by Ginger Booth
“I agree. But hang on. Who are these strongest? You? Johnny? Panic? Pebbles?” Jake shook his head in irritation when he named the 4-year-old. “OK, you think Pebbles is useless. But Jake, it takes all of us. And when I fight? I fight for Pebbles, and Johnny the latrine lord, as well as Panic. And Panic? She keeps me fed and warm and healthy. And this evening’s performance notwithstanding, she’s one hell of a fighter.”
“I didn’t mean kick out the girls! Panic and Kat and Butch, they’re alright! Some of the others…”
Frosty stared him down until he dropped his eyes. “They want to live. You talk about all these mouths to feed as though you’re laboring to provide the food. But it’s the other way around. They find food for themselves, and you. They’re willing to do whatever it takes. I’m willing to protect them, give them a chance.
“But I asked you a question. Honor. You gave me…an excuse, really. Why you should steal food from the children instead of defend them. I want you to be my warlord, Jake. Because you’re a good one. You argue with me incessantly, and I say thank you. Because your arguments are worth listening to.”
“Usually,” Maz commented. “Tonight not so much.”
“Maz has a point. Tell you what, Jake, tonight? Go home and write me – no. Write for Father Tanis and Sensei and me, an essay on what honor demands of you as warlord for this gang. I want your essay on my desk first thing tomorrow morning.”
“Fuck you!”
Frosty whispered, “You would rather fight us?” He and Maz slipped off the table, crowding him backwards.
“You wouldn’t! Two against one? My guys would mutiny!”
Frosty batted his eyelashes. Maz sucker-punched Jake, a cross to the eye. As the momentum carried the warlord to the left, Frosty tackled him. He ground his face into the mat, kneeled to sit on his ass, then twisted his arm into a lock behind him. “Apologize.”
“God damn you – ah!” Frosty pulled up on the twisted arm. Just a little further, and that shoulder would pop out of its socket. Jake tried slapping the mats to tap out. But those weren’t the terms the king specified. “Fine! I apologize!”
Frosty added a little more twist to the arm and bent down to whisper in his ear. “That didn’t sound contrite.”
Jake struggled to master his anger. “I’m sorry. I was out of line. I misunderstood.”
“And you will write a lovely essay. Spelling counts. You know how hard it is to earn an A from Father Tanis. And Sensei, well, he doesn’t tolerate bullshit. Neither do I.”
“Don’t pop my shoulder, Frosty. I need it to fight. I’ll write your essay.”
Frosty untwisted the arm with care, and laid it next to Jake’s face, ready for him to push to standing. He rocked back and hopped up, then extended a hand. “Next time use your words, Jake.”
Jake prudently jerked his head to acknowledge this, and left quickly.
Maz hazarded, “Let me know if I can help with Panic.”
“Yeah…” Frosty scrubbed his forehead. “Critique?”
“Be nice to yourself when it sucks. Because sometimes life just sucks.”
Frosty huffed a sad laugh. As though that were news this lovely winter. “I meant, any idea how I could have done better?”
“A challenge to your authority is a lose-lose proposition. You haven’t lost yet. Could be worse. Good luck with Panic. You want to keep her.”
Ava huddled on the loveseat in a down blanket against the cold and dark. Her crying wound down to shudders. She mopped her nose on a dishtowel that smelled of the ramen they split for dinner.
Kat gave her an earful before insisting she sit here to face the music. That was almost as shocking as Frosty’s punch, that Kat agreed she deserved it. Ava’s humiliation felt like nausea mixed with horror, far worse than the quiet frozen corpses felled by pitiless microbes. She only wished she could vomit it out.
She was right, wasn’t she? Older kids shouldn’t molest the preteens. And her boyfriend shouldn’t hit her, ever. And that galled her worst of all. She was a damned good fighter. But he was better, and she was small, and any time Frosty wanted to hit her, there wasn’t a damned thing she could do to stop it, him no more than the rapists on New Year’s Eve.
And her other option? She could try to break up with him, she supposed. She’d lose her apartment, her rank in the gang. Every time she’d pulled rank on another girl would come due for payback.
No, that didn’t bother her, really. She’d fight, maybe she’d lose a few. In Kat’s role, queen bitch, breaking off with Frosty might be a death sentence, but not as the kidkeeper.
She just wanted Cade back. She might as well wish for her parents, for her world before Ebola. Or rewind even further, back to Texas when she was 12, before they ever came to this cruel city of the bitter winters. Winter was nice in Austin. Summer was hotter than hell and lasted an eternity.
Silly. She and her boyfriend had a fight. Every couple has a fight eventually, as Kat hammered into her ears. You want to keep him? Meet him halfway. Since he has the upper hand, and you’re dead wrong, meet him more than halfway. Then Kat vowed to mop the floor with her if she dared budge from this apartment before Frosty came home.
Ava stilled. Those were his footsteps now. Her whole face felt like a plaster of paris mask of shame. She still tasted the coppery salt of blood from where her molars cut her cheek under the blow. She sniffed and blew her nose one last time, mopped her eyes. Find that fighter’s zen, that cool poise. She blew out slowly, as the door opened.
Frosty was the one who taught her to do that, to master her anxiety with her breath.
He carried a lit candle stub he used for traversing the pitch-black halls. He glanced around, found her, met her eye for a second, and blew it out. He liked to leave it on the high counter to grab on his way out. His keys clanked beside it. Funny how well they could see each other in the dark, so used to each other’s movements and habits.
“Sorry I was delayed. Jake chose to follow your fine example. He’s now writing an essay on honor. Would you like to write an essay?”
“I suck at English,” she whispered, heart quailing. He’s toying with me.
He sloughed into the arm chair, then changed his mind and grabbed the solar-charged study lamp from the window. He returned to the chair and lit the desk lamp on the coffee table between them. She was surprised to see he’d also grabbed a bottle of bourbon and two small glasses, also thunked to the table. Maybe she didn’t see him as well in the dark as she thought. She swallowed nervously as he poured.
“Apologize,” he demanded.
18
January 28, E-day plus 51.
Frosty took a sip of his bourbon, leaving the other glass for Panic to drink or not, as she chose. He didn’t drink much, but he was wound too tight. Please God, don’t let me hit her again. She was so little and morose, blinking puffy eyes against the tiny pool of light on the glass coffee table. He wanted to pull her into his arms. He also wanted to hit her again.
“What did you do to Jake?” she asked, deflecting instead of answering his demand for an apology.
“I talked to him. My best weapon. But he insisted on getting physical, so we roughed him up a little. Hopefully by the time he’s done writing his essay he’ll understand. He wanted to fight me for control of the gang. He wanted to kick out all the ‘useless mouths’ who don’t fight, select who lived and died.”
She didn’t reply.
“Listen, Ava –”
“You called me Ava.”
“Don’t get used to it.”
“Cade –”
“No! Cade died and left no forwarding address. Do not call me Cade.” Because the name caused his stomach to flip-flop, like the world turned upside-down again. He blew out slowly to tame the panic attack. Cade! his mother screamed, as she apparently changed her mind the second she jumped from the balcony, as though he could save her. He never could before. My dearest Cade, she began her little note, the words stabbing like knives into his Ebola-ravaged frame
as it hit home this was suicide, not an accident. Two parents, both abandoned me at my weakest.
“Why? Can’t you tell me why?”
He blew out softly and pulled himself together. But he pushed the bourbon away. “No. Everyone finds their own wall, Panic. And their own way past it. Wouldn’t do you any good to know mine.”
“Might help me get past it.”
“It wouldn’t. Look, I can’t let you challenge me in front of the rank and file. Do it again, and I’ll hit you again. Acknowledge you understand this. Note that I’m not asking if you agree. Just that you hear me.”
Her mouth worked as though churning with bile to spew at him, barely controlled. Fair enough.
“I hear you,” she eventually managed. “But how could you?”
“Hit you? Or let Pistol walk?” Apparently the latter, he read from her face. “I told you. It wasn’t rape. Just a business transaction gone sour. I talked to Tommo.”
“But it’s never voluntary for a child, Frosty! It’s despicable, demeaning!”
“Nice to know you feel that way about a blow job. Don’t feel obligated to give me one.”
She glared at him. “It’s rape if –!”
Frosty lunged forward to grab her arm in a vise grip. “I’ve been raped too, Panic. Remember? But this? You’ve done it. Me too, not that it’s any of your business. In my experienced opinion, Tommo was not raped, and he never said he was. And the kids should have spoken to you. But they didn’t. Because they trusted me, not you. So as tyke bitch, I also require you to acknowledge this ruling. If a kid trades sexual favors for food, it’s prostitution, not rape. You need to accept this. It’s not so wildly different from what you do.”
“You –!” she spat in outrage.
He grabbed her by the shirt and dragged her face within an inch of his own. “I gave you an order. Can you live with it? Or do I demote you from kidkeeper? They need to eat, Panic. They aren’t strong enough to have your options. I will not block them. You won’t either. Acknowledge!”
“Damn you, Frosty!” Her face crumpled, and more tears flowed.
“Damn me? To hell? I’m already here! Where the fuck have you been?” He released her shirt and shoved her away, then scooted back in his seat. “Where were we. Apologize for challenging me in public. Acknowledge my ruling with regard to the kids. Oh, yeah, the girlfriend thing. Well, fuck it, we can’t do that tonight. Unless you want to storm out in hysterics. I don’t recommend that, if you ever want Maz and Kat to respect you.”
She whispered, “I don’t want to break up with you. I need you.”
“Same. I appreciate all you’ve done for me. I don’t like you much right now, but I love you. I couldn’t have survived this long without you. I know that. I need you, too.”
She blew her nose and wiped her eyes again. She was kind of adorable that way. He wished he could kiss her and make it all better. Maybe he should just go to bed and give up on today.
“I love you,” she said in a tiny voice. “I don’t agree. But the gang abides by your rules, not mine. I won’t challenge you in public. I’ll apologize to the kids. I –” Apologizing to him clearly stuck in her craw.
So he crushed her against his chest in a hug instead. “Sh. Enough. We don’t have to agree on everything. I hope we can put this behind us.” She stiffened instead of relaxing into his embrace, and that saddened him. Did I screw up? Is there anything I can apologize for here? But there really wasn’t, not if he was to maintain his authority. And she needed his authority, even if she never believed it. “Sleep, Panic. I’m going to bed. You’re welcome there. It’s cold out here.”
He wasn’t surprised when she stayed put, shrouded in misery and a wool blanket.
Later she climbed into bed with him, freezing. She tried to perch on her side at the edge of the mattress. He reeled her into his arms instead. She elbowed him, so he rolled over to nestle back to back, and finally the bed began to warm.
And they made it through another night.
January 29, E-day plus 52.
“I loved your paragraph on integrity.” Frosty praised Jake. The leadership team, the five of them from the dojo’s high school demo team, sat crammed in Sensei’s office the next evening, to review Jake’s essay assignment. The dojo was packed with classes in progress, absent their head teachers for the moment. With no way to copy the essay, they’d handed it around over the course of the day to read and consider before this meeting.
“Personal wholeness,” Frosty continued. “Predictability. That my allies can predict which way I’ll jump because I live my mission. And principles, to the extent I can afford them. That sounds like honor.”
Maz led this discussion. “But not your enemies?”
“I’d rather keep my enemies guessing,” Frosty allowed.
“Sun Tzu would smile,” Jake confirmed. “But only tactically. I mean, there is a role for integrity with enemies, right? They know you’re implacable about… Hm. No, that turns into a weakness, doesn’t it, if they know how to jerk your chain?”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Frosty agreed. “Well, screw it. OK, I’m a weasel, but –”
Someone hammered on the door and stuck her head in when Maz opened it. One of the younger girls. “Panic, Germy says come quick! We’ve got news! Like new news.” She scampered away.
Panic rose from her perch squeezed into the corner, as far from her boyfriend as she could get. “Excuse me. I’ll be back.”
The four remaining glanced around, meeting each other’s eyes, reluctant to venture a guess. They had radios, and enough batteries and solar chargers to listen to them if they wanted. But the Calm Act had such a stranglehold on what anyone could broadcast or print as news that it was all lies, and had been for half a year even before Ebola broke out. Even the weather forecasts were bogus. Now, with all of downstate New York and half of New Jersey inside the epidemic barricades, bereft of power, the only broadcasts came from outside. Those reassured the public that the Ebola threat was safely contained behind the borders, damn them to hell.
No one mentioned how the people inside were doing, or when they might come out. Of course the suburbs outside cared what happened inside. Millions of them had family in here dying. It wasn’t like the Big Apple and its neighbors were at odds with each other, like they talked about with southern cities at political war with their rural surroundings. People near New York liked to pop in to enjoy the city now and then, on extensive and convenient commuter rail lines. No, the people outside cared plenty. But in support of ‘maintaining public order’ as per the Calm Act, the public was systematically lied to.
None of them bothered to bring it up again. But there was always that temptation to hope. That ‘new news’ this time might be a light at the end of the tunnel. Might –
“Trustworthy,” Maz prompted, to move them along. “I trust people to do what I’ve seen them do before.”
“That’s not trust,” Kat argued. “That’s predicting which way a frog will jump.” The debate warmed again from there.
Panic slipped back in. “Excuse me, um?”
Like a kicked puppy, Frosty thought, disgusted. “Talk if you have something to say, dear.” Maz kicked his ankle with the side of his sneaker.
Panic gulped. “The news. Southern California. Northern too, I guess. Earthquakes. Like really, really big earthquakes, 8.7 on the Richter scale. But all up and down the coast, all at once. Gas lines ruptured, fires everywhere, no water to put them out, aftershocks up to 8.1, a hundred thousand dead in Hawaii from the tsunami. A couple days ago. Now millions are trying to flee the state, with armies trying to stand against them. ”
They sat stunned, trying to process this. Jake scowled. “Why would anyone in Hawaii die from a tsunami? They’d know it was coming.”
“No time?” Kat guessed.
Jake shook his head. Frosty agreed. “We studied that in AP Enviro.” He and Jake took a college-level Environmental Science course together in this, their senior year. “A tsunam
i travels as fast as a jet plane. It takes hours to fly from California to Hawaii.”
“Would they lie about even that on the news?” Maz wondered.
“Work it backward,” Jake suggested. “Why would they lie?”
“If they wanted people to die. Like us.” Kat said it. But they all suspected it was true.
Frosty counted on his fingers. “New York. L.A. Is it Chicago, the third biggest city? Houston. Fifth is…I dunno.”
“Philadelphia,” Panic supplied. “Then San Diego. The earthquakes hit San Diego, too. The triple hurricanes in September washed Houston off the map. My parents heard that from hospital friends in Texas somehow, then couldn’t reach them again.”
“There won’t be any rescue for us, will there,” Kat mused thoughtfully, leaning away from the desk where she sat. “Because us dying is the plan.”
“Frosty said that from the first,” Maz noted. “The whole barricades setup.”
“The Ebola vaccinations at school,” Jake pointed out. “Those gave us Ebola. But a mild form. Milder than the adults. To protect us? Sort of?”
Panic offered, “The oral rehydration salts. Mountains of them stocked in the drugstores right before the Epidemic. By somebody. And the Board of Regents making us all study solar ovens and potato batteries again, middle school stuff.”
Maz chuckled. “We didn’t get that in parochial school. We’ll have to rely on you. So where’s my solar oven?”
“Wait for summer,” Panic advised. “Starting below freezing, with pale winter light, doesn’t work. I tried.”
“And the water to L.A.,” Frosty mused. “Nevada cut off the water to California last year. No, year before last. No more of the Colorado River for them, local water only for 40 million people. And their farms, but they can’t export produce to other states anymore, so.”
They fell silent, each contemplating their chances if the U.S. government was really out to kill them, if no help was ever coming. Frosty gave them a minute to digest, but he’d already come to this conclusion long ago. He slammed a fist on the desk, making them jump.
