Zone One Part 8

The office's digital player, enthroned on a doily in the microwave/coffeemaker nexus by the watercooler, had been playing a set of old pop and Mark Spitz was startled by the DJ's sudden bl.u.s.ter: "Hey! All you out there. Hope you're getting a chance to enjoy this suns.h.i.+ne today!" Surely there were no radio stations up yet. The DJ forecast fair skies for the rest of the afternoon, and Mark Spitz realized it was a recording of a radio block from some random afternoon before the disaster, a ghost transmission of yesterday's deals on teeth bleaching, ads for movies playing in dead theaters, and last-minute invitations to join cla.s.s-action suits. nexus by the watercooler, had been playing a set of old pop and Mark Spitz was startled by the DJ's sudden bl.u.s.ter: "Hey! All you out there. Hope you're getting a chance to enjoy this suns.h.i.+ne today!" Surely there were no radio stations up yet. The DJ forecast fair skies for the rest of the afternoon, and Mark Spitz realized it was a recording of a radio block from some random afternoon before the disaster, a ghost transmission of yesterday's deals on teeth bleaching, ads for movies playing in dead theaters, and last-minute invitations to join cla.s.s-action suits.

A new recruit Mark Spitz hadn't seen before, one of the teenagers from the camps, entered the office and dropped himself at Fabio's old desk. Distribution may be a mess right now, but Buffalo had a lot of spare parts lying around.

"We can't believe Fabio's been our man up there and we didn't even know it," Gary said.

"It's disgraceful," Kaitlyn said.

They quickly ran out of remembrances. Honestly, they didn't know him that well. "Pretty cool boss," Carl said. They waded into deep, frigid silences and drank. Carl changed the mix on the digital music player, saying, "This one's remixes." It had been rare to memorialize someone's pa.s.sing. You were on the run; you left the bodies behind to leak fluids in the sun. This was the first time since the world ended that most of them had the luxury to do things in the old style. They had little to say.

The drinks executed their mission. No Mas saluted the silhouettes on the wall, slow, catching on his gears, and Mark Spitz guessed the man was performing his Lieutenant impression for his inner audience. No Mas smiled faintly. Kaitlyn strangled a loop of hair on her index finger. She caught Mark Spitz looking at her and said, "The subway."

Seven weeks into their mission, the Lieutenant had Fabio summon them from the field. This was unprecedented, as they only returned to Wonton on Sundays and were now deep in the rhythms of their work flow, replete with Monday-morning despair, hump-day torpor, and a fragile strain of muted Friday-afternoon euphoria. The comms still worked back then, providing a tether to a mending civilization. For his part, Mark Spitz appreciated the interruption of that week's grid. Omega wormed through the intestines of a starter-apartment rental tower, and floor after floor of beige carpet, noise-permeable walls, and fingerprint-smudged doorways soured his disposition. His friends in the city lived in buildings like that, and the hallways reeked of the dead ambitions decomping behind the doors. They'd had hopes. Now the cheap, emptied construction signified the complete eradication of aspiration, all luminous notions. hump-day torpor, and a fragile strain of muted Friday-afternoon euphoria. The comms still worked back then, providing a tether to a mending civilization. For his part, Mark Spitz appreciated the interruption of that week's grid. Omega wormed through the intestines of a starter-apartment rental tower, and floor after floor of beige carpet, noise-permeable walls, and fingerprint-smudged doorways soured his disposition. His friends in the city lived in buildings like that, and the hallways reeked of the dead ambitions decomping behind the doors. They'd had hopes. Now the cheap, emptied construction signified the complete eradication of aspiration, all luminous notions.

In the dumpling house, the Lieutenant told them that Buffalo wanted them to sweep out the subway tunnels.

"I thought the marines already did that," Metz said.

"Mostly," the Lieutenant explained. When the marines landed, they'd locked up the black gates and turnstiles to the platforms. The thinking was, they'd clear out the tunnels later. But once they cottoned to the fact that the top of the island was uncapped and the northward rails were wide open, the bra.s.s grew apprehensive. Even though skel migration patterns didn't work that way, everyone started having nightmares of miles and miles of tunnels br.i.m.m.i.n.g and bursting with the dead, envisioning the uptown lines as umbral channels rerouting these very, very sick pa.s.sengers to right beneath their tamed Zone boulevards. Ghoulish faces smeared into the bars and verminous mitts clawed through the metal grating in a h.e.l.lish rendition of the worst rush hour ever, gates wrenching free from the concrete platforms...In their final mission before redeployment to the latest, more fas.h.i.+onable instability up or down the coast, the marines blocked the underground tunnels at the northern edge of the Zone, as if the Great Wall of Ca.n.a.l extended through the asphalt and deep into the Earth's crust. Then the marines swept through the downtown shadows after the trapped skels.

It was the Lieutenant's first week in the Zone. Buffalo was all paperwork; he wanted a proper posting. He led a platoon down the Lexington Avenue line. "Sketchy is the word I'd use. We'd tamed aboveground. Put them down. Underground was skel territory-as if it still belonged to the interregnum, even though it was just under our feet. Even with the subways blocked off, there was this feeling that the other end of the tunnel, its terminus, was in the dead land. Claustrophobic as h.e.l.l, despite the trolleys we had on the tracks carrying the spots-the bra.s.s had reallocated our night-vision gear for some op up north, so we had to bring our own light. You're not in the city anymore down there. It's medieval. Water streaming down the wall like a catacomb, rats running around, and then you're lurching in the pits between the tracks. The third rail's dead, but it's still creepy, like it could come on any second and zap you. paperwork; he wanted a proper posting. He led a platoon down the Lexington Avenue line. "Sketchy is the word I'd use. We'd tamed aboveground. Put them down. Underground was skel territory-as if it still belonged to the interregnum, even though it was just under our feet. Even with the subways blocked off, there was this feeling that the other end of the tunnel, its terminus, was in the dead land. Claustrophobic as h.e.l.l, despite the trolleys we had on the tracks carrying the spots-the bra.s.s had reallocated our night-vision gear for some op up north, so we had to bring our own light. You're not in the city anymore down there. It's medieval. Water streaming down the wall like a catacomb, rats running around, and then you're lurching in the pits between the tracks. The third rail's dead, but it's still creepy, like it could come on any second and zap you.

"But the main thing was never knowing what was around the next bend or how many were going to come pouring out of the dark. Guys p.i.s.sing themselves in fear, even after all they'd seen in the wasteland. To make it extra h.e.l.lish, the general had the bright idea to make us bring flamethrowers, which was fine for making human-or subhuman-torches, but there was no ventilation. When the subway's running, they got superfans going to keep the air in circulation. Halfway in, it's full of dead air down there, eyes burning from the smoke, can't breathe, skels cras.h.i.+ng at us through the flames-"

The Lieutenant paused. He wasn't selling the sweepers on their temporary rea.s.signment very well. He poured a gla.s.s of water from the plastic pitcher on the podium. "But we pulled it off. Elbow grease, American Phoenix, rah rah. Now they want you to finish it so it's a hundred percent. Do what you're doing now, pop 'n' drop whatever skels have wandered in from some maintenance conduit over the last weeks, or that one random fellow in the supply room. If any. The hard stuff has been taken care of," he said. The Lieutenant's face sketched a look of bravado Mark Spitz had not seen on the man before, so he took it to be fake.

Omega and Gamma were a.s.signed the Seventh Avenue line, Ca.n.a.l to South Ferry. The most n.o.ble of subway routes in Mark Spitz's estimation, hallowed meridian of Manhattan Island. When the two sweeper units arrived at the uptown side of Ca.n.a.l, the yellow tile of the station entrance generated a familiar calm in him. During his first teenage missions in the New York City underground, the steps leading to a subway platform offered refuge from the madness of the streets above, sparing him the skysc.r.a.pers' indictment of his shabby suburban self and the constant jostling of strangers, who cut him off, scowled at his tentative steps, tried to puncture his eyeb.a.l.l.s with their umbrella spokes and render him defenseless so they could devour him. He caught his breath on the platforms and furtively checked the transit-authority app on his phone so that no one would know he didn't have a clue of where he was going. He was a rube, but he was no tourist. One day he'd live here and be one of their tribe. Mark Spitz got out at his stop, at some part of the city he'd never been before, to complete the a.s.signment given by a website-in search of imported sneakers or limited-edition hoodies-eager to school himself in this new cranny of the city.

Back then, if the worst happened, his phone would transmit the coordinates of his murdered body to the satellite and back down to the authorities and eventually to his parents on Long Island. What a quaint notion, to die while looking for cool T-s.h.i.+rts.

The sweepers unlocked the gates and gained the platform. They did not speak. They tightened the straps of their night-vision goggles and waited for their eyes to recalibrate to a new, murky-green modality that made them into scrabbling things at the bottom of a deep-sea chasm. It was as the Lieutenant described it: a decrepit dungeon, with a slow, miasmal atmosphere and secret topography. Trevor said, "Looks like we just missed the train," and they laughed and walked over to the hooked ladder at the south end of the platform.

Gamma was a unit of mellow bandwidth, third-generation potheads to a man, who couldn't wait for the new era of marijuana tolerance sure to come in reconstruction, the legislative no-brainers and utopian buds. "When we put it all back together, we will inst.i.tutionalize joy," Foreskin said, "for the medicinal toke is the balm of oblivion." Richard Cowl, a.k.a. d.i.c.k Cowl, a.k.a. Foreskin, was Gamma's leader and a former sommelier at a high-end novelty eatery in Cambridge that specialized in offal. "Which is sort of amusing, given the skel's yen for human entrails. They're my regulars!" Even in these times of scarcity he was a vegetarian. He never sampled the exotic delicacies on his employer's menu but accomplished a mean pairing nonetheless. According to him, at any rate-pre-plague triumphs were often exaggerated, given the lack of contradicting witnesses. potheads to a man, who couldn't wait for the new era of marijuana tolerance sure to come in reconstruction, the legislative no-brainers and utopian buds. "When we put it all back together, we will inst.i.tutionalize joy," Foreskin said, "for the medicinal toke is the balm of oblivion." Richard Cowl, a.k.a. d.i.c.k Cowl, a.k.a. Foreskin, was Gamma's leader and a former sommelier at a high-end novelty eatery in Cambridge that specialized in offal. "Which is sort of amusing, given the skel's yen for human entrails. They're my regulars!" Even in these times of scarcity he was a vegetarian. He never sampled the exotic delicacies on his employer's menu but accomplished a mean pairing nonetheless. According to him, at any rate-pre-plague triumphs were often exaggerated, given the lack of contradicting witnesses.

Joshua and Trevor were the other two Gammas. The only description Joshua gave of his former life was that "I was an alcoholic, and I'm still an alcoholic." One Sunday at Wonton, Josh related how his mother flipped on Last Night and Mark Spitz almost shared his similar tale but declined. Josh didn't have the bearing of one who was going to make it to the other side; there was something taffy to him, despite the fact he'd survived this long, and to tell him the story would be like pouring coffee into a broken saucer. As for Trevor, he had been a mall security guard in the bright, prelapsarian days of shopping abundance. When they met, Gary teased that Trevor must be glad to "finally have a real gun" after his stint as a fake cop, and Trevor had replied evenly that he hadn't needed a gun in his mall rounds. He had everything he needed in his hands-Trevor was a master-level pract.i.tioner of a branch of martial arts Mark Spitz had never heard of but, after an impromptu demonstration, had become convinced of its lethal pedigree. Gamma got high every night, the minute they bivouacked for the night, "In police stations if one is handy," Foreskin said.

One of the most solemn rounds of rock-paper-scissors in human history ruled in favor of Omega: Gamma was on point.

"It's all right," Foreskin said. To draw the skels out, Josh started playing an old heavy metal song on a kazoo. The t.i.tle eluded Mark Spitz. In the video the band played a bar mitzvah dressed in thick biker leather. Top-notch anti-skel gear in retrospect, save for the exposed neck. Soon they were all humming the song, then giddily crooning it at the top their voices. "It's all right," Foreskin said. To draw the skels out, Josh started playing an old heavy metal song on a kazoo. The t.i.tle eluded Mark Spitz. In the video the band played a bar mitzvah dressed in thick biker leather. Top-notch anti-skel gear in retrospect, save for the exposed neck. Soon they were all humming the song, then giddily crooning it at the top their voices.

The Franklin Street station hove into sight when they heard a holler, back from Ca.n.a.l. Safeties clicked. The dead did not speak. Was it some misbegotten freak who'd been eking it out down here, hiding? Mark Spitz had never come across a true homesteader, but the marines had rounded up a few on their first rounds through the Zone. Citizens who'd locked themselves in insubstantial one-bedrooms and unlikely studios and somehow made it through until the soldiers came to take back the city. What must it have been like, to see the choppers after all that time, after they'd emptied the larder of hope and had only mealy, unleavened stubbornness to chew on? Marines sliding down cables, grinding up the bodies of the dead with their .50-.50s, those devils that had besieged them for so long. They were insane, most of them, and had to be pried out screaming before being taken to the Wonton medics, where the top-shelf antipsychotics awaited. One or two attacked their rescuers, shooting the soldiers in the head, unable to believe in their deliverance-and some homesteaders were no doubt mistaken for skels in turn, palsying in their PASD. There weren't many, but they did exist. Some homesteaders were still immured north of the barrier; a few managed to signal choppers and were plucked from the roofs. Perhaps others shrank from view when they heard a helicopter, content in whatever doomsday theater played out in their traumatized heads.

Omega and Gamma readied their weapons. Gary lit a cigarette. Mark Spitz thought of the old sign in the token booths: I AM THE STATION MANAGER. I AM a.s.sISTING OTHER CUSTOMERS. YOU WILL RECOGNIZE ME BY MY BURGUNDY VEST. The man identified himself, and when he got close enough Mark Spitz saw he was not wearing a burgundy vest. It wasn't some transit authority rep or bearded subterranean hermit who hailed them, but the Lieutenant, in full combat gear, the first time they'd seen him so outfitted. Their laconic boss was aboveground in Wonton; down here he was a real soldier, veteran of the calamity. Shamed, the sweepers a.s.sumed their idiosyncratic versions of combat stances. "Thought I'd tag along and get some exercise," the Lieutenant said. himself, and when he got close enough Mark Spitz saw he was not wearing a burgundy vest. It wasn't some transit authority rep or bearded subterranean hermit who hailed them, but the Lieutenant, in full combat gear, the first time they'd seen him so outfitted. Their laconic boss was aboveground in Wonton; down here he was a real soldier, veteran of the calamity. Shamed, the sweepers a.s.sumed their idiosyncratic versions of combat stances. "Thought I'd tag along and get some exercise," the Lieutenant said.

He hadn't geared up in months, "But it's like riding a bike. A h.e.l.l-bike, made out of h.e.l.l." Over whiskey the following Sunday, he confided to Mark Spitz and Kaitlyn that he'd had a bad feeling about Broadway, ever since Buffalo gave the green light.

Mark Spitz kept tripping over the crossties. He didn't like walking in the rut, where the bilge seeped into his boots, so he jumped from tie to tie like a kid in a hopscotch grid. He was paranoid about the niches cut into the wall, where a track worker might duck if caught in front of a train. Each black hole harbored a skel, each maintenance corridor was full of hostiles about to spill onto the track, the native population bursting from their shadow habitat to rout the invaders.

"We've never been on the subway before," Gary said.

"Usually you ride in train cars," Mark Spitz said.

"Do you think they'll start it up again?"

"Have to get around somehow. Zone One, Zone Two. Once they get the juice on." The subway will be reduced in the next world, stripped of its powers like some punished G.o.d. Forced to recapitulate childhood stages, when it extended through the savage city neighborhood by neighborhood, line by line.

"Queens?"

"I don't think we're sweeping Queens anytime soon," the Lieutenant said. "It's Queens. But yeah, there will be power."

"It will be nice to watch TV again," Kaitlyn said.

"Certainly," the Lieutenant said. "There's some idiot in Bubbling Brooks right now thinking up a plague sitcom." He whirled at a scurrying sound, then resumed his march. "Filmed in front of a live studio audience. Half filled." Brooks right now thinking up a plague sitcom." He whirled at a scurrying sound, then resumed his march. "Filmed in front of a live studio audience. Half filled."

Mark Spitz imagined the hunchback in the cement-block chamber a mile beneath the city, sweating through a yellowed wifebeater, who hit the switch. A hundred thousand refrigerators hum-to at once, 12:00 blinks on the displays of a million microwave ovens and digital video players, all the sad machines that had shut off in the middle of their humble duties, waiting for orders. The hallway lights of tenements and corporate towers snap on, and in the underground, the red and green signal indicators. The magic third rail in deadly awareness. The machines wake to a new world where their old routines are void. As if they were human beings powered down by the plague and then reinitialized for an alternative purpose.

He acclimated to the underneath world, the echoes of their voices and boots that fluttered from wall to wall like bats, the spitting and streaming water that pushed through every crack. An eerie tranquillity settled in his chest. There had been a lot of ash swirling in the air that day, oppressive in its steady, mindless a.s.sault on his personal zone, settling in drifts on his barriers. The black stations were an asylum again, the platform a st.u.r.dy rock to cling to, as it had been when he was a teenage explorer in the city and the vast human current was attacking him, plucking at him. Before the unwinding of the world, he could always catch his breath here, beneath the uncountable tonnage of the city, the ma.s.s of strivers' aspirations and evanescent hopes, and prepare himself for the next engagement. So it was again.

Everything was copacetic until Chambers, when that eternal question confronted them: local or express. "What do you think, Lieutenant, South Ferry or Brooklyn?" Joshua asked. He snapped his sponsor chewing gum like a bored teen being shuttled to the family reunion. They'd seen rats, dried blood puddles, dust, and chips of bullet-lacerated subway tile, but not a single skel. The marine operation had been so noisy that any plague-blind galoot skulking in the tunnels had been drawn out and cut down. When Disposal came for the bodies, they'd terminated the one or two laggards that wandered out like the unpopular kids no one had told about the end of hide-and-seek two hours prior. It was becoming apparent to Gamma and Omega that underground was as straightforward as their aboveground sweep. Actually, easier, for any stragglers-the odd, befuddled straphanger waiting for the train that would never pull in, or the token clerk hovering over a stack of two-day pa.s.ses-had already been wiped out. The darkness did not squeeze so tightly now. marine operation had been so noisy that any plague-blind galoot skulking in the tunnels had been drawn out and cut down. When Disposal came for the bodies, they'd terminated the one or two laggards that wandered out like the unpopular kids no one had told about the end of hide-and-seek two hours prior. It was becoming apparent to Gamma and Omega that underground was as straightforward as their aboveground sweep. Actually, easier, for any stragglers-the odd, befuddled straphanger waiting for the train that would never pull in, or the token clerk hovering over a stack of two-day pa.s.ses-had already been wiped out. The darkness did not squeeze so tightly now.

"We'll do South Ferry first, get to the end of the line, and then double back," the Lieutenant said.

"Then we have to come back tomorrow to finish," Foreskin said.

"Then we come back tomorrow."

"How about we take the express and Omega takes the local?" Foreskin suggested. Split up, rendezvous here, and call it a day.

The Lieutenant glared at the two southbound tunnels, the dead black eyes of them. Gary raised his eyebrows, clowning.

"We're up in the Zone day and night," Trevor said. "This is just another bas.e.m.e.nt, if you ask me. We've been in some serious bas.e.m.e.nts the last few weeks."

"Serious bas.e.m.e.nts," Joshua said. They all nodded at the sage a.s.sessment, and Mark Spitz chuckled. n.o.body knows the bas.e.m.e.nts we've seen...

The Lieutenant stalled in the loop of one of his trademark hesitations and relented. Gamma chose the express tracks, which sloped down south of the station, and Omega took the local. Foreskin resumed Gary's heavy metal song and the two units proceeded to their fates. During a later Sunday-night confab in the dumpling house, the Lieutenant regretted not riding with Gamma. "The bad feeling I got was an express-track bad feeling, not a local-track feeling, but this escaped me when we split up. I f.u.c.ked up." He had brought a present: ice cubes. They clicked and tocked in their gla.s.ses. Kaitlyn crunched them in her teeth. That's the express all over, Mark Spitz thought: It gets you to your final destination quicker. He decided the Lieutenant's bad feeling told him that the express was a preordained cl.u.s.terf.u.c.k, and that's why he posse'd with Omega. To save those who could be saved. had brought a present: ice cubes. They clicked and tocked in their gla.s.ses. Kaitlyn crunched them in her teeth. That's the express all over, Mark Spitz thought: It gets you to your final destination quicker. He decided the Lieutenant's bad feeling told him that the express was a preordained cl.u.s.terf.u.c.k, and that's why he posse'd with Omega. To save those who could be saved.

"Bzzzz bzzzz," Gary said. He tapped the third rail with his sneaker.

Mark Spitz was on point. Kaitlyn diligently retraced Gary's footsteps, as if they were in a minefield. It was getting on his nerves. "For luck," she told him when he complained. He told her to back up. She didn't. The Lieutenant pulled up the rear, dawdling for a reason, trying to figure out what detail eluded him.

"What's next?" Gary asked.

The old World Trade Center station, Mark Spitz thought. That was a long time ago, but he remembered.

The reports of Gamma's a.s.sault rifles churned through the tunnel as if on slick steel wheels. Mark Spitz looked uptown and downtown to fix the origin of the gunfire, and he was back on a platform in the old days, trying to figure out if that was his train approaching or the opposite track's. They ran back to Chambers. Their night vision atomized the beams and struts into grains, flimsy pixels, that rose and submerged from shadow. The world dissolved into and re-formed out of darkness with each step, and the barrage continued. Three weapons firing, shouts, then a lesser volley. One weapon silenced. The Lieutenant hollered commonsense rules of engagement, but between the gunfire and the military jargon, Mark Spitz found it hard to make out. He relied on his standard translation of mayhem, which had served him well so far.

When the downtown tracks merged, and Omega leaped between the columns to the express, the shooting had stopped. The Lieutenant cursed. One man shrieked and then the man's cries sputtered to a wet gurgle. They recognized the sound of people being eaten. Gamma's flashlights were on now, reflecting from around the bend in the tunnel as if the first train of the reborn metropolis were approaching the station. The Lieutenant tracked ahead. The lights jiggled. The screams sputtered. The Lieutenant motioned for them to slow down as the crouching skels appeared in the lights, pieces of their bodies moving in and out of illumination, so engrimed by the underworld that as they fed, they were gargoyles glistening with blood. being eaten. Gamma's flashlights were on now, reflecting from around the bend in the tunnel as if the first train of the reborn metropolis were approaching the station. The Lieutenant tracked ahead. The lights jiggled. The screams sputtered. The Lieutenant motioned for them to slow down as the crouching skels appeared in the lights, pieces of their bodies moving in and out of illumination, so engrimed by the underworld that as they fed, they were gargoyles glistening with blood.

"Heads!" The Lieutenant didn't need to remind Gamma, as there was little chance of them being hit by friendly fire, prostrate on the tracks, pinned beneath monsters. The bullets detonating in the craniums of the skels interrupted the feast. One looked into Mark Spitz's eyes, face decorated with gore, and then resumed eating Trevor. Other dead on the edge of the feeding huddle were more interested in the prospect of a deeper menu, and wafted clumsily toward Omega, stumbling between the tracks.

The four survivors intended to continue their march through the dead world, as they had since Last Night. They terminated the skels, draping their disparate masks over the faces of the d.a.m.ned so they could be certain of who and what they were killing.

They each saw something different as they dropped the creatures. Mark Spitz knew Gary's appraisal of the dead. They were the proper citizens who had stymied and condemned him and his brothers all his life, excluding them from the festivities-the homeroom teachers and a.s.sistant princ.i.p.als, the neighbors across the street who called the cops to b.i.t.c.h about the noise and the trash in their yard. Where were their rules now, their judgments, condescending smiles? Gary rid the squares of their heads with gusto, perforated them redundantly to emphasize his contempt.

To Kaitlyn, this scourge came from a different population. She aimed at the rabble who nibbled at the edge of her dream: the weak-willed smokers, deadbeat dads and welfare cheats, single moms incessantly breeding, the flouters of speed laws, and those who only had themselves to blame for their ridiculous credit-card debt.

These empty-headed fiends between Chambers and Park Place did not vote or attend parent-teacher conferences, they ate fast food more than twice a week and required special plus-size stores for clothing to hide their hideous bodies from the healthy. Her a.s.sembled undercla.s.s who simultaneously undermined and justified her lifestyle choices. They needed to be terminated, and they tumbled into the dirty water beside Gary's dead without differentiation. These empty-headed fiends between Chambers and Park Place did not vote or attend parent-teacher conferences, they ate fast food more than twice a week and required special plus-size stores for clothing to hide their hideous bodies from the healthy. Her a.s.sembled undercla.s.s who simultaneously undermined and justified her lifestyle choices. They needed to be terminated, and they tumbled into the dirty water beside Gary's dead without differentiation.

If the beings they destroyed were their own creations, and not the degraded remnants of the people described on the things' driver's licenses, so be it. We never see other people anyway, only the monsters we make of them. To Mark Spitz, the dead were his neighbors, the people he saw every day, as he might on a subway car, the fantastic metropolitan array. The subway was the great leveler-underground, the Wall Street t.i.tans stood in the shuddering car and clutched the same poles as the junior IT guys to create a totem of fists, the executive vice presidents in charge of new product marketing pressed thighs with the luckless and the dreamers, who got off at their stations when instructed by the computer's voice and were replaced by devisers of theoretical financial instruments of unreckoned power, who vacated their seats and were replaced in turn by unemployable homunculi clutching yesterday's tabloids. They jostled one another, competed for s.p.a.ce below as they did above, in a minuet of ruin and triumph. In the subway, down in the dark, no citizen was more significant or more decrepit than another. All were smeared into a common average of existence, the A's and the C's tumbling or rising to settle into a ruthless mediocrity. No escape. This was the plane where Mark Spitz lived. They were all him. Middling talents who got by, barnacles on humanity's hull, survivors who had not yet been extinguished. Perhaps it was only a matter of time. Perhaps he would live until he chose not to. Mark Spitz aimed at the place where the spine met the cranium. They fell without a sound. He'd had practice.

They fired until all that needed to be killed had been killed, and they stood numbly looking into the darkness for more, the next apparitions hiding in the wings, for surely they were not finished. They were human beings, after all, and full of things that needed to be put down. and they stood numbly looking into the darkness for more, the next apparitions hiding in the wings, for surely they were not finished. They were human beings, after all, and full of things that needed to be put down.

Mark Spitz didn't know what monsters the Lieutenant saw, but his system must have worked, for the man dispatched them with brisk proficiency.

From what they could reconstruct, the dead had been trapped inside a transit-authority control booth that the marines had missed in the first sweep of the tunnels. Gamma freed them. Mark Spitz pictured them splas.h.i.+ng forth from the room, as if from the burst membranes of a cyst. No, not liquid, something electric-the banks of quiet machines, the neglected, pining keys and blank screens coordinating the subway system were full of frustrated energy and those bottled-up forces finally exploded in recrudescent fury. Released at the first indication that the people might return, the people from above, the riders who gave these tunnels purpose. Trevor, Joshua, and Richard Cowl had made it ten meters back up the tunnel before they were overcome, or one was pinned and his brothers failed in their rescue. In the light of their helmets, the blood was very dark against the rails, mixing with the black water trapped in the ruts. No one said "Name That Bloodstain!" because you didn't play Name That Bloodstain! with people you knew. Mark Spitz told himself, I can Name That Bloodstain! in five seconds: It looks like the future.

That was the end of sweepers in the subway. The Lieutenant informed Buffalo the tunnels could wait until the next detachment of marines arrived, when they initiated Zone Two. He wasn't going to send his people back down there. "One of my unit leaders majored in communications, for G.o.d's sake."

Bravo and Omega drained their gla.s.ses in the Brazilian churrascaria. No one talked. The digital musical player chirped uplifting verses about summer love. Mark Spitz realized he hadn't told them about Bubbling Brooks yet.

"Oh my G.o.d," Angela said.

"Those poor people."

"The Triplets! What about the Triplets?"

"They say one made it out," Mark Spitz said.

"Which one? Was it Finn?"

"I don't know."

"I hope it was Finn," No Mas said. "He's my favorite. That little motherf.u.c.ker got heart."

"Poor Cheyenne," Kaitlyn said.

Gary closed his eyes and nodded, communing with the world's most hardscrabble triplet.

They set up the motion detectors and bunked, nestling gamey rims of sleeping bags under their noses. Kaitlyn propped herself on her elbows, flossing. She said, "Bright and early, back to work." The matter of who owned the disputed grid, with its walk-ups and cherished parking lot, had been settled in Omega's favor. One final gift from the Lieutenant.

Mark Spitz closed his eyes to the jungle shadows on the wall. The last time he saw the Lieutenant had been in the dumpling house, as their Sunday-night confab was winding down. Kaitlyn was asleep, leaning against the wall in a full-on snore session. Greater Wonton was in a jovial mood. Italy's prime minister had released Gina Spens pinups, for the sake of global morale, wherein the bikini-clad warrior woman posed with a machine gun on a beach, draped herself coyly on a radar panel, and the like. There had been another three kill fields reported, even though one turned out not to be a bona fide kill field but the dumping ground of some master-level skel slaughterer, ident.i.ty unknown. (Buffalo was keen to find him for a profile.) Good news, although the Lieutenant's features argued otherwise. Mark Spitz said, "You resist?"

"I'm not immune. I sleep poorly, but I nap rich. The plague is the plague, though. I don't see a reason to believe it's finished."

"Didn't take you for a divine-justice whacko."

"Not G.o.d. Nature, if you have to call it something. Correcting an imbalance. It kicks us out of our robotic routine, what they called my dad before we pulled the plug: persistent vegetative state. Comeuppance for a flatlined culture." an imbalance. It kicks us out of our robotic routine, what they called my dad before we pulled the plug: persistent vegetative state. Comeuppance for a flatlined culture."

"Maybe it's corrected now," Mark Spitz said. He'd had a lot of whiskey for a tint of optimism to leak into his words. "Got rid of the extra population and now it's done." He was immediately disgusted with himself for phrasing it that way and checked to make sure Kaitlyn, his externalized conscience, hadn't heard. She snored.

"Maybe Buffalo is right and we're done with the plague and this is a vital enterprise we're doing here. Maybe we're merely butchers sc.r.a.ping off the gone-bad bits off the meat and putting it back under the gla.s.s."

"Then why are you here, if it's doomed?"

"I apologize again for not bringing ice."

"It's fine."

"I was trying to make it into a weekly thing, but I forgot." He took a big sip. "You know why they walk around? They walk around because they're too stupid to know they're dead."

"I'm here because there's something worth bringing back."

"That's straggler thinking." He smiled. It was the faintest of disturbances on his face, as if a black eel miles below on the ocean floor had turned in its sleep and left this slim reverberation on the surface. "I'm grateful. Buffalo has given us some busywork to keep our minds off things. Dig a drainage ditch for the camp, shuck the f.u.c.king corn." He raised his gla.s.s to his friends across the table. "Clear some buildings. You have to admit, it pa.s.ses the time."

SUNDAY

"Move as a team, never move alone: Welcome to the Terrordome."

When the wall fell, it fell quickly, as if it had been waiting for this moment, as if it had been created for the very instant of its failure. Barricades collapsed with haste once exposed for the riddled and rotten things they had always been. Beneath that facade of stability they were as ethereal as the society that created them. All the feverish subroutines of his survival programs booted up, for the first time in so long, and he located the flaw the instant before it expressed itself: there.

The morning the Zone died Omega slept in, murk-mouthed in hangover. Normally the unit would have punched out at 3:00 p.m. and hit Wonton, but Kaitlyn reminded them that they'd knocked off early yesterday. She "didn't want to let them down," them them being that many-headed pheenie hydra, whether it quivered in a bauxite mine waiting for the dead weather to clear or was clutched tight to the happy bosom of a settlement camp and at this very moment scooping Sunday brunch out of aluminum tins in the mess hall. Mark Spitz registered Kaitlyn's response to the news of the Tromanhauser Triplets, and interpreted this morning's dedication as a sacrifice toward their welfare, zipping out across the being that many-headed pheenie hydra, whether it quivered in a bauxite mine waiting for the dead weather to clear or was clutched tight to the happy bosom of a settlement camp and at this very moment scooping Sunday brunch out of aluminum tins in the mess hall. Mark Spitz registered Kaitlyn's response to the news of the Tromanhauser Triplets, and interpreted this morning's dedication as a sacrifice toward their welfare, zipping out across the miles: May it keep those tiny hearts pumping. In her action sequence, Kaitlyn emerged from the burning shed in slow motion, outrunning a covey of skels, one triplet under each arm and the last in a sling on her chest. miles: May it keep those tiny hearts pumping. In her action sequence, Kaitlyn emerged from the burning shed in slow motion, outrunning a covey of skels, one triplet under each arm and the last in a sling on her chest.

The two sweeper units wished each other swift recovery from dehydration and alcohol-wrung melancholy. Hair of the dog once they got back to Wonton, no question. Then it was back to work. Fulton x Gold. Yes, Omega savored their hard-won parking lot row by row, that void in their work detail, every blessed cubic foot of it and the fallow air rights to boot. The line of four-story tenements were devoid of demons, save for two suicides they bagged at 42 Gold. The pair killed themselves in identically laid-out junior one-bedrooms two floors apart. The elderly occupant of 2R hung herself from a stained-gla.s.s chandelier in the living room. Once the fixture tore away from the ceiling, the plaster bits mixed with the decomp sludge and lent her corpse a unique, lumpy texture that reminded Mark Spitz of the things lurking in old takeout. She had mutated, stranded in her cardboard carton at the back of the fridge. He recognized the ottoman on which she'd steadied herself; he had impulse-bought the same one online, on sale, the spring he moved into his parents' rec room. Stainproof, one of the new miracle weaves, machine washable. He'd used it to change the recessed energy-saver bulbs in the track lighting, whose pallid light he accused of draining him of vitality and cheer.

The neighboring suicide upstairs blew his brains out on his sofa. The man in 4R was owl-faced with thin straw hair and shrunken limbs that poked from clothes a size too big. He'd starved before offing himself, nos.h.i.+ng on the doomsday stock he gathered for his market-rate bunker: the bathroom tub was full of licked-clean cans and neatly flattened boxes, tied up and bagged in preparation for recycling day. Gary observed that his stench didn't jibe with that of your average putrefying New Yorker, and indeed inspection of the hatbox next to the body revealed it to be the tomb of the fuzzy, deflated form of the calico recognizable from numerous photographs adorning the apartment. The suicide note mentioned this roommate prominently, conjecturing about a mingled animal and human afterlife that did not discriminate between species, or possession of a brain big enough to conceive of an afterlife. Neither resident was bitten; they acceded to their particular forbidden thoughts. the fuzzy, deflated form of the calico recognizable from numerous photographs adorning the apartment. The suicide note mentioned this roommate prominently, conjecturing about a mingled animal and human afterlife that did not discriminate between species, or possession of a brain big enough to conceive of an afterlife. Neither resident was bitten; they acceded to their particular forbidden thoughts.

Omega bagged the two neighbors and left them in the street for Disposal. They zipped up the calico with its owner.

The fortune-teller was their final sweep of the day. It was almost six o'clock. Kaitlyn suggested they pick up here tomorrow, but Gary said, "I want to get my palm read."

Mark Spitz could not fathom how this deathless codger of a storefront had endured the relentless metropolitan renovations. The only answer was that the city itself was as bewitched by the past as the little creatures who skittered on its back. The city refused to let them go: How else to explain the holdout establishments on block after block, in sentimental pockets across the grid? These stores had opened every morning to serve a clientele extinct even before the plague's rampage, displaying objects of zero utility on felt behind smudged gla.s.s, dangling them on steel hooks where dust clung and colonized. Discontinued products, exterminated desires. The city protected them, Mark Spitz thought. The typewriter-repair shop, the shoe-repair joint with its antiquated neon calligraphy and palpable incompetence that warned away the curious, the family deli with its germ-herding griddle: They stuck to the block with their faded signage and ninety-nine-year leases, murmuring among themselves in a dying vernacular of nostalgia. Businesses north and south, to either side of them, sold the new things, the chromium gizmos that people needed, while the city blocks nursed these old places, held them close like secrets or tumors.

The fortune-teller's was precisely such an atavistic enterprise, a straggler in the current argot, with disintegrating tinsel sparking dully beyond the tacky exhortations stenciled on the window. Garlands of Christmas lights and black necklaces of dead insects beaded at the bottom of the window display. Every other store on the block ministered to some yuppie lack, bent toward the local demographic sun and absorbing into its capillaries imported kitchen implements and upscale children's accoutrements. Yet here was the fortune-teller's. Could events have transpired differently? If Bravo had won Fulton x Gold, Mixed Residential/Business, that other unit's blend of personalities might have shepherded events in a different direction. If it hadn't been Omega's last stop before R & R, perhaps Gary wouldn't have been in such a jovial mood and played the fool. Later Mark Spitz untangled the string of inevitabilities. It looked like a choker of dead black flies. a straggler in the current argot, with disintegrating tinsel sparking dully beyond the tacky exhortations stenciled on the window. Garlands of Christmas lights and black necklaces of dead insects beaded at the bottom of the window display. Every other store on the block ministered to some yuppie lack, bent toward the local demographic sun and absorbing into its capillaries imported kitchen implements and upscale children's accoutrements. Yet here was the fortune-teller's. Could events have transpired differently? If Bravo had won Fulton x Gold, Mixed Residential/Business, that other unit's blend of personalities might have shepherded events in a different direction. If it hadn't been Omega's last stop before R & R, perhaps Gary wouldn't have been in such a jovial mood and played the fool. Later Mark Spitz untangled the string of inevitabilities. It looked like a choker of dead black flies.

Gary snipped the bolt and Mark Spitz helped him slide up the shop's recalcitrant gate. The dark bra.s.s doork.n.o.b and lock were relics, smoothed to an otherworldly l.u.s.ter by the caress of generations' hands. Mark Spitz didn't see this tacky shop attracting a high volume of seekers, but who knew what vital shops operated here before the clairvoyant unpacked her arcana, the clandestine line of utility and desire terminating at this address. Real estate agents, butchers, antique jewelers, and cell providers stood behind the counter, tending customers who wore fedoras, then loops of metal in soft tissue. Hoop skirts, panty hose, then blue ink where the symbology of the upstart faiths and outsider iconography were carved into their skin. The sole page in this address's photo alb.u.m he could see was the one before him now.

The proprietor sat at the table in the center of the room. Eschewing the traditional finery of her profession, this straggler was dressed in the all-black uniform of a downtown punk. She was around Mark Spitz's age, not yet thirty when the plague dropped her in its amber, with green streaks entwined in her ebony-dyed hair and smudged mascara deepening the plague bruises circling her eyes. The signs on the wall provided a menu of services in a popular computer font: Astrological Charts, Numerology, Aura Manipulation, and the enigmatic "Recalibration." Small jars and bowls of herbs, rainbow powders, and bone-white charms perched on tiny metal shelves, props acquired from an internet retail site. Red and brown earth tones dominated the tapestries, pillows, and rugs, bestowing the aura of a lair. Omega stood before a medium's sanctum as portrayed in pop culture, the demeanor of the clairvoyant herself bestowing a small, necessary tweak. The fortune-teller in the modern city, plying the Old World enchantments and scrying trade of her ancestors. Her parents probably thought she'd forsaken her heritage when she came home with that loop of metal in her nose, but it was an adjustment that allowed the family biz to keep up with the protean city. Everybody needs a shtick to keep compet.i.tive, Mark Spitz thought. her eyes. The signs on the wall provided a menu of services in a popular computer font: Astrological Charts, Numerology, Aura Manipulation, and the enigmatic "Recalibration." Small jars and bowls of herbs, rainbow powders, and bone-white charms perched on tiny metal shelves, props acquired from an internet retail site. Red and brown earth tones dominated the tapestries, pillows, and rugs, bestowing the aura of a lair. Omega stood before a medium's sanctum as portrayed in pop culture, the demeanor of the clairvoyant herself bestowing a small, necessary tweak. The fortune-teller in the modern city, plying the Old World enchantments and scrying trade of her ancestors. Her parents probably thought she'd forsaken her heritage when she came home with that loop of metal in her nose, but it was an adjustment that allowed the family biz to keep up with the protean city. Everybody needs a shtick to keep compet.i.tive, Mark Spitz thought.