by Alex Irvine
His daughter, Amelia, would turn twelve in about a month. June 3.
Something clicked when he had that thought, and Aurelio decided he would be there for her birthday. Ivan would be ten in August. Aurelio planned to be in DC for that, too.
It was time for him to go home. There would always be work for a Division agent in New York, but there was plenty of work in DC, too. He’d overheard chatter in the Post Office that the government was still in flux. Aurelio knew President Waller was dead. Reports were, he’d succumbed to the virus sometime in January. His VP, Mendez, was supposed to be in DC trying to hold everything together, but the rumor mill suggested he was having a hard time. Too many competing interests, too many people seeing the aftermath of the Green Poison as their chance to claim power.
One more reason for Aurelio to get back to DC. Winter was over, people were beginning to adjust, adapt, rebuild . . . it was time to make sure that the nation’s capital was safe and stable. That was the Division imperative. But he could also keep a closer eye on Ivan and Amelia.
He shoved off the railing and started walking north. When he got to Thirtieth Street, the High Line curved west and Aurelio dropped down to the street. Two long blocks east, he hung a left on Eighth Avenue and was back inside the Post Office at about seven o’clock.
The first thing he did was hang up his gear to dry in the former sorting area, now a makeshift barracks. Then he toweled himself off and went looking for Lieutenant Hendricks over in the security wing.
She was just getting off duty, but he begged five minutes of her time and she sat down with him at her desk. “Just as a courtesy,” he said, “I thought I’d let you know I’m going to head back to DC. From what I hear, the situation on the ground there is deteriorating, and things here seem pretty stable. At least by comparison.”
“Well,” she said, “maybe by comparison. You and I both know I can’t tell you what to do, Agent Diaz. But I can tell you I would appreciate it if you stayed another three days. JTF is planning a large-scale operation to reclaim the area around city hall and the approach to the Brooklyn Bridge. We’re going to need every asset we can muster, and that includes you and your fellow Division agents.”
Aurelio could understand the symbolic importance of reestablishing city hall. The scale was different, but to the people of New York, having a reliable local government would mean as much as a stable White House and Congress.
Three days, he thought. He’d been in New York four months. “Okay,” he said. “Unless—”
“I know,” she interrupted. “Unless you decide there’s something else more important. I’ve read Directive 51, too, Agent Diaz.”
He stood. “Thanks for your time, Lieutenant. This op rolls out in three days, or you think it’ll be over in three days?”
“The current plan is to roll out in . . .” She glanced at her watch. “Fifty-nine hours and thirty minutes.”
“Got it,” Aurelio said. “One more thing. You have access to records from DC?”
“Not all of them. What are you looking for?”
“Amelia and Ivan Diaz,” he said. “They were housed at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel when the JTF turned it into a refugee camp. I’d like to know if they’re still there.”
“Your kids?”
Aurelio nodded.
“Okay.” Lieutenant Hendricks swiped and tapped through a sequence of screens on her tablet. Then she paused, finger hovering, as she studied the result of her search. “That entire part of the city is currently flooded,” she said. “The Potomac’s been over its banks for three weeks. Operational notes from the logistics people in DC suggest that most of the Mandarin population moved to another settlement, in the Smithsonian Castle. Others headed north, to a couple of other settlements.” She looked up at him. “I’m afraid I don’t have any specifics on which of them went to which location.”
Aurelio had to fight a reflex to stand up, get his gear, and head for DC right that minute. He took a deep breath, got it under control, and asked, “How detailed are casualty reports on settlement populations?”
“I’m sorry, Agent Diaz,” Hendricks said. “I don’t have anything like that. Except the JTF deployment logs do not show extensive contact with hostiles at the Mandarin, or for that matter at the Smithsonian Castle. I hope . . .” She set the tablet down and sighed, closing her eyes for a long moment. “I’m sorry. That’s all I have to offer you.”
Reading between the lines, Aurelio realized the odds were still pretty good that Amelia and Ivan were all right. He knew they’d survived the initial outbreak, and there was no record of a mass-casualty attack on either place they’d been since then.
That would have to be good enough for now.
Three more days, he thought. Then maybe three more to get to DC, depending on how much of the distance he would have to cover on foot.
Then he’d be back in DC, to defend the republic against all enemies foreign and domestic. And while doing that, he would find his kids.
It was twenty minutes to eight. Time to get something to eat, get some rack time, be ready for whatever would happen tomorrow. Aurelio got back to his cot. His coat was still dripping in the corner. He sat on the cot, hungry and sore and wanting nothing more in the world than to look his kids in the eye and tell them he was back.
Then he shook it off. Three days. He had a job to do.
11
VIOLET
It rained all day, a steady downpour that started before dawn and kept up until late in the evening. To Violet it seemed like there had been nothing but rain since the last snowstorm in February. She and the rest of the kids were stuck inside all day, doing chores until Junie ran out of ideas to keep them busy. Then they spent the afternoon in their room, inventing new card games and trying not to talk about what was on all of their minds.
In the middle of the night, just before the rain started, a huge explosion had woken them all up. Rushing to the windows, they’d seen flashes and fire near some of the museum buildings across the Mall from the Castle. Violet knew one of them was another Smithsonian museum, maybe for art? Or maybe the Natural History Museum? She wasn’t sure which building was which. But all around it were fires and explosions. It went on for more than two hours, until the rain moved in. Then whoever was fighting seemed to decide that neither of them were going to win so they might as well get dry, and the Mall was quiet again.
On the Castle grounds outside their window, they saw armed adults watching to see if the battle was going to start up again. That meant they were worried it was coming their way. “What do we do?” Shelby asked.
They had an escape plan. Junie had told them that if there was ever trouble right in the Castle, they were supposed to all run out the nearest exit and then get together in the art museum just on the western edge of the gardens. Then she had walked them through the Castle, showing them all the stairways and doors. All of them knew the plan, but it didn’t answer all their questions. What if the closest exit was where the bad people were coming in? Then they would have to go to another one. But what if they couldn’t get across the gardens?
Junie had sighed at that point and said, “I know, I know. There’s no way to predict everything. What’s important is that you have the idea: Get out fast, worry about getting together again after you’re safe.”
This was on their minds while they watched the flashes across the Mall, only maybe two soccer fields away. “Is that close enough? Do we run?” Saeed clutched a little stuffed animal, a zebra he’d gotten at the zoo. He wasn’t afraid to like stuffed animals even though he was going to be eleven in the summer. That was one of the things Violet liked about him.
“I don’t think so,” she said.
“Me neither,” Amelia agreed. She still had her retainer in, so it was kind of hard to understand her. “I think if we see people here starting to . . . you know, shoot back, then that’s when we run.”
Violet also thought that made sense.
Someone turned their doorknob. Clustered by the north-facing window, they all turned around. Junie was there, peeking around the door. “Hmm,” she said. “I was hoping you’d all slept through this, but I guess that was never going to happen.”
She came in and shut the door behind her. “Okay. Back in bed, everyone.”
“What’s going on out there?” Wiley asked.
“Shooting,” she said. “Other than that, I don’t know. Don’t know if it’s JTF or bandits or that militia that’s been out over by the Capitol. Or any of the other bands of lunatics. A lot of people in this town are crazy. Probably the same everywhere else. And sometimes they get crazy at each other.” As she spoke, she was going from kid to kid, settling them in sleeping bag or couch, tucking them in and smoothing their hair before she moved on. “That’s how it is, and there’s no point pretending it’s not. But whatever it was, it’s over now, and it didn’t come this way.”
She was tucking Amelia in as she said that. “But what if it does?” Amelia asked.
“You remember the escape plan?” Junie asked. Amelia nodded. “All of you?” Junie added, looking at each of them in turn. They all nodded. “Then you know what to do. I don’t think any of those crazy people care about us.”
Saeed piped up. “That’s not what Mike said at dinner.”
Junie sighed. “I could kill that man.” Quickly she added, “Not really. You know what exaggeration is, right? I’m exaggerating.”
“We know,” Saeed said.
“There’s a lot of arguments sometimes about what we should do. You know why? Because none of us ever had to do it before. So we all have to learn.” Junie settled herself on a long couch at Shelby’s feet. “Mike and I don’t always agree on how to do things. That’s natural. But we both want the best for everyone in the Castle. Especially you kids. You didn’t make this world, but you’re going to be the ones stuck with it.”
“Thanks, grown-ups,” Wiley cracked.
Violet felt the same way.
Junie was quiet for a bit after that. Violet listened to the rain, and wondered what else was happening out there in the dark where she couldn’t see or hear it.
Then Junie started talking again. “You’re doing good, you know. You’re sticking together. You’ll be all right. I hear President Mendez is getting things under control. Pretty soon there might be a Congress again. Then we can get back to moaning and groaning about how dumb they are.”
She sat with them a while longer, yawning once in a while. Then she pushed herself up off the couch. “You going to be okay in here?”
They all said they would. Or rather, Violet and Amelia and Saeed did. The others were already asleep.
“Okay. It’s late. Early, really. I’m going to get some sleep. You should, too.”
She left them, and they lay wrapped in their blankets and sleeping bags, listening to the rain and wondering when the shooting would start again.
* * *
• • •
Because they’d been up so late, they slept in, waking up to rain and more rain. The whole day seemed out of joint, like it was already close to bedtime even though they’d just gotten up. Junie’s chores took their minds off everything for a while, and then so did the card games. Saeed and Amelia were good at inventing them. Violet was better at seeing a new game and suggesting little ways to improve it. Noah and Shelby were mostly good at complaining that nobody wanted to play the games they wanted to play. Wiley and Ivan just went along, staying quiet and not really participating in anything. Violet could tell they were still really scared about what had happened the night before.
At the end of the day the rain barrels they used to collect water from the Castle’s downspouts were overflowing. Junie sent the kids out with gallon jugs to gather whatever they could. “Last chore,” she said. “If it’s going to keep raining, the barrels will fill right back up. We can get a lot of water saved.”
Outside, a grumbling group of adults were already tapping the rain barrels into big buckets and jugs. The kids got in line, wet and miserable, waiting their turn to fill up their jugs. Violet was glad it wasn’t a thunderstorm. Usually she liked them, but right now she thought thunder might sound too much like a bomb or a gunshot. She hated whoever was shooting for turning something awesome and beautiful like thunder into something that scared her. Then she felt bad about hating. Her parents always said she shouldn’t hate. Maybe she was just angry, then. Anger was okay as long as you didn’t let it bottle up inside. This was the problem, though. If you talked about what was making you angry, adults tended to misunderstand it and start telling you how you should feel. So the kids only talked about bad feelings with each other . . . at least when they could keep their feelings under control. Violet was still a little embarrassed about crying in front of everyone after they saw the yellow powder.
What was that, anyway? Nobody seemed to know, but everyone agreed that since the Division agent had warned them not to go down there anymore, it must be something serious.
It was her turn to fill her jugs. She carried them back into the Castle and down to the far end of what had once been the main art gallery on the first floor. There were still some paintings hanging on the walls. One of the other adults in the Castle, an old white-haired guy named Raúl with a big mustache, was arranging the jugs in blocks and rows. He took hers. “Pretty heavy for a little girl like you,” he said. There was a twinkle in his eye. She knew he didn’t mean anything bad by it.
Still, Violet didn’t like it when people talked down to her, and she wasn’t too morose or worried to roll her eyes. “I can carry them just fine,” she said and went to get two more. She heard Raúl chuckling to himself as she went. That was fine, she thought. Let him. He didn’t know how tough a little girl could be.
12
APRIL
At ten o’clock sharp there was a knock on the door of April’s room. She was ready. She’d bathed, changed her clothes, eaten, repacked her gear, and even caught up on her journal. She had long since run out of room in the margins of the New York Collapse book, which she’d used as a diary in the weeks after the quarantine. It had happened without her meaning to do it at first, but she was alone and terrified and putting words on paper calmed her. Now she kept doing it as a way of organizing her thoughts and helping to keep her oriented. In many ways she was no longer the same person who had scribbled those first lines in the book, back in December. She was more capable, more sure of herself. She’d looked the worst of humanity in the face a couple of times and also seen people at their best. Maybe she’d even been able to help a few people here and there.
She mused on this in the journal for a while, as the sun dropped behind the Palisades across the river. Then she made her final preparations, and when she opened the door to see Brother Michael in the hall she was ready to go.
He led her through Inwood Hill Park in the rain, not using a light until they got to the steep slope that took them down to a tidal flat at the edge of Spuyten Duyvil Creek. Then he shut the light off again and they waited for their eyes to readjust. “There’s a JTF checkpoint at the maintenance yard over there,” he said, pointing. April saw it, a floodlit cluster of trucks behind sandbags under the Manhattan side of the Henry Hudson Bridge. The creek itself was only maybe five hundred feet across at this point.
“Please tell me we’re not planning to swim,” she said. She was a good swimmer, but maybe not with her pack and the Super 90. Also, one of the things she’d read in New York Collapse was that swimming across any of the rivers that surrounded Manhattan Island was nearly impossible due to their treacherous currents and undertows.
“Oh no,” he said. “I’m just pointing it out because we have to get around it along the shore before we arrive where we’re really going. The rain is good, it masks a lot of noise, bu
t this is a time to be very careful.”
April nodded. “Okay. Lead the way.”
Brother Michael tramped through the undergrowth, finding a footpath that ran parallel to the creek. As they got closer to the checkpoint, other sounds resolved out of the background patter of the rain. A generator, a truck engine. The crackle of static on radios. Brother Michael kept going, not even looking up at the checkpoint. April followed. The hair on the back of her neck was prickling and she had to fight an urge to run.
When they were under the bridge and briefly out of the rain, Brother Michael stopped. “Okay,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “We keep going here, out to a railroad bridge. The JTF runs river patrols, so we have to wait until a patrol passes. Then we go across. There are motion sensors on the tracks, so we can’t just walk over. We have to jungle-gym the whole way on the outside.”
April took a moment to digest this. She’d seen that railroad bridge before. It had a center section that swung open to let boat traffic pass. Once she remembered driving over the Henry Hudson Bridge and looking over at it when it was open, with a passenger ferry chugging through toward the Hudson. “You’ve done this before?” she asked.
Brother Michael grinned. “Yeah. It’s kind of a rush. Might be a little slippery in the rain, though.”
“You don’t say.” April took off her hat and retied her hair into a ponytail. “All right. Let’s do it.”
They came out from under the Hudson Bridge and kept working their way along the edge of the creek until they came to a cleared space near the southern end of the bridge. The shore here was huge granite blocks dumped around the bridge foundation to hold it in place. The bridge itself was made of steel girders.
“We can get under here, get out of the rain a little,” Brother Michael said, crouching to squat on one of the tilted blocks.
