by Ginger Booth
Ava grinned from ear to ear. She’d told Guzman what a big hit her high school diploma suggestion was at fitness camp. He decided to try a pilot program in Soho Ville with the New Year last week. Based on lackluster participation in voter testing – there were less than 20 teen voters out of 7,000 of age in Soho Ville – he hoped at least 3 would show up for the organizational meeting. Instead, 650 squeezed into the DTM meeting room, with an overflow of hundreds more on the frigid Washington Square outside the community center.
A delegation from Chelsea Free, including Maz of White Supreme and Elon of Libre, visited Guzman’s office earlier in the day to request a satellite program in Chelsea, because most of their citizens worked a full day in Chelsea and Midtown. And in any case, Chelsea had nearly 3,000 young adults interested in participating. They offered to clean up a middle school on West 17th Street to house the project. They proposed Chelsea students chip in to pay half a salary per teacher for two nights and half of Saturday teaching every week, plus grading and tutoring. In keeping with Chelsea Free values, they reserved the right to fire teachers the students didn’t find worth their pay.
Ava helped Maz develop the proposal via mesh texts. She stressed the need to study and do the work in class. No homework.
“Furthermore!” Zapple continued. “You’ve already passed one section! The GED social studies section is superseded by the Hudson voter test.” Cheers again.
“Now I have some good news and some bad news. Basic Combat Training does not permit time for GED prep class.” Boos. “But our turn in the computer training room is tomorrow morning. You have time to take any one section of the GED tomorrow. And hopefully, pass it! And! Your GED test progress will be added to your citizen records. When someone checks you out for a job, they’ll see that you’re 2 for 4 on completing high school by your own hard work.”
Thunderous cheers at that.
On Zapple’s advice, Ava tackled the two-hour math test Tuesday morning. And by Tuesday afternoon, she had half of a high school equivalency diploma. Ava meshed Maz and Guzman and Samantha in triumph. All three meshed her back almost immediately, with as effusive congratulations as she could wish, and kudos on being accepted into Basic as well.
It took until Saturday for Hudson software development to catch up with the new rules. Then Ava’s citizen record reflected her accomplishment, right below her food credit balance. Ava appreciated that touch. Every time she paid for a meal, the idiot proctor would see it right there.
Saturday evening after dinner, the whole platoon, thirty-nine headed for Basic Combat Training, met in their common room on the fifth floor of Pershing Barracks. Their platoon commander, Sergeant Clarke, spoke first.
“Congratulations,” he said. “I am proud, and humbled. Not just that you all made it into Basic. But how you made it into Basic this week. You left no one behind. I gotta tell you, when you arrived, I had some concerns about the future of the Hudson Army with you lot in it.” They laughed. “After this week, seeing you pull together? I have no doubts at all.”
Clarke led the five sergeants in saluting the recruits. They stood at attention and saluted right back. When their arms dropped, the youths gave their sergeants a standing ovation for a full three minutes.
“Thank you,” Clarke said, when he could be heard again. “And good-bye. We will not advance with you into Basic. They decided, from now on, fitness camp will overlap Basic, to get more students through each year, and allow for a six-week fitness program. Sergeants Calderon, Awalo, and I choose to continue working fitness camp, instead of Basic. Sergeant Weinzapfel as well, for those of you who studied GED prep with her. This has been incredibly rewarding for us. While you move on to Basic, we’ll revise the fitness program, and prepare for the next class to start, about five weeks from now.”
The students gave them another round of applause, that turned into a standing ovation again. He only allowed about a minute for this one.
“Sergeants Singh and Michaelson will advance to teach in Basic, but they will not be your sergeants. Because of the phenomenal level of unit cohesion you displayed this week, across the brigade, we do not want to break you up. Clearly, you give each other strength. But it’s important that you experience other leadership styles. Also, in Basic you’ll have only one drill sergeant plus a corporal per squad.
“The platoon will be filled back up to fifty with new recruits from outside the Apple Zone. I expect you to welcome them tomorrow. Offer them the same solidarity you showed each other this past week in passing 1-1-1. If you thought the LI recruits were big and fat, just wait til you see these brutes.” They laughed.
“But remember, these new recruits have weak spots, too. Most of them never left their parents before. Never lived on their own. Maybe never even seen the Apple, or the ocean. They left lovers and friends behind. They never got the chance to finish high school, any more than you did. So be nice. Make us proud.”
“We’re always nice!” a leading jerk yelled out from Midtown.
Clarke laughed. “Yeah, we’re always remarking on that. How incredibly nice you people are. So to wrap up announcements, your new commanders show up, right here, before breakfast tomorrow. Be nice. Your new squad mates will trickle in all day. Be nice. Show them the ropes. And Basic begins Monday morning. Where you will shine. Make us proud of you. Alright, with that, I’ll open the floor to questions.”
Ava leapt to her feet and raised her hand high. Quickest off the mark, she got the first question in. “Sergeants, you’ve been amazing. I’ve asked before, and you wouldn’t tell me. What did you do before this? Where are you from? Why are you so good with us?”
Sergeant Clarke was from suburban Jersey, just north of the George Washington Bridge, part of urban North Jersey now. His family fled into extreme northwest Jersey, a rural district now considered part of Upstate, where they survived to be among the first areas liberated, as Project Reunion contracted the borders inward toward the city. Clarke spent the Starve in the garrison holding that section of border, never knowing that his parents were less than 10 miles from him, still alive.
Sergeant Awalo was from South Jersey, as he’d told Ava. He served on the border garrisons in mid-Jersey, half the time keeping apples in the epidemic zone to the north, and half the time fighting civilians, militants, and gangs to the south. Pennsylvania dumped hardened prison populations into South Jersey, who preyed on the farms and suburbs. He resolved to make sure the gang rats didn’t turn all of Hudson into the same interminable melee.
Singh grew up in San Antonio, Texas. He hadn’t heard from his family in a year. Michaelson was from Southern California. His family was wiped out in the earthquakes and fires there.
Sergeant Calderon was from Queens. He served jail time for a couple months at age 15, straightened out, and joined the Army after high school. During the epidemic and the Starve, his team patrolled the Greenwich garrison border with Connecticut. Hell on earth met one of the poshest suburbs in America at Greenwich. His worst day, his personal kill was 17 fellow Americans. He and his troops slowly went mad.
Part of the plan MacLaren offered General Cullen, when he proposed Project Reunion, was to relieve the criminally insane garrison at Greenwich. They were taken to a nice prison on the Connecticut shore for rehabilitation. Calderon’s unit spent two months there.
“Panic,” he said softly, “my first day I walked twenty-five miles. Hadn’t done PT in a year. I was stuck coloring for a week.”
Ava smiled and nodded. He knew. All along, he knew. “Why would you want to face this again?”
“Thought my perspective could help,” he replied. “I’m no different from you guys. Hell, I’m even the last one left in my family. Was just sitting on the damned wall when it happened. I think you’re making the right choice, to join the Army. We take care of our own. So do you.”
26
Interesting fact: Civilian air travel was grounded world-wide even before the Calm Act and interstate borders, in a last-gasp international attempt
to curb emissions. Air travel was one of the worst contributors to atmospheric warming, with a single round-trip from New York to San Francisco contributing the equivalent of 2-3 tons of carbon dioxide. By comparison, the average American contributed 19 tons in an entire year, and a European 10. Military flights continued, ‘as needed.’
“Hi! Is this room 586?” A giant white kid boomed from the door, in a friendly way. Of course, the door was emblazoned with 586. “I mean, hi, I’m assigned to this room.” He laughed at himself, saving Ava and Doc the trouble.
Ava sat up and smiled, waved. “Panic.”
“Doc.” Doc lay draped along the edge of his top bunk like a jaguar, one arm and one knee over the edge. As soon as Marquis relinquished the top bed this morning, Doc claimed it. Sergeant Awalo hadn’t managed to cycle every black guy in the platoon through Ava’s bedroom. But he tried.
“Matthew Ryan,” the newcomer announced. He ducked his head back out to check the names by the door. “You’re my room-mate?” he asked Ava in consternation.
Ava was distracted by the fact that he ducked to get through the doorway. He also turned sideways. His shoulders brushed the door frame otherwise. “Huh? Oh, yeah! Mixed gender rooms. No funny stuff.”
“How tall are you, man?” Doc asked.
“Six-eight,” Matthew said bashfully. “Yeah, scars on my forehead. From when I forgot to duck.”
“How much do you weigh?” Ava asked, still looking him over from head to enormous foot.
“Uh, 220, I think. Where should I stow my stuff?” Matthew gazed at the lower bunk in dismay.
Doc was 12 inches shorter, and 90 pounds lighter than the newbie. That was still 7 inches taller and 30 pounds heavier than Ava. “It’s time, Panic,” Doc intoned, in a low funereal voice.
“No, it’s not.”
“You’ve had the same bed since we got here. Give it over.”
“I like this bed. It has a view, over the Hudson. At dawn, the river gleams all pink and pewter.”
Doc rolled off the top bunk and clambered up beside her on the loft bed to contemplate the Hudson. “Join us, Matthew Ryan.”
Smiling apologetically, Matthew easily pushed up onto the bed backward. The loft frame groaned alarmingly. With another scoot, his back was against the wall, leaving his calves to dangle freely over the side. “Man, this bed’s small.”
Doc pointed. “Hudson River.”
“Huh,” Matthew agreed.
“Recruits, what are you doing?” Their new nanny Corporal Mark Icenogle stuck his head in the door.
“Admiring the view, sir,” Matthew replied.
“He’s a corporal, not a sir,” Ava advised.
“Helping Panic mourn the loss of her bed, corporal,” Doc said. “There’s a view. But she’s smallest, you see.” He started playfully pushing her off the bed.
“Agreed, Panic,” Icenogle declared. “Lower bunk. That’s an order.”
“But then I’m surrounded by guys, corporal.”
“Move it, Panic. And don’t let me see more than one of you on a bed again. No fraternizing. No ambiguity.” He rapped the door with his knuckles and left.
“Ambiguity?” Matthew inquired.
“Isn’t enough to be innocent,” Doc explained. “Or mutual consent. Don’t get caught in any he-said, she-said. No touching. We are brothers.” He hopped down. “Off Matthew’s bed, brother Panic.”
Annoyed at losing her personal space, Ava showed the newbie where to stow things. She was pleased to see that he took storage seriously, understood that in a tiny room with three people, all things must be put away at all times. A few of her room-mates needed breaking in on that point.
Matthew shook out the uniform he’d been issued at check-in. Apparently they weren’t doing chaos today downstairs. “My mom and dad are waiting for the tour,” he shared. “They want me to come back in uniform. For pictures. Oh, hey, want cookies? Mom made a zillion of them. ‘Share treats in barracks and make friends!’ Here. So do I, um, change here?”
“Face the desk,” Doc advised. He and Ava were busy boggling at the cookies. “Your family rich, Matthew?”
They couldn’t work out how much it would cost to make this enormous plastic tub full of oatmeal cookies. Such ingredients weren’t for sale in the city.
Ava bit in. “Mm! Wheat flour, oatmeal, raisins. Corn syrup, to sweeten it?” She supposed it would be more polite not to examine the boy’s posterior while he stripped. But his butt was a foot away and enormous, and she couldn’t help it.
“We have a farm near Otisville,” Matthew said. “About 50 miles northwest of here. We grow all that stuff. We weren’t rich Before. I mean, we had an organic farm. We haven’t changed. We’re lucky. We’re so big, we’d never make it on rations. You guys are from Manhattan, right? Must be rough.”
“Cookies,” Doc remarked, as Puño stuck his head in. “Matthew. Puño.”
“Ow!” Matthew said, and sucked on a bloody finger.
“Oops, that’s mine,” Ava said, and hastily retrieved her golden chopstick. “Let me check.” She jumped back up on the loft bed and extracted a few more odds and ends. “Sorry about that, Matthew.”
“There’s a storage locker for weapons, Matthew,” Doc said. “Not supposed to keep them in our rooms. If you have any.”
“Weapons?”
“This is a hair pin,” Ava insisted. “See?” She demonstrated, by sticking the chopstick in a quick knot of her hair. But she quickly let her hair down again and slid the chopstick into the bunk frame by her new pillow.
“Pointy jewelry,” Puño remarked. “Excellent cookie, thank you. Want to make friends?”
“Yeah, they’re for everybody,” Matthew agreed. He had his camouflage pants and shirt decently fastened by now, still tugging at the belt.
“Everybody!” Puño called down the hall. “Cookies!” He stood in the doorway doling out one cookie per person, and introducing them.
“You got a nickname, Matthew Ryan?” Doc asked.
“My family calls me Matt.”
“No,” Ava declared. “Like a doormat.”
“Cookie,” Doc declared. He scribbled it on some masking tape and affixed it over Matt’s uniform name spot.
The newly dubbed Cookie looked unsure of this development.
“Your mom will be flattered,” Doc assured him. Puño automatically switched to introducing him as Cookie at the door. With the positive reinforcement of the homemade oatmeal raisin cookie, everyone would remember him.
“Let’s go meet her,” Ava suggested. “We can show you around.”
“What do I wear over this?” Cookie asked. “It’s ten degrees out.”
Ava pulled on long sweater, leather jacket, and hat. “They didn’t issue us coats. Use your own. And wear sneakers. We have a broom ball game later.”
“Beat Hauppauge,” Doc and Puño agreed. The less than enthused cheer echoed down the hall. They didn’t stand a chance against Hauppauge. “Long Island,” Doc added for Cookie’s edification.
The Ryan parents were delightful, and scaled to match their giant son. Ava had never met a woman over six feet tall before. “We haven’t seen any other parents,” Mrs. Ryan worried. Mr. Ryan let his wife do the talking.
“Most recruits come by bus,” Ava explained. “Even the train people, they’ll fetch to West Point by bus.” She pointed to a new batch disgorging. “Friends say good-bye at the other end, usually.” Travel wasn’t easy in the new nation of Hudson, especially in January. Most recruits here didn’t have parents, of course.
“Oh, I see,” Mrs. Ryan said. “And where are you from, Panic?”
“Lower Manhattan. All three of us.” Puño had tagged along. His room wasn’t getting any new out-of-Zone recruits today. “We’ve been here since Thanksgiving, fattening up. Until today, our platoon was all Lower Manhattan and North Jersey.”
“Oh!” Mr. and Mrs. Ryan shared a quick glance of consternation. Gang rats and concerned rural parents sized each other up anew.
Ava considered adding something about how the Ryans shouldn’t worry, because the gang rats were perfectly nice children. Any true statement along those lines eluded her. “We dubbed the place Hogwarts because of the dining hall. You seen that yet? And the stupid guy on a horse. That’s the main landmark. All directions and distances are given relative to Washington Statue. This big lawn is called The Plain.”
Ava continued in her self-appointed role as tour guide. She took them into the dining halls and showed their exact table, and the ‘house’ banners. The camp commandant tried to snuff out the practice of calling table rows ‘Gryffindor’ and so forth. Ava’s table was in row ‘Reapers,’ under a blood-red banner with sickle. The others were ‘Rats,’ ‘Vermin,’ and ‘Pigeons.’ The Long Island dominated wings favored more outdoorsy emblems – seagulls, windmills, whitecaps, bonfire, etc.
They used the elevator to show off their room in Pershing Barracks, where the Ryans finally caught on that the rooms were mixed-gender, and Ava and Doc were their son’s room-mates. Their Matt was the only non-apple kid visible on the floor. The slender gang rats stared at them, enormous aliens from another world, and thanked Mrs. Ryan for the cookies. The Ryans tried manfully not to stare back.
Now and then, Puño and Doc ordered Cookie to point to Stupid Statue. Cookie struck a wind vane pose and recited how to get there from here. It was a simple game, but they made sure the newbie got his bearings. The statue itself was useless, but it marked the place where they got fed.
They made their way through some sample lecture halls and many, many gyms, the broken cadet chapel, and finally the broom ball reservoir. Along the way, Ava provided details of what the apple recruits had been up to in their six weeks at fitness camp so far.
“That’s about it,” Ava concluded. “We don’t really use the rest of the campus.”
“We will in Basic,” Puño amended. “Firing range, rock climbing, campgrounds. There’s all sorts of cool stuff. But it’s freezing out here.”
