by Ginger Booth
It seemed disrespectful to rush through her errand and run out again. But gazing around, nothing caught at her heart, which felt frigid as the blustery November night outside. She wandered into her old bedroom, thinking something there might matter, make her feel something. Her algebra and biology texts still lay on her desk. Her black karate gi looked a couple sizes too big for her now. Was I fat? No, the martial arts jacket was always roomy. She’d learned not to fight in loose clothing since then.
A senior yearbook photo of Frosty, wallet-sized, lay on the nightstand, under a felt-like layer of dust. She wiped it off on the bedspread and stared at a handsome blond stranger, with a secretive smile. Maybe we were fat. No, that firm square jaw was well-toned muscle and plenty of it. The white-blond hair was perfectly combed in a respectable haircut. He wore a crisp white Oxford shirt under dark green school uniform tie and jacket. Not Frosty. Cade Snowdon. She tucked the photo into her waist pack.
I should go. She returned to the living room to collect her prize. Her family moved often, and traveled light. All their pictures were on a memory card in an electronic photo frame in the living room. She pulled the card intact. She considered plugging it into her tablet, to see if the pictures survived. But she didn’t want to face that now. Retrieving it was enough. She hadn’t left the last trace of her family behind for the demolition crew, or to be wiped for resale by a salvage team.
Gold was still worth something. She wandered into her parents’ room. As usual, they left their wedding rings on the dresser before work. She slipped those into her waist-pack too, for a rainy day fund. Not that wedding rings were in short supply. The dead provided millions. But these gold rings led to her, in a way.
Nothing? She wondered at her inability to feel something. But two years was an eternity at her age. She outgrew this alien place. This stuff was supposed to mean something once. Before, supposedly smart people struggled to work punishing hours, placate unreasonable bosses, pay off mountains of educational debt, and buy their trinkets. But it was all a cruel lie, pointless. After so long caring about basic survival, food and fighting, to Ava the debris of life Before was cleanup and salvage, no more compelling than the old copper pipes. Trash collection and recycling. One light duffel bag encompassed all the possessions she cared about. She wasn’t willing to care about more stuff. She was right not to come back here before.
The people she’d cared about. That was real. But they weren’t here. Dead and gone. She was relieved not to suffer any flashbacks.
She left the door wide open on her way out, candles and matches conveniently to hand on a table beside it, for whoever came next.
9
Interesting fact: The old New York City comprised five boroughs – Manhattan, Staten Island, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. Project Rebuild incorporated a sixth, called Jerseyborough, on the west bank of the Hudson River facing Manhattan and Staten Island.
It was raining in the gathering gloom of late afternoon when she arrived by foot at the Lower East Side recruiting station. A biogas bus waited silently by the curb. No one left parked vehicles idling anymore. A placard on the dash advised its destination as ARMY BASIC.
Ava had until 4 p.m. to report, but she’d left work at lunch. The good-byes with the salvage crew were stilted and chilly. She stopped by Guzman’s office at the community center. He hugged her, wished her luck, and both had tears standing in their eyes.
That was enough. Someone cared that she was gone. After Guzman, she picked up her duffel, turned in her key, and left Soho Village as efficiently as possible.
Frosty never responded to her text. That hurt, but she couldn’t blame him.
At the recruiting office, she dumped her duffel on the pile by the door, and joined a queue of a half dozen, supervised by Specialist Nicci. The proceedings reminded her of airport check-in Before, and not in a good way. She relinquished her worldly goods and her freedom, submitted herself hours before takeoff, to be herded and managed and processed, a statistic instead of a person. This dehumanizing process was supposed to make travel safe. Instead it zeroed attention on not-safe.
Like everyone else in line, she needed to return to her luggage to stow her blades before passing through the metal detector. Nicci seemed disturbed by this. She held on to her ball lightning control pennies.
At least they didn’t make her strip her shoes before weigh-in – 91 pounds, fully clothed. The medic shook his head. To her eyes, he looked fat, but everyone from outside the Apple Zone did. The medic approved her blood pressure and eyesight, seemed dubious about the condition of her teeth. She did take her shoes off for height measurement, 61 inches. They took her fingerprints and cross-checked her identity records.
“Do I pass?” Ava inquired at the end of the livestock inspection.
The medic glanced up from his tablet. “No. You’ll need to weigh 100 pounds minimum by the end of fitness camp. Then pass the physical fitness test at the end of Basic. You have a waiver until then. Everyone here does. Next!”
Next in the process was signing the employment contract. About 20 seats worth of banquet tables were squeezed into the other side of the recruiting station today. Each place-setting included glass of water, quarter sub snack – eggplant parmesan today – and a tablet. Sergeant Callahan waved her to take the next available seat. By the time her eyes opened from full-body sensual appreciation of that delectable little scrap of sandwich, the guy behind her from medical took his seat.
Sergeant Callahan slid into the last seat at the table, and gave everyone a warm smile. “Welcome, and congratulations! This is a big day.” Apparently he was trying to fill and process a table at a time.
The teens nodded vaguely, most eyes elsewhere, five guys and one other girl besides Ava, likely from Chinatown. The last to arrive was still lost in his eggplant parmesan experience.
Callahan continued, “Next you need to sign your enlistment contracts before you board the bus. Everyone sign in to your tablets, and tap on the ‘Contract’ button. Your meshnet id works as your citizenship id, as always. We’ll read this together.”
“Sir?” The other probable Chinatown recruit raised his hand, as though in school. “I already read this. Everybody read this? Raise hands.”
Seven hands rose, out of seven.
“Alright,” Callahan conceded. “Did you have any questions?”
“Yeah,” a black guy down the end said. To Ava’s eyes, he looked 21, his frame already grown to a man’s size before the Starve. “When we’re discharged for cause, are we returned here as place of origin, or can we elect to be released Upstate?”
Callahan blinked. “You would be returned here. Home. The Army would provide travel.” Seven heads nodded, lips pursed. That’s what they figured.
“Question,” Ava said. “The contract said eighty percent are ‘expected’ to complete Basic and enter the Army. I was unclear on eighty percent of what. Those who enter fitness camp? Or Basic? Also, is eighty percent a limit, or an estimate?”
The first Chinese guy cocked a finger at her, like shooting a fake pistol, followed by recoil. Good question.
Callahan watched the pantomimed gun play in puzzlement. “I believe that’s not clear,” he replied to Ava. “I mean, I agree. It’s not clear. Ah, but it would be eighty percent of those who enter Basic, after passing fitness camp. Pretty sure. Do you need that clarified before you sign? I could check.”
“We don’t need nothing clarified before we sign,” the Chinese girl said.
“We’re all voters, man,” a brownish kid expanded on this. “Look around. You got the intellectual elite of Lower Manhattan. Bet there’s not a rat in here had less than a B average.” He shrugged a little. “Next batch will be different.”
“Way different,” the next kid muttered. They looked like brothers, or at least cousins.
“Midtown may be different, too,” Ava cautioned. Soho Ville was nearly pure socialist. Midtown management was raw capitalist. “Is our bus all downtown?” The bus parked outside looked
overly large for the fifteen or so recruits she expected from the downtown villes.
“No, a city bus is bringing the recruits from Midtown,” Callahan supplied. “They’re late. A couple recruits didn’t show on time.”
“Sure they’re not already here?” Ava stood and called across the medical queue. “Anybody from Midtown?” No response. “Tribeca?” Five hands raised. “Lower East Side?” Eight. “Soho Ville?” Four plus herself, as expected. Two hadn’t raised hands. “Where are you two from?”
“Chelsea free, bitch.”
Ava sat, mystery solved. But Callahan clearly didn’t get it. She explained politely, “Chelsea might be listed as Midtown. But it’s closer to walk here than there. I’m guessing you have all your Midtown recruits. Tribeca?”
The sole other white guy at the table offered, “Should be two more of us coming from Tribeca.”
Callahan contacted Midtown to release their bus. Without him leading the conversation, the recruits at the table fell back into silence, sizing each other up. She didn’t know the other Soho Ville recruits well, and none were at her table. Every recruit had passed the voter test. That didn’t mean they showed up to town meetings. Based on body language, she guessed some of the people at her table were at the front of the line for the same reason she was. Experienced gang leadership, staking their claim in the new surroundings.
Based on the numbers, possibly no one from Downtown opted for the final long holiday weekend of freedom.
Ava paged to the end of her contract and signed it. Everyone at the table followed suit within seconds. A class full of cutthroat leaders would be interesting, she feared.
Callahan was turning back to their table when a ruckus broke out at the end of the short medical line. A new guy had arrived, of indeterminate brown skin and bushy black hair, bleeding from the hairline and knuckles, clothes and duffel torn, fists clenched and bouncing on the balls of his feet. The other recruits who waited for medical backed up to give him a wide radius.
Ava winced as Nicci walked straight up to him. Back off! The medic stopped what he was doing and joined them, too, trying to draw the kid in for first aid. “Someone should stop them,” she murmured.
“Be my guest, White Trash,” one of her neighbors suggested.
The white guy from Tribeca sighed. “I’ll go with you.” The older black guy from the end rose too, and followed them toward the fray. That one was from LES. White Tribeca sought to draw Specialist Nicci and the medic back. Black LES stood backup, leaving Ava to face the crazed brown Tribeca.
Ava held her hands out facing him, her knees and torso slightly crouched. “Breathe, Tribeca. You’re here on time. Safe. Take a minute.” She modeled breathing out, nice and slow.
He grabbed for one of her annoying hands. She dodged left, turning him a quarter. She faced him again in a fighting stance, one hand up facing him same as before, the other guarding her face. “No one wants to fight you. Chill out.”
Still bouncing with the adrenaline surge, brown Tribeca lashed out again at her flat hand, that aggravating intrusion into his personal space. She dodged left again, until he was facing the door. From there she backed up slowly. He advanced on her. Once she had him clear of the door frame, Ava quickly skipped backward ten paces across the sidewalk, and threw her hands up in surrender. Black LES and white Tribeca followed them out to block the door.
“Someone jump you on the way to muster?” white Tribeca asked. Brown Tribeca whirled on the guys standing behind him, but they had their arms crossed, no challenge offered.
“That’s got to suck,” black LES commented. “Take a minute. Do you know his name?” he added to white Tribeca.
“Sauce,” white Tribeca supplied.
Ava circled warily around to lean against the recruiting station window beside white Tribeca, hands thrust deep in her leather jacket pockets, heart still thudding away happily. The three blocking the door volunteered their own names. They chatted lazily about the rain. The eggplant parmesan subs. The Army employment contract. The proportions of recruits between the downtown villes, and was it really fair that Soho Ville got five recruits to LES’s eight and Tribeca’s seven. How many Midtown might contribute. The book of the month posted on the meshnet, Oliver Twist.
“Who picks those damned books?” Brown Tribeca – Sauce – finally entered the conversation, and spat on the concrete. “Dickens. I can’t relate to Dickens.”
“Soho Ville librarian,” Ava said. “Samantha means well. Figures we’re orphans. And that ‘please, sir, I want some more’ thing.”
Sauce looked revolted. “She thought Dickens would involve gang rats in a book club?”
White Tribeca – Yoda – shrugged. “Something to talk about, besides the weather.”
“Turning to sleet,” black LES noted – Marquis.
“Wonder if we get heat in the barracks?” Ava asked.
Marquis scowled at her. “I was suggesting we move inside.”
“Sauce, you cool yet, man?” Yoda inquired.
“Need to leave it on the street,” Ava said. “Start a new life when you cross this threshold.”
“Clean slate,” Marquis agreed. “Don’t matter how you got here.”
“Yeah,” Sauce said. He wiped blood-tinged rain out of his eyes. “Thanks. I owe you guys.”
The brilliant headlights of a bus suddenly outraged the night, and the recruits hid their eyes behind their hands. “Damn, Midtown,” Ava said. “Sauce, need to go in now.” The two beside her ducked in first. Ava insisted Sauce go in before her. The couple still waiting in line evaporated from their path, and Sauce went straight to the medic.
Ava, Marquis, and Yoda lingered beside the line. The pair from Chelsea, finished with signing their contracts now, drew over to them. “Panic, the sergeant says Midtown did the indoor stuff already.” He nodded to the others in guarded greeting.
Ava frowned at him. “You know me?”
“Libre, next door,” he said, naming a gang a couple blocks from White Supreme. “Frosty came around looking for you, when you left. I’m Puño, that’s Fakhir. He runs with Al Kebab.” The Al Kebab gang turf was on the verge between Chelsea and Midtown South.
Ava reciprocated, introducing her quartet.
Puño nodded, and continued with a pointed glance around the station. “Cocos picked soft in Downtown. You’re all ville kids, huh?”
“You’re still out?” Ava asked. If he wanted to assume she was soft, that was fine with her.
“Chelsea free,” Puño repeated from earlier. “Chelsea took three recruits off Midtown’s quota. Frosty lost his White Trash slot at the meet, because you were picked. Point is, Midtown gave its slots to the gangs.”
Chelsea held inter-gang summit meetings even before Ava went into Soho. From the sound of things, Chelsea was more organized now, with quasi-status as a mini-city without a Coco.
“Thanks for the heads-up, man,” Marquis said thoughtfully.
Puño nodded. “We’re free agents. Don’t lump us in with Midtown. Is all I’m saying.”
“And watch our backs with Midtown,” suggested Yoda.
Puño quipped, “You ain’t learned to watch your back yet?”
The group grinned at that, including Yoda. They drifted to the windows, to observe the bus of Midtown gang rats. Apparently they’d been waiting on board until now, while their luggage transferred to the other bus. Two armed soldiers unloaded first. Next a kid fell flying out the door to the pavement. He bounced up fighting, to drag the next guy off and continue the brawl. The soldiers broke that up, dragging them apart by their collars. Ava noted the glint of a knife kicked under the bus. The brawlers were pushed to stand leaning against the bus, hands and feet spread. The rest of the passengers disgorged and walked around them to transfer to the other bus.
“Rest room,” Ava said, excusing herself. For bonus karma points, she met the eye of each girl in the recruiting station along the way. Two black girls sniffed at her impertinence. Two other colors joined her. Ther
e were no other white girls, just Ava. She hadn’t seen any coming off the Midtown bus, either, but it was hard to tell in the dark.
Unfortunately, the weakest looking girl in the room was the other pick from Soho Village. Ava mentally dubbed her Hijab for her dubious wardrobe choice today. Ava had seen her around the ville, working the street vegetable gardens until the weather turned cold, always with proper head-scarf covering hair and neck.
Finally the downtown recruits completed their in-processing. They followed Specialist Nicci out with their luggage to stow it below the bus. They bunched up waiting to board as Sergeant Callahan stuck his head into the bus. A few broke ranks to share a last hug or good-bye with well-wishers waiting in the rain to send them off.
The group of boys formed over the Sauce incident still stood together at the lead. Ava rejoined them, Hijab trailing along uninvited.
“Midtown claimed all the seats,” Yoda explained the holdup, tacitly welcoming Ava back among their number. Fakhir tried not to look eager for an introduction to Hijab.
“Where did the fighters go?” Ava asked. No one was spread-eagled against the bus anymore.
“On the bus,” Yoda replied.
Two adults waded in from the well-wishers on the sidelines. “Marquis! Just wanted to say good-bye,” said the well-fed one in Army camouflage, holding out a hand for a hand-shake. “Do us proud, man.”
Yikes, Ava recognized. Colonel Margolis, and the Coco of LES ville.
“Yes, sir!” Marquis said, shaking the offered hand. He traded handshake-and-hug with the apple-gaunt Coco as well, with words too low for Ava to catch. She wondered if the officials understood how much face they gave the black recruit.
“What’s the holdup?” Margolis asked, stepping up into the bus.
