by Ginger Booth
Frosty disappeared into the crowd. Catching her looking for him, Maz teased, “Don’t worry, he won’t leave without you. Now show us around! We’re taking a bus back, by the way. Just caught a ride up with Frosty for fun.”
Butch grabbed Ava’s arm without the carbine, and hung onto her like a long lost sister. The three of them laughed and clowned around all over campus. Frosty caught up with them before they visited the martial arts gym. By then Ava had turned in her carbine so she could have friends hang on both arms. In the dojo, they held two karate matches, Frosty versus Maz and Ava versus Butch. Ava won her match. To her surprise, Frosty lost, and laughed about it.
Officers and drill instructors stood in little conversational groupings, scattered about the Plain and Central Area between the barracks. They made themselves available for introductions and good-byes on request. Ava took them up on it.
She showed off her room to her friends, and changed into civilian clothes. Aside from that, she was already packed to go. Maz casually slung her duffel over his shoulder.
At last, they drifted toward the bus that would take Butch and Maz, and some of Ava’s squad, back to Lower Manhattan. A long receiving line to greet Lt. Colonel MacLaren, and West Point’s ruling junta of three majors, was down to about a dozen now.
Ava tugged Frosty and Butch. “We need to do this.”
“Meet Emmett MacLaren?” Butch squeaked. “Us?” Maz and Frosty traded one of those grins. The expressions reminded her of that old picture of them as thirteen year olds, quaffing beers before heading for the gun range. The expression that said, ‘I can’t believe we can get away with this.’
“I’ve talked to Emmett before,” Ava assured Butch. “You’ll like him.”
“By all means,” Frosty agreed, eyes lit.
Ava wasn’t expecting the great man to recognize her, without even her name blazoned on her uniform anymore.
But Emmett smiled broadly, and grabbed her hand to shake. “Panic! Loved your after-action report from Passaic. Good work. Guzman and I are sorry to lose you. Really wanted you to trail-blaze on Soho militia. I hope you’ll consider us again next year.” Major Thurston, whose last handshake was brief, looked on with interest.
“Uh, thank you, sir!” Ava said. “I’d like you to meet my, um –”
“Cade Snowdon, sir,” Frosty interrupted, extending a firm hand. “Used to lead Panic’s gang in Chelsea. Honored to meet you.”
“Ah, so you’re the one we lost Panic to,” Emmett said with a smile. “The honor is mine, Mr. Snowdon. You’ve seen me say it on the news, I’m sure. I’m in awe of the leaders who kept communities together during the Starve. The youth groups as well as the adult gangs. Hell of an accomplishment.”
“Thank you, sir. I had a great team,” Frosty assured him, indicating the four of them.
Maz took the hint, and leaned in for his hand-shake. “Gary Mazurkiewicz, sir. Everyone calls me Maz. I run the gang now. We’re working to win full ville status for Chelsea Free. This is my lieutenant Butch. She took over Panic’s job as queen bee.”
Emmett shook both of their hands with interest, sizing them up. “That’s been dragging on, hasn’t it? I like that your gang has a strong female lead. Too many treat the girls and children badly.”
“Not White Trash, sir,” Butch assured him. “Not on my watch. Not on Panic’s, either.”
Emmett consulted his phone. “I can give you fifteen hundred hours– Excuse me, three p.m. On Thursday. My office in LES ville. Bring the other Chelsea gang leaders, if they can make it. I might ask the Midtown and Soho Cocos to join us.”
“Yes, sir! Thank you, sir!” Maz and Butch said, grinning.
Emmett gave Ava a last nod of respect, and turned to greet the next party in line.
They moved on to the majors. Major Thurston told Ava, “Sorry to lose you for the Army, Panic. You made a difference here. We won’t forget you.” Smith and Carella beyond him nodded an amused true-enough. Ava’s hunger strike would live on in infamy. She’d never spoken to the other battalion commanders before, so their handshakes were cordial and perfunctory.
The rats kept on their best behavior through the end of the line, then Maz and Butch broke off for high-fives and whooping. Maz broke off and turned to mock-throttle Ava. “Do you know how long I have worked for that damned appointment with MacLaren?”
Ava laughed. “Well, if you’d told me…” she teased.
Frosty got an arm-hold to strangle Maz and twisted him off Ava. “Don’t break the girlfriend, man. Just got her back.” Frosty let him go with a shove.
“Oh, man, I cannot wait to tell Elon!” Maz spun to search the bus windows for the Libre gang leader.
Frosty said, “Sure, go, don’t mind us.”
“Love ya, bro,” Maz assured him, and they mock-wrestled a bit more. “Talk atcha whenever.”
“You rule, girlfriend!” Butch assured Ava. “Thanks for the Resco assist!” Then they traded off, Ava hugging Maz, while Frosty traded playful high-fives and an arm-slapping game with Butch.
Guzman alighted from the bus to trade a last hug with Ava, and wish her luck. She would miss him, she really would. They both got teary-eyed. She promised to write when she could, but that mostly, she couldn’t. He promised her she’d always be welcome home.
After Guzman, most of Ava’s squad traded final good-byes, too, and Fox, still in uniform. After Passaic, MacLaren requested several recruit platoons, including Ava’s, be assigned to Apple Garrison whole, for use in North Jersey and the Apple Core. He felt these gang rat hardened teams were more useful than the veteran regular Army units. Unlike most of the honorable discharges, Fox appealed to stay with them. North Jersey was her home turf. Sergeants Gonzo and Clarke approved. Thurston granted the exception. It wasn’t decided yet, but likely Calderon would go with them as their new platoon sergeant, at least at first, with a field-commissioned lieutenant to command them.
Frosty stood back and waited through all this, carrying Ava’s duffel. Until at last, Ava nodded that she was done. He put his arm around her and drew her off to the lower parking lot, where his SUV and other passengers awaited.
Ava didn’t feel like she’d failed anything at all. Graduation was a blast. She would miss her friends and West Point, though.
“Regrets?” Frosty asked her softly.
“Missing some great parties in Manhattan tonight,” Ava quipped. “But, no. Excited.”
“Good.”
40
Interesting fact: The so-called ‘gran caravans’ were bands of mostly senior citizens living in recreational vehicles. These outlaw gangs migrated through the American super-states without regard for borders.
The sun was setting by the time they rolled into a campground north of Elmira, a modest town between the Finger Lakes and the long northern Pennsylvania border, 200 miles northwest of West Point. Cade pulled up to a pretty little cabin, with a roofed front porch complete with picnic table.
Ava smiled in amazement. When Frosty said camp, she’d pictured some drab military installation. But no, this was a civilian resort. She didn’t spot any other people, though there was another SUV parked by the main building.
Frosty pointed that way. “Kitchen, indoor pool, hot tub, showers, sauna, laundry. Playground behind it. Zip lines and trampoline and stuff.” He grabbed her duffel and made for the cabin. “I usually use this one when I’m here. You don’t have to room with me?”
“Of course I want to sleep with you,” Ava assured him, and hustled up to the door. It was unlocked. The front room was adorable. Walls, ceiling, and floor were cedar planks, by the smell of them. A little kitchenette and table with chairs faced the door. The couch was clearly a sleeper sofa. An air conditioning unit stuck through the wall between good insulated windows. Ava suspected the cute pot-bellied stove beneath did the real work these days. The back room included one full-sized bed and a double bunk-bed. Off the kitchen was a washroom with toilet, no bath.
Frosty passed her at the bedroom door
and dumped their duffels on the lower bunk. He gathered her into his arms and pressed her against him from thigh to head. She wriggled in for an even closer fit, and pressed him to her as well. He dropped his cheek to her hair and breathed in deep, breathed out, and relaxed. Ava felt herself unwinding into him as well, her body knowing its own. After a minute or so, Cade sighed and pulled back enough to give her a deep kiss.
“We’ll be alone together soon. But tonight, you need to meet Skull. I need to grab us some bedding.”
He took her hand and led the way to the main building. She drank in the peaceful beauty along the way. She’d imagined evergreen woods, like Minnesota. But mostly deciduous trees crowded around them, winter-bare, rattling in the wind above. Only the central playground area and parking lot would get much sun.
It was so quiet. Even after the machines died, and the millions, Manhattan was never so quiet. Some chuffing sounds came from beyond the clubhouse. Other than that, not even bird calls broke the peace. Keyed up as she was to meet her new boss, Ava still breathed deep and felt something inside her unclench, no longer pressed in by people. She let go Frosty’s hand and stopped on the gravel road, to do some quick stretches.
Cade watched her a moment, then joined in. The drive from West Point was long. He told Ava he could normally make it in three hours. Traffic was non-existent anymore. Road conditions were the bigger challenge. But he had four other new recruits to drop off here and there, and introduce to their new bosses, or point to the right train. The last of them was Daneel, the meshnet intern from Long Island, delivered to a pleasant house in Binghamton, once home to New York’s top public university, only about 30 miles back. Apparently his lungs took too much damage from recurrent pneumonia during the Starve. He looked strong, but with his asthma, he didn’t make the cut.
Along the way, Frosty insisted that secrecy rules applied until they met with their new supervisors. The new recruits mostly talked West Point and Basic Combat Training in the car. They happily compared experiences on their deployment to Passaic and the Bronx. Cade listened.
They were alone for the final stretch. But Cade said the same went for Ava. She needed to meet Skull before he could tell her anything. And it wasn’t as though the young couple had nothing else to talk about.
“Kinks out?” he asked her now. “Ava. You had these awesome friends at West Point. Teachers, pros. Helped you through. I had this place, and Skull. He said he’d wait dinner for us. He’s…a friend.”
Ava blinked. She wasn’t sure what she expected, but that wasn’t it. “Whatever he did, it worked, Cade. You seem a lot calmer. Comfortable being you.”
He smiled softly, something he rarely did. “You too. We needed it. Back when you left, Ava.” He shook his head ruefully. “We were like these bombs with red buttons sticking out all over. Labeled, ‘Push me, make my day!’”
Ava laughed. “Yeah.”
Cade gave her another brief hug. Then he led her around the corner, where woods grew close to the wall. A guy in Army uniform pants and a T-shirt stood there chopping wood. “Sir?” Cade called.
“Hey, hey! Welcome back, Cade.” With a broad smile, Skull traded handshake and hug with the younger man. He looked to Ava around the same age as Emmett MacLaren, a bit taller and wider, and clearly in great physical shape. His military haircut showed a liberal helping of silver hair among the brown. His firm square jaw, and his upright bearing, suggested he was an officer. The golden oak leaves on his uniform jacket, lying neatly folded on a upended log, confirmed it. Ava recognized the oak leaf insignia, though it looked more like a sunburst to her. Skull was a major, like Thurston.
“Good job in Passaic,” Skull added.
“Thank you, sir,” Ava and Frosty said in unison. Only then did Ava realize Skull was speaking to Frosty.
“I’ll get dinner started,” Frosty excused himself. He headed into the building.
“Frosty fought with White Rule in Passaic?” Ava asked. “I was there. We could have killed each other.”
“Have a seat, Panic.” Skull indicated a log stool. He pulled on his uniform shirt, but left it unbuttoned for the moment. He was still warm from chopping wood. He sat on the log he’d used to hold the shirt.
“We call him Cade here, Panic. He’s done being Frosty the Snowman. That’s a mask he uses. Here he gets to be himself.” He pointed to an oak leaf. The name patch on his jacket said Sullivan. “I don’t, not here. Out there I’m a Resco. You can look me up online. Matter of public record. But you only know me as Skull. Ever. As a regular Resco, I don’t know you. You don’t know me.”
“Yes, sir.”
“First things first. I asked Cade not to tell you anything, because you can still walk away. Enjoy a nice long weekend with your boyfriend – or ex or whatever. I gather you two could use a little space to figure that out. Then head back to Manhattan and a different job. Cade passes through the city now and then. Long distance relationships are hard. Hopefully you’d both find someone else, in time. I’m just saying. That option is still open.”
“Yes, sir.”
“So what do you know? Or suspect.”
“Frosty – Cade – hasn’t told me anything. You did, at our interview. I know White Rule. I ran into them in Passaic. Killed one there I recognized – I met him with Frosty last summer. A gun dealer. I killed a different one in Soho in November. Um, I don’t care for them. Frosty and I broke up over White Rule in August.”
“Can’t say I blame you. They’re a gnarly bunch.”
“I think you’re a death angel,” Ava said. “And you run White Rule.”
“I am a death angel,” Skull agreed, with a single nod. “But White Rule is just some hired help. Frosty ran them for the operation in Passaic. Cade. White Rule knows him as Frosty. He used them to work his way into this organization, last summer.”
Ava stared. “You killed New York City?”
“Ah, no. I was Resco of Albany until November. My predecessor was the death angel for the Epidemic. For what it’s worth, he was also a Resco. He had a district just south of here, in PA.”
“PA? Oh, Penn.”
“Yeah, people in Penn call it PA,” Skull said. “Please pick up that habit, by the way. We do a lot of work in PA. My predecessor set up most of our resources there. Canber, we called him. Major Canton Bertovich. He killed himself. I took over his job in November.”
Ava nodded. “The Rescos don’t go after you because you’re one of them?”
“Most don’t know I’m a death angel. Some do. You don’t need to know who. The rest only know the services I provide. That’s what we do, Panic. We provide services, on demand. The big operations – New York City, the South Pole tsunami – those are outside Hudson’s scope. Please understand that point. No one in New York state ordered the culling of New York City. That decision was way above my pay grade. Governor-General Cullen would never have ordered that. Even Canber was carrying out orders. The Calm Act legislation itself authorized the big city cullings. New York. Los Angeles.
“In other words, the President and Congress ordered it. The Army recommended it. Because without culling New York, Hudson didn’t stand a chance of feeding itself. Out of the whole ex-U.S., the Northeast has some of the best real estate in our climate-changed world. But the whole region would have gone to hell without its population culled. Like some kind of Mad Max nightmare on steroids. No civilization left. Hudson’s resources destroyed. And the planet cannot afford to lose these forests.”
He paused and considered her blank expression. “I didn’t do it, Ava.”
“So you’re saying you only do little things? Like attack a food hub?”
“A Resco – never mind who – called in a marker for that service. We were specifically asked to incite locals to attack the Passaic food hub, on that day. With small feints in the city. Yes.”
“Why?”
Skull shrugged. “Urban North Jersey is still not within acceptable parameters. Too many people. Too little cooperation. No productivit
y. Unacceptable sanitation. They don’t earn their keep. The solid middle class fled during the Starve. Or died. MacLaren didn’t get very far before the tsunami. But the better people remaining, he managed to relocate, sift out of the bad apple barrel. The remainder were stuck in a poverty cycle for generations before any of this happened. That whole section of Hudson is a problem the Resco Raj needs to solve. So, this week a lot of angry young men died trying to rip off food from their neighbors, and ammo to kill them with.” He paused and considered. “That one’s not very deep, Ava. Excuse me – Panic. Cade calls you Ava.”
“Call me Ava,” she murmured. “Panic goes with Frosty. Ava goes with Cade.”
Skull nodded, with a slight smile. “Ava. For what it’s worth, the date was obviously chosen to test the graduating class at West Point. At which your class performed brilliantly.”
Ava’s brow furrowed. “And pointlessly.”
“Not so. Today there are several thousand fewer angry young men around Passaic. The new gang rat units proved their mettle in controlling urban conflicts. Everyone who participated in this giant game did so of their own free will, pursuing their own dreams and goals. Including you. Including White Rule. And the less stupid, less angry citizens gave the whole mess a wide berth. They get slightly more willing to obey orders. Everyone goes a little hungry for a week to pay for the lesson.”
“You provide the poisoned opiates, too.”
Skull nodded. “Our most popular service, yes. Not just opiates. We control the drug supply chain. Clean, partly tainted, wholly tainted. Prescription-level or off-the-shelf. Whatever drug the Resco specifies. But usually we tailor specific packages to achieve specific goals. Did you see the hydroponic greenhouses from the road? Those are medicinal marijuana. I don’t think we’ve ever tainted that. Yet.”
