Zone One Part 3

He learned to keep still, ease into a sleep shallow enough to still perceive and react to peril, practicing a quick jungle swing/running/landing combo in case one or more of them looked up and saw him, which they never did. They never came when you were vigilant; they came for you when you had one foot in the past, recollecting a dead notion of safety. Way he saw it, if you were going to get surrounded, you were going to get surrounded-if your luck went that way, it didn't matter if you were up an oak or in a colonial revival.

The first time he'd shared his tree affinity with another survivor, she said, "So what? Everybody sleeps in the trees from time to time." They'd all done the same things during the miseries. Manhattan was a template for other feral cities and Mark Spitz was a sort of template, too, he'd figured out. The stories were the same, whether Last Night enveloped them on Long Island or in Lancaster or Louisville. The close calls, the blind foraging, the accretion of loss. Half starved on the roof of the local real estate office, crouching so they wouldn't be seen from the street and have the ravenous dead clot around the only exit. Contorted in a stainless-steel restaurant cabinet and waiting for morning to break, when it was time to split for the next evanescent refuge. Listening, ever listening for footsteps. The insomniac's brutal scenario had become the encompa.s.sing reality across the planet. There were hours when every last person on Earth thought they were the last person on Earth, and it was precisely this thought of final, irrevocable isolation that united them all. Even if they didn't know it. ravenous dead clot around the only exit. Contorted in a stainless-steel restaurant cabinet and waiting for morning to break, when it was time to split for the next evanescent refuge. Listening, ever listening for footsteps. The insomniac's brutal scenario had become the encompa.s.sing reality across the planet. There were hours when every last person on Earth thought they were the last person on Earth, and it was precisely this thought of final, irrevocable isolation that united them all. Even if they didn't know it.

Kaitlyn said, "Can you not do that in here? h.e.l.lo-secondhand smoke kills."

Mark Spitz wondered how Gary would handle changing these common Spanish phrases for use with his dependable "we." "Gary, you gonna catch a ride on that sub to get to your island?"

Gary removed his headset. "If we have to. We can get a.s.signed no problem, all the stuff we've done out here for them."

"You probably have to be in the navy," Kaitlyn said.

"Half the navy's been eaten. We're not worried. We'll swab the decks, whatever." He replaced his headphones and loudly added, "Soon as we get to the island, we're done climbing stairs."

Gary wouldn't spill which island he had in mind: "You'll tell everybody and then it will be ruined." Mark Spitz caught him reaching for Spain guidebooks on two occasions, Gary about to furtively pluck them off bookcases in silent apartments before aborting the mission, so he had discounted the landma.s.ses and archipelagoes of the lower hemisphere. The Mediterranean, then. It was hard to argue with the logic of the Island die-hards and their sun-drenched dreams of carefree living once every meter inside the beach line had been swept. The ocean was a beautiful wall, that most majestic barricade. Living would be easy. They'd make furniture out of coconuts, forget technology, have litters of untamed children who said adorable things like, "Daddy, what's 'on demand'?"

In practice, something always went wrong. The Carolinas, for example. Someone snuck back to the mainland for penicillin or scotch, or a boatful of aspirants rowed ash.o.r.e bearing a stricken member of their party they refused to leave behind, sad orange life vests encircling their heaving chests. The new micro-societies inevitably imploded, on the island getaways, in reclaimed prisons, at the mountaintop ski lodge accessible only by sabotaged funicular, in the underground survivalist hideouts finally summoned to utility. The rules broke down. The leaders exposed mental deficits through a series of misguided edicts and whims. "To be totally fair to both parties, we should cut this baby in half," the chief declared, clad in insipid handmade regalia, and then it actually happened, the henchman cut the baby in half. s.e.x, the new codes of f.u.c.king left them confused. Miscreants pilfered a bean or two above their allotted five beans when no one was looking and the sentence at the trial left everyone more than a tad disillusioned. Bad luck came to call in the guise of a river of the dead or human raiders rumbling up the lone access road despite the strategically arranged camouflage brush. He'd seen this firsthand during the long months. People are people. scotch, or a boatful of aspirants rowed ash.o.r.e bearing a stricken member of their party they refused to leave behind, sad orange life vests encircling their heaving chests. The new micro-societies inevitably imploded, on the island getaways, in reclaimed prisons, at the mountaintop ski lodge accessible only by sabotaged funicular, in the underground survivalist hideouts finally summoned to utility. The rules broke down. The leaders exposed mental deficits through a series of misguided edicts and whims. "To be totally fair to both parties, we should cut this baby in half," the chief declared, clad in insipid handmade regalia, and then it actually happened, the henchman cut the baby in half. s.e.x, the new codes of f.u.c.king left them confused. Miscreants pilfered a bean or two above their allotted five beans when no one was looking and the sentence at the trial left everyone more than a tad disillusioned. Bad luck came to call in the guise of a river of the dead or human raiders rumbling up the lone access road despite the strategically arranged camouflage brush. He'd seen this firsthand during the long months. People are people.

Now the big groups were in again: the elite antsy to drop their p.a.w.ns, and the p.a.w.ns hungry for purpose after so long without instructions. One day Mark Spitz looked around and found he no longer knew each person in camp, how they had arrived, who they'd lost-suddenly this settlement had become a community. Buffalo implemented food-distribution networks, specialized scavenger teams, work details keyed to antediluvian skill sets, and the survivors had something to hold in their hands besides the make-s.h.i.+ft weapons they had nicknamed and pathetically conversed with in the small hours. The leaders toiled over the details of the paradigm-s.h.i.+fting enterprises like Zone One. So tentative bureaucracy rose from the amino-acid pools of madness, per its custom.

Mark Spitz had to admit that he preferred things now that Buffalo was in charge, replicating the old governmental structures. He liked the regular meals, for one thing: beef jerky and room-temperature high-fructose colas had devastated his insides.

Others resisted the transition back. Sometimes the soldiers had to convince a well-armed doomsday cult that it was safe to come out from behind the fortified hatch, or rough up some hippies to get them to come off the farm, hydroponic breakthrough or no hydroponic breakthrough, but it seemed to work, the return of the old laws. In reconstruction, you knew where you stood. Others resisted the transition back. Sometimes the soldiers had to convince a well-armed doomsday cult that it was safe to come out from behind the fortified hatch, or rough up some hippies to get them to come off the farm, hydroponic breakthrough or no hydroponic breakthrough, but it seemed to work, the return of the old laws. In reconstruction, you knew where you stood.

His arrival at Fort Wonton was a deep immersion into the reanimated system. After finis.h.i.+ng his tour of Central Park, the pilot beat it south over the crest of midtown edifices. From above, Mark Spitz registered the flaws in the skyline, the gaps, the misbegotten architecture of some of the specimens, the cheerless monotony of the gla.s.s surfaces. They did not seem so magnificent from above; they were pathetic, not a brigade charging the sky in unchecked ambition but a runty gang stunted and stymied. A botched ascension. The other pa.s.senger was similarly unmoved, for different reasons. He didn't speak the entire trip or acknowledge Mark Spitz's presence. He wore a smart black suit, spy sungla.s.ses, and rested the black cylinder that was chained to his wrist in his lap, petting it slowly from time to time. He barely looked out the window save for the periodic robotic glance, followed by a nod, as if comparing his mental track of their journey with the landmark evidence below.

When the chopper touched down on the bank the man with the cylinder was met by two men in similar dress, similarly mute. Mark Spitz was invisible to them and vice versa: he never again saw the agents of this hush-hush division during his tour of duty in Zone One. He presumed they operated out of an anonymous building they had requisitioned, or in a government complex that had bided the disaster, alive with the hum of its sublevel generators.

As for Mark Spitz, the pilot gave him a thumbs-up, took off, and stranded him in the middle of the bright reflective paint of the landing X. He felt as if his ride had forgotten to pick him up at the airport or train station, and he decided that he was more far gone than he thought for this comparison to occur to him. A walk to the edge of the roof and the sight of the beautiful wall cured him of disappointment. He'd been granted a glimpse on the approach, whirring over the desiccated skels writhing on the sidewalk in their mindless pantomime, then over that other territory beyond the wall, the human side, but it was different up close. The machine gunners strafed and perforated the intermittent skels from their catwalk nests, the beefy crane operators clawed up the sopping corpses and plunked them in cherry-red biohazard bins. The snipers lounged on scattered rooftops, taking potshots up Broadway and goofing off. This was real live human business even though only a thin concrete wall separated them from the plague and its tortured puppets. The world was divided between the wasteland he had roamed for so long and this place, loud and rude, cool and industrious, the front line of the new order. He put aside his petulance over his meager welcome. This was chicken soup. the landing X. He felt as if his ride had forgotten to pick him up at the airport or train station, and he decided that he was more far gone than he thought for this comparison to occur to him. A walk to the edge of the roof and the sight of the beautiful wall cured him of disappointment. He'd been granted a glimpse on the approach, whirring over the desiccated skels writhing on the sidewalk in their mindless pantomime, then over that other territory beyond the wall, the human side, but it was different up close. The machine gunners strafed and perforated the intermittent skels from their catwalk nests, the beefy crane operators clawed up the sopping corpses and plunked them in cherry-red biohazard bins. The snipers lounged on scattered rooftops, taking potshots up Broadway and goofing off. This was real live human business even though only a thin concrete wall separated them from the plague and its tortured puppets. The world was divided between the wasteland he had roamed for so long and this place, loud and rude, cool and industrious, the front line of the new order. He put aside his petulance over his meager welcome. This was chicken soup.

The stairwell door opened on the controlled mania of a military operation in full swing. He'd served on the new bases before and taken orders in the mobile trailers of the ad hoc HQs, but on the island it was different. It felt like a city, as if order did not terminate at the electric fence but strode forth, extending up every avenue and inside each building. The city was back in teeming business behind every bleak window and street entrance. He'd soon take it for granted, when he returned to Wonton for check-in and turned a corner to suddenly find himself on living streets. In the hallway, he squeezed past soldiers, clerks, and officers. He had yet to pa.r.s.e the hierarchy. Comms squealed and buzzed behind closed doors. Pictographs and signs on the walls hectored about sanitation procedures and vandalism edicts in Buffalo's pet font. He stood in the middle of the stream, pack dangling in his hand, as he listened to conversation phase in and out. Noise, fabulous noise. as he listened to conversation phase in and out. Noise, fabulous noise.

Three privates sn.i.g.g.e.red as Mark Spitz blinked in the current, a hick stupefied by the bright lights of the big city. He was dressed in an old SWAT uniform taken from a locker in a Bridgeport police station, back in accursed Connecticut. When off duty, the civilians working the Northeast Corridor wore old cop gear to distinguish them from the regular army, as if their general conduct and deportment did not suffice. He'd sewn up parts of it over the months, poorly. "Hey, you missed a spot," one of the soldiers jeered, lobbing the standard sweeper joke. As in, broom. He'd heard it before.

Fort Wonton's nerve center was an old bank. The owners had changed over the years in the inevitable consolidations, liquidations, and takeovers, but the building still stood, a tiny granite hut among the furious high-story construction in downtown over the last hundred years. The offices overlooked the main intersection of the wall, Broadway and Ca.n.a.l.

A soldier carrying a stack of folders whistled. "You Spitz?"

Fabio led Mark Spitz to the office. When he saw his new charge flinch at a sudden round of machine-gun fire, Fabio told him, "They usually come in three waves these days. Kinda regular, so we call it Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner." The artillery increased for a short burst. "That there," he said, "is Lunch."

The Lieutenant's office had eastern and northern exposure, and perhaps at one time enjoyed a healthy wash of morning light, but the skysc.r.a.pers and the sun's reluctance to bless the zone surely extinguished that phenomenon. Maps of different segments of the Zone hung on the walls, covered in incomprehensible marks, tinted different hues, and the old, varnished desks made Mark Spitz think he'd wandered into a World War II campaign, on another island in the Pacific. The ceilings were twelve feet tall, and the large half-moon windows overlooked the wall. A ponytailed soldier prowled lazily across the scaffolding, looking at something or someone at the foot of the barricade, on the other side. She took a quick shot, shook her body like a wet dog, and stretched. ponytailed soldier prowled lazily across the scaffolding, looking at something or someone at the foot of the barricade, on the other side. She took a quick shot, shook her body like a wet dog, and stretched.

People carried themselves differently in the thrall of PASD. Per Herkimer, each was marked. Everyone he saw walked around with a psychological limp, with a collapsed shoulder here or a disobedient, half-shut eyelid there, and that current favorite, the allover crumpling, as if the soul were imploding or the mind sucking the extremities into itself. Mark Spitz sported this last manifestation from time to time, in maudlin moods, only unwrenching when adrenaline straightened him out. Anyone with perfect posture was faking it, overcompensating for entrenched trauma. In the Lieutenant's case, the man's movements were marked by a distinct reluctance, the slightest gesture requiring a hesitation before it could be completed-it needed to be vetted, triple-checked before morose execution. The input could not be trusted, as if the logic of the lost world were struggling to rea.s.sert itself: Surely this is not happening.

He spotted Mark Spitz and his hand ratcheted up to a slow come-hither wave. "Sit, sit, sit," he said. His thumb was pressed to his temple and his index finger was embedded in the middle of his brow as he squinted at his desk.

"Have your file right here," the Lieutenant said. "On sponsored paper-they browbeat some recycling magnate into giving the okay. Writing on paper like in the Stone Age. Used to be everything was in the cloud, little puffy data floating here and there. Now we're back to paper. You hear people talking, they miss cable TV, basketball, they miss local organic greens cold-washed three times. I miss the cloud. It was all of me up there. The necessary docs and e-mails and key photographs. The proof." He coughed into his fist. "Now it's evaporated. Least we still have the old-fas.h.i.+oned clouds. What about you?"

"Me what, sir?"

"What do you miss?"

Mark Spitz sat up straight. "Traffic."

"And where do you fall on the question of c.u.mulus versus cirrus?"

"The puffy ones."

"c.u.mulus! Has its plus sides, the Rorschach thing, but I'm a cirrus man born and bred. Can't beat a coherent layer of cirrus, self-organized, covering the sky. Sunset, bottle of s.h.i.+raz, and the usual double entendres? The way we used to do it. Nonetheless, I see where you're coming from, young man."

The Lieutenant glanced between the file and Mark Spitz to confirm the man before him. As the Lieutenant talked, his manic delivery gave counterpoint to the physical hesitancy. "Says here you did a good job mopping up I-95, adjusted to the transition from camp life to active duty. Except for an incident on a bridge? Some people, you know. But you made it out, that's the important thing, right? 'The mighty Phoenix shall spread its wings.' What do I call you?"

"Mark Spitz is fine," he said. It was the truth. "It's caught on."

"Wanted to make sure. People like to be called what they like to be called. Served under Corporal Kinder?"

"Yes, sir."

"f.u.c.king idiot. Part of the brain trust working on phase one around here, forgot to cap the island."

Mark Spitz had heard tell of the so-called technical difficulties, but he wanted the Lieutenant's description of it. He was starting to like this character. He'd been forced to endure such a low variety of PASD in Happy Acres-a host of inappropriate staring, unabated drooling, and compulsive finger-sniffing-that the man's almost sophisticated strain was refres.h.i.+ng. Urbane and citified compared to that b.u.mpkin sniveling.

"We have to quarantine the island," the Lieutenant said, "so we can clean it out. The subways, the bridges, tunnels. Secret exits most people don't know about. Civilians anyway, but we do, we have the maps. All kinds of holes in the island of Manhattan. It's startling. They do the big sweep of Zone One, guns blazing, turkey shoot, put the wall up, but then they notice something. Every day there are more and more skels up at the wall. The marines cut them down-you saw the .50-.50s on your way in. But still. Proper ordnance is not the point. Everybody's, What the f.u.c.k. have the maps. All kinds of holes in the island of Manhattan. It's startling. They do the big sweep of Zone One, guns blazing, turkey shoot, put the wall up, but then they notice something. Every day there are more and more skels up at the wall. The marines cut them down-you saw the .50-.50s on your way in. But still. Proper ordnance is not the point. Everybody's, What the f.u.c.k.

"They finally have this big confab, right down the hall in fact, General Carter's down from Buffalo and he wants to know what the problem is, where they're all coming from. Because there's too many to only come from uptown. Then one of the bright boys asks, 'Is it possible they're using the George Was.h.i.+ngton Bridge, maybe?' Like they're commuting from Jersey. Then it hits them. They didn't shut it down above Ca.n.a.l. All that s.h.i.+t is still wide open. Lincoln Tunnel, GWB, Triborough, all of it. Plum forgot. All these skels visiting the Big City like they did before all the s.h.i.+t went down. Piling into tour buses for a Broadway matinee."

"Wow."

"But by this time the Army Corps is redeployed on that crazy s.h.i.+t they're cooking up in Baltimore, and we're not going to get the manpower to block uptown for months. The marines tasked elsewhere, too. Crazy. Buffalo's att.i.tude is, Let the sweepers do their thing and then we'll fix that little glitch when we start on Zone Two. In the old days, we'd have a court-martial, but good old Tattinger, the guy in charge of this cl.u.s.terf.u.c.k, got his face eaten off a week later, so there's that I guess." He shook his head. Laboriously, as if commanding the muscles one by one. "You don't have to call me 'sir,' by the way. You're a civilian. We work for you, although some of them have forgotten that around here."

The sudden menace of gunfire interrupted. He talked over it. "You have a lot of experience with stragglers?" he asked. "That wasn't your bailiwick out on the Corridor."

"Same as anyone else. You can't help it, being out there. Pop 'em and drop 'em." That easy vernacular.

"Where was your first?"

The question surprised him. No one asked questions like that. Mark Spitz had been navigating repulsive Connecticut. Behind a half-built housing development there was a field that had been chewed up by dozers to make room for another line of houses. At the far side of the field a highway ran north-south, and that was his day's mission, make it a few paces up his map. He saw the man standing in the middle of the dirt. At first he thought it was a scarecrow, it was so still, even though it eschewed stereotypical scarecrow stance and this was no farm. The figure's right arm stretched to grasp the sky. Mark Spitz waited for him to move. He scanned the territory, then tried to get the man's attention in that moronic stage whisper he used so much in those early days. If it was a skel, he'd kill it; he didn't see any others around. That was the rule: Don't leave them around to infect other people if you can get away with it.

He crept toward him. Mark Spitz was in a baseball-bat phase and he got his slugger grip ready. The figure was an older man, dwindling inside his red polo s.h.i.+rt and khaki pants. A string trailed from his hand, leading to a roughed-up box kite that had been dragged a great, difficult distance from the look of it. Was the man in shock? Mark Spitz didn't know if the guy had shrunk from malnutrition or the plague. He didn't want to know, actually. He gave the thing's shoulder a pro forma shake. He'd abandoned his share of crippled survivors. Couldn't save everyone.

The man's mind had been eliminated. He didn't stir when Mark Spitz snapped his fingers in his ears, blink at the stimuli. The man's gaze, if such a barren thing could be called that, was leveled at a void above the horizon. Any activity or process in him was directed at pouring some undetectable message into that spot in the sky. Mark Spitz shook his shoulder, prepared to jump away if necessary. What did he see there?

He abandoned the man in the field. Then it was like in the old days when he came across some energetic new fad, a nouveau jacket or complicated haircut: He started seeing them everywhere, sitting patiently at a bus stop or holding a leaf up to the sun or standing in the field they'd played in as a child, before they grew up, before the dozers. When he mentioned these creatures to a band he hooked up with for a brief time, they gave him the term: stragglers. "They're all messed up." old days when he came across some energetic new fad, a nouveau jacket or complicated haircut: He started seeing them everywhere, sitting patiently at a bus stop or holding a leaf up to the sun or standing in the field they'd played in as a child, before they grew up, before the dozers. When he mentioned these creatures to a band he hooked up with for a brief time, they gave him the term: stragglers. "They're all messed up."

Mark Spitz related a version of this to the Lieutenant, who stroked his chin skeptically. "Buffalo's still trying to explain what makes one person become your regular pain-in-the-a.s.s skel," the Lieutenant said, "and what makes another into a straggler. That one percent. Buffalo's not really known for explaining s.h.i.+t. How they can walk around for so long just feeding off their own bodies. Why they don't bleed out. Buffalo will tell you that the plague converts the human body into the perfect vehicle for spreading copies of itself. Thanks for the news flash. But what's up with this aberrant one percent?"

Mark Spitz said, "I don't know." He could have added his own questions. How come, rain or s.h.i.+ne, the stragglers stand at their posts? Hottest day of the year, monsoon, they're standing there foul and oblivious. Caught in a web.

"They're mistakes," the Lieutenant said. "They don't do what they're supposed to. You know that super-secret bunker in England? Those guys are the real deal, three more n.o.bel Prize winners on tap than Buffalo. They've been studying this thing, squinting at the microbe, cutting it up, and all the British guys can come up with is that the stragglers are mistakes. n.o.body knows anything."

Mark Spitz turned to the movement at the border of his vision. Outside the window, ash had begun to fall in drowsy flakes.

The Lieutenant said, "You figure it out, you get back to me. Personally, I like them. Not supposed to say it out loud, but I think they've got it right and we're the ninety-nine percent that have it all wrong." He waited for Mark Spitz to turn away from the window. He tapped his desk, lightened the register of his voice, and the new sweeper rejoined him. "Who knows? Maybe it'll work. The symbolism. If you can bring back New York City, you can bring back the world. Clear out Zone One, then the next, up to Fourteenth Street, Thirty-fourth, Times Square on up. Those sweet crosstown bus routes. I used to take the bus all the time when I lived here, to see the Famous New York Characters in all their glory. Spitting, scratching, talking in voices. Them, not me." He batted at a fat fly. "We'll take it back, barricade by barricade. Tell me, Mark Spitz, are you known for your optimistic disposition?" window. He tapped his desk, lightened the register of his voice, and the new sweeper rejoined him. "Who knows? Maybe it'll work. The symbolism. If you can bring back New York City, you can bring back the world. Clear out Zone One, then the next, up to Fourteenth Street, Thirty-fourth, Times Square on up. Those sweet crosstown bus routes. I used to take the bus all the time when I lived here, to see the Famous New York Characters in all their glory. Spitting, scratching, talking in voices. Them, not me." He batted at a fat fly. "We'll take it back, barricade by barricade. Tell me, Mark Spitz, are you known for your optimistic disposition?"

"Sure."

"I can tell." The Lieutenant smiled. "That wall out there has to work. The barricade is the only metaphor left in this mess. The last one standing. Keep chaos out, order in. Chaos knocks on the door and bangs on the wood and gets a claw in. Will the boards hold until morning? You know what I'm talking about if you made it this far. There are small barricades-across the apartment door, then a whole house nailed up-and then we have the bigger barricades. The camp. The settlement. The city. We work our way to bigger walls." Across the room, Fabio tried to catch his attention, but the Lieutenant dismissed the man with a flick. From his a.s.sistant's expression, he was accustomed to his boss's rhetorical flights. "One naturally thinks of the siege, but we overlook that because the word takes away our agency. Sure, I can play that game. We are safe inside from what is outside. We had our modern conveniences, the machines at the end of the power strip that kept away the primitive. I had my beloved cloud, you had yours.

"I notice you are not staring vacantly at your palms. Good. Sometimes they s.h.i.+p these mopes in here, they've had their souls scooped out. They wash out pretty quick. The hard way. Now I screen everybody who comes in. See what kind of business they got behind the eyes. You pa.s.sed the quiz. You're still alive. Congratulations. Even got all your fingers. Which is a big plus in this line of work."

The Lieutenant held up a hand to his a.s.sistant, acquiescing. "We're almost done and then you can go. I know the first thing people want to do when they get to Zone One is walk around. See the sights." Outside, the lunchtime fusillade erupted anew. He rolled his eyes. "You get used to it. Spend some time here and you get used to it. What made you volunteer? You don't like farming? I come from a family of farmers."

Mark Spitz didn't know in that moment. It would take some time in the Zone for him to discover the reason. He said, "Just trying to do my part."

"Good answer! That can-do pheenie att.i.tude. Personally, I say wake me when you bring back cilantro. Got any family?"

He thought of Uncle Lloyd, but what was there to say. "I don't know."

"Mostly joking with that one. I've been thinking about how in the old days, we had these special-ops dudes who did all the bats.h.i.+t stuff. Parachute into hostile territory, baroque wetwork, tiptoeing into the tent to garrote the warlord-pretend I didn't say that-and these bats.h.i.+t killing machines were always single guys, single men and women, no families. What do they have to lose, right? But who has a family anymore? Everybody's dead. All those vacation pictures floating in the cloud. Zip. Been thinking about that. Now we're all bats.h.i.+t killing machines, could be a motherf.u.c.king granny wielding knitting needles. I digress."

The Lieutenant hesitated, then nodded wearily. "What we have here in Zone One is not a suicide mission. Just a bunch of stragglers. Welcome to the team."

The Lieutenant stared at him and Mark Spitz wondered if he was dismissed. Then the man clicked on once more. "You bunk where you want in the grid. Take your pick. Try not to break anything. They're really big on that now. Sundays you come back here for check-in. Besides that, pop 'em, bag 'em, drag 'em. Any questions?"

"Seems pretty straightforward," Mark Spitz said. "This has been very informative." Fabio handed him some paperwork. He was pulling the door shut behind him when he heard, "Think it might rain today. That's what the old clouds say."

It did rain. It had been raining pretty much constantly since that day. At the window of the conference room, Mark Spitz looked out into a solemn nigrescence that was interrupted only by a white dome of light leeching out of Fort Wonton. The light climbed up a few stories on the Ca.n.a.l buildings like mold. He visualized the hard-core military lamps bleaching the concrete wall to sun-beaten bone white while the night-s.h.i.+ft gunners sat in their nests or patrolled the catwalk, listening to the dead songs on their digital music devices. The cranes motionless, maybe being hosed off with sterilizing compound by Disposal. Tomorrow at Breakfast the machines would whine over the wall and clutch the corpses in their firm metal grip and drop them on our side.

Kaitlyn and Gary slept. He resisted the urge to tug Kaitlyn's paperback out of her hand-with her reflexes, she'd probably stab him in the eye. Still awake in a shallow layer of her mind. Mark Spitz had pretended to be asleep when his father used to check on him when he was a kid, but he was always awake before the door even opened. His brain processed the distinctive think-I'll-peek-in-on-my-offspring gait out in the hall and a clerk in his awareness woke him in time for the turn of the doork.n.o.b, the creak at ten degrees, the second creak at fifty-five degrees, and the sliver of hall light prying under his eyelids. He fell asleep knowing someone watched over him.

Gary and Kaitlyn would sleep until their personal danger detectors went off or morning arrived. They were exemplary sleepers, not that kind of pheenie who was up all night rewinding their private pageant of horrors. So much more efficient to be obsessed with such things when awake, to save it for when it might be converted into fuel. obsessed with such things when awake, to save it for when it might be converted into fuel.

Who was his family now? A specter of an uncle floating half a mile uptown in a blue building. He had these two mutts. Mark Spitz lost his parents on Last Night, and Gary's brothers perished in that initial wave as well, when the triplets joined the posse handling the Incident at the Local High School. This when the villagers still believed they could set up a quarantine, and it would work. That tooth-fairy period.

The PTA meeting went worse than usual, even by the deplorable standards of Milton High School. The engaged, the outraged, and the merely trying to fill the blank s.p.a.ce that was their lives had convened to argue over that spring's big scandal, when one of the lesbian seniors announced her intention to bring her girlfriend to the prom. It had hit the national media as a fully operational event, with a berth on cable network chyron, pro-and-con expert panels, and mortifying nightly-news graphics. Lawsuits had been filed, the late-night wits bon-motted, and the Milton community wanted to see how to prevent such a thing in the future.

At any rate, the a.s.sistant princ.i.p.al had been infected the previous afternoon while breaking up a fight between two elderly ladies in the parking lot of a discount-sneaker chain and had been lurking around the bio labs all day. Attracted by the noise, he interrupted the proceedings with brio. When the police arrived they locked the doors of the premises per the measures suggested by the web videos that had been uploaded by the government about the emerging epidemic, segregating the bitten from the unbitten, employing the gymnasium and a.s.sembly, respectively, and waiting for further instructions from the authorities. Who by this time were not even listening to the voice-mail messages from the less consequential munic.i.p.alities, let alone dispatching a scramble team. It wouldn't have mattered anyway. It was too late. It had always been too late.

Gary and his brothers were giddy over their deputization, only slightly deflated when told there weren't enough badges to go around. They'd b.u.t.ted heads with Sheriff Dooley and his officers plenty of times, sure, but in these new circ.u.mstances it was easy to see that they were good men to have by your side, s.h.i.+tkickers. They didn't take any mess, a trait that had hampered their upward mobility in former days but now provided opportunity. The brothers were even issued guns; Gary held on to his for almost a year in the following madness, before he accidentally dropped it while hightailing it out of a disused coal mine in South Carolina, no time to stop.

The guards hadn't heard anything from inside the school for twelve hours when the sheriff decided to go in. They peered past the wire-reinforced gla.s.s set in the thick inst.i.tutional doors and into the halls they'd bullied through and grab-a.s.sed in during their teenage glory days. Saw nothing but shadows. Was this even the same place they remembered? In mistaking this place for something they knew, they undid themselves. For they were now in an entirely different country. It should be noted that as a general rule, the early rookie posses were not as successful as the later posses. Steep learning curve.

As for Kaitlyn, she never saw her parents again after she departed on her trip to see her best gal pal Amy in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Another member of their college-rooming group drove over from Philly and it turned out they hadn't changed all that much since graduation. The same dull boys skulked around, indulged or ignored, and the trio didn't have to force the in-jokes at all. They'd lost sleep fearing it would be otherwise. At the end of the weekend, however, the Sunset Dayliner did not return her to home and hearth. The train didn't budge at all after the conductor got a report about the incident in the dining car and pulled the brakes outside Crawfordsville to wait for the National Guard. She was stuck. Untold misfortunes later, she was in New York City.

Mark Spitz turned off the lamp. Outside, one of the potbelly transport planes cut the sky, red lights trailing. Grunts and experts rocked on the bucket seats, en route to where? Buffalo, or a make-s.h.i.+ft landing field outside one of the camps? Bearing their disparate ammunition.

In the days following his arrival in the Zone, he'd mulled over the Lieutenant's theory of the barricades. Yes, they were the only vessel strong enough to contain our faith. But then there are the personal barricades, Mark Spitz thought. Since the first person met the second person. The ones that keep other people out and our madness in so we can continue to live. That's the way we've always done it. It's what this country was built on. The plague merely made it more literal, spelled it out in case you didn't get it before. How were we to get through the day without our barricades? But look at him now, he thought. They were his family, Kaitlyn and Gary, and he was theirs. He owned nothing else besides them, and the features of his dead that he superimposed on the faces of the skels, those shoddy rubber masks he pulled out of his pockets. He knew it was pathetic to carry them with him, a lethal sentimentality, but it warded off the forbidden thought. The faces of his dead were part of his barricade, stuck on pikes atop the length of the concrete.

He volunteered for Zone One while the rest of the wreckers on the Corridor remained because he was from around these parts. The lights of the broken city were few these days. A dim constellation hovered around the wall, smaller halos in the windows of the buildings that personnel staked out in far-flung Wonton, and in silent buildings across the downtown where drones like Mark Spitz cupped their palms around their little flames. North of the wall was darkness and the dead that sc.r.a.ped through that darkness.

The city could be restored. When they were finished it could be something of what it had been. They would force a resemblance upon it, these new citizens come to fire up the metropolis.

Their new lights p.r.i.c.king the blackness here and there in increments until it was the old skyline again, ingenious and defiant. The new lights seeping through the black veil like beads of blood pus.h.i.+ng through gauze until it was suffused. Their new lights p.r.i.c.king the blackness here and there in increments until it was the old skyline again, ingenious and defiant. The new lights seeping through the black veil like beads of blood pus.h.i.+ng through gauze until it was suffused.

Yes, he'd always wanted to live in New York.

SAt.u.r.dAY

"The age demanded an image of its accelerated grimace."

Initially the dreams, when safe nights permitted them, favored a cla.s.sic anxiety paradigm. He was enmeshed in the inst.i.tutional structures of his previous existence-in school, one of his blank jobs-and the other students and the teachers, fellow employees, and bosses were dead. Dead in a precipitous state of decay, winnowed by the plague: bones visibly gliding under taut skin at every movement, blackened gums bared when they told a joke or introduced a complicating element to the setup (the exam is today, the supervisor is on the warpath), their wounds mushy and livid. They leaked, leaked constantly from sores, eyes, ears, bites. In the dreams he was not bothered by their appearance, nor were they. They informed him that they'd all studied for the test save for him, the big a.s.signment was due after lunch and not next week, the performance review was already under way, abetted by secret cameras. Not that he'd ever had a performance review in his life-it was a neurotic curve-ball his subconscious came up with to freak him out, employing the exotic cant of bona fide grown-ups. They were not the rabid dead or stragglers. They acted pretty much the same as they had before, his best friend, his insidious science teacher, his distracted boss. Except for the plague thing, these were the dreams he'd been having for years. the same as they had before, his best friend, his insidious science teacher, his distracted boss. Except for the plague thing, these were the dreams he'd been having for years.

The dreams changed once he made it to his first big settlement. He was no longer late for the final exam of a cla.s.s he didn't know he'd enrolled in, or about to deliver the big presentation to higher-ups when he suddenly realized he left the only copy in the backseat of the taxi. His dreams unfurled in the theater of the mundane. There was no pulse-quickening escalation of events, no stakes to mention. He took the train to work. He waited for his pepperoni slice's extraction from the pizza joint's hectic oven. He jawed with his girlfriend. And all the supporting characters were dead. The dead said, "Let's stay in and get a movie," "You want fries with that?," "Do you know what time it is?," while flies skittered on their faces searching for a soft flap to bury eggs in, shreds of human meat wedged in their front teeth like fabled spinach, and their arms terminated at the elbow to showcase a white peach of bone fringed with dangling muscle and dripping tendons. He said, "Sure, let's stay in and snuggle, it's been a long day," "I'll take the side salad instead, thank you," "It's ten of five. Gets dark early this time of year."

He downward-dogged in a drop-in yoga cla.s.s as the skel next to him broke in half while essaying the pose. No one remarked upon this sight, not him, not the dead teacher, not the enthusiastic and limber dead around him, and not the bisected skel on the floral-patterned hemp mat, who flopped grotesquely through the rest of the hour like a real trooper. He got into his street clothes in the locker room as the yuppie skel beside him dragged an expensive watch over his wrist, grating the fresh scabs there. On impulse he purchased a deluxe combo juice at the cafe on the way out and decided not to say anything when the pimply skel dropped a banana slice into the blender. He hated banana. He drank it anyway, blowing into the striped straw to dislodge a plug of pulp, and stepped out to the sidewalk into the rush-hour stream of the dead on their way home, the paralegals, mohels, resigned temps, bike messengers, and slump-shouldered ma.s.sage therapists, the panoply of citizens in the throes of their slow decay. The plague was a meticulous craftsman, dabbing effects with deliberation. They were falling apart but it would take a long time until the piece was finished. Only then could it sign its name. Until then, they walked. on their way home, the paralegals, mohels, resigned temps, bike messengers, and slump-shouldered ma.s.sage therapists, the panoply of citizens in the throes of their slow decay. The plague was a meticulous craftsman, dabbing effects with deliberation. They were falling apart but it would take a long time until the piece was finished. Only then could it sign its name. Until then, they walked.

He took the subway to the commuter rail, curling his fingers around the pole still warm from the skel who had grasped it moments before. In the advertis.e.m.e.nts lodged just above eye level, airbrushed heads of the dead hawked trade schools and remedies. Some of the dead entered the train politely and others were quite rude as they shouldered into the car when he tried to gain the platform. Everybody trying to eke it home. On the commuter platform he made sure his monthly pa.s.s was secured in the nook in his wallet and he pictured the night ahead. Order in from his go-to takeout spot, pop open one of the beers, and watch the reality show he'd DVR'd three days before. He woke up as the train left the tunnel and they were out of the underground.

The only unsettling thing about the dream was that he'd never taken a yoga cla.s.s in his life.

This series eluded the category of nightmare. He awoke refreshed, or at least aloft in a routine state of morning dread in equilibrium for months. The new vintage of dreamscape left him feeling curiously indifferent. The dead small-talked, recited speculation over tomorrow's cold front, numbly caromed from task to task as they had before, but they were sick. He recalled a theory of dreams from the old days that declared them wish-fulfillment, and another declaring that you are every person in your dreams, and each theory seemed equally plausible and moot and in the end he didn't spend too much time a.n.a.lyzing. He was a busy man these days.

To the next grid, and G.o.dspeed. His unit squeezed MRE bacon-and-eggs paste onto their tongues-amber with brownish-red swirls-and packed up their gear. Kaitlyn deposited her celeb bio on the windowsill, as if gifting it to the next guest at the sun-splashed resort. They almost made it to the stairwell when she remembered the motion detector. She went back for it. That happened a lot these days. It was nice to know it was there even though it hadn't sirened once since the start of their tour. swirls-and packed up their gear. Kaitlyn deposited her celeb bio on the windowsill, as if gifting it to the next guest at the sun-splashed resort. They almost made it to the stairwell when she remembered the motion detector. She went back for it. That happened a lot these days. It was nice to know it was there even though it hadn't sirened once since the start of their tour.

Their new a.s.signment was Fulton x Gold, Mixed Residential/Business, a few blocks east. It started as a no-bother drizzle but Mark Spitz pulled on his poncho on account of the ash, and the others followed suit when the rain intensified.

They progressed without speaking, still waking up on their march. Kaitlyn whistled "Stop! Can You Hear the Eagle Roar? (Theme from Reconstruction Reconstruction)," that irrepressible pheenie anthem, as they stomped through the gray puddles. "What if we get there," Gary said finally, "and they've all keeled over? They finally caught what those kill-field skels got and all we have to do is bag them from now on?" He made this offering whenever they switched grids.

"That would be nice," Mark Spitz said. The discovery of the kill fields that spring hastened the start of many a reconstruction operation. Word first arrived with the new survivors stumbling through the camp gates with their extravagant tales of meadows and mall parking lots br.i.m.m.i.n.g with the fallen dead. It wasn't as if someone had neutralized them and departed without sterilizing the area-their heads were intact, they said. The dead looked as if they'd dropped in place.

Reentry into the anterooms of civilization was always difficult, and the longer the survivors spent out there, the harder it was to come back. But even after a hot shower, sleeping like stones for twelve hours straight, and tasting the corn (everyone was quite proud of the corn harvest, and rightfully so), the refugees continued with their wild stories. Then recon units came back with confirmation, video, up and down the coast. In wide-open places, the dead were falling en ma.s.se. A high-school football field in faraway Raleigh b.u.mpy with bodies, a public park in Trenton where black flies zipped at the banquet. Buffalo sent down word of their think-tank scuttleb.u.t.t: The plague had finally, inevitably, exhausted what the human body could endure. There was a limit to the depredations, and that meant a limit to the devastation. faraway Raleigh b.u.mpy with bodies, a public park in Trenton where black flies zipped at the banquet. Buffalo sent down word of their think-tank scuttleb.u.t.t: The plague had finally, inevitably, exhausted what the human body could endure. There was a limit to the depredations, and that meant a limit to the devastation.

The reports of the scattered kill fields emerged at the same time, suggesting (according to some) a time frame for the course of infection. It was the season of encouraging dispatches. The establishment of steady communications with nations abroad, the intel traveling back and forth over the seas. Throw in the continued consolidation of the uninfected groups and clans, and the simple fact that skel attacks and sightings had diminished by all empirical measure, and one had reason to dust off the old optimism. You had only to look at the faint movement in the ashes: surely this is the American Phoenix Rising. At least that's what the T-s.h.i.+rts said, lifted from the biodegradable cardboard boxes fresh from Buffalo. Toddler sizes available.

Mark Spitz observed the reduced skel numbers firsthand. There were simply fewer of them around, the chancred losers, a blessing during his time on the Corridor in accursed Connecticut and beyond. But kill fields aside-and there were no solid numbers regarding these sundry fallen, given the general appet.i.te for a quick bonfire-no one could account for where the skels had gone. One school maintained that exposure had cut a lot of them down, the winter in its savagery. Speculation was above his pay grade, never mind that he was paid in socks and sunscreen.

Kaitlyn said, "Haven't heard of that happening in urban areas yet." She registered Gary's deflated expression and, checking her usual impulses, added, "But maybe."