through the water as they race down to the black. The chains tumble out of sight after him. The chain links yank on Nos’ fingers and threaten to take him down, too, so he untangles himself. The chain unspools all the way until it is taut, and the boat starts to sink fast. Nos kicks away from the boat as it crushes down after its anchor.

  Just like that, the boat, the anchor, and Lawlor gone—the whole beast is lost to the ocean’s bottom.

  Nos is swimming. He feels like the water runs through and through the stab wound in his hand, the hole inside his ribs. The small vial of shrapnel is tucked in his waistband.

  The ocean goes and goes, blank as his mind.

  Chapter 16

  The Water

  Nay’s eyes open, and she’s in a bed. Her first bed in so many days and nights. She’s still hot, still sweating. But she’s not so wet. The bed jostles ever so much here and there, and she knows there’s water somewhere down below.

  She smells the alcohol and feels the dull pain of the shot in her arm. She feels the damp cotton swab on her skin. There’s Pa, by her bed.

  “Pa,” she says and hugs him.

  “Nay, sweetie.”

  She feels his heartbeat up against hers at the same exact rhythm. He’s crying on her shoulder. She gets dizzy.

  They look at each other and laugh. Nothing’s funny, but they laugh.

  “Did we make it?” she asks.

  “We sure did.”

  “Wow.”

  “Wow.”

  “How?”

  “The water, sweetie.”

  She sinks into the pillow. She wants so much to keep her eyes open, but she can’t quite manage. She wants to keep looking at her Pa, at his face. She wants to know what he’s been through. But there will be time for that.

  “The water’s always moving,” he tells her, soothing, like he’s reading her a bedtime story. “The ocean’s always turning. The rivers always move forward. The water flows and never returns. The water divides the land and divides the soul. It runs deep as the earth and shallow as sand. The softest element in the world, but strong enough to break rock. It can flow, it can crash. It runs at its own will and can form the shape of a bottle or cup. Finite as a canteen, and waves that surge and recede without end. The river passes along the rocks and retains nothing, and as the river eventually finds the ocean, it finds freedom.”

  ***

  He leans forward and kisses her cheek. She still sweats, but less and less. Her color is less yellow now—more red. She’s still hot, but cools by the hour. Her breathing is slow, in and out.

  Breathe. Breathe. The soft in and out of sleep.

  Epilogue

  She can’t remember what she called herself the last time someone asked. She’s Emma. Or Sarah. Or Clara. No one asks her much anyway. No one has asked her today. She waits in a disorganized crowd. She stinks so bad she’s forgotten what stink is. The world just smells, and once in a while, when she gets away from all the people and there’s grass and trees, it doesn’t. But that’s when it’s dangerous. That’s when you have to be afraid, when you can’t smell the people.

  Emma or Clara or Sarah used to be afraid all the time. Men terrified her. They would always look at her like she was a tray of desserts.

  A skinny woman turns to her. She sees the scar on Emma or Clara’s face and looks concerned. “You know I used to be fat,” she says. She’s talking about the old life. “I used to diet, can you believe that? There used to be food that I would make sure I didn’t eat. I wish I could slap myself back then,” says the skinny woman. “Wish I had eaten until I was so fat I’d never need food again.”

  People would always talk about the old life. But Emma or Clara or Sarah had never known the old life. As far as she can remember, the world was always like this. She was always scared and hungry. Men always looked at her like dessert.

  “I had a job at Weight Watchers! You fucking believe that? Weight Watchers?”

  “Weight Watchers,” she repeats.

  “You don’t remember?”

  “Sounds familiar,” she says. Emma or Clara doesn’t like talking to people, especially about the old days. They never understand why she doesn’t remember. She’s too old not to remember. They think she’s being funny. Or they think she’s stupid.

  “Familiar? Everyone knew Weight Watchers. Jenny Craig?”

  She shakes her head. The woman looks at her with pity.

  “I’m Renee, sweetheart. What’s your name?”

  Clara Sarah Dara Emma. Emma

  “Emma,” says Emma.

  Renee has big, tangled red hair, and her skin hangs from her face.

  They hear a roar of motors in the distance.

  “Is that them?” Renee asks as she spins her head to look. “Fuckin’ bikers. Guess not.”

  Now she’s going to ask me more about who I was.

  Emma’s oldest memory is the man with the black hat. They were running from the explosions. Hoards of them running. People clawing each other to get away. People falling and trampling on top of other people. Emma even remembers stepping on some fleshy, bony parts as she ran alongside (who? Man? Child? Son? Husband?) Someone. The world was on fire. The city was shaking. Buildings were falling. Death was everywhere.

  And then whoever she was with was gone. She remembers a person’s skull crushed like a melon and lots of blood. Only she kept running. Running until the man in the black hat stood in her way. He was watching her run. Everyone around was going one way, and he was looking the other way. He was looking at her, and when she tried to run around him, he tackled her. His breath stank. That was back when she knew what smelled and what didn’t. He looked at her like he knew her. Did I know him? Or did he only know me?

  The next thing she remembers is being chained in a small room. He never allowed her any clothes. He fed her whenever he felt like it. He raped her whenever he felt like it. She was chained to his bed, and he would sleep next to her. He would call her Clara (or Sarah?) and pretend she was his wife. He had a rash. She could see it every time he took off his black hat. The rash grew bigger by the day. One day he didn’t wake up. Maggots lived in him.
/>   But she was still chained. She screamed and cried for a whole day before anyone heard her. When someone did hear, they were men. They brought her with them, but kept her chained. They thought it was funny. She promised she would give it to them for free, but they said there wasn’t any fun in that. They kept her and two other girls chained in a truck. They travelled, looking for food and guns and women. They all got rashes. So did the women she was tied up with. Soon they all died, too.

  She got out of her chains. She wandered the city, begging for food. Men still looked at her. They smiled at her. She would run. She found a knife and found a mirror and cut her face. Men didn’t look at her the same after that.

  Big convoys of soldiers would bring crates of food to Tompkins Square. She would wait every week and make sure she got enough grain to last her.

  Only there is one soldier who keeps looking at her. She gets scared every time the food comes, and she’s scared now. Renee can tell.

  “Why are you so squirrely?” she asks.

  “I hope we get some food,” says Emma. She doesn’t want to mention the soldier. He looks like more than a soldier—like he’s in charge, some powerful general. That’s the last kind of man she wants to deal with. He has gray hair and gray eyes and is well shaven. Every time they bring food he’s there, and he looks at her. Even with the scar on her face, he looks at her, out of all the people in the crowd.

  The convoy comes. The crowd in Tompkins Square begins to cheer. They clear out of the way for the trucks to pull up. Soldiers hop out and open the backs of trucks and start tossing bags of grain into the outstretched hands of the crowd. Emma gets excited at first, and then she sees the gray man.

  Even his eyes are gray, and his skin is just a shade pinker than his hair. He has a young look, for all his gray, and fierce lips. He wears mirrored sunglasses. She feels him staring at her anyway.

  Emma holds out her hands. Renee catches a bag. Emma still has nothing. The general still stares. McCatherty, she thinks for a second, but doesn’t know where the thought came from.