by Ginger Booth
Yafuel Guzman considered that, kicking himself for not catching on quicker. As an ex-police detective, he prided himself on being more street-savvy than the average Coco. But the feral kids were anything but forthcoming. Getting Ava Panic to come in had been a major coup for him, a gang leader who actually talked, explained things.
“I hoped you’d bring in the rest of your gang,” he murmured eventually.
Ava’s teeth raked her lip. “You don’t want that. Frosty committed to White Rule. The gang supported his decision.”
White Rule was one of the largest insurrectionist groups in the new nation of Hudson. They claimed a ton of support in the Upstate sticks, though Ava doubted it. People who thought saving the Apple was a bad idea unless it was ‘ethnically cleansed.’ Unlike most of the insurrectionist groups, White Rule approved of the martial law government. They loved the ‘death angels’ even more, the shadowy organization behind ‘culling’ the population. Word on the street was that because of that stance, the authorities weren’t cracking down on White Rule like the other insurrectionists. The group didn’t target troops and militia, so they were low priority.
Ava wondered, not for the first time, what kind of hold the ‘death angels’ had on the martial law government. Why the young nation of Hudson hadn’t gone after the ones who murdered New York City.
Guzman hissed. “So White Rule is what, targeting the non-white gangs in the city?”
“Pretty much. I’m not too popular here,” Ava returned. “With the other gang rats.” To put it mildly. “Stupid. I tried to tell Frosty. The other gangs catch on, they can work together to wipe us out. Them. White Supreme.” It wasn’t her gang anymore, only Frosty’s.
“The morals of this don’t bother you?”
“What morals,” Ava growled. “Kill or be killed. That’s all. White Rule is going to get White Supreme wiped. They don’t care about us. No one does.” She shrugged. “I might be able to bring in a few of the survivors after it gets too hot on the streets. But they’d still be loyal to White Rule. Just use you as a shield, Guzman.”
“Then knife me in the back. Great.”
“If it makes you feel any better, they hate me more than you,” Ava offered. “Traitor to White Supreme. Enemy to everyone else.”
“Friend to Yafuel Guzman,” he refuted this. Though this new information shed much light on why Ava wasn’t as useful to him as he’d hoped, as a bridge and peacemaker to the gang population.
“Even if I’m a racist? I wasn’t, before. Just been in a whole lot of fights since then. You know?”
“You weren’t racist before?”
“Brooklyn Tech was only a fifth white,” Ava said. “Most of the public schools were that way. That was just normal, here. It was hard to get used to, when we moved to the city. I was in mostly white schools before. Mm, my family was pretty racist. They liked Frosty.” Not that they’d known him very well. Deda only saw him at karate dojo. Her parents went by what Deda and Ava told them.
“So you knew him Before.”
“Yeah. We founded the gang together.”
“Think you could let it go? The racism.”
“I can if they can.” Ava scuffed the heel of her sneaker on the step. A stray thought led her back to the previous discussion. “Hey, Guzman, did you get it? Ebola?”
“No. Vaccinated.”
Ava frowned. “When? Just before the outbreak?”
“No, NYPD got it months before. Why?”
“Nothing.” Her parents were vaccinated a week Before, at the hospital. She wondered if that was the vector, how they did it, introduced the disease.
Guzman changed the subject. “What I wanted to talk to you about – you ever think of joining the Army?”
“Why would I think of joining the Army? You mean the army that penned us up to die in here? That army?”
“They’re not doing that anymore,” Guzman pointed out. “They run our new country now.”
“Yeah. Great place,” she said sourly. The propaganda news played on the big screen in most of the cafeterias. To be fair, the segments she recognized from her own world seemed honest enough. It looked like downright paradise in other parts of Hudson, outside the Apple Zone, in Upstate or South Jersey, or even out on Long Island. Not like Before. But not like this.
“The thing is, Ava, they’re looking for recruits. I’ve got five slots for the first group. The goal is a way out for kids like you, a career opportunity. Training. Security. Discipline. You come out the other side, no one cares any more about your time in the gangs. Anyone would hire you.”
“Why me?”
“You’re a good fighter,” Guzman said. “But for these first recruits, we need to work out the system. Figure out how to train kids like you. The U.S. Army was all volunteer, cherry-picked high school grads. But here Hudson’s got all these gang survivors. Over three hundred thou in the Apple Core alone. We’ve got to find a life for you kids. Not with insurrectionists like White Rule.”
“The Hudson Army can’t be that big.”
The average kid, or even college grad, wouldn’t have spotted the numerical chasm between the size of the problem and the proposed size of band-aid. But most kids weren’t at Brooklyn Tech, one of the three premier science high schools of New York City. Hundreds of thousands of kids competed for entry. If it weren’t for Ava getting into Brooklyn Tech, the Panic parents would have moved on after a couple years, like they always did, to their next lucrative nursing contracts. The family stayed for Ava to attend her precious high school, and sealed their doom.
“No. Hudson needs to cherry-pick, too,” Guzman agreed. “But they’re giving preference to our gang problem. Three quarters of the recruits will come from the Apple Zone. Like I said, out of ten thousand kids in Soho Ville, I get to choose five for this first batch. I want to send gang rats smart enough to make it. Work out the kinks so I can send average kids next round. You’re the smartest I’ve got, Ava.”
True. “They got stuff to read up about this? On the Internet?”
“Probably.” Guzman considered a moment, whether to push, and how. “Hey, Ava, what did you want to be? Back at your fancy high school.”
“Parents wanted me to be a doctor.” She shrugged. They were nurses, after all. “Engineering maybe.” All moot points now, it seemed. She’d left high school in her second year. The only college still open was in New England. They didn’t want Hudson’s gutter rats any more than Hudson did.
Wistfully she added, “Those demolition crews were awesome. Then I was a jerk to them.”
“That why you’re moping on the church steps?”
“Huh?”
“You sit here and think when you’ve had a bad day.”
“Huh.” Maybe he was right. And when she sat here, Guzman often dropped by to talk. Maybe he did care. Fool if he does.
“Catholic? You never talk to the priest.”
“No. Sit here and talk to Deda. He’s buried here somewhere. Probably.” Who knew what pile, where, the dead ended up. She pointed a thumb over her right shoulder, along Houston. “We lived at Washington Square Apartments, Bleeker and Wooster. Guess we’ll blow those up too.” The building was huge for Soho Ville, twenty stories. There had been fires in there, like most places. It was burning the day she left.
The apartments had nice balconies.
“Haven’t decided yet on the building,” Guzman said. “Not this year, anyway. Deda, that your dad? What language is that?”
“Grandfather. Serbian. Deda mostly raised me while Tata and Mama worked.” They never left work after Ebola broke out. Not many survived the hospitals. The Mount Sinai Hospital bodies wouldn’t be in Houston Calm Park. “Always spoke English to me. I don’t really remember Serbia. I understood more Serbian than they thought I did, though.”
Guzman laughed. “I bet you did. And I bet the Army needs engineers and medics and stuff. If you make it, you get training and a career. And get out of here. If it doesn’t work out, you’re welcome back. With
training, maybe the older voters will let you into the militia.”
“You’d really trust me with a gun?” The vote went overwhelmingly against that proposal at the democratic town meeting.
“I would,” Guzman said. “But after a little army discipline, maybe the others would too. You kids make up half the ville. You know I think you should help police it. Maybe police the ganglands, too. But, you saw. In the meeting, they shot me down. Ava, trust is earned. Sucks at your age. But you’ve got some more earning and learning to do.”
The kids were half the ville, but only a handful of voters. Ava nodded. “Sucks.”
Guzman’s phone beeped a 10-minute warning to curfew. Creakily, he rose and offered her a hand up. “Think about the Army.”
“I will,” she promised. “And hey, Guzman? Thanks for talking to me. Like a real person. Nobody else does.”
Guzman shook his head. “Of course you’re a real person. You all are. You know that, Ava. And you talk to me, too. Like I might not be the enemy. That’s why I enjoy talking to you. Anytime, young friend.”
4
Interesting fact: Several diseases can invoke the ‘cytokine storm,’ a positive feedback loop whereby the body’s own immune response kills the victim. The weaponized Ebola so effective in culling greater New York City was optimized for this response. Other diseases include ARDS, SIRS, sepsis, avian flu, and smallpox. The Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918, which killed 50 million people worldwide, was especially deadly to healthy adults in their 20’s and 30’s, possibly due to a cytokine storm.
Early the next evening, Ava peered around the church corner in the gloom. She let her eyes adjust, carefully keeping them away from lit windows. The usual throng of after-dinner teenagers was out on Houston Green in the rain. The puzzle was how to cross it without engaging with anyone. That would slow her down.
She’d just about decided straight through with her head down was the way to go. Then a flock of elderly joggers appeared around the corner at the back end of her Sullivan Street block. Worth a shot. She waited and let them pass her, then joined the tail of the group, stumbling a bit to fake being winded. Yes! The herd took the path across the Calm Park at Sullivan, a track made of rubber gravel cut from recycled car tires. With her hood pulled down against the rain, no one noticed her.
Halfway up the next block, she decided to sprint for a block, and left the joggers behind. The senior health club veered right onto Bleeker Street, and never knew Ava had joined them. Unfortunately, at the next cross-street up, Sullivan Street hosted a hip hop party tonight, with several hundred kids clogging the intersection. She slipped the wall, giving them as wide a berth as she could. Some couples were humping in the basement apartment stairwells. They wouldn’t bother her if she didn’t bother them.
She stood against the right wall at the corner of West 3rd, paused, and peered around the corner. A black kid peered back at her from a foot away, the posted guard.
“Just passing through. Not looking for trouble,” she whispered.
“Who you?”
“Nobody. Doing nothing.”
The guard stepped out to gaze around her. “Yeah, alright. Better run fast, little bitch.” He grinned, his face dimly lit by spillover from a spotlight they’d rigged from one of the fire escapes across the street.
One of those. But Ava nodded jerkily, as though terrified, and launched into another shambling jog. As expected, the corner lookout yelled, “Jackrabbit! Catchee, catchee!”
Ava sped up, dodged grabbing hands, spun, vaulted, and made it across the street. Once past the crowd, she ran full out. “That was no jackrabbit, fool!” she heard behind her with satisfaction.
No, rabbits were prey. She just didn’t want to be slowed down. She reached the top of Sullivan Street at Washington Square. Clear! The militia enforced a strict six-kid policy near the community center, at the old student center. They dispersed any larger clumps.
The center appeared undamaged from the violent demise of the sandstone library across the street. Ava trotted right in, and up the dim stairs to the Soho Village library.
“Incognito again tonight, Panic?” the librarian Samantha joked with her. Samantha was an old one, too, and needed a walker. Sit-around jobs were reserved for the frail.
“Short on time,” Ava explained. “DTM tonight.”
She shook the raindrops off her big boxy plaid hooded coat, and hung it on the coat-rack. Who wore stuff like that Before? It looked like the sort of thing parents would camouflage a girl in, to ship her off to parochial school, as though an ugly coat could prevent teen sex. The homely thing would make a good ground blanket for sex, actually. Like most gang rats, Ava preferred to avoid loose clothing. Too many handholds. Rather than a backpack, she wore a waist-pack. She also favored shoes with ankle protection. But everyone knew her at a glance in her signature skintight black leather jacket, black skinny jeans, and high-top red sneakers.
Clothes cost next to nothing in the city. They salvaged wardrobes by the millions, and could wear whatever they liked. She often swapped out parts of her wardrobe on Saturday, flea market day. Food was what cost money.
Ava slipped into a study carrel, with 20-inch monitor and ear bud jack. Not too busy tonight. She was surprised. With the DTM later she expected the place to be packed.
Samantha shuffled over in her walker, dragging one foot. “Can I help with anything, honey?”
Ava grinned up at her. “Why are you so nice to me? Aren’t you scared?” She curled fingers in front of her face like claws, still smiling. “I’m a highly dangerous predator, I’ll have you know.” The kind of dangerous predator who snuck into libraries to protect her rep.
Samantha laughed. “You read. I like that in a young person. Not that there are any books to read.” Not a one in the library, in fact. Books made a convenient fuel brick for cooking supper or boiling water, or just keeping warm. Books were in short supply in the Apple these days, just like the trees. The library housed their public-access computers. Of course, consumer electronics were in ample supply. Ava had a tablet herself. Power and Internet connections were sparse, though.
“What are you up to tonight, Panic?” Samantha asked.
Ava logged into Amenac, the usual online forums where the Hudson government seemed to publish things. Samantha taught her that. “Army training,” she said thoughtfully. “How would I search for that?”
“Oh, are you thinking of applying to boot camp? How exciting! Let me think.” Samantha leaned over her to type in some search terms. Ava rolled her chair out of the way, but held onto Samantha’s walker to stabilize the old woman.
In nothing flat, Samantha had three tabs ready for Ava. One, army entrance requirements. Two, an application to the Hudson Army. Three, a pre-collapse website describing the old U.S. basic training process.
“Don’t take that last too seriously,” Samantha cautioned her. “The new army will probably change things.”
“You’ve already heard about this?”
“Oh, you did, too, sweetie.”
Ava smiled in amusement at the ‘sweetie.’
“Governor Cullen announced that in the first state of the State speech last week.”
“Why do they call it that? State of the state?”
“State as in condition, of the state as in nation-state,” Samantha said. “But I watched in here, instead of some noisy cafeteria like you. And I followed the links.” She pointed at the screen. “That should get you started. You need anything at all, just ask. Oh, I’m so excited for you! And this is exactly the sort of thing that shows me that you, young lady, are a smart and responsible voter.”
“You’ve got my vote, Samantha.”
“I didn’t tell you what I want yet.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’ll back you.”
Samantha chuckled and shuffled away to check in on someone else’s carrel.
Ava read the pages Samantha had queued for her. It all looked quite doable. Sixteen or older, check. Qualified Hudson voter, chec
k. There was an exam to take, trivial compared to the SAT and Brooklyn Tech entrance exams. She should take a practice exam first because she was rusty. Two years since she left school, after all. But no big deal. They waived the high school graduation requirement, since no high schools were open anymore, check. She certainly wasn’t overweight, check. The physical fitness test sounded like a light workout to her, check.
The description of Basic gave her pause. Not because it sounded hard, but because she pictured doing it surrounded by fellow gang rats. Guzman was right to be concerned on that score. Whole lot of obedience training. Well, gang rats were beaten into submission all the time, she supposed. Normal members, anyway, not gang royalty like her and Frosty. She sure never wanted to be in the middle of the heap. Looked painful.
No time to take a practice test tonight. She sat back and frowned at the screen. Do you think this is a good deal, Deda?
They killed Deda. And Mama and Tata and millions of others besides. No, they didn’t come in here and shoot us. They just barricaded us in to die and cannibalize each other, because there was nothing left to eat but the corpses and the rats. Then Frosty wanted to join forces with White Rule to finish the job after the survivors finally got a reprieve. Because the Army hadn’t waited long enough. Too many browns and immigrants still breathed in the Apple Zone. Damn you to hell, Frosty.
Yeah, Army Basic Training was doable. Joining the Army was also a betrayal of everyone who died. Then again, Frosty thought she’d betrayed them by joining Guzman and coming in from the gangs to help build Soho Ville. She understood the rage. Oh, she knew the rage alright. Her heart was pounding just thinking about it.
Live, Ava! Deda ordered her, on his last day. He bled from his eyes and nose, his skin mottled purple and magenta and greenish all over, from the blood vessels bursting inside him. Liquid rustled in his lungs as he whispered. That’s all that matters. You live!
She blinked away the flashback, and blew out. The lungs take care of breathing in automatically. Just breathe out slowly.
