The Julian Year

by Gregory Lamberson

  “You really think we could start turning in year two?”

  “Anything can happen. These walls could come down a lot faster than we’re putting them up.”

  September 5

  When Rachel picked Betty up from work at the live-in school, two dozen children played at the tables and on the floor, some of them running in circles.

  “Hey, hey, hey!” Betty said. “No running or you’ll get a time-out.”

  The children slowed to a fast walk.

  “Wow, they actually listened to you,” Rachel said.

  “Sometimes,” Betty said. “I wish I had their energy.”

  “How many are there?”

  “Sixty children, ages one through seventeen. These twenty-four are one to six. We’ve divided them into three groups, but I don’t have a teaching degree, so I play Miss Day Care. I don’t mind, though. I love kids at this age.”

  Rachel watched the boys and girls play. “I can see why. You must feel great about what you’re doing. They need you so much.”

  “You could do this too. We’re shorthanded.”

  “Me and kids? I don’t think so. I lack maternal instincts.”

  “They come naturally; you’ll see.”

  Someone tugged Rachel’s hand, and she looked down at an African American girl with beads in her hair.

  “Look at my picture,” the little girl said.

  Rachel took the picture from the girl: a watercolor painting on heavy paper that depicted a man, a woman, and a little girl standing in front of a house, with a yellow sun smiling in the blue sky. Rachel resisted the urge to cry.

  “Do you like it?” the girl said.

  “I love it. It’s beautiful.”

  “Take it. I want you to have it.”

  Rachel raised her eyebrows. “Are you sure?”

  The girl nodded and hugged Rachel’s leg. “My name’s Ashanti.”

  “Thank you, Ashanti.”

  At home that night, Rachel opened the drapes in her apartment and taped the painting to the wall. Later she wept.

  September 9

  Larry awoke to the sound of his alarm. Then he remembered he hadn’t set it and realized the sound of a fire horn filled his head.

  Sitting up on the king-size bed with a groan, he saw a depression beside him where his date had slept. He chuckled. Date was a strange adjective to describe the young man he had brought home; the scruffy, blond street musician had been just another meaningless diversion, a tool to fill Larry’s time while waiting for the end. And now he was gone, like a shadow in the night, and Larry couldn’t even remember his name.

  Rising, he crossed the expansive bedroom and opened the velvet drapes, flooding the room with morning sunlight. Leaning close to the glass, he looked out West End Avenue three floors below. The fire horn, wherever it was, blared eight times. Not a single vehicle traversed the avenue below, but several Humvees and troop transports lined the curb.

  Just another day in Wonderland, he thought. Happy birthday to me.

  He turned on his favorite jazz station—all preprogrammed music, no DJs to interrupt the notes—and entered the oversize bathroom, where he set his hands on gold-plated handles and filled the Jacuzzi with hot water. He found the news too depressing to listen to. Luxuriating in the hot water, he watched steam dampen Italian marble walls and the wide vanity mirror.

  Everything I do today will be for the last time.

  It was no more stark a realization than the knowledge that he was totally alone, with no one to share his last hours with and no one to comfort him. By all rights, he should have turned himself in to detention a day and a half ago, but the detention facilities had been converted into protected population centers, where people could live in bunkers, without fear of surprise attacks from MacNeils.

  Since the truce, the murders had stopped, but no political arrangements had been made. People turned in privately and vanished. Entire neighborhoods became vacant. Larry had paid a black marketer to find him a nice apartment in a nice neighborhood. Private security protected this building, and the other tenants were squatters like Larry. Who could evict them?

  Larry rose from the bath, dried himself, then put on a red silk robe that came with the condo. He cooked breakfast, the sizzling of the fried eggs somehow relaxing, then changed into jeans and a navy-blue NYPD T-shirt. Since he no longer had a shield to carry, it didn’t hurt to send the signal that people should not fuck with him. He slid his snub-nose .38 into his ankle holster, tucked his Glock into his waistband, then stuffed one magazine into each pocket out of habit.

  As he entered the lobby the guard, a dark-skinned Hispanic man with massive arms that made his shotgun resemble a toy, nodded at him. “You coming back?”

  “I might. It’s still my place, isn’t it?”

  “Until 5:00 p.m.”

  “Then maybe I’ll see you and maybe I won’t.”

  Larry felt the man’s gaze on his back as he stepped outside. The shaded sidewalk was cool, but he saw sunlight in the avenue ahead. Many people who had means of transportation had deserted the city. Tall buildings reached into the sky like giant tombstones, shadowed by helicopters. He couldn’t remember the last time he had seen or heard an airplane.

  On Broadway, soldiers stood in a circle around a crowd surrounding a produce truck. Larry wondered how long it would be before every person in Manhattan who wasn’t possessed was either a soldier or a cop.

  Two-thirds of the world’s population had been possessed; 80 percent of those had been killed or executed; 10 percent had fled underground; and 10 percent had turned since world leaders, including President Lopez, had bowed to the demands of the PPA. Factoring in the nonpossessed casualties, perhaps 25 percent of the population survived.

  So far, basic services continued: electricity, telephone, gas, and water. Television consisted of reruns, old movies, cable news, and religious programming. Larry lamented that for the first time in his life, there was no fall season on TV. Perhaps that was one of the reasons why he had decided to spend his last day roaming the city rather than in the comfort of the palace he had rented.

  Many of the stores along Broadway had closed. Some had broken windows and others were boarded up. Within walking distance he saw a coffee shop, a deli, and a McDonald’s open. He imagined that on December 31, the last man would have no trouble sating his Big Mac attack. The mayor had closed the subways, and metal gates covered the station entrances. Traffic was nil. Even though vehicles were easy enough to obtain, few people had the patience to deal with the checkpoints: I’m an American, goddamn it!

  Larry waited at a corner. Within minutes, a city bus pulled over. He boarded it and swiped his ID card. The scanner beside the driver beeped.

  “Last day?” the driver said. She had curly red hair and wore her uniform in a sloppy manner.

  “That’s right,” Larry said.

  “Then you ain’t riding on my bus.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Simple. I’m refusing to serve you.”

  Disliking the tone in her voice, he glanced down the aisle. A racially diverse mixture of passengers stared back at him. “I don’t turn until 5:00 p.m. I’ve got my birth certificate.”

  “I don’t care. You’re not getting on my bus.”

  “Look, it’s not even ten o’clock yet. I’ve got seven hours, and I don’t want to spend them pounding the pavement. Be nice. Don’t discriminate.”

  The woman snorted. “I’m not. I’m just watching out for myself and my passengers. We’ve had enough and we’re not taking any unnecessary chances. It’s bad enough people have to keep working instead of spending time with their families. Why don’t you be nice and kill yourself so no damned soul can take over your body?”

  Larry glanced at the passengers, hoping one would speak up in his defense, but none did. Instead, they looked at him as if he were a circus freak.

  “Have a nice day,” he said as he got off the bus. Then he walked down Broadway.

  Near Sixty-seco
nd Street, a man who looked homeless strummed an acoustic guitar on the sidewalk outside the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas. The multiplex art house had closed without fanfare weeks earlier. Larry stopped and listened to the emaciated-looking man, who had longish blond hair so greasy that it appeared brown.

  His voice sounded strained and raspy. “It’s the end of the world as we know it . . .”

  Larry took out his wallet, then tucked a twenty-dollar bill into the musician’s tin cup and walked on. He crossed over to Central Park and followed it to Fifty-eighth Street, where another theater, the Paris, had closed.

  Dozens of soldiers milled about outside the Plaza Hotel across the street, and Larry surmised they had commandeered the ritzy structure for barracks.

  Good for them, he thought. Live it up, boys. The 1 percent had been decimated as badly as the 99 percent had; this was one war that wealth didn’t offer protection from.

  An ambulance roared by, its siren bleeping. Death remained a part of life, business as usual.

  Larry continued downtown. Times Square loomed ahead. Free of the once crushing press of tourists, civilians fed pigeons, played chess, and read on bleachers in the gray sunlight.

  Outside a restaurant, a man in a patched jacket handed out flyers. “Girls, girls, girls . . .”

  Larry grunted. The Times Square he remembered as a boy had returned. Across the street, four police officers stood with their hands in their pockets. Choppers buzzed the tops of buildings that appeared lifeless with their neon lights off. A transvestite standing at the corner blew him a kiss. Walking along Forty-second Street, he watched garbage glide across the street.

  A twitchy Columbian man with a feathered white fedora fell into step beside him, holding a can of beer. “What’s your flavor? I got speed, coke, IDs . . .”

  Still walking, Larry stared ahead. “I don’t want anything.”

  “I got women, men, girls, boys . . .”

  “I don’t want what you got.”

  The man tugged on his arms. “Then why are you down here? Don’t you know what this place is? The Deuce is back, black.”

  Larry felt his blood pumping. “Keep your hands to yourself, little man.” Go ahead, push me.

  The man sipped his beer. “I gotcha, man. I read ya loud and clear. You follow me and I’ll give you just what you want. I got this white boy who can’t be more than twelve years old . . .”

  Larry threw a punch at the man’s face with such force that the man’s legs flew out from under him and he levitated in the air for a moment, his body horizontal, before he crashed to the sidewalk and beer foamed out of the can.

  In an instant, a dozen shadows detached from doorways. Larry backed into the middle of the street, and the figures followed him. All the men and women appeared skeletal, with hungry eyes: pimps, prostitutes, drug dealers, and addicts united against him. Blades appeared, chains dangled, and a blackjack materialized out of nowhere.

  As they closed in on him, Larry drew his Glock and swept it before their faces. “Drop your weapons and back the fuck up. It’s my last day, and I’ll gladly take every one of you with me.”

  One by one, the fiends dropped their weapons. The roar of a helicopter grew louder, and garbage and dirt swirled around Larry. The criminals dispersed, and Larry looked up as the police helicopter descended.

  Holy shit, they’re going to land in the street.

  Larry broke into a run. Halfway down the block, he entered a multiplex. Men with tight jaws and spiky hair held rifles and pistols in the darkened lobby. Larry walked through the velvet ropes to the ticket counter, where a woman chewing on a toothpick nodded at him. She didn’t wear a uniform, let alone a nametag.

  “What movie?” Her thick accent identified her as a Brooklyn resident.

  Larry looked at the board. Handwritten notes identified the movies and showtimes for the two dozen auditoriums. Only old movies were playing, and there was no way in hell he was watching The Exorcist, Evil Dead 2, or any version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, though he smiled at the thought of Five Fingers of Death, Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS, and Savage Streets. “Who does the programming?”

  “My brother.”

  “I’ll see Taxi Driver,” he said. Nothing like a little catharsis.

  The cashier held out one hand. “ID, please.”

  Larry glanced over his shoulder and saw no sign of soldiers, although the pedestrians outside the door all looked in the direction he had come from. He took out his wallet and handed his ID to the woman.

  She stared at the card, then studied his features.

  Yes, it’s my last fucking day, he thought.

  She gave his ID back and punched an automated ticket, which she handed to him. “I know what you want. Go to the top floor.” She winked at him.

  Everyone knows what I need today. But he didn’t argue with her. Instead, he rode the escalator to the next floor, where an armed guard wearing sunglasses asked to see his ticket stub.

  Larry presented it to the man, then passed a concession stand and boarded the next escalator. During his ascent, he surveyed the lobby. Garbage and what looked like bloodstains covered the carpet, and men and women wearing studded leather drank alcohol at the candy counter.

  On the next floor, prostitutes of every shape and persuasion eyed him. By the time he reached the sixth floor, he felt dirty. Graffiti covered the walls, and the light boxes above the auditorium doors had been stripped of their Mylar film logos, leaving it to the imagination what played inside.

  The auditorium reeked of illicit smoke as he made his way down the aisle. Perhaps a dozen figures sat slumped in seats, their faces obscured by murky darkness. Larry took a seat in the middle and exhaled. He had not planned on spending the afternoon hiding from the army in an enormous multiplex that had gone to seed and been taken over by gangs. Why had he pulled his gun on the lowlifes on the Deuce?

  Because they were coming after me.

  Then why did you clock that drug dealer?

  Because I wanted to, because I was hungry for action, and because I miss being a cop.

  The dim lights darkened and the movie started: no snipes, no commercials, no previews—and no Taxi Driver. Instead, the digital projector threw The Devil in Miss Jones on the big screen.

  Larry burst into laughter. Boy, do you have the wrong guy, he thought, picturing the cashier. Rising from his seat, he hoped the armed forces would give up searching for him by the time he reached the street. Before he had even taken a step toward the aisle he froze, except for his heart, which thumped in his chest.

  Scattered throughout the theater, gleaming like stars in space, were several dozen pairs of red eyes. They glowed from within, each pair centered within the countenance of a face illuminated by the light reflected on the screen, shadows and shapes passing over them like floating specters.

  Larry realized he had been set up. The cashier and the gang members could have been Regan MacNeils whose eyes hadn’t turned yet. Or maybe they had simply made a deal with the devil, sheltering and serving the possessed in exchange for special favors.

  Collaborators.

  Larry drew his Glock in the darkness, praying none of the possessed people were armed.

  An icy hand seized his wrist. Two more clamped on his shoulders from behind. Silhouetted figures dove into the beams of light coming from the projection booth, then collided into him.

  Toppling over the row of seats before him, he saw the black shapes of his attackers moving in front of the screen like shadow puppets. He dropped his Glock under the sheer weight of the bodies and tried to reach for the .38 in his holster, but the possessed people had immobilized him. Elbows drilled into his back; fingers sank into his hair and jerked his head; fists rained down on him. He struggled to escape but his enemies outnumbered him.

  Then unconsciousness rushed over him like rippling warm water.

  Larry’s face, stomach, and fingertips tingled. When the tiles in the ceiling came into focus, he realized he had been awake for some time. The a
uditorium lights were on and the movie was off.

  He lay on the cement floor, his shoulders wedged between seats. Forcing himself to swallow, he tasted blood. The left side of his jaw and his right eye ached. With a loud groan he sat up, the right side of his head throbbing. The pain started at his eye and wrapped around the side of his head like a vise. His knees burned and his knuckles were skinned raw.

  Son of a bitch, he thought, wincing.

  Using his left hand, he gripped the back of the seat beside him and used it for leverage to stand. Empty seats surrounded him. He touched his swollen eye and uttered a cry. They had fucked him up good. He searched his waistband for his gun, then checked for his ankle holster. They had robbed him of his weapons.

  That was their whole purpose, to make sure I don’t shoot myself. He shuddered. They want me alive. They want everyone alive. A war of attrition.

  Larry checked his cell phone for the time—2:30 p.m. He staggered out of the auditorium. Where were the possessed people now? Probably hiding somewhere in the building. He was tempted to use an emergency exit but feared what he might encounter, so he departed the same way he had arrived. Rap music blasted on one floor, and two couples groped each other at the concession stand. Going to the movies just wasn’t the same anymore.

  In the lobby, a new cashier worked the ticketing machine. She had a rooster hairstyle and wore dark sunglasses. Larry had no trouble imagining the eyes behind those glasses.

  Outside, the air had grown chilly. He spotted soldiers here and there on the sidewalk, but the choppers were in the air where they belonged. Gazing at his reflection in the tinted glass window of a restaurant, he admired the lumpy flesh around his right eye. Then he headed uptown.

  Forty

  Janet Johnson looked up from her desk as Larry entered the 19th Precinct squad room. The instant relief she experienced at seeing him turned to concern as she noted his battered face and disheveled clothing. His gaze darted from one soldier to another, like a cat surrounded by strangers.