by Chris Weitz
Brainbox and I discuss this under our breath as he beats me again and again at chess. We’re all assuming that our new quarters are bugged.
“Did you get a—”
“Message from someone, yes.” He answers before I can finish my thought. He repeats the message, and as his uncanny memory brings my vague recall into focus, I realize that he’s remembered it verbatim.
“So?” I say.
“I’m not entirely convinced it isn’t a trick to incriminate us in some way or open us up to betray one another.”
“That’s harsh, dude.”
“So’s solitary confinement,” he says. “Look at it this way—what do they need us for?”
“A cure—”
“For who? For them? They’ve already figured it out on their side. You know what they would need our Cure for? To inoculate themselves against a transgenic shift in the virus in New York.” He shifts a bishop behind his pawn defenses.
“There was a marine,” I say, “who told me they were just letting people die in New York. So why would they—”
“They have plans for New York, just not yet,” he says. “Your move.”
I move my right-hand knight, forking his queen and bishop. A little hum of satisfaction in my gut as I feel myself getting the better of Brainbox. “Maybe they just want to make sure they know what they’re doing before they go back and administer the Cure.”
“Sure,” says Brainbox. “Maybe they’re our friends. Yes, maybe we should trust them. Maybe we should report the messages we received to ensure their trust.” He drags his queen out of hiding, and before I can take my well-earned bishop, says, “Check.”
He looks at me, blinking.
“I’ve lost, haven’t I?” I say.
“In four more moves, yeah,” he says.
“I don’t think I’ll report the messages.”
“Me neither,” he says. “Better to wait and see.”
In the evening, Admiral Rosen appears again, this time without the interrogator. He says he’s come to answer our questions—“to the best of my abilities.”
“Do you mean,” says Brainbox, “that you’re going to tell us everything you know, or everything we’re allowed to know?”
Admiral Rosen smiles at him, fixing him in his eyes. “Barracks-room lawyer,” he says. “Well, they say you’re smart. I could use people like you.”
“Use me how?” says Brainbox.
“There’s a lot of work to be done,” the admiral says, “to rebuild.”
And he starts to tell us, occasionally stopping and pondering what he should and shouldn’t say, in the verbal equivalent of a redaction, about the way things are.
Yes, there is a president. He is elected by a direct plebiscite on the Internet. There’s a House and Senate, though the states are gone; the overseas settlements are being redistricted. The government sits in Hawaii, which supports maybe half of the population. The rest of the population lives in the United Kingdom, where the Reconstruction Committee handles the almost impossible task of administering an entire country scattered within the borders of another country.
We ask what’s in it for the British. What’s in it, we gather, is the collected strength of the United States armed forces, especially the navy, which, as the most powerful maritime force in the history of the world, effectively has a choke hold on world trade. On the one hand, it sounds like the Americans have just bullied their way into some prime, if rainy, real estate. On the other hand, it seems like the affinity between the Yanks and the Brits makes for a sort of revived Anglo-American Empire.
The world has gotten a lot more dangerous. Seems like all the proxy wars and counterinsurgencies of the nineties and aughts were, in retrospect, a period of blissful calm. We’ve had full-blown wars in Korea and Ukraine. China’s economy went down the tubes when there were no Americans to sell to, and they’ve oscillated between allying with the Russians to counterbalance the Anglo-Yanks and skirmishing over oil. Meanwhile, all the monarchies and dictatorships and oligarchies we’d been propping up in the Middle East have been rocked by armed revolt. A Sunni caliphate wanted to use oil as a cudgel. Then a Shia caliphate rose up to fight them. The essential disagreement seems to have been over who was going to succeed the Prophet Muhammad about fourteen hundred years ago. Anyway, war between the Shiites and the Sunnis gave us the opportunity to seize the Strait of Hormuz. Now if anybody wants to sell Middle East oil, they have to go through us. Sometimes the caliphates stop the flow and everybody holds their breath.
There are plans, Rosen says, to go back to the US. When? we ask. Soon, he says. But that’s all he will say, and no amount of angling gets it out of him.
The day after they move us into our new dorm, some marines come to take us up to the flight deck, and we breathe fresh salty air and watch the gulls flocking. It becomes a daily routine. Twenty stories below is the ocean, stippled blue to the razor-sharp horizon. Smaller ships, the rest of the carrier strike group, lie off at a distance.
There doesn’t seem to be any possibility of escape. I wonder whether I actually want to get away. Captivity aside, I’m warm and dry and fed. Nobody is trying to kill me that I can tell. I luxuriate in the idea of a life that won’t be cut short at any moment. No, I don’t mind being stuck here, with Donna’s nimble mind and sleek body and soft mouth.
I notice the others putting weight back on, their scars fading, their postures unclenching. Even the kid we call Captain seems to be enjoying himself. He peppers the marines and sailors with questions, keen to absorb whatever he can of life on the ocean. I can practically see the bond with his tribe back in Harlem slackening, returning only now and then with an unexpectedly sharp tug that makes him surly and miserable.
At one point, we stand to the side of a crew drill, as different teams in color-coded uniforms hurry to unhook and replace the massive arresting cable that runs across the deck. In the clamor of the exercise, squads of men and women running to and fro, a marine’s sidearm comes loose and skids across the deck to find a stop at Captain’s feet.
It’s the first time any of us has had a gun within easy reach since we were picked up. Only recently, a weapon had meant freedom or the chance of it, a chance to have some kind of say in life. All eyes turn to the gun and then to Captain as he ponders it.
He folds his hands behind his back and waits as the marine retrieves it.
Every time I meet someone’s eye, I look for a blip of recognition, some kind of insinuating semaphore. But none comes. So I tell myself that the time has passed, and there’s nothing I need to do other than play house with Donna, play chess with the others, look at the ocean, and feel my sinews knit back together.
Below the top deck, there’s the hangar, a massive open space, big as a cathedral. Around the dormant jets is an informal running path where sailors exercise, and tucked into one corner by a bulkhead is a basketball hoop. Captain bullshits with the marine guards and arranges for us to play. Behind this, I can sense pressure from the admiral to humanize our living conditions.
Donna and Brainbox have no interest in playing and would rather wander the hangar deck with their watchdogs. To make up numbers, we play with whoever is on break at the moment.
I’m surprised to see that Peter can ball. He shrugs. “I’m stuck between two stereotypes. I want to defy them both, but they’re contradictory. I’m supposed to be bad at basketball ’cause I’m gay, but good at it ’cause I’m black. But what can I do? To deny the world the pleasure of watching me play would be cruelty.” He turns and sinks a jumper.
The serious business of half-court even overrides his constitutional good cheer and jokiness, turning him into a downright brutal trash-talker. Once off again, though, he’s his usual pleasant self, “always down for some pickup,” emphasis on the social meaning. In fact, he seems to have struck up a flirtation or two among the crew, which is impressive, given the lack of opportunity for fraternization.
So when a good-looking young crewman—he seems no older than ei
ghteen—sits down next to me and strikes up a conversation, I wonder if I’m being cruised. “We should do this more often,” the boy says, leaning in confidentially.
“Sure,” I say. I’m not thrown by the idea of a gay guy hitting on me, but misunderstandings of any kind, especially those that could lead to hard feelings, cause me mental anguish. “But, um, I’m not sure you’re barking up the right tree.”
“I’m not barking at all, big boy. You like crosswords?” he asks, and I realize who he is. I cast my eyes around the vast, airy hangar, and see that no one is paying us any mind.
From his appearance, this must also be the guy Donna told me about—her late-night visitor for the Resistance. And in the moment, I don’t know whether I’m glad or not.
“What do you want?” I say.
“Same thing you want,” says the boy.
“Oh? What’s that?”
The boy smiles. “They showed you the video? The—whatever—the ad?”
“Yeah.”
“And?”
“And…” I think. “It felt like there was something wrong with it.”
“You’re right in thinking it’s wrong.” The boy looks at me as if he expects me to lead the conversation to the next place.
“Listen,” I say. “I don’t know what this is all about. I don’t know what they want, and I don’t know what you want. All I know is…”
I look away, see a ball in its lazy arc toward the basket, take in the satisfyingly chunky sound of the net blooming and recoiling.
I feel infinitely sad. “I just want to live. I just want to get free. And I want to rest, okay? I want to go…”
“Home?” says the boy.
I shake my head. “No. Home is gone. Home was the Village and school and Mom and Dad and Wash. They’re all dead. Home was thinking about college, a job, the future, whatever. That’s over forever. I don’t know. Will they take me to England? Or Hawaii or whatever? If I do what they want and give them my blood and answer all their questions?” I’m only partly speaking to the boy next to me.
But he answers anyhow. “No.”
I watch the ball squirt out of somebody’s hands. Of course not.
“I’ll tell you what they’re going to do with you. They’ll keep you like a specimen. You’re the first kids to make it out of the plague zone alive, with whatever homebrew antidote your buddy and that freak back on Plum Island whipped up.”
He appears to know as much as anyone.
“Anyhow,” continues the boy, “they’ll keep sucking blood out of you until they figure out it’s safe to go in. But you know what they’ll do first?”
I can guess, but I wait for him to say it.
“First, they let everyone who’s left, in New York and everywhere else in the country, die.”
“People wouldn’t let that happen—if they knew—”
“They don’t know. Only a few have any idea that there’s anybody left. The ones at the top of the food chain. They’ve misreported the life cycle of the disease.”
“But the kids there… they’re American—”
“Oh, don’t get me wrong, they won’t feel great about it, and they have the best intentions”—he says this with a sneer—“but that doesn’t beat best practices. The risk is too great, and the prize is too valuable. They’d rather let the Sickness burn itself out on what little human fuel is still left than sink precious resources into saving a load of semiferal, acne-ridden delinquents.”
“What prize?” I watch Peter receive the ball in the post, dribble, drop-step, shoot. I feel a strong urge to get away from the whirlpool of this conversation, get on the court and forget myself in the soothing physical grammar of the game.
“What prize?” repeats the boy. “Did they ever tell you what the Sickness was?”
I nod. “A bioweapon. Destroy command and control.”
“But leave the physical capital.” The boy lists them off. “Factories. Mines. Oil fields.”
I think about this for a minute. “They want to come back for the resources.”
“In a while,” says the boy. “First, let the Sickness burn itself out. Then scrape up the goo and get on with it.” The boy looks out at the ocean, which can be seen out of a massive loading hatch. “Halliburton will be happy to do it. Hell of a cleanup contract, right?”
“But that’s—”
“Evil? Not really. I mean, yeah. It’s sort of evil. But I’m sure they could make a good argument for it. Spin it, reframe the issue.”
“How?” I say. “How are they—I mean, the navy or the military or whatever—how can they keep all this going without, like, a home country, supplies…”
“Dude,” says the boy. “Okay. I forget that you civilians never knew shit about how the world works. See, the US Navy is the most powerful force the world has ever known. Ever. By several orders of magnitude. Bigger than the next thirteen largest navies in the world combined. Ten aircraft carriers. That’s ten mobile air bases to rain hell on whoever we want. Three thousand seven hundred airplanes. Seventy-two submarines. Thirty-three bases, not counting Pearl. You know what that means?”
“It means control.”
“More or less,” says the boy. “Actually, more or more. Nothing moves over the ocean without our say-so. We have a choke hold on world trade. And if you try to cut off our fuel and supplies? We send in the marines. Fuck, yeah.” Though he’s stated his opposition to the endeavor, he seems moved by the sheer power of it.
“Okay, so they’re the evil empire. You’re—what—the rebellion?”
“Is there no analogy that Star Wars can’t serve?” he answers. “Well—not exactly. Things are more complicated than that, of course. But that’ll do for now. I guess that makes me a Jedi.”
“You want to go back,” I say. I have a sick feeling in my stomach.
“I want you guys to take me back.”
“Why?”
“Did I have you pegged wrong? I thought you were all about making the world better.” The boy fixes me with his eyes. Butterfly and pin. “We need to go back to save your friends at the Square. And everybody else, for that matter. We need to go back to build something real, instead of this.” He gestures around at the men in uniform, the dozing arsenal around him. “And you need to be free. It’s the only freedom you’ll ever know, Jefferson. Arguably, Washington Square was the only place you were ever free. You just didn’t realize it.”
I think of my tribe in Washington Square, two hundred souls in an armed camp scavenging and scrapping for survival every day.
“Who are you?” I say. “What are you doing here? If I’m going to trust you, if I’m going to make this decision, I need to know.”
“I’ll tell you who we are,” he says. “We’re the ignored. We’re the used. We’re the ninety-nine percenters. We’re cannon fodder all over the Middle East. We’re the sacrificed pawns. And we’re everywhere. On this ship, in Hawaii, in England, all around the world. We’re like you. Except we got left behind a long time ago. I don’t think we should let millions of kids around the country die so that a bunch of immortal corporations can make a killing. Do you?” He says this fluently, angrily.
The idea hangs there.
“Three days,” says the boy. “Be ready. We’ve got one shot at this. I’ve got all our people lined up, but getting the shifts right wasn’t easy.”
“I haven’t said yes.” I look down at the metal deck. “I don’t even know if I trust you.”
“So turn me in. You have the power of life and death over me. That enough trust for you? You decide for yourself. Turn me in, or help me out, or keep your mouth shut. Actually, if you don’t mind, keep your mouth shut no matter what.”
“The others—”
“We’re reaching out to them separately. Don’t discuss this stuff in your quarters. They’re bugged.”
“Tell me your name.” It seems to matter.
“Chapel,” says the boy. He gets up and takes some shots before the marines come to escort us bac
k.
AFTER THE GIRL midshipman—or should it be midshipwoman? Midshipchick?—finds me in the head (which is what they call the toilet, which is a terrible name for it, it makes me feel like I’m peeing in someone’s skull) and tells me about the plan to go back to New York, I keep looking at the others, trying to figure out whether they’ve been contacted, too. I’m not supposed to speak about it with them. They, the “they” who have us captive, who are the navy but not (I guess they’re more like mercenaries now or maybe, like, military dictators, according to my night visitor), are watching and listening. So I go around just looking at my friends with slightly bugged-out eyes and hoping for a response that matches up, like, “Yeah, I know.”
Brainbox is unreadable as ever. He was unreadable back when he was double-crossing us at Plum Island, which was a good thing, because he was actually double-double-crossing the Old Man, which amounted to either triple-crossing or quadruple-crossing, depending on how you figured it. That saved us all. But I can’t say I feel particularly like confiding in him.
Theo—who’s great at affecting cool indifference—well, I don’t know if he’s been contacted. But Peter for sure has been told something’s up, which might not have been the best idea, since his response to my look is to sing out, “Girrrrrrrrlll,” as though he just heard the best gossip ever. Then he mimes locking his lips and putting the key in his back pocket. Not particularly discreet.
With Jefferson, it’s easier to bring it up. We’re lying in our tiny bunk in our cozy little battleship-gray love nest. And I put my lips to his ear and whisper, “What are we going to do?”
This starts a weird sort of conversation, like, one person whispers into the other’s ear, then we look at each other—then the other person whispers back. Kind of like that game telephone without anybody in the middle.
Jefferson: “What we have to do.”
This is typical. Jefferson is all, like, duty and responsibility and public service.
Me: “Please don’t tell me that you want to go back.”
