by Ginger Booth
Ava stayed atop the hill. After Doc’s group investigated their target, they tried to yell something back. Ava sent Doc a mesh text, Can’t hear. Live one?
Dog. Live.
Ava replied with a thumbs-up icon and reported dog rescue to Jenn. Jenn was unimpressed.
“See that woman waving?” Jenn pointed. “She wants help.”
Ava, Sauce, and Yoda took the assignment. They brought back another stripped body to lay on the sand bank. A girl, maybe 15, a gang rat like them. Or who knew, maybe she still had family out there in the rubble, or among the bodies. Outcasts like these, who didn’t live in the villes, might never be identified. They went back for a second body, a boy the same searcher located not far from the girl. Maybe friends or lovers. Maybe only united by misfortune. Another half dozen bodies had joined the naked lineup since Ava’s squad arrived.
Having found two bodies, the searcher, Bonne Kelley, asked them to return and continue sifting through the wreckage at that location. She was a ‘senile,’ by gang rat standards, apple militia in her fifties from one of the Brooklyn villes. Bonne treated them with respect, glad to have their strong backs. Ava struggled to let down her automatic defensiveness toward a senile. Yoda made faces at Bonne behind her back after she issued orders, grab this, lift that.
But Bonne took for granted that they were on the same team. She focused on the work. Gradually, the recruits tolerated her, too. Bonne wasn’t the enemy. Broken glass, rusted nails, and treacherous footing were. Ava’s best smooth leather gloves grew ripped and sanded to suede, with white streaks from seeping salt water. Yoda hadn’t brought gloves along. His hands were bleeding before he found some quilted wet pot-holder mitts to use. Bonne stayed to make sure they understood what they were doing, then continued on her assigned search path. After a half hour more digging without nothing to show for it, she told the recruits to give up and go back to the intersection.
The big wave Ava and Jenn had spotted stayed 100 feet shy of the previous wet high water line. The next after that washed within 6 houses of the intersection. Calderon sent runners, to warn searchers to abandon the area south of the new high water line. The tide was coming in.
The afternoon passed this way for a couple more hours. The lowering winter sun slid around the rim of the sky to the southwest. Searchers found something, Jenn spotted their call, and recruits were dispatched to do the heavy digging and retrieval.
Only two live ones were found, none on Ava’s calls. The living were stripped like the dead, and hastily wrapped in an emergency blanket. Recruits carried them to an aid station a few blocks away. They received first aid there. Later they were transported to Bensonhurst ville, high and dry and absorbing refuges from oceanfront Brooklyn.
Doc’s live dog was treated much the same. One of the searchers identified her as a local therapy dog. The dog’s partner was still missing. Maybe they’d been here on a walk. Maybe she’d been on a treatment call.
Doc couldn’t stop talking about it, how he’d love to adopt a therapy dog, and do therapy rounds for a living. They’d done a study out on Long Island, effective means of treating apple trauma, and concluded that talk therapy often did more harm than good. But therapy dogs were soothing. The dogs even toured large day-labor employers on Long Island, like the railroads, or harvesting vineyards, to help stabilize the workforce.
Ava didn’t like to douse Doc’s enthusiasm. But she was sure that dog would be adopted instantly in Bensonhurst. Therapy dogs and livestock were the only pets left in the Apple Core. A lot of people shared Doc’s dream. She just wished they had dogs to help search the rubble. Dog noses might be a lot more effective than human eyes.
Before the sun dropped beneath the horizon, Calderon and the searchers herded everyone back to the intersection. They’d completed their assigned blocks. A high-suspension four wheel drive pickup truck arrived, already carrying a half dozen bodies. The recruits loaded their collection on top, a grizzly job, and tucked the wet recycled clothes into the back of the cab.
Ava was gratified that Calderon made sure Jenn and the other standoffish Upstate recruits did their share handling the cold, damp, and sometimes mangled corpses. Jenn had managed to steer well clear of dead bodies until then. Cookie patted her back reassuringly while she vomited. Ava wasn’t so sympathetic. Soldiers do death, Jenn. Deal with it.
There were enough bodies piled on the cargo bed that the driver brought out a tarp. The recruits helped him secure it with bungee cords. When he drove away, their work at the waterfront was done.
Ava was standing near Bonne Kelley, the searcher senile, at that point. The older woman stood tired, staring after the truck. “Did you know any of them?” Ava asked guardedly.
Bonne, surprised, smiled back at her. “Not really. Recognized a couple.” She sighed. “Just tired. Hell of a day.”
Busy and excited, Ava hadn’t thought much beyond her immediate concerns. At Bonne’s comment, she briefly considered just how large this disaster was, multiplying the few blocks she’d been assigned, by the entire Eastern seaboard. Her mind careened away from the magnitude.
“Thanks for your help today, Panic,” Bonne said.
That was too friendly for Ava’s taste. “You realize we’re gang rats, from Manhattan, right? Most of us.”
“Good for you!” Bonne agreed, face breaking into an authentic smile. “Yeah, I could tell you were apples. Those others, they from out of town?” She pointed at Jenn and Cookie. “Treat me like I’ve got cooties.”
Ava grinned at being claimed on ‘our side’ with her new senile acquaintance. Bonne was militia. She and Ava’s kind were at war during the Starve. But then, that was true of Guzman as well. “Ran into a pocket of typhus today,” she shared, “a few blocks from here. Not done with the cooties yet.”
Bonne shook her head in sympathy. “Hell of a thing. They had nothing left. Only asked to be left alone to enjoy the beach.”
Calderon called out, “Attention! Our bus is headed to Bensonhurst. Everyone’s welcome for a ride. Squad, follow me.”
Puño parked well, only a five minute walk from West End and Oriental, on an elevated highway. The recruits let the searchers board first, to claim the seats. They passed water jugs up the aisle to share out, adults and recruits alike.
32
Interesting fact: The direct death toll from the ‘South Pole Tsunami’ was about 80,000 in Hudson, most of them along the Jersey shore. Order never broke down in Long Island and the Apple Core. Hit harder and under lighter military control, Jersey lost nearly 50,000 more to violence before order was restored. To the east, New England casualties were light, due to geography and advance warning from Long Island, except in the new state of Narragansett, which was devastated. South of Jersey, Virginia–Del–Mar collapsed into chaos.
“I watched the news,” Captain Deluca admitted. Around nineteen-thirty hours, he dropped by the platoon’s Army green school bus, parked ten minutes walk from downtown Bensonhurst. He stood in the stairwell by to the driver’s seat, briefing the sergeants. Ava’s home table crew was seated right behind them, soaking up every word.
“Alright, listen up!” Deluca called out. “You will not be watching the news tonight.” He patted the air to quell a chorus of boos. “Guys, you saw Bensonhurst center. They’re mobbed. We hoped to watch the news after the locals got fed. But they’ve got three villes’ worth to cycle through the cafeterias. So here are the highlights.
“The whole Atlantic Ocean was hit by a tsunami this morning. Probably the Pacific and Indian Oceans too, not as bad. Half of the south pole ice sheet broke up and slid into the water. America got hit bad. South America and Africa got it a lot worse. Eastern Caribbean. Whole Eastern seaboard. The Apple Core isn’t too bad. The villes are thirteen feet above sea level or more. The tsunami waves were up to eighteen feet here, so the seaside villes got wet. Squatters died, not that many. Long Island and Jersey weren’t so lucky. That’s why we’re here in the city. To free up seasoned troops for harder problems.”<
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“Sir?” Ava asked. “How did that happen? The ice sheet.”
“Good question. Basically global warming. It was expected. The surprise was that it happened fast enough to cause a tsunami.”
Ava couldn’t imagine how that could happen. But clearly Deluca didn’t know, and possibly didn’t realize how physically that didn’t add up.
Deluca resumed his summary. “The tsunami was the first bad news. Second bad news, the ocean rise is permanent. Three feet so far. They expect that to double, maybe more. All buildings less than ten feet above the old sea level are condemned, effective immediately.”
Ava scowled, still stuck on how much water that was, three feet deep, over the entire ocean surface. Dropping Mount Everest into the oceans might add a half inch. She doubted dumping the whole Himalayas into the ocean would raise sea level three feet. In one day? She wished she could see this news broadcast herself.
“Third bad news. They didn’t broadcast this part. Martial law held firm in Long Island and the Apple Core. But order broke down in Jersey. People fleeing the coast went in guns blazing.”
A third of the recruits in the bus were from Jersey, and started crying out questions. Deluca refused to proceed until they shut up. “I don’t know details. Gang, the priority right now is to restore order, save lives, and clean up. We’re on cleanup. We can get details after we’re back at West Point.
“One more thing. Governor-General Cullen also declared price-gouging a form of looting. So be aware of that.”
“Dang,” Puño moaned, a little too loudly.
Deluca pursed his lips. “You planned to do some price-gouging, recruit?”
“Just sell some warm dry clothes, sir. Not me. My wife and friends in Manhattan.”
“They need to charge fair prices. Anyway, those were the news highlights.”
“Tomorrow, sir?” Sergeant Clarke prompted.
“Our assignment is the same. Lend a helping hand, whatever the Cocos need. Probably done for tonight, though.”
The captain socialized a bit longer with the sergeants, then departed to visit the next platoon, wherever they were parked. Clarke doused the bus dome lights. He had the driver’s seat, while Sergeants Calderon and Gonzo lazed with their feet up on the front two bench seats. Rank hath its privileges.
“Calderon. It’s a teachable moment,” Clarke claimed.
“That so.”
“You first,” Clarke clarified.
Calderon turned his head to regard Ava and Cookie, seated behind him, without lifting his slump against the window. Apparently he found inspiration written on their blank faces. He uncrossed his feet and reluctantly stood.
“Hey, listen up. This, today? This is real Army life. You train. You get orders and do stuff. You wait around goofing off. And you sleep. The real deal. Welcome to the Army. This here now? This is goofing off. Clarke, I’m gonna stretch my legs.”
The bus was parked on a broad pleasant residential block, near a group of wooden houses with cute little front gardens and porches. Far from the high-rise canyons of Manhattan, this street could have blended into any small city in the Northeast. The street was busy, even this far from ville center, with everyone milling around talking. The Bensonhurst Coco extended curfew tonight to twenty-three hundred, for extra time to feed and house the homeless influx from the flooded Gravesend and Sheepshead Bay villes. No one was likely to sleep for hours yet.
Calderon set out for a porch party, blasting out Caribbean tunes and hip hop. Several other musical venues vied for supremacy. Strung-up solar lights glowed in the dark, gradually dimming their way toward lights-out, supplemented by lights in downstairs windows. The scene would have made a fun summer block party. Unfortunately, since this morning, the weather had remembered that February was supposed to be cold.
Ava leaned her face against the window to study another porch party, and reviewed her day. From the sound of things, this tsunami was probably one of the most momentous events of her life. And what was she doing? She wasn’t doing anything, she decided. Her unit was doing chores. Her unit comprised 25 strong young bodies, useful for assorted horsepower. They called it a uniform for a reason. All this training wasn’t to make Ava the best Ava she could be. It was to make her an interchangeable cog in the unit, no worse than anybody else. The 25 bodies were stronger than average. But for today, her Army squad wasn’t much different from her work gang in Soho Ville.
As queen bee in White Supreme, she set up all sorts of different work groups, each suited to the task, leaders, strengths, and personalities. She frowned, wondering why Soho Ville used such all-purpose teams. She decided the system evolved to absorb temporary laborers, who needed to learn the task in under an hour to be worth their feed for the day. It also didn’t rely on much talent from the indifferent supervisors.
“What are you thinking about, Panic?” Cookie asked. His conversation with Puño and Marquis behind them had reached a natural lull.
“How to run the world better,” Ava replied. “Why I’m in the Army. Stuff like that.”
“You think too much,” Marquis advised.
“You’re in the Army to get a credential, same as us,” Puño said. “Walking papers.”
Cookie frowned. “I’m in the Army because it’s way more cool than Otisville. Get out. See the world. Blow stuff up. Hang with people my own age. This is great!”
Ava nodded slowly, studying him. “This is a good gig for you, Cookie.”
“Me, I’m proving to the Man that I can do what I already know I can do,” Puño said. “You, too, Panic. This is a cakewalk compared to queen bee, or salvage boss for Libre. But we don’t get respect.”
“So we obey micro-management orders, learn to march in sync, to get respect,” Ava summarized.
“Works for me,” Puño agreed. “College was another three or four years. God knows how much money. Studying sociology and bullshit, instead of shooting and unarmed combat. This is fun and easy, and they pay me.”
Marquis was paying more attention to Ava. “Hell, Panic, are you getting pissed off?”
“Yeah, I’m pissed off! I used to run half a small ville. Here? Having a brain is a liability.”
“We are kinda brainy for this,” Puño allowed. “Good thing we like to kill people, too.”
Cookie looked a bit scandalized. Marquis scowled at Puño.
“What? Panic and I are good fighters,” Puño defended. “You, too, Marquis. Cookie, not so much. But he’s getting better.” Puño bopped the big guy’s shoulder. “We’ll have you ready to murder in no time, Cookie. No worries.”
Cookie stifled a guilty laugh.
“We won’t fight some foreign enemy, you know,” Marquis said. “Hudson Army controls Hudson citizens. Maybe attack other Americans, if we’re lucky.”
“What pisses me off,” Ava clarified, “is that I’m not a brainless cog. I’m a good leader. I’m even good at Army stuff. But I’m small, and someone big and dumb would be better. Sorry, Cookie. Not calling you stupid.”
“There’s room for advancement,” Marquis said. “Sergeant Clarke isn’t stupid.”
Sergeant Clarke kept his eye on the street, confirming Ava’s suspicion that he was following every word. Sergeant Gonzo played games on his phone.
“You know what else pisses me off?” Ava said. “Calderon’s over there getting laid. Why don’t girls go out and get laid?”
“Psst, Panic?” Puño leaned forward to stage whisper in her ear. “Pretty sure most guys getting laid? There’s a girl, too.”
She pursed her lips, to stifle a laugh.
“Psst, Panic?” Puño again. “Nice girls don’t.”
Undulating her hips with the slow beat, Ava caught her dance partner’s eye. She drew her hands up along her jaw, and combed fingers through her hair, tousling it all to one side. Then her hands smoothed down her sides, from breasts to hips. She left the unflattering uniform top in the bus, and danced in the cold February night wind in her T-shirt. Damn this felt good.
/> His eyes said he liked the way her hands bracketed her pelvis. He was white-enough with dark hair. Muscular though thin and wiry, shorter than Frosty. Other than that, she didn’t know him from Adam. But he was hot and he danced well.
“Panic,” she yelled over the music, near his ear. “My name.”
“Mario Aguilar,” he yelled back.
Would she really seduce him, she wondered? She spun for him on the dark sidewalk, arms crossed atop her head, to show off all sides. He returned the favor. His tight pants showed clear enthusiasm for this project. If she backed out now, she might have a fight on her hands. Not a problem. She could take him, in either sense. For backup, Doc and Sauce were in the crowd as her ‘wingmen.’
A whiter arm descended out of the murk and pushed Mario away. “Cutting in.” Nothing thin or wiry about this guy’s build. Mario was about to object, but took in the ripped chest and arms, showing clearly through a snow-white T-shirt, under a quirked smile that said, ‘go ahead, make my day.’ Mario raised hands in surrender and slipped away through the dancing crowd.
The newcomer grasped Ava’s hands and sashayed backward with the music, drawing her into the street where they’d have more room. A gold stud gleamed from one ear. A scar crossed his cheek. “Wanna dance?”
“I would love to dance,” she agreed, shaking her head in amazement. She’d never stopped dancing. She grinned from ear to ear.
He grabbed her to him, hip to hip, and spun her around. She leaned back into it, hair sweeping around, laughing. When she came up, she seized his shoulders, hopped up, and locked her legs around his waist. “Do it again.” She leaned back as far as she could still holding his shoulders.
He firmly held the small of her back and swept her another full circle. Then he lifted her off and set her down. “Gained some weight, have you? Looks good on you.” He grabbed her into a clutch to slow dance through the rest of the song, hip-grinding the whole way, followed by a spin flourish and a backwards dip at the end. Then he pulled her back so they touched from ankle to cheek.
