by Ginger Booth
“Wish you wouldn’t do that, sir,” the LES Coco muttered.
Margolis stepped back down. “Not afraid of my people,” he replied to the Coco. He raised his voice to carry to the whole Downtown contingent. “Just wanted to tell all of you recruits. I’m proud of you. If your families could be here, they’d be proud of you. Do your best, and come home safe. Home is where you go in victory and defeat. You’ll always be welcome home in the Apple.” He saluted them all, then ducked back into the bus to repeat the farewell to the Midtown recruits.
Sergeant Callahan followed Margolis out of the bus. The Resco invited him and the whole recruiting office staff to join the fancy leadership Thanksgiving dinner the next day with Margolis, MacLaren, and the Apple Cocos. Callahan accepted, honored and tickled pink. Ava envied him.
At last the steps were clear and they boarded, the self-selected ‘leadership’ group taking the lead, and the first seats pressed against Midtown at the back of the bus. The guys gallantly claimed the back-most row. Someone from the back darted forward to claim a seat with Fakhir, pushing him against the window away from Hijab across the aisle. Marquis started to object, but Puño and Fakhir insisted he was Chelsea free, with them.
Ava looked out the window at the far side of the bus, and the noisy jockeying of recruits abruptly vanished from her mind. There, under some dim solar-powered pseudo-streetlights, Frosty stood alone in the sleet, hunched in his favorite leather bomber jacket. She hadn’t seen him in a few months. He’d put on a few pounds, and trained it to muscle, just like she had. His white-blond hair was a little longer, jaw squaring again, as though the gaunt Frosty of the Starve was merging back with Cade Snowdon of Before, to birth the man. His twentieth birthday would be in January.
She sat frozen for a moment. He probably couldn’t see her. Without conscious volition, her fingers grasped her flashlight to flash her face a couple times, to catch his attention. She swallowed nervously. He stared straight at her, gorgeous face implacable, set in harsh lines from clenching his teeth, a scar standing out across his cheek. His narrow ice-blue eyes were shadowed in the gloom. Except that she could always, would always see his blue eyes.
She pressed her right fingers against the window in a gesture from Star Trek, first two and last two fingers glued together in a V. Live long and prosper. Frosty crooked a tight smile, and returned the Vulcan greeting. The gesture was tender at first, vulnerable. Then he clenched his teeth again and thrust his arm high, elbow locked in a Heil Hitler.
Why did you have to do that, Frosty? She let her fingers splay apart, and wriggle slowly down the window, like rain or tears. He dropped his arm and nodded. She couldn’t tell if tears flowed on his face along with the sleet. Nothing left to say, they gazed at each other as the bus lurched into motion at last.
“Your boyfriend? He’s a hunk,” Hijab commented, with a shy smile.
“Ex,” Ava said, craning her neck to keep him in sight. Meshnet! she suddenly thought, realizing they could have texted each other all through the exchange.
Yeah, and they could have talked, shared a hug and a proper good-bye, if he’d made his presence known before she boarded. Damn you, Frosty, why do you have to be so cryptic?
She rose on her knees looking backward to catch her last possible glimpse of the blond cipher under street-lamps. Instead, she saw one of the Midtown rats pull a knife on Sauce and Yoda in the seat behind her.
She bounced up onto the seat back and kicked the attacker’s hand to make him drop the knife, her high-top red-sneakered heel just inches from the surprised faces of Yoda and Sauce. Yoda cowered into the window, but Sauce grabbed the knife and sliced the back of the attacker’s hand.
“Knife fight!” Marquis yelled out to the front of the bus. The driver slammed on the brakes. Sauce guided that lurch of momentum to crack the attacker’s face into the tubular steel on the back of his seat. The black attacker from Midtown bled copiously from broken nose as well as the sliced veins on his hand.
The guard – or possibly a spare driver, no one had introduced him – waded back. Sauce hastily dropped the knife and kicked it up the aisle to Marquis, who took custody with a booted foot, pulling it under the seat.
“What the hell, back here?” the soldier demanded.
“Sir –” A number of recruits said it at once.
“I’m not a sir! Never mind. Everybody shut up! What happened? You, holding your hands up. Answer me.”
“The guy bleeding behind me pulled a knife on us,” Sauce said. He pointed at Ava, now demurely back in her seat. “Panic kicked his hand. I got control of the knife. And used it on the fucker.”
“And you! Why did you pull a knife –”
The bloody mess of a guy lunged and grabbed Sauce in a throttle hold. Assorted recruits from Midtown pulled him back, but not before Sauce bit his wrist.
The soldier put his hand on Sauce’s head, and looked him in the eye. “Stand down now. Chill out, or you’re off the bus.” Ava pivoted back onto her knees and stared at Sauce, too. Come on, man, you can do this. You chilled out before. Yoda nodded at him, too.
“I want the knife!” the soldier demanded in general.
“Here, sir,” Marquis offered the bloody switchblade politely.
“Specialist,” the soldier corrected. “Everybody? Listen to this. In civilian life, ‘sir’ is a term of respect. In the Army, it has a specific meaning – officers. Enlisted personnel are not called ‘sir.’ Ever. You call me ‘specialist,’ or ‘corporal.’ The guy driving the bus is named ‘sergeant.’ Got it?”
“Huh,” Marquis acknowledged. Gang leaders didn’t take correction lightly.
“Right.” The corporal looked back at Sauce. “You hurt? Blood all over you.”
“Cut fingers. Most of the blood is the mad dog’s.” Sauce indicated behind him with a jerk of his head.
“So why did ‘mad dog’ attack ‘cut fingers’?”
Discussion ensued, as the bus got rolling again. ‘He crazy,’ emerged as the general consensus from Midtown. Downtown couldn’t argue with that. The bleeding mad dog tried to pin blame on Ava, then Sauce, then Yoda, then back to Sauce. The specialist had the driver stop the bus again deep into East Harlem, and deposited him there, to screeching protests.
Ava wondered idly if the soldier knew he was signing the reject recruit’s death warrant. The crazed black kid, bleeding and after dark, didn’t stand much chance of making it out of El Barrio alive. Good.
Puño and Fakhir’s associate from Chelsea, a Dominican guy with dreads, saw to Sauce’s fingers. This earned him the new nickname of Doc, which amused him greatly. He seemed cheerful.
Ava settled back and realized she’d missed her last glimpse of Frosty. Oh! She grabbed out her phone and checked. Yes, he’d finally meshed her back.
Succeed, and I’ll see you on the other side. Love, Cade
Cade? He’d called himself Frosty since the day they left Washington Square. Aside from Maz, she doubted anyone in the gang even knew Cade’s real name. Sensei gave him that nickname Before, Frosty the Snowdon, a comment on both his white-blond coloring and cool head on the karate mats.
She checked the message time stamp. Frosty sent it just after he passed out of view.
I will not ask. It doesn’t matter, Ava argued with herself. And then she realized they were passing out of the city. The high-rises were rapidly getting shorter and thinning out. Frantically she tapped a response.
Cade, thanks for sendoff. Why so cryptic? Love, Ava
But she waited too long, with the knife fight. The meshnet responded.
Meshnet dead end, 20 feet. Message queued.
She gazed out the window. They’d entered an interstate highway now. Grown trees, all but extinct inside the city, showed as deeper shades of black against the dark suburbs. The burbs didn’t use the phone-to-phone meshnet.
For the first time in over two years, she’d escaped the confines of New York City. She was out of range of the gangs, just like she hoped. Except she’d brou
ght them with her. And she was free of Frosty. Except she desperately wanted to turn back right this minute and ask what was going on with him.
Damn you, Frosty.
10
Interesting fact: The U.S. Army held Basic Combat Training – boot camp – at Fort Benning, Georgia; Fort Jackson, South Carolina; Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri; and Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Hudson, formed from the prior states of New York and New Jersey, held no such facility.
West Point. The recruit information websites hadn’t divulged where Hudson’s new boot camp might be. About an hour and a half north of LES ville, the highway exit sign still advertised the United States Military Academy at West Point. As the bus passed a fortified gate into campus, a brightly lit, repainted sign proclaimed Hudson Army Training Base at West Point.
After another mile or so winding past dark house-sized buildings and trees, the bus came to a hulking huge stone building with sporadic lights in the windows, and came to a stop behind another parked bus.
The driver cut the lights and took up a microphone. “Welcome to West Point, your new home. I imagine you’re hungry.” Deafening cheers corroborated this.
“We’re parked next to your barracks,” the sergeant continued when he could be heard again. “We’ll take you to the cafeteria first, then return to the bus to collect your gear and find your rooms. Do not become separated. If you do become separated, ask a soldier in uniform to return you to the Lower Manhattan group.”
He paused to open the door and another soldier clambered in. “Do not wander off. Do not attempt to leave the West Point campus. You will be shot. There will be no further fighting between recruits until you are ordered to fight by an instructor. People, soldiers obey orders. Your training begins Monday. But you will obey orders, effective immediately.”
The newcomer accepted the microphone from the driver. “Hello. I am your head drill instructor, Sergeant Clarke. You will address me as ‘Sergeant Clarke.’ What is my name?”
“Sergeant Clarke,” they chorused grudgingly.
“I can’t hear you.”
“SERGEANT CLARKE!”
“Better. That’s the most important thing you need to remember for now. You will exit the bus in an orderly fashion, and form a double line on the road beside the bus, behind me. You will not talk in line. Execute.”
With Clarke’s continued micro-management guiding every step along the way, the hungry recruits lined up and followed him past the monstrous stone ‘barracks.’ It looked more like a castle, and a big one at that, with honest-to-God turrets and crenelated battlements. After they took a left turn, a wide flat green opened up to their right, with a couple precisely placed trees. To the left, crenelated barracks gave way to a smoother-topped building, windows lit on this wing of the ground floor.
Clarke brought them to a stop at a grand entrance to the building, broad stone steps leading up to a massive door. To their right a statue loomed several stories tall, some guy on a horse. “This is the Washington Statue, at the main entrance to Washington Hall. What is this statue?”
“WASHINGTON STATUE.” This was getting old.
“You will always know where you are, relative to the Washington Statue. Point to the Washington Statue.” Ava felt ridiculous pointing to the statue. “Very good. Washington Hall is our dining hall. We will step into the hall and stop.” They did so, not expecting much.
Instead a space opened up to their wondering eyes, like the greatest cathedrals of Europe, but more vast. Six wings radiated out from the grand entrance, five of them dark and unused at present. A hundred or so recruits and soldiers sat at linen-napped tables, dwarfed by the lit sixth wing. The ceiling climbed maybe 50 feet above them to exposed wooden beams, with lit chandeliers suspended on chains.
Ava expected rustic barracks in the snowy backwoods of Upstate. Instead they sent her to Hogwarts. Jewel-toned gaudy flags of mystery hung high on the white-washed walls, above dark wooden wainscoting at grubby-hand height.
“I want Gryffindor,” Yoda quipped behind her. Ava and Hijab shot him a grin.
“Point to the Washington Statue.” Sergeant Clarke had to ask twice to collect the attention of the boggle-eyed muttering recruits, but they got that part right. “Now point to the bus.” There were a few failures on that pop quiz. “The bus, and Pershing Barracks, are that way. Point to the bus. Now point to the Washington Statue. Where are you standing?”
“WASHINGTON HALL.”
In fairly short order, Ava and her Lower Manhattan bus were packed into ten-person tables, colonizing a new row at the far end of the wing, nearly back to the barracks castle. The table behind Ava appeared to be fellow Apple gang rats, finished eating a big meal.
“I’m told you people can’t eat and listen to instructions at the same time,” Sergeant Clarke boomed out. “So you’ll listen first.” He droned on while Ava’s attention was completely captured by the arrival of food trolleys, pushed by civilians. The food remained tantalizingly covered, servitors waiting politely.
Clarke’s voice stopped. About forty pairs of eyes were glued to the food trolleys. He said something, and paused again. He gave up and signaled the servers to go ahead and serve.
Unlike most, Ava unrolled her cutlery and draped the cloth napkin on her lap. Hijab and Yoda, flanking her, followed her lead. A motherly waiter deposited huge plates with green salad in front of them. Another man passed out cheeseburgers and strategically placed ketchup bottles. A third server doled out about three whole potatoes worth apiece of shoestring fries.
Ava peeled open the cheeseburger in amazement. Inside the white wheat bun were not one, but two quarter-pound beef patties, medium rare, with three slices of American cheese, tomatoes, onions, pickles, dressing. That ‘sandwich’ alone held more than her daily pay back in the ville. For the first time in two years, she thought, I can’t eat all this!
But she could certainly try.
About a third of a cheeseburger later, Ava became aware of the world around her again. Sauce and a couple other Downtown recruits stood against the wall, along with a dozen she didn’t recognize. Another couple buses worth of new people had arrived. The ones at her back had departed.
That was disconcerting. Her situational awareness had gotten rusty living in the ville.
“Can I have the rest of that?” Yoda wheedled, pointing at the rest of her cheeseburger.
“Uh, sure,” Ava said.
“No way, man!” Marquis pounced from the head of the table. “Girls can’t eat it all, we split it between us!”
Sergeant Clarke drifted over to stand behind Yoda. “Do more of you need to stand against the wall?”
Ah, a punishment for fighting at table, Ava realized, glancing at the standing line. “No sir, uh, Sergeant Clarke,” she said. “We were discussing how to share out leftovers.”
She reserved a few fries for herself – her salad was gone – and cut the rest of her burger into four pieces. She passed the plate to Yoda. Hijab followed suit, passing her more-empty plate in the other direction. Chinatown girl did the same, her plate even more full than Ava’s. The boys’ plates were wiped clean, except for Sauce’s, which no one touched. He’d eaten about half before he was banished from the table.
“Well done,” Clarke said. “You can dole this out, too. He had enough.” He passed Sauce’s plate to Ava, and drifted away to raised voices at a Midtown table.
“You crack me up, Panic,” Puño said from the foot of the table. “Politest queen bee on effing Manhattan.”
Hijab stiffened, and glanced at Ava from the corner of her eye. Chinatown girl stared at her, appraising.
“Panic’s a queen bee?” Marquis asked, dubious.
“Not anymore,” Ava said. “I left the gang in August.”
“White Supreme, Frosty’s little lady,” Puño explained, with cheerful malice. Marquis’s face went from dubious to disgusted. “You should have seen the cat fights when she left! It was epic.”
“Still fighting,” Doc added, grinning at Ava.
“Seems Frosty still has a thing for you. Not into the new queen. Wonder if he sleeps with the harem.”
“None of my business anymore,” Ava growled. “We broke up.”
“You broke up alright,” Puño laughed. “Nearly brought the whole gang down!”
“She not look like a queen bee,” Chinaboy said dismissively.
“She’s queen alright,” Puño said. “One time, this guy raped one of the younger kids? Panic and the girls pinned him in his sleep, cut off his balls. He jumped from the Flatiron building a couple days later. Bloodthirsty little bitch, aren’t you?”
Ava took a dignified sip of her water, and firmly shoved down the images Puño recalled to mind. That suicide was no loss to White Supreme. “I disapprove of raping children.”
Puño chuckled. “So we’re three rooms plus a spare? You three girls, us three from Chelsea. Marquis, you going to room off-table?”
Ava frowned. “Three to a room?” she whispered to Hijab.
Hijab nodded warily. “You really get lost in your food.”
Marquis completed sign language negotiations with the next table and turned back. “Yeah, I got people. So, Yoda and Sauce and, what’s your name?”
Chinaboy offered, “Fang.”
“Good to meet you, Fang,” Yoda attempted. “I’m Yoda.”
Fang looked unimpressed. Chinagirl said, “Lotus.”
“Pretty name,” Ava said. Hijab nodded judiciously. Lotus gazed back implacably. Ava continued, “I hope we get a walk after supper. I’m stuffed.”
“No way,” Yoda said. “I could sleep for a week after this.”
Soon after, Sergeant Clarke declared dinner over. In more discrete micromanaged stages than Ava would have dreamed possible, they marched back to the bus to collect their stuff, and up to claim their rooms on the fifth floor of the turreted ‘Pershing Barracks.’
Judging by the distant gleam out the window, Ava’s room would boast a view of the Hudson River past the giant greensward fronting the stupid statue. The room was cramped, but featured attractive wooden furniture, clean sheets, warm blankets and pillows. And heat. The room was nearly 60 degrees. Shouts in the hall informed her there was even hot water in the showers.
