by Ginger Booth
“Hey, darlin’,” he said, eyes narrowing into a searching gaze of concern. “What happened to you?” His finger traced around my black eye and a cut above the brow.
I frowned, still amazed he didn’t know. I pointed to the living room. “Cam and I were caught in the tsunami near Jones Beach. That’s where we were, when we sent the warning.”
“Oh, hell!” Emmett said in horror. He pulled me into the living room and looked open-mouthed at Cam, still parked on the couch, both broken feet up on pillows on the coffee table. That man’s pale skin sure did highlight cuts and bruises. Ash Margolis and Carlos Mora were in the living room, too, on their feet now.
“Hey, buddy,” Cam greeted Emmett reservedly. His head was laid back on top of the leather couch, eyes back to that thousand-yard stare. “Where you been?”
Emmett held me tighter around the waist. “North Jersey,” he said. “I, uh, didn’t think to check those GPS coords you sent. Hell, Cam. You alright?”
Cam glanced pointedly at his feet, then me. “We survived. That’s a miracle.”
“Lot of skill and intelligence goes into miracles,” Emmett returned. “Thank you, Cam. For keeping Dee safe.”
Cam nodded ever so slightly, face neutral. “She spotted the tsunami, I didn’t.”
“How’s LI?” Emmett inquired guardedly. “Is Dwayne OK?”
“Death toll maybe six thousand in the end,” Cam said. “Less than Jersey and the Apple. Still counting. Barrier islands half-gone. Dwayne’s in charge. Doing a great job. He’s safe.”
“Good,” Emmett breathed, and swallowed. “I screwed up, huh.”
“Looks like,” Cam agreed.
Sean climbed halfway down the bedroom stairs, slightly more loudly than necessary. “MacLaren?” he said to Emmett quietly. “My bedroom to talk, please. Ash, effective immediately, Major MacLaren reports to you. Apple cleanup.”
“Yes, sir?” Ash replied, one eyebrow raised. Emmett was a lieutenant colonel, like the rest of them. At least, he had been.
Emmett gave me another quick kiss and trotted up the stairs to follow Sean for their little chat.
“Good to see you back safe, Emmett,” Carlos called after him. Ash and Cam glanced at Carlos uncomfortably, perhaps regretting they hadn’t said that.
“To be a fly on that wall,” Carlos muttered.
“Demoting him to major won’t work,” Ash critiqued, arms crossed. “Dee, what do you think would happen? The ‘hero of Project Reunion’ demoted now?”
I frowned, trying to wrench my thoughts away from Emmett’s personal level, back to the general public. “Bad optics,” I agreed. “The public would take his side against Sean and Hudson’s, mostly. It would make the Raj look bad. Probably not Emmett.”
“Right,” Ash said sourly. “The man’s fireproof. Can’t touch him. No way in hell I can put him to work as a major. He needs to be restored to light colonel before I can use him at all.”
“If he did what I think he did,” Cam said softly, “a demotion isn’t quite…”
“That’s up to Cullen, and Hoffman,” Carlos said firmly, with a quelling gaze on Cam. “You don’t order the medic to kill the patient, Cam. You know?”
“I don’t understand,” I complained. “What do you think Emmett’s done? He said something about ‘off the reservation.’”
Cam and Ash clammed up, looking away from me.
Carlos said softly, “It means he disobeyed a direct order, Dee. Did something unauthorized. During an emergency like this, that’s kinda…”
“Desertion? Treason?” Cam supplied. “Court martial offense, for an officer.”
“Sean’s too smart for that,” Ash opined. “He won’t go off half-cocked.”
Carlos jabbed a couple fingers into Ash, and glared at Cam. “Cullen ordered a crackdown in North Jersey, Dee. No more Mr. Nice Guy. My guess is Emmett went AWOL to pull his people out. Cam, you would have done the same. And damn the consequences.”
I noticed he didn’t accuse Ash of that. Ash might have voiced objections, but then he would have obeyed orders. Cam shook his head in denial as well, though, lips pursed. He wouldn’t have crossed the line to disobey a direct order, either. At least, that’s what Cam thought. Like Carlos, I wasn’t so sure he was right. Cam could be idealistic to a fault. In this scenario, it was a bit of a coin toss as to which ideal would win.
“Thank you for explaining, Carlos,” I said quietly. “Good night, guys.”
I woke to Emmett’s hand brushing the hair out of my face. He was on his knees beside the bed. “Morning, darlin’,” he murmured, and kissed me on the forehead.
“You should have woken me up!” I croaked crossly. I tried clearing my throat a few times. It wasn’t working. Taking a swim in the winter North Atlantic is not a good idea.
“I needed to sleep,” he argued. “We’ve got a half hour alone together,” he suggested, running his hand down my body, inside the covers. “Before you head off to catch your train.”
“Oh, yeah. Train.” His hand felt so good. He was putting me back to sleep. With an effort, I rallied and sat up, letting the blankets fall to my waist. The bedroom dosed me with bracing winter air. “I hate morning.” No doubt about it, the back of my throat felt raw. I caressed his face. “I don’t feel so hot,” I apologized.
He laid a hand on my forehead, then quirked a lip in a brief sad smile. “May have a fever there, darlin’. Are you OK? From the tsunami.”
“I’m fine,” I claimed. “I need to go home to Totoket. Mangal got himself crimed. Mel took over Amenac. You knew Mel was HomeSec. I need to go clean that up. Need PR News on the ball. Public’s pretty cranky. Scared.”
He nodded, then decisively crawled into the bed with me, pushing me ahead of him into the middle. I laughed.
“Oh, hey, how’d it go with Sean last night?” I asked.
“I’m in the doghouse. Don’t worry. It’ll wear off,” he said. “Don’t want to talk about Sean, darlin’. Or Amenac. Lot I can’t tell you about what’s going down in Jersey. Don’t want to talk. Can do that over the phone.”
We made love, and showered together, and stuck to the here and now. It was only for a little while, but so good to have him back.
14
Interesting fact: Several of the commuter trains into the Apple, including Metro North serving the northern suburbs and Connecticut, and the Long Island Railroad (LIRR), used an electrified third rail. The New Haven line switched to overhead power before the trains reached Connecticut, however. The city subways also used an electrified third rail, but the subway system was not restored by Project Rebuild.
Dawn gathered pink and purple as the train wended its way into Connecticut. The wind, usually light at dawn and dusk, tossed bare branches around viciously, sketching dark scribbles against the sky. The tracks often crossed water here, between marshes and rivers and ports, threading between the land and the Sound. The wind-ruffled water lay pewter with rosy highlights until the sun burst out its early sunbeams nearly horizontal, gilding dead grasses to glow like ripe wheat or corn.
I idly watched a seagull fly directly into the face of the gale, going backwards. I smiled. They liked to do that in the powerful winds of late winter. I never understood why.
The marshes were full beneath us. That, I bothered to look up. Amenac reported about a half hour from low tide now. Net sea level rise so far was 4.15 feet, according to our official counter. This wouldn’t be marsh land anymore. The grasses just didn’t know that yet. Apparently 4.15 feet wasn’t enough to particularly threaten the commuter tracks on a good day. Their margin of error for storm surges was gone, though. This stretch of rail would need to be raised, or more likely, shifted inland.
Only six cars made up this biggest passenger train of the morning. Half-passenger, really – three of the cars carried manufactured products outbound. The dawn train’s spiritual twin left New Haven at the same time, to pass each other near Stamford, bearing another smattering of passengers plus winter’s sparse agricultural products in
toward the city, milk and cheese and eggs mostly. It was a far cry from the commuter trains I rode to Stamford only a few years ago. Over a hundred thousand people a day used to ride this line. So far, Connecticut’s transfer into Hudson didn’t appear to have increased trade and travel much. We’d already localized our economies, and that was the Calm Act plan. No one sought to reverse it. Commuting was dead.
Good riddance.
No one recognized me, muffled in knitted hat and scarf. I was happy to commune with the seagulls in their seemingly pointless quest to scale the wind. But I overheard snatches of conversation from fellow passengers. Most of them were about their own business and friends and family. Some weren’t. A guy behind me had fixated on the nuclear reactors. He’d apparently been parked on Amenac last night watching for any snatch of news, and caught Ivan Link’s public rants live.
“Link has lost it,” he insisted to his companion, maybe his son. “We transferred to Hudson none too soon. You know, I wish Cullen had the balls to take over Narragansett and Massachusetts, too. Hell, all of New England.”
Beguiling thought. Wouldn’t it be lovely if Emmett escaped the Apple and took on Narragansett. So beautiful, so like the Connecticut shore, instead of that grimy urban tangle around the city. And the Cape was –. I stopped myself. Poor Cape Cod and the islands were likely wasteland now, dead bodies bobbing at the tide line.
“Hey!” another guy objected from across the aisle. “What, you want Hudson to fight New England? At a time like this?”
“Wasn’t talking to you,” the first one growled back. His conversation continued at too low a volume for me to follow it further.
“He’s right, I don’t trust that Link,” a woman behind me said to her crony. She concurred, before their conversation too dove back below the decipherable range.
I sighed and lay my warm forehead on the cold window, to watch a postcard-tidy New England village center slide by amidst the bare trees. Fake! The population density around here probably rivaled most of L.A. and Houston – or used to. Los Angeles and Houston hadn’t fared much better than the Apple going into the Calm. Poser Persnicketyquaug here was likely the more populous now.
I smiled. Emmett referred to a Connecticut town as Persnicketyquaug when its leaders annoyed him, as a Resco.
On the whole, I was relieved. Connecticut didn’t look too bad. Few cars on the road. No one had much reason to go anywhere on this blustery February morn. It looked OK.
New Haven train station looked much the same as always at first glance, aside from being nearly empty of people. The corridor leading under its fourteen tracks was awfully dark, the stairway up to the station steep beside the sleeping escalators. A desultory arc of orange and white sawhorses, slightly askew, blocked off the lovely main concourse, walls of stately limestone rising 35 feet, far smaller than Grand Central but dating from a similar gracious era. Its marble floor hadn’t been buffed and waxed in years, and no longer gleamed. The electronic screens and terminals were gone. A chalkboard easel reminded people that this terminal was for passengers only – produce was to load at State Street Station. Despite years without candy and processed food boxes, flimsy plastic supermarket bags and wrappers still blew in to litter the corners. We’d stored up a seemingly endless supply of trash.
“Alex!” I called, breaking into a grin as I pushed out the terminal doors into the sun. Our foster-teen, sort of, ran to exchange a warm hug with me. We had to leave Alex behind in Connecticut. That was OK. He was an adult now by Hudson law, and ran the livestock half of my farm. He lived in his own house, anyway, with twenty-two-year-old Shelley and Trey instead of me. He and his pets. He visited us in the Apple sometimes, where he looked like a deer caught in headlights. Alex didn’t belong in Brooklyn.
He grinned and took over my bags, to carry to our battered little electric car. Zack had acquired that car for me to replace mine – was it really over two years ago now? He’d expended my last one as a car bomb on Christmas Day. I could remember things like that and smile by now, albeit crookedly.
“Home?” Alex inquired.
“Mangal’s place first, I think,” I said. “You can keep the car, though.”
“Don’t need it,” Alex denied. “Just drop me off. Hope we’ll see you for dinner?”
“Deal,” I agreed. “Invite whoever you want. Or it can be just us. It’s been a rough week, huh?”
“Scary rough,” Alex agreed. He lapsed into silence a while, negotiating the broad and deserted interstate to cross New Haven harbor. “Heard a rumor, Emmett was missing?”
I smiled at him. “HomeSec tries so hard, and can never stamp out the rumor mill, huh? Yeah, he was out of communication, maybe thirty-six hours? That was scary. But he’s back in Brooklyn now, at the brownstone. He’s OK.”
Alex blew out a breath, shaking his head in relief. “I was afraid you’d lie.”
“If he were still missing, I might have to. Until the Rescos were ready to make an announcement,” I admitted. “I’d hate to lie to you, though.”
“He offered to adopt me once,” Alex blurted out. “I said no. I was too old. But if I were adopted, you could tell me. Right?”
I nodded slowly. “I guess. I think you should talk to him.”
Alex scowled. “He’d make me calm down. Say we shouldn’t deal with that while I’m scared. Later if I still wanted to. Stuff like that.”
“I bet you’re right,” I said. “That’s exactly what he’d say. But you should call him. Because he’d make you feel safe. Let you calm down. It’s Emmett’s special superpower. Least for me.”
Alex grinned and nodded shyly. “Yeah, me too. We’d talk animals, I bet.”
“Endlessly,” I whined in false despair. The two of them really bonded over animals. “You’ve got me, too, Alex. You know that, right?”
“Yeah.”
“What are you scared about? Now.”
“Are the nuclear power plants really gonna blow up?”
I forcibly relaxed into my seat headrest. “Connecticut’s nuclear plant is fine. Couple others are in trouble. Good people are doing their best. They’re on it. Those plants are far from here, though.” I felt like a cad saying this. Toms River, New Jersey and Seabrook, New Hampshire were probably within 200 miles of us – not so far, as the nuclear fallout drifted.
“Will Hudson and New England go to war over it?” Alex asked.
“You do hear the damnedest rumors, Alex,” I told him. “Nobody’s going to war.” I had to look out the window on that one, though.
“You hope,” Alex said.
“That wouldn’t make any sense,” I argued.
“If Hudson can keep things under control, and New England can’t, it makes sense,” Alex argued. “Isn’t that what you and Emmett always said? That freedom’s better than order, but any order is better than disorder?”
“Yeah, I’d buy that,” I agreed.
“I’m glad Connecticut transferred to Hudson. Link isn’t very good,” Alex said. “Cullen’s cool. He’s the best martial law governor in the Northeast. Emmett likes Cullen better, right?”
“Yeah,” I allowed. “Since when did you get so political, Alex?”
“You seen the pictures out of Narragansett yet?” he countered.
“Where’d you see pictures out of Narragansett?”
“Darknet,” he replied. “Everyone knows you can’t trust Amenac on New England. Censors.”
I nodded. “Thanks, Alex. I needed to know that.” We were pulling up to Mangal’s townhouse by then. Apparently Alex planned to walk home. “And Alex? I’d be proud to adopt you, too, you know? I care about you, kiddo.”
He nodded offhandedly.
That was OK. Alex would never want another mom. His own was his whole world until she vanished a couple years ago. But a dad was something he’d never had, and longed for. He’d latched onto Zack, and then Emmett, like a starfish, as though starved for a man to care about him. Perhaps he was. Perhaps that was part of what made military service so temp
ting for some teenagers, that yearning for a grown man’s approval.
I was just a neighbor and onetime source of food, a friend of his mom’s. And that was OK. I gave him another big hug and smile when we climbed out of the car, and let him go.
I sure admired Emmett’s superpower though, the ability to make people feel safe. I felt safer the moment my phone rang the night before.
Shanti answered promptly when I knocked on the door – no one would waste power on a doorbell anymore. A nearly eye-searing dose of Indian spices wafted out the door beside her.
Shanti was less than five feet tall, and probably weighed less than 90 pounds. She was a zealot for nonviolence and pacifism. And she blocked the door like a so-very-polite miniature linebacker. Shanti of Steel, I called that look on her.
“Dee,” she said. “You shouldn’t have come.”
“I should have called first, Shanti,” I admitted. “I’m sorry. But you would have told me not to come.”
“Yes,” she agreed, and started to close the door on me.
I strong-armed the door open. “Not good enough, Shanti. I know you don’t want me to talk to him. But I need to.” I forced my way past her into the living room. The decor looked like a Maharajah’s harem to me. The few hard-backed chairs and little tables were pressed to the walls, leaving the middle of the floor free for large sitting pillows in a jeweled palette of saturated bright colors, matching hangings on the walls. The textiles matched the sinus-clearing smell and colors of Shanti’s excruciatingly hot cooking, the room swathed in golden turmeric and red-orange hot chilies, accented with brilliant blues and greens, purples and hot pinks.
A few Buddhist or Hindu or Jain elders sat on the pillows, thin and frail, draped in thin fabrics of likewise spicy colors. They blinked up at me in mild curiosity. I pressed my hands together and bowed them a quick Namaste. Mangal was thoroughly Westernized outside the home. But within days of moving to Totoket for safety, Shanti began weaving herself a south Asian enclave at home. I had no idea how many of these people lived here, were just visiting, or if visiting, whether that meant for an hour or a year. Shanti had a habit of adopting people.
