A New Day in America (2 page)

The fire crackles and the flue sucks up the smoke. Flames tremble along the logs.

There’s
pounding
on the door.

“
Help!”
cries a woman. “
Whoever’s in there, listen! I’m pregnant and I need food! Hear me? Help!”

Nos spies the woman though the bars of his second floor window. She is indeed pregnant. A large black woman wears a gasmask and pounds the door and its hinges cough up debris.

Nos brings his .50 cal rifle to the window as S.O.P. He used to entertain desperate families, roaming bands, and abandoned children, some of whom made off with a can of beans, until he stopped responding all together. Waiting out the noise of beggars is better than giving up a can of food he doesn’t have.

The pounding stops. Silence rings in its place.

Naomi unlatches her locks and comes out, blinking, sleepy, and confused.

“You brush your teeth?” He asks.

A colossal
roar
breaks the air. Naomi snaps alert, frightened by the sudden barrage of noise.

A motor? A Harley?

For an instant, Nos is deathly terrified. Like he’s coming under heavy fire. He whips his neck. His muscles clench. Then he relaxes. Blinks. Breathes.

There’s nothing in the street below.

No cars or bikes. Not even the pregnant woman.

Still, an invisible motor revs louder and louder, ripping the air. Then another joins the menacing chorus. And another.
At least three
.

And mine is the only building on the block that hasn’t been gutted, scavenged, and abandoned. And I’ve got conspicuous-as-hell smoke burning from my chimney
.

Nos straps his own gasmask to his face and bends to secure Naomi’s mask.

“Nay, back to your room!” he barks, sounding like Petty Officer First Class Nostradamus Greene. He is more on edge than he wants to be.

Calm down
, he reminds himself.
Control your pulse
.

Naomi bolts to her room. Before she shuts the door, Nos touches her shoulder.

“It’s going to be OK,” he soothes. She is shaking with fear. “Just stay inside until I say it’s OK to come out.
Breathe. In—nose, out—mouth.”

Nos demonstrates. He sucks air in his nose, fills his diaphragm, and releases through his mouth.

Naomi does the same.

The Harley motors rev and roar outside.

Nay jumps.

“Pretend they aren’t there, my love.
Breathe
.”

Nay breathes in, breathes out, her small ribcage fills and deflates.

“Daddy will take care of you.”

She nods.

“OK?”

She nods and looks inside her room, knowing she will be all alone in there. “I’m scared, I’m scared OK? I don’t want to go.”

He turns to look at her, frustrated that he cannot touch her face through her mask, that her tears now stain her goggles.

“
The basest of all things is to be afraid
,” he says, as much to tell her as to tell himself. “
’Knowing that, we must forget it forever
.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s OK to be afraid. But then we have to forget it,” says Nos.

“I can’t.”

“You can. You’re afraid, right?”

“Un-huh.”

“OK, be afraid, and now forget that you are, that you ever were.”

She stares at the green veneered eye shield.

“Do I seem afraid?” he asks.

Nay shakes her head. “No, pa.”

“But I am. Only I’ve forgotten that I am. That I ever was.”

“OK, I’m trying. I’m trying.”

Something massive
slams
into the front door and kicks drywall off the hinged wall.

She panics. Her breathing does double time, triple time.

“Inside, love, inside!” Nos urges.

Nay steels herself, sucks in her tears, goes inside, and slams and locks her door.

Be safe, my love
.

Nos scopes the street, hoping her fear is just fear. He hopes wrong.

Three bikers circle across the watery street with guns and machetes. One biker backs up away from the door, revs, and burns up the steps and smashes into the wood like a battering ram. The building shakes.

What I get for burning a fire for my daughter
.

Exit the father and enter the soldier.

Subdue or deter with lethal force if necessary. High ground—check. Rifle—check
.

Nos cracks the window and steadies the barrel of his .50 cal M82 semi-auto anti-materiel Barrett SASR, also called the ‘light fifty.’ The rifle is a thirty-pound monster. Nos’ fave.
Pure overkill. Shock and awe with a scope
.

Nos bolts a forearm sized bullet and aims at the lead biker. Asshole is using his wheels to bust open the front door. Nos pulls, the rifle kicks, and a round bursts through the raider’s leg and cracks the bike off its axel.

Before he can target the next, pistols fly and blast at his location. He ducks and flattens. Bullets punch through his boarded windows.

They actually want this fight
.

Another motor rumbles from the distance.
No wonder. Backup
.

Nos spies a U-Haul truck speeding up to his doorstep. Its doors glide open and a half-dozen rugged men stomp through the water. Gunshots repeat pop at his location.
Nothing close
. But he’s holed in.

Another bike slams into his door. He hears the motorcycle reverse, rev, and then slam again. The door takes a pounding, hinges crack. Bullets burst through the window just above his head—can’t get another .50 cal shot off.

They’re coming
.

The door crumbles at its frame. The hinges give and snap open like a button fly. A wheel splinters through the top and spins.

Nos breathes.
In—nose, out—mouth
.

His Sig Saur sidepiece is drawn. He doesn’t remember pulling it out.

A bike burns through his living room. The raider howls a battle cry.

“
Yeaaah, motherfuckaaaa!”

The hoard rushes in behind him waving machetes and pistols. Nos kneels and fires from the second story. His trigger snaps and his gun jumps. Bullets slam into the oncoming crowd. Looters are kneecapped, spun by shoulder hits, dropped by headshots. Bodies streak across the hardwood.

There’s a momentary lull.
Bastards realizing they picked the wrong fight
.

“Everybody get down on the fucking ground!” he shouts.

Nos covers the mass below with his Sig, mag empty. It’s hard to tell who’s hit and who’s not. Some stay down. Some scavengers crowd by front door. Nos spies his crowbar by the window.

Time to crack skulls
.

He grabs the metal bludgeon and speeds down the banister and wades sideways into the mob. He traps four of them in a corner, arms pinned so they can’t swing their knives. He cranks back and wails the crowbar like a bat. He breaks legs, ribs, shoulders, heads—anything as long as he can get a clean swing. He feels bones crush and splinter at the end of his makeshift maul.

He’s the only one standing. His blood is hot. He’s breathing hard.

“Everybody get down on the fucking floor!”

They obey, whether voluntarily or not.

Nos grins like a kid—like Jay as Denzel.
Overwhelming force. Some badass operator shit right there
. Feels good to let the soldier out. His old unit would be proud. Officers Danny and Jet and Ferrell would be proud.
Shit, they’d expect nothing less
. They’d clown his ass if any of those scumbags had so much as nicked him.

Bodies writhe on the bloody floor. Some have their masks turned around, with red-pocked and blistered diseased faces.

The disease. Sorry sons-of-bitches. Lunatics in a U-Haul truck waiting out a death sentence
.

“Run,” Nos announces. “Get the fuck out of here.” He buries his foot into a writhing set of ribs on the floor. “Run from me, from Brooklyn. Swim if you have to. I find you in my borough and I’ll turn your asses
inside
-
out
.”

One gets to his knees and stares daggers at Nos, debating his next move. Nos makes it for him. He grabs him by the neck and lifts him to his feet. He smacks the gasmask off his face and drives him out through the busted door, hurling him into the canal.

In the street, the pregnant woman stands ankle deep in the stagnant water and flashes a hateful look, like
momma’s gun remember you
. Three others scurry back to the U-Haul, shouting,
go go go!

The truck moans and lumbers off.

Nos inhales though his gasmask. The street is quiet with the dead. His front door is utterly destroyed. He creeps back inside.
Are we alone?

Nos can hear heavy breathing and the shuffling of fabric from inside the kitchen.

“Who’s there?” he yells.

No answer.

Nos pops open a drawer, grabs a fresh clip, bangs it into the gun, and snaps a bullet into the chamber. He inches along the kitchen wall at the ready. He spies inside.

A bike is on its side on the granite-tiled floor. A voice is repeating, “No,
no, no, Jamie, bro, no
.”

“I’m OK, Sammy,” another voice answers.

Nos peeks barrel-first into the kitchen. Two bikers are on the floor. One is on his back, a leg involuntarily kicking over and over again. Blood gushes from his throat. The other biker sits over him, both hands pressed firm on his brother’s neck.

Nos inches closer. They don’t notice. Nos aims at the biker’s head—
Sammy
,
his brother called him
.

“Jaime,
please
no, bro, no,
please bro.”
Sammy sits upright to get as much leverage as possible atop the gaping wound. The blood from Jaime’s neck pours between his brother’s fingers. He keeps his hands cupped firm and presses down with all his weight, but it’s no use.

Jaime’s twitching leg slows. A half beat. A full beat. And it stops kicking altogether.

Sammy is in tears.

Nos presses the gun to Sammy’s head.
Plug him
, he thinks.
You can’t injure a man this bad and let him live
.

Sammy’s is so lost in grief that he doesn’t realize the gun is at his head.

Put him down
, Nos thinks, but his trigger finger doesn’t flick.
Just a pair of brothers. In my kitchen
. His heart swells.
Scavengers. Just trying to live. His brother was everything to him
.

“He won’t make it,” Nos whispers.

“
No shit
,” spits Sammy.

He turns furious eyes on Nos. Sammy’s face is ravaged by the disease. He stares long past the gun with all his hatred. He wears the rash like a phantom’s mask. The rash kills with less conscience than Nos Greene.

This one is dead anyway
.

Nos hesitates. Maybe if he were on duty in some war-torn country halfway across the world he would have executed the enemy in a blink and been done with it. But these are Americans, with New York accents. Brooklyn neighborhood types. The sort his boys would have hung with, chased girls with, played ball with. Truth is, he’s not in the Afghan Kush. He’s home, in his own kitchen, confronted by the love of two dying brothers.
By the fridge, where Mikey tossed the granola bar at Jay, and it fell to the floor
.

A deadbolt from upstairs clicks and unlocks. And another. And another.
Naomi
.

Nos can’t believe his fucking ears.
No
, he thinks. Must have been too quiet, so she’s come out of her room.

“NO! BACK INSIDE!” Nos shouts.

Too late. Sammy slaps Nos’ gun to the side and flies up the stairs.

Nos doesn’t dare fire.

Too late
.

A clash in the upstairs hallway. Sammy has Naomi clinched up, forearm under her gasmask. She struggles with everything she has.

“Pa! Pa!” is all she can get out before he gags her.

“I’m here, sweetie!”

“
Fuck off
,” the biker cries. “I’ll
kill
the girl!”

A dead man
, Nos sneers,
without the decency to die
.

“Put her down. Put her down, and you can run along,” says Nos, calm. Assertive.

Sammy’s color is red as his bloodshot eyes. A vein along his temple bulges purple.

“Put her down, now. Put her down, now. Put her down, now.”

Tears squeeze from Sammy’s eyes like citrus from the peel.

“You
killed my brother, you killed Jaime!
” he shouts, coming unhinged.

Naomi is trying desperately to breath. Blood all over his hands, Sammy is choking the life out of her.

“Put her down now, and you can walk on out of here. Put her down now. Put her down, now.”
Please put her down, now
.

Nos eases closer, trying to calm his racing pulse, trying to hold himself together to get the lunatic away from his girl. Nos holds the gun with both hands, and aims off to the side.
This lunatic I should have put down not forty-five seconds ago
.

“Easy, now. Let her go. Now.”

“
Jaime…”

Sammy rips Naomi’s mask off and sinks the choke beneath her chin, crushing her throat.

Nos fires. Brains him.

Sammy’s eyes go dark. His grip relaxes. He sways forward. Nos grabs him by the hair and shoves him backward. He slams on the floor.

Nay is crying. There is so much blood. Her face is a red-painted devil.

Not her blood. Sammy’s blood. Jaime’s blood
.

Nos picks her up, and she buries her head in his chest.

He holds her tight and cries into her hair.

He looks down at Sammy, dead on the hallway floor. The scavenger wears the random gear he’s collected—a Gucci leather coat and Dickie cargo pants and torn Air Jordan 4s. Everything worth dying for: everything worthless.

Just around the hole in his head is that pink, frothing rash.

The disease
.

A dead man running out the clock. Nothing to lose. Like a suicide bomber. No man more dangerous. And I let him have forty-five more seconds. All he needed was ten more seconds to detonate. And I would have lost her
.