After America

by John Birmingham

  His head swam and his ears felt as though somebody had jabbed a sharp stick in them, so loud was the noise of the battle reverberating around the huge empty space of this room. It must have been beautiful once, he supposed, before war came to it. The mural on the ceiling was smoke-damaged and pitted and gouged with bullet holes and long dark scorch marks that all but obliterated the original artwork. It was a shame. He knew some members of the faithful looked disapprovingly on all forms of art, taking the Prophet’s admonitions against such images much more generally that Yusuf imagined the Prophet intended.

  He ducked as he saw the small, dark shape of a hand grenade come flying through the door. It detonated with a great crash and showered his barricade with deadly shrapnel. How much had changed in such a short time. Not so long ago he would not have dared to advance his own opinions or interpretation of the Prophet’s works, especially not when they did not agree with those who were his elders in the faith. But as he wiped a sharp white fleck of bone from his cheeks and contemplated his own demise, he thought he understood much more of what the Prophet wanted from his followers and even the leaders of his people than some of those leaders did.

  Honesty, courage, modesty, righteousness, even kindness and mercy—they all had their place in life. Yusuf shook his head again in bitter despair as he saw the bodies of the women and children they had come to protect. There were only three of them left alive. The fedayeen had done what they could to construct a bunker inside where the innocents might shelter, but the Americans had thrown so many explosives in there with such abandon, and some of the children had panicked and broken away from their mothers, and …

  His stomach contracted mightily, and he dry wretched for half a minute.

  What were they even doing in the city?

  What fool had sent them here into a battlefield?

  The Americans’ fire tapered off for a moment, giving him hope that they might be withdrawing, but it soon returned with increased intensity.

  Surely the emir could not have done so, knowing how dangerous it was? Not when there was so much preserved food and even wild roots and vegetables that could be harvested away from the fighting.

  He swapped the clip on his Kalashnikov, the last of his ammunition. There had to be some explanation, some mistake, he told himself. Unfortunately, mistakes were as common in war as death and sorrow. Perhaps the emir had been misinformed. After all, he was only a man.

  Yusuf lifted the gun above the line of the barricade and fired two single shots in the general direction of the little room where the Americans were trapped. He scolded himself for his lack of faith. Not in God, of course, but in the messengers he had sent to earth. The emir, Ahmet Ozal, all the other fedayeen commanders—they were but men and so subject to the failings of all men. He himself had more than enough experience to understand that. After all, his failure on the island at the start of this great battle had not been a failure of judgment but one of heart, of courage. He had failed his god and his comrades because he was a coward. And now here he was, having been given a chance to redeem himself, and he was blaming others for yet another failure of his own.

  Yusuf Mohammed resolved to do better in what little, little time he had left, to stop questioning and doubting and forever finding fault elsewhere when the fault lay within. So many had died for the dream of this new home, where the light and grace of Allah might shine on all who opened their hearts to his love. And yet Yusuf still lived. To what end?

  None.

  He felt the sickness steal over him again. The nausea of an existence without meaning.

  He tightened the grip on his weapon, drew in a deep breath, and prepared to die with God’s name on his lips. He pushed himself up from his hiding place and, standing tall, aimed his rifle into the darkened room from which a river of deadly fire was now pouring.

  “Allahu akbar!” he cried out as he fired again and again at the enemy.

  Flashing lines of tracer zipped past his head while unseen rounds cracked and fizzed all around him. Allah smiled on him, however, protecting him from harm. At least for a brief while. The Americans’ fire was a terrible wind that swept over his comrades, cutting down more of them even as he stood in the storm, untouched.

  “Allahu ak—”

  The cry died in his throat as he saw the strangest and most unexpected of things in all his time in this city of wonders: two large metal buckets covered in tape slowly arcing through the air, turning end over end, trailing a pair of wires as they flew.

  Yusuf Mohammed eased off on the trigger of his weapon and stood staring at the flight of those most unusual objects. He had another moment of intense dislocation, a feeling that he had somehow lost his tether to this world and slipped back into another he had lost many years ago. He was a small boy again, standing at the edge of a stream that ran near the little village. The tall thin man with the patches of gray at his temples stood by him, teaching him how to cast a fishing pole. He was not very good, this being his very first time, but the man was not just patient with him, he seemed to take joy in the little boy’s squeals and giggles of delight as his brightly colored lure flew everywhere but where it was intended. The sky wrapped itself around them, an endless blue, soft and resplendent with a warm sun.

  The old man told him not to look into the sun, but Yusuf Mohammed did not listen. He smiled and smiled, and the sun smiled back on him, filling the whole world with bright, white light.

  “Cease fire!” Milosz shouted. “Cease with the fucking fire already!”

  The clatter of weapons fire died down in much the same way his tractor at home wound down after he shut it off. A few bursts stitched the walls, followed by sporadic single pops, finally punctuated by a single hollow thump.

  An ear-piercing wail reverberated off the marble interior of the reading room. Milosz could just barely make out, through the smoke and mist, a woman cradling a child in her arms. She rocked back and forth, adding her own screams to the baby’s protests.

  The fighting had shattered the cathedral-like windows, letting the driving rain pour inside. As the rain dispersed the smoke, Milosz could see them.

  Bodies. They lay strewn amid the tables and chairs of the reading room. They held children close, curled up with their backs to the door he and Gardener had just fought their way through. Along the walls were stacks of canned goods, jars of sauces, meats, and other food that was still edible, if a bit questionable.

  A can of pineapple rolled to a stop against Milosz’s boot. Through a hole it leaked a thick yellow syrup onto the floor, which mixed with the dark blood of a little girl who was missing the back of her head.

  Two of the surviving militia men who had covered the assault from the upper level looked at each other.

  “How many frags did we throw in here?” one of them asked.

  The other shook his head. “I have no idea.”

  “Too many,” Gardener said, wiping her brow. She was sweating profusely despite the cold rain, preversely reminding the Pole of a wheel of cheese. “Or not enough. It doesn’t really matter now, does it?”

  “Are we going to get in trouble for this?” the one who had asked about the frags wondered.

  “I doubt it,” Milosz said. “They will probably give you medals. And one hundred and forty new bucks this month. Probably.”

  51

  Kansas City, Missouri

  The city never slept. The demands of reconstruction meant there was always something going on somewhere, and Kip took solace from that as he sat at his desk in the early morning, eyes burning with fatigue, struggling to write something original in each letter of condolence. Handwriting each letter, each comma, and restoring his rusty cursive script after decades of disuse helped provide a sort of penance for the men and women dying on his command. “Dear Mrs. Kohler,” he wrote, ignoring the cramp in his fingers, “I am terribly sorry to have to write you this letter …”

  He had begun writing after a long night of briefings and video meetings with his military chie
fs, and the brief, frustrating talk with Agent Monroe. It was nearly four-thirty before he finished the last of the letters, and his head swam with fatigue. He was sick of it and desperately wanted nothing more than to climb into bed next to Barbara back at home and fall asleep for twenty years, waking only when all this was history. Instead he spent the next hour inhaling coffee and reviewing reports from Manhattan. When the first silver bands of dawn softened the eastern horizon, he asked his security detail chief—Agent Shinoda was asleep—if she could organize a morning run for him with some troops.

  Forty minutes later he was pounding down Highway 210, surrounded by a platoon of U.S. Army rangers, who seemed flattered to have been called on in such a fashion by their commander in chief even though he had signed orders yesterday sending them all to the slaughterhouse of New York.

  Kipper would never understand the military mind.

  The rangers took the president past a QuikTrip and a recreation center that were both open despite the early hour. The QuikTrip’s red façade had faded to pink after four years of weathering, but the doors opened frequently as men and women from the night shifts grabbed a meal or perhaps a nightcap and some early birds came around looking for an easy breakfast. As he jogged along, he watched others make their way into the rec center for a shower, a swim, or perhaps, strangest of all in an era of renewed physical labor, a workout. Through the windows of the center he could even see militia troops playing basketball as part of their physical training. He felt guilty at the sight of them. The militia was suffering by far the worst of the fighting in Manhattan.

  The runners took a turn down past the Northtown’s city hall, where the FBI had set up shop along with the restored Metropolitan Kansas City Police Force. A couple of officers in green fatigues on the front steps noticed their commander in chief and snapped out salutes as he headed north toward the high school where newly arrived immigrants were processed and given rudimentary medical treatment and a meal in the cafeteria. To them he was nobody, and they ignored him. KC was crawling with small groups of military men and women pounding the bitumen. That was a strangely satisfying experience. The rangers continued past the red brick three-story building and the football stadium. A glance over the rock walls revealed the olive drab tops of army tents, where many of the refugees would spend their first night. The Missouri militia watched over the football stadium from plywood guard towers.

  Kipper made an effort to keep up with the rangers, who were singing a song, or a cadence as they called it. There was a rhythm to it that was supposed to help one endure the double time, but Kipper kept tuning it out, lost in his own thoughts, mostly haunted by images of his trip to the hospital.

  Her face!

  Moving farther north, they passed a high school campus and turned east by a large park dominated by cracked tennis courts and weed-choked baseball diamonds. A few abandoned cars filled the parking lot, probably belonging to runners who’d been getting in a morning jog when the Wave took them. The rising sun silhouetted the bulk of North Kansas City Hospital from here, reminding him of yesterday’s visit. Running alongside the men who would be going into New York City on his say-so, he was haunted by visions of them reduced like that poor woman yesterday. Faceless, limbless, hobbled and broken for the rest of their lives.

  Why risk their lives for a dead city or country?

  He couldn’t help wondering. If you took away the uniforms, they were just regular people, young and fit, for sure, but not supermen. Not giants or comic book heroes. They were average guys with the same problems as any other average guys: overdue bills, relationships, family problems. The usual.

  Why do this when he couldn’t even guarantee they’d be paid this week? Why not hire themselves out to private contractors who valued their skills and would pay well for them? Why did they do it? Because, as Barbara kept telling him, somebody had to.

  Kipper increased his pace a fraction until he was running alongside the rangers’ squad leader, or platoon leader, or whatever. That made him a … lieutenant … he was pretty sure. There was no way of telling from the man’s running gear.

  “Son,” he puffed, “I reckon I’ve had enough of this sweaty bullshit. How about we head back and win us a war.”

  “Hooah, Mister President!”

  “Yeah,” said Kip. “Plenty of that today.”

  Having made the call to throw everything into the maw, Kipper found himself strangely calm as he examined the results a few hours later from almost exactly one thousand miles away. It was possible, if the satellites and the stars were aligned at the precise moment, to watch the unfolding battle for New York City on the screens in the ad hoc command center the army had quickly established once he’d decided to stay in the Midwest hub settlement. Kip wasn’t sure where all the extra personnel had come from, whether they’d been here when he arrived or had flown in over the week, but the Cerner Campus was suddenly overrun with uniforms, and the rather quiet building in which he had his local office was swarming like a busted ants’ nest.

  It reminded him of the first week after the Wave, when Seattle’s city council tower had been all but invaded by Mad Jack Blackstone’s people from Fort Lewis. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of phones rang constantly. The corridors were crowded, sometimes getting on for impassable, as hundreds of men and women scurried about, carrying sheets of paper, folders, ring binders, phones, files, maps … all the mountains of paper generated when the United States committed itself to battle. The small conference room where he and Jed had often met to run the country was now crowded with communications gear, computers, and dozens of wide screens. He had relocated to a boardroom up on the top floor, similarly overrun and stocked with electronics but at least not as hopelessly crowded as downstairs, with only a handful of military officers able to cram themselves in around him.

  Kipper sat between Jed and Colonel Mike Ralls, who had changed out of his dress greens and into the standard fatigues of the U.S. Army. He looked a lot more comfortable than Kipper felt as the aide used a smartboard to provide a running commentary on the engagement.

  “The Second Marine Expeditionary Brigade has established their blocking positions to east of Rockefeller,” Ralls said. “The One hundred first is inbound.”

  Kipper rubbed his forehead, which was aching a little. He was dreading what the day would bring. There was no ignoring the fact that he’d ordered the destruction of a huge part of the city, something he’d once promised himself he would not do. Homes, businesses, streets, churches, memories. All would be gone. He built such things, helped provide water, power, and other service to homes just like that. New York City wasn’t his town by any means, but the destruction still offended him.

  The shattered, faceless female soldier in the hospital offended him more, however.

  “Mister President?” Another aide stepped through the door. Their numbers had suddenly metastasized like the dancing brooms in that old Mickey Mouse film.

  “Yes?”

  “Colonel Kinninmore reports that the last of the resistance at the old library has been neutralized and he’s transferred the bulk of his forces there to reinforce the cordon around Rockefeller Center. G2 is estimating the bulk of the enemy have dug themselves in there now.”

  “Good,” Kip said.

  “Copy that,” Lieutenant Colonel Alois Kinninmore replied, handing the phone back to an aide. It had been a long time since anything had surprised the cavalry commander, but his new orders did. Finally, he thought. The end is coming.

  He walked over to the map of Manhattan that covered half a wall inside 1/7 Cav’s latest tactical operations center in the small, ravaged wasteland of the park behind the New York Public Library. Thick columns of smoke poured from the upper floor of the building, and the last time he’d stepped outside his command Bradley, he could even see flames through one or two windows. A small and miserable-looking band of prisoners from that fight were still sitting on the muddy ground in the rain at the rear of the library, being guarded by a squad of resentful m
ilitia.

  Kinninmore was flanked right and left by liaison officers from the 101st and the Marine RCTs who were tasked with backstopping his push toward the enemy.

  “Gentlemen,” he said. “That was General Murphy at Fort Lewis. The president has authorized us to proceed.”

  “About goddamn time,” the marine growled.

  Major Holt, Kinninmore’s XO, pulled a printout from the fax. “Do you want me to execute this fire mission Colonel?”

  “Affirmative,” Kinninmore said. “Forward that to fire support for immediate action.”

  “All the bridges, sir?” Major Holt asked. “Won’t we need them to press into Brooklyn and Queens?”

  “Rules have changed, Major. We’re fighting to win now. That’s the extent of our new rules of engagement.”

  Realization dawned on Holt’s face. “Sergeant Cathey, send this fire mission ASAP.”

  Kinninmore picked up his helmet and retrieved his personal weapon. He turned to his colleagues from the U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Airborne Division. “Gentlemen, I’m going forward. Care to join me?”

  Governors Island had reverted to a natural prehuman state in the four years since the Wave had swept over it. After the pollution storms, only the hardiest trees had flourished, their roots and trunks shrouded by the rapid growth of underbrush and weeds—until the U.S. Army arrived and began returning the island to its earlier role: a fort. The gun bunnies of 1/5 Field Artillery and the Sixth Field Artillery dug themselves into the fields around Fort Jay, establishing Firebase Euler, home to the long guns, heavy mortars, and rocket batteries that had chopped down wave after wave of pirates, insurgents, and freebooters inside the city. The island also housed the core of the local civilian administration, run by the appointed governor, Elliott Schimmel, and protected by a battalion of troops from Schimmel’s irregulars—now reduced to a mere company by the need to reinforce the army on the main island.

  Governor Schimmel was a New York native, an historian who had been guest lecturing in Japan back in March 2003. From the battlements of Fort Jay he watched the skyline of his city shrouded in dark oily smoke, an ungovernable rage churning in his innards.