A New Day in America (20 page)

The three kids cry less as they walk through the park, following the ogre with the soldier behind them. The park is empty, but there’s so much everywhere. A round ride like a big pink mushroom stands with strings and seats dangling on the ends, swaying in the breeze like beads. A Ferris wheel makes a circle that’s round and perfect
.

They smell burning fumes. Nay and the children cough and cough. The fumes are wrong, like when plastic catches fire. Something that was never meant to burn
.

They pass a huge swimming pool with no water inside, only a blackened pile in the middle that steams. The smell gets stronger, and even the soldier coughs. When Nay gets closer she sees the small burning bodies against the baby blue of the pool floor. They are all children. They are naked and black in the flames
.

The boy and the girl with the rash cry, but Nay is done crying. She doesn’t know why, but she doesn’t have tears left. She feels like she will see Pa again, Mommy again, Joachim, and Mikey again, too. She thinks about how Pa was right and she does miss Mikey after all
.

She follows the children and the ogre. They approach a tower at the end of the road. The tower looks like it was made of four gigantic sticks with big platform elevators on all four sides. One of the children tries to run, but the soldier grabs her and smacks her in the face. The five of them step onto one of the elevators, and it takes them up. She sees above the Ferris wheel, above all the buildings, past the highway, and to far away mountains with green glowing trees and brown and tan earth. When they reach the top of the tower Nay looks about the endless sky, and she sees everything ever in the world
.

The ogre ruins it by talking
.

“By this you shall know that the Lord has sent me to do all these deeds; for this is not my doing.”

A rope dangles off the edge of the tower. The soldier pulls it up toward them. It’s a thick braided rope, and it makes a circle at the end. He holds the girl who tried to run away by the shirt and puts the rope around her neck. The soldier kicks the girl off the tower, and the rope unravels and snaps. Her body bounces up once like it’s in water. Her crying is done, her neck broken, and she hangs limp as a sawdust doll
.

The boy cries. Nay doesn’t; she doesn’t know why
.

The soldier pulls the rope up with the girl attached at the end. Her neck is stretched long with rope marks like it’s part of the rope. Her face is so horrible Nay can’t look. The soldier takes the rope off her neck and strips her of all her clothes, and she’s naked. He then puts the rope around the neck of the wailing boy. He gets the rope because he’s crying and Nay isn’t
.

“By this you shall know that the Lord has sent me to do all these deeds; for this is not my doing,” the ogre says again
.

The soldier kicks the boy in the back, and he flies off the tower, farther than the girl, like the soldier put joy in the kick. The rope flies out and snaps like it would rip through the boy’s neck
.

The boy swings back and bangs against the tower. Pee soaks the boy’s leg and drips all the way down
.

Now Nay wants to pee. She has to go so bad
.

The soldier pulls the rope back up with the boy at the end. His neck is badly broken, and his leg is drenched down to his sneaker
.

“I’m not touching that,” says the soldier
.

“Strip him,” grunts the ogre
.

He is disgusting. Nay feels a rumble in her empty stomach, and before she knows it, bile flies from her mouth. She throws up off the edge of the tower and if falls and separates all the way down
.

“Fucking kids,” says the soldier as he carefully peels the pants off the boy and puts the rope around Naomi’s neck
.

Naomi has to pee. She has to
go.

“By this you shall know that the Lord has sent me to do all these deeds,” says the ogre. “For this is not my doing.”

Nay closes her eyes and tears squeeze out like juice from a lime
.

Mommy. I’m coming.

And then a
pop
. Something wet slaps her on the back. And then another
pop.

Nay opens her eyes. The soldier and the ogre are on the tower floor beside the dead children
.

They don’t have heads
.

Nay is alone with the rope around her neck on top of the tower
.

Nos is soaking wet. He had to watch the second kid hang as he readied his rifle. Wasn’t fast enough. Saw the little girl like a dot dangling on the tower. Saw the little boy piss his pants. Saw Nay spit up and vomit. But she wasn’t crying. He didn’t know how she wasn’t crying.

The Revelation walkie he has set beside him buzzes with panic.
Shots fired
.
Preacher down! Preacher down!

Time to move.

Nos bounds down the fire escape. He’s still soaking wet. He’s leaving a trail of water as he goes. Easy to follow. Just like how he followed the trail of fuel from the road to the amusement park. The Humvee tank leaked all the way to the smiling gates.

He flung himself off the bridge and pushed off the bike in mid-air so it wouldn’t fall on him. He straightened into a desperate dive and smacked into the water and tunneled deep.
Didn’t die
.

He swam out to the land. He had swallowed so much water he wanted to puke. He was trained to do better.

He climbed all through the brush and the trees as leaves stuck to his wet face. Nos stood in the road and blocked the first car that came. The Laredo stopped. The driver yelled at him. Nos put his Sig in his face.

Nos rode the Laredo along the trail of spilled fuel and found the park. Nos caught a soldier as he was taking a leak in the woods. Knifed him without a sound, quick and dirty. Apparently his name was Lucky, because the voices on the walkie kept asking for him.

Nos hauled up the stairs of the nearest building. Found the high ground. Found his girl. Laid his scope on the men, stock firmly in shoulder, focusing on the target, not the cross hairs. He pulled, turned, and pulled, and a couple of monsters’ heads burst like popping mosquitoes.

Nos stays hidden in the park’s wide-open spaces, going from kids’ rides to abandoned cotton candy stands. He has to get to Nay, and the soldiers are forming a four-point perimeter around the tower. They are half a dozen, and Nay is still vulnerable.

Nos doubles back to Lucky’s corpse. He still looks shocked, and his throat is spilled in the grass. Lucky has a small block of C4. Small, but big enough.

The Laredo is a short walk away. Nos drags Lucky by his arms to the car and sets him down in the driver’s seat. He takes the block of C4 and Lucky’s hunting knife and stabs the explosive into Lucky’s chest.
Lucky is lucky he’s not alive for this
.

Nos arms the C4. Starts the car. Takes a rock and leans it on the gas pedal. The school bus is dead ahead.

Lucky the gearshift is on the steering wheel. Nos flips the car into drive and pulls his arm right out, getting smacked by the doorframe as the Laredo drives.

The car goes relatively straight. Nos
runs
.

Laredo smashes into the back of the school bus. The soldiers rush to it. Nos jets around the park and over to the tower. He watches as the soldiers turn their backs to him and start firing at the Laredo.
Dummies
.

“Stop shooting! Stop shooting!” yells one. “Wait. Lucky?” he says.

Another shoots anyway.

The explosion is good and loud. It rattles in Nos’ head. The back of the school bus blows and flips forward and crushes a soldier.

Two left
.

Nos rips a round through one soldier’s chest. The other turns and a bullet buries into his head.

He rides the elevator up the tower and wishes he could just climb and get there faster. Nay slowly erects into view as the elevator arrives. She is crying. She clings to his waist with her tiny hands, and Nos feels the hummingbird flutter of her heart.

Nos scans his surroundings through the scope. A Revelation convoy is coming down the road, fast. A river behind the park, running west.

Another river
. Nos licks his lips.

Can still taste the last one
.

Nos and Nay hurry to a trash dump behind the park, past mounds of trash and dead wood standing like rusted metal frames. They race to the bank of a frothing river.

He needs something to float.
Quick. Think
. There’s no time to build a raft. They are ankle deep in garbage. Nos sees a garbage bag and a mound of Styrofoam. He opens the bag, and it’s full of more Styrofoam.
Last I checked, Styrofoam floats
.

Using five branches as poles he places the bag at the bottom and stuffs the Styrofoam inside, pulling the ends of the bag overtop the Styrofoam and twigs and tying it down in a doughnut shape.

The raft floats. Nos sits cross-legged inside with Nay in his lap. The raft actually stays afloat, though it’s filling with water. His ore is a makeshift slice of junked tin from the metal of some forgotten hull. Nothing to do now but row.

Naomi is snuggled safely against his chest. Somehow, she still isn’t crying.
My little soldier
.

The night is cold, but they find some rest in a modest campsite. Too risky for a fire. Naomi sleeps and Nos sharpens his knife with oil on a stone and mentally draws up their situation report. Assets: his .50-caliber, his Sig, a stolen Beretta nine, three extra clips, a Motorola radio, six MREs, a makeshift raft, Naomi’s treatment, and a knife that’s getting sharper by the moment. Liabilities: a highly organized and well-armed fanatical sect of the American military hunting them, Naomi’s condition could get them killed on sight, he only has five .50-caliber bullets left, half a canteen of water, maybe two weeks worth of treatment, they are about a hundred and fifty miles from San Francisco in Revelation-controlled territory, and they lost Leila and her tremendous dogs.
Leila
. Nos knows which liability hurts the most. He hopes she got out of the hospital OK.

Tommy, too
. He realizes the Revelation Guard Corps are going to take Fort Dan.
He would have been safer if he’d come with us
.

He turns to his daughter’s serene eyes watching him.

“You sleep OK?” he asks.

She nods. She is intent on the action of the knife against the stone. She records the fluid movement of his hands. She is done with the night, eyes open to the morning. He’s still thinking about his dreams—demons with ox-heads and heavy artillery hunting him and his daughter. Nay is over her sleep, wide-awake and onto the next. Nos envies her from time to time.

Nos takes a syringe and a vial from his pack. Nay knows the routine. She winces as he sticks her, and he isn’t sure if she’s wincing from the pain or because she’s used to wincing. Nos runs his fingers over her rash. It’s getting bigger. He can see it crawling over her shoulder.

Nos slips her hooded sweatshirt over the rash and puts his trench coat on, charcoal gray from the dirt. He lifts the pack and offers Naomi a ride in it. She shakes her head. She wants to walk.

“Walk,” she says.

“Walk,” he repeats.

He puts the pack on his back, light without her forty-pound-bundle inside. She holds his hand for her first few steps into the brush and then is OK on her own. The sound of the river gets louder. Nos hears voices. He stops. Listens. The heavy machinery of a boat. Ten-to-one a Revelation boat.

“Naomi, wait here.” She stops and folds her arms around her knees. She instantly recognizes the severity of his tone. Whenever she hears him say her full name, there is no time for play.

Nos creeps toward the noise, lightening his footsteps. The river comes into view. The Revelation boat is familiar to Nos—an RIB—A Rigid-hull Inflatable Boat: a charcoal gray powerhouse of a boat that could transport eight and go over forty-five knots at top speed. The RIB hovers above their makeshift raft.

Two Revelation soldiers in tall boots with fingers on AR-15 triggers investigate the raft. They act like armed cops. They wear the camo tans of desert soldiers. Nos misses the days when police wore blue. He misses his ridiculous NYPD van. Misses Leila and Ghost, Face and Killah.
Tommy, too
.

One slings his rifle over his back and opens their pack of supplies. The other stands in shallow water looking through yellow goggles at the path to Nos and Naomi’s campsite. The lead officer stokes the trampled trail as if it were a dying fire. Stray birdcalls resonate in the stillness. The water is opaque and lifeless like a sheet of black ice.

Nos’ gunshot shatters the silence.

The lead soldier’s head blows out the back of his skull. Nos bolts and pulls and hits the next. The headless twins stagger in sync. Spurts arch from their necks. They are dead, but their hearts still pump blood. Bodies fall and splash into the shallow water, and waves reach the embankment and lap at Nos’ feet.

Too easy
. Nos isn’t sure whether he means the execution or his ease at executing two Americans in American uniforms.

Blind gunfire erupts from the boat’s mounted turret. The gunman can’t see Nos just as Nos can’t see him. The power of the boat gun is dangerous, so Nos hangs his jacket on a tree and relocates. The gunman is blocked off by some enclosure on the deck. Nos can’t see him.

Nos unsheathes his knife from his ankle. He puts the knife between his teeth and within moments he is submerged without a ripple. He swims deep and under the boat. When Nos hits the air he is beside the boat. The gunfire explodes in the water, bullets tunneling though the depths. Nos flips a short grappling hook deck-side, catching the railing. He pulls himself up the line and walks the side of the boat. He creeps along the deck. The gunman blasts away as if trying to kill his own shadow. The gunman stops, looks, listens, but he cannot hear Nos as he has blasted himself deaf. Nos grips the gunman’s forehead and slits a bloody smile through his throat.