Project Reunion
Author: Ginger Booth
Date: 2016-03-08 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Dystopia
Description: A Bold Plan to Save a Dying City New York City is a lost cause. When Ebola broke out, the Calm Act prescription was to wall off the city with armed borders. Otherwise contagious refugees would flood out and take the whole Northeast down along with it. The survivors outside, struggling to make ends meet in a chaotic climate and collapsed economy, are grateful. But they feel guilty as sin. New York weighs heavily on the regional conscience. At the conclusion of End Game, Dee Baker and her lover Emmett MacLaren were invited to present at a military conference on the problem. Dee leads the Amenac

by Ginger Booth

Copyright © 2016 Ginger Booth

All rights reserved.

Cover photo © Hasenonkel | Dreamstime.com - WAR Photo
Cover design by Ginger Booth.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author‘s imagination or are used fictitiously.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author.

Maps

Prologue

New York, October.

Gladys Petrosian lived at the top of a twenty-story apartment block in Brooklyn. She hadn’t lived here before Ebola broke out. She colonized this place after the power died. No one else wanted the twenty-floor walk-up. So many had died in the fires last winter, with no way out. They tried to cook in their apartments, or heat themselves in the bitter cold. The buildings caught fire, and there was no water to put the fires out. Yet another horrible way to die.

But Gladys was more afraid of the people than the flames. No one could give her Ebola, up here, away from them all. No one could kill her for her food. There used to be more people in the lower floors of the building. They’d fallen lower and lower as the food ran out. Too weak to climb.

There used to be more people.

The roof was all hers, up above it all. She had half a block’s worth of apartment homes to draw on for raw materials. And canned goods, once, but those were gone. Shower liners made excellent rain catchers for water. Other shower liners, slashed, created an overhead netting to keep the birds out. Or if they got in, the birds were trapped, easy to catch. Pigeon was her favorite. It was a good day, when she caught a pigeon.

She had a farm up here. Her seed collection was limited. But she’d hoarded a few potatoes until spring, and planted them. Sunflowers. Beans. Basil. Her own home-made manure, she joked. Potting mix from the apartments, odds and ends. It wasn’t much. She was starving, like everyone else. Not that she spoke to anyone else. Not in months.

A child cried on the fifteenth floor. That had been maddening. Why did he have to climb up her building to die? She would escape up to the roof and sing to herself, so she didn’t have to hear him. She didn’t have enough to share. But the crying finally dwindled and stopped last night. Tomorrow she’d climb down to look, from a cautious distance. Armed with kitchen knives. Maybe.

Today she cooked the last of the potato harvest. In a solar pizza-box oven, like the ones she taught the kids at PS 282 to make. Seventh grade science. Soon it would be too cold to cook potatoes. There wasn’t enough. There wasn’t nearly enough to make it to spring.

-o-

Maisie Mora waded at the edge of a beach near Port Jefferson, Long Island. She didn’t call herself that anymore, though. Syringe was her new name. She traded sex for food, and had for months. If she got the chance. Usually they just took the sex and gave her nothing in return.

But that one guy was too rough. She’d grabbed a dirty syringe off the ground and stabbed him in the eye with it. Of course he’d beaten her for it, and left her in an alley. Good riddance. The new gang of kids she roamed with wasn’t so bad. But she called herself Syringe to remind them not to mess with her. She wore the syringe on a string around her neck. It wasn’t really the same syringe, just another one she’d found. It made her feel tough, like her father the soldier. Not weak, like Mom, who died of Ebola and left her stranded here, on the wrong shore.

She gazed out across the Sound. Connecticut was over there, barely visible, a hazy grey line on the horizon. Bridgeport. That’s where the ferry was, to Port Jefferson. She’d taken it across the Sound once with her family. She imagined swimming across, home. Daddy would be so proud of her, swimming across the Sound! But the daydream fractured, crumpled. Daddy wouldn’t be proud of a thirteen year old whore, running with a gang. And it was 10 miles across the Sound here. Syringe couldn’t swim that far, even before, when she had enough to eat.

She used to fantasize that Daddy would come find her. Or that she’d find the ferry still running in Port Jefferson. She’d tell them what an important soldier her father was in Connecticut. They’d call him for her, and carry her across the Sound, back home.

That was a long time ago. She didn’t want to be found anymore. She just wanted to eat.

A hermit crab scuttled over her foot. She grabbed for it, slurped the life out of its tiny body. That didn’t satisfy her hunger at all. But it did inspire her. She made for the tide pools, to hunt for the periwinkles that clung to the rocks. That’s why the other kids put up with her, in the gang. They were city kids who didn’t know how to find anything to eat. But she did. Never enough, but some.

Chapter 1

Interesting fact: The final President of the United States was the second who had never been elected.

I wonder what the Founding Fathers thought they were doing, when they first set out on the American Revolution. They couldn't have foreseen the globe-spanning American empire that would emerge from their friendly debates over a pint of beer in the colonial pubs of Boston or Philadelphia, or the parlors of Virginia. Personally, I was hoping for a romantic weekend getaway. My boyfriend Emmett and I could have used the break.

It was a rough couple weeks leading up to our summit meeting at the Coast Guard Academy in New London. I was so excited to get the invitation to present, that I convened a meeting of my hacker team the very next day to get started.

The guys – and they were all guys except for me – lounged around Dave’s industrial loft office space in the center of town. He’d done it up beautifully as a hacker haven. Whiteboards, chalkboards, and giant paper pads adorned the exposed brick walls, interspersed with a nerf-ball hoop and dart board. Power outlets and Gigabyte Internet cables abounded in the work zone. We were selective about what traveled the airwaves, preferring a hard-wired connection controlled by our firewalls. Desk space was a free choice of picnic table, breakfast counter, stand-up desk, or dual-monitor workstation.

The non-work area was larger, complete with kitchenette, ping-pong, foosball, and the meeting lounge we met in now. That was furnished with a beat-up collection of old couches, folding tray tables, and bright crocheted afghans, all grouped to face a 65-inch monitor that was probably liberated from a sports bar. We had most of the screen set to duplicate my laptop screen, leaving a wide strip along the left to show the two members attending remotely.

It was a far cry from the Fortune 100 corporate cubicle maze down in Stamford that I used to work out of, only a year before. Not all changes in the world that past year were negative. Not that I’d ever commuted down to Stamford if I could avoid it, anyway. I had a telecommuter office at home. But I’d allowed that pasteurized corporate miasma to invade my personal space via my office, so that I could better relate to the suits in Stamford. This hacker lair felt closer to my real world of granite bays, marshes, woods, orchards, and vegetable gardens. Here even Mangal, my coworker and best friend of a dozen years down in Stamford, sat in stocking feet on a floor pillow.

“Time,” Mangal announced. Not all of our corporate manager ways had worn off. Mangal and I were still sticklers for beginning a meeting on time. “Dee Baker called the meeting. What’s up, Dee?”

“Thank you, Mangal,” I began, “and thank you all for coming on such short notice.” I met each of the seven present by eye, and looked directly into the video camera for the off-site attendees. “This is big, guys. Niedermeyer has convened a summit meeting in New London in two weeks, at the Coast Guard Academy. You’ll remember Captain Niedermeyer. He’s the Power in the Coast Guard and Navy around here.

“Now the Calm Act plan says we do nothing about New York, or open any borders, until March at the earliest. But we all know that the Ebola survivors in the city can’t wait another five months for relief. They’re starving, they’re dying, they’re our neighbors.” I paused, and was glad to see that most of the gang nodded solemn agreement. Not all. Our graphic designer Will, also late of UNC in Stamford, frowned and wriggled in discomfort on the couch. Leland, our man in Canadian intelligence who attended remotely today, just pursed his lips.

I pressed on. “As I understand it, Niedermeyer’s concept is to re-unite the Northeast around the grand cause of relieving New York City. The summit meeting is to present proposals for how we can do that – and whether it’s safe.” I tossed that last bone to Will, whose wiggle quotient was building toward an interruption. Will reported to me for years at UNC. I knew all too well when he was about to erupt. He subsided into the couch with a huff.

“Now, I’ve caught two parts of this,” I pressed on. “I’m asking for help with both of them. Two people from the New Haven area have been invited to present at the summit – Emmett, and me. You know Emmett as my boyfriend.” That got a couple of chuckles. But I added an explanation for the benefit of the Amen1 hackers I didn’t know as well. “Major Emmett MacLaren is also the lead community resource coordinator – the Resco – for the greater New Haven area –”

“We’re under martial law. He’s our marshal,” Popeye interrupted with a summary. As with all of the Amen1 hacker half of the Amenac partnership, I didn’t know his real name. I barely knew Popeye at all. The full-body tribal tattoos and piercings, under black biker leathers, didn’t fit my usual social circle. He wore black wraparound sunglasses, even late at night. I found him hard to connect to.

“Close enough,” I agreed, with a sunny smile. He scowled back. I’d never seen him without a scowl, so that was fine. “Anyway, Emmett plans to present an overall proposal for the relief of New York –”

“Overall proposal?” Leland cut in. That surprised me. Our Canadian intelligence representative rarely said a word during our meetings. Judging from his video feed, he was suddenly and intently researching something on his own computer.

“Yeah, it’s pretty ambitious,” I agreed. “Especially with only two weeks to prepare. He calls it a ‘framework.’ So, Emmett’s asked for our help to pull that together, to do the research and present it effectively. I think a couple other, um, ‘military marshals’, have agreed to help, too.

“But second, I’ve also been invited to present. So, I want to showcase what Amenac has done for the world so far, and what we can do to support and coordinate on the civilian side, if we go forward with helping New York. Like the missing persons lost-and-found database you guys threw together after the quakes and tsunami on the west coast last winter. That was an outstanding contribution to the world. Based on that, we can do a lot to support the New York effort. An online clearing house for people to volunteer. We need an inventory of skills, food, housing, Ebola vaccine doses, you name it. There’s just a lot of data and communications to pull together. And we’ve got the framework and track record to do that on the public side. Without getting shut down for violating the Calm Act, like everyone else does.”

Belatedly I clicked up my presentation for today onto the big screen, and flipped forward to a staffing sketch labeled ‘Dream Team.’ “Now obviously, guys, who does what, depends on who wants to do what. But I mean it when I say ‘Dream Team.’ We’ve got the people to perform miracles here, if you’re willing to come on board. If I get all my wishes, this is a suggested division of labor.”

I let them digest the list for a minute. I had four columns – the New York relief plan, the Amenac show and tell, both, and neither. The ‘neither’ column was necessary, because we had to keep our existing operations up and running. On the content end, we had legions of volunteer moderators minding the shop. But keeping the servers up, and thwarting the Federal watchdogs trying to shut us down, kept Popeye busy full-time. He led a remote server team that didn’t attend our steering committee meetings. I didn’t need to know who or where they were, but the Canadian Leland probably represented several of them.

Mangal and I could also pull in about a half dozen more UNC alumni from outside this steering group. How many Amen1 hackers were represented by the six attending this meeting, was something we were not invited to know. So the names on my list were just the principals present at the meeting, not the full number of people who might be deployed.

I considered and discarded several more sales pitches. This wasn’t a group who responded well to cheerleader nonsense. “So that’s the ask, and those are the stakes. Of course, I’m all in. Emmett is loaning me back Shelley from the barricades for a couple weeks. Mangal? Thanks! I knew I could count on you. So – discussion?”

Popeye jumped in first. “I can’t believe this fucking shit, whore!” Actually, that’s a cleaned up version of what he said. There was more in that vein, involving my choice of boyfriends and what I did with them, followed by, “No fucking way you’ll use Amen1 to back the evil empire!”

My mouth was hanging open.

Our host Dave, the Amen1 public spokesman, interjected calmly, “Popeye, I think we’d all feel more comfortable in these meetings if you could dial down the profanity.”

The Amen1 white-hat hackers were a motley crew, but Dave looked and acted like a successful 50-something real estate agent, in a casual but oh-so-very-expensive grey suit and cashmere pullover. Much as I wished he was the leader – and he acted like it – Dave insisted that he wasn’t. My Stamford UNC alumni contingent didn’t know who Amen1’s leader was. What Leland of Canadian intelligence knew, I wouldn’t hazard a guess.

Mangal, Leland, and Will nodded emphatically to the proposal of cutting the profanity. The other Amen1 hackers nodded more in resignation. Like me, I suspect they weren’t sure Popeye knew how to speak politely.

“Fucking whore!” repeated Popeye. “Whore to the evil empire!”

“Excuse me, Popeye,” I attempted, “but what exactly do you mean by the ‘evil empire?’”

“Fucking U.S. of A. Especially the pigs.”

“The ‘pigs’ being...the U.S. Army?” I hazarded faintly. Or Emmett?

“With respect, Popeye, I’d like to re-frame this,” said Dave. Unlike Mangal and I, Dave hadn’t lost his cool in the slightest. “Dee, I think several in Amen1 have a certain, ah, commitment to anarchy. Bypassing the Federal government to liberate information that ought to be free – that’s a natural fit for us. I think what Popeye is saying, is that assisting a military operation is, um, an unnatural fit.”

“Fucking A!” agreed Popeye. He rose, intentionally throwing his folding chair backward to clatter on the floor. He looked to another hacker, Mel, as though expecting Mel to get up and storm out with him. Mel shrugged. Popeye slammed his way out of the loft.

Damn, I didn’t know that about Mel, that he was so ideologically close to Popeye. A few years older than Mangal and me, Mel was another mild-mannered corporate refugee, a computer engineer out of Boston. I wouldn’t have hesitated to invite Mel, and his somewhat intense wife Jeannie, over to my house for dinner with Emmett and my foster-teen Alex.

I must have stared at Mel for a moment. In the quiet pause after Popeye’s slamming door, Mel offered with a smile, “Count me in. That assignment looks good to me.” I had him penciled in on ‘both’ projects.

“Thank you, Mel,” I said faintly. I smiled, but I suspect it came out crooked.

“Excellent re-framing, Dave,” said the middle-aged black guy under Leland on the video display. He went by ‘Genghis.’ I’d never met him except by video. “I think that focuses on a key issue for me. Why does this need to be a military operation. Dee?”

“Thank you, great question,” I replied. “I guess it has to be, because it already is? New York is surrounded by armed borders, just like we are. To allow millions out of New York, or major relief personnel and supplies in, and set up quarantine zones for safety, we need at least the tolerance of the border forces. And Niedermeyer is inviting proposals that go way beyond that. To throw the resources of all the regional armed forces – Army, National Guard, Coast Guard, Navy, and so on – into solving New York. Or at least, that’s what Emmett’s framework proposal will involve. Whether Niedermeyer and the other powers-that-be will go for it, remains to be seen.

“To get back to that ‘evil empire’ thing... Whether or not you agree with what the U.S. military has been used for in the past – they’re damned good at logistics. When we’re talking about controlled movement of millions of people, without letting loose an Ebola epidemic on the rest of the Northeast – we’re talking major logistics here.”

Genghis nodded thoughtfully. “Thank you.” Above him on the screen, the Canadian Leland nodded impatiently, as though all that were obvious. Fair enough. I thought so, too, but many people had a hard time thinking with large numbers.

“Does that require Washington’s...tolerance...as well?” asked Dave.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “I would know more after the summit meeting. But, I may not have a need to know. I suspect Niedermeyer’s going out on a limb. For what it’s worth.”

Will couldn’t bottle it up anymore. “I hope Washington flattens the guy. Come on! The Ebola risk isn’t worth it. Yeah, I’m sorry they’re all gonna die in New York. And the Calm Act sucks. And Congress had no fucking right to do that, to pen us all up like cattle inside borders. But they did it. And the stupid plan has advantages. Like, we’re not gonna die of Ebola on this side of the border. No one has the right to risk our survival here by letting them out of New York.”

“That’s the concern,” I agreed quietly. “That’s Emmett’s challenge, to come up with a framework of a plan that allows us to carry out the humanitarian mission, saving lives, without risking lives. Or rather, not risking lives beyond the military ones. Acceptable risks, as he put it.” I swallowed. By that yardstick, Emmett counted his own life as an acceptable risk.

I continued, “New uncontrollable epidemics, are not acceptable risks. But we’ve done a pilot program out on Long Island. And Emmett and Niedermeyer have epidemiologists to draw on. Maybe even the CDC if they can get a little more than Washington’s ‘tolerance.’ If we can’t allay those concerns, the proposal is dead in the water.”

My best friend Mangal chimed in. “But to condemn millions to die – further millions, because millions have already died – without even trying to construct a feasible plan to help them, is...unforgivable. Will, I agree with you that the risk is terrifying. And Dee, I hate to think what Emmett did to deserve this assignment –”

“His choice,” I supplied, with a shrug.

“Well, bless him,” Mangal continued. “It’s only a proposal, Will. Unless and until it proves itself viable, and sells to these military leaders at the summit meeting. Unless the proposal can convince people it’s safe to relieve New York. The lives at stake deserve our best shot at building a proposal that can do that, I say. If it’s really unsafe, or really against the will of the people, then due diligence in our research should make that clear.”

“Well put, Mangal,” said Dave. “Is Emmett’s proposal the only one, Dee?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “Emmett wants to propose to clear people through quarantine, and then resettle them throughout the Northeast. Probably not all of them. But there are other possibilities. Like just inserting supplies and medical teams across the border. But that isn’t sustainable. So Emmett wants what Mangal just said. New York deserves at least one earnest attempt to save their lives, and sustainably solve the problem. Not just charity. Charity won’t solve this.”

There was a lot more discussion. But in the end, I got my ‘Dream Team’ for the proposals. Even Popeye. All I’d asked was that he continue what he was already doing – keep the servers running. The rest of us got down to work, brainstorming how to research the proposals as best we could.

Chapter 2

Interesting fact: In the stock market crash of 2008, over $10 trillion were lost. When the U.S. defaulted on its national debt, $20 trillion vanished. Soon after, the dollar lost all value, and the U.S. Gross National Product went from $16 trillion a year, to nothing at all, because there was no yardstick with which to measure it.

“Hey! What are you doing in my office?” I asked Emmett. I’d come in from the garden the following afternoon to find him seated at my desk, busy at my computer. Emmett was at my house almost every night for dinner. He was welcome to use my Internet and big display in the living room, and he frequently did. But like everyone else in our four-household extended family, I expected him to stay out of my office unless invited. Even Mangal had to ask permission, and we worked together in there all the time.

“Have a seat, Ms. Baker,” Emmett replied, after a few moments. He continued typing, face set in stony lines. He was wearing his blue dress Army uniform today, not my favorite look on him. His usual civilian button-down jeans and dark jewel-toned shirts showed off his wiry buffed physique, his best feature. His more common workaday combat fatigues at least looked casual. Today’s dress blues looked stuffy and intimidating. The outfit’s beret sat squashed on the desk at his elbow.

“Emmett? What the hell?”

“For this interview, I prefer to be addressed as Major MacLaren. Sit down, Ms. Baker.”

Now he was scaring me. And I don’t like being scared. I dragged Mangal’s usual chair around, and sat back in it, crossing my legs and arms, facing the wrong side of my desk. “Major MacLaren,” I bit out. “What the hell?”

He turned and steepled his fingers before his chin, elbows on the desk, and finally deigned to look at me. Emmett was usually the embodiment of cheerfully amused sarcasm. I’d never seen him furious at me before.

“Ms. Baker, there is an aspect of our relationship I haven’t mentioned, until now. You’ll recall that Homeland Security released you into my custody last winter. As a resource and asset to my command.”

“How could I forget,” I replied, eyes narrowed at him. “My knight in shining armor.”

“Uh-huh. That was not a get-out-of-jail-free card, Ms. Baker. You, and the Amen1 hackers, and the Amenac websites, are not free. You were made my responsibility. In effect, I am your parole officer.” He unbent slightly to add, “Among other things.”

Oh, shit. “I see,” I replied.

“I just spent several hours with HomeSec. Not what I hoped to do today.”

“They’re back?” We’d blown up the local HomeSec offices. “Where?”

Emmett scowled at me. “They showed me a recording of your meeting yesterday with the Amen1 hackers. The discussion that included bringing down the ‘evil empire.’” Yes, no doubt about it – Emmett was furious at me.

I was aghast. It took me a few moments to sift through all the levels on which I was aghast. First off, that HomeSec had a recording of that meeting at all, and how they managed that. Secondly, what exactly I’d said about the ‘evil empire.’ “Um – did anyone actually suggest ‘bringing down’ the ‘evil empire?’ I thought, um, some elements, were just expressing discomfort at helping the, um, armed forces. And just for the record, Emmett – Major MacLaren – I didn’t express those views. I just...handled the objections.” In fact, I thought my conscience was clear. Fairly clear.

“Uh-huh,” said Emmett. “Ms. Baker, I need you to tell me where I can find Popeye.”

“Why?”

“I need to talk to him.”

“Look, that was a private meeting,” I objected. “No one in that meeting incited anyone to do anything. We were organizing, to act as your resources! I don’t care for how Popeye expresses himself, either, but –”

“I have a time limit, Ms. Baker. HomeSec gave me a head start, to deal with the problem before they do.”

“Deal with it how?”

Emmett didn’t deign to respond to that one. He just held my eye.

I broke eye contact first, and gazed down at my lap in defeat. Who did I trust more – Emmett or Popeye? I didn’t really know or like Popeye. I suspected I was in love with Emmett. But he’d turned into this alien army officer, working in cahoots with HomeSec.

“This will destroy Amenac,” I whispered bitterly. “And I’ll be out. They’ll never trust me again.”

“I’m trying to avoid that, Dee,” he said gently. “We need Amenac. And you.”

I looked up hopefully. But his face was still angry, and he silently demanded an answer.

I sighed. “Alright. Late afternoon now, so Popeye’s probably working at his place. He’s squatting in an upscale townhouse in the marina. Umbrella Reef condos, unit 318. Around 8, he normally knocks off for a couple hours for dinner and drinks at the Brewery on Hemlock. He’s usually back online from home before 11. Works until 3 a.m. or so.” I didn’t know any of that as Popeye’s friend, just gossip and observation.

Emmett jotted notes. “Thank you. Grab a jacket. Leave your purse.”

“I’m going with you?” I asked in horror.

He didn’t answer, until we parked his car at Delilah’s house. Delilah was co-coordinator for my neighborhood, under Emmett. She was also the sister of my late boyfriend, Zack Harkonnen.

Zack had been our original community coordinator until he died four months ago, in June. Emmett was his best friend. He’d sat with Zack while he died. The operation succeeded. The nasty survivalist camp that terrorized Broomfield was gone. But they’d killed one last man, my lover Zack.

“Hey, Delilah,” Emmett greeted her when she answered the door. “I need Dee held incommunicado for a few hours.”

Delilah blinked, but rallied quickly enough. “Sure, Emmett, no problem. Hey, Dee, come on in. We haven’t sat down over a cup of tea in ages.”

Emmett snorted. “Delilah, I need Dee squelched, no outgoing communications,” he clarified.

“Ah,” Delilah said thoughtfully. Then she turned her manic grin on me. “What fun!” She drew me by the arm into her kitchen. “So we haven’t really talked since you started sleeping with the major. When was that, in August, two months now? It looks good on you, Dee! You looked like the walking dead there for a while after Zack died...”

Emmett left to hunt down Popeye.

Delilah wouldn’t even call Alex, my foster teenager, to tell him I wouldn’t be home for supper. Weirdly, she grilled me on my sex life, but not on why Emmett had incarcerated me with her. He’d left me there to tell her, or not tell her, as I saw fit. And I wasn’t in the mood to share. In fact, my nerves felt raw. Not that I really felt like talking about my sex life with Delilah, either.

Delilah grows excellent vegetables, and prepares them perfectly. Especially when an extra pair of hands is available to play scullery maid. It’s a shame she has some political or medical objection to salt, though. She didn’t have any in the house.

Around 9 p.m., Emmett called and told her I was free to go. She offered to drive me home, but it was pleasantly cool and clear, with a harvest moon up to light my way along the empty dark wooded streets. I walked the mile and a half alone, thinking.

-o-

I woke disoriented, to Emmett’s hand brushing hair away from my face. He loomed over me in the dark. I started to jerk up to a seat, but he quietly pressed me back down.

“Shh. You fell asleep on my couch,” he murmured, by way of orientation. “It’s 2 a.m. I asked you to give me space for 24 hours, Dee. Give me a chance to cool off.”

I rubbed the bridge of my nose, trying to focus. “You said you wouldn’t be back till after 10, so you’d see me tomorrow. But I didn’t want to wait that long, so I came over to wait for you. But I fell asleep. Hasn’t it been more like 36 hours by now?”

He snorted softly. “More like 10 since I asked for 24. But yeah, a day and a half since I asked you about Popeye.”

“So I need to go, because you’re still mad?”

He considered that, still petting me gently in the dark. He was going to put me straight back to sleep if he kept this petting so platonic. “It’s not so much that I’m mad at you. My temper’s still too close to the surface. Doesn’t matter. I’m exhausted. Come to bed.”

“If you don’t want me here, I should walk home.”

He drew me up into a hug. “Come to bed,” he repeated, in my ear. “Don’t make me carry you.” He stood up and yanked me to my feet, by the arm. He left me standing there, to go brush his teeth and change for bed.

At that mixed message, I thought maybe I should leave after all. But that thought made me tune in to the weather. Keening wind. Ozone and ions in the air, and a wet smell of burnt dust, overlaid with fish. A sudden spit of drumming rain on the roof, then none. I glanced out a window to pitch black. Emmett had lit two candles, one in the kitchen, and one in his bedroom. They seemed to provide the only light in the universe, and the candle flames were guttering like mad. No, it wasn’t a good night to walk home. I blew out the kitchen candle and took my turn brushing my teeth.

I tried to give him space by lying as far to my edge of the bed as possible. He climbed in and dragged me onto his shoulder. “So. What couldn’t wait?” he asked.

“I’m sorry, Emmett. This was a bad idea. I invaded your space, right after you asked for space.”

“Uh-huh. Dee, the rooster out there is gonna crow in an hour. Out with it.”

“I didn’t call America the ‘evil empire.’ Popeye is a pig. I defended you at that meeting. I explained why we needed the Army for New York. Maybe not as hard and glowing as you would’ve liked. But it was a hostile audience. And I wanted them to do something for us.”

Emmett was silent, stroking my side with the hand attached to his arm beneath me.

“What did you say to Popeye, anyway?” I went on.

Emmett clamped his other hand over my mouth. “Stop. Dee, we’ve never had a good fight before. Some ground rules. Don’t change the subject before I respond to the first subject. You damned Yankees talk too damn fast. I listened to you. Now I’m thinking. You wait.” He unclamped my mouth and resumed his silence.

A clock ticked in the kitchen. A buffet of wind struck the southwest corner of the house. I puzzled over why the air smelled so fishy tonight. Dead sponges smelled especially rank. Was the Sound really rough yesterday? That often tossed sponge fragments up onto the beaches to die. I waited at least 15 seconds. Southerners talk too damned slow. Did Missouri even count as the South? Emmett’s Ozark accent sure sounded southern when he laid it on thick. The Ozarks extended into Arkansas, didn’t they? Arkansas was definitely South.

“What do you really think of the U.S. Army?” he asked, jolting me back to the present.

“Umm...” I thought giving my honest opinion would not help here.

“Uh-huh,” he responded. And he waited, damn him.

“Look, Emmett, I didn’t support any war we’ve been in for... I don’t remember the last war I did support. I think we usually did more harm than good, and mixed into fights that were none of our business. We invaded countries, on insufficient grounds. And yeah, I think you could call that ‘imperial’ behavior. Possibly one could even make a case for ‘evil.’ I think the U.S. government and the military-industrial complex have spiraled out of control for a long time.

“But that’s not the same as being against the people in the Army. I respect our soldiers. I don’t blame them for the orders they carry out. As an American, I owe them for their service. And you personally – Emmett, you know I respect you! I don’t always agree with you. I imagine you believed in what you were doing in those wars –”

“Please stop talking,” he cut in.

I got to practice waiting for at least another 15 seconds. I tried to stay with him this time by stroking his lower belly. He arrested my hand in a vice grip.

“That’s what I thought you thought,” he eventually said. “Two things. I believed in what I was doing, in those wars. No regrets, no apologies. I won’t argue with you about it. I will suggest that you never get to know what would have happened on the road not taken. We can agree to disagree on that.

“The second thing bothers me more. I wonder if you have me confused with Zack. Dee, I loved Zack like a brother. But I am not Zack. Zack was a reluctant, apologetic warrior. Not me. Zack was a Yankee liberal arts ROTC officer. I went to West Point. So here I slipped into his life, his house, into a relationship with his girl and her foster kid, even his damned livestock. So I gotta wonder – are we both dating Zack?”

“Ow,” I said, eyes suddenly tearing up. He released my hand and hugged me tighter. “Ow, Emmett! I’m sorry if I said anything that made you feel that –”

He shut me up with a fierce kiss. We didn’t talk anymore until we’d made love and lay spent, with me draped half over him.

I considered waiting for Emmett to talk first. Nah. I poked him. “I’m not Zack, either.”

He snickered.

“I don’t believe you ever slept with Zack, Major MacLaren.”

“Slept? We roomed together for a year in Estonia. Truth. Vacationed together in his ancestral Finland. That was epic.” He chuckled at a stray memory.

I’d heard snatches of that adventure in Finland before, from both of them.

“I don’t believe you ever had sex with Zack, Major MacLaren,” I clarified.

“Not without a woman in the room, certainly.”

“I don’t believe you.” He just shrugged. “Can I respond to what you said yet?”

He hesitated, and sighed, but said, “Shoot.”

“I think part of what makes a relationship is shared experience,” I said, groping for words. “Especially deep emotional experience. Shared drunken debauchery in Helsinki. Lost comrades. Working together on shared goals. Grieving and celebrating and getting the work done. We’re both still doing work that we started with Zack. He’ll always be a part of that. But we all believed in it. Dee and Emmett still do.”

“Yeah,” Emmett murmured.

“I think you were right to call me on it, Emmett. I’ll watch out for confusing you with Zack. But I’m pretty sure I’m dating Emmett now. And that damned rooster crowing is mine now. And I’m very grateful that I have a man who can wring its neck for me. I have an idea. Could we stop referring to this as Zack’s house, or my livestock? You live here. You deal with the dratted birds and the goats and the cow. So they’re Emmett’s. Not Zack’s, not Dee’s.”

“And if we break up?”

“How about we worry about that after we’ve slept, taken care of the livestock, saved New York, turned the garden beds for winter, eaten, and dodged today’s weather?”

“Sounds like a plan. Maybe the kid will take care of the livestock for once without me today.” One of Emmett’s hobby goals was to teach animal husbandry to others in West Totoket. The local teenagers proved pretty unreliable on the dawn shift, though.

“Miracles happen,” I quipped. “Emmett... Are we OK now?” I wasn’t sure we were. But he’d fallen fast asleep.

Chapter 3

Interesting fact: The most important currency that year was the tax credit, established by the community coordinators, or Cocos. A tax credit was minted when an agricultural producer deposited food as taxes or surplus. Any tax credit balance could be traded for food at a trading post. A ‘full tax credit’ meant enough credits to feed an adult for a year. Few civilians managed to earn that in trade for non-agricultural production.

“Hi. I’m Major Emmett MacLaren, U.S. Army,” Emmett drawled to the assembled Amenac team later that day. This was the same group as three days before, including an eerily well-mannered Popeye. “And I am your sponsor. You know your Canadian sponsor, Leland over there. He protects you in cyberspace. I’m the sponsor who protects your warm pink bodies. Homeland Security shared a video with me of your last meeting.”

That riveted the group’s attention. Apparently Popeye hadn’t told them any more than I had.

“Based on that video,” Emmett continued, “you weren’t aware that I’m the sponsor who pays your tax credits so you can eat. And the one who protects you from HomeSec.

“Because, boys and girl, what you’re doing is illegal. You are in clear violation of the Calm Act. Now I’m good with that. I’m happy to protect you. You’re providing a useful public service. I want you to keep it up. But there is a line. That line was crossed on Tuesday. Happily, no one died. This time.

“Now, I don’t know or care what you pay Leland. But every once in a while, I ask that you earn your keep with me. On Tuesday, Dee expressed this ask, as a favor to Dee. I’d like to correct that. You owe me. Dave, can you confirm what I pay you guys? Aside from keeping you out of HomeSec.”

“Full tax credits for 12, including dependents,” Dave confirmed. “Plus power and Internet. Emmett provides equipment, too, sometimes. He found us that replacement motherboard for the server.”

It was my turn to wriggle uncomfortably. I busted my butt all year gardening. My after-tax balance was not quite three full tax credits for myself and Alex, going into winter. And I got nothing for my work for Amenac or the community association. Granted, we all ate well in pre-tax food. Still, 12 full tax credits represented a lot of hard labor.

“Alright,” said Emmett. “You’re going to justify those princely salaries by giving Dee whatever she wants, to prove you really are a public resource worth feeding. Because that’s what we accomplish with Dee’s presentation at this summit meeting. We prove Amenac is worth our support and protection.

“Also, you’re going to do some civilian-side research and infrastructure to support my proposal for the relief of New York. You’ve already started on that. What Dave’s shown me so far is outstanding. Today I want to review progress with you and do some brainstorming and fine adjustments on that. This may be the only day I can work with you in person. I know what I’m asking from you is Herculean, but it’s still only one part of the plan. I have a lot to do on the rest.”

Our graphics designer Will raised his hand. Emmett nodded for him to go ahead. “With all we’re doing, what are you doing? Are you going to show us the rest of this grand plan?” Leave it to Will to imply that Emmett was lazing around while Will did all the work.

Emmett blinked, taken aback by the question. “I’ve got an epidemiology team proving out quarantine methodology. How to scale that up to millions of people. We need current reconnaissance on conditions inside the New York borders. Leland, if you have any intel you can share on that, I’d be grateful. Troop force levels and readiness training. Supplies and logistics, transportation. This is a major operation.” He gave Will a pained look. “Does that answer your question?”

“So it’s not just a volunteer rescue that Amenac is organizing?”

“I don’t see how it could be,” Emmett replied. “The border forces have to be persuaded not to shoot us. For instance.”

Leland cut in. He was attending in person today. How he managed to move around so freely, when he was known to be Canadian intelligence, I didn’t need to know. “Emmett, we do have some information to share. I’ll get the approvals straightened out, and have it to you by tonight, I hope.”

“Outstanding, Leland. Thank you.” Emmett turned toward the video camera, and said, “I think that’s all I needed for the group meeting. Thank you for your time.” He gestured a neck slice at Popeye.

Popeye confirmed, “Circuit switched.”

“Hello, again,” Emmett said to the video feed, which never stopped running. “Now I hope we are no longer on HomeSec’s feed.”

“Shit,” said Leland.

Emmett shrugged. “They already know you, Leland. Will was skating on thin ice. Will, you’re not entitled to demand operational details from the Army.” Will looked unrepentant, of course.

“In case anyone missed it,” Emmett continued, “Popeye and I found HomeSec’s circuit. We can now switch them in and out of your teleconferences. That’s not 100%. I wouldn’t be too surprised if one of you were a mole for HomeSec. One of my goals coming here today was to increase your security awareness. Yes, you’ve got permission to do what you’re doing, for the public good. But don’t even think about taking down the borders, or martial law, or the Calm Act. Or God help you, because I can’t. Got it?” He looked at each person in turn, getting a nod of assent from each of them.

“Good. Enough said.” With that, Emmett got off his high horse, and waded into what data we needed to support his proposal. The questions we were asking Amenac users online needed some fine tuning. For instance, we started out asking how many Ebola vaccines people had. That wasn’t quite right. The adjusted question was how many doses health authorities were willing to commit to the relief effort, for use by troops and volunteer medical personnel. And Emmett was interested in a frightening list of vaccines beyond Ebola, including cholera, meningitis, Hep A and B, rabies, typhoid, and yellow fever.

Emmett got on the phone twice to confer with his epidemiology team on Long Island. The first time was to inquire who used to have control over the civilian stocks of this stuff. The second was to ask whether there were treatment drugs we should be researching, in addition to the vaccines.

“Anti-inflammatory drugs – I like that,” he murmured after the second conversation. “So that’s a contribution anybody can make, later. We could have collection boxes for aspirin, ibuprofen, naproxen, acetaminophen, pink bismuth, first aid ointments, bandages – a whole slew of over-the-counter first aid stuff.”

“Why do you like that?” asked Popeye, puzzled.

“One of the goals on the civilian side is to maximize public involvement. Let every household and little kid say they helped save New York.”

“Shit, you’re serious,” Will commented.

“I am,” Emmett agreed. He sighed. “The idea behind the borders was that it was OK with us, for those people over there to die. Because we’re safe. If we do this, relieve New York, it’s because that’s not OK with us. Not OK enough. So are we clear on what we need on drugs? Because if we are, I want to move on to housing. You alright there, Dee?”

“I just... This is overwhelming.”

Emmett nodded thoughtfully. “Anyone else feeling overwhelmed?” There were reluctant nods. The group’s point of view had completely flip-flopped since Will arrogantly suggested that Emmett was making us do all the work.

“Gather round,” Emmett encouraged. We concentrated back toward the meeting lounge. “Look, let’s fall back a minute. Like I was telling Will earlier, you’re not trying to plan the relief of New York. I am. It’s an Army operation. You don’t have the training to plan that. But I do.

“Most of this stuff we’re asking donations for – the Army has all that. They’ve got Ebola vaccines, drugs, food stockpiles, hundreds of thousands of trained soldiers and medics. They want to hoard it. But they’ve got it. No way they’d commit to the operation otherwise. They’d never trust civilians to supply them. And I can get the data on their stockpiles from them. Persuading them to commit, is the purpose of the proposal.

“Now, this information you’re trying to gather civilian-side – there are only two things that civilians absolutely have to provide.” Emmett raised fingers to count. “One – the willingness to take in refugees, and let them resettle outside New York. Two – the food to feed them. Without public support for both, we can’t let refugees out of New York. OK?

“So don’t get too hung up on accurate data. Better data is cool. Just don’t let it paralyze you. What we need most is a real, concrete public conversation about this. Not public opinion poll crap like, ‘Do you believe someone else ought to do something about New York?’ Make it concrete. Make it personal. ‘Would you accept refugees into your home, and feed them?’ ‘Would you go to New York and risk your life to treat refugees?’ Any statistics you collect are going to have huge error bars. That’s fine. That’s my problem.

“But what I really need, to sell this proposal, is concrete evidence of growing public support. Evidence that says, ‘Hell, yeah, let’s do this!’ I want the city council of Buffalo to say, ‘We’ll take every refugee who has a relative in Buffalo, plus another 2,000, and we’ll house them in our high schools.’ I want Little Bunnykill to offer 10 dairy jobs. I want Persnicketyquaug to offer 150 acres of farmland.”

I grinned at his fictitious town names. Little Bunnykill would be a hamlet in the Catskills in upstate New York. He called a Connecticut town Persnicketyquaug when it argued with him too much.

Emmett continued, “I’d also like space for people to sound off that they’re completely opposed to this. So you could open a board where Fearford or Big Roadkill can say, ‘Hell no! We shoot looters and refugees!’ And let ’em say it. And another forum for people trying to debate it, maybe?”

Dave sighed, and started adding a whole new whiteboard to our brainstorming collection, on offering refugees housing. Mangal stepped in to help him on the technical end.

Emmett had to bow out for a phone call. I followed him into the loft kitchen, because I saw the point of impact when he answered the phone and got some news. He swallowed, and looked increasingly grey. I offered my hand, and he gripped it.

“Investigation? ... The home’s locked down? ... No, I’m tied up today... This is not your fault. Not in any way... I wish I could be there for you, man. In the meantime, take of yourself, OK? I’ll call you later.”

“What happened?” I asked softly after he ended the call.

“Mass shooting again,” he said, and folded me into his arms. “Darlin’, tell me I should be doing this proposal, instead of doing my job.”

I squeezed him back. “You should do this proposal. You’ve never stopped doing your job, Emmett. Whose turf?”

“Teague, North Haven.”

“Delegate?” I suggested. “Vito and Andy Teague seem to like each other. And Vito just went through this last month in East Haven. It might help him, to support Andy.”

“You’re a smart lady, you know that?” Emmett didn’t wait for a response. His phone was already back at his ear. “Vito? Need a favor...”

I was used to this. Emmett’s work life consisted mostly of followup phone calls. I gave his hand a parting squeeze and went back to look over the whiteboards. I’d started another whiteboard of my own by the time Emmett rejoined me.

“Did I just make it better or worse, on the last round?” he asked.

“The target is public support?” I confirmed. “I think that helped focus a lot. Took the pressure off the numbers, shifted to provoking conversation and keeping a database. The database design,” I pointed to one of the whiteboards, “just got revised. Aside from pro or con New York, there’s the question of why New York and not Boston-Providence. That’s what’s going on over there. And the drug and vaccine survey is ready to implement. Big movement on all boards. You did good.” I grinned at him.

“What’s your new board? ‘Sales funnels’?”

“Yeah, people don’t happen along online by accident. We funnel them in with ads. We’re not selling anything, but it’s the same concept. I didn’t have a good picture of how to funnel before. Now I do.”

“Anything I can do?”

“Not just now. Maybe you could hang around another hour and go where people have questions. I need to do some mock-ups.”

I was so deep into developing a graphics mock-up with Will, that I missed Emmett’s all-hands invitation to an apple gleaning the next day. But he kissed the crown of my head before he left for bed.

Chapter 4

Interesting fact: Connecticut’s main agricultural products were milk, poultry and eggs, hay, apples, sweet corn, peaches, and maple syrup. Only about 350 farms in the state earned over $100,000 a year – in sales, not profit. Average apple yields were 11,000 pounds per acre, and 20 million pounds for the state.

Every once in a while, a day struck me as infinitely better than life before the borders. The weather turned out heart-stoppingly beautiful for the apple gleaning. Bright dry mid-morning sun left sharp shadows on every leaf, making the candy box colors pop in the autumn woods. The trees still wore mostly summer green, but yellows, scarlets, and oranges were on the rise, as stressed trees turned early. The fiery maples would peak in another week or so.

There was barely any traffic on Route 1. Gone were the summer and autumn weekend traffic jams, as tourists flooded through Connecticut on the way to the Cape or the islands. Gasoline and diesel were tightly rationed. Only electric cars were on the road. Without exhaust fumes, I could smell the salt air and mown hay even from the highway.

I pulled into the orchard to park on the grass, and breathed deep of fermenting apples. For a moment, after I turned off the car, there was no underlying machine growl anywhere, just a breeze rattling the leaves, distant seagulls, and insects. A hawk soared lazily above, sailing the air currents. A few orchard personnel lazed around a barn-red sales shack a hundred yards up the gravel road.

“This the right place, isn’t it?” my foster teen Alex prompted from beside me in the front seat. Now 15, he’d shot up lately. He was only my height when I fostered him, a year ago at Thanksgiving. He was already a couple inches taller. His soft boy features were disappearing as firmer lines showed through a perfectly clear ruddy Hispanic complexion. That kid was a looker, for sure. Girls were already vying for his attention. I wasn’t sure any of them had broken through his gentle shyness yet. But if not, that would change soon.

I smiled at him. “Yup. Guess we’re early.” I’d allowed extra time to pick up three Amenoids on the way, but found them standing on the street corner, ready to roll. Will, Dave, and Mel piled out of the back seat and gazed around, looking as entranced as I did.

We didn’t wait long before the city hybrid bio buses started rolling in, three of them in a line from New Haven. Advertising slots on their blue sides held bright murals to promote local festivals and New Haven market town days. Watching these low-slung articulated urban behemoths see-saw their way into the sloped humpy gravel orchard drive was entertaining. Emmett leapt out of the middle bus to spot and direct for the lead driver. They worked it out, and eventually bounced and grated their way uphill, to park by the red shack. About a dozen cars had piled up behind them, and pulled in beside us. The quiet was nicely shattered as a hundred or so inner city kids and their keepers laughed and bounced their way out of the buses.

“So what are the ground rules here?” Will inquired, as we drifted into line to be issued our picking bags.

“We’re only picking windfall apples,” I explained. “There should be plenty, after the storm yesterday morning. You can eat some, if you want. But the proceeds go to support the elderly. Emmett promised this to the kids. It's their way to help Grandma or Grandpa pay their taxes. This group is from the Hill in New Haven.” I pointed to a 30-ish black guy in the ubiquitous militia camouflage pants, and a bright white T-shirt. “DJ's their Coco. This is really his party. He’s Emmett’s number two now for greater New Haven.”

That role used to be Zack’s. On such a glorious day, the thought didn’t twinge much. DJ was incredible at his job. He could have been Emmett’s right hand in the first place. But Zack had an easier community in West Totoket, and was an experienced officer. DJ retired as a sergeant to work with New Haven Parks&Rec, to keep kids busy and out of trouble outside of school. His brilliant white grin was infectious. When that man smiled at you, you knew you were loved.

“So they bus black kids out to work the fields, on threat of starving their grandmothers.” Will said it. Dave and Mel grinned and patted his back.

If I’d wanted to enjoy this glorious harvest festival, I shouldn’t have brought my hacker cronies. I frowned at them. “Everybody works to eat,” I said. “The kids don’t have a chance to grow food at home.” A couple other volunteers in line glared at us. Alex shot the guys an uneasy look. He found some teenagers to join near the back of the line.

Dave was ever the peacemaker. “It's lovely for the children to get out of New Haven on a field trip. Treats included.”

“We’re all slaves to the Cocos anyway,” Mel said. “Might as well train the kids young at hard labor. What?” he demanded, as a middle-aged woman turned to glare at him, fists on hips.

“I support the Cocos,” she schooled him. “They’re the only ones keeping us from complete anarchy. Without them, we’d have no food distribution system at all! What are you doing here, anyway?”

“Major MacLaren invited us,” I offered wanly.

“He’s our boss, like everyone else’s,” Mel added unnecessarily.

“Why don’t we wait over by the trees, Mel?” Dave suggested smoothly. “Dee will be along with the bags in a moment. Won’t you, Dee?”

The busybody ahead of us took a parting shot. “And don’t talk to children along the way!” She huffed and turned her back on me, to face the front of the line again.

I considered explaining that I supported the Cocos, too, probably a lot more than she did. But she hadn’t exactly earned the right to an explanation.

I tuned out the lot of them and tuned in to Emmett instead. Now that the kids were out of the way, he and a helper carried an elderly black woman and her wheelchair out of the bus. She was missing both feet. Her smile flashed some gold teeth as she and Emmett flirted with each other. He wheeled her toward DJ and the orchard owners by the sales shack. The helper carried a folding table.

I walked down the line and asked Alex to grab bags for five, and bring them to me. Then I slipped into the gang by the shack and under Emmett’s arm. They were still at the greeting stage, so I wasn’t interrupting anything important.

I mock-glowered at the elderly woman. “Have you been flirting with my man? The nerve of you, Emmett! Flirting right in front of me!”

He laughed and kissed my forehead. “Uh-huh. Sorry, Liddy. I brought a date. Meet Dee.”

“Huh! Scrawny.” Liddy clucked pretend disapproval, then gave it up for a warm smile. “Just teasing you, child. Emmett talks about his Dee all the time. So nice to finally meet you. She is a pretty little thing, Emmett! We still miss you in New Haven, though.”

Clearly this was a long-standing issue between these two. Emmett had lived in New Haven for a year before settling in Totoket after Zack died.

Emmett just smiled at her, and took his turn shaking hands with the orchard owner. “Any limits today, Mike? Beyond windfalls,” he asked.

“Nah. All you can pick up and sort,” the owner replied. “You’re welcome to it.”

I silently cursed Mel for planting an ugly seed in my mind. This orchard owner had little choice but to agree to whatever Emmett suggested. My little vegetable operation bore the standard 30% taxes to support the military and public services, because it was ‘subsistence’ level – less than 3 acres. Pine Ridge Orchards didn't have that problem. They could pad their payroll to hundreds of people, and probably did, to shield as much as possible from higher taxes. Regardless, Emmett's organization would essentially confiscate over half his harvests, one way or another.

Mike gave a good impression of not minding in the slightest, though.

“So we can glean the whole orchard?” Emmett pressed.

Mike grinned. “I've got over a hundred acres in apples, Emmett.”

“I might have some friends on the way,” Emmett suggested.

“Now how are we going to make that much applesauce, Emmett?” Liddy complained.

Mike sighed. “Alright. I'll press them into cider for you, too.”

“Bless you, Mike!” Liddy replied, with a beatific smile.

The deal was concluded before Emmett’s ‘other friends’ started rolling in, trucks full of professional farm workers, mostly Hispanic. Emmett saluted their leader, who wore properly complete Army camouflage uniform. Lieutenant Colonel Carlos Mora, Emmett’s commanding officer, had brought his friends from Middlesex county next door. Mora’s elder brother was still in the fruit picking business, as a farm labor organizer.

“You tricked me,” Mike commented.

“You underestimated me,” Emmett countered. “Now what kind of resource coordinator would I be, if I couldn’t get an orchard gleaned?” He smiled in challenge, and then relented. “You still OK with this deal, Mike? It’s for a good cause.”

“Yeah,” said Mike. He sighed. “Can’t let all these windfalls go to waste. You’re doing me a favor. I’d just have to hire those guys anyway.” He shook his head and waved to the crew bosses. He wandered over to them, to set up logistics with the pros.

“It doesn’t matter how many apples the kids glean, does it?” I said.

“It matters that they helped,” said Emmett.

“They’ll be proud of themselves,” Liddy agreed. “Let’s get them started, Emmett!”

“I’ll find you later, darlin’,” Emmett assured me.

I lost sight of the massive operation around me, as I settled into picking through my assigned row of Macoun apples with the Amenoids. Alex wisely stuck with the other suburban teenagers he’d found, and vanished up the hillside. He’d find his way back to the car eventually.

Gleaning apples is fun at first, then hard work as the sun beats down on you doing stoop labor. I was used to it, and conveyed a steady stream of apple bags to the nearest collection crate. The Amenoids quickly progressed to spending more time on break than working.

“Do you have to talk politics all day?” I complained, after Mel concluded a particularly academic diatribe against the food taxes. “Mel, your theory could be impeccable, and still completely irrelevant. We need to eat. The guys with the guns need to eat. The apples need picking. We have peace and protection so we can pick them. The weather’s gorgeous for once. How about you get off your high horse and pick up some apples?”

“When does it end, Dee? No, tell me. When do we escape martial law and restore free government and free trade?”

“When does it start, Mel? I’ve been producing food all year. You’re still on your ass. Yet you’re still eating.”

Dave pulled Mel to his feet and got the trio working again.

I probably should have shut up, but I wasn’t done. “You know, before the borders, this orchard probably paid just as much in taxes as it does now. Income taxes, payroll taxes. The property taxes would have been murder. Most farms didn’t survive here on the shoreline. The taxes were too high. Developers offered too much money to just give in and sell off housing parcels. Now we need peace and order to pursue agriculture. People like me who produce food, we want predictable taxes and protection, instead of random violence and looters. The Cocos aren’t out raping and pillaging. They’re trying to rebuild a collapsed economy, so we can have a good life.”

“Don’t you think you’re a little biased, Dee? You’re sleeping with the oppressor,” Mel retorted. “Collaborator.”

“Maybe I’m sleeping with him because I believe in him,” I hissed at Mel. “Maybe I was in on this whole food taxation scheme from the beginning, because I thought we needed it. Maybe I created Amenac to support them in the first place.”

“Paddy paws, gang,” Dave cut in calmly. “Mel, I was there. Dee’s telling the truth. Dee, we do live under martial law. The Rescos like Emmett, and the Cocos under him, dictate our lives. He’s a benign dictator, and doing a bang-up job of it. But Mel has a point. Emmett’s still a military dictator.” He paused and added more softly, compassionately, “It can’t be much fun for you. Working like this all day, every day, for nothing but enough food to eat and a little protection.”

I stood up to ease my aching back and stretch my neck. Mel’s intellectual criticism was easy to reject. Dave’s compassion was not. He’d caught a chink in my resolve, and I swallowed uneasily. “It’s not easy,” I allowed. “It’s not fun.”

I usually refused to look at it, but I didn’t love life as a subsistence farmer. I used to love gardening. I needed security. I feared survivalists and looters. I thought I loved Emmett. But this life was a grind.

But I didn’t have to look at it that way. I had goals, things I was working toward. I was presenting Amenac to a regional summit meeting in just over a week. I had good weather and good apples, a gorgeous day. Kids were safe and playing and laughing in the next row. “It’s good enough,” I breathed.

In sudden decision, I yanked up my picking bag. “You people aren’t much fun. See you back at the car.”

I switched over a row and walked up-hill along the Macoun trees until the guys were out of sight and earshot, if not out of mind. I picked through windfall apples alone. It took me a quarter hour to realize it wasn’t the Amenoids I kept arguing with in my head, it was myself. I didn’t win that argument either. But I picked up a lot of apples to feed people who couldn’t. Eventually the monotony of the job and the beauty of the setting allowed me to just give it a rest and enjoy the day. The glory days of Indian summer were nearly gone. I wanted to savor this one.

“Heya, darlin’,” Emmett said. I startled, and coming up, knocked my head on an apple bough. “Watch your head,” he commented. He flopped down in the tall grass between the rows, after kicking a few rotten windfalls out of his way. I crouched my way out of the tree, to flop down beside him.

He gazed at my stormy face, and thoughtfully chewed on the end of a sprig of grass he had sticking out of his teeth. “Wanna talk about it?” he offered.

“No.”

He scratched his jaw. “Dave seemed to think they pissed you off.”

“They did.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I think I lost it when they called you a benign dictator.”

The grass seed-head bobbed. “Uh-huh.”

That wasn’t honest. “I really lost it when Dave said I was doing hard work without end, for nothing.”

“Uh-huh.”

I sighed. I’d long suspected that ‘uh-huh’ meant Emmett heard me, but didn’t buy it. He said it a lot – to everyone, not just me, though especially to me. He waited me out. I hugged my knees and put my face down on them, looking at him, watching the seed head bob.

“You’re done?” he inquired. At my nod, he continued, “The difference between heaven and hell is the company we keep here, darlin’. These are hard times. It’s a lot of work. I sure do like the company I’m keeping, though.” He smiled and laid a hand on the small of my back, just where I liked it.

“Lots of work,” I breathed.

He nodded, and took a deep breath. “I’m just a convenient target, Dee. The real problem is productivity. We need to farm more efficiently. Until we manage that, yeah, it’s one hell of a lot of work just to keep us fed.”

I frowned at him.

He laughed. “OK. No more politics.”

“I don’t like people calling you a benign dictator.”

He shrugged. “They’ll call me a lot worse than that, if I try to fix this instead of letting people work it out for themselves. Just imagine if I tried to reform land use top-down. Get rid of all the little scraps, and put together effective farms.”

I sat up in alarm. “You mean, take my farm away?”

“Darlin’, you don’t have a farm. You barely have a subsistence lot.” I bristled. “Dee, my step-dad has a subsistence farm. It’s back-breaking work, with no end in sight. You never get ahead, never get it done. Even with me as free labor, we didn’t earn half as much as Momma. And he’s got ten, twenty times the land you do. I’m not criticizing you at all. I’m amazed at what you get out of that suburban scrap of land. But darlin’, it doesn’t have to be that way. You see these trees? The grass? That sunlight? The rain? They can do most of the work, Dee, if you leverage them right. This is a good farm.”

“This is a dozen good farms.”

Emmett shook his head. “One family runs this operation, and they know how. They give a lot of people jobs, sure. But it’s one farm. But. I’m not going to take your farm away. I’m not about to chop up this successful orchard and give the pieces to amateurs, either. So you break your heart and back feeding us all, on less than an acre, while Pine Ridge Orchard’s got apples to burn.”

“We don’t have enough margin to relieve New York, do we?” I asked sadly.

He considered that. “Shoreline Connecticut was a bedroom area. We don’t have any margin at all. That’s not true of the Northeast as a whole. There are plenty of real farms. Just not here.” He suddenly chuckled. “Is that what’s bothering you? You’re already hacked off that you’re breaking your back, while these Amen1 yahoos get a free ride? And then you picture feeding a bunch of city idiots, too?”

I pursed my lips to stifle a grin.

“Well, damn, Dee. That’s so unfair.”

I gave up and giggled into my knees.

“Oh, I know. They’re probably good at asphalt, those city types. We could put them to hard labor. They could jack-hammer up your street and driveways. That could give you, oh, another half-acre. You could plant a couple apple trees. Have to wait five years for the first harvest, though.”

“Stop!” I said, laughing.

He grabbed me into a hug and rolled us down into the grass. I finally relaxed into him, and just enjoyed the comfort of his body, insects singing, the people’s voices far away. Increasingly far away, in fact – it sounded like this party was drawing to a close. Only the real farm workers were left gleaning in earnest. The volunteers were worn out.

“Congratulations on your gleaning, Emmett. It was a good day.”

“Yeah, it was. Dee... I’m not coming back to Totoket tonight. I’ll be gone a few days.”

“Oh?”

“I need to do my research for this New York proposal.”

“Oh.” I assumed he meant to visit the border garrisons.

He kissed me slowly and tenderly, then pulled us both back to our feet, to walk down the cidery hill to the mad-house of laughing children by the little red shack. It was a good day.

He came back from his research sick as a dog, and closeted himself in his house. When the vomiting and fever subsided and he could think straight again, he had a lot of proposal left to write and precious little time left to do it in.

Chapter 5

Interesting fact: The Greater New York City borders were closed two weeks ahead of schedule on an emergency basis, due to the Ebola outbreak. The New York–New England border closed at the same time, a month early. Their share of the U.S. strategic reserves – food, fuel, and ammunition, among other things – was not delivered before the borders closed early.

“Darlin’, remember you’re not here as my girlfriend.” Emmett waited until we were parked at the Coast Guard Academy to drop this little bombshell. He casually proceeded to unbuckle his seatbelt and hop out of the car.

I sat gaping at him. That was the second time in two weeks I’d been informed that he wouldn’t consider me his girlfriend for the next bit. The first time hadn’t gone so well. For a moment I was just stunned. Then I started getting mad.

Maybe he felt the vibe. Maybe he just noticed that I wasn’t moving as he wanted me to. He bent down to peer in through the door. His familiar bushy brown hair was gone. Somehow he’d managed to get a precise military haircut after we’d quit work last night at midnight, and before he picked me up this morning for the trip to New London. His cropped hair was topped with proper red beret over cammies, the trousers bloused into combat boots. That look hid his tight wiry body even better than the dress blues. He looked padded. Why he wasn’t wearing dress blues, I hadn’t a clue. I was certainly wearing navy blue blazer and chinos, my old corporate standard. Suspicion dawned that I didn’t know who this man was, or what he’d done with my lover.

“Dee,” he said. “We’re both presenters here? Colleagues.” He sighed. “Just trust me on this? We cannot have a scene right now. We’ll talk later in our room.”

Our room, yes. How exactly weren’t we here as lovers, when we were sharing a hotel room? Oh, yes, there would be a talk. I pulled his messenger bag out of the back seat and thrust it at him. Then I flashed him my sunniest steel-edged smile. “I look forward to that, Major MacLaren!”

He grinned crookedly. “Shit. I’ll see you in the meeting, Ms. Baker.”

By the time I’d clambered out of the car with my own laptop case, and straightened my clothes, he’d been swallowed into a small flock of a half-dozen cammie-clad men of similar 30-something age. They clapped each other on the shoulders, shook hands, sometimes combined with half-hugs, and other close physical male bonding. At a guess, they were the Connecticut Rescos, minus their commanding officer, Lt. Colonel Mora, the only other Resco I’d ever met. The Cocos were civilians, or at least reservists. But the next tier up, the Rescos, retained their commissions as Army officers.

I sighed, affixed another false smile on my face, and looked around for anyone else I knew cluttering up the little campus green in front of the entrance. Finding none, I headed for the door. Just inside, I met an armed security screening checkpoint, yet another thing I didn’t miss from life before the borders.

“Corporal Tibbs!” I cried, with a sincere smile this time. “So good to see you again! Thank you for your help last winter.” The stolid young marine had been my jailer the last time I’d visited New London harbor, on an aircraft carrier converted to an ark. He’d been dutiful enough as a jailer. He’d also surreptitiously gotten word of my incarceration to the right people. That probably saved me from death at the hands of Homeland Security. I was glad to see it didn’t get Tibbs fired.

“Ms. Baker. Good to see you well.” A certain sharp glance suggested that Tibbs would prefer I not get too specific, in this context, about the incident last winter. He inspected my laptop bag thoroughly. He ran me through the stand-up X-ray. He photographed me and took a retina print. From all this, he produced a very high-tech version of a ‘Hi! My Name Is Dee!’ name tag. It proclaimed my affiliation as ‘Presenter, Amenac Resource, New Haven County.’

I slung its lanyard around my neck, and tried not to dwell on how many trillions the Defense Department had added to the national debt with toys like this. It was all moot now.

I re-affixed earrings and shoes, and gazed around the sea of cammie-clad men, as the after-images from the retina scan abated. They were all men. The different color berets and camouflage probably meant something. But not to me.

“Dee,” Tibbs said softly, “Lieutenant Commander Lacey is over there. He’s standing with Captain Niedermeyer.”

“Thank you, Corporal,” I breathed. And I hesitated. These military types seemed very big on protocol. I knew nothing about military protocol. With them all wearing cammies, I couldn’t even tell Navy from Army from Coast Guard or Marine, without getting close enough to inspect the labels.

“Captain Niedermeyer is your host, ma’am,” Tibbs further prompted. “It is always appropriate to greet your host first. Or anyone else you already know.”

“Right. Thank you!” I hazarded a smile at him this time. But he blandly gazed out the door, in relaxed readiness, and pretended not to know me. Right. I couldn’t blame him. Ex-prisoner, ex-jailer was such an awkward social tie. I steeled my courage, and strode to my ex-fiancé Adam Lacey as though this were a cocktail party. “Adam!” I cried.

“Dee! Great to see you!” Adam, at least, didn’t have a flagpole up his back. He broke into a broad grin, folded me into a warm hug, and kissed my cheek. He turned to his companion. “John, I’ve told you about Dee Baker, my once fiancée. Dee, meet Captain John Niedermeyer. Ah, Dee, a Coast Guard captain is two ranks up from an Army major,” he added for clarification. “In contrast to an Army captain, who is one rank below major.” Adam understood my haziness on such matters.

“Well, that’s confusing,” I said with a laugh. I held out a hand to shake, hoping for the best. “Pleased to meet you at last, Captain Niedermeyer. And thank you for inviting me to present.”

Niedermeyer grasped my hand for a robust two-handed shake, so apparently I got that right enough. “Pleased to meet you, Dee. You saved our posteriors on the New Year’s hurricane. Looking forward to your presentation!”

Niedermeyer smiled. I smiled. Adam put his hand on the small of my back to draw me to his other side to chat. So apparently that was enough of that. I was just grateful I didn’t have to wade alone back into the throng of large men in cammies again just yet. Adam and I had a fine time catching up quietly. Occasionally Niedermeyer boomed greetings to others, but Adam merely smiled and nodded politely to them.

Of course, that didn’t include Emmett. After Niedermeyer fulsomely greeted Emmett, Adam pulled his right hand off my back to offer it to him. “Good to see you again, Major.”

“Have we...met,” Emmett managed, glancing down at Adam’s name tag and thus answering his own question. “Ah, of course, Lieutenant Commander. At Zack’s funeral.” He was not pleased to find me with some other man’s hand resting on my back. He was not more pleased to recognize my ex-fiancé. Being reminded of Zack’s funeral didn’t help much, either.

I was annoyed enough with Emmett to be glad. I smiled sunnily.

His head tilted. “Uh-huh.”

With all the panache you’d expect of a Wall Street scion and prep school upbringing, Adam cut in smoothly, “I hope your trip from Totoket wasn’t too challenging. I hear a bridge was out on I-95? Refreshments will be served in a few minutes.”

“The inevitable pizza?” I quipped.

“We’ve adopted the inevitable clam chowder of late,” Adam played along. “I also anticipate cider.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant Commander.” Emmett placed his hand firmly on the small of my back and led me away to stand against a wall between him and a rubbery plant. He occasionally greeted people. I smiled and shook hands when he introduced me, and otherwise bonded with the rubbery plant while he socialized with not-me.

“I only know three people here,” I pointed out to Emmett during a lull in the greetings. “You, Adam, and the Marine at the door. The Marine held me in jail last winter. Well, Mora too, but I haven’t seen him yet.”

“Uh-huh.”

I shot him a hairy eyeball. Accidentally, on my eyes’ way back to pleasant blandness, I caught Adam’s eye down the hall. He looked amused. He also looked damned good. In a sea of large bulky looking men, leave it to Adam to actually look good in cammies. Superior tailoring, no doubt. I fought to suppress a grin.

“Dee, I didn’t brief you,” Emmett cut in, “because I wasn’t worried about you. You’re better at making instant friends than anyone I know. Then twisting them around your little finger.”

“I didn’t want to embarrass you,” I claimed.

“Uh-huh. So you just did. Right in front of Niedermeyer.” Emmett looked pointedly at Adam, then held my eye again. “Look, the brass is going to be here any minute. I just introduced you to a half dozen colleagues of mine. They’d love to know you. Go mingle.” He sighed. “Try to avoid the brass.”

He pushed off and immediately another man’s arm flung around him. The same little Resco flock from outside drifted back to him, their seeming center of gravity.

I kicked myself mentally for being slow on the uptake. That’s exactly what was happening. Emmett was second in command of the Rescos in Connecticut. This was his team, and he was revving them up until their boss, Mora, showed. And brass would be...Mora? And Niedermeyer?

I drifted into a side room to sample the clam chowder – the standard New England cream-based variety. No pricey wheat crackers were included. It had been a century or so since New England had grown much wheat, and we were still tooling up on that. My sense of humor gradually kicked in. “Oh, good heavens, you’re from Massachusetts? I wasn’t sure it was still there!” and other party quips to my fellow buffet grazers.

One of the other Connecticut Rescos, Cameron, from the northeast corner, ducked in for food. He actually stopped to get to know me. “I can’t tell you how much Emmett has helped me, Dee. And Amenac! God, it’s a lifesaver. I’m really looking forward to your presentation tomorrow!”

“And what are you presenting, Cameron?” His badge told me that he was presenting.

“Um...” He glanced around guardedly. “Prisons. We Rescos kind of each have a pet project. I do prisons. Hey, Dee – great to meet you! I ought to get back to the brass. And hide in the back.” He chuckled nervously. “We’ll see each other tonight at the hotel.”

After he left, I drifted toward the door to peek out at what was happening in the hall. I needn’t have worried about identifying ‘the brass.’ They were the only ones in dress uniform, brass buttons shining. I’d never seen Emmett or Adam at parade rest before. They all stood that way, except for ‘the brass.’

-o-

“Major Emmett MacLaren,” our host Captain Niedermeyer called out, once we’d settled into the gorgeous modern auditorium. The hall was paneled in golden wooden beams overhead, as though we were tucked under a newly joined Viking hull, made posh. We had plenty of elbow room, with only a few dozen attendees.

“Why don’t you present first, Major?” Niedermeyer pointed at the projection console in front of the stage. I was relieved to see that a technician manned that station, so Emmett didn’t have to figure out the cables and talk to an audience at the same time.

“While Emmett’s setting up – welcome!” Niedermeyer said. He didn’t bother with the stage, but rather lounged a couple rows up, his arms draped across a few seats, legs crossed. No one sat in front of him. Adam and some others flanked him. The five brass sat a few rows behind him, buffered by Lt. Colonel Mora, Navy Captain Amatrudo from Ark 7, and several others I didn’t know, but assumed were of similar rank-above-Emmett. The rest of us gave them a wide berth. I’d chosen a seat behind Emmett and the tight group of Connecticut Rescos, across the auditorium from their leader, Lt. Colonel Mora.

“The purpose of this summit is two-fold,” Niedermeyer continued. “First and foremost is to discuss the possible relief of New York City. Secondly, since we’re all together, we have some presentations on resources and progress here in the Northeast.” He gestured up at the brass. “Those won’t be of interest to our higher-ranked guests. So we’ll tackle New York first.

“We have four proposals. I believe Major MacLaren’s plan is the most extensive. So I’ve asked him to go first as a basis for comparison.” Emmett hopped onto the stage, as his first slide came up on the screen behind him, and the room lights dimmed slightly from the pseudo-keel above. “Ready, Emmett?”

I was listed on that slide as second author of the proposal, ‘Dee Baker, Amenac.’ I’d worked on data and graphics and slides. But I hadn’t seen it all put together. And I wasn’t expecting to be honored as a full co-author.

“Sure!” Emmett said with a wry grin. “Thank you all for coming. I know it’s not an easy trip. And thank you, John, for hosting such an expeditious meeting. We’re all very busy.”

“Sorry to put you on the spot, Emmett,” Niedermeyer returned. His grin didn’t look sorry.

Emmett introduced himself, and me as co-author. Cameron the Resco discreetly prompted me when to stand and smile around the room, and when to sit back down.

“Major, why are you presenting in combat uniform?” one of the brass demanded. “And why is a civilian listed as co-author of this proposal?”

Niedermeyer shot a look at another brass. That one said, “General, I believe this is Captain Niedermeyer’s meeting. And we have four proposals to review. It’s a large topic.”

“Thank you, Admiral,” Niedermeyer said. “Proceed, Major.”

And Emmett laid it all out. I knew it was going to be hard, to relieve New York, but the scope and audacity of his plan was breathtaking. Four exits from greater New York into quarantine and recovery zones. Hundreds of thousands of troops and medical volunteers and how to deploy them at the exits. Food and shelter and medical supply levels. Estimates of the current status and population distribution inside the New York borders. How to resettle the refugees through New England, New York, and New Jersey. Estimates of civilian acceptance of refugees and ability to feed them.

Painful as it was to accept, his proposal only saved about 2.5 million people, of the 21 million population that was once inside the New York epidemic border. Of those, most would only be freed to Long Island. Only a million would migrate outside the border. Given the complete breakdown in communication within the border, he could only guess at how many people survived in there. His current estimate was about 7 million, and falling.

Emmett had done a masterful job at making the presentation succinct, given the scope of the plan. If he’d presented without interruption, it might have taken 45 minutes. But despite Niedermeyer’s best attempts to squelch questions until the end, even Niedermeyer himself interrupted Emmett a few times. Emmett was giving a fair impression of remaining fresh and professional after two hours on that stage. But I didn’t buy it. He had to be exhausted.

“In closing,” he said, “I’d like to share some photos. These are fresh refugees entering into our quarantine pilot project on Long Island.” They looked like images from the emancipation of Dachau or Auschwitz at the end of World War II. But these were in living color instead of grainy ancient black and white. Instead of shaved heads and efficient German striped pajamas, the remains of normal American attire flapped loosely on them.

Emmett clicked through the photos slowly, trying to control a catch in his voice. “As you can see, few of these people are in any condition to make it to the exits on their own power.

“These are refugees graduating from quarantine...” They looked better, but still skeletally thin, often still with bandages.

“A Coast Guard photo of a refugee ship, trying to make it to the Connecticut coast...” I glanced over at Adam and Niedermeyer. Their faces were set in icy rage. The Coast Guard was charged with gunning those ships down.

“A SEAL team took me into Manhattan last week...” My head whiplashed back to Emmett in horror. No wonder he’d been so sick. “A body pyre in Battery Park... Corpses in the 9/11 Memorial... This community had a hydroponic garden on the roof... We traded our MREs for their supper. This was my serving of rat stew...”

Emmett lost it then, and turned his back to the audience. “Take a moment, Major,” Niedermeyer encouraged gently.

Emmett nodded. After a few moments, he slowly clicked through his remaining collection of images from his foray into Manhattan, without trying to speak. Next came images of border emplacements with guns trained on suburban Westchester County. One photo showed soldiers bowling with what looked like a child’s skull. He clicked on through to an overall schematic of the four land exit routes out of New York.

With visible effort, he concluded, “I believe we can do this. The risks are high but manageable. I believe we need to do this. I wish we could save more people. Perhaps later we can, in a second wave.”

Silence held the auditorium. After a minute, the testy general said, “Jesus.”

Niedermeyer rallied. “Thank you, Major MacLaren, for a masterful presentation. I believe we need to break for lunch before questions.”

Emmett nodded stiffly, and strode straight out of the room. I pelted out after him, while everyone else still tried to rouse themselves. In the hall, Tibbs silently directed me out the door. I found Emmett standing off to the side, out of line of sight from inside the building. He stood with his face up to a light rain.

I wasn’t sure whether to touch him, with the girlfriend prohibition in place. “Emmett, you were amazing,” I hazarded.

He grabbed me to him and hugged me hard, pushing my face into his shoulder. I hugged him right back. When his rigid muscles started to relax into me, I tried a quip. “This might be a compromising position, Major.”

“Screw that,” he breathed, and kissed me. “Thank you.”

“Thank you. I am proud beyond measure.” It was a stilted thing to say. But there’s a time for that.

He pulled my head back onto his shoulder, and said, “They’re going to shoot it down, Dee.”

“The brass? Like hell they will!”

“Shh. Just don’t be surprised. The hard part will be the Q&A.”

Chapter 6

Interesting fact: Pennsylvania has two large cities – Philadelphia and Pittsburgh – widely separated by rural areas. Of particular interest at this point, Pennsylvania was home to tens of thousands of Amish and Mennonite farmers, expert in low-tech sustainable agriculture.

Tibbs let us back into the building without inspection. I glanced him a question, and he nodded to a video monitor trained on where Emmett and I had just stood. Tibbs shrugged apology. If Emmett noticed any of this by-play, he didn’t care. His Resco flock quickly coalesced around us, and bore us into a larger room down the hall, where they’d staked out a table for lunch. We both enjoyed congratulations on a job well done. Emmett’s buddies policed each other to suppress any questions.

Colonel Mora’s right hand fell on Emmett’s shoulder between us, and the Rescos fell silent. “Hell of a job, Emmett. In two weeks.” Emmett swiveled to shake his hand. “He even took a day off to pick apples for the elderly.” That was addressed to the other Rescos. Emmett’s commanding officer was boss to them all. “Plus that sightseeing stunt in New York. Damn fine work from you, too, Ms. Baker. Couldn’t you have stopped him from taking the side trip?”

“I would have tried if I’d known about it, Colonel,” I admitted. Though on reflection, I was kind of glad I hadn’t known he was in New York those three days. I would have worried myself crazy.

“That makes two of us.” Mora shrugged. “It needed doing. You didn’t need to go along, though, Emmett.”

“Sir,” Emmett replied, in polite disagreement. “How did it play in the gallery?”

Mora shrugged microscopically. “Pull your punches in the Q&A,” he advised. “You don’t know your own strength. Oh, and Emmett? If you could pull this off in two weeks, clearly you haven’t been giving me 100%.” They all laughed. “Enjoy your lunches, gentlemen, Ms. Baker.”

Mora moved off to physically block a brass bearing down on us, and redirect him toward the brass-and-upper-minions table at the far end of the room. His flock of Rescos visibly relaxed. The one to my left said, “Phew,” and shot me a grin.

“This is kind of entertaining,” I offered to him. “I have no idea what’s going on. I’m just reading body language.” He was Major Papadopoulos, his name tag supplied, Resco for Fairfield County, the Connecticut Gold Coast just west of us, the wealthiest suburbs of New York City. Or, they used to be.

“I imagine body language is speaking volumes, Ms. Baker,” he replied.

I smiled at him, and resolved not to underestimate these guys. They might look cute flocking together for support at the moment. But on a normal day, each held as much authority as Emmett.

Lunch was served, eaten, and cleared with surprising dispatch. Captain Niedermeyer pulled Emmett away for a few minutes of discreet consultation.

Then we all filed back into the lovely wooden auditorium. Emmett took the stage, and beckoned me to join him. In consternation, I did. We set up my laptop on a little table.

“Welcome back,” boomed Niedermeyer, causing stragglers to settle faster. “We neglected one item before breaking for lunch.” He stood up, and started clapping.

At his cue, everyone in camouflage stood and gave us a standing ovation. Emmett nodded acknowledgment. They kept it up. He held out a hand to clasp with me, and we both smiled around the room. They kept clapping. “Thank you,” Emmett attempted to settle them.

“Thank you,” Niedermeyer insisted, and they clapped harder.

The brass remained seated and silent through it all. In increasingly fidgety discomfort, I was glad to see. I thought Emmett deserved a standing ovation. The Amenac team deserved it, too, and all the Rescos here who bridged the draconian Calm Act with a little human decency.

Eventually Niedermeyer sat. The room quieted, following his lead.

The testy general tried to ask a question first. “Major MacLaren, who authorized you to –”

“I did,” Niedermeyer belted out, cutting him off. “I invited everyone to this summit, and I proposed the topics. We have limited time, gentlemen. I suggest we address the message, not the messenger. Major MacLaren, I have some questions.” And he dove right in. It was Niedermeyer’s meeting, and he didn’t let the brass forget it. He allowed some of their questions, but that wasn’t the last one he vetoed.

“Major, how did you determine how many refugees to relocate where?” Niedermeyer began.

“Thank you, Captain. My co-author, Ms. Baker, and the Amenac team collected the data civilian-side. Dee?”

“Yes,” I said, trying to feel entitled to speak here, “there are a number of Amenac boards well-attended by Rescos, Cocos, relief organizations, and town and city governments. We instigated some discussions. They’re still going on, but some towns have brought the matter to a vote, and reported a commitment.”

I sifted through Emmett’s prodigious collection of backup slides on my laptop, and cued the right one onto the screen. “The example Emmett mentioned,” I continued, “Poughkeepsie, is one of those communities. They opened their own public sub-board and had a lively debate online. Which was interesting to watch. Initially they were very hesitant, and suggested maybe 1% of their population. The Poughkeepsie area, Dutchess County, is comparable to southern New Haven. So only 4,000 refugees. But soon people realized that they expected – hoped – they’d get more than twice that, just from family members reunited. Almost universal agreement emerged, all across the Northeast, to reunite any family members found in New York. On this slide, I plotted against discussion time, how many refugees the Poughkeepsie Resco estimated they would accept. First day, 4,000. Second day with family reunions, 12,000. And so on. Two days ago, when I last contacted him, he said 48,000. You can see the steady increase over time. The more they talked, the more refugees they committed to accept.”

“I’d estimate 60,000 now,” a Resco called out.

I grinned. “Is that avm89?”

“Yes, ma’am. Also known as Ash Margolis. You’re the Mangler?”

“No, sorry, I’m the Deeb. The Mangler is one of my colleagues.”

“You don’t look like a Mangler,” he allowed, with a smile.

“Thank you. Though I’m not sure I want to look like a Deeb.” That got some chuckles.

“Anyway,” I continued, “based on examples like Poughkeepsie, we plotted Resco estimates versus distance from the city.” I showed the following slide. “That doesn’t seem to matter. Buffalo and Burlington are just as willing as Poughkeepsie and New Haven. The entire Northeast is connected to New York City by blood and friendship.

“But we’re connected to Boston-Providence the same way. Western Mass, New Hampshire, and Maine are more concerned with Boston-Prov. They seem willing to accept up to 5% of their pre-border populations in New York refugees. Plus relatives. But they want to reserve capacity for Boston-Prov later. They’re very eager to do something about Boston-Prov. Yet they seem to agree that New York is more urgent. Across New York state, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Vermont, the average seems more like 8%.”

Emmett clarified, “And that’s without food subsidies, correct?”

“Yes. Some communities might be willing to take more if food subsidies are offered. But their Rescos vetoed the idea. Rescos are only willing to take in sustainable numbers of refugees, fed locally.”

“It’s our job,” Emmett agreed, echoed by ‘avm89’ with, “It’s what we do.”

I added, “Pennsylvania... I’m sure you’re all aware. We’re getting no word out of Pennsylvania.”

Cameron, the northeast Connecticut Resco, raised his hand. “Major, these numbers seem lower than what I saw on the Amenac boards. I offered to take 10% for Tolland and Windham counties.”

“Right, Major Cameron,” Emmett agreed. He took a moment to introduce Cameron for the benefit of the out-of-state Rescos. I was a little surprised that Cameron was a major. He seemed so young and earnest compared to the rest of Emmett’s flock.

Getting back to business, Emmett said, “After Dee’s analysis, I pruned the numbers down to 8%. If some areas are willing to take more, later in the process, great. But – Dee, photo 2 again?”

I displayed the quarantine graduates from Long Island. Emmett continued, “These are urban and suburban dwellers, Cam. They’re in rough shape. They have no agricultural skills. They’ll include elderly and children. They need to be taught how to farm. They can’t make their own shelter, not going into winter. It’s a big burden. So, yeah, for planning purposes, for now, I pruned it to 8%. And 5% for the other three states, but those areas aren’t as populous, anyway.”

“But my prison offer?” Cameron persisted.

“Oh! Absolutely,” agreed Emmett. He rummaged for a backup slide himself on my laptop, and put it up with the remote. “I’ll just let y’all read that. Sorry, Cam, I had to cut some details from the presentation. There are prisons to deal with in New York. And we might imprison some more bad actors. Let’s talk about that during your presentation. OK, Cam?”

“Thank you.” Cameron sat back satisfied.

“Why the hell are you saving prisoners?” demanded General Testy.

Niedermeyer cut him off. “We’ve decided to discuss that during Major Cameron’s presentation, General Tolliver.”

“I won’t be here for that,” he argued.

“These facts are not unrelated,” Niedermeyer said. “These are local civil matters, General. Now, Major –” And he launched a long period of detailed military and operations Q&A.

I was fascinated, but much of it went in one ear and out the other. Occasionally I fielded a quick question, but this was Emmett’s arena. I fell into a daze of locating backup slides for him.

When the key question came, what alerted me was the way Emmett’s posture changed suddenly, attentively.

Another general who hadn’t spoken yet asked, “Emmett? Where did you get that picture? Of the soldiers, playing with the...” The man’s voice sounded desolate.

Lips pursed, I helpfully flipped up the image of soldiers playing ball with a child’s skull. If he was responsible for these soldiers, he could rot in hell, was my general thinking.

“I took that picture in Greenwich garrison, this past week, sir,” Emmett said gently, kindly.

The general’s face blanched as the image came up again on the screen. I saw Colonel Mora gesture urgently to Emmett. Emmett turned, saw what I’d shown, and quickly backed the screen to the boring logistics slide he’d had up before. He gave me the tiniest head-shake of warning.

“Those poor kids,” the sad general said. “We need this, Major. God help us, we need this.”

“You need to control your people, Cullen!” barked General Testy – or Tolliver. “What if this Amenac got hold of a picture like that, and published it?”

I must say, the thought had crossed my mind. In fact, I’d intended to do just that, from the moment I saw that photo.

“She wouldn’t do that,” Emmett promised General Cullen softly.

I shot Emmett a skeptical look. But his eyes were glued to General Cullen. Niedermeyer was paying just as rapt attention to the interchange behind him, up in the brass ghetto section of the auditorium.

“Are you threatening me, General Tolliver?” General Cullen growled. “With what? Who else would take my post? This man,” he pointed to Emmett, “offers me my only chance out, besides swallowing my own gun. And the only reason I haven’t done that was right there. Those poor young men and women in my charge. There’s no way out for them. They can’t be discharged, can’t go home again. Ordered to pen up their own American people, shoot them down like animals – ”

“Watch yourself, General!” cried General Tolliver in anger. “There is a civilian in the room!”

“Yes, and I thank God she is,” General Cullen bit out in return. “Thank you, Major. And thank you, especially, for including the retraining time.” His voice caught. “I hope you’ve allowed enough time.” Emmett’s plan called for taking soldiers off the borders for several weeks of training before the relief operation.

“Even if this plan doesn’t go forward,” Emmett offered, “let’s take some of your people out on furlough, sir. We have vacant college campuses. A penitentiary in Niantic, if that’s needed. We can start this week. Majors Cameron and Papadopoulos and I, we’d be honored to help you.” Cameron and Papadopoulos stood and nodded emphatically at Cullen.

General Cullen nodded gratitude, as though he didn’t trust himself to speak.

And suddenly I got it. When Emmett played for souls, he played for all of them. Including the young soldiers who’d gone off the deep end, and played with a child’s skull as though it were a toy. They were his people.

This meeting wasn’t just to persuade the other Rescos. Judging from what I’d seen, they were probably on board already. Emmett’s primary target was this General Cullen. He apparently commanded the border garrisons that penned up New York City. Testy General Tolliver seemed to think he held some authority over Cullen. If so, I suspected he’d just lost it.

Niedermeyer nodded to Emmett in salute. “Final question, Major. This proposal is huge and audacious and fascinating. I’m sure we could spend days sifting through it. But we just don’t have the time today. Bottom line. When could we move on this?”

“It’s tight, sir. But I’d like to move by Thanksgiving. I think that would give a huge symbolic morale boost. There’s nothing to make you feel grateful for what you have, like giving it away to someone less fortunate. Failing that, Christmas.”

“Nice touch,” Niedermeyer agreed, nodding thoughtfully. “Alright, everyone. Let’s take a break before the other three presentations. Be back in 15 minutes.”

It was already mid-afternoon. I couldn’t imagine how we’d review three more presentations today. I left for the hallway, to mingle with avm89 from Poughkeepsie – Lt. Colonel Ash Margolis – and the other Rescos from outside Connecticut. Emmett just sat down on the edge of the stage in the auditorium, to speak one-on-one with anyone who came up to chat.

Chapter 7

Interesting fact: Maine sent no representative to the summit meeting in New London. The sole Resco from New Hampshire caught a ride down on a Coast Guard boat. The U.S. Coast Guard no longer patrolled Maine, having cut a deal with Canada to cover it. Maine was deep in negotiations to become a Canadian province. But the Maine Resco insisted that they would accept their share of New York refugees regardless. Contacts in Canadian intelligence confirmed this.

The final session for the day was long, but not as long as I’d feared. Of the three other presenters, two stood and said they backed Emmett’s plan instead of their own. Like Emmett, they’d accepted the challenge to plan a resettlement of New York refugees. Unlike Emmett, they hadn’t gotten nearly as far in the limited time available. They did have some details worked out to elaborate Emmett’s plan, and offered to work with him on it. Emmett gladly accepted their collaboration.

“And that leaves you, Colonel Hoffman,” Niedermeyer prompted with a grin.

“For the record, I also support Major MacLaren’s proposal,” Colonel Hoffman replied. He got up anyway, to hand off his laptop to the A/V technician, and take the slide control device in return.

“Nevertheless,” Niedermeyer replied cheerfully. “Colonel Hoffman is here from south Jersey. He’s the ranking Resco there. And he gamely took the short stick, to develop a proposal to relieve New York in situ. I think Emmett got the easier assignment, Pete.” That got a few laughs.

“I didn’t think so at the time,” Hoffman replied, with a rueful smile. “First off, I’d like to thank Major MacLaren for making his epidemiology team and his own progress available to me at every step along the way. I’d also like to help your planning team any way I can, Emmett.”

Hoffman went on to present the options he’d evaluated for how to add food and remove illness from New York City and its suburbs, without removing its borders or people. Essentially, the best he’d come up with was to extend Tom Aoyama’s work out on Long Island – quarantine zones, growing inward as a diseased core shrank.

Geography and demographics were not kind in this pursuit. The moving Long Island quarantine line would hang up shy of Queens and Brooklyn, unable to swallow two whole boroughs of the city. Instead they’d need fully armed borders-within-the-borders there, to pass a controlled flow of refugees into the disease-free end of Long Island.

They could start another moving quarantine line. Naturally, Hoffman focused on trying to reclaim northern New Jersey, which wrapped around the city proper to its south and west. The border-within-border challenge would be even more personnel-intensive there.

“After Long Island, the second best agricultural opportunity inside the city epidemic borders, is northwest Jersey here,” Hoffman pointed out. Naturally he had a map of the city environs on the screen. “General Cullen... Do you have any authority over the Pennsylvania border here, sir?”

“I do not,” Cullen confirmed.

Hoffman paused. “That’s...essentially the same down the entire western edge of New Jersey, in or out of the epidemic borders. I’ve been unable to secure any kind of cooperation, or even communication, from fortress Pennsylvania.”

Another Resco volunteered from the audience, “We have the same problem in western New York state.” The New York–Pennsylvania line ran about 225 miles west to the Great Lakes.

Niedermeyer turned to the testy general. “Is there any light you could shed on this for us, General Tolliver?”

“If you have specific requests, I could forward them to the appropriate personnel,” Tolliver replied smugly. A bureaucratic ‘No’ if ever there was one.

The Niedermeyer-friendly Admiral pushed harder from the brass bank. “What we’d like to know, General, is what exactly is going on in Pennsylvania. The scuttlebutt down in Norfolk says that Penn has become the Army’s own private reserve state. Though I don’t recall the Calm Act authorizing the Army to take and fortify a private – reserve – state. And the Army in the Northeast doesn’t appear to be sharing in the fruits of this private Army state – in the Northeast.”

“That is precisely the way the borders were intended to work, Admiral,” General Tolliver replied testily. “Each area within a border is charged with developing its own sustainable local economy, without commerce with other areas. It’s the rest of these states in the Northeast that are violating that directive, not Pennsylvania. And I shall be reporting back to Washington on those violations, rest assured!”

“Uh-huh,” Emmett commented softly beside me.

“As I will certainly inform Norfolk,” the Admiral assured him in return.

Tolliver simply snorted and relaxed back in his seat. Apparently he didn’t consider the seat of the eastern seaboard Navy to be much of a threat. As well he wouldn’t, I supposed, if his base of power was Fortress Pennsylvania. What was going on in there?

“Let’s continue, Colonel Hoffman,” Niedermeyer invited, after a pregnant pause. “Apparently we’re not going to secure cooperation from Pennsylvania today. Either.”

“Right,” agreed Hoffman sourly. Emmett had already conveyed in his presentation that Pennsylvania could save another 750,000 New Yorkers if they were willing. But apparently that wasn’t going to happen.

Hoffman moved on from the problem of how to establish viable quarantine borders-within-borders, to the problem of how to feed the people within those new quarantine zones.

“Essentially it takes land, and people, to provide the food. Emmett calculates – and I agree with him – that we can only commit to donate about 5% excess food. Emmett’s plan puts the refugees to work, to increase agricultural capacity, given time. Instead, donating the food as charity, we can support less than a million excess people. And that’s never-ending. We can’t even feed them well enough to survive, let alone get back on their feet.

“The remaining 7 million people at risk seems small, compared to what they started with. But it’s huge compared to who’s left outside. We only have 15 million, outside Pennsylvania, New York City, and Boston-Providence.”

Niedermeyer asked, “So what population do you think we could support in there by charity?”

“Without food from the strategic reserves, possibly 900,000. Some people in there would find ways to support themselves. How many depends on whether they can establish any public order. Under the circumstances, I doubt they can.”

“Your recommendation is that we not do this,” Niedermeyer suggested.

Hoffman flipped to his final slide. “Correct, sir. I believe Major MacLaren’s plan will save as many lives from New York as it is possible to save.”

“And if we could release food from the strategic reserves?” Niedermeyer prompted.

Hoffman shrugged. “I was unable to find a way to apply it effectively. Too many people. Too sick. Too little order. Too few troops.” He opened a hand, and let it fall. “I tried.”

“Thank you, Colonel,” Niedermeyer, and led a round of applause. After that, he said, “I don’t think there’s any need for a Q&A. Let’s break for dinner. Breakfast will be served back here at 8 a.m. Thank you all.”

-o-

Emmett leaned into the door jamb leading to the bedroom of our little housekeeping hotel suite. He’d stashed our bags in there, while I transferred beer into the kitchenette fridge.

“You want to get that fight out of the way now?” he offered softly.

“No need. I think I get it,” I replied. I stepped up to lean on a wall next to him, where I could reach his front shirt button to toy with. “You gave me credit as your co-author. Thank you. As your girlfriend, I didn’t belong in there.”

“Yeah. Not even socially. Dee, we’ve only been together a couple months. You’re not an Army wife. You’re here as a presenter in your own right. You’d never be here as my date.”

“Understood.” I looked up at him and smiled. “I meant it, you know. Impressed as hell with your presentation.”

“Thank you. And thank you for all you put into it.” He narrowed one eye. “I’m not sure we’re done with the fight yet, though.”

My heart sank. “Look, I’ll tell Adam no more touching in public.”

“Not that easy,” he said, shaking his head a bit. “He still cares about you. You still care about him. You broke off with him because he was going to sea. But, darlin’, Adam’s not at sea. He left the ark. Hell, he could commute back to Totoket, now.”

“I chose Emmett,” I said firmly, meeting his eyes.

“You sure about that? Why?” he demanded softly.

“Emmett, I – Gah,” I said, as someone knocked on our door. “I’ll get rid of them.”

“Not what I’m here for, darlin’,” Emmett murmured, and reached the hall door before I did. “Captain, Commander, come on in.”

Niedermeyer and Adam walked in to our housekeeping suite’s miniature living room, and froze at seeing me. “Ah, didn’t mean to intrude, if you’re busy. Emmett, Ms. Baker,” Niedermeyer said. Adam just raised an eyebrow.

“Not a problem, sir,” Emmett assured him, and waved them to the little couch. “Care for a beer? They brew some good stuff in Totoket. Only a little warm from the car.”

Once we were all settled with glasses of beer – and on a first-name basis, at John Niedermeyer’s insistence – Adam got down to business.

“Emmett, I didn’t want to bring this up during the Q&A,” Adam said. “But we had an alternate suggestion for your exits from New York.” He pulled out a convertible tablet computer, and brought up the map from Emmett’s presentation. He set it on the coffee table where we could all see.

“You point out – rightly – that the refugees are in rough shape. But these exits are at the periphery. Your most awkward logistics are creating corridors to move them out. But here at the periphery, the population is lower, maybe even sustainable. I mean, suburban lawns aren’t much smaller in Westchester than they are Fairfield County across the border. So your plan expends a lot of troops and effort just to move people out of the center, New York City proper, by land. While traveling past people who want to get out, but who are your lowest priority. Lot of conflict there.”

Adam’s finger tracked to New York harbor. “But we’ve got excellent water access straight to all five boroughs. There are islands we could secure and invest for staging areas and quarantines. Meanwhile, it looks like your land troops might be, um, not steady enough to handle civilians inside the border.”

“I’m an idiot,” Emmett replied. “I’m sorry. In the Army, we usually think of D-Day and the impossible landing problem.”

“There’s not much parallel here with D-Day,” Adam said politely. “You’re not trying to land an overwhelming force in the face of an entrenched defense. You want to extract controlled batches of civilians. There are small weapons inside the city. But not much that would trouble a ship. I spoke to the XO who inserted your SEAL team. He said they didn’t face any significant hostiles from shore.”

“I’d expect more hostiles against a sustained effort,” Niedermeyer cautioned. “One ship visiting Battery Park was a fluke. No one on shore had time to gather forces and react.”

“What kind of boats would you use?” Emmett asked.

“The ferries,” Adam supplied. “Probably with destroyers as a defensive screen. I’ve checked – the Staten Island ferries are in dock at Staten Island. The New London ferry is right here. I haven’t tracked down the others yet. We wanted to pass this by you first.”

“So, first we’d have to extract the ferries,” Emmett said, groping at the logistics. “Or rather, you’d extract the ferries. And get them operational, and fueled. You have fuel?”

“Excuse me, I assumed you were more familiar with the ferries in New York.” Adam smiled. “There are ferry terminals. So, we’d probably start by securing the Staten Island terminal. Then our engineers could check over the ferries and the fueling facilities, and get those operational. Top the fuel storage up from our reserves. Sanitary facilities. Get the place ready for traffic. Repeat as needed at other ferry terminals, or excursion boat docks. The point is, all these facilities already exist in New York. Some of them were even built to process immigrants.”

Niedermeyer interjected, “The ferry terminals have to be pacified before we send in engineers. With respect, Adam. Emmett, our engineers aren’t like the Army Corps of Engineers. They need protection.”

“Hey, I can hit the side of a barn with a rifle,” Adam quipped.

Niedermeyer patted him on the shoulder. “But you can get my boat guns to track just fine. And that’s what I need from you.”

Adam sighed. “I’d rather play with a ferry. I’ve always wanted a crack at those engines.” The thought visibly cheered him.

Emmett smiled at the by-play, but studied the map on the table, thinking. “So how many troops to secure a small island?”

“Now you’re out of our depth,” said Niedermeyer. “The Coast Guard, and maybe the merchant marine reserves – we could pitch in and operate the ferries. But securing the docks is up the Marines’ alley. Maybe they’d want help from Cullen’s troops, maybe not. The Navy would be their main support.”

“You’d still need a massive land operation,” Adam added, “for quarantine. The Hudson River is navigable up to the epidemic border. Long Island Sound is easy. We can move people around with just the ferries there. The Atlantic’s rougher. But with the hospital ship from Ark 7, we could transport people down to south Jersey, too. It’s up to you, whether to set up quarantines outside the borders. Or inside New York Harbor, before moving the refugees.”

Emmett shook his head. “Triage at the most, in the harbor. Quarantine takes too many supplies and volunteers. I don’t want them in there. Could you transport refugees up to New Hampshire and Maine? The train lines all run through Boston-Prov.”

“Probably,” said Niedermeyer. “The merchant marine reserves could.” Adam made a note of it. “So – are you interested enough for me to set up the meetings?”

“Hell, yeah!” said Emmett. “This is far better than we can do on land. Thank you!” He frowned a little in puzzlement. “Why didn’t you bring it up in Q&A?”

Niedermeyer shrugged. “Wrong invite list. The land end is crucial. Without the receivers, it wouldn’t matter if we could extract refugees for you. I’m impressed with how far you’ve come with that, so fast. Especially Cullen.”

“Especially not Tolliver,” Adam suggested wryly.

Niedermeyer tilted his head. “Might not be a bad idea, to proceed with a plan totally different from what you showed Tolliver, Emmett.”

“And you really think the naval forces would play ball?” Emmett prodded.

“I think the naval forces are dying to do something,” Niedermeyer assured him. “The Coast Guard most of all. We’d like all the borders dismantled in the Northeast, as soon as practical. We’re damned sick of enforcing them. The North Atlantic blockade has quieted down nicely. The Navy might have to leave the party if something blows up. But they haven’t seen any real action in months. Amatrudo’s Ark 7 resource ships are near mutiny, over being held in reserve so long.

“But the land’s not up to us. Hence this meeting, to see if there was anything we could contribute to help matters along. We have ships, ammo, men, fuel. Too much fuel, in fact.” He cocked an eyebrow at Adam.

“Oh, yeah,” said Adam, taking his cue. “Emmett – those fuel oil storage drums in New Haven. Any chance you have excess capacity? We’ve been, um, inflating our fuel requisitions out of Norfolk. By 15%. Because they neglected to deliver our reserves. Now we’re running out of storage.” Adam grinned.

Emmett returned the grin. “Good problem. I believe I can secure you a drum. Let me get someone intelligent to talk to you about it. I can’t even imagine how many gallons are in one of those monsters.”

“Barrels,” Adam corrected.

“Barrels,” Emmett echoed agreeably. His tone was agreeable. The way his eyes flashed at Adam was not. The pair were competitively cooperating.

“Well, we have much more to talk about, Emmett,” said Niedermeyer, rising. “But dinner is waiting down by the pool. Apologies for boring you, Dee.”

“Not at all,” I assured him. Boring, no. Discouraging, yes. I’d hoped Emmett’s plan was ready for action. Instead it seemed like he’d won some key backing. But he needed to scrap and renegotiate a big swath of the plan. Yet I got the impression that Emmett was surprised to even land backing on this trip. Every time I thought I had a handle on how large this operation was, it seemed to grow bigger.

“So, are you two...?” Niedermeyer prodded.

“Dating,” I supplied. “Just a couple months now.”

“We’ve been working together ever since I extracted her from HomeSec last February,” Emmett added. “She got together with one of my Cocos then. My best friend, Zack Harkonnen. Zack was KIA in June.”

“Yes, I remember. I’m sorry for your loss, Dee. Yours as well, Emmett.”

“Thank you, John. Any chance we’ll see General Cullen at this pool bash?” Emmett inquired.

“No, all secured from the brass tonight. Amatrudo whisked them away to someplace 5-star.”

“Well, thank God and Captain Amatrudo, then.”

Emmett showed them out the door.

Chapter 8

Interesting fact: Officers in the U.S. armed services were well paid. Majors earned around $90,000 a year base pay – nearly double the national median household income – plus combat pay, and enormous benefits that included advanced degrees, health care, and housing.

“Another woman! Eureka!” I cried, to greet the sole other woman in the motel’s pool area. Around 15 male Rescos kept her company. “Please tell me you’re with this party. Not just a random motel guest?”

She laughed, and held out a hand to shake. “Pam Niedermeyer. You must be Dee Baker. John said you must be feeling like a fish out of water. So thank you! I got a night out with my husband! That doesn’t happen often.” She pulled me into the buffet line beside her. Pam looked fit and comfortably padded, her sun-drenched freckled complexion setting into laugh lines around deep dimples. Her short chestnut-brown hair was streaked with just a little grey. She looked the perfect happy soccer mom of teen-aged kids. I guessed both Niedermeyers to be in their mid-forties.

“Granted, I haven’t seen my husband yet,” Pam added. She didn’t seem concerned.

“Yes, sorry, John got hung up in our room. Emmett and mine.” I pointed for clarity, but Pam had already seen us come in together, before Emmett was waylaid by the pair of Massachusetts Rescos.

“Pam, please tell me John didn’t make you put this buffet together.” It was a lovely spread of food, well picked over by the time Emmett and I got there. I nabbed a steamed lobster, drawn butter, more chowder, cornbread, home fried potatoes with onions, succotash and squash. “This looks wonderful. I’m starving.”

Putting on my bathing suit, I saw that I’d lost more weight, or inches at least, just since I’d last worn it a month ago. That was a novel experience, checking myself in a bathing suit in a mirror and finding myself too skinny. Emmett insisted I looked great. But I was determined to overeat my way through the rest of this summit.

“The buffet was catered,” Pam assured me. “Please, take more! I’ll enjoy it vicariously. Ever since I turned 40, I’ve gone stout.” She grinned, and loaded up on succotash and raw hothouse vegetables.

We settled into lounge chairs by the poolside to munch and chat. The caterer had provided a small keg of local beer, which Pam and the Rescos were depleting as quickly as possible. Emmett and I weren’t the only ones to bring our own local alcohol to the summit either, though we’d left ours in the suite. We didn’t drink much.

“Such lovely bodies,” Pam mused. “My favorite thing about being a military wife. Your Emmett has a very nice ass.”

“Ah – yes,” I settled on. “John is, um, very trim for his age.” Her husband was a very attractive, athletic, virile man. He was also mostly bald, with the rest of his head shaved. He and Adam had wandered in by then.

“He’ll do,” she dismissed him. “These are all O-4 and older, aren’t they? That’s a shame.”

“O-4?” I repeated.

Pam laughed. “Oh, you are a babe in the woods at this, aren’t you? O-4 means officer grade 4. The middle grades are four through six, the field grade officers. Above that is generals and admirals. Your Emmett’s an O-4. John’s an O-6.”

“What does it take to go from O-4 to O-6?”

“About 12 years,” Pam supplied. “They have to be competent, too, I suppose. But if they’re not on a promotion track, they resign. Emmett might be nearing O-5.”

“You think he looks older than most of these?” He looked right about in the middle of the pack. Pam was making me study the wet athletic male bodies rather closely. On the whole, I was quite pleased with how Emmett stacked up. Though we both clearly needed to eat more. He’d lost weight this week with that stomach bug, too.

“Not especially older. Emmett’s just second of the Connecticut Rescos.” Pam continued her body ratings. “That gay one’s the youngest. Gay, married, married, bitter, not sure, looking, and in love. The gay one’s in love, too. Adam wins the beauty contest tonight, but he always does that.”

“You always dissect people like this, Pam?” I inquired. I was used to thinking such things, but not speaking them. So the analysis usually flitted in and out of my brain, quickly dismissed.

“She does,” Adam supplied with a grin, and pulled up a lounge chair beside mine to eat his own plate of food. “Especially when she’s drunk.”

Pam stuck her tongue out at him. Adam saluted her back with thumb planted on his nose, fingers waving. I laughed. Clearly these two had known each other a long time.

Emmett and Niedermeyer finally made it off the buffet line and came to join us. The earlier arrivals were done with the food, and playing in the pool. Niedermeyer grabbed an upright chair on Pam’s other side. Emmett handed me his plate, pushed me forward, and clambered in behind me on my lounge chair.

Pam’s dimples deepened to maximum upon him. “Possessive much?”

“Uh-huh,” Emmett agreed happily. He traded introductions with Pam, then snatched a lobster claw left on my plate. “Teach me how to do this, darlin’?”

“I couldn’t get that one without a nutcracker,” I said. I turned it in his hand. “That way.” He easily cracked the shell with his fingers. “Have you considered your own chair?”

“I like this one,” he assured me, and planted a drawn-butter-and-lobster kiss on my hair.

“You could force Adam to move,” Pam suggested. “Like this: Adam – move.”

“You’re a real ball-breaker, Pam,” Emmett observed appreciatively. “You and Dee must be bonding nicely.”

I attempted to straighten my spine. Emmett clutched me around the middle, forcing my back round again. Adam grinned at me. We were both a great deal more polite than Pam and Emmett.

“She seems a little repressed so far,” Pam replied. “I like your cross, Emmett.” She reached across and fingered it. He wasn’t wearing anything above the waist except dog tags and a cross on a chain. It looked great on him. “Is that allowed?”

“From my Dad’s dog tags. Old-style, but they’re grandfathered.”

“You knew your Dad?” I asked. He’d never mentioned his father.

“You just assumed I was a bastard? I think you’re making progress on her, Pam,” Emmett quipped. “Dad’s been dead since I was 12, Dee. Didn’t see any rush to fill you in on him. KIA, special ops.”

“So you were an Army brat?”

“Part-time, yeah. Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Dad was kind of a nasty drunk. When he hit Momma, we headed back to the Ozarks. When he hit me, she divorced him.”

“So you didn’t really know him.”

“Knew him fine. We got along great. Died four years sober. Fort Campbell was a lot more fun than the Ozarks. But he’ll still be dead when we get home, Dee. This is a party.”

“He’s not the talkative kind, is he, Dee?” Pam observed.

“Apparently not. What other secrets are you keeping?”

“Has he told you about his divorce yet, Dee?” asked Adam.

I craned my neck around to frown at Emmett. Pam threw a lima bean at Adam. She had a pile of ammunition, apparently her least favorite ingredient from the succotash.

“He was just fishing,” Emmett said, with a scowl. “But yes, I’m divorced. What is it with women? Would it be better if a man my age never had a serious relationship?”

“We want to know what you learned from the experience,” claimed Pam judiciously.

“Let’s see,” said Emmett. “If I’m married, and deployed, I don’t want her cheating on me. Could have told her that before I married her. In fact, I did.”

“Where is she?” I asked. That seemed more pertinent to me than what, if anything, he’d learned.

“Abu Dhabi, last I knew. She worked for a big military contractor.”

“Oh!” cried Pam in revulsion. “Emmett, that wasn’t the marrying kind!”

Emmett barked a laugh. “You got that right. Hey, it was fun, until it wasn’t. And Adam is also a ball-breaker. So, John. Do you surround yourself with ball-breakers, so you don’t have to?”

The captain just laughed, and turned back to his conversation with the senior New York Resco. A number of Rescos were standing around talking along the edge of the pool. Scenic wet lower bodies obstructed our view of the water.

Pam got up, stretched languorously, and pushed the closest Resco into the pool. “I find it so entertaining how I can get away with this, Dee,” she explained. She pushed in another one before they caught on, and pushed her in.

“Yes! Play-time,” Emmett announced in my ear.

We dove in, raced to the far end of the pool, and generally splashed around playing, much as we did at home in Mangal’s pool next door, during the long summer evenings. The artificial not-a-girlfriend constraint was gone, I was glad to see. Pam got together a game of chicken for a while. I fought piggy-back from Emmett’s shoulders. We kept losing, since everyone else out-massed me by 50 pounds or more.

The other men frequently eddied out from the water play to network and do business. Pam made it a point to get to know each Resco – probably her real assignment for the evening. Adam worked the room as well, focused on shoreline Rescos from New Jersey and New Hampshire. He shouted over once for Emmett to verify that yes, New Haven still had machine shops eager for business. But Emmett took the time to play with me, even while he got to know the other Rescos better.

We were taking a snack break, standing at the edge of the pool, when Colonel Mora finally joined us, still in combat fatigues. The Connecticut Rescos all laughed and welcomed him.

He lumbered straight up to Emmett beside me, and shoved Emmett – hard – backwards into the pool. Major Papadopoulos promptly pulled me away, and kept his body between me and Mora. Niedermeyer rose from his lounge chair and walked toward us, stopping 10 feet away, arms crossed and mouth pursed.

Mora let out a blue streak, swearing down at Emmett in the pool. Emmett swished his hands around idly, just standing there taking the abuse.

When Mora wound down, Emmett said cautiously, “So, Carlos. How did your dinner go with the brass?”

“MacLaren, that is the last favor you get from me!” Mora’s renewed flood of invective carried more information this time. Apparently Emmett had set him on the brass, to find out what he could. General Cullen, the commander of the New York borders, had sent a decoy car back to New York, so he could hide out here for the night, and then attend the rest of the summit. The other brass would leave first thing in the morning.

“The strategic reserves are in Pennsylvania,” Mora concluded. “All of them. That what you wanted to know, Emmett?”

“All of them?” echoed Colonel Hoffman. He was the one from New Jersey, who presented the plan to supply New York instead of evacuate it. He was the only Army officer present who out-ranked Mora – an O-6 like Niedermeyer, as Pam had clued me in.

“All of them. All the Army reserves for the entire Northeast,” fumed Mora. “Food, munitions, fuel, vehicles, everything. Effing Tolliver stole them all and stockpiled them in Pennsylvania. It’s his operation. He bragged about it.”

The last sentence was barely above a whisper. I thought Mora had gotten it out of his system. He started to turn to leave, but then turned back toward Emmett and hopped into the pool, fully clothed. He held out a hand to Emmett to shake. “Sorry, Emmett. I was out of line.”

Emmett shook his hand guardedly. “Thank you, sir. We needed to know. That couldn’t have been much fun.”

“Yeah.”

“Might want to take off your combat boots, if you want a swim. Colonel.” Emmett suggested. He continued to eye Mora warily.

“Maybe we could give you a hand, getting back to your quarters, sir,” Major Papadopoulos – they called him Pops – said reluctantly. He offered a large hand down to Mora. I was tugged from behind Pops, to behind Cameron, who in turn hid behind the Resco for New London County. I would have thought it funny, these tough guys wary of Mora. Except, they surely knew him better than I did. Maybe they weren’t allowed to fight back if he swung on them.

Mora ignored Pops’ hand and trained a belligerent glare on Emmett.

Emmett sighed. “You might have had a bit too much to drink tonight, Carlos.”

“I agree, Carlos,” said Niedermeyer forcefully.

“Amen,” chimed Colonel Hoffman.

“That wasn’t the worst of it,” Mora said, in a dead voice. “Emmett, they seeded New York. The Ebola outbreak. Tolliver admitted it. Boasted of it.”

“We were pretty sure of that,” I offered. “From the pattern of how it broke out, all over the city and suburbs at once. But it came on so fast. How did they do it?” The Rescos flanking me looked torn between curiosity and wishing I’d just hide and keep quiet.

“Weaponized Ebola,” Mora said woodenly, still staring at Emmett. “They used nukes to set off the faults in California, too. Amatrudo recorded the confession on his phone.”

I thought Mora was done. Then suddenly he hauled off and took a swing at Emmett. Emmett lunged backwards quickly, to splash-land into the water. He only took a fist to the thigh, the blow softened by landing through water.

“Colonel Mora!” Niedermeyer called out. “You’re done here! Stand down!”

“He murdered them.” Mora stood there sobbing. “My wife, my daughters. Millions of them.”

I’d forgotten that. Mora’s wife and two daughters had been caught in the city when the epidemic broke out. They were confirmed dead. I could only imagine what it took for Mora to sit through that dinner in silence, while Tolliver boasted of murdering New York City and California.

Two of the largest Rescos broke the stalemate. They jumped in and took Mora’s arms, to lead him up the pool steps and away to his room. They weren’t ours, from Connecticut. Clearly Mora would swing on his own guys.

Pops and Cameron pulled Emmett out of the pool. He didn’t need the help, but accepted it anyway.

“You seem to have a problem on your chain of command, Emmett,” Niedermeyer ventured, in a voice pitched to carry over angry murmurs of discussion.

“Tolliver’s a rat bastard,” Emmett agreed. “Mora’s alright. A bit drunk.”

“Your commander took a swing at you,” Colonel Hoffman offered reluctantly. “That’s not alright.”

“It’s not ideal,” Emmett allowed. He sighed. “But I understand where he’s coming from, tonight. Carlos still has a 10-year-old boy at home. It’s tough. Just the two of them. That swing wasn’t aimed at me, Pete. It was aimed at Tolliver. But he couldn’t hit Tolliver.”

“Yeah, that makes sense,” Pops said. “In a drunk and unreasonable sort of way. Emmett, don’t make excuses for him.”

The rest of the Connecticut Rescos seemed to agree. I wondered if Mora hadn’t done something like this before. Young Cameron especially seemed to shrink from him.

I noted sadly that the Rescos didn’t seem too surprised that their reserves had been stolen. Nor by the confirmation that New York and California had been intentional massacres. They’d suspected that. Emmett and I had tried to prove it one way or the other, tracking through my data sources that underlay Amenac. That investigation, among others, was where our partnership began.

We suspected. We just couldn’t prove it.

I surveyed the room of Rescos, now talking business in earnest. Casting around for something useful to contribute, I approached Colonel Hoffman, talking quietly with another New Jersey Resco.

“Hi,” I butted in. “I just wanted to say – it means a lot to me, that New Jersey stands with Connecticut on this. I know you have a choice. You have Delaware and Maryland to your south. With D.C. and Virginia behind them, they’re probably more powerful than us. Thank you for coming to this summit, and trying to save New York with us.”

Surprise grew into slow smiles from the two Rescos. “Thank you, Dee,” Hoffman said, nodding. “It is hard. We are cut off from the rest of you.”

“But we stand with New York, and the rest of the Northeast,” the other said. “Major Reg Washington, ma’am.” We hadn’t spoken before.

“Dee...” Hoffman said, hesitant to stick an oar in. “We get a lot of guys in the Army who were knocked around as kids. Like Emmett. Sometimes they put up with too much.”

“Not a criticism,” Washington added. “They make good heroes.” He sighed.

“Not sure what I could do about that,” I said uneasily. “Emmett seemed to want to shield his guys.”

Hoffman nodded, and gave a little sideways shrug. “Maybe enabling an abusive superior isn’t his best option. Something you might be able to help him see.” He smiled encouragement.

I nodded uncertain thanks, and left them. I’d have to think about that. On the one hand, Mora unloading his rage on Emmett made me irate. On the other hand, Emmett seemed to know what he was doing. I didn’t have much perspective on Army life.

I worked my way through the other out-of-state Rescos, giving similar thanks, without interrupting any of them for long. There were only a dozen of them. When that was done, I slipped gratefully into the hot tub. That hot tub had been calling to me all evening.

Pam Niedermeyer slipped in across from me, and eyed me thoughtfully. “That was interesting, the way you worked the room. What were you trying to do there, Dee?”

I didn’t have any grand ulterior motive. I was just showing a little appreciation while I stayed out of Emmett’s way. To Pam, I shrugged. “I just felt like saying thank you.”

“You ever think about what comes next?” she asked.

“Next? After New York, Boston-Prov could use some help,” I said. My gardening chores stretched into the future unending. There was always something new for Amenac to grow into. Emmett wrangled tirelessly to keep the lights on, the natural gas pipelines and water mains and sewers flowing, the Internet up, transportation running, food distribution. The Rescos worked to provide infrastructure to rebuild in the wreckage of our economy. But entropy was encroaching. I imagine I looked sad.

“After the United States,” Pam clarified. “After March, when the Calm Act’s ‘culling’ phase is over.”

I frowned. “No one’s ever told me what the plan is, after March. Pick up the pieces, I assumed.”

Aside from Zack and Emmett, Pam was only the third person to mention March to me. That culling part of the Calm Act was far from public. I doubt even Emmett would have said anything to me, if Zack hadn’t already.

Adam slipped into the hot tub, interrupting wherever Pam had been going with that. With a pang, I wondered if he’d been in a hot tub since our last time together, a romantic evening at his beach house before Christmas, nearly a year ago. I hadn’t. And he seemed to be thinking long thoughts. I was glad he sat next to Pam.

As the party broke up, most of the Rescos floated back to their rooms. The linchpins slipped into the hot tub with us as their consultations broke off, simply because Niedermeyer and Emmett joined Pam and me. The hot tub conversation stayed casual, until we were the last left in the echoing pool room. Most of the lights were turned down, except the underwater ones, giving the hot tub an intimate feel.

“I hope you’ll all stay after the summit,” Niedermeyer said, after the social conversation dissolved into the churning hot water. “I’ll work out the details for a dinner. Just us.”

Emmett frowned slightly. “You want Mora for this, don’t you, John?”

“No. You.”

Hoffman agreed. “You’ve clearly got Connecticut in hand, Emmett.” The others nodded.

-o-

“You must be exhausted,” I said sadly, when we got back to our suite. We hadn’t made love all week.

Emmett tucked a lock of my wet hair behind my ear. “Chlorine hair. I could help with that.” He relieved me of my towel, and started peeling me out of my bathing suit. He changed his mind. “That could wait.”

“So you’re not tired?”

“Wired,” he reported.

“You’re very pushy.”

“Uh-huh.” He pushed me backward until I was sitting on the bed, then crawled on after me, pushing me down flat until I laughed. “Talk less,” he advised. Not that he gave me any choice in the matter. He crushed his mouth to mine.

Afterward, lying spent draped along his side, I said, “Emmett? I love you.” It was a scary thing to say, for me.

He froze, and stopped breathing for a few seconds. Then he crushed me to him and said, “Thank you. I love you, too. You know that.”

He’d let it slip the first time we’d ever made love, that he’d fallen in love with me when I was still with Zack. I didn’t want to hear it at the time.

“Anything else we need to talk about?” I asked. I considered his surprise previous wife, his upset over Adam, his presentation’s rousing success, his stand-off with Mora. I could talk for hours. But I gave him his 15 seconds or more to respond.

“No,” he decided. “I’m good. Better than good.” He kissed me gently, on the mouth, the eyes, the forehead.

I doubt either of us fell asleep for another hour. We were busy thinking through the day, silent in each other’s arms. It felt great.

Chapter 9

Interesting fact: Resource coordinators – Rescos for short – had contrasting selection criteria from community coordinators – Cocos. The ideal Coco was a retired non-com or junior officer who refused to take part in the borders, choosing instead to stay home and defend his own community. A Resco was a middle grade officer – level O-4 to O-6 – especially trusted for his loyalty, judgment, intelligence, and independence.

I took the stage first at the summit the next day. I was pleased with my presentation, and hugely proud of Amenac, so I spoke with enthusiasm and confidence.

The attendees already used Amenac all the time. So I went deep into our national impact to date. How many Resco and armed forces personnel online, of course, as well as overall members over time. The survivor reunion database, which had gone from Hawaii- and California-specific, to national, with over 5 million people found and reconnected to their loved ones. Over 20 million had been found and confirmed dead. Which was a comfort, too, to the survivors – to know, rather than to be left forever wondering.

Tens of thousands of farm markets and safe routes to get to them. Thousands of meteorologists giving the best weather forecasts available. By now, the federal government had given up lying. They published honest weather data in the first place. But Amenac had the people’s confidence, not the National Weather Service. We’d never lied to them, and risked arrest and disappearance to tell them the truth. Like many other Amenac initiatives, the meteorologists had their own in-depth site now, where the experts evolved new forecast models that discounted older data in favor of newer, climate-skewed experience. A number of other Amenac-powered research clearinghouses had blossomed, from autism research to environmentalists.

We’d added online voting, and hundreds of communities now experimented with Amenac for direct democracy. I was deeply pleased with how that was evolving, and encouraged the Rescos to experiment with it.

Emmett apologetically took the stage with me to answer questions. And many of the questions were directed at him, from the Resco perspective. He related how he’d acquired me, Amenac, and his epidemiologist Tom Aoyama, out of HomeSec detention in exchange for a marker – for reliable local daycare.

I laughed out loud. “You’re making it up!”

“I’m not,” he insisted. “The Director has two kids, and the schools closed. A mother-in-law with Alzheimer’s at home. In exchange for Tom, I extended the marker to cover her, too. Hey, it’s what she really wanted.” Emmett shrugged with a grin.

“And they’ve honored that? All this time?”

“HomeSec is people, Dee, just like the rest of us. They use Amenac. The weather scares them. They’re afraid of Ebola. They have missing relatives to find. Their work is to stamp out dissidents and potential terrorists, and Amenac helps them monitor that. Granted, when you piss them off, they add demands and make my life miserable.” The audience laughed.

“Question,” called out the Poughkeepsie Resco, who I still had mentally tagged as avm89 – Lt. Colonel Ash Margolis. “Do you have any cyber warfare capability?”

“No,” I said.

“Yes,” Emmett contradicted me. “Amenac is powered by a white hat hacker group. They have massive defensive capability. They also have other sponsors. Two of them are truly interesting resources in their own right. Especially in cyber security.”

I frowned. I was only aware of one other sponsor, Canadian Intelligence. Though as Emmett pointed it out, I realized that keeping Amenac alive constituted cyber security in itself. But I’d never considered it in the context of cyber warfare.

“And those sponsors are?” our host Captain Niedermeyer prodded.

“Can’t say,” Emmett said. “But I could offer some markers on cyber security. To protect a power plant or something?”

“Interesting! Thank you,” avm89 replied.

“Emmett, or Dee,” called out General Cullen. The commander of the New York city borders was the only brass left with us today. He wore camouflage like the rest, and sat near Niedermeyer’s clump in the auditorium. “Have you tracked any Amenac activity originating in Pennsylvania?”

“We did look at that,” I answered. “They’re locked up tight. No civilian communications.”

“I looked a little deeper,” added Emmett, “with some other members of the Amenac ecosystem. The tech is good on the Pennsylvania communications barrier. We cracked through, of course. But all the digital cables are interdicted at the borders. The Army has a strangle-hold on the power lines. Engaging the public in there would be a challenge.”

“But Amenac does track visitor locations?” General Cullen followed up.

“All web servers track that,” I agreed. “Amenac more than most. That’s integral to our system for frustrating the Fed’s efforts to shut us down. If Amenac can’t locate you, you can’t view the site.”

“So if I had a major operation to plan,” Niedermeyer asked, “and I wanted the sort of help Amenac provided with the New York relief plan – would you envision that as a marker?”

“Ah – we went all out on these presentations,” I said. “I think Emmett holds the only marker worth that much.” Well, Emmett and Canadian intelligence. “We don’t have the staff.”

“There’s plenty of unemployed tech talent around,” Emmett differed. “We could add staff for the right project. But Amenac’s existing sponsors hold veto power. We’d have to agree with the goals.”

“Does that mean HomeSec has to agree with the goals?” Niedermeyer clarified.

“HomeSec is a factor we’d take into account,” allowed Emmett. “The driving consideration is Amenac’s public mission. We’d be very protective of that brand.”

“We have the public trust,” I emphasized. “We would not be open to violating that trust.”

“Of course,” Niedermeyer agreed thoughtfully. “That was key to your effectiveness with the New York plan.”

That was key to our effectiveness in everything, including the glue that held us together. But I simply nodded.

Again, Niedermeyer adjourned us for a mid-morning snack break. We got a second standing ovation.

Emmett’s phone buzzed. He would have ignored it, but one of the Connecticut Rescos held up his own phone, and said, “You need to take that, Emmett.”

Emmett read a text message, and nodded. The other shoreline Connecticut Rescos were already headed out the door. “Excuse me, we have a situation. We’re expecting the temperature to fall to 20 degrees by tomorrow night. And the Connecticut shoreline hasn’t got all the harvest in yet.” He grinned an apology. “This freeze affects New Jersey, too. All of us, actually. But inland you’re probably done with the harvest. We’re not. Major Cameron? Could you help me with Long Island while I deal with New Haven?”

And they were off. I noticed that Niedermeyer also dispatched Adam. The New Hampshire and New Jersey Rescos left in a hurry, too.

I grabbed my phone to check in with Alex about my garden and the livestock. He was a reliable kid, but sometimes teenagers didn’t think things through.

Emmett caught me at the water fountain during the break, to quickly tell me that he’d pick me up at the motel for dinner at 6:45 that night.

“Can’t DJ cover for you at home?” I asked, aggrieved. “The summit is important.”

“What? Oh, I’m done with the freeze,” he agreed. “I just authorized overtime pay for the farm workers on my dime, and got people moving. For the rest of the day, we’re doing breakout sessions in parallel with the presentations. I’m booked solid. Take good notes for me, OK?” He gave me a peck on the cheek, and started to leave.

He arrested himself and turned back. “Oh, I forgot.” He grabbed me up in a big hug, kissed me fully, and laid his forehead on mine. “I am so proud of you. And Amenac. Awesome job, Baker. Especially the part where you made me free Tom Aoyama and save New York. That was pretty clever.”

I laughed, and grinned from ear to ear. “I don’t think I’m gonna take responsibility for that one.”

“Maybe not. You deserve a lot of credit though.”

General Cullen cleared his throat behind us. Emmett sighed. “See you tonight. Dress up for dinner. Sorry to keep you waiting, General.”

Emmett and Cullen headed for a door flanked by a beckoning Niedermeyer and an admiral.

-o-

I enjoyed the rest of the resource presentations. Aside from Emmett, most of the Rescos were in the auditorium most of the time. Even Niedermeyer was back as master of ceremonies after a half hour or so. The whole Connecticut Resco flock disappeared into a separate lunch meeting. I enjoyed lunching with some out-of-state Rescos. After the pool party, we were all comfortable with each other.

Reg Washington, from New Jersey, presented on seed bank and livestock sperm bank initiatives he coordinated. An upstate New Yorker was apparently taking point on our natural gas pipelines, while a western Massachusetts Resco focused on power plants. The New Hampshire Resco reported on the depleted status and prospects for the North Atlantic and coastal fisheries. And so on. Some of the presentations were brief updates and requests for help.

The two contentious talks were on land use reform, and prisoners. It was during the land use debate that it finally dawned on me that not all of these areas were as well under control as Emmett’s turf. Northern New England and parts of western New York were still on a pure barter basis, with not even tax credits for currency. Southern New Jersey still struggled mightily with looters. Tens of thousands of gang members had escaped Philadelphia to terrorize the countryside. Poughkeepsie was under the iron thumb of control freaks, to my mind, while the Resco for northwestern Connecticut, Litchfield County, was reassigned at lunchtime as an assistant to Emmett. He’d managed no traction outside a single township, and even that was due more to the gran caravans than anything he did. The arks and their surrounding troops and fields ruled the northwestern corner of Connecticut.

The land use speaker explained what Emmett had tried to tell me in the apple orchard, that there were minimum viable sizes even for sustainable farms. Unlike Emmett, he believed larger farms – vineyards more than orchards in his area – should be broken up, and smaller farms merged, for improved yields and greater fairness.

I waded in on this one. “I can’t really speak for Emmett. But I do know he’s looked into land use reform in southern New Haven, and decided not to act. It has to come from bottom up, or he’d just make too many enemies. As a subsistence farmer myself, I whole-heartedly agree. No one’s taking my scrap of land, and telling me to trust someone else to provide me with food. Not now. No way.”

Pops – our Resco neighbor toward New York – backed me up. “I can speak for Emmett, and me. We can’t lead by pissing people off. I can’t think of a better way to alienate them, than trying to steal their land. Maybe this would play better in rural areas. I don’t know. In suburban Connecticut, I do know. We can’t afford to lose our leadership with the people.”

Niedermeyer was a good moderator. He allowed time for a variety of opinion to be vented, then cut it off. “I think it’s clear we’re not ready for a Northeast-wide policy on land use reform. This is a subject where the resource coordinator model shines, I think. You Rescos really know your own regions and your own people. And we can all learn from each other’s experiments. So let’s go slow and learn something. Thank you for the excellent presentation.” He led polite applause.

“Major Cameron, I believe you’re up next. Prisons.”

Lt. Colonel Mora glowered as Cameron took the stage, the young Resco for the thinly populated northeastern Connecticut counties. Mora had been alright in the morning, just a bit sheepish over his behavior the night before. But he’d been in a dark fury since the lunchtime meeting.

Cameron did a masterful job reminding us about things everyone knew, and didn’t want to face, about American prisons. Before the borders we had more people in jail per capita than any other country in the world. Most of them served long sentences for victimless crimes – drugs, usually. Most were non-white. Most, upon release, were homeless and unable to get a job. Half were back in jail within a year or two.

And no, I realized guiltily, until now I hadn’t spent a moment wondering what had become of them. I forced myself not to fidget, and instead attended to what Cam was telling me. I was a citizen. I had the right and duty to sit in judgment on my fellow citizens, much as we all hated doing that.

Cameron explained how he’d formed courts with juries to review and release the drugs-only offenders. They didn’t fare well after release. In fact, 70% were dead, most from overdosing on the ubiquitous oxycontin made available for suicide. Others were shot as looters. That left 8,000 violent offenders who could not be released. He’d consolidated them by danger level, half the inmates into three quarters of the prisons, to relieve overcrowding. And he moved the guards to the exterior of the facilities, just to keep them in. About 5,000 inmates still survived the societies that emerged within.

They grew some food, and Cameron supplied about half rations. They earned more by hiring out as work gangs, generally in chains. They had visitors. Some volunteers taught them trades. AA and other 12-step groups kept up regular meetings.

“So I have labor available. I invite you to make use of this resource.” Cameron ended there. He looked like he hoped for the best, but didn’t really expect it.

The Rescos stared back at him. I was fairly confident that this was not, in fact, how they’d dealt with the other state prison populations. I doubted that was how Mora wanted to handle Connecticut’s inmates, either.

“Thank you, Major Cameron,” I offered into the silence. “For taking care of these people.” I was pretty sure Emmett would have encouraged Cam, if he’d been there. “Question. You mentioned Niantic – the women’s prison, right? – and helping with the New York relief effort?”

“Yes!” Cameron leapt onto my question gratefully. “I’ve moved the remaining women, so the whole women’s prison is available. We can use that for prisoners taken during the relief of New York. And as a retraining facility.”

Colonel Mora couldn’t hold it any longer. “Cameron, for Christ’s sake, we’re going to shoot them in New York, not take prisoners.”

“Since Emmett MacLaren isn’t available, let’s skip this part,” Niedermeyer directed.

It didn’t work. The room erupted into an ugly debate, between men who’d murdered or authorized murder on defenseless inmates, and had to believe their choice was the right one.

After about 5 minutes of this, Niedermeyer jumped onto the stage, and yelled, “Enough, gentlemen! Thank you, Major Cameron. Please take your seat. Next presentation.” It was time for mid-afternoon break, but he knew better. If he’d released us for break right then, the fight would just resume.

I stood and offered Cameron a hug as he came back to his seat in front of me. “We need to save New York, Cam,” I whispered in his ear. “I can’t care about those prisoners either, anymore, and it scares me. Thank you for being brave enough to care.”

Tears stood in his eyes as he hugged me back. He understood.

-o-

“You look gorgeous,” Emmett said, hanging in the bathroom doorway. He’d found a few minutes to change for dinner at the motel. “I’ve never seen you wear makeup for real.”

I shot him a funny look. “I wore makeup this morning for the presentation.” I knew what he meant, though. For morning, I’d just used eyeliner and subtle lipstick. For dinner, I’d started with foundation to douse the summer freckles, contoured with blush, and made my eyes and lips pop with color. My dress was the same architecturally pieced and pleated coat-dress I’d worn to present earlier. I’d only brought the one dress, drafted and sewn myself out of striped navy duck cloth, bought during my trip to Vermont last year with Adam. For day to evening conversion, I used makeup and pearls.

“You’re not wearing a uniform! I love it.” I turned to admire him.

He mockingly did a model swirl, offering me several views. The khaki pleated front chinos could have been tighter, and showed creases from the luggage. His rosy-tan basket weave cotton sweater was perfect, though, with a grey herringbone wool blazer. “You clean up very nice, Major MacLaren.”

“About that –” he began. He was interrupted by another knock at the door. He shook his head, and headed for the door. I trailed him.

“Hey, Colonel!” Cameron beamed at him, as the door opened.

“Hey, Cam!” Emmett exchanged handshake-plus-hug with him. “Sorry I missed your talk. I heard it was rough. You alright?”

“Colonel?” I inquired.

Cam grinned. “Hadn’t got that far yet, huh? Emmett got a promotion at lunch!”

“Was just about to tell her, when this knock interrupted me,” Emmett said.

I flung my arms around him for a hug and kiss, and got lipstick on his face. “Congratulations!”

“Well deserved!” Cam said.

“Eh. Time will make light colonels of us all,” Emmett said. “But thank you. Look, Cam, we have a dinner date with the Niedermeyers, so we don’t have much time. Your presentation?” He looked at Cam intently, checking for hurt. I loved that about Emmett. He needed to expedite it, but he’d make time for Cam.

“No surprises.” Cam shot him a grin, that leaked sadness around the eyes. “Dee inspired me, though. I’m putting in for a transfer, boss. I kind of liked Long Island today. I cut some deals. Tolland can tack on to Hartford County, and Windham onto New London. You asked at lunch if we wanted to make changes. I’m answering.”

I was horrified at the thought that I might have inspired him to do this. Northeastern Connecticut – sparsely populated Tolland and Windham Counties – was safe and orderly. Inside the city epidemic borders, including Long Island, he’d be the first Resco ever.

Emmett stared at Cameron searchingly. “Uh-huh. Does this have anything to do with me replacing Mora?”

“It surely does,” Cameron agreed. “I’d follow you to hell and back. Let’s add Long Island to your turf. If you didn’t have Dee, you’d do it yourself, Emmett. You know you would. But it’s better this way. I can start now.”

My horror shifted to Emmett. Leave New Haven, after all he’d done to make it work? But his attention was riveted on Cameron.

Emmett nodded reluctantly. “Alright. When?”

“Need to pack some munitions. May have some Cocos to come along. Few days?”

“Jesus, Cam.” But Emmett held out his hand to shake on it, and fell into another man-hug. “God speed. Thank you. We’re damned lucky to have you.”

“I will send prisoners!” Cameron warned, wagging a finger as they broke off the hug, eyes bright with standing tears. “I’ll let you get on with dinner. Good night, Dee.”

“Good night, Cam,” I said. “I hope to see you again soon.” That seemed unlikely.

He smiled and took off down the hall. Emmett closed the door thoughtfully.

I placed a hand on the small of his back. “It’s 6:50,” I pointed out.

Emmett nodded abstractly, still thinking. “What did you say to him?”

“That we need to save New York. Because I can’t care about the prisoners anymore, and that scares me. I thanked him for caring.” I gulped. “I didn’t really mean anything by it, Emmett. Not – this.”

He snorted softly, with a sad smile. He brushed my hair gently with his fingertips. “I’m surely glad that you’re on my side, Dee Baker.” He rallied. “Dinner,” he confirmed. “We’re late.”

“I hope it’s a nice quiet dinner, with no politics,” I said wistfully. “A bit of wine, good food, good company...”

He nodded. “I could use a break from the roller coaster. I doubt we’re going to get it, though.”

Chapter 10

Interesting fact: Pennsylvania’s agricultural output was 15 times that of tiny Connecticut, with a population only 4 times larger. In particular, Pennsylvania grew wheat, oats, potatoes, and beans. New York wasn’t far behind Pennsylvania, producing 11 times as much as Connecticut, but with a population 7 times larger. New York grew fruit and potatoes.

The storefront windows of an upscale bistro beckoned us warmly. This didn’t quite manage to evoke a sentimental return to wealthier days and fancy restaurants. Behind us, the cold New London street was pitch black and deserted. The footing was slippery and treacherous under wet fallen leaves. A misty wind whipped at us, salted from the Sound. The restaurant’s golden candle-lit interior felt like a jack-o’-lantern grinning out of the haunted dark brick block.

Stepping in, I whispered urgently to Emmett, “Who’s the older Resco? He wasn’t at the pool last night.” I’d seen him in the auditorium the day before. I couldn’t remember whether I’d seen him today. They wore neither uniforms nor name-tags tonight, drat it.

“General Ivan Link,” Emmett murmured back. “He commands the New England borders. And the New England Rescos, sort of.”

“What, all of you? He didn’t sit with the brass,” I said, vexed.

Every time I thought I finally understood what was going on at this summit, the tables of power seemed to tilt again. Cameron’s suggestion of Emmett leaving New Haven to tame New York, not just a rescue operation, had left me uneasy. I wasn’t entirely sure what Emmett’s promotion meant. On the drive, he’d passed it off as a work in progress, but he coordinated the other Connecticut Rescos now instead of Mora. So far the summit days had been long on events and news and changes, and awfully short on explanations. I was growing wistfully eager to get home to normal. The next normal, anyway. Each new normal had a short shelf life, these days.

Emmett shrugged, out of time to explain further, as we joined the table. It was the only occupied table in the restaurant. Marine Corporal Tibbs, wearing a white steward suit this evening, handed me a small menu card, as Emmett pulled out a chair for me.

“Tibbs!” I said in astonishment.

Deeply amused that I ignored the general to focus on the waiter first, Emmett turned to let me introduce him to Corporal Tibbs. Then he steered me into my chair and introduced me to General Link. I already knew the other five – Pam and John Niedermeyer, Adam Lacey, Ash Margolis – avm89 online – from Poughkeepsie, and Pete Hoffman from South Jersey.

I smiled and smiled, and said pleasantries, and waited for a little lull, and unfolded my napkin into my lap. Emmett and I leaned our heads together as though for a little lovers’ confidence. Emmett’s jacket and my gold pashima shawl – woefully inadequate to the plummeting temperatures outside – further shielded our lover’s laps. And we both pulled out our mock-MP3 players, which buzzed silent warning like mad.

I don’t know which Amenoid put these little gizmos together, but they tracked hostile communications. They were cleverly designed. Tibbs had seen them at the security checkpoint. They’d been stashed in our laptop bags and wound around with ear buds. So Tibbs hadn’t given them a second thought. Tonight they lived in my little gold clutch purse and Emmett’s jacket pocket.

Someone at the table was transmitting. We both used our devices, a couple feet apart, to determine that it was Link.

“He was clean all day,” Emmett whispered to me, under guise of nibbling my earlobe.

I leaned over, draping us better in my pashima shawl, and nibbled his ear while he quickly checked his messages, then sent a priority text to our security gang: TRACK ASAP #1. I’m good with tech, I really am. But Emmett ran southern New Haven County from his phone. The man was a wizard at it. We were done before Pam tapped me on the shoulder.

“Get a room, Dee!”

“I’m sorry, you know how it is,” I confided to her. “Oh, I love your necklace, Pam. What a beautiful seagull.” And it was. Pam wore a dark green knit sheath dress, with a couple big wooden buttons decorating cuffs on elbow-length sleeves. A detailed palm-sized seagull, painted in true-to-life colors, hung on her breast, from a chain bearing beads of carved driftwood.

“It’s an albatross,” she said. “You’re different tonight, Dee.” Her eyes narrowed.

I had to hand it to her, she was right. I’d been feeling awkward, diffident, out of my depth, at this summit. But not any more. My attention was riveted, my sense of humor fully engaged.

“An albatross!” I said. “As in the Rime of the Ancient Mariner? John, did you hang an albatross on your wife’s neck?” The phrase meant an annoying burden, and a husband could certainly qualify.

We all laughed cocktail-party laughs, though I question whether half got the obscure literary joke. Adam stole a second glance at Pam’s bird, as though considering something. My own memory had been recently refreshed on the old poem. A firebrand on Amenac, who went by The Great Pumpkin, used a bit of the Rime as her tag line: ‘He prayeth well, who loveth well both man and bird and beast.’ The Great Pumpkin wanted us to declare the Northeast an independent nation, seceding from the U.S. She had an enthusiastic following. I would have asked Pam if she was a fan, if our conversation wasn’t being transmitted.

“To Lieutenant Colonel Emmett MacLaren!” Niedermeyer toasted. We all joined the toast. I wondered why Emmett’s new boss General Link didn’t beat Niedermeyer to it. As a supervisor myself, I mentally awarded Link a D for effort. Emmett would never have made that mistake. I’d seen that in Cameron’s eyes.

“Emmett,” said Margolis afterward, “you missed the most controversial presentation of the summit today. Bet you thought it would be yours.” Emmett laughed obligingly. Margolis continued, “So what did you do with your prisoners?”

“I got off easy on that one,” Emmett replied. “New Haven only had pre-trial prisoners. So we got some judges together, hashed out some rules. What punishments I was willing to offer. What crimes not to bother with any more. We threw out most of the cases. Got it down to a few dozen prisoners. Then we handed them over to the townships for trial by jury. Some of the damnedest trials. The townships really surprised me. But – it was up to them, not me. I insisted that whatever they decided, it had to be local. If they chose to keep a prisoner, they had to provide their own jail cell. Several towns are still holding them.”

“You didn’t kill any?” Margolis didn’t like that.

I recalled Margolis’ contributions to the land use debate. They’d screamed out ‘control freak’ to me.

“Pre-trial, Ash,” Emmett reiterated. “They hadn’t been convicted yet. A couple juries offered death by oxycontin overdose. The judges allowed it. There was this one case –”

As salads arrived and we settled down to eat, Emmett related the goofy local jury trial that kept us entertained last January, before I’d met Emmett. The jurors insisted they needed to study the house where the husband had putatively attacked his wife. This mansion was on an island, so boats were dispatched to reunite the principals to re-enact their roles of the night in question. The judge kept calling Emmett to decide whether all this silliness was allowed. Emmett kept saying, ‘You’re the judge. You decide.’ Eventually, the jury determined that the wife had falsely accused the husband, and set the whole thing up to steal his money. The jury verdict was divorce, and they offered the wife the opportunity to suicide, in exchange for everyone lying to the kids that Mommy had gone away. And she’d taken the oxycontin.

I was impressed. Emmett was hardly a chatterbox, and he managed to dominate the conversation long enough for Amenac to report back. Though I was ready to step in and prattle if his energy lagged.

“Dang it,” Emmett said, ostentatiously pulling out his phone to read it. He openly angled it for me to read: ‘Tracking complete, PA. Shut it down. SUX2NT.’ “You know, I think we should all shut these down, and go offline for the rest of dinner. Don’t you agree, Ivan?” He held out his hand across the table, with a fey grin.

“Is that your cell phone, Ivan?” I asked pointedly, as I stretched my hand out across the table, too.

He hadn’t produced the cell phone yet. I playfully put a finger to my lips to urge silence. “I’ve always wanted to look at one of those. May I?”

General Ivan Link frowned at Emmett. But he slowly drew out his phone, as everyone else plonked theirs out on the table. “No holdouts now, Ivan!” Niedermeyer pressed. His voice was cheerful. His narrowed eyes were not.

“Oh, it’s so pretty,” I prattled, as I took his golden chassis phone. Emmett seeded a general babble of how we’d all become slaves to the damned devices, as I inspected the phone’s running processes. General Link looked alarmed, and almost said something – no doubt there was classified stuff on the thing. Hoffman and Margolis, flanking him at the table, both grabbed his biceps, and pointedly insisted he join the conversation deploring the use of cell phones at meals.

I left the malware SUX2NT process running, and dropped the phone into my wine goblet. I sloshed it thoroughly and dunked it on both ends. “Oh! I am so sorry, Ivan!” I told him. “I owe you a new phone.”

“Tibbs?” Emmett called the Marine over. “Could you please store these phones in the kitchen for us?”

“Absolutely, sir,” Tibbs assured him. “I’ll clean this one up.”

“Oh, don’t trouble yourself,” I suggested. “I broke it, I’ll fix it.”

“No trouble at all, Ms. Baker,” he said, blinking his eyelids slowly.

Rats. Tibbs wasn’t going to let me take the general’s phone home for an autopsy.

Emmett rose and circled the dining room, with his sniffer out. “Clear,” he reported, as he resumed his seat. He’d kept his own phone and sniffer. No one argued with him.

“No cyber warfare capability, eh, Dee?” Hoffman teased.

“Well, I think of warfare as offense,” I said, in defense of my denial earlier today.

Emmett snorted his wine beside me. “Uh-huh. Darlin’....”

“Dis-ingenuousness comes in handy sometimes, Emmett,” I offered. Adam laughed.

Emmett explained to the table. “Ivan was clean all day. We all were. I left Ivan at the Academy around 6:15, and by the time we arrived – 7:10? – his phone was transmitting our conversation to a location in Pennsylvania. SUX2NT was the malware program name. Right, Dee?” I nodded.

Tibbs was back to plonk medium-rare prime rib in front of Link. The general’s fork was still poised over the salad Tibbs relieved him of with the other hand. Tibbs’ steward style was a trifle uncouth. His security style, I rather liked.

“Time is of the essence, sir,” Tibbs told Link. “Who had access to your phone?”

“My aide was in my room while I took a shower,” Link supplied. “Possibly the driver? No one else, that I know of.” Tibbs nodded and disappeared.

Adam and I shared a skeptical look across the table. But Niedermeyer voiced the question. “So, Emmett. You’re sure that Link didn’t do this – why?”

“I did not do this,” Link asserted. He certainly looked angry and betrayed.

“No way to know for sure,” Emmett said. “But I believe him. His aide tried too hard to get into the planning room today. The Admiral threatened to throw him into the brig at one point. Did he have access to the naval plans in your room, Ivan?”

“No. The Admiral secured them,” said Link.

Emmett shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. That’s too large an operation to remain secret,” he concluded to Niedermeyer. “I think we have privacy for tonight’s conversation, at least.”

“Would you rather I leave, John?” Ivan Link offered bitterly.

John Niedermeyer looked like he was seriously considering it. “No, Ivan,” he decided. “I think you’re a Northeast patriot.” The two men held each other’s gaze without flinching. Link nodded once, emphatically.

“Ivan and I have spoken at length about this,” Niedermeyer continued. “I believe you three Rescos – and you, Dee – are some of the key power brokers in the Northeast.” He met their eyes, and mine. “Have you considered secession?”

I shrugged uneasily. Margolis and Emmett nodded neutrally. “Pennsylvania...looms large,” Margolis said.

Hoffman said, “I’m particularly curious about your opinion, Emmett. You did an exceptional job on the plans for New York. Leavenworth?”

Emmett tensed beside me briefly, then relaxed. “Command school. I finished the ILE, yes,” he agreed.

He’d mentioned that to me before, that he held a Master’s degree from Leavenworth. I thought it was funny, since I’d only ever heard of Leavenworth as an Army prison. ILE stood for Intermediate Level Education – a peculiar name for a grad school to prepare for brigade-level command. It sounded like a middle school series of graded readers.

“Yes, I saw that on your record, Emmett,” Link said. “I was interested to see that you graduated from ILE three years ago. You arrived in New Haven two years ago.”

“I was on classified assignment after ILE,” Emmett agreed. No doubt about it, he was tense now.

“There’s an interesting rumor,” Hoffman said, continuing the tag-team offense, “that the final SAMS class at Leavenworth game-tested the Calm Act. Even helped write it.”

“I tried to look up who was in that SAMS class,” Link said. “That information was locked up tight. Possibly expunged. You would have been an ideal candidate, though, Emmett. And your performance with these plans – like a SAMS who’s considered the scenario before.”

“Sam’s?” I asked Emmett.

“SAMS stands for School of Advanced Military Studies,” Emmett supplied softly. “Another grad school, post-ILE, at Leavenworth. SAMS go deeper into planning complex operations.”

“Including cross-service, such as a joint Navy, Marine, Coast Guard, National Guard, and Army operation,” General Link elaborated for me. “Though even a SAMS wouldn’t be able to tackle this one cold. Unless he’d played the scenario before.”

“I think you’ve been outed, Emmett,” suggested Niedermeyer softly. “What I’d like to know is, who are the other SAMS in the Northeast from that class?”

Emmett’s eyes flashed bitterly at Niedermeyer’s, but just for an instant. I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t been watching Emmett so intently. My stomach was turning sour. I felt like the foundation of my life had been yanked out from under my feet. And this less than a day after I’d finally admitted I loved him. You wrote the Calm Act?

“That question is one I will never answer,” Emmett replied to Niedermeyer. “Alright. I’m outed. So be it. It’s more than my life is worth to out the others.”

Niedermeyer nodded understanding. Was it also relief? Or just the release of tension as Emmett admitted this...SAMS thing? I wondered briefly if SAMS were Army-only, or included other services.

“Dee...” Emmett turned to me, with a trace of pleading in his eyes. “I didn’t sign up for this. SAMS... It’s like a second grad school. I was honored to be accepted. We were already enrolled when they told us we’d be doing ‘something different this time.’ And we did not write the Calm Act. Well, not most of it.” He sighed. “We did add the section that authorized the resource coordinators.”

“And the Resco manual that goes with it?” Hoffman inquired. “That was quite a training manual.”

“Yeah, that too,” Emmett agreed. “We were tasked with, um, play-testing the Calm Act. The Resco materials came out of...play balancing, you might say. Other sections, we recommended changes. We never saw the final version, what Congress approved. Not all of it, ever. Some parts were classified too highly.”

“You chose the Northeast. You’re not from here,” I accused.

Emmett shrugged. “Hawaii was popular with the SAMS,” he quipped. “For obvious reasons. Dee, I was originally assigned in Missouri. I never lied to you about that. I came up here to join a friend, and make a difference. It’s the end of the world, you know? Why play it safe, when I could play big.”

Link framed his question thoughtfully. “Having ‘play-tested’ the Calm Act, Emmett – is relieving New York a good move?”

“It’s an excellent move,” Emmett replied, without hesitation. “Unify and mobilize a large and viable swath of the U.S., in advance of March. Start reversing the victim mentality created by the culling. Create a feeling of solidarity across the states, that we’re in it together. It puts the Northeast in a strong position to start the next phase. Uniting the regional armed forces is a major plus.”

“Is that why you’re doing it?” Ivan Link pressed.

“No,” Emmett sighed. “I believe – I believed all along – that the right thing to do, is the right thing to do. The only good strategy is to play for lives. For quality of life. For a sustainable society. Dee originally suggested that New York deserved a chance, and pointed out – rightly – that Tom Aoyama, my epidemiologist, could lead us to that chance. The more I thought about it, the more I thought it could work.”

“I don’t understand,” I complained. “What other strategies are there?”

“Power. Control. Resources,” Emmett said. “Survival. Dee, in the Northeast we’re playing one of the better hands. Large parts of the U.S. don’t have the resources to go it alone. They’ll seek to steal them, and more turf. Better turf, anyway.”

“Who are the players?” I asked. “These SAMS, like you?”

“My crop of SAMS are still only middle-grade officers, Dee,” Emmett replied. “And as Ivan pointed out, we don’t even have the SAMS credential on our records, just our abilities. If one of us plays for territory, it would be through someone who already has command of a big chunk of the Army, probably. Like Ivan here, or General Cullen, or Tolliver. It’s possible a SAMS could try to wrest control. But that’s a waste of energy, if he could work through an existing command structure instead. Much easier.”

“So this massive – game,” I hissed the word, irate. “This begins in March? What exactly does the Calm Act call for, in March?”

“We don’t know what the final phase of the Calm Act says, in March,” Emmett said. “The United States is over, so far as we could tell. If a powerful enough player wins, the U.S. could be put back together again. But that’s a very ugly scenario. On the bright side, I doubt any of us would live to see it.”

“So your game, Emmett,” said Link, “is to what, play Cullen or me, to win the Northeast?”

“It’s not my game,” Emmett said bitterly. “As I said. I’m playing for the lives in New York. Because they’re worth saving. I won’t risk lives in New Haven. Because I care about them.”

Link sat back and stared at him. I couldn’t blame him. I wasn’t sure I believed Emmett, either. And he certainly hadn’t replied with a ringing ‘I’m behind you, sir!’ team player style endorsement of Link.

But I didn’t know or care about Link. “How many of you SAMS are there, Emmett?” I asked.

“Fifty-eight.”

“Sounds small, for a SAMS class,” Margolis commented.

“It didn’t turn out to be a SAMS class,” Emmett returned. “They said it was a special intensive. It was certainly intense.”

“Emmett,” Hoffman asked, “should South Jersey team up with the Northeast?”

Emmett toyed with his dessert, an apple-oats cobbler. Assorted courses had come and gone with Marine-fisted elegance while we spoke.

“Pennsylvania is a problem,” Emmett eventually said. “Your position in Jersey is infinitely stronger if we reintegrate New York. But I’m not a crystal ball, Pete. Sorry. You’re at a bit of a crossroads in South Jersey.”

“You mean battlefield,” Hoffman suggested.

“My honest advice?” Emmett said. “Play neutral. Treat your people well. Get the best deal you can for them. If you live at a cross-roads, might as well set up shop as a trading post.”

“MacLaren, we need South Jersey!” Link barked at him.

“With respect, sir, who is ‘we’?” Emmett returned. “And do we? If we can’t defend Pete, then why ask South Jersey to join us? Why die there, defending an exposed position? Unless it’s good for South Jersey, and good for us, teaming up is a bad move.

“But Pete, I hope you’ll help to save New York. In the long game, maybe that gives you options. In the short game, doing the right thing is its own reward. I may never be able to help you militarily. But help with New York, and whatever happens – you have my good will.”

“Yeah,” said Hoffman. “I’m behind you, on New York, Emmett. Bank on it.”

“Ash,” Link said to Margolis. “New York state will stand with New England. Won’t it?”

Margolis looked around the other men, then also applied himself to his dessert. “I don’t know,” he eventually said. “Maybe after New York City. We’ll see.”

“The next right thing, is New York,” Emmett said. “Then Boston-Prov.”

“Pennsylvania is a problem,” Niedermeyer underscored, to close the subject. “Tibbs? Perhaps you could pass us back our phones? Gentlemen, ladies, it’s been a very enlightening evening. Thank you very much for coming.”

Niedermeyer really was good at this master of ceremonies thing. For a brief moment, I considered that I’d spent the past two days up on strings, just another marionette being jerked around by a puppet master. I discarded the thought as unkind. Niedermeyer was a highly effective leader. And he’d done quite well by Emmett and myself.

As I suspected, the phone Tibbs handed Link was in a bright shiny new box. “Just like new, sir,” he murmured helpfully. He handed mine back with a smile worthy of a sphinx. No, Amenac wouldn’t be allowed to dissect the corpse of Link’s phone.

“Did you catch the aide, Corporal?” Emmett inquired.

“He’s my goddamned aide, Emmett!” Link spat at him.

“Sir.”

Tibbs turned to Emmett and Niedermeyer, snubbing Link, to report that the aide and driver were being questioned in the Ark 7 brig. He shared a smile with me. “Have a good night, Ms. Baker.”

I grinned. “Thank you, Corporal Tibbs. You’ve quite made my evening.”

I left Emmett to his awkward good-byes with his Army colleagues, and instead traded farewell hugs and cheek kisses with the Niedermeyers and Adam.

“Stay in touch,” Adam breathed in my ear, in the scant moment his mouth was in the vicinity.

“You, too, Adam,” I replied. I tapped Pam’s albatross with a smile. “All things both great and small.”

The Coast Guard trio chorused the end of the stanza. “For the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all.”

I should have expected that. At a guess, a Coast Guard Academy graduate – and by association, the wife of one – probably couldn’t avoid Moby Dick or the Ancient Mariner. There were only so many masterpieces of nautical literature to torture students with. So it was an inconclusive experiment on The Great Pumpkin front. But it gave us all a good laugh.

“Have a Happy Halloween, Dee,” Pam added, with a wink.

Chapter 11

Interesting fact: The state of Washington was the same size as all six states of New England combined. New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania combined to roughly the size of Nevada.

“You could have waited inside,” Emmett said, as he joined me on the dark and blustery wet street. He tried to put an arm around me for warmth. I could have used it. A pashima shawl is a perfect foil for air conditioning on bare shoulders. For 45-degree rainy winds, not so much.

I stepped out of his arm and headed for the car, using my phone to light our footing.

“Dee?” he called, frozen to the spot.

“Not on the street. You have the keys. Unlock the car.”

“Dee...” he attempted again, once we were in the car, out of the wind.

“Start the car and turn on the heater. And start driving,” I ordered. Once we were moving, I pointed. “The water’s over that way. Park somewhere scenic.”

The industrial seawall he found wasn’t terribly scenic, but I did see some heaving waves in the headlights before he turned them off. After that we couldn’t see much of anything, but the familiar sound of waves crashing soothed me. Emmett laid his head back on the head-rest, and waited in the dark.

I out-waited him.

“I never lied to you, Dee,” he said softly. “Everything I said in there was true. Including how dangerous it is to talk about this. Including how I started down the road to save New York because you suggested it was possible. Because they deserve a chance. I sure as hell didn’t do it for Link.”

“You didn’t do it for me, either.”

“I’m not sure about that,” he said.

“Uh-huh,” I said, clearly enunciating each syllable.

“It couldn’t get this far unless it made sense,” he conceded testily. “To move millions of people, it has to make sense to millions of people. Not just Emmett trying to impress Dee.”

I didn’t know what to do with that – the idea that this powerful and influential man would even try to impress me. He’d impressed the military power brokers of the Northeast at this meeting. Me? But then, maybe it was true. He really did want me to tell him I loved him last night, really was that grateful.

“I’m beyond impressed, Emmett,” I said. “You’ve been so impressive at this meeting that it scares me. To also be behind the Calm Act –”

“We did what we could to soften it, Dee,” he said. “The Rescos and Cocos make a huge difference. Without them, this would have been hell on Earth.”

I could see that. I’d seen that all along, how people like Zack and Emmett stepped up and organized communities. Things still fell apart. But we weren’t terrorized, at the mercy of thugs stealing all the food production. So there was more food produced. We lived better, and more of us lived. If it were just a free-for-all within the boundaries, might was right. Life would have been far worse.

“Fifty-eight,” I said. “How many of them became Rescos like you?”

“Over fifty,” Emmett said. “A couple are missing. Some are a different kind of Resco. I can’t tell you much, Dee. You figure things out too easily. And you don’t lie worth a damn.”

“What are you afraid of?”

“All the SAMS are capable and dangerous. That includes me. But I only want the same things you want. Neither of us would like what some of the others want. But they believe in what they’re doing, and they’re effective. We’re all pretty zealous about our aims.”

“But you know who and where these others are, and what they hope to do.”

“Yes. There are some wild cards, but basically.”

“And they know the same about you.”

“I was supposed to be in Missouri. But yeah. Sort of. Some people are harder to predict than others. They’re not too worried about me knowing about them. If they thought you knew too much, I’m afraid they’d silence you.”

“You don’t want any of this published on Amenac.”

Emmett blew out a long breath. “How long did it take me to defend this to you, Dee? All that a stranger would catch, is that MacLaren wrote the Calm Act. Let’s save New York before you get me lynched. Please?”

I chuckled, and reached over to take his hand. He grasped mine back so desperately it almost hurt. He had a lot to accomplish, my tricky lover. And as he’d pointed out once, if ‘safe’ was my goal, I’d still be with Adam. I didn’t want safe. I wanted him to succeed, at least with the stated goals so far.

“I love you,” I assured him. “I’ve got your back.”

Apparently it was the right thing to say. He crushed me to him for a desperate kiss. “Thank you,” he whispered. After a few moments, he added, “It was good to see you back to your old tricks in there, Dee. You’ve been so sad since Zack died. I finally won the princess. But she was broken. I was afraid I wasn’t the prince who could fix her. But you were great in there.”

“Huh,” I said. He was right. Maybe we were both adrenaline junkies, people at their happiest in a crisis. That didn’t bode well for a happy life. Or did it?

My phone buzzed. “Adam,” I said.

“Take it,” Emmett said. He let me go just enough for me to pull out my phone. I put it on speaker. Hoffman may have been right about excessive heroism being one of Emmett’s Achilles heels. But jealousy sure seemed to come up more often.

“Hey, Adam.”

“Dee! Are you alright? Is Emmett with you?” Adam demanded.

“Hi, Adam,” Emmett replied. “We’re fine. What’s up?”

“Your suite’s been ransacked at the motel. No computers here, nothing but clothes.”

“We’d never leave computers in a motel,” I said. “Emmett’s checking the trunk. Are my clothes alright?”

Adam rummaged around on inventory, and we verified that the clothes and jewelry and makeup seemed more-or-less unscathed. Emmett found our laptops unmolested in the trunk. We weren’t surprised. There was a bonus screamer circuit on his car, in addition to the original electronics. We would have heard it from the restaurant.

“Thanks, Adam,” Emmett said. “I think we’ll just head home. Could you pack that up for us?” Adam would bring our luggage when he came to look over the fuel oil drums in New Haven in a few days.

-o-

The new normal was hectic, and I loved it.

Before the hard freeze, Emmett shut off the gas and water into the main part of his house – he left a lower water spigot to service the livestock – and moved in with me. Alex handled the livestock full time, because Emmett was too busy. Emmett living over there didn’t make sense anymore.

I was kind of astonished how easy it was for us to live together. When I imagined him moving in before, I felt it would turn my world upside-down. I’d feel invaded. Especially because Emmett was such a very pushy person. But in domestic matters, he claimed the hall bathroom as his, and kept it spotless. The living room couch and giant monitor were his office. That was entirely packed up when he closed his laptop.

He did talk on the phone incessantly. But he also stretched his legs and stepped outside when he was on the phone, or into the garage for a sensitive conversation. And he was often away for meetings, once overnight. We didn’t sleep on the same schedule, so even the bedroom was just extra friendly and warm unless we chose otherwise.

We were just too busy to get neurotic about anything, I suspect.

-o-

“First off, you did it! Take a well-deserved bow,” Emmett told the assembled Amenac team. We were back in the loft, a couple days after we returned from New London.

He clapped hard, and bowed to us with a grin. “You proved that we have the will of the people behind us, to relieve New York. You proved it carefully. Dee did a great job presenting your work, and received standing ovations – twice – on your behalf. Well done!

“I proved that we can do it on the operational level. I didn’t do as well as Amenac – half of my plan was scrapped.” We laughed. “That’s OK. The Navy had a better plan. We’re going to do a water evacuation. Amenac’s work got them on board. That gives us a lot more resources to draw on than just the border forces. Again – well done!”

“And the reward for a job well done?” Genghis prompted from the giant monitor.

“A bigger job, of course!” Emmett agreed with a grin. “Now we actually do it. Over the course of the next week, Army forces will take land areas at the New York periphery for our quarantine zones. Our first batch of refugees will be small, maybe 10,000 people.”

“That’s not very small,” Leland cut in, from the monitor.

“That’s one one hundredth of the number of people we hope to evacuate,” countered Emmett. “Essentially, just the people we need to remove from our staging and quarantine zones. This first batch will be handled by armed forces personnel, as a training operation.”

Some of the guys looked like they were still trying to get their heads around 10,000 people as a small down payment on this project.

“Let me explain how the batches are going to work,” said Emmett. “Quarantine will take four weeks. Week one, a batch gets collected and processed and moved to a quarantine zone. Medical attention begins. They start getting fed, regaining their strength. Active disease cases transfer into hospice care. If they recover, they rejoin a quarantine batch later.

“Each week, a batch graduates to the next stage of quarantine. The fourth week, they’re ready to move out. So you get the idea. We have three to four weeks to match refugees with destinations. Some may have to wait around longer for transportation. We’ll know who they are. We’ll have a list of relatives outside the city borders. If possible, we want families reunited. Remember, everyone’s willing to take in extra refugees, if they’re family members.

“So here’s what I need from you,” Emmett said. “ASAP, we need one of your lost-and-found databases for friends and family seeking to reunite. This first batch will be added to the database as soon as we collect them. If you don’t mind the bandwidth, I’d like to add a photo of each refugee?”

Mel and Mangal were already up and headed for a whiteboard to start mapping out the task. Mangal nodded and scribbled a portrait in the corner. Under it, he added a double-ended arrow for two-way, and ‘Notify.’ Mel scribbled ‘Last address,’ ‘Current location,’ and ‘Quarantine phase.’

Emmett continued, “Next. ASAP, I also need medical volunteers. Within two weeks, we want volunteers moving into the quarantine zones and getting trained. And yes, we will accept volunteers from Boston-Prov.”

That got a whoop of cheers all around. Mel scooted over to colonize another whiteboard, and proudly wrote, ‘Boston-Prov Welcome!’ across the top.

“Any supplies those medical volunteers could bring would help,” Emmett added. “Food. Blankets. Rescos and Cocos might be willing to organize caravans and buses to bring ’em down.” Mel took dictation, elaborating his database schema.

“Third,” Emmett began.

“This is a lot, Emmett,” Dave cut in, eying Mel’s work uneasily. “How long is this project going to take?”

“It is a lot,” Emmett agreed. “We’ll ramp up, then a couple-few months at a fever pitch. Then it might ramp down for months. Sort of a continuing clearinghouse. The immediate goal is to migrate over a million people. It’s going to take time.”

Emmett took another deep breath. “That’s where the third item comes in. Look, this all sounds noble and heroic. But it’s going to be a lot of hard work. These people will smell. They’ll scream with nightmares. They’ll stare at a wall and not earn their keep. This is really hard, folks. Reality will sink in and supplant the romantic fantasy. Mistakes and scandal may happen along the way. We need to keep public morale high. We need constructive dialogue, and solutions to the problems. What do you do with a teenage bed wetter with night terrors? How do you feed a person who’s been starved? What are the signs of permanent neurological damage from starvation?

“Basically, I want to commission a PR arm of Amenac. I want rah-rah, and I want practical advice. I want celebrations and events and human interest stories.”

Mel and Popeye frowned at him, starting to take umbrage. Emmett raised a hand to forestall protests. “I want it totally up front and above board. This is a part of Amenac created officially and specifically to support – We need a name for this operation.”

“Project Reunion,” suggested Genghis. “P. R.”

“Perfect,” said Emmett. “You can put a footer on every page. This sub-site is commissioned by the armed forces of the Northeast, to support Project Reunion. OK with you? Mel? Popeye?”

Their hackles looked soothed enough. “I want that separate from the databases, though, Emmett,” Mel insisted.

“I leave that to you,” Emmett agreed. “I leave staffing up to you, too,” he added apologetically to Dave and Mangal. “There’s a big startup community in New Haven who could help. They know marketing, or advertising, or PR... I barely know what the difference is between those.”

“Do you need them local?” Dave asked.

“I don’t care,” Emmett said. “No, I take that back. I’d like them in the northeast quadrant of the U.S. Yeah, a few from outside, in neighboring states, would be good. I can quadruple your tax credits, if it helps.” Emmett pulled out his phone and fidgeted with something.

“Nah,” elegant Dave ruthlessly decreed. “People will line up to do this for free.”

Emmett laughed. “Well, I’ve transferred the tax credits into your budget. Don’t pay anyone who already has a full meal ticket, alright?”

“You suddenly strike it rich, boss man?” Will needled him.

“Actually, I did get a raise,” Emmett admitted.

“Emmett got a promotion,” I boasted. “Lieutenant Colonel MacLaren is now the lead Resco for Connecticut.” I beamed and led a round of applause.

“Yeah, thank you,” Emmett acknowledged. “Don’t take that Connecticut part too seriously. I’ll be rather busy on New York for a bit.”

“Who’s taking point on PR?” Dave asked.

“I don’t know about PR in general,” I said. “But I had an idea for a blog series. I just met all the principals on Project Reunion. I’d like to write some interviews.”

“Yeah, people will read that!” Will said enthusiastically.

I picked a whiteboard and took the lead on PR. Will joined me there to pitch in on the initial design, plus a sales funnel for the site launch. And thus, naturally enough, we UNC media alumni took on the news and infotainment division of Project Reunion.

I was already deep into the brainstorming when Emmett came over to say good-bye. He gave me a quick kiss and handed me a leaflet. He shrugged with the deep inadequacy most people feel toward their attempts to write advertising copy.

“We thought we’d throw something out a helicopter to people in Staten Island,” he said. “To explain what’s going on. Maybe with granola bars. We’ll need to print thousands by tomorrow. Is this good enough?”

Will frowned at the leaflet. “Some time, we ought to come up with a better name for New York-Jersey-England. New Britannia? Old Colonies?”

“Blech,” I said. I scribbled ‘New Britannia’ on the board, and drew a line through to cross it out. I added ‘Naming contest?’ underneath. “Though it beats listing the states. I wonder how many people can spell ‘Massachusetts.’”

“At a guess, more people than ‘Connecticut,’” Emmett suggested.

“Right,” I sighed. “Or even find Connecticut on a map. Send us the text, Emmett?”

“Yeah,” said Will. “I’ll do a quick design pass, and get it back to you tonight,” he promised.

-o-

To: the People of Staten Island

From: New York, New Jersey, and New England

We cannot bear your suffering.

We want to help.

That starts here, with you.

Beginning in the next few days:

- U.S. armed forces will take over the Staten Island Ferry Terminal.

- Please vacate northeast Staten Island, north of Victory Blvd, east of Jersey St. This area to be used for Quarantine and Staging Operations.

- Quarantine graduates will relocate outside the epidemic border.

- We want to reunite family members where possible.

- We can’t take everyone. Please decide if you can stay and rebuild.

Stay tuned for more details. This is a huge operation. Please be patient! And hang in there.

You are not alone.

Chapter 12

Interesting fact: This year marked a low point in American entertainment. The television industry was decimated in California and New York. There was no money to fund high production values. Censorship on the Internet made it difficult to express anything with negative emotional content, yet audiences were in a solemn mood. Escapist fiction fell flat. Amenac bloggers like the Great Pumpkin, who combined dark acid wit with pragmatic hope, seemed to do well. But Bible commentary and weird apocalyptic rants drew the largest following after Amenac’s core offering – news you can use.

“You have a logo,” Carlos Mora said wonderingly, as he glanced over a sample leaflet he picked up from my dining table. He shook his head. “God, you’re an asshole, MacLaren.”

“Uh-huh,” returned Emmett. “Darlin’, Carlos and I’ll be out on the back deck,” he added to me.

I was in the kitchen, rummaging up beverage and snack service for them the following afternoon. “Ah, OK,” I agreed, contemplating this afternoon’s tropical downpour through the window. Two hurricane remnants had met and fallen in love off the coast of North Carolina. Their love-child puppies and kittens were falling upon us. A good month’s worth of rain was expected over 12 hours or so. Over the summer, Emmett added a scrap of roof over part of the back deck for me. I’d never noticed it to succeed at keeping me dry in a hard rain. Indeed, the chairs under it splintered raindrops in every direction. “I’ll...bring this out to you.” I smiled hopefully at Mora.

Mora’s face maintained its usual implacable expression, Native American impersonates Easter Island stone head. His hair was dripping on his face and neck from his 10-second sprint from the car to my front door. He didn’t bother to wipe it away.

“Dee and her team did the leaflet for me, Carlos,” Emmett explained cordially as he manhandled Mora out the back door. “You’re just jealous cuz you don’t have a logo. Leave the food on the table, darlin’. Thanks.”

I thunked their glasses and plate down on the table with unnecessary percussion, and retreated to my office. So much for helping Emmett make nice. I understood his reasoning for bringing Mora here to talk things out, after giving him a few days to cool off. That didn’t mean I liked having Colonel Stoneface in my house.

I tried to put them out of mind while I revised my first interview blog post. I’d caught Pete Hoffman in New Jersey by phone first thing that morning. I’d meant what I told him, about realizing South Jersey was in an isolated position. I hoped to sort of cement Jersey’s friendship with the northern states that they were so nearly cut off from, aside from their common interest in New York City.

The rain suddenly doubled down in intensity, making me flinch. I collected towels and a couple man-sized robes, to bring to the kitchen as a hint. By the time I made it there, Emmett and Carlos were already indoors and puddling on my kitchen floor. There didn’t appear to be any blood or contusions. They couldn’t have been any wetter if they’d jumped into a pool again, though. Other than looking like drowned rats, the pair seemed to have turned a more affable corner in their relationship.

“Thank you, darlin’,” Emmett said, giving me a kiss on the cheek. “Join us?”

“Sure...” I said. “Why don’t you change in here. Call me when you’re ready...”

Once the dryer was clonking away, I took a seat with them at the dining table. “So! How’s stuff at home, Carlos?” I inquired. “It must be tough, raising a ten-year-old single-handed. You’re welcome to bring him over, next time you come. Our foster teen, Alex, has a whole room of rabbits and guinea pigs next door. I bet your son would love it.”

Mora nodded slightly. “Probably. I don’t bring him around, though. Keith is autistic.” He turned his attention to Emmett. “We moved in with my brother and his wife, day before yesterday. Too many ghosts at home. And I just can’t handle Keith alone.”

Emmett looked alarmed. “Didn’t your brother suggest, um, oxycontin on Keith?”

My eyes widened.

“Yeah, I finally had that out with Manolo,” Mora said. “It’ll be alright. I think.”

“That’s...” I didn’t know what to say. And no, I shouldn’t open my mouth when that happens. “That’s a tough thing to get past. I’m not sure how I’d deal with it if my family, um...” I couldn’t imagine my family suggesting that I euthanize my own child.

Mora shrugged. “He said he was just testing, to make sure I knew what I was doing. He’s old school.” He shrugged again. “They have the room. Manolo wants to teach Keith to handle oxen. That’s useful.”

“Well, Keith is always welcome,” I reiterated. “I don’t have much experience with autism. But I know Alex does. He used to help his gym teacher with the special ed kids.”

“Oh, yeah? Cool.” Mora actually looked impressed at that.

“I’m glad you’re getting some help with him, Carlos,” Emmett said. “Hope you find some time for yourself, too. Not just make time for work.”

Mora looked unappreciative of the personal time management suggestion. I couldn’t blame him.

“Dee,” Emmett said. “Carlos is going to pitch in and act as censor for Project Reunion for me. I need to delegate that one.”

I blinked. “What?”

“Maybe you could show him your article? On Pete Hoffman.”

“Censor.” I sat frozen, gazing at Emmett in disbelief.

“To publish about a military operation, you need a military censor,” Mora explained. “Hoffman, huh? Let’s see it.” Emmett nodded, his face pleasantly neutral.

I pulled up the article on the tablet I kept at the table, and handed it to Mora. I looked daggers at Emmett as Mora tackled the article. But my attention quickly drew back to Mora, who stabbed his way through my article in nothing flat. I hadn’t realized the tablet program was capable of highlighting. But Mora annotated in three colors, just as quick at tech as lightning-fingered Emmett. After a half-second consult with Emmett, he beamed the results up onto my living room big screen.

“Pink is a no,” Mora explained, pointing his way through the highlighted parts. “That’s an operational detail. Never – ever – publish ops details. Could put soldiers’ lives at risk. Location, date, time, troop movements – those are ops details. Yellow is a caution. Pass it by Pete. I don’t think he’d want to go on record saying that. Green is feedback. I think the paragraph would read better without this sentence. I don’t know that word, or that phrase. Achilles heel?” He shook his head. “You want to reach a broad audience. So, dumb it down a bit. So people like me can understand.”

I stared at the screen. Mora was dead right on every comment. And he’d done it in minutes. “I think you’ve done this before, Carlos. You’re good,” I said slowly. “You have a master’s degree, just like Emmett, don’t you?”

“Nah,” he said. “I couldn’t write a master’s thesis. I’m the first person in my family to graduate high school. English is hard. I did a tour with media relations for NATO in Brussels, though. That’s where I met my wife. Then the Pentagon press office for a couple years.”

“Carlos’ brother Manolo raised him, after their parents died,” Emmett said. “He dropped out, and kept Carlos in school. Good man.”

Drat. Emmett knew any chance I had of continuing a grudge against Mora just bit the dust.

Mora picked up his critique again. “Make those corrections, and get Pete’s blessing, and I’ll OK it. But Dee – why start with Pete? The man of the hour is Tom Aoyama.”

I thought the man of the hour was Emmett MacLaren, but I was biased.

“That’ll take some censoring,” Emmett said sourly. He had a low opinion of Tom Aoyama, the epidemiologist who just could not keep his mouth shut. In fact, Tom wasn’t even allowed to call him anymore. Emmett had hired a polite grad student to ‘expedite’ Tom’s communications.

“So I’ll edit it,” Mora said. “Anyway, that’s where I’d start. Ordinary citizen defies the Calm Act, to prove it’s safe to save New York. You know the guy, Dee. Emmett, could she visit Long Island and interview him? Let him show off his work on video? And show the refugees.”

I stared at him. “That would be incredible.” Interviewing Pete Hoffman was simply easy, the low-hanging fruit. It was something I could do quickly. But Tom Aoyama’s quarantine operation – that would put Project Reunion’s website on the map. Everyone would want to see that footage.

Emmett grinned at my expression. “Carlos, I think she likes the idea. Can you find her a video crew?”

“You mean, pros?” I said, astonished.

“Why not pros?” Emmett replied. “You think camera crews in New England have something better to do this week?”

“They’d kill for this gig,” agreed Mora. He looked at me apologetically. “Reporters, too.”

I must have looked crestfallen.

“This is your show, Dee,” Emmett said. “I don’t want a reporter. I want you.”

Mora studied me critically, then nodded. “Yeah, she’s got the vision. For her series on personal stories only, though, Emmett. You need an experienced war correspondent on your end. I’ll hook you up.”

“In time?”

“Yeah, they’re all adrenaline junkies. I could get one here in two hours, if you needed it.”

“Excellent. Why don’t you interview Cam, too, while you’re out on Long Island, darlin’,” Emmett suggested to me.

“Cam! On Long Island?” Mora interjected. “I thought you liked him!”

“His idea,” Emmett said sadly. “Couldn’t say no.”

“Jesus,” Mora said, but nodded slowly. “He’s idealistic enough. So who’s taking Tolland and Windham?”

I left them to divvy up Connecticut, and went back to my office. I had a censor, just what I’d never wanted. Mora was among the last people I’d have wanted, too. Yet here he was, already making my modest little project better than I’d ever dreamed. Life’s funny that way.

‘Advisor,’ not ‘military censor,’ I corrected to myself. Yes, I’d need that verbal whitewash for the Amenac team. They’d see right through it. But the UNC end of the team, at least, would be too busy salivating to mind, once they saw the professional footage and the surge in web traffic. And this footage would absolutely, positively throw HomeSec into convulsions with its Calm Act violations.

Though as Emmett pointed out during my presentation, they’d be as glued to their screens as everyone else. Probably more so, in fact. I sighed. They had the tech to scrutinize video footage right down to its photons. They could probably identify every face reflected on a window by accident, if they wanted.

Better Mora than me, to deal with HomeSec.

After Emmett showed Mora out, he sank into the couch and invited me to join him. “No, not on my lap. Still business, darlin’.”

“Don’t Ms. Baker me,” I pleaded.

He laughed out loud. “Promise. Not that kind of business. Thank you, darlin’, for giving Carlos a chance. I’m worried about him. But I can’t ask the other Rescos to keep an eye on him, and I’m spread too thin. He loves media and politics. Seems to me he’s good at it.”

“He blew me away,” I agreed.

“Well, don’t count yourself short, either. But you’ll keep an eye on him for me? Try to get him to have a little fun?”

“Yeah. Promise,” I agreed. “Thank you. That…wow. This could be phenomenal, Emmett.”

“None of that ‘could be’ or ‘try’ nonsense, Baker. ‘Phenomenal’ is a project requirement. You need to deliver me high public morale and enthusiasm for Project Reunion!” He grinned, then added more quietly. “You can do this. He can help. And I feel a lot better leaving you with him to watch your back. I trust Carlos, Dee.”

“Leaving me?” I echoed.

Emmett nodded slowly, eyes searching mine. “You didn’t really think I was going to command this operation from your living room. Did you, Dee?”

“I thought the generals, and the admiral...”

“I’m coordinating the civilian evacuation,” he said softly. “It takes a boat-load of officers to do this, Dee. Literally. Plus the train-load, truck-load, and helicopter. And a whole lot of Rescos, Cocos, and volunteers. And a beautiful and visionary PR lead.”

I smiled dutifully, and looked down at my hands. “When are you leaving?”

“Half past rooster.”

He gave me time to process that, and didn’t speak again until I looked up. Even then, he gave me time to speak first, if I wanted to. Instead I attempted a brave smile. I bet it came out ghastly.

“I invited the whole family to dinner tonight,” he said. “Trey and Shelley and Alex. To tell them. Didn’t want to blind-side you, though.”

“Yeah. No. Thank you.”

He smiled slightly at the Yeah-No. He used to make fun of Zack and me for sharing that verbal tick. Long ago. Several new normals ago. And here it was, time for another new normal. And he’d only just moved in.

Emmett pulled me onto his lap after all. “Don’t fall back into being sad, Dee,” he whispered. “We wanted this, more than anything. I’m a soldier. Some days I go to work and can’t take you with me. It’s what I do.”

“This time it’s months,” I said. “I’ll miss you.”

“We’ll talk on the phone. And I’ll pop home now and then for a break.” At my eager glance, he cautioned, “Not for a few weeks, at least. Darlin’... I intend to have the time of my life, career-wise. I hope you do, too.”

“It should be fun,” I said, nodding.

He kissed me on the head. “I want to help Alex with the livestock before supper. See you in a bit.”

Chapter 13

Interesting fact: Studies attempted to explain what ‘special something’ the survivors of New York had, that the dead had lacked. None of their findings were especially convincing.

The day Emmett and Adam invested Staten Island, I was on the far end of Long Island, oblivious.

“Dee!” Grinning, Major Cameron grabbed me up into a big hug that caught me by surprise, when I climbed down from the Coast Guard boat. It’s not as though I knew Cameron well. Two weeks ago, I hadn’t known him at all. My video wrangler, Kyla, recorded every bit of our enthusiastic reunion.

One of Cam’s old Cocos from Windham County had met us at the dock in New London with supplies to bring across. Here, skeletally thin men and women, dressed in fresh militia camouflage, stepped up to offload it all. They packed it into Cam’s waiting trucks.

“Chicks,” Kyla prompted.

“Oh, yeah!” I cried. “Careful with that one! Cam, that’s three dozen chicks.”

“Oooh!” Cam crooned on cue. He stepped up to the cadaverous man holding the box, and opened it up to grin at the chicks. “Welcome to Long Island, my pretties!” He plucked up one of the little tan fuzzballs and cupped it in his hand to pet it. Kyla dove in for a close-up.

“What’s with the chicks, Cam?” I asked. I thought it was obvious enough, but prompted him for the sake of the video footage.

“It’s almost November,” he explained. “Not a lot we can do with crops right now. But we have all these lovely lawns on Long Island to support livestock. Some eggs and milk will make a huge difference to our food supply.” He looked straight into the camera, heartfelt. “Windham County, Connecticut – thank you for the chickens!”

That was certainly the money shot, a buff and attractive blond man, earnestly saluting the folks back home with an adorable baby animal. Kyla nodded curtly, and moved off to record the people loading the trucks.

Those chicks were only a month old, just beginning to look chicken-shaped. It would be another four months or so for any to lay eggs. I wished I’d thought to bring some rabbits for Cam to set loose. Alex wouldn’t have given up his pets for meat, though.

Cam grinned at me. “Does she have a personality, or just an eye? Your camera woman.”

“I’ll try to introduce you,” I replied. “But that’s how she is. I try to get to know her. We get a couple minutes into the conversation. Then the camera’s out again, and she tells me to repeat what I just said. She’s pretty intense. Kyla, is her name.”

“Cool,” Cam said, sizing her up, then reviewing his team’s operation. “If Mora picked her, I’m sure she’s good.”

“This is a drop in the bucket, isn’t it, Cam. How are you really doing out here? I know Emmett and Carlos were worried about you. And deeply impressed that you would tackle this. Carlos said to convey his respect.”

“Really,” he replied thoughtfully. “Please convey mine to him.”

The trucks were sparsely loaded, the militia climbing back on board. We were all packed up and ready to go. “That didn’t take long,” Cam commented. “Shall we?”

“Ms. Baker!” The Coast Guard commander called down to me from the boat. Two crew were already casting off. “Noon, two days from now, right here. Correct?”

“We’ll be here!” I called up. My smile ached. I realized a bit late in the game that I was terrified, to be stranded on Long Island. Hardly a tropical deserted island. Surely a devastated one. “Thanks for the ride!”

The captain waved cheerfully. The closest crew member gave me a searching look, then a curt nod of respect. She hopped onto the boat to leave.

-o-

Long Island Sound is wide where I live, maybe 18 miles. Toward the city end, the salt water gap between Manhattan Island and Brooklyn is called a river, and not a particularly big one. At Orient Point, where the Coast Guard dropped me off, on the north fork of eastern Long Island, we were maybe 8 miles from the Connecticut coast, maybe a dozen southwest of New London. I’d taken the ferry across once, just for fun. It took over three hours each way, after the hour drive to New London. Fortunately, the Coast Guard ride only took about 45 minutes.

I’d never taken the ferry again, because Orient Point isn’t very exciting. It’s a bucolic place, fairly flat, lots of green grass and trees, some farmland. In other words, it looks nearly identical to the Connecticut shore, clearly visible across the water. Which made for an awfully long trip to reach someplace that looked just like where I started, except with fewer people. There’s a lot of beautiful scenery within a 4-hour drive of New Haven. Orient Point is merely homey. The fabulously wealthy Hamptons, where elite New Yorkers escaped the heat for the summer party scene, were on Montauk, the other claw point to the south of us. It was nearly 30 miles west along now-deserted roads to reach Riverhead, where the Orient and Montauk forks met.

Along the way, Cam explained to me that Tom Aoyama had started his quarantine working his way down Orient Point. Then they barricaded Orient off and started again from the end of Montauk, the more populous point. Now, six months into the project, they’d advanced to a few miles west of Riverhead.

“So you’re nearly a third of the way to Manhattan?”

“That’s misleading,” Cam said. “It’s a third of the distance, but nowhere near a third of the land. Maybe a twentieth of the people.”

“Do you get a lot of refugees out here, from the city? You know, people who’ve heard the rumors and flock to safety?”

“No, actually,” Cam replied. “Almost nobody heads back west to carry the tale. Once they’re here, they wait for their turn to go through quarantine. Power and long distance communications are all down. And who’d believe them if they went back? Would you walk 50 miles, on a rumor? When you can barely walk a block? When you’ve heard a thousand rumors that promised help, but never panned out? And most of them left you worse off.”

“Makes sense, I guess. What are they like? The refugees. Off the record.” Kyla was in the other truck. Cam and I were alone in the cab, so he could grill me about Emmett’s operation. “What we publish will be for PR purposes. I’ll only publish truth, but... Constructive truth, I guess.”

“Good way to put it,” Cam agreed. “They’re pretty shell-shocked. Vacant. Staring. They avoid touching, meeting anyone’s eye. The guilt...” Cam stopped speaking for a minute, his mouth drawn in a hard line. “They lived, Dee. A lot of them did terrible things to live. What they saw was horrific. And we’re on eastern Long Island. Off-season, it wasn’t much more crowded than home.”

“What town?” I asked, to lighten the conversation. We chatted family for a while, and I looked out the window. Occasionally I saw gaunt people working in the fields, still harvesting the tall grass for hay, some with nothing more than a machete. It would take an eternity to mow a field that way. The fresh-cut grass smelled nice, over an underlying cloying smell of rot, that grew as we headed west.

“You don’t burn the bodies,” I hazarded.

“That’s a waste of fuel,” Cam agreed. “Better to bury them as fertilizer.”

“How can you bear it, Cam?”

“I am healthy and well, Dee. My husband Dwayne is here with me. We are right where we want to be, doing what we chose to do. Together. We are here to make a difference.” His body at the wheel was erect and resolute. The fire of a zealot shone in his eyes. “Without a Resco here, the Northeast could take some refugees, then turn its back on whoever was left. Say they’d done all they could. I’m here to give Long Island a voice. The other Rescos can’t ignore me.”

Who was I to call him crazy? Emmett was off to do something at least as insane, and I was behind him all the way. “Thank you, Major Cameron,” I breathed.

Cam took my hand and gave it a squeeze. “Emmett knows what he’s doing, Dee. Believe it.”

-o-

“You must be Dwayne!” I said. He certainly looked like a Dwayne, with cafe au lait skin and short playful dreadlocks. I pegged him as around five years younger than Cam. Where Cam was upright and earnest, Dwayne seemed rounded and flexible and sway-backed, with a playful flashing smile.

“Must be!” he agreed. “Welcome to Camp Cameron, our not-so-humble abode. I love this place.” He stepped beside me, and waved his arm wide to show off the spread in his imagination. “The horses and stables go there. And a gazebo on that little rise. Surrounded by rhododendrons.”

“You said wisteria yesterday,” Cameron commented. He exuded not-into-flowers.

“The wisteria bloom after the rhodies,” Dwayne explained.

“I can see it,” I agreed. The rise was hard to detect. The grass grew waist-high around their sprawling brick ranch-style house. I guessed the lot at several acres. It featured a guest house, a triple garage for storage, and a large parking plaza for the trucks.

“I like her, Cam. I like you. I’ll share my rabbit with you. I caught a rabbit today, hon.”

“Outstanding, Dwayne. Dee, Kyla, my husband Dwayne Perard is a Coco,” Cameron offered by way of introduction. “Or used to be a Coco. Of Windham township in Connecticut. We haven’t gotten that far yet here.”

“We’re working to secure the water supply,” Dwayne clarified. “Water. Sewage. Communications. Power.”

“Enough power for water and communications, anyway. Dwayne, we have chicks. No, the other kind. That truck.”

“Sorry, ladies, back to work. Slave driver.” Dwayne shot Cam a crooked grin and headed for the trucks. He sang the militia workers a bit of a Jackson 5 song – simple as ABC, 1, 2, 3, baby you and me... I admired his ability to project good cheer toward their vacant faces. He got them moving and working again, slowly.

Cameron took us to tour a civilian encampment nearby, squatters in a once-upscale apartment complex. He called them day laborers. He and Dwayne, or local farmers, could go there to recruit a group of workers for whatever task. There was an open trench latrine, that the Army had dug for them when the quarantine line passed through here. Without the water mains running, the residents relied on a swimming pool to collect drinking and wash water. The downspouts of the roof rain gutters were redirected into the pool with add-on bits of gutter, scavenged from other buildings.

Cameron called out and hired a half dozen people to help him work on the local pumping station. They each got an apple as down payment on their wages, to eat on their way to the job site for energy. Kyla and I elected to stay and talk to the locals instead of following Cam. He looked dubious about that, and called Dwayne on a walkie-talkie, asking him to check up on us in a bit.

Then Kyla and I were alone with the sullen refugees. The ones who’d emerged from their apartments hoping for work and food, mostly disappeared back into the buildings. I spotted a few furtive children’s faces behind drapes or bushes. They vanished if we got close to them. Some women stood their ground by the pool, out washing clothes. I approached one, who looked slightly more spirited than the others.

“Can I help?” I offered, with a friendly smile. Kyla hid behind her camera, recording.

“Rinse,” she said. She was washing in a big beer cooler with detergent suds. A dish tub of sudsy clothes sat waiting next to another beer cooler, apparently the rinse water.

I got busy with the rinsing, blessing my electricity and gas water heater and washing machine back home. Technology is a girl’s best friend. Without it, cooking and cleaning and clothing could easily fill a woman’s life to overflowing with drudgery.

“I’m Dee. That’s Kyla. We’re filming to show people what it’s like here in Suffolk County, past the quarantine,” I explained, once I’d established myself as helping with the laundry.

The woman narrowed her eyes at the camera, then returned to scrubbing.

“Are these your husband’s clothes?” I asked. I was rinsing jeans around Emmett’s size.

“Business,” she explained. “I wash, get some food in return. The pretty men prefer to hire clean workers. I hate men who smell.”

I could relate. Some of the men who clamored for Cam’s jobs had smelled awfully ripe. I gathered that the pretty men were Cam and Dwayne. I could easily picture Cam insisting that his employees wash.

“Are you originally from Riverhead?” I asked. “I’m from New Haven, across the Sound.”

“Ronkonkoma,” she replied, naming a city near the middle of Long Island, maybe 20 miles west of where we stood in Riverhead. “What’s it like in New Haven now?”

I privately exulted that I’d managed to elicit some curiosity from her. I told her that we worked hard, grew food, paid food taxes to support the militias and the border troops, and they protected us. That I still had power, a washing machine and dryer and stove and heat, Internet and phones. That Major Cameron hoped to that set up for them here, too. Running water, at least, to start. That most of the Northeast still had Internet. That’s how they’d see this video.

The washer women kept their eyes on their laundry, but listened intently.

“The pretty man you came with?” my washer inquired. “That’s Major Cameron?” I nodded. “What do they do about the rape gangs?”

I glanced up at her sharply, and around at the other women. “They kill looters and rapists, in Connecticut,” I told them all. “We have no rape gangs.”

“Not so loud,” my companion whispered in warning.

Several men sauntered out of the closest building and headed for us. They didn’t shuffle in sullen vacant resignation like most.

“Rape gang,” the woman breathed.

Kyla scurried behind me, camera pointed at the men as her only defense. My weapons included a tub of cold water too heavy to lift, and wet jeans.

“Fat asses,” one of the men commented. His aroma preceded him foully. I guessed them all to be in their early twenties. Kyla and I were a bit old for them, and actually on the lean side. But we were certainly curvier than the other gaunt women nearby. Good health definitely makes you more attractive.

“What are you telling these fat asses, Mary?” One of them grabbed my washer companion by the hair, then grabbed and twisted her breast just to hurt her. “Getting ideas, stupid bitch?”

I warily eyed the one zeroing in on me. His eyes were plastered to my wet shirt. I crouched down behind my beer cooler, and twisted the jeans in my hands. Kyla squeaked behind me as one of them grabbed at her.

Suddenly a shot rang out. Our tormentors ran for the building, as Dwayne ran up to us. He barely spared us a glance, before he was yelling at the buildings. “Get them back out here!” he demanded. “If any of you ever want work again, you get those assholes back out here!” His new militia caught up. They headed into and around back of the building, to hunt our attackers down.

Cameron had heard the gunshot from down the block. He jogged up to us, just as the last of the wannabe rapists was thrown to the lawn by the pool.

“They were attacking the women,” Dwayne told him.

“Mary told me they were a rape gang,” I explained, indicating Mary. I wasn’t sure what all a ‘rape gang’ entailed, but the gist was clear enough.

“Did one of these men rape you, ma’am?” Cameron inquired.

“All of them,” Mary agreed. The other women nodded.

“Does anyone defend these men?” Cameron called out. The throng – several dozen now – shook their heads no. “Dwayne? You saw them assaulting these women?”

Dwayne nodded.

“Shoot them,” said Cameron, the Resco who’d defended the inmates of Connecticut.

“Cam, are you sure about this?” Dwayne whispered urgently.

“I am sure,” replied Cameron coldly. To the crowd, he said, “We shoot looters and rapists. Kill them.” He handed a pistol to one of his new militia, who stood over each of the rapists in turn, gun to the back of their heads, while the other militia men held the rapists to the ground.

Mary and her neighbors looked eager. I turned away, hugging myself, and winced at each execution shot. Kyla recorded, with a steady hand.

Cam selected a few people to bury the corpses down by the latrines. He pre-paid them in apples.

The attitude of the encampment visibly shifted. People who wouldn’t look at us before nodded in respect. Mary looked me in the eye and said, “Thank you.”

Dwayne led his militia back to Camp Cameron, while Cam took us with him to the waterworks. They’d made their point.

And within a few hours, Cam got the pumping station back online, powered intermittently by a solar array he’d cobbled onto it. The work crew actually smiled and cheered. Cam dispatched them to scatter through the residential neighborhoods. He needed them to turn off the water mains in abandoned homes, to keep pressure up instead of leaking out through all the pipes that burst last winter.

-o-

“There’s a manual,” Cam explained. He pulled a hefty softcover off the side-board. After a meager supper of barbecued rabbit and apples, we’d set up for a formal interview at Cam’s dining table. Multiple cameras on tripods, and lighting in the form of camp lanterns, provided Kyla creative control.

“The Resource Coordinator’s Guide,” Cam continued. “This book constitutes my written orders. And yes, Dwayne, I am ordered to shoot looters and rapists. A looter being someone who steals food and survival supplies from someone else. Salvage is fair game.”

Of course salvage was fair game. This entire property was salvage. Dwayne chose to keep the portraits on the dining room sideboard, of the couple who’d lived here once. Stan and Rachel, their kids and grandkids. If any of them came back, they’d be welcome to stay. The backs of old photographs provided their names.

Cam was really talking to me, for Kyla’s cameras, though Dwayne sat beside him. “We cannot tolerate looters, because looting destroys productivity. People waste their energy defending what they have instead of producing the food we need to survive. A rapist is a looter who terrorizes women, in practice.”

“In Connecticut, you would have given those men a trial,” Dwayne argued stubbornly.

“I gave them a trial. I confirmed, before a jury of their peers, that they were rapists. None spoke in their defense. It’s also perfectly acceptable to kill them in the act. These particular criminals also interfered with a Resco, by attacking Dee and Kyla. Attacking a Resco or Coco or his operation is also a capital offense. Always.”

“Alright,” Dwayne allowed. “That one makes sense.”

“It does?” I blurted.

Cameron opened the manual to a page near the beginning. “A resource coordinator, first and foremost, must exert authority over the assigned area. That’s a pre-requisite. It is necessary that I be the biggest, baddest authority around, and use it to win the respect and cooperation of the populace. Let’s check. Were the citizens more, or less, cooperative, as a result of those executions?”

“They were delighted,” I admitted. “The women especially. They almost looked like they dared hope again.”

“My crew talked about it all afternoon,” Dwayne offered. “Said it was about time. I’ve never heard them talk so much before.”

Cam nodded curtly, professionally. “This page in the manual outlines different levels of civilization that the Resco may find himself trying to organize. At any given level, the goal is to rise. In northeast Connecticut – my previous Resco assignment – we were about level 8, working toward level 9, on this 10-point scale. Middlesex County, under Lieutenant Colonel Mora, was likewise a solid 8 or 9. The shoreline counties run maybe 6 or 7.”

“Hey!” I objected.

“Dee, I’m basing that on your own Resco’s assessment. Lieutenant Colonel MacLaren rates New Haven at about a 7. Fairfield County fell hard at the beginning. They struggled heroically to get back up to a 6. Hartford is about the same. Litchfield County Connecticut is a 3.” He pressed his lips in disapproval of Litchfield County, a realm of petty armed kingdoms, each centered on a castle ark.

“Here in Suffolk County on Long Island, we are at level 1. Essentially an unorganized struggle for basic survival. Even the gangs are small and powerless. Our current goal is to work our way up to a 3. My point is that different levels require different treatment, to gain and keep the respect of the people. As a Resco, I cannot improve the lives of people unless I exert authority. At this level of chaos, even the simplest order – we shoot rapists – is a huge win. Tonight we have running water, and three dead rapists. People sleep better tonight in Suffolk County, because of that. Not many people yet. But a few.”

“And that wouldn’t have impressed anyone back in Mansfield or Windham,” I said.

“Of course not,” Cam agreed. “They never lost running water. Rapists and looters never ran amok. We shot some, at the beginning. But northeast Connecticut never fell to these levels. There we even kept the state university running, let alone water.”

“One of the state universities,” I quibbled. UConn was still alive. Eastern Connecticut State University was not.

Cam nodded, and tapped a finger at level 8 on the infographic printed in his manual. “The goal at level 8 is efficient food production to support more trades and occupations. With UConn, I wanted to preserve the capacity for microelectronics fabrication, among other tech. Not many Rescos can afford that luxury now. But without microelectronics, we can’t maintain our communications infrastructure. I had a choice between supporting other colleges, or primary education. We chose to keep day care and public schools through grade 8. We also kept three high schools open, including Colonel Mora’s Middlesex County. The other teenagers need to work.”

He pushed the Resco manual into the middle of the table. “Here in Suffolk County on Long Island, people could care less about microelectronics. They don’t have electricity. They need food and shelter.”

“And order?” I ventured.

Cam nodded. “Without order, any effort is useless. What good is it to plant and nurture a crop, or raise livestock, if someone will kill you for it? At this level of chaos, it was better for those women to live with a rape gang, than to have no protection at all.”

At that beguiling thought, we fell into silence for a bit. I pulled the manual from the center of the table and looked at the description of level 7. “Why is New Haven only a 7?” I doubt the world wanted to know the answer to that, but I did. So it came off the top of my head.

“Inefficient agriculture,” Cam answered. “I’m not criticizing your Resco, Dee. Emmett’s done a great job. People live fairly well around New Haven. But to live better, you need more effective agriculture. Larger farms, skilled farmers, proper equipment. New Haven is hung up at 7 because it’s full of little suburban lots, farmed by amateurs. We require local agriculture. So there’s a learning curve, and social adjustment. You can get some improvement from learning to farm better on the little lots. But you need bigger farms to be efficient.”

Kyla broke in, surprising us all. She’d steadfastly trained us to see her only as the eye of a camera, not as a person. “Who wrote this manual?” she asked. She nudged my shoulder.

“Who wrote this manual?” I parroted reluctantly, on cue. I wasn’t sure I wanted that question answered on camera, due to Emmett’s concerns.

“The Army,” Cam replied without hesitation. “Before the Calm Act was put to a vote, it was given to the Army for study, and several other Federal agencies. What the likely outcomes of the Calm Act would be, and how to improve it. The Army play-tested the borders scenario, if you will. The Resco manual essentially distills their research, and the winning strategies. Based on that work, authorization for the Rescos themselves was added to the Calm Act. Without the Rescos, more regions would have fallen to lower levels, and from there would tend to devolve even lower. The Army testers proposed the Rescos as a key to rebuilding.” He smiled.

I smiled. “Thank you, Major Cameron. And thank you for taking on the challenge of rebuilding Suffolk County.”

“Thank you, Dee.”

I imagine most Rescos could have answered that question. The official answer was probably in the manual. But I bet only another of Emmett’s SAMS class could have expressed it that fluently, that clearly, that fast. Once the cameras were off, and Kyla elsewhere, I would have liked to casually ask him, ‘So hey, Cam, did you go to command school with Emmett?’ Or even, ‘Say, did you know Emmett before he moved to Connecticut?’

But I didn’t ask. Emmett seemed adamant that SAMS must not be outed.

Instead I asked Dwayne, before Kyla finished turning off the cameras, “So are you from Connecticut, too, Dwayne?”

“No,” he said. Kyla got a great closeup of his expression. “I’m from Hoboken. My mother and little sisters are still there. Last I heard.” Hoboken New Jersey was just across the Hudson River from lower Manhattan, nestled between the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels. Cam laid a consoling hand on his shoulder.

All four of us slept together under a down comforter in Cam and Dwayne’s big bed. There was a frost that night. Heat wasn’t on Cam’s list of priorities.

Chapter 14

Interesting fact: Despite the sensational fear factor of Ebola, it is estimated that more people died inside the New York epidemic borders of cholera, typhus, typhoid, dehydration from diarrhea, and starvation.

“I’ll be back at 4:30 to pick you up,” said Cam. We smiled and waved as he drove off to resurrect the next water pumping station.

“Why are we staying with Cam instead of Tom tonight?” Kyla asked suspiciously. Her skepticism was understandable. Cam had left us to wait at a tall chain-link fence, topped with loops of razor wire, under a lowering morning sky. Literally lowering – that sky looked closer and darker by the minute. An unfriendly looking Army guard stood just inside, glaring at us. Something about him reminded me of the photo of soldiers in the Greenwich garrison, bowling with a child’s skull.

Kyla pulled out her camera. “No filming!” the guard barked, and aimed his gun at her. She tucked her camera away, and we both held up our hands placatingly.

A harried-looking young woman approached. “Well, let them in,” she said, in exasperation. “Dee Baker and Kyla Osterwald? I’m Dr. Clarke Whitfield, Dr. Aoyama’s assistant. How do you do? Come this way.” Whitfield didn’t stop for breath, just glanced uneasily at the guard. She hoofed it as soon as we slipped in the gate. I knew from her CV that she was a post-doc, and thus probably around 30. But she was a very petite woman, who barely looked old enough for college. The once-white lab coat and severe short brown ponytail looked like a Halloween costume on her.

We scurried to catch up across a blank field of overgrown grass, toward a grey row of Quonset hut style temporary buildings. From outside the gate, I’d decided that the purpose of the empty field was a clear line of fire, and time to aim from the machine gun towers.

Whitfield slammed her way into the building, and kept us half-trotting along a central corridor. Judging from the sudden heavy drumming on the roof, we’d made it inside moments before the dark clouds let loose.

“Here,” she said at last, pushing open the last door to the left. “Tom,” she announced. She turned on her heel, and sped away.

“Tom!” I cried. “So good to see you!” I grinned warmly, before I took in the man before me.

I’d last seen him half a year ago, battered and bloody, drugged and asleep in the doctor’s camper of a gran caravan. He almost looked better back then. His face, once moon shaped, was hollow, his cheek bones clearly visible. The roots of his near-black hair had gone steel grey. He tried to stand and fumbled over his own chair wheels. I grabbed him by the elbow before he fell.

“It’s good to see you, Tom,” I repeated fiercely. I drew him into a hug, feeling his bony shoulders.

“Dee,” he said wonderingly. Once I let go, he sunk back into his chair.

“Oh! I have something for you,” I said, and rummaged in my pack. I handed him a manila envelope.

He opened it to pull out a crayon drawing from his daughter Charity. It showed a mommy and two kids, a smiling girl and frowning boy, on a big grey ship. And a man standing alone on a little island. Tom lovingly touched the crayon on the paper, that had touched his little girl. His fingernail had never regrown from his torture at HomeSec.

“She divorced me, you know. Beth.” Tears rolled down his cheeks. He didn’t seem to notice. “Did you see them? Charity and Dennis?”

“I’m sorry, no.” I shrugged. Wild horses couldn’t have dragged me into Ark 7 again. “Do you remember Corporal Tibbs? He brought the envelope to me.”

“Cro-Magnon man,” Tom said. He’d called Tibbs that, while we were in the Ark 7 brig.

I snickered. “Funny, he remembers that, too. How are you, Tom?”

He rubbed his hair, and pointed a finger vaguely around the room. “This, is hard.” He nodded to himself and stroked the crayon tracks. The tears had stopped. “The guards. The misery. The hunger. It’s so very hard, Dee. That day, in the brig. I was so damned cocky then, you know? It all seemed so easy. They were just stupid. Cro-Magnon.”

“You saved a lot of lives, Tom,” I held his eye, willing him to believe that I believed in him. “You did it. You proved it could be done. Emmett will scale it up from here.”

Tom nodded, his whole body rocking. “Emmett hated me. I thought he was a cocky son of a bitch. He thought I was a cocky son of a bitch. We were both right.”

I held his shoulder and breathed deeply, slowly. I calmed his rocking. “Is it time for you to leave here, Tom? Maybe you need to come home to New Haven with me. Take a rest.”

“No. No!” he said, winding back up in agitation. “I’ll never leave here! There’s no end. No end!”

“Shh, Tom,” I crooned, and held him, rocking. “You succeeded, Tom. Thank you. You’re alright. Just cry if you need to. Cry it all the way out.”

Whitfield looked in on us, scurried away, and returned with a pill and a glass of water. “A mild sedative,” she offered. I stared her down until she placed them on the desk. She swallowed.

I needed to watch my temper here, I warned myself. Little Dr. Whitfield was the friendliest competent person we’d met yet. It likely wasn’t her fault that Tom was falling apart. She’d only tried to help with the sedative. The ions from the storm clouds were making me edgy as much as anything else, I told myself.

My little internal pep-talk wasn’t working. What I wanted to do was scream at her, demand to know whether she’d told Emmett how bad off Tom was.

I blew through my lips trying to cool off. She saw it and flinched.

“Are you in touch with Colonel MacLaren?” I asked, as mildly as I could.

“Colonel who?”

“Major Emmett MacLaren was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel,” I clarified. I continued to stroke Tom’s back slowly. He sat placidly now, his head resting against my stomach.

“Oh! Emmett. Yes. I spoke with him the day before yesterday. We’d just started training a new team. He had them sent to Greenwich. He’s left us very short-handed.”

“That was the team of medics from the Army National Guard, correct?” I prodded.

“Yes,” she admitted.

“Who were sent here to be trained for duty in Greenwich,” I completed the thought.

“He’s left us very short-handed,” she reiterated pissily.

“I don’t understand,” I said pointedly. “Did more people leave than Colonel MacLaren sent to you for training?”

“No,” she admitted. “I’m very busy.” She slammed back out of the room.

“Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to piss her off, Dee,” Kyla suggested.

I sighed. “Probably not.” My watch said it was almost 10 a.m. Only six and a half hours to go until Cam came back for us.

“I’m alright, Dee,” said Tom, surprising me. He sat up and scrubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands. “That picture from Charity just overwhelmed me for a minute. Sorry.” He tucked the drawing into the envelope and handed it to me. “Toss that on the bed for me?”

There was a cot in the corner, under a tangle of clothes and bedding. “You sleep in here? You really need to get out more, Tom.”

“I don’t trust Whitfield. I need to stay here and keep an eye on things. My work is all I have left now.”

“Tom? You still have Charity and Dennis left,” I said.

“I may never see them again.”

“Even so. They live. You protect them. You make the world a better place, for them.”

“You’re ruthless, Dee.”

I shrugged. “How long have you been popping sedatives?” I asked, picking up the capsule.

It was a gaudy pill, bright aqua with black codes printed on it. It didn’t look like any sedative I’d ever seen. Those tended to feature brand names, to pose as stylish drugs of choice. Kyla zoomed in for a closeup on it.

I trusted that her video cutting room bit bucket would be very full when this trip was over. Nothing yet this morning was going public, if I had any say about it. And I did have much to say about it. But I let her do her thing without comment.

“That’s a tetracycline antibiotic,” Tom said, frowning. He plucked the pill from my fingers. “She said it was a sedative?” He punched an intercom button on his desk. “Whitfield, get in here.”

I wondered how many hours a day the woman wasted on saying she was busy. But the little package of attitude was soon back and glaring down across Tom’s desk.

“Why did you bring me tetracycline?” Tom demanded. “Why did you tell Dee this was a sedative?”

“I didn’t want to embarrass you, Tom,” Whitfield declared. “He let typhus escape quarantine –”

“Bullshit,” I said in surprise. Her tells were all over the place, that she was lying. She was sweating, panicked, eyes darting all over the ceiling. “Look me in the eye and tell me that Tom has typhus,” I demanded.

“Who the hell are you!” Whitfield shrieked at me. “Some human interest reporter!” Clearly she considered this an insult, human interest news reporters some category of sub-human. “I’ll have you know that I hold an M.D. from Harvard, and a doctorate in epidemiology –”

“Yes, I’ve read your CV,” I cut her off. “Who I am, is Emmett MacLaren’s partner. Who I am, is a co-founder of Amenac. Who I am, is Tom’s friend.” I let that sink in a moment. Then I pushed inside her personal boundary, and pushed her down into a chair. It was a novel experience for me, to physically intimidate a smaller person. The sensation made my skin crawl.

“Now try again, Dr. Whitfield,” I demanded. “What the hell are you trying to pull here?”

What followed was a long and trying couple of hours. Dr. Clarke Whitfield was not cut out for life as an agent, and not nearly as clever as she supposed. I almost felt sorry for her.

-o-

“So we need to get word to the Greenwich garrison. These two medics we trained for them are actually agents for Pennsylvania,” Tom explained to the quarantine border commander, Captain Elizabeth Spelt. He handed her a slip with the names. He’d summoned Spelt to his office when we were done extracting what information we could.

Spelt studied Whitfield in puzzlement. “What were they trying to accomplish?”

“Discredit the quarantine procedures,” I supplied. “Prevent the relief of New York by creating public fear of the refugees.”

“That would carry the death penalty,” Spelt observed to Whitfield. “Inciting public panic.”

“They planned to infect people with typhus, just before release outside the quarantine zone,” Tom elaborated. “Bio-terrorism, not just rumors.”

Spelt’s eyes widened in horror. She pulled out her phone. “Bridget? Beth Spelt. You know that group of medics we sent? We need to detain all of them for questioning. Separate out these two.” She rattled off their names from the scrap of paper. “Hold them for HomeSec.... That’s fine, it’s a capital charge... We believe they plotted with Pennsylvania to release typhus into Connecticut via post-quarantine refugees... To stop Project Reunion... You’ll contact MacLaren?... The agent here was Dr. Clarke Whitfield, Tom Aoyama’s assistant... Thanks, Bridget. And – sorry.”

I ached to tell MacLaren myself, instead of going through proper channels. But he was far away and buffered by many uniformed layers. I let the cog-works do their cranking.

“What are you going to do with me?” asked Whitfield pitifully.

“Hand you over to the Coast Guard on tomorrow’s boat,” Spelt replied. “I imagine they’ll deliver you to HomeSec in New London.” She summoned guards to take Whitfield away until then.

Tom shook his head at Whitfield. “What did you hope to accomplish, Clarke?” It was a rhetorical question, perhaps for Spelt’s benefit. Whitfield had already told us that.

“I could have done a lot of good with a properly funded lab!” she screeched. “Not this half-assed, sorry excuse for mud-hole! With proper food! Pennsylvania has drugs and supplies!”

The guards came, trussed her up, and dragged her away.

My phone rang, startling me. I didn’t realize it would work here in the quarantine complex. “Emmett! It’s so good to hear from you!”

He was in a noisy place, with machine thrumming and plenty of voices in the background. “Hey, darlin’. Just got off the phone with the quarantine commander in Greenwich. She told me about the medics. Well done! Thank you. How’s Tom?”

“He’s OK. He’s right here. Wanna talk to him?”

“God, no. I’ve got people coming up from CDC. Tell Tom I’ll send one to replace Whitfield. It’ll take a few days.”

“Will do. Cam and Dwayne send their love –”

“Sorry, Dee, I have to go. I love you.” And the connection abruptly cut off. I realized self-consciously that I’d been stroking the phone while he spoke. I put it away.

I rallied and turned back to Tom and Kyla with a forced smile. “Alright! Now that’s out of the way, we have an interview to shoot!”

-o-

The day’s process was messy, but the eventual video came out great. Tom and I introduced ourselves, and conveyed the basic story of how we met, and how this got started. Most of the show comprised quarantine surveillance footage downloaded from Tom’s computers, with our conversation overlaid as the narration. They had plenty of footage – Tom’s facility used two-way video to supervise the quarantine batches, only risking staff in bio-hazard suits when absolutely necessary. Tom also kept records, of course. We included animated graphs from that data as well, to illustrate points he made during the discussion.

Mora was right. Not only the Northeast, but the entire country, and then the world, flocked to see my interview with Tom Aoyama. The surge in web traffic brought down Amenac’s servers several times as we hustled to scale up.

Cam’s episode didn’t get as much traffic. We tacked a teaser for it onto the end of Tom’s interview, promising to show Long Island refugees after quarantine, which drew some people in. Cam’s discussion of the Resco manual generated thoughtful buzz. Rescos and Cocos adored his episode, and left encouragement. But most important, Cam got more volunteers to help rebuild on Long Island. By Thanksgiving, he and Dwayne had a bigger force of Cocos and militia than they’d ever led in northeast Connecticut. Each volunteer reported to the pier with a four-month food supply and camouflage uniform, for the Coast Guard to give them a ride. Many of them came from Boston-Prov.

But that was all weeks later.

Chapter 15

Interesting fact: About 1 in 5 people died before graduating from the Project Reunion 4-week quarantine program. Actively contagious disease cases were shifted to hospice wards instead of quarantine, where they usually died. But more commonly, some refugees simply ‘let go’ after entering the program. These patients would pass disease screening, but whether in the first week or the last, simply laid down and died in their sleep. Cause of death was listed as R.I.P. – rest in peace.

“What do you mean, Emmett’s already taken Staten Island!” I yelled at Carlos Mora over the phone. Mora left a message to call him as soon as I got home from Long Island. “Why didn’t anyone tell me!”

“Cam knew. Emmett didn’t want you to worry,” said Mora. “The raw video is on the staging server. I’d like you to upload the two Long Island collections the same way, for HomeSec –”

“HomeSec!”

“Dee...” Mora’s croon had a warning tinge. “Remember how Emmett delegated military censorship to me? And HomeSec. This is how I make HomeSec play ball. They see all the raw footage, and submit suggestions. We treat them as partners, not the bad guys.”

“But Carlos, why would you do that? Sell us out to HomeSec?”

“I’m giving HomeSec a chance to join the good guys. HomeSec is going to co-sponsor the Project Reunion website. They’re eager to see your Whitfield footage. They’re talking about putting together their own episode for your web series. I’m giving them a chance to clean up their public image.”

“Whitewash their image, rather. Christ, Carlos – do you have any idea how much this will piss off the Amenac team?”

Mora sighed. “Dee, I’ve already OK’d this with Dave and Popeye and Leland. Amenac has the upper hand. We have the means to publish whether HomeSec likes it or not. But, if HomeSec stays happy, Project Reunion goes mainstream – Calumet-approved. Everyone is allowed to link to our website. Re-broadcast our webisodes. Discuss our agenda openly. Not just inside Amenac’s little protected sandbox. World-wide. We increase our audience by a factor of ten, at least.”

I hung on the phone, boggled into silence.

“Dee? You still there?”

“No muzzle? Carlos – you won us back freedom of speech?”

“Hardly. Dee, we have an agenda, same as HomeSec. Don’t get all self-righteous on me. I intend to use HomeSec and Project Reunion to wage a propaganda war against Pennsylvania.”

“...Why?”

Mora sighed. “To buy Emmett time to relieve New York.”

I rubbed my forehead in frustration. “Project Reunion was going to be all positive. Yay us. Not boo them. Pennsylvania didn’t create New York.” A moment too late, I remembered who I was talking to, the anguished Mora of that night in the pool.

“Actually, Dee, Tolliver did create Fortress Pennsylvania. And he seeded that Ebola epidemic. If you want to play Little Miss Pollyanna Sunshine – fine. But there’s a real risk here. Tolliver could move while Emmett’s got us over-extended saving lives. In case that happens, I want our version out there first.”

“OK. I can see that,” I said, only because I didn’t have much choice. “But Carlos, Project Reunion is a humanitarian mission. Yay us. The mission critical message is, ‘Yay us.’ The mission Emmett left me is high public morale, to sustain a long hard effort.”

“Understood,” he said grudgingly. “Anyway, Emmett’s footage is there if you want to see it. It’ll be a couple weeks before that episode is edited. By the other team, not yours.”

“We’re not going to publish that right away? But it’s...news.”

“No. What Tolliver knows, is that we hope to start moving refugees into quarantine by Thanksgiving, or maybe Christmas. We let him think that as long as possible.”

The light finally dawned. “Emmett already launched Project Reunion? Really?”

“The videos are there if you want to watch them.”

I wanted. So I dove in. I couldn’t waste too much time, though. I had my own webisodes to produce, and a major site launch in a few days.

-o-

Emmett stood at the ship’s rail, peering through binoculars at the industrial shore. A gaggle of marines stood near him. They wielded sturdy tablet computers. Emmett had one of those tucked under his elbow as well. It was an unpleasant early morning in New York harbor. The men’s uniforms flapped at them, drizzle damping their hair and faces. Heavy chop and whitecaps lay on the waves beyond.

“Is this a good time, Colonel MacLaren?” the disembodied interviewer’s voice asked. The reporter was Amiri Baz. I’d seen him before on cable, reporting from distant battlefields. He was good. He usually embedded himself into armed units.

Emmett flashed him a smile, and ignored the camera man. He accepted a small microphone and clipped it onto his collar. He jerked his chin to indicate the men standing nearby. “They’re flying reconnaissance drones into position. I’m just killing time with the binoculars. Or, well... It helps me understand the drone feeds. I get a better 3-D feel for their viewpoints. That one’s headed for the Staten Island Ferry Terminal.”

The camera zoomed in on the ferry terminal across the rough water. A barely-visible miniature helicopter drone headed for it. It bobbed in the strong breeze, obscured by drizzle in the air.

“What are you looking for?” Baz prompted.

“Reception committee,” Emmett replied tensely. He gathered himself back into interview mode, and explained, “We’re about to launch the landing forces. So, taking a last look at what our marines are heading into.”

A commotion caught his attention from out of mike range. Emmett pocketed his binoculars in a hurry and brought up his tablet. “Drone 7...” The camera dove in to catch a smile growing on his face. A real smile, not a feral one – Emmett was surprised and delighted. “White flag confirmed! Drone 8 yet?”

Fast forward. Emmett and the gang were swapping high-fives. He pulled out a field phone. “Colonel Yazzie? MacLaren. We have white flags confirmed. I repeat, we have white flags. Surrounding the terminal, and all along Jersey Street and Victory Boulevard. There are small clumps of civilians on the streets, each with a white flag.... Yes, sir. Proceed with Plan White Flag, stage 1.”

Emmett turned to Amiri Baz with a triumphant grin. “Now we land troops on Staten Island. We go in carefully. But we have initial communication with the civilians on the island. I believe that’s a welcome. Cameras off.”

He looked alive, exultant, enthralled, in his element. Emmett was having a blast.

“Wait, Colonel – does that mean you go in unarmed?”

Emmett smiled crookedly. “It means cameras off, Amiri.”

-o-

The camera panned across a large abandoned parking lot, and zoomed in on an approaching group. Two marines wore medical face masks and gloves. One carried crutches, while the other pushed a cadaverous man in a wheelchair. A small citizen group stood waiting behind them, white flag flapping from an upright pole held between them. The mid-day sun flashed through between fast-scudding clouds above.

Amiri Baz’s voice-over: “At this point, the ferry terminal complex is secured. Units are pushing forward throughout the Staten Island landing zone. No resistance so far. This elderly gentleman was waiting for us in the parking plaza by the ferry terminal building, under a white flag. He had a large sign proclaiming that he was a Staten Island council member. He is about to meet with Lieutenant Colonel MacLaren, commanding the evacuation forces for Project Reunion.” Camera panned to Emmett, who stood waiting behind a folding table, also wearing medical gloves and mask.

Emmett stepped around the table to greet the councilman. He bent down to tenderly affix a microphone on the man. He gently shook hands and introduced himself. “I can’t tell you how much it meant to us, to see your white flags, sir. Thank you, for arranging the warm welcome. You are?”

“Staten Island council member Ty Jefferson,” he replied, in a reedy voice. “I’m the senior one left. From before. On behalf of Staten Island, welcome. Thank God for you. We’ve waited so long.”

Emmett perched on the edge of the table, and handed Jefferson a tiny cup of cider. “The medics warned us not to feed you too fast,” he murmured apologetically. Jefferson’s skeletal hand shook so fiercely that Emmett took a knee before him, and held his hand steady. Jefferson closed his eyes and drank the cider in rapture. He paused, lips lingering to kiss the empty cup. Perhaps he would have called himself black. But his skin was pale compared to Emmett’s deep tan, his patchy hair white.

Emmett’s nose twitched. He looked up at one of the marines in anguish. “Fetch a medic. His leg... Councilman Jefferson, were there any other council members waiting with you, over there?”

“No. My family.” He rallied. “You’ll find other people, in the streets. They’re high priority for help. We couldn’t move them out of the landing zone you asked for. They’re too weak. Maybe two hundred. The other council members – we’re arranging priority...” He lost his thread.

“Thank you, sir.” Emmett glanced at the remaining marine, who nodded and turned away to make a call, and convey that information.

Haltingly, often confused, Jefferson briefed Emmett on the local status. There were some gangs he had concerns about, but they weren’t on this part of the island. He advised strong defenses along Jersey Street and Victory Boulevard, the border of the area the landing forces had requested be cleared. Jefferson warned of the pile of bodies, not burned for lack of fuel. He recommended buildings most suitable for quarantine housing. He asked how many evacuees Emmett could take, and how long they would have to wait. He begged for food for those left behind.

The medic arrived, and briefly looked at the leg. He looked up at Emmett and nodded. “Gangrene. We should be ready to handle that in another hour or two, sir.” He turned to Ty Jefferson. “I’m very sorry, sir. But that leg needs to come off as soon as possible. We’ll take good care of you. You’ll be evac’d with the first wave –”

“No, no I can’t leave –”

The medic made to grasp his shoulder firmly, then winced back to a gentler touch as the elder man gasped. “There is no choice sir. The leg can’t be saved. You’ll die if we don’t amputate.”

“Not that! Good riddance,” Jefferson spat out. “God, it hurts. But I can’t leave my people. Not now. They need me,” he entreated Emmett.

“Ty – may I call you Ty?” Emmett replied earnestly. “The refugees will need a leader like you in the quarantine camps. Will you go with them, and lead them into their new lives? I need you too much to let you die here, Ty. They need you too much.”

“My family...” Jefferson wailed softly.

“They could go with you,” Emmett said doubtfully.

“Of course they can’t!” denied Jefferson. “They are not priorities! But – can I come home again? Later?”

Emmett nodded slowly. “When you’re well, sir. I promise you. But for now, please do me this favor. Go to Camp Yankee to heal, and lead your people there. And introduce me to someone I can negotiate with for Staten Island while you’re gone.”

The marine wheeled Ty Jefferson back to his family, back to arrange another representative to the armed forces.

Emmett turned to Amiri, tears standing in his eyes. “That man, Ty Jefferson, is a hero. These survivors – they’re all heroes.”

-o-

“Sure,” replied Adam, wiping grease off his hands to affix the microphone. “Just for a minute. I’m Lieutenant Commander Adam Lacey, Coast Guard. What we’ve got here is a team of engineers from the Coast Guard and Merchant Marine. We’re getting these ferries back into service. We’ll use them to collect and transport evacuees.”

Adam turned and waved to some of his guys. They grinned and waved back, then got back to work. That particular group seemed focused on a fueling mechanism. They were on some sort of sub-level dock. The burnt-orange side of the ferry loomed upward to levels where passengers might tread.

“So you report to the Navy here?” Amiri Baz asked.

“No. Our mission is part of the evacuation. Army Lieutenant Colonel MacLaren is in command of the evacuation. We’re using inter-service teams on Project Reunion. The command chain is task-based. My group does ferries.” Adam grinned self-effacingly. It looked stunning on him, as always.

“And where will the ferries go?”

“We will use them to ferry people, and supplies,” Adam replied wryly. “I’m sorry, but you’d have to ask Colonel MacLaren about plans. You’re welcome to film the ferry, though. We’re working down in the engines. They’re black. And grubby. And really loud.”

Baz laughed. “But you’ll get them working?”

“Absolutely,” Adam agreed. “They’re in good shape. Someone cared about these machines, and put them to bed in good order.” He spared a glance of appreciation at the grubby orange ferry. “Good people did their jobs well.” He gave a brilliant smile to the camera, then added, “Is that enough for now? I really ought to get back to it.”

“One more,” Amiri Baz wheedled. “How do you feel about Project Reunion, Commander Lacey?”

Adam looked straight at the camera, stern and gorgeous. “Enthusiastic. Ecstatic. We are thrilled to be here, doing this. This is what we’re supposed to do, in the Coast Guard and the Merchant Marine. Help people and materiel move safely through our waters. We do not enjoy enforcing the borders. We are completely behind Project Reunion. Speaking for myself, of course. And the people on my team who have shared their opinion.” He paused. “But, that would be all of them.” He laughed. “We’re 100% behind this.”

“Of course,” agreed Baz. “Thank you, Commander Lacey.”

-o-

My phone rang before I opened another video. It was nearly 11 p.m. by then. “Emmett! It’s so good to hear from you!”

“Hey, darlin’. It’s good to hear you, too. Did I wake you?”

“Nope. I was watching the raw videos of you and Adam, your first day at Staten Island.”

“Oh, yeah? How did Adam come out?”

“Firm, confident, pro-Reunion. He really is photogenic. You looked great, too! That meeting with Ty Jefferson... I was crying. Do you know if he came out of surgery OK?”

“Yeah, that was a couple days ago. He’ll be fine.”

“You’re my hero,” I whispered.

Emmett laughed softly. “Thank you.”

“Is it still going so well?”

“Shots were fired today,” Emmett allowed. “Nothing too bad. Mostly more like Ty Jefferson. These people...” His voice caught. “I was expecting more like on Long Island, you know? The ones I met there had given up. Blank, resigned. Seemed to shuffle through life vacant.”

“I met some like that, with Cam,” I said. “The strangest thing, though – he executed a rape gang that attacked us –”

“What?”

“I’m fine, Emmett,” I assured him. “Dwayne charged in before my camera woman and I could get hurt. But after the gang was shot, it was like the refugees there started waking up. Dwayne was floored that Cam was willing to shoot them. But Cam said, look – I have to create order. And my orders state that I am to shoot looters and rapists. And then people started to hope again, that it could get better.”

Emmett thought for a bit before responding. “Thank you. That helps.”

“If you had to kill people, who interfered with you taking refugees, maybe that helped the ones left behind, too,” I suggested. “Thinned their problems.”

“Maybe so.” He sighed. “God, I miss you.”

“Well, only when you’re going to bed,” I teased. “The rest of the day, you probably don’t think of me at all.”

“Uh-huh. I am kinda busy.”

“Kinda.” I was stroking the phone again. “I miss you, too. And I have a thousand questions, and things to tell you. But you need to sleep. Then go back out and wave the baton again, and redirect the lives of millions tomorrow.”

“Only tens of thousands on any given day,” he allowed. “But yeah.”

“I love you, Emmett.”

Silence. Drinking it in? “Thank you, darlin’. I love you, too. I’m glad you’re home safe.”

I was proud of myself for not asking when he’d come home. That would be needy. And he’d been gone less than a week. I could be with him, through my work.

It wasn’t enough, alone at bedtime. But it would have to do.

Chapter 16

Interesting fact: Project Reunion provided closed captioning and transcripts for its interview series in English, Spanish, and French, plus a ‘Translate This’ button for other languages. Volunteers rewrote the auto-translations and submitted some back to the site for other languages. It was soon noticed that Calumet – the censorship plugin mandated to test public comments on U.S. websites – allowed discussion of Project Reunion anywhere, though other political commentary was banned.

‘Swamped’ was an evocatively fitting word to describe our work that November. The dreary wet and dark of autumn after the leaf fall. Every step resisted by water, gnarly roots and undergrowth, and deep sucking mud. The occasional alligator. Problems dissolving only to appear again from a slightly different perspective, as though you’re walking in circles. The constant nagging suspicion, ‘I’m lost, aren’t I.’

I regretted taking on PR lead for Project Reunion. The personnel issues reminded me of the years I’d spent in corporate project management, scaled up by orders of magnitude. Of all the things I missed about life before the borders, my old job at UNC wasn’t one of them. Leading a software project on a tight deadline is like herding cats with a squirt gun. Now I had far more unruly cats than I’d ever attempted to herd before. And not just the web producers. Our schedule kept getting tossed into the air by my star player – Emmett.

“We need to rethink Thanksgiving,” he announced, with a pensive frown. No, he wasn’t there in person. He’d joined the sports-bar-sized monitor at the Amenac loft, next to Leland, who was presently God-knew-where physically. Emmett sat in a small conference room on a Navy destroyer, somewhere in New York Harbor. Which covered quite a lot of sea, really. His ship could be overnighting off the Rockaways, for all I knew.

“We’ll have the first batch of evacuees ready,” Emmett explained. “That’s no problem. But that’s a small group, only 12,000. Kind of a random catch. I’d rather use them to iron out the transport logistics from Camp Yankee. Without cameras on them. The following week, same problem, next order of magnitude, with Camp Upstate and Camp Jersey shipping out their first graduates, too.”

“You anticipate a cluster fuck,” concluded Carlos Mora. We had only the Project Reunion steering committee here tonight, but Mora took his role on Amenac more diligently than Emmett had. Or perhaps he had a higher tolerance for meetings.

“And how,” Emmett agreed. He shrugged. “They’ll get it done, but it won’t be pretty.”

“Emmett, we need to show the first refugees going home,” I objected. “Reunions with families...”

“Yeah, yeah. But that could be a minor part of your show for the Sunday after Thanksgiving,” said Emmett. “Here’s the thing. When we planned this, we didn’t expect to find functional government or organization in the Apple. Just chaos.”

With everyone talking about it, the accurate but unwieldy phrase ‘Greater New York City area epidemic borders’, and the grossly inaccurate ‘New York City borders’, or the completely ambiguous ‘New York’ – these terms were dysfunctional in practice. The terms ‘Apple Skin’ for the borders, ‘Apple’ for the whole Jersey-NYC-Long-Island-plus-NYC-suburbs metroplex innards, and ‘Apple Core’ for New York City itself, worked. Took far fewer words, and people understood what they meant. Granted, New York City didn’t produce apples. And it was surrounded by states that did. Its nickname never did make much sense. Regardless. It was the Big Apple.

Emmett continued, “But starting with Ty Jefferson on the first day, and the Staten Island council, we’ve met organization. Those first responders who collected and delivered orphans to us in Brooklyn. Some of the better crime outfits and block associations.” He nodded in thought. “I’m changing my strategy. I want to work with them. Try to build them up, leave them stronger.”

“You can’t send just the dregs out to the boonies, Emmett,” Mel argued. Our quisling anarchist Amenoid was on the PR steering committee, too. “Elderly and sick children. They have to be able to work once they get their strength back. Most of them, anyway.”

“Agreed,” said Emmett. “Look, I’m not saying I know where this’ll lead. There are millions of people in the Apple. And these little pockets of sanity and competence, fighting for survival. And they’re just as hungry as the rest. But we used to do a one-two. First day leaflets dictating who, where, and when. Second day, pick them up. Now we do a one-two-three. First day leaflets explaining our constraints and suggestions, and where to meet for discussion. Second day, dialogue. Then third day pickup, on their schedule. We’re empowering communities. It’s a little slower.”

“Are you getting dregs?” Mora asked.

“No, I don’t think so,” Emmett replied. “Or, no more so than we would have anyway. We take a lot more relatives of people outside the Apple Skin. More people who are desperate to get out of there. Families. Teams. The ones who choose to stay are pretty damned proud of themselves.”

“Well, that’s something,” Mora agreed.

“So, what does this have to do with Thanksgiving?” I cut in.

“I wanna throw a party,” said Emmett.

“At Camp Yankee?” I clarified.

Camp Yankee was the Connecticut quarantine complex, actually located in Port Chester New York, adjacent to Greenwich Connecticut on the shoreline. Refugees ultimately bound for anywhere in New England, were processed through Camp Yankee. The quarantine camp names were intended to get the idea across without advertising quite where they were located – Camp Yankee, Camp Jersey, Camp Upstate (New York), and Camp Suffolk (Long Island).

“No. In the Apple Core,” Emmett replied. “And northern Jersey, here around the harbor. Maybe Suffolk. Wouldn’t that be a good PR stunt, darlin’?”

I blinked. “How do you...?” The mind boggled.

“Donations,” Emmett suggested. “People could donate food at railroad stations, and we can cart it in from there. People could put a note on it. ‘Happy Thanksgiving and best wishes, from Little Bunnykill, New York.’”

Emmett perceived that I was aghast. “If all else fails, I can hand out apples, Dee. We’ve got a hell of a lot of apples. Grapes, too.”

“The Navy has volunteered to transport all this into the Apple Core?” I asked.

“Merchant marine, actually,” Emmett mused. “And Army at the rail heads. So...what do you think? Would that be a good PR stunt?”

“I – yes,” I admitted. It was only two weeks to Thanksgiving, and I thought both of us had far better things to do, with Project Reunion just getting started. But, yes, it would be a remarkable PR stunt. Because it would be a remarkable stunt.

“It’s – doable, on our end,” admitted Mel, with a similar lack of enthusiasm.

“I think you ought to collect up refugees and move them out to the quarantine camps,” opined Mora. “Your proposed mission creep is extreme, MacLaren. On two counts.”

I couldn’t blame Mora for being more honest than Mel and I were. Emmett didn’t seem to take it amiss.

“The two counts,” Emmett reviewed, “being a Thanksgiving food giveaway, and working with local communities to select evacuees. That spreads me too thin, is what you’re saying?”

“Yeah. You’re still trying to be a Resco, instead of commanding an evacuation,” Mora critiqued. “You know better than that. Though your new mission goals aren’t incompatible, I suppose. Provided you could delegate the Resco jobs, to Rescos.”

Emmett smiled crookedly. “Uh-huh. Are you volunteering, Carlos?”

“No. You need me right here,” said Mora. “Hoffman would be ideal. But he’s up to his ass in alligators setting up Camp Jersey. Cameron could wish he had alligators, so he could eat them. All around, you’re spreading the Rescos pretty thin. They need to receive all these refugees.”

Emmett nodded thoughtfully. “Part of my job I’m not doing well enough, is helping Cam.”

Mora sighed. “I can try.”

“I can try, too,” I suggested. They both frowned at me. I shrugged back. “I’m not a Resco, but I’ve been involved all along. Seems to me he needs to do less, and inventory more. Find answers less, and frame the right questions more.”

“No offense, darlin’, but Cam doesn’t need unsolicited advice,” Emmett replied. “Although... That inventory thing was interesting. You’re damned good with satellite images. You did some useful things with that for New Haven County. Do you have satellite images from July and August?”

Leland broke in, “If you don’t, Dee, I do. I’ll send you access details.”

“Aerial inventory,” I said, nodding. “I could do that. Tell him where to look for food production, give him a map. I’ll call him tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” Emmett said, with a warm smile.

Mel sighed. “Back to PR, people. What’s the plan?”

Emmett sat up decisively. “Plan for the Thanksgiving party. How to ask for donations and organize. But don’t advertise it yet. I’ll find a point person – not me – or we won’t go through with it. That would be a bonus webisode or whatever, day after Thanksgiving. We’ll do the first release of evacuees that weekend. And you can show the footage from investing Staten Island that Sunday.”

“Not the weekend before?” I asked in surprise. “Why are we waiting so long on Staten Island?”

“Because, darlin’, so far everyone thinks Project Reunion starts at Thanksgiving, not four weeks before. That leaves Pennsylvania behind schedule and following the wrong game plan, if they want to screw with us.”

“But you invested Staten Island before Halloween,” I said.

“Yes, but do they know that?” asked Emmett. “We may not have fooled Pennsylvania. But hopefully we’ve confused them.”

We settled the schedule then, for the PR episodes through Christmas. It was one hell of a plan.

-o-

“Emmett?” I called myself hoarse, dodging through the throng on the railroad platform in Greenwich.

Finding him wasn’t easy, nor running – the platform was mobbed with volunteers bound for Camp Yankee. A few snow flurries danced in the dark. Around 9 p.m., it had been dark for hours. The platform was mostly lit by the dim lights inside the waiting commuter trains. The train on the right was huge, overflowing the platform by several cars on either end. More heavily-laden winter-swaddled volunteers continued to swarm across the platform, still transferring from the shorter local train from New Haven. I’d arrived on the monster express from New Haven, standing room only for an hour, bearing volunteers from points east and north.

Finally I spotted Emmett, and ran into his arms.

“Had to see you,” he murmured into my hair, clutching me tight.

“I see you all the time,” I countered. “Hear from you, too. It’s touching you that I miss.”

“Yeah, that.” He brushed my hair out of my face, drinking in my eyes, and kissed me again deeply. I held his waist to me as tightly as I could.

As he broke off the kiss, I asked brightly, “So where are we headed?” I made a grab for his duffel. He caught my bare hand, his leather-gloved fingers interleaving with mine.

“I’m not staying, darlin’. I have to turn around and go back,” he said. “I just... I was inspecting Camp Yankee, and... It’s so close. I couldn’t bear not to see you.” He swallowed. “But stuff happened back in the Apple Core. I can’t stay the night, after all. I’m so sorry.”

I swallowed, and blew out sharp disappointment. “I brought you sandwiches,” I murmured. I’d dropped those with my overnight bag on top of his duffel. “I guess there isn’t anywhere we could...” I suggested doubtfully.

We contemplated nearby opportunities to sneak in sex, from a mobbed railway platform, in the snow, in a town neither of us knew.

“Not really,” he concluded wryly. “Maybe when I was younger.”

I laughed against his chest. He folded me back into his arms and lay his head on mine. I settled into the embrace and breathed deep of the here and now. “This is enough, then.”

“God, I love you,” he said. “Sorry to drag you all the way here for nothing.”

“I would have come, just for this,” I assured him. It was even true. Except for the part about it being enough. He was stressed out and morose and guilt-ridden, and hugging me like a teddy bear wasn’t going to fix that. “I know! Let’s dance!”

He laughed in surprise. I pulled my phone out, selected a song, and set it playing on speaker. Emmett had taught me country swing dancing to that song at a memorial service over the summer. Yes, it sounds odd, but the departed had explicitly requested we dance in his memory. Totoket is quirky like that.

The loudspeakers blared, “All aboard!” The throng started thinning more rapidly.

“Ignore them,” I said, grinning. Most people pushed into the train, but a handful of couples tarried to dance with us. I twirled and stepped. He danced half-heartedly, and kept glancing at the volunteers staring at us from the train.

I stopped, and directed, “Bow to the onlookers.” And turned and did so, to the train windows.

He laughed and tried to break away. “Christ, Dee, I’m in uniform!”

“And your stuffiest one at that,” I agreed. I tucked his insignia-bearing coat collar inside-out to hide it. “Your overnight leave turned into 10 minutes. They can wait, Emmett. You’re too serious. Need to lighten up.” Relentless, I restarted the song. “Dance with me. Just one song, but you have to mean it.”

He laughed and shook his head, but gave in and really danced this time. Just for one song, with a deluxe twirl and dip and kiss at the end, and then grabbed me back into a clutch. The next song played for anyone else who wanted to dance while I delayed their commander.

“Are you OK?” I asked, taking a moment to caress and search his face. He’d lost more weight and had dark circles under his eyes. I wasn’t surprised.

“Harder than I thought. Hardest job I’ve ever done. And the most rewarding.”

I smiled and nodded. “Good.” I rummaged in my pocket and dragged out some chapstick and smeared his lips. He laughed. I tucked the chapstick into his coat pocket. “You keep that, and use it. New York is windy in winter. And that stupid beret is not a winter hat. Wear a real one.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He grinned crookedly. “Are you OK?”

“We’re fine. Busy. Proud of you.”

The platform was getting decidedly thin. A trio of M.P.’s reluctantly headed towards us.

“Uh-huh.” He sighed. “You don’t tell me what’s going on with you anymore. Tell me, Dee. Don’t just be brave for me, OK? I’d rather feel like you shared your burdens with me. Like I’m still part of your life. I can’t tell you everything on my end. But that’s security.”

I contemplated that. I contemplated the deep misgivings on the faces of the M.P.’s, currently hovering 10 yards away, dithering before approaching us. “Does your phone work, on your boat back to the Core?”

“If not, there’s a comms room.”

“Call me then, as soon as you reach the boat. Let’s talk. About the little stuff.”

The loudspeaker blared, “Lieutenant Colonel MacLaren, please board the train.” We were alone on the platform with the M.P.’s.

“I’ll do that,” promised Emmett. “In an hour, maybe two.” We shared a last long deep kiss. He boarded the train, to hoots and jeers from his fellow passengers. That shushed pretty fast, as word spread of exactly who they were teasing. He turned his collar insignia back out properly, and put on the little beret, back on duty again. He leaned against on a divider by the train doors, on an old advertisement for Forbes, Capitalist Tool. He watched me, hand up in farewell to match mine, as the train rolled away.

The head M.P. cleared his throat. I wiped a tear away, and turned to him with a smile. “Yes?”

“We’re to wait with you, ma’am. The train should be back in an hour and a half. This platform, express to New Haven. Should be nearly empty.” The wholly empty local train on the other side of the platform had already left.

The M.P.’s gave me plenty of space and privacy later, as I chattered away to Emmett on the phone, telling him all the details I’d been holding back. I unloaded about Long Island, Cam and Dwayne, Tom Aoyama and Dr. Clarke Whitfield. I let off steam about Carlos Mora and the Amenoids. I shared about a girl Alex had a crush on, and Shelley and Trey’s latest argument, and Shanti and Mangal talking about another baby. We laughed a lot. Not as good as pillow talk, no. But it was the best intimate talk we’d had since he left weeks before. He seemed to feel the same way. We were together, even though it was such a little time physically touching.

One of the M.P.’s accompanied me all the way back to New Haven. He even saw me to my car in the deserted night streets. The attention was embarrassing. “Thank you, Nguyen. Are you sure I can’t find you a bed here in New Haven?”

“I have a bedroll on the train, ma’am,” he assured me.

“I’m sorry to put you to all this trouble.”

“With respect, ma’am. I worked 11 months straight on the Westchester border. I was ordered to fire on desperate Americans. I’ve just come off my first 2 week leave at Niantic. I would do anything for Colonel MacLaren. Tonight was just a pleasant evening’s duty. Have a good night, ma’am.”

Niantic. They must have followed through with Emmett’s idea for rotating the most disturbed troops into the empty women’s prison there for remediation and retraining. I’d just spent the last hour in a train car alone with one of those. And mostly I felt grateful that he appreciated Emmett.

Of course I knew Emmett was important. Hell, I did PR for the man, choreographing his introduction to the masses. But that really made it strike home. Emmett was a hero for the masses, yes, and me. But even more so to the Northeast armed forces. That was a bit daunting.

Chapter 17

Interesting fact: Following Major Cameron’s interview, the Project Reunion website received demands that The Resource Coordinator’s Guide be published. The Rescos vetoed that. But a few copies were surreptitiously distributed to community leaders in areas that lacked a Resco, such as Houston.

“Hey, Cam!” I greeted Major Cameron. “Got computer, got Internet, got Gigabytes today?”

“Ready and eager!” he agreed.

This was the third in a series of phone calls. On the first one, I’d outlined what I offered to do for him with an aerial inventory. He was enthusiastic and grateful – especially once he understood that I offered to do it for him, not teach him how. He didn’t have time for that, which was my point in offering in the first place. Because I thought he desperately needed a current Long Island resource inventory, but with the limited tools at his disposal, it would be too labor-intensive.

I was amazed to find Cam even sharper at tech than Emmett. Within minutes of me introducing the concept to him, he was requesting refinements. For instance, it was pretty easy to automatically detect and map inventories of solar panels, wind generators, cell phone towers, power transformer stations, and pumping stations, using pattern recognition on the winter satellite photos instead of summer. Focused on food production, I hadn’t thought of that.

Then it took a couple weeks to get the inventory mapping done. Leland provided me the data, and I figured out the processes. I found a GIS savvy – graphical information systems – environmental grad student from Yale, Reza, to help me with that, and then carry out the scut work to crank through those processes on the summer and winter satellite data sets. That was one hell of a lot of data. Cam had requested, while we were at it, to go all the way west to Hauppauge on this pass, at about the midpoint of the 100-mile Long Island. But Reza was enthusiastic and a wizard at the automation.

Once she was done, I called Cam to tell him his data was ready. But he only had a cell phone with him at the time, wholly inadequate for monster data. So today he was at the quarantine garrison with a broadband connection, and a computer with the power and space to receive his present.

Once the detail map transfers were chugging away – he’d be stuck there for hours – I reviewed the much-smaller summary data with him, to make sure he knew how to navigate the maps. “So now you should have the solar panel layer up, Cam?”

“Dee, I love you!” he cried. I took that as a ‘yes’. “Hamptons!”

“Right – the Hamptons are your solar panel salvage superstore. But there are plenty within 10 miles of you, too. And some windmills to complement the intermittent sun. You get the gist of how to do this, right? Just flip layers on and off at the right?”

“Hm? Yes, sorry, I was just glancing at all of them.” I took that as a ‘yes’, too. Quick study, Cam. “God, Dee, do you know how long this would have taken us, without you?”

“I do indeed. That’s why I offered,” I assured him. “You also miss a lot from street level. Here around New Haven, there’s all kinds of odd habitat and farms tucked around the edge of the marshes. You’d never know it was there, from the road. I think you’ve got even more of that on Long Island.”

“Could be. This is huge. Thank you isn’t enough,” Cam said. “Now, explain to me – ‘grain land’?”

We went through all the layers on the summary map, one by one, as I explained what parameters led to the conclusions. He really was phenomenal at this analysis. He easily caught the strengths and limitations of my methods, and suggested improvements for next time I tried this.

“Awesome, Dee,” Cam concluded. “I think I got it! Hey, can I ask – how did you come to volunteer for this? You already have a job or three.”

“Oh, it called to me, I guess,” I said. “You’ve got such aching need on Long Island. Just like New York. It bugs me. I need to help. Lots of people do, you know? I mean, it’s one thing to volunteer to move your soft warm body to Long Island and starve. But Cam, lots of people could help you remotely. And they want to. Reza was so psyched to help! Then Emmett complained that one of the things he ought to be doing, but couldn’t find time for, was you. So I suggested I could help you. And Emmett told me unsolicited advice was the last thing you needed.” That part still smarted a little. Because Emmett was right, of course.

I continued, “I mean, Cam, it’s not that I underestimate you. Totally the opposite. Every step of the way, I thought I respected you. And then you blew me away. I’m already impressed as hell. And then you impress me more.”

“Wow. Thank you, Dee,” he murmured. “That means a lot, coming from you. I am, also, by the way, impressed as hell. So. Consider yourself solicited.”

“Hm?”

“Well, let’s say you’re offering suggestions. Not advice. That I will take or leave,” he quibbled. “Did you have any other suggestions?”

“Oh, well, this was the most important thing, the inventory,” I said, feeling bashful. “Although. You need a woman on your team, you know. I mean, I don’t disrespect Dwayne – or you! You’re really, um, sensitive to women’s issues. But...”

“We’re not women. I think we know that, Dee.” The grin came through loud and clear in Cam’s voice.

“Sorry.” I’m sure my grin was audible, too. “If you can’t find anybody else, maybe Mary, that washerwoman. She had spirit.”

“Already hired her to do our laundry. She lives in Camp Cameron now.”

“Well, Cam, maybe half your workforce shouldn’t be stuck hand-washing laundry. You know? Maybe when you’re thinking how to use your wind generators and stuff – spare a thought for how much better your clothes would feel if you hooked up a dryer. Maybe you can’t afford three square meals a day. But your quality of life goes way up when your underwear doesn’t chafe.”

He snorted. “OK. Got it. Enlist women on quality of life issues. Anything else?”

“No. Well... Your bandwidth sucks. And I don’t just mean your Internet connection. I mean you.
You are too little bandwidth. Mary should be able to get onto the Internet herself. And brainstorm with other women making the best of level 1 lifestyles. And your Cocos when you pick them, and everyone else.”

“If Mary had Internet, we wouldn’t be level 1,” Cam pointed out.

“I bet you could rig a meshnet and funnel it through Tom’s Internet,” I countered. “Your Internet speeds would suck. But at least you’d have long-distance text messages through your area. You could collaborate locally through it.”

There was a long silence.

“What is a ‘meshnet’?” Cam asked intently.

“Um, I’m not an expert,” I warned. “But basically a peer-to-peer network using smart phones? Message packets are forwarded from phone to phone to phone. When they can. The tricky bit is that connectivity is always intermittent. Great way to send text messages. They’ll get there eventually. Lousy way to watch cat videos.” There was a long pause. “Cam? Did I lose you?”

“God, no. This doesn’t require powered cell phone towers?”

“Patching in wi-fi or cell phone towers could give it extra range and speed. Allow messages to cross into the Internet, or across the Sound, for instance. But no, the phones talk to each other directly, short-range. Not through cell towers. You need to charge the phones of course. But if all else fails, you can charge a phone with a cook fire and a thermo-coupler.”

“Yeah. The thermo-coupler dodge is even in the Resco manual,” he agreed. “Dee – have you ever mentioned this ‘meshnet’ idea to Emmett?”

I frowned. “Not the sort of thing that comes up in conversation.”

“Dee, on behalf of the greater Big Apple, I would like to commission a ‘meshnet’. For me, for Emmett, for New York.” His voice took on a silken tone. “How do I go about that?”

I blew out a long breath, thinking. “The Amen1 team might know. Or a telecomm firm. Maybe ask at UConn. Do you have any connections in the engineering department?”

“My mother is an engineering professor at UConn,” he supplied. “Professor Sarah Argyle-Cameron. Goes by her maiden name professionally. Argyle.”

I made a note of it. “OK, sure. I’ll ask around. And call your mom for you – Dr. Argyle.”

“You really don’t know what you’ve just done, do you?” Cam asked wonderingly.

“I haven’t done anything yet. And I won’t, really. I don’t know how to set up a meshnet. I’m just acting as your secretary. Which was my point. Your bandwidth is too low. I’m busy. You’re busy. We’re a bottleneck. Someone else should be dealing with laundry and a meshnet.”

Cam laughed softly. “Absolutely,” he breathed. “Did you have any other suggestions, Dee? Because I’m all ears.”

“No... No,” I said decisively. “Those were the important ones. Although... It would be nice if people updated the Resco manual with stuff they figured out. I mean, I’m sure the authors did a great job. But they couldn’t think of everything.”

“Absolutely. We do that. With this nifty thing you gave us called Amenac,” Cam replied. “Hey, Dee, mind a little unsolicited advice back?”

My face burned a little. But he couldn’t see that. “Sure. Shoot,” I invited.

“You’re nobody’s secretary. Ever. I mean, I’d really like to see you and Emmett work out. Good luck with that. But you’re not Emmett’s secretary, either.”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Well, this. You had important things to say. To me. And I wanted to hear them! You don’t need Emmett’s permission to call me. Ever. Dee... You’re a lot more powerful than you realize.”

Yeah, my face definitely burned. “Well, thank you for saying so.” I sighed. “Though not as powerful as Emmett.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Cam replied. “Anyway – call, email, whenever. I’d love to hear from you. The inventory you sent today is pure gold. And I’m really looking forward to hearing more about this ‘meshnet’.”

“Will do. Call me anytime, too. Hey, Cam? You said ‘good luck with that’, about Emmett. I think you know him pretty well.”

“A bit,” he bit out.

Yes, it was clear that Cam knew Emmett better than he was going to admit. “OK, I’m not going to ask how you know him,” I said. “Because Emmett says he doesn’t want me to know... some things like that. But, ‘good luck with that’? Any pointers, on Emmett?”

Cam was silent, thinking for a few moments. Fortunately he used quick Connecticut moments like me. Not long Ozark moments like Emmett. “Has he talked to you about his divorce?” he finally asked.

“I didn’t know that he was divorced until the Resco summit.”

Cam chuckled. “Figures. You might ask him about it. I won’t tell you what I know. It wouldn’t do you any good, anyway. It’s not the content. It’s the talking between the two of you, that might illuminate something. Tread gently, though. That sort of thing.”

-o-

“I’m so glad we got a chance to eat dinner together,” I told Mangal, a couple nights later. “It seems we hardly have time to talk anymore.” Dinner was already inhaled, my foster-teen Alex come and gone. We were lingering at the table over herb tea.

Mangal was my best friend, partner in cyberspace, and next door neighbor. We saw each other and talked all the time. We’d founded Amenac together. That day, he’d worked over my house all day, and we’d likely keep going until midnight. Emmett had given the green light on his Thanksgiving bash. The Amenac technical details seemed to multiply like rabbits. Mangal and I were the ones to stomp out digressions to the mission.

Still. We rarely got time for that best friend thing anymore. Apparently today was some kind of Jain observance. Mangal was in the doghouse with his wife Shanti for working instead of communing with their local extended Jain-Nepalese-Buddhist-whatever community. Otherwise he would have spent dinner with her and his small children, not me.

Mangal didn’t reply.

“Oh,” I burbled on, “what did you and Shanti decide about another baby?”

“Not to,” he murmured. “Not just now.”

That should have opened a conversation, not shut it down. I launched a couple more conversation openers, dashed just as abruptly.

“We should get back to it,” Mangal said, starting to rise.

“Sit down,” I said, peeved. “Spill it. What’s wrong? Why aren’t you talking to me?”

“I am talking to you.”

“Mangal, you know what I mean. Why the cold shoulder? What have I done?”

He fidgeted with silverware, preparing to sideswipe the awkward topic. But then gave it up. “Dee... I guess... We were a bit shocked when Emmett moved in. I was...happy for you. When you dated again. But...Emmett isn’t Zack. And living with someone, isn’t just dating.”

“Agreed,” I said, puzzled, just to move him along.

Mangal blew out. “Dee, you know I’m a pacifist. And now you’re partnered to a man whose life is dedicated to violence.”

I stared at him. “Emmett is trying to save a couple million people from the hell-hole of New York,” I countered. “He is willing to kill if needed along the way. But I’d call that dedicated to saving people. Not dedicated to violence.”

Mangal didn’t reply, or meet my eye.

“Mangal, are you saying you’re not my friend anymore?” I asked in disbelief.

“We’ll always be friends. I hope,” Mangal said softly. He still didn’t meet my eye though. “Friendships change.” He sighed. “Our friendship is based on work. Let’s get back to that.” He went back to his own home office to do it, though.

-o-

Later, I called Emmett and asked him how he and Mangal got along. They’d always seemed fine, no different than Mangal and Zack. Emmett’s answers seemed to match my observation.

“Darlin’,” Emmett followed up, “what’s wrong?”

I didn’t want to say it. But Emmett himself, and then Cam, had seemed to encourage me to talk to Emmett remotely, just as if he were home with me. “Mangal says he’s not my best friend anymore.”

“Because you’re with me?” Emmett asked.

“It’s that Jain nonviolent thing,” I agreed reluctantly.

What I expected Emmett to say was, ‘uh-huh.’ What he actually said was, “Well, that sucks, Dee. I had, um... Did Zack ever tell you much about his ex, Grace? The Quaker? Oh, I know he did. You had that blowup the day of her funeral.”

I frowned in consternation. “Zack told you about that?”

That memorable fight had covered a lot of ground. Grace. Quakers. Adam. My decision to visit Ark 7. Betrayal. Amenac. A snow hurricane. I felt like a caroming pool ball just remembering it. I hadn’t considered before that Zack might blow off steam to his best friend Emmett, like anyone else, after a fight.

“Uh-huh,” Emmett replied wryly. “Can’t tell you how much I looked forward to meeting you, after that. Seemed unlikely I’d get the chance. At the time.”

“What did Zack say?”

“Never mind,” Emmett said. “Best friend confidential. My point was Grace. When they were together. She tried to tell Zack that it was her or me. She wanted him to dump me as a best friend.”

“What did you do?” I asked. “What did Zack do?”

“I told Zack I loved him like a brother. And that wouldn’t change,” Emmett said. “Whatever he needed to do. I wanted him to be happy. But. It was something in him, not me. I mean, I wasn’t even here. I was an unknown somebody, on the far end of a phone line. It was Captain Zack, not Major Emmett, that Grace wanted him to swear off. Told him that I liked the Captain and the Zack. I thought he could do better, than Grace.”

I laughed quietly at a memory. “That Zack’s taste in women sucked.”

“Yeah, that too,” Emmett agreed. “Present company excepted. I don’t know, Dee. They’re not really parallel situations. Zack and I had years of history. Grace was new. Here, you and Mangal have the history. But your relationship changed over the years, didn’t it? You don’t hang out with him the same now as you did before Shanti came, or before the babies arrived.”

“Yeah,” I said softly. “Yeah, that makes sense. It keeps changing.”

“Darlin’, I’m sorry it hurts. There is a fierce streak in you, though, that I love. I hope you never have to kill another human being. But I think you could. And you would, to protect your own.” He chuckled. “Though I’d bet on you to find another way. I love that part even more.”

“Thank you,” I breathed. “How do I love the fierceness in you, and the pacifist in Mangal? Both.”

“They’re both in you,” he replied simply.

“That’s pretty contrary.”

“In most people, maybe. Not in you. I think it’s pretty cool.”

“So what did Zack do?” I asked. “About Grace and you.”

“Oh, you know. Zack. Tried to work it out with her. Stayed friends with me. Stuck to his guns. Just like she did. They had that in common. Grace was the one who resolved it. She dumped him.”

“You wouldn’t dump me for staying friends with Mangal.”

He snuffed amusement. “No. Neither did she, really. It was never about me. How did Mangal do with Zack?”

“I guess he wasn’t happy with Zack, either.”

Emmett sighed. “Well, I’m sorry your friend doesn’t approve of me. For what it’s worth, I like him fine. I like his wife even better. Shanti’s brave as a lion. Hope you feel better, darlin’.”

“Yeah. Thanks, Emmett. You helped.”

Chapter 18

Interesting fact: Emma MacLaren – Emmett’s mother – ignored the directive that she had Resco authority for only one county. Essentially, the Missouri-Arkansas border troops grew bored. Their commander was happy to entertain suggestions to put them to good use. By Thanksgiving she coordinated three Missouri counties, all thinly populated.

“Hey, there,” said Emmett, smiling so hard his chapped lips split. You could wear chapstick an inch thick here. It still wouldn’t prevent chapping, living on New York Harbor in November. I’d managed to surprise him, boarding his destroyer the night before Thanksgiving. He hadn’t expected to see me again until the refugee extravaganza two weeks later at Camp Yankee.

“You so don’t belong here, darlin’,” Emmett mock-scolded, shaking his head in disbelief. “I should turn you over to the M.P.’s as a stow-away.”

I grinned ferociously, and tapped my ‘PRESS’ badge. “Captain Flores was most accommodating.”

Emmett had tossed the Thanksgiving dinner problem to Captain Niedermeyer. Typical of Niedermeyer’s solutions, a champion emerged who didn’t appear to have anything to do with the Coast Guard. Captain Gil Flores was Navy, and he coordinated Merchant Marine, Army, Navy, Marines, Coast Guard, National Guard, and a vast network of donations and logistics for the Dinner Bash Mobilization Detail. He’d also arranged for my overnight visit on Emmett’s destroyer to be a surprise.

“No,” Emmett denied flatly. “You are not my media coverage.” As though to underscore this point, his own war correspondent team zeroed in on us on the deck for pictures. Team Flores had notified them, naturally. Emmett unclipped my ‘PRESS’ badge sourly and stuffed it in his pocket. We smiled and cuddled for a few camera shots, and then Emmett swatted the media duo away. I silently vowed to meet them later.

“They’re doing news coverage, Emmett,” I picked up the argument. “We still haven’t done my personal interview.”

“Yeah, they’ll do that, too,” he insisted. “Dee, this is every kind of wrong, you being here.” He looked like a starving man pushing food away, though.

“Why wrong?”

“Darlin’, do you see all these troops? They don’t get to see their wives and boyfriends this holiday, or their ankle-biters and chihuahuas.”

Ah. He actually meant it – he didn’t believe I should be there. Well, that sucked. He’d just have to get over it. I pursed my lips and retrieved the ‘PRESS’ badge from his pocket, and re-affixed it to my cherry red swing coat. A swing coat strategically reinforced with velcro to lock it closed, while merely looking free to swing. I was no novice to the grey New York winter wind-scape.

“I brought food,” I announced practically, refusing to buy into his hum bug-itude. “Let’s hide in your cabin and eat it. Then you won’t have to stand here looking mortified by me anymore.” I narrowed my eyes and tilted my head at him. “Or would you prefer I embarrass you further?” I leaned my face closer to his. “I could, you know. Embarrass you. Much, much further. You’ve seen it happen.”

“Uh-huh.” He relented, laughing, and drew me into a hug. He kissed me on the cheek, though even yet not on the mouth. He broke it off and picked up my bag and food box, and led the way into the ship.

I was glad he was leading. He couldn’t see my face as I gulped heading into the grey belly of a Navy ship again. The Coast Guard boats hadn’t bothered me. Nor the ferry doing Greenwich-to-Apple-Core transport. Nor the little kodiak that whisked me over to Emmett’s destroyer. I grew up on Long Island Sound. I love boats. But I’d only been in the one Navy ship before, and that didn’t end well. Fortunately, a destroyer is a much smaller boat than the Ark 7 aircraft carrier. And HomeSec was on my side now. A development that still made me faintly nauseous.

After a long journey through the warren of pipe-lined grey corridors, we arrived at a surprisingly posh suite, with separate bedroom, couch-lined sitting room, and private bath. “Wow, Emmett. What does the captain’s cabin look like?”

“This is the captain’s cabin,” he explained. “His port cabin. At sea, he has a cabin near the conn.” He stowed my things in the bedroom.

He didn’t grab me and throw me to the bed the way I was kind of hoping. Not even a clinch. I sighed and took off my coat and winter things. He leaned in the bedroom doorway and looked at my feet.

“Darlin’, those shoes...”

I looked down at my sensible middle-height heel pumps. “I brought deck shoes, too,” I allowed. “They look kinda foolish with a dress.”

“Good,” he said. He dug my pink-and-green plaid deck shoes out of my luggage and handed them to me. “Come!” he called at a knock on the hatch.

A Navy woman in a royal blue jumpsuit entered, beamed at me, and handed Emmett a tablet. He sat on the couch by the door to look it over. Multi-tasking, he asked her, “How’s your track record at guessing my answers, Lieutenant?”

“Maybe 40 percent, sir.”

Emmett appeared to be signing off on things. Or not, as the case might be. A number of items he corrected, denied, asked questions, or otherwise disagreed with. After five or ten minutes, he handed the tablet back with a smile. “Thank you, Lieutenant.”

“Sir. The captain’s mess is at nineteen hundred,” she noted. “He’s looking forward to meeting Ms. Baker.”

As the hatch shut, I muttered, “We can’t eat dinner alone?”

Emmett shook his head slightly. “Two more aides,” he warned. He reached over and brushed hair out of my face. Hooked his hand around my neck to draw me to him for a kiss. And the hatch banged again. He dropped his hand. “Come!” he called.

His invitation was apparently optional. The next guy was already stepping into the room, this one in forest cammies. Marine combat uniform, at a guess. He braced and pretended I wasn’t there, after handing a slate to Emmett. Again, after a first-pass perusal of the list, Emmett asked, “What’s your track record, for guessing my answers, Major?” He didn’t stop processing the stuff on the slate.

“Haven’t really kept track, sir,” admitted the Marine.

Emmett nodded absently. He was busy frowning at something in detail. He took out his phone and took notes. A to-do list, I feared. Several other items on the slate generated notes as well. I gave up and drifted into the bathroom to touch up my face for the unwelcome dinner with the captain. The Marine left, but Emmett continued working on his follow-up. The promised third aide showed before that was done, and had to stand waiting for Emmett’s attention. Army this time, or perhaps National Guard. Emmett asked again about his track record.

“Getting better, sir,” the man replied. “Maybe 70 percent.”

“Outstanding,” said Emmett. “Major, after dinner, I’d like to go off duty until oh-five hundred. Can you make that happen?”

The aide considered this, and shot me a smile. “Would the colonel be willing to address issues at twenty-three hundred, and at oh-four-thirty?”

“I like this model,” Emmett said with a grin. “Let’s make it thirties in general. Every other one. Twenty thirty, twenty-two thirty, all the way to oh-four thirty. And just sort of channel everything into those windows. Excellent idea, Major. Thank you. Get the other two, please, and tell them the plan?”

“Of course, sir. Ma’am.” He grinned, accepted his tablet back, and left.

I looked at my watch. Twenty minutes to captain’s mess. “I don’t suppose you could blow off the captain, huh?”

“No,” Emmett agreed. “In fact...” He shot up and headed to the bedroom, pulling off clothes as he went, to change into dress uniform for dinner. It was unlike him to dump discarded clothes on the bed. But I supposed there was an aide for that, as well.

His phone rang. “Hey, Momma! Putting you on speaker. Dee’s here. Sort of a surprise present.”

“Hi, Emma,” I sang out, and joined him in the bedroom.

Emma laughed. “Well, I certainly hope you’re sufficiently chaperoned, Dee,” she teased.

“Thoroughly, utterly,” I agreed. “He might get to kiss me again before the night’s out.”

“Uh-huh,” Emma said, exactly the way her son did. “Dee, I watched your interviews with Tom Aoyama and Cam. Great job!”

“Thank you, Emma!”

“We need to run, Momma,” Emmett cut in. “Glad you called, though. Tomorrow’s gonna be a zoo. So we won’t talk.”

“Understood, baby,” she said. “You will thank the Lord tomorrow?”

“Every day,” he agreed, smiling at me. “Whole lot to be thankful for. Love you, Momma. Give the step-dad a hug.”

“Will do. Love you baby. Bye now.”

Emmett had never stopped moving, and was now fully turned out in dress uniform. He dragged me unwilling up off the bed. He drew me to him for a deep kiss, then folded me body to body and whispered in my ear. “I do thank God for you. I’m glad you’re here.”

Someone banged on the door. “Time, sir!” At least the minion didn’t barge in. Not that it mattered.

Emmett smiled wryly at me. “Welcome to my work-life, darlin’.” He put a hand on my back to escort me to the captain’s table.

The officers were charming. They’d seen my video interviews online, giving us some non-classified common ground to converse on. Dinner was surprisingly good, even the inevitable Manhattan clam chowder – tomato base rather than cream this time. Only social-level comment seemed permitted, regarding the massive mission of the morrow. His chosen gatekeeper-aide only dragged Emmett away from the table once. The formal dinner slotted almost exactly into the time Emmett had allowed before his 8:30 p.m. aide-fest back at the cabin.

That didn’t go as smoothly as the before-dinner report routine. There was, after all, this major thing happening the next day. I sprawled across Emmett’s bed, stocking feet waving in the air, and surfed Amenac while my phone recharged. Every once in a while, worrisome bits floated to my ears. But no one was explaining, or even speaking loudly enough for me to follow what was said. And for each out of context snippet, another issue marched in quickly on its heels. At least Emmett shed shoes, tie, and jacket along the way.

I’d nodded off, when he finally flopped across the bed beside me, facing up. I groggily pushed up onto my elbows. “I’m sorry, Emmett,” I said in a small voice. “I shouldn’t have come without asking.”

He turned his head to me, still relaxed back onto the bed. He gave me his best slow smile. If his cracked lip hurt, he didn’t pay any attention to it. “Uh-huh. But I’m glad you did. Selfish of me.”

“Is it always like this?”

“No. Today and tomorrow are light. Flores is running the big feed. Refugee extraction is on hold.” He propped himself on an elbow and slowly unzipped my dress down the back. “Dee? We talk every night. Right now, we have one hour. In private. And a bed.”

Emmett quickly laid to rest any doubts I had about him being uninterested or too tired, or mad at me for coming to New York unannounced.

Chapter 19

Interesting fact: There are over 2,000 bridges in New York City.

“Getting underway,” Emmett murmured in the pre-dawn raw windy drizzle. Our vantage point was on the destroyer’s conning tower. He handed off the infrared binoculars to me, and sidled up to hug me from behind. I peered through the binoculars, but I couldn’t make much sense of what I was seeing. Our ship had moved much closer to Manhattan, that was clear. A whole lot of different-sized ships seemed to be on the move.

“Adam Lacey’s assignment is across the Hudson from ours,” Emmett offered. “Hoboken, etcetera.”

“Oh, cool. Dwayne will be pleased. What are the bright spots on shore?” I asked.

“Feeding stations,” Emmett said. “Probably boiling water by now. They set up yesterday. Everything but the food. But most of the heat signature is waiting crowds.”

“At this hour of the morning?”

“We need to use as much daylight as we can. For crowd control. Our boat is scheduled for three stops. First feed at 8 a.m.” He guided my hands to point the binoculars to the right. “That ferry coming toward us, is ours.”

“You’re not even sleepy, are you?” I groused. He seemed to think his selected aide had been a wizard last night, to provide us nearly five hours of uninterrupted sleep. I need at least six.

“Wired,” he agreed cheerfully. He took back the binoculars when I lowered them, and peered through them over my shoulder. “This is just too cool, darlin’. We did this.”

I hesitated. “You’re not worried about food riots?”

“Of course we are,” Emmett said. “Flores held test runs a few days ago. They went OK. This is a huge operation. It won’t go off without a hitch.” He squeezed me. “That’s OK. There’s our ride to the ferry. Let’s go!”

I had to admire his ability to maintain enthusiasm in the face of epic logistics tedium. With cold rain.

-o-

Three hours later, I finally saw actual New Yorkers getting fed. Our ferry’s first stop was the Hudson River Park, near Soho and the West Village. I wasn’t allowed off, but neither was Emmett. So I mostly watched through binoculars. Pinpoint precision on the leaflet-dropping had delivered about 8,000 to dine here. Loudspeakers had been tutoring the crowd for an hour, while the food and its wranglers poured off the ferry, setting up.

One of the tricks with feeding starving people is that they want to gorge, but could die of it. This crowd wasn’t quite that bad off – they’d managed to walk here on their own power. But the queue snaked through different stations, getting small servings at each. The first table supplied a hot cup of apple cider. The second supplied a sturdy paper plate and spoon. The third doled out a small portion of mashed potatoes. The fourth ladled a thin poultry and vegetable soup into the hot cups. And so on to the final station, where each guest received some take-home foods. At this particular stop we were gifting cranberry-applesauce and a canned vegetable, in home-canning jars, condensed milk, and a two-pound brick of cheese cut into 1-ounce slices.

I knew that. It had taken the past two hours to mobilize that. And I’d seen the survivors of the New York disaster before, on Long Island. I was still awed, and overwhelmed. With the binoculars I watched a woman move away from the first cider station, with two school-aged children. All three were emaciated, filthy, with cracked lips and open sores and red-rimmed eyes. They bore their cups reverently in mittened hands, to move clear of the table for the people behind. The little family stopped a bit further along, and sipped, eyes closed in bliss. A few Navy ratings, sailors wearing yellow face masks and big hazmat yellow over-gloves, gently touched them, to get them moving again to the next station.

“Dee.” Emmett placed a hand on the small of my back gently, but I still jumped. He’d been busy doing his job, plying his phone, while I watched the pageant on shore. “Our first guest is almost ready.”

He drew me to a heated compartment on the ferry, near the concession stand, which was once again in business preparing food. A table was set up, with white tablecloth and Navy silverware and china and sturdy cups. Candlesticks bracketed a pretty centerpiece of pine cones and bright gourds. Ten more of the yellow hazmat-accented sailors stood by a side table, waiting to serve us.

Emmett peeled off the first in the line of sailors, to take me aside and brief me on procedures. She showed me where to stow my outerwear – it was thoroughly warm in our dining room – and kitted me out with with my own yellow mask and gloves, and a yellow lap sheet to deploy under the table, wrapping my legs. I was to talk to our guests, only. Any touching or serving should be left to the waiting stewards and medics. And if I ever wanted to wear my blue velvet dress again, I’d better pray no bodily fluids reached it. There were procedures for that, and velvet was unlikely to survive. Or even wend its way back to me through the fleet.

The helpful medic sat me at the table beside Emmett, and rejoined the end of the steward line. I deployed my lap sheet. Another yellow-tipped pair of sailors rolled in our skeletally gaunt guest, in a wheelchair for his ease.

The man had been aboard for nearly the past hour, getting the spa treatment from the medics. His head was freshly shaved bare. I trusted they’d given him a choice on that. A shaved head was a valid fashion choice for a man, but anyone who tried to shave my hair would get an earful. Lice, fleas, crabs, and other nuisances were washed away in a deep hot bath. His own clothes were being boiled in bleach. He wore a crisp fresh suit of blueberry Navy cammies, clean socks and slippers. All his lingering wounds – starving people do not heal well – had been neatly tended, fingernails clipped and clean, half his fingertips clad in band-aids. I imagine his teeth were freshly brushed, too, and the toothbrush and toothpaste tucked into his goody bag. The bag dangled from the arm of the wheelchair.

Emmett rose to greet him. “Happy Thanksgiving, sir. Thank you for joining us. I’m Lieutenant Colonel Emmett MacLaren, U.S. Army. My girlfriend, Dee Baker.”

I smiled warmly. He couldn’t see my lower face, but a smile shows clearly in the eyes and voice. “Welcome.”

“Detective Yafuel Guzman. N.Y.P.D.,” our guest replied, with a trace of Caribbean accent in a rusty voice. The hovering medic served him another sip of hot cider. He cleared his throat. “Thank you, for inviting me. Are my people eating yet?”

“Yes. So far so good,” Emmett assured him. “Let us take care of your people today. I hope other leaders will join us, Detective Guzman, as we move up Manhattan. Give you a chance to meet each other in safety.”

Guzman looked alarmed. “You’re taking me away?”

“Only for the day. We’ll bring you back here. Around 5 p.m., I hope.”

The medic served Guzman a small portion of mashed potatoes. Emmett stopped talking. Clearly the potatoes expanded to fill the universe in Guzman’s eyes. The policeman unconsciously winced while he chewed, his teeth bad, but otherwise he looked beatific. He picked up the plate to lick it clean. He sat back, eyes closed. The medic unfolded a mirrored emergency heat blanket, and tucked it around his stomach. He slipped a second blanket, still sealed, into the goody bag.

And, just for a few minutes, Detective Guzman fell asleep.

Emmett, clearly moved, whispered in my ear. “A leader can’t relax, while his people are in jeopardy. He’s been carrying them. Through this. For a year. That’s a lot of trust, to sleep.”

I nodded understanding, and kissed him, mask to mask. Emmett closed his eyes and laid his forehead against mine, relaxing too. Just for a moment.

Guzman roused. I’m not sure he realized that he’d slept. “Colonel. I thought the Army hemmed us in. Left us to die.”

“Those were our orders,” Emmett agreed. “Fuck orders.”

Guzman barked a surprised laugh.

Emmett continued, “Our orders say that we can’t take down the borders until March. And the disease situation here means we really can’t, even then. But New York can’t hold out that long. The Northeast decided we had to help now. We can’t feed all of you. But that’s no excuse to do nothing.”

Emmett went on to explain the partial refugee evacuation plan, and the disease-controlled end of Long Island. But that a lot of people – over a million – would stay here in the city, with nowhere else to go. Whether or not that was a death sentence depended on leaders like Yafuel Guzman.

Another from the line of medics supplied a printed pamphlet outlining the evacuation plan, written for a New York public audience. Emmett’s spiel was practiced and well-prepared.

Guzman nodded. He shared his story with us. First responders in his section of Soho had banded together – police, fire fighters, emergency medical techs. Volunteer civilians joined them. They’d started with just a few blocks, centered on a supermarket. But they’d locked that down and defended it as their food cache. They’d instituted rationing from the first, including fuel oil and gas siphoned from the cars. Food was systematically retrieved from restaurants and abandoned housing, and stored. They’d barricaded their streets, and enforced order within. Looters were executed. The sick and dying were quarantined. Sanitation was enforced ruthlessly. Guzman himself was the fourth boss of the neighborhood. The first three were dead. Three quarters of their people were dead.

The first winter they’d mostly hunkered down and endured. They’d eaten the dead when everything else was gone. By spring, they got a few crops growing, and started to expand their turf. A similar community had secured Washington Square at the center of Greenwich Village, the largest green space in this section of Manhattan. The two communities merged.

Emmett mapped this on a tablet fetched by another of the ratings. He used a stylus to operate it in the hazmat gloves. Guzman simply used his fingers. “That’s only 8,000 people?” Emmett asked.

“Maybe three quarters of the people outside are mine,” Guzman supplied. “Maybe another thousand of mine didn’t come. The leaders I know of are up around Chelsea, Union Square, the Chinese gangs south of Canal, Little Italy, Alphabet City, Stuyvesant Town. I can’t tell you the exact extent of their turf.”

Emmett asked, “But you didn’t recognize any other leaders out in the crowd?” He pointed out the area where they’d dropped invitations.

“No. There wouldn’t be.” Guzman pointed to neighborhoods on the tablet map. “This part’s not bad, but not organized. Not many survivors. Over here we call the war zone. You may have invited some bad actors to dinner.” He stopped and considered. “Kids have mostly taken over the war zone now.” His ‘war zone’ seemed to be the westernmost West Village. “They’re kinda feral. We try to help ’em sometimes.”

“Like a gang?” Emmett asked.

“Yeah, but not like a gang before the borders. Just…kids. Orphans. Resilient. Feral.” He shook his head.

The medic decided it was time for a course of soup. Emmett let Guzman eat in peace. He compared Guzman’s neighborhoods with the leaflet drop areas assigned to us and others. We’d hopefully catch the Chelsea leader at our next stop. He messaged a couple other supper hosts who might find leaders from the Chinese gangs, Little Italy, and Alphabet City.

When Guzman was tracking again, Emmett said, “Detective, I’d like your advice. If I were to take some of your people for relocation, how many should I take? To leave you stronger. Some ground rules. I don’t want to take people who will just die anyway. This is a big investment for the people outside New York. I need people resilient enough to make it. Pick up their lives again out in the sticks somewhere. Buffalo. New Hampshire. Farm jobs, whatever. Migrants who can succeed, and make the people outside willing to take more next year. Think about it. Would taking 10 percent help?”

“Definitely. More,” Guzman said immediately, then paused to reconsider. “Not a lot more. Maybe...20 percent.”

Emmett made a note of ‘1500?’ on Guzman’s turf on the map. “Do you think I should take these feral kids?”

Reluctantly, Guzman shook his head. “Some people will never leave here. Not in their heads,” he explained softly. “Leave the stray kids here with me.”

Emmett made a note of ‘0?’ on the ‘war zone’ of orphaned children.

By 9:30 we cast off, and chugged north maybe a mile to the Chelsea Piers, to do it all again.

While Guzman was wheeled away for a bathroom break, and we got up for a stretch, I confronted Emmett. “Surely you should take the kids?”

He looked at me sadly. “A wise lady taught me to listen to other kinds of leaders. You, Dee. He’s probably right.” He kissed me on the forehead through his mask. “Darlin’, if anyone’s suited to live in what New York’s become, it’s those kids. I used to think they were the best candidates for evacuation. Especially if we could find relatives outside the city. But we’ve caught a feral band like that before. They refuse to remember their real names. They didn’t want to leave. Ate a meal, then escaped quarantine and vanished.”

“But orphans, Emmett.”

“Shh. We take in plenty. The adults bring us some. Some come to us on their own. There are a whole lot of orphans here.”

He held my hands in the hazmat gloves and leaned his forehead against mine. The medics respectfully interrupted to remind him. No touching. Holding hands in hazmat gloves was the limit.

Chapter 20

Interesting fact: New York City was highly diverse. Nearly 40% were foreign-born immigrants. Non-Hispanic whites made up 35% of the population, with blacks and Hispanics (of any race) both near 25%, and Asians 12%. Brooklyn and Queens were the most populous boroughs, each with over 2.5 million residents. Staten Island had the lowest population, at about half a million.

Chelsea Piers played out much the same as our first stop at Hudson River Park near Soho. Our table added a single new leader, a businessman named Raoul Valcourt, whose community was much like Guzman’s, except with a popularly elected leader at the helm. Valcourt and Guzman had dealt with each other before, and chatted guardedly.

Our final stop, the Midtown Ferry Terminal, was a whole different ballgame. There are only so many places on Manhattan where you can park a big ferry like the one Emmett and I were hosting for the day. And Midtown is – or was, at least – more densely populated than the low-rise neighborhoods of Soho and Chelsea. So the leaflets had attempted to invite about 15,000 people here.

What arrived was estimated at 40,000. That wasn’t a last-minute surprise, of course. The setup crew had notified Captain Flores, the Thanksgiving coordinator, when the crowd just kept growing. He’d sent along reinforcements of both troops and food from the operation’s reserve. That consumed a fair bit of Emmett’s attention, but not mine.

My attention was focused on three more leaders at the table. “There is no separate turf here in Midtown,” Becca Saltzman told me. She was a tough entrepreneur, once in the restaurant business, a crew-cut blonde in her forties. The other two Midtown leaders seemed to defer to her. “The three of us just have different focus. Chet here runs our trade expeditions into Jersey. Juba is our food distribution czar. Paul Mullen heads law enforcement for this neighborhood, but he stayed outside to control the crowd.”

Saltzman was interrupted by her phone buzzing. She took it out to check messages, riveting my attention as well as Guzman and Valcourt’s. Scowling at the message, she demanded, “We need your people to back off on the Javits Center side, south of the terminal. Who can make that happen on your end?”

“I don’t know,” I confessed. I summoned the next waiting rating. “Could you get Colonel MacLaren for me, please? We have a crowd control request from the local authorities.”

“I’ll tell Major Fairweather,” she assured me, and hurried off.

“Ms. Saltzman, do you have cell phone service here?” I inquired.

She waved dismissively. “We run a meshnet.”

“A meshnet would be an ad hoc peer-to-peer message-forwarding network, built from near-field communications between cell phones,” I courteously supplied for Guzman and Valcourt’s benefit. Well, and to tell Saltzman she wasn’t speaking to an idiot. “Think Napster, for phone text messages.” I turned back to Saltzman. “What meshnet software do you use? And how many nodes do you have on it?”

“I have people for that,” she replied sourly, eyes narrowed. “What will you give me for it?”

“What are we bargaining for?” asked Emmett, breezing back into the dining room with a Marine officer alongside. This was likely Captain Fairweather, suffering from a temporary social promotion to major due to Navy sensibilities.

“A meshnet. Ms. Saltzman is using it to communicate with her enforcement people outside the terminal,” I supplied. “The request was to ‘back off on the Javits Center side’, was that right, Ms. Saltzman?”

Emmett spun the tablet in the center of the table for his and Fairweather’s viewing convenience. They studied this a moment.

Fairweather offered, “There are a lot of hostiles down there. My people are regrouping for a push here, Colonel.”

“Well, they wouldn’t be hostiles, if you’d just back up and let my people do their jobs!” Saltzman shrilled. Sitting next to her, Juba the food czar rolled her eyes toward me. Significantly thicker in body than the others, I suspect Juba started out the epidemic rather obese. She was dressed in an African explosion of neon colors, feathers and beads, but her accent suggested another native New Yorker. Juba didn’t seem to like Saltzman much more than I did.

Emmett narrowed his eyes at Saltzman, but spoke to Fairweather. “Well, assuming her people can do crowd control, where do you want them to back off?”

“Definitely behind the Javits Center – east, Colonel,” said Fairweather. “I’ve got snipers on the roof, and naval personnel on the ground.”

“Alright,” said Emmett. “Ms. Saltzman, we need your people to back off. Could they supply someone to coordinate? Here at the corner.”

“I said, you need to get away from the Javits Center!” Saltzman demanded.

Emmett stared her down. “This is not a debate, Ms. Saltzman. We considered your request. It is not compatible with our requirements. Anyone you have in that area who accosts another civilian, will be fired upon. So back them off. Now. And have them send someone forward to coordinate.”

“I can coordinate from here!” she claimed.

“Uh-huh. I said, have your people send someone forward to coordinate on the ground,” Emmett repeated. “Before I order this party to shut down.”

“She said Paul Mullen was leading their enforcement outside,” I offered. Saltzman still wasn’t moving to cooperate.

“Thank you, Ms. Baker,” replied Emmett. He plucked Saltzman’s phone out of her grasp. It wasn’t much of a struggle. He rapidly entered a quick message into Saltzman’s text stream with the outside, then handed it off to Fairweather to take it from there.

“What did I miss?” Emmett asked me brightly, resuming his seat at the table.

“Chet leads trade expeditions into New Jersey. Juba has centralized food distribution. And Becca Saltzman has a meshnet,” I recapped for him. “Remember I was telling you that Major Cameron commissioned a meshnet? For you and him.”

“That would be handy,” Emmett agreed. But after taking a memo on his phone, he turned to Chet instead. “So you trade for food with Jersey?”

The next rating in line brought phone solar chargers to tuck into Guzman and Valcourt’s goody bags, to heart-felt nods of gratitude. They got three sets apiece.

Emmett played Saltzman like a fish on a line, for half an hour, usually talking to Juba and Chet instead. At one of the many low points in their brief relationship, Saltzman demanded to talk to Emmett’s commanding officer. Emmett supplied his name – General Ivan Link – and told her to feel free. He waved over another rating from our service line, whispered instructions, and sent him out. After about 10 minutes, the rating came back and rejoined the end of the line.

“Where is General Link?” Saltzman boomed in demand.

“Not here, ma’am,” supplied the rating. “Maybe Massachusetts.”

“It’s not your concern where General Link is,” Emmett clarified mildly. Chet, a grey-haired veteran, winced.

“But I want to talk to him!” Saltzman said.

Emmett shrugged. “Perhaps you’d prefer to go ashore, since dining with me isn’t good enough for you.”

“Juba and I are delighted to stay,” Chet hastened to interject. “As long as possible. And get to know Detective Guzman and Mr. Valcourt better.” Unlike Saltzman, Chet and Juba had actually listened when it was explained that Emmett was the supreme commander of Project Reunion. And it was just dumb luck that he was visiting their dinner. And it hadn’t escaped Chet or Juba’s attention that more things landed in Guzman and Valcourt’s goody bags than in their own. Although Emmett seemed to be considering the very real possibility of offering powered transport for a supply excursion into northwest Jersey.

I advised Emmett that ideally I’d like the meshnet developers, not just the software.

Eventually Emmett brought Saltzman to heel. She coughed up a trio of software developers from her meshnet team, to go into quarantine and then out to Cam on Long Island. In exchange, Emmett offered to take the same proportion of evacuees from her Midtown turf as he’d already suggested to Guzman and Valcourt – about 20%. Saltzman seemed much happier and more cooperative once she was sure she’d driven a hard bargain.

Emmett smiled at her. “Perhaps you could go down to the dock, to identify the programmer team? No need for Ms. Saltzman to come back,” he instructed the rating who grasped her wheelchair. He continued smiling at her back until she was gone.

He turned back to Chet and Juba. “Interesting choice of leader,” he commented.

Juba shrugged. “She’s a potent threat. Most people will do anything just to avoid dealing with her.”

Chet nodded, and added, “She doesn’t dare order us around. The neighborhood enforcement teams, like Mullen, seem to be on her wavelength.”

Valcourt hazarded meekly, “Colonel, is there any way we could get a copy of that meshnet? I don’t know what we’d pay for it...”

“Free,” Emmett assured him. “Dee was working to provide meshnet communications for the whole Apple. Now she found one.”

The dinner was actually festive after that. Our guests bonded and cross-fertilized ideas as well as we could have hoped, though we only had a half hour left together. The sailors pressed other non-food treats upon them for their goody bags, such as multivitamins and painkiller tablets, garden seeds and hand-cranked radio receivers.

Emmett demonstrated that there were actually four radio stations they could tune in, one of them Project Reunion Radio, broadcast from Staten Island, with weather reports on the hour, every hour, followed by announcements. They filled in the rest of the hour with music, alternating with news from around the nation selected from Amenac. The Navy comms tech announcer sounded like he truly loved his job. Emmett promised our guests that they hoped to leave the radio transmitter and news operational, in the hands of the Staten Island borough council, when Project Reunion left.

The leaders also got the same food gifts that the Thanksgiving guests outside received, to bring home. Their eyes widened at the huge chunks of cheese, their attention nearly swallowed again, following the cheese path into their bags.

“No more than one slice of cheese a day,” the medic cautioned them. “That’s very rich food. Too much will make you ill.” I doubt the community leaders were capable of listening right then.

Word came that my programmers were safely aboard with computers and source code, and being processed through the spa treatment. So we waved our guests away with big smiles, Chet and Juba to walk home, Guzman and Valcourt to be taken by boat back to their own docks.

“Where did you get so much cheese?” I asked Emmett. “Vermont and New York gave all that?”

“Need to know,” he answered.

“Completely off the record,” I wheedled.

“Wisconsin,” he admitted. To my agog reaction, he shrugged. “They still have their cows. They still make enough cheese for half the country. They can’t eat all that. Their Rescos offered it for Project Reunion, as much as we could take. Arranging transport was tricky.”

“This isn’t the end of the cheese?”

“Nowhere near it.”

The medics had to scold us to break it up again when I tried to hug him.

-o-

I adored my new meshnet programmers. I went to meet them while Emmett caught up on his work, and our ferry waited its turn offshore to unload and decontaminate at the Staten Island base. They’d never sent so many people ashore before to mingle with the natives, so decontamination was a major traffic jam.

I don’t know who Saltzman intended to give us, but we got their top three, Connecticut and Long Island transplants who’d been working in the city when the borders went up. All three brought along significant others, and one had an adorable three-year-old daughter in tow as well. This troop of seven was far better fed than the New York norm these days, lean but still healthy, minds clear and sharp.

Chas had started perfecting his open-source copy of the meshnet while volunteering in Middle East refugee camps. The software carefully sipped power, and they’d had plenty of time to wring every last foot of communications range out of a wide variety of phone types. Chas’ expertise, down at the protocol and hardware level, was over my head for the most part. But I knew a tech guru when I met one. This guy and Amen1’s Popeye would fall in love at first sight, and never shut up.

Carmen was their user interface wizard. The software was a snap to set up, and for most phones you could simply push a button to install the app phone-to-phone. In addition to text messaging, the main purpose of the meshnet, there was also a crowd-sourced mark-this-map interface that made it a breeze to add warnings and key information.

Carmen showed me the last map captured before she boarded the ferry. Thanksgiving guests were walking home by that point. Along the way, they added geocoded icons to show incidents of violence or gunshots, with optional comments, that faded over time. I imagined that alone would be a godsend to anyone living on Manhattan these days. Enforcers could monitor this in real time and pounce on looters within minutes. There was even a view on the map that tracked numbers of people, to help you find a more or less crowded route. Water, charging stations, and nearest open food distribution center were also marked.

Vikram managed the administration software. The meshnet would function purely peer-to-peer to pass messages, but computer nodes could be inserted to monitor and tweak the network. He demonstrated how he could check for bottlenecks and thin coverage where more participating phones were needed. From his software, bulletin board announcements could be posted, and reverse-911 type warnings by area. He could track any particular phone on the network, providing a spy-eye view of a community. He could also push software updates through the meshnet.

I suspect it was those last two features that inspired Saltzman to limit the spread of their meshnet much beyond her Midtown turf. We were just starting to brainstorm a new sticky trust system for establishing more secure sub-networks who couldn’t spy on each other, when Emmett came to tell me it was finally our turn to get processed through decontamination.

“We need to talk more,” I told the programmers, to answering grins. “Lots more! Emmett, I’m staying, to work with them another day or so.”

“Uh-huh,” he sighed. “Good to meet you all. Really look forward to your contributions.” And he dragged me away to get washed. A medic claimed the programmers to move into quarantine holding on the island. Between this, that, and the other, the fleet of dinner ships had picked up nearly a thousand new evacuees today.

I lost my blue velvet dress after all, going through decontamination. My pink-and-green plaid deck shoes, too. At least I got a full Navy camouflage suit in my size in return. And my winter outerwear had been secured, so I got that back without boiling. Emmett claimed I had a better than average chance of seeing my clothes again. There were only so many Army officers in the New York Harbor fleet, and my clothes were with his.

-o-

“You knew about this?” I cried to Emmett in delight. We finally broke free of the Staten Island Terminal building, into a full-scale party.

“Uh-huh,” he agreed with a grin. “Adam sent out the invites. Coast Guard and Merchant Marine cordially invite you to a Thanksgiving after party. What a zoo.”

“How’s that going? With Adam,” I asked in concern.

Emmett hugged me closer. “Outstanding. We couldn’t have done without him. That man is a wizard of scrounge. Damn fine officer. Speaking of which...” He got directions from scurrying Marines and Navy ratings, to guide our way to the officers’ pavilion.

Captain Flores, the Thanksgiving master controller, was still hard at work there. Emmett and I stopped to greet him at his table, and congratulate him. But he only had a minute for well-wishers before his subordinates swallowed him up again with ongoing minutiae.

I traded hugs and a kiss with Adam at the presiding party table. He spun me around to check me out in my blueberry Navy cammies. Fortunately, Emmett didn’t take it amiss. The two of them seemed to have authentically bonded in the past month. They traded handshakes and hugs as well, along with the head Merchant Marine ferry engine wrangler.

Aside from Flores’ logistics champions, most of the officers under our tent had hosted leaders for dinner the same way we had, or commanded ground forces defending the buffets. Stewards kept us supplied with food plates and drinks, including beer and wine today. Everyone shared stories from their leader dinner tables, what they’d learned. Adam regretfully reported that he’d inquired, but found no trace of Dwayne Perard-Cameron’s family in Hoboken. My meshnet acquisition was a major win, and got cheers. Emmett’s new ambition of setting up a trade route between northwest Jersey and Manhattan earned almost as many jeers. He took them with good grace and a broad grin – and threatened to give Captain Flores another job as a reward for Thanksgiving well done. That got cheers all around.

I was having a blast. I finally felt comfortable, an insider among these officers and their work in New York. We grazed the food, and worked our way between the tables, Emmett trying to give personal attention and a handshake – usually with a hug – to everyone.

But before we’d been there an hour, Emmett’s phone summoned him back to reality. “So it begins,” he murmured, his grin fading. “Love you, darlin’,” he whispered in my ear. “Not sure I’ll be back tonight. Happy Thanksgiving.” He gave me a huge kiss and a smile, and let go.

He pushed his way over to Adam and whispered in his ear. Adam rose promptly and called out, “Speech! Speech!” to renewed cheers. Adam dragged Emmett and Flores along to a podium, and pointed to several other people to warn them they’d be up soon.

Taking the microphone first, Adam welcomed the crowd and congratulated them all on a job well done. He took a couple minutes to expound on the glorious and crucial contributions of the Coast Guard and Merchant Marine engineers, and got the crowd warmed up cheering themselves silly. Then he introduced Emmett, who likewise gave a very short and cheer-inducing speech. And then Emmett’s aides enveloped him and carried him away.

The speeches lasted half an hour, and I was cheering as much as anyone. The only solemn part was when the commanding Marine colonel reported the casualty count for the day, military and civilian. He said the tallies were below projections – he didn’t say by how much – and ended on a cheer for all the Marines anyway, for keeping us safe. The next speaker had me laughing out loud, as he celebrated exactly how much laundry the Navy stewards had processed that day. Another provided a run-down of potatoes mashed. Hey, I wanted to know.

Following the speeches, there were fireworks, some of them Fourth of July grade aesthetic bursts of color, others naval flares fired from the ships in the harbor. The continuing windy drizzle subdued the display a little. But the harbor was velvety black, with only a sprinkling of fairy-like ship running lights and dim glows from fires on land. The rockets’ red flares and echoing booms drummed patriotism to well up in every heart, as always. The Star Spangled Banner, then America the Beautiful, played over the loudspeakers.

I didn’t know the war had begun.

Chapter 21

Interesting fact: Probably the largest ongoing meshnet before Project Reunion was guifi.net in Spain, with about 30,000 nodes. The rural meshnet’s popularity was driven by low Internet availability and high broadband prices.

“Adam!” I cried, latching onto his arm when I finally found him again in the throng. The fireworks signaled the end of the party. Thousands were moving toward freshly-cleaned tenders and ferries, to bear them back to their assorted ships in the harbor and their well-earned beds.

“How do I get back to Emmett’s ship?” I begged him.

He put an arm around me to draw me close to talk. That was a rowdy crowd. “What ship?” he asked.

“Um,” I reported.

Adam laughed. “Which captain?”

“Er,” I suggested.

Adam laughed even harder. He was the most drunk I’d ever seen him, and he was sky-high from the rousing success of his after-party and the whole Thanksgiving operation. “Just tag along with me, Dee. We’ll figure something out.”

“I heard somebody say destroyers are moving up the Hudson,” I told him worriedly.

“None of our business,” Adam admonished me, briefly solemn. “Me Coast Guard. Dee civilian.” He tapped a finger to his nose, then mine as he said it. His grin popped back up like a cork when he saw another officer over my shoulder. “I need to talk to that guy!” I held onto his hand like a lifeline, toddling along behind him through the crowd.

Eventually Adam learned that indeed Emmett’s destroyer was no longer in New York Harbor. Whether it had sailed up the Hudson River, with or without Emmett, he refused to ask. In any event, I couldn’t go back to my ship, so Adam brought me along to his.

We eddied out of the throng in the ferry terminal, and ducked into a back stairwell of the authorized-personnel-only variety. Adam was probably the most authorized person in the city these days when it came to the ferry terminal. We took the stairs down from the public levels. He needed a flashlight to wend our way through some echoing empties and creepy chock-fulls, then out along a dark lesser dock. There we found an over-sized houseboat-tug. Powerful enough to budge a tanker, and all kitted out as a home for its owner. Leave it to Adam.

“I had a Coast Guard boat,” he confided in excuse. “That’s still around here somewhere. But they keep getting called. Go back to Greenwich. Go down to Jersey. Just never here when I needed to sleep, you know? This boat is sweet! I’m taking it with me back to Connecticut.”

“It moves, too?” I asked, enchanted.

“Sure! Hey, aboard! We waiting for anybody?” He gave me a hand up the ladder.

The merchant marine commander I’d met earlier stepped out of the wheelhouse above, mug in hand, to call down, “Nope, you’re the last.”

“Let’s head to mooring to sleep,” Adam directed. “All ashore that’s going ashore.”

“Spoilsport,” the man returned.

Soon two Navy women emerged from the house. They scurried onto the dock, still adjusting their clothing, so Adam could cast off. “Evening, ladies!” he called cheerily in farewell. The boat thrummed to life as though I was standing atop a Moon rocket. It took those massive engines a matter of minutes to gently move several hundred feet and tie off to a mooring pole. Adam let someone else deal with that, and drew me inside.

The six beds in the living room slightly marred the charm of the large combo living-dining room, with galley along the side, all over a beautiful wooden floor. No one was sleeping – the onshore party had simply moved on board. Even without the girlfriends, there appeared to be twice as many people as beds, all rowdy, music blaring.

“Half hour to lights out,” Adam yelled over the music.

Variations on ‘Aw, c’mon, Skip!’ assailed him, as he drew me across to the galley. “We’ll see,” he yelled back. “Meet Dee Baker, Colonel MacLaren’s girlfriend. She got stranded here.”

“Well, finder’s keepers!” called out one guy with enthusiasm, leaning back on his chair to ogle me upside-down.

Adam mock-hit him. “Not like that.”

“No, you idiot,” another guy said. “MacLaren’s gone up to fight Pennsylvania at West Point, I heard.”

Someone clicked off the music. All eyes turned to Adam. “That true, Skip?”

Adam pointed at the man who’d mentioned Pennsylvania. “Dog-house,” he informed him. “Way to go on operational security, bonehead. And did his girlfriend need to hear that? No.” Unsurprisingly, this did little to distract the intent eyes focused on Adam, including mine.

“Hell,” said Adam. “Dee, want a drink? I’m having coffee. We’ve got scotch and brandy.”

“Coffee’s good,” I said softly. “Adam? Did Emmett go into battle?”

Adam shook his head. “Hope not. Doubt it.” Fortified with coffee mugs, he turned back to the room full of engineers, their eyes still hovering on him. Actually, three more had climbed down the stairs to wait on his answer, one a woman.

“OK, listen up,” Adam said. “Here’s what I know. Just before the speeches outside, Pennsylvania attacked what they thought was Camp Upstate, at West Point. The real Camp Upstate quarantine is safe. West Point is a decoy infantry garrison. Armed to the gills. Their second surprise, I hope, is naval support. Four destroyers headed up the river to provide backup. The enemy came in with air drops and attack helicopters. I don’t know how many. This is all inside the Apple Skin. A clear violation of the Calm Act, in every way. I don’t know how the fight is going. The attack was entirely airborne, no troop columns spotted on land. Yet. That’s all I know.”

Inevitably, his ‘that’s all I know’ invited a babble of questions. I got mine in first. “Adam – Commander – is Emmett – Colonel MacLaren – is he in the fighting at West Point?”

Adam re-introduced me, for anyone he’d missed. Then, “The answer is no. I’m sure Colonel MacLaren is following events closely. But General Cullen is in command of the New York borders.” He raised a finger. “And General Cullen does not update the Coast Guard and Merchant Marine on his actions.” A measure of how keyed up we all were, this got a big laugh.

“While we’re on Project Reunion,” Adam reminded them, “we report to Colonel MacLaren. I spoke to the Colonel before he left. We have no orders. So for now, we sleep off our Thanksgiving turkey.”

There were more questions, and Adam answered them. But he also told them to turn the music back on. He sat down with me at the table to drink our coffee and visit before bed. Not that I knew where he’d shoe-horn me in. There were now 16 people partying in the admittedly generous living room, most of them sitting on the beds.

“Skip,” the merchant marine commander interrupted us, “Kate.” He tossed Adam the phone. “Hey, still at Governor’s Island?... You’re safe there, we’re safe here. Just fix the boat.... Keep me informed, where you are, just in case.... Yup, bye.” Adam tossed the phone back.

I grinned at him. “Is your home always this much of a zoo?”

“I put my foot down at light’s out,” he assured me. “Kind of a full house tonight, though, with the party.”

“Skip, Niedermeyer,” the same guy held up his phone. “What, do you have your phone turned off?”

Adam sighed. “I’ll call him.”

“He says he wants us to pull out,” the guy said uneasily.

“So get off the phone and I’ll call him now.” He did so. “Hi, John... That’s a negative... That’s quite possible. Emmett might want to speed up the evacuation... I report to Emmett... I still report to Emmett... With respect, sir – no sir.” He ended the call. “Always wanted to say that,” he admitted.

I winced in sympathy. “Are you in trouble with Niedermeyer?”

Adam nodded his head yes-and-no. “Gang, listen up!” he called. “The Coast Guard wants us to bug out. I said no. We report to Colonel MacLaren. We stand by Project Reunion.” Cheers. “We could be the last ones out of here,” he warned, “if we’re driving overloaded ferry buckets of refugees.” Cheers and whistles. “All in favor?” Standing ovation. “Any opposed?” No one. “All right then.” He grinned at them, truly and deeply pleased.

“Think you could sleep?” he asked me gently.

I glanced at the time. Nearly 11, and I’d been up since 4 a.m. “I might just pass out on the table here soon.”

“Let’s go, then.” He led me upstairs to his bedroom, a cheerful little chamber with a window, twin bed, and a big easy chair with divan. “You take the bed, Dee.”

Once the lights went out, and sudden silence fell on the tugboat, I asked in the stillness, “Adam? Are you OK here? I wasn’t sure, for a while. I still care about you, you know.”

“Yeah, me too,” he replied. He sighed. “Always will. I’m good. I wasn’t, before Project Reunion. But now, yeah. I feel like I can breathe again. When I saw that video of Emmett on the first day, calling Ty Jefferson a hero? I thought that was so corny. But I was nearly crying today, meeting the Hoboken leaders in person. The guy who renovated this boat – he towed barges full of refugees from Manhattan out to the Rockaways, to escape into Long Island. Then he got sick and died. But he really lived first. You know?”

“Yeah. It is a city of heroes.” I understood exactly what Adam meant. My heart sang when I thought of these people, who never gave up. Under far more hopeless conditions than I ever had to face. Maybe I can be braver, too.

“Cranky, cantankerous, rude New Yorkers to the end. Heroes.” He laughed softly. “Yeah, I’m fine, Dee. Having the time of my life. Emmett... He’s a hell of a commander. It’s an honor to serve under him.”

“He says the same about you. Good night, Adam.”

“Thanks. Sweet dreams, Dee.”

-o-

I dreamt I was on the African savanna. Horny hippos reared on their back legs, to roar honking challenge upon each other.

Adam joggled my ankle. “Rise and shine.”

The honking hippos resolved into foghorns, as ships of the fleet greeted each other through sheeting, possibly sleeting, rain. I peered out Adam’s window and found the prospect entirely uninviting. I tried to slump back under the blanket. But another foghorn, seemingly inches from my eardrum, shot me out of bed like an electrocuted cat.

“Your carriage awaits, Dee. Please get dressed. Before they honk at us again.”

Adam had already skinned into naval cammies. He stepped out to let me pull mine on.

“Carriage to where?” I belatedly thought to ask.

But the boat-vibrating engine awoke to nudge us back to the docks. Much lower and closer to the water than my previous ships in this harbor, and with the tide going out instead of in, the rank smell of diesel, raw sewage flowing out of the city, and decomposing bodies was much stronger than last night, despite the clean-smelling rain. The heavy tug was also rocking just a little, in addition to the engine thrum. But most of all, I’d now gone two nights in a row without enough sleep. My nerves felt raw, my eyes gritty, my stomach queasy.

I firmly told myself that Emmett and Adam did this day after day, yet the zealot fire of eagerness still burned in their eyes. Yeah, I wasn’t buying it.

The tugboat bumped into the dock as I arrived at the breakfast table. Two passing people grabbed me to keep me from falling. My stomach noted that even parked, the boat continued to lurch up and down, and side to side, on sort of a diagonal.

“Under way,” Adam suggested mildly, “you should always hold on to something.” He was polishing off the last scraps of cornbread and eggs over easy. “Especially when it’s slick out.”

“Got it. Have any oatmeal, or cereal?” I asked. I couldn’t face eggs. I wasn’t reconciled to facing day yet.

Adam handed me a bottle of dramamine. Sea sickness pills. “I don’t recommend you eat breakfast today,” he said apologetically. “You can keep the bottle. We don’t need it.”

“You’re eating,” I accused.

He laughed. No, I don’t suppose people who went to sea suffered much from sea sickness. Or at least, not when tied to the dock. “Come on. I’ll see you to your ride.”

As we emerged onto the slick deck – Adam clarified that I should hold onto the boat, not him, as we both nearly went flying – I found a Coast Guard boat awaited on the other side of the dock, where a couple of impatient crew waited for me in the sleet. “They’re taking me back to Emmett’s destroyer?” I asked.

Adam didn’t answer until he had me firmly handed onto the dock. “Camp Suffolk. Orders.”

“What? No!” I cried. “I need to see Emmett again. I need my stuff! Adam, I was going to work here today with the meshnet programmers.”

“Quarantine passengers for Suffolk are on their way, ma’am,” the nearest crew woman assured me, taking my elbow. She pointed down the dock.

A party of Coast Guard crew and a half-dozen figures in hazmat-suited yellow approached slowly from the far end of the dock. One carried a giant floppy hazmat bag. After a moment, I realized that the bag must contain the three-year-old that one of the meshnet programmers had.

“Oh...” I said sadly.

“Skip!” Someone yelled behind us. “You gotta hear this!” He piped a broadcast out through the tugboat’s speakers. It took me a moment to recognize the voice of the President of the United States speaking. Yes, my mental processes were slow. But I’d only heard President O’Donnell speak once before, at the rush inauguration last Christmas after the previous president committed suicide. We knew he was hiding in an ark. We didn’t know where, until today.

“My fellow Americans, I’m speaking to you today from the White House Ark at Raven Rock Mountain, Pennsylvania...”

“The rat bastard,” escaped my lips in reflex. No one noticed my faux pas. They were too busy exclaiming worse.

“...Last night, brave forces of Pennsylvania led an assault at West Point, New York. This action was necessitated by flagrant violations of the Calm Act, perpetrated by New England insurgents, attempting to steal territory from the beleaguered and defenseless people of New York City...”

“Who the fuck is that?” Chas demanded from inside his yellow suit.

“We need to get you squared away aboard, sir,” a crew member attempted. “You, too, Ms. Baker.”

“Ms. Baker needs to hear this,” Adam countermanded. He put an arm around me.

“It’s OK, Chas,” I assured him. “You’ll hear it later, on Amenac.”

This wasn’t true, however. Only a few tens of thousands heard the actual speech live, at 7 a.m. eastern time, the day after Thanksgiving.

O’Donnell was never elected, but he wasn’t a complete moron. His defense of Pennsylvania’s actions might have been persuasive outside the ‘chaotic insurgency’ of the Northeast. Except for the fact that everyone already knew about Project Reunion, because we’d been explaining and marketing it full tilt world-wide for a month. It was possible – even likely, given the way O’Donnell was cocooned inside Pennsylvania – that the man believed what he was saying. Pennsylvania’s invasion of the Apple was justified.

And that would never do. While I spent a perfectly hideous day lurching through 70 miles of stormy Atlantic off of Long Island, too seasick to do anything but endure in a dramamine-doped fog, back home Lt. Colonel Carlos Mora and the Project Reunion team went on overdrive.

Chapter 22

Interesting fact: On the Forbes 2015 list of the best colleges in the United States, the U.S. Military Academy at West Point (Army) ranked #11, just after M.I.T. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). The Naval Academy at Annapolis ranked #27, and the Air Force Academy at Colorado Springs #38. These liberal arts colleges were not only academically excellent, and free, but paid cadets a stipend of $10,000 per year.

The meshnet programmer group was finally settled in at the Camp Suffolk quarantine, and I was dying to get to Major Cameron’s compound and collapse. Brave good intentions of us working on the meshnet together all day had not survived the sullen misery of seasickness and dramamine. None of us could think straight. We vowed to try again tomorrow – afternoon. Or maybe Sunday.

“But you can’t go yet!” Tom Aoyama burbled happily, leading me back to his office. “I’m on the 6 o’clock news on Amenac! I did a video interview with Amiri Baz this afternoon!”

I smiled at him as best I could, trying to look deeply impressed. The war correspondent did wow me, too. Was it only yesterday I’d spoken with Amiri at Midtown? My sense of time was warping. It was good to see Tom so happy, though. The Camp Suffolk quarantine had mushroomed in capacity since I’d last been there – just a month ago? Tom had gained 10 pounds, and looked clear-eyed and well. He adored the CDC team Emmett had sent him, and nearly worshiped Beth Spelt, his garrison commander, now promoted to major.

Tom’s office was another dramatic turnaround. The sad little cot and all the clutter were gone, providing open space around a proper little conference table. I sank to a seat beside Cam and Dwayne, and drooled at the smell. They were already chowing down on cole slaw and a huge casserole of gratin potatoes, crusted brown and oozing with good Wisconsin cheese, washed down with sweet apple cider. This was the first I’d eaten all day, and it tasted divine.

Major Beth Spelt’s voice boomed over the loudspeaker, reminding everyone of the special Amenac broadcast in 10 minutes. Apparently the entire garrison and quarantine were expected to watch.

“Oh, Dee, I spoke to Emmett,” Cam told me, when his voracious eating slowed and his mind was again available for such things. “We won, at West Point. HomeSec is still interrogating the prisoners. But he expects they’ll double down.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“Pennsylvania will attack again,” Dwayne translated for me. “Harder next time.”

Obviously, I wanted to hear more about that.

But Cam asked, “Did you really sleep with Adam Lacey last night?”

I groaned. The entire effing fleet knew I’d slept in Adam’s bed last night. Apparently we were the joke of the day, providing levity in an otherwise rattling time. Perhaps we should have thought of that last night. But it seemed completely reasonable at the time. “I slept. Adam’s a friend. Emmett left me stranded on Staten Island. So I stayed on Adam’s boat.”

“Huh. Emmett said he’s your ex-fiancé,” Cam continued, eyes dancing with mirth.

“Oh, that Adam Lacey!” Tom helpfully waded in. “Yes, they were engaged last year when I met Dee. How’s he doing, Dee?”

“Probably enduring a thousand jokes at his expense today,” I growled. “Other than that, he’s doing great. Lives on a cool house-tugboat parked at Staten Island. Cam, did Emmett sound…cheerful? About Adam?”

Cam chuckled. “Sounded pretty pissed to me,” he confirmed.

“Mm-mn, girl, what were you thinking!” Dwayne chimed in, likewise laughing at me.

“God, this day sucks,” I said. “I want a do-over. I want more potatoes.”

Tom beamed the news broadcast onto his big display, and turned up the sound. The edgy music and Breaking News – Special Report banner were already playing, over the pretty and brainy ex-Yale acting student we used as anchor when we wanted one. She was still shuffling papers on the desk. Amenac’s short-form logo showed behind her, on a green-to-brown gradient backdrop, praying hands shielding a tender sprout.

The camera zoomed in on her solemn, weighty visage and perfectly glossed brown hair. She wore neat but normal layers, a thick natural wool sweater over cotton plaid collared shirt. She wore makeup, but only to accent the weathered outdoorsy New Englander look. The competition’s posers could wear elegant clothes. Our announcers had to look like they authentically lived with uncertain power and dicey weather like the rest of us.

Granted, feeling righteous about this was silly when I knew she was an actor.

“Good evening. This is Jennifer Alvarez, joining you from Amenac world headquarters in Totoket, Connecticut. For our broadcast today, we hoped to show you special holiday coverage of the triumphant Thanksgiving dinner yesterday in New York City. We will still tell that story.” Behind Jen, the screen showed previews of the throngs being fed in New York. Unsurprisingly, they were from my stops the day before, with Emmett. Amiri Baz and his crew had traveled on our ferry.

“But first. Last night at 9:30 p.m. eastern time on Thanksgiving, after the city dinner reached its successful and peaceful conclusion, armed forces from Pennsylvania attacked the New York epidemic border – the Apple Skin – at West Point. The attack was without provocation, and without warning.”

A graphic behind her explained where West Point was, on the Hudson River upstream from ‘NYC dinner’, a few miles inside the armed epidemic border. This switched to video of steaming wreckage at West Point. Medics carried off injured soldiers. I wondered just how many of the Army upper echelon had studied at West Point, like Emmett and Cam had. They’d captured easily recognizable landmarks of the campus on video, smoking in broken ruin and sheeting rain. Cam looked livid, face set in stone.

“Penn forces used air attack craft to bomb and strafe the off-duty garrison, then dropped several thousand armed paratroopers. The surprise attack killed or wounded over a thousand New York soldiers, relaxing after their Thanksgiving duties, before they were able to mobilize their defense. The Penn forces were – utterly – defeated. Some hundred prisoners were taken for questioning. The rest were killed in action.”

Jen skewered the audience with a Look. “The use of aircraft, and attacking another state, are both blatant violations of the Calm Act. Later in the broadcast, we’ll be speaking with Homeland Security about what they’ve learned from Penn’s POWs.” Video of prisoners on their knees, hands on their heads. “We’ll also hear from Lieutenant Colonel Emmett MacLaren, commander of Project Reunion –” Great video there of Emmett cheering with the crowd at the after-party last night. “– And the commanders of the New York and New England borders, General Sean Cullen and General Ivan Link.” Cullen was shown in field helmet, listening grimly to an aide’s report, while he stroked the altar Bible in the shattered West Point chapel. Link and his staff debated at a huge screen, showing a schematic of the attack’s approach path and origin in Pennsylvania.

“– And others. And we will cover the most important event of yesterday. Project Reunion’s Thanksgiving dinner in the Apple Core of New York City!” Jen smiled proudly. “But before we do,” Jen hushed and looked grim, “there was also an address broadcast at 7 a.m. eastern this morning, putatively from President O’Donnell. From Raven Rock Mountain, Pennsylvania. The President claimed that he ordered this attack. And that he’d done it to stop New England insurgents, stealing from New York City.”

Cut to General Link, belligerent: “Well, that’s a crock. Pennsylvania knew what we were doing on Project Reunion, from day one.”

General Cullen, sad and pitying: “If the President believes that, he has been misinformed by bad advisers. As the military governor of New York, I bless Emmett MacLaren for proposing Project Reunion. The Apple welcomes help from New England, upstate New York, and New Jersey, with open arms. The military governors – we were in complete agreement about this.”

Admiral Huyck, Navy of the Northeast (first time I’d read that phrase!): “Do we even know that was President O’Donnell? I’m sorry, but if he were my Commander-in-Chief, wouldn’t he be commanding the Navy, General Cullen, General Link – all of us? Not just – Pennsylvania. At no point did the Commander-in-Chief tell us that he took issue with Project Reunion. It’s not as though we did this in secret. This is a vast humanitarian relief mission. Millions of people are involved.”

Emmett, soggy and smudged with soot: “Uh-huh. Look, we knew we had a problem with Pennsylvania. And this wasn’t their first attack on Project Reunion. We have a lot more to talk about there. But the question was – do we give up on the survivors of New York? Heroes like the Manhattan survivors we shared Thanksgiving dinner with yesterday? No.”

Karl Abramson, New York director of Homeland Security: “Say what? Humanitarian relief doesn’t violate the Calm Act. Bombing your fellow Americans, without warning or provocation? That’s treason. With or without the Calm Act.”

Prefaced by that, Amenac played O’Donnell’s speech, edited ever so subtly. Illustrating his remarks – we only had audio, after all – Amenac played video from the attack on West Point. The wounded. Then the starving people of the Apple receiving food yesterday. The first broadcast images of Ty Jefferson and his band under white flags at the Staten Island Ferry Terminal. Volunteer survivors, and hazmat-suited service men and women, carrying emaciated children to be taken into quarantine. The donation trains, as the people of the Northeast contributed their own food to support the quarantines and Project Reunion. The volunteer trains. We’d never shown any of that footage before. And we didn’t explain it now.

People this morning on the dock had seemed a little confused, dismayed and defensive when we listened to O’Donnell. There was none of that in Tom’s office tonight. Only outrage. We weren’t very close to the garrison troops, where they watched. But I could hear the growl of their reaction.

More sound-bites crowded onto the end of O’Donnell’s speech, without preamble.

Prime Minister Durand of Canada: “That speech betrays a dangerous level of ignorance on the part of the American President. All of Canada – the world – knows the truth of Project Reunion. Why doesn’t he?”

General Charles Schwabacher, military governor of Ohio and West Virginia: “The President is misinformed. Ohio, the Virginias, Maryland and Delaware – we are fully apprised of Pennsylvania’s...actions.”

Cam sat up ramrod-straight when Schwabacher came on. His face glowed. “Was that your play, Emmett?” he breathed. We all looked to him to explain. But Cam shook his head, focused on the screen.

Amiri Baz, Pulitzer prize-winning war correspondent: “Doctor Aoyama, I’m told this was actually Pennsylvania’s second attack on Project Reunion.”

Dr. Tom Aoyama, lead epidemiologist for Project Reunion: “Yes. Pennsylvania infiltrated our pilot quarantine on Long Island. They suborned my assistant, Dr. Clarke Whitfield. We were very fortunate to uncover the plot before any damage was done. Aside from discrediting me, their plan was to release weaponized typhoid into Connecticut, via refugees released from the Camp Yankee quarantine. And thus discredit all of Project Reunion.”

Amiri: “My God. That’s a terrorist plot.”

Tom, nodding: “It certainly would have spread terror. There are millions of good people in Connecticut. Trying very hard to help their neighbors in New York.”

We all shot Tom a thumb’s-up, and he happily grinned like a fool.

Amiri: “Director Abramson, do you believe Homeland Security has prevented this bio-terrorism attack on the Northeast?”

Abramson, New York Homeland Security: “I believe so. You have to understand, there are tens of thousands of volunteers and armed service personnel involved in Project Reunion. But we have procedures in place. We also... We have evidence, that this wasn’t the first bio-terrorist attack on New York. We have evidence that the initial, overwhelming, Ebola outbreaks in New York – those were an intentional attack. By elements in Pennsylvania.”

Jennifer Alvarez, Amenac narrator: “A program note. Amenac will be airing a special report from Homeland Security later in the week. Among the topics will be the case against Pennsylvania. But now, on a happier note,” Jennifer broke into a beatific smile, tears of pride standing in her eyes, “let’s turn to the Project Reunion Thanksgiving dinner, in New York City.”

Amiri Baz: “I’m speaking with Navy Captain Gil Flores, the officer charged with coordinating what must be one of the largest single-day soup kitchen operations ever attempted. Captain Flores, it’s the night before Thanksgiving. Are you ready?”

Captain Flores: “Ready or not! Yes, we’re ready. We’ve done test runs. We have dinner stations set up throughout the Apple Core and North Jersey. Tables and supplies and troops for crowd control. Everything but the food, and that’s cooking as we speak.”

Amiri Baz: “How many people do you hope to feed tomorrow?”

Captain Flores: “Half a million. Yeah. It’s amazing. The outpouring of food donations across the Northeast has been...amazing.”

That went on for a while, Flores and Baz outlining what the Thanksgiving operation entailed, how much food, a map of the dinner stations. Video clips of the donation stations, the food trains. The cameras caught Emmett and me looking around the harbor before dawn, with Amiri’s hushed voice-over, ‘three hours to first dinner.’

I was as rapt as anyone at the video coverage on the ground, showing the guests at Soho, Chelsea piers, Midtown. The interviews, asking thin guests what this dinner meant to them.

A quick sample from other boats, taken with phones. Adam: “Happy Thanksgiving from the Coast Guard, in Hoboken New Jersey!” His houseboat-mate: “Happy Thanksgiving from the Merchant Marine, in Queens!” Another: “Happy Thanksgiving from the Navy, in Brooklyn!” Another: “Happy Thanksgiving from the Army National Guard, in the Bronx!”

Emmett and I grinning, with our masks temporarily down around our necks. “Happy Thanksgiving from the Army, and Amenac!” said he. “From the Midtown Ferry Terminal in Manhattan!” said I.

Baz zeroed in for an in-depth interview with us, about our relationship and role in Project Reunion. Then photo opportunities with our leadership table. The voice-over continued with Emmett sharing about his hero-worship of the leaders he’d met in New York. How he hoped Project Reunion could leave them stronger, as well as take refugees out. Baz asked if he was worried about disease spread, from all this. Emmett said they had their procedures, and so far, illness levels were similar to a winter Army garrison.

And more. Including Adam’s after-party in Staten Island. Emmett and I showed up in several video clips there. Including the moment of impact. Someone was filming us as Emmett got the call about the attack on West Point, and kissed me good-bye.

“On a lighter note,” Baz shared with a grin, the camera back on him in some destroyer-based conference room today. “Dee Baker, Colonel MacLaren’s partner and a co-founder of Amenac, was stranded at Staten Island last night, when MacLaren took his destroyer up the Hudson River to West Point. Fortunately Baker’s ex-fiancé was also at the party –”

“No...” I groaned.

“– so she spent the night with him, on his houseboat moored at Staten Island. The teasing today has been merciless, in New York Harbor.”

Jen Alvarez laughed at me from the screen. “And that’s our report. From all of us here at Amenac and Project Reunion, we hope your Thanksgiving was overflowing with gratitude. Good night.”

“I’m going to kill Carlos Mora,” I groaned.

“Well, like I said, Dee,” Cam offered, in mocking consolation. “We’re your friends regardless of your relationship with Emmett.”

“Now, which one did you sleep with last night?” Dwayne inquired. “Was he shown?”

“The Coast Guard officer,” Tom supplied with a grin. “The male model, Adam Lacey.”

“Ooh! Oh, honey, he’s much better looking than Emmett,” Dwayne assured me. “Is he as good in bed?”

I glared at Dwayne, as Cam’s phone rang. “Hey, Emmett! Yeah, she’s right here. We were just watching the.. Yeah.” He handed me the phone, and hustled up the others. “We’ll just leave Dee alone to talk to Emmett,” Cam said.

“But I want to stay!” Dwayne objected.

Cam hauled him out of his chair, and the three of them exited the office, still laughing.

“Hi, honey,” I said tentatively.

“Don’t call me ‘honey’!” Emmett yelled in my ear.

Chapter 23

Interesting fact: Dr. Clarke Whitfield was eventually executed for crimes against humanity. Homeland Security strung her along for several months, giving her extra days of life in exchange for further information. But her fate was non-negotiable after she admitted her role in weaponizing Ebola for use in New York City, and then abusing her position in Long Island to cover her tracks. The lead scientists on the Ebola weapon project escaped to South America. They were never found.

Voilà! My apologetic, groveling demeanor vanished in the blink of an eye. “Don’t be an asshole, Emmett. Look, I apologize on purely PR grounds. Not for anything I did. You left me stranded in the middle of New York. Fair enough. You were busy. So I slept on Adam’s boat. Also, fair enough.”

“That’s not – Gah!” Emmett blew out slowly.

Screw it, if he was going to do his southern torture 15-second pause thing, I needed a pastime. I shifted over to Tom’s desk, spawned an anonymous browser window to sign in, and brought up Project Reunion broadcast traffic reports on the monitor.

Strange. They must have limited the broadcast to the Northeast – minus Pennsylvania – to prevent any pesky server load issues. Yikes. It seemed like half the Northeast had watched already, or was still watching. Traffic there was still rising. Oh, there it went. The mirror servers across the U.S. completed replication and started to stream the broadcast.

“– ex-wife used to call me ‘honey’,” Emmett was saying, when I guiltily recalled we were in the middle of something. “That was a knee-jerk reaction.”

“So? Apologize.”

“...Uh-huh,” he growled. “I apologize for barking at you.”

“Cool, so here’s the desensitization round, honey. Honey, honey, honey, honey with jam, peanut butter bananas and honey sandwich, honey ham, honey pot, honey trap, land of milk and honey –”

“Uh-huh. Enough, Dee.”

“Ooh,” I said. “The broadcast just went out to Canada and Mexico. Zooming out... Yeah, Europe, Asia, world-wide.”

“You’re watching Amenac traffic? While we’re talking on the phone?”

“You pissed me off. Honey.” Cool it, I warned myself. You love this man. This conversation is important. Like I ever listened to myself. “Sorry, Emmett. It’s kind of a big moment for the media side of Project Reunion. And I was offline being seasick down the length of Long Island today. They did all this without me. You paused to think. That gave me time to wonder...”

“Uh-huh. So how’s it going?”

“This may break the records of Tom’s broadcast – Christ!”

“What now?” Emmett sighed. Cam stuck his head back in to check on me. He wandered in, curious, when he saw what I was talking about. The conference display was still set to echo Tom’s monitor. Dwayne and Tom followed him in.

“Pennsylvania just lit up! Emmett – we’re finally reaching Pennsylvania!” I cried in triumph. “Solid borders on the west and southwest... Starting to glow on the northern border with New York state... Wow, the whole New Jersey border just lit up solid. I don’t know what these blue things are.”

“Radio broadcasts, maybe,” Cam suggested.

“Should be some radio broadcasts around the periphery of Pennsylvania,” Emmett said.

“That’s what Cam just said.” I zoomed in on a blank area. “Huh, there’s this dead spot in the middle of the southern border.”

“Raven Rock Mountain?” Emmett suggested.

“Raven Rock Mountain,” Cam said.

Irritably, I punched Emmett on speaker so they could hear each other.

“You’re right. Aw... They’re not going to let the President see it? We’re not getting traffic inside the Penn border,” I sighed.

“No power or Internet inside Penn,” Emmett and Cam said, in more or less the same words at the same time.

“How’s traffic outside the Northeast?” Emmett added.

“Zooming out... Holy. Cow. Still rising everywhere in North America. If they have Internet, they’re hearing about this tonight.”

“How about Europe?” Emmett asked.

“It’s after midnight in the UK, Emmett... I take that back. I guess a few people stayed up, huh?”

“A lot more than a few,” Cam said, for Emmett’s benefit. “Not much outside the UK in Europe, Emmett. It’s later there.”

“May also need a pause for translation,” I suggested. I panned. “Australia and New Zealand are paying attention. Russia’s asleep. Japan is offline, maybe a cyclone.” There were flickers of traffic across the Asian landmass as well, but that region was a war-torn train wreck. Likewise Africa. Internet access was rare. They could wish for America’s problems.

I sighed. “Not bad. Pity about the President,” I added, vexed.

“Oh, he’ll see tonight’s broadcast,” Emmett assured me.

Cam chuckled in dark glee.

“Am I missing something?” I inquired.

“You show her, Cam,” Emmett invited.

“Got it. Dee, every border has two sides,” Cam explained, pointing to the display. “But not two commanders. What we think of as ‘Pennsylvania’ is really the northern and eastern borders, and the interior. But west and southwest – those borders are controlled by General Schwabacher. Ohio, West Virginia, and this western panhandle of Maryland as well – that’s all under Schwabacher as military governor. This south-east border with Maryland is also garrisoned by General Tolliver as Penn’s military governor. Across that border is Virginia–Maryland–Delaware, under its military governor. They probably couldn’t do anything, because they don’t keep troops up there. But Schwabacher’s turf ends here. Just 15 miles west of Raven Rock.”

“Used to end there,” Emmett commented through the phone.

“Did you talk to Schwabacher today, Emmett?” Cam asked, with a grin.

“Above my pay grade,” Emmett claimed. “Well, I said hi. He says hi to you, too, Cam.”

“Sweet of him to remember,” Cam said, pleased. To me, he explained, “Schwabacher was commandant of the Army Command School at Fort Leavenworth. Emmett and I got our masters degrees in military science under him. Different years, of course. Emmett is senior to me.” Dwayne flashed him a look. There was a lie in there somewhere, but I couldn’t tell where.

“So,” Dwayne cut in, “you’re saying Schwabacher is stealing the President back from Penn?”

“No comment,” Emmett said.

“No comment today,” I suggested.

“Today,” Emmett agreed. “Duty calls, gotta go. Bye.”

I handed Cam’s phone back to him, reluctantly. My own phone was shielded so no one could track me. And it would stay that way until I was safe at home in Totoket. A special voicemail message advised people that I was off-planet when my phone went dark.

“Have a good chat?” Cam inquired brightly.

I frowned. “Um, we didn’t get around to that.”

“What was with all the honey, honey, bananas and honey?” Dwayne inquired. Cam shot him a quelling glare. “Inquiring minds want to know, sweetie!”

Cam sighed. “We should go. Thanks for sharing this with us, Tom! You looked great.”

-o-

I was beginning to think Emmett was the only Resco who wasn’t a control freak. Granted, he was emphatically dominant, if not outright domineering. But he didn’t control anything he didn’t have to. Too much effort. He preferred to control key elements. He laid down the rules, and then let people do their thing within his framework. Cam, on the other hand...

“So are you saying it isn’t technically feasible?” Cam demanded. “To make meshnet users untraceable, except within their own community subnet?”

I’d hoped to inflict my own opinion on all this, working directly with the meshnet team on Staten Island. And just stick Cam and Emmett with my preference. Which was that there was only one meshnet. All users were trackable unless they stuffed their phones into a shielded pouch, like I did. And there were only trusted message-senders, not trusted sub-communities within a sea of messages. Trust whoever you want. Doubt the rest.

My preference had the distinct advantages of being foolproof and quick to deliver. Foolproof in the sense that there can be no security breaches, if there was never any delusion of security in the first place. Perhaps I was closer to the anarchist Amenoids than I cared to admit. Then again, perhaps I was an even bigger control freak than Cam, since I’d been perfectly happy to inflict my preference on everyone without consulting him.

“Technically feasible. That’s a good razor,” proclaimed Genghis, to move things along. Several of the Amen1 crew were consulting with us today by video, since my first-day specification negotiations with Cam and the meshnet crew had bogged down. They were talking by video, anyway. Cam was adamant that his body language gave him greater presence in the meeting. Sitting 10 feet from him, I hid behind an avatar. My encrypted audio was spoofed to originate in upstate New York. I was still pretending not to be on Long Island.

“Is the protocol layer fully encapsulated?” I asked wanly. “Is it even possible to force all message traffic through the same API?”

“Yeah… Well, I mean it’s possible,” allowed Chas, the original programmer of this meshnet. “It isn’t that way now.”

“This meshnet is already out there,” I pointed out. “So even if our new meshnet were locked up tight, it meets the old one out in the wild and – what happens?”

“Oh, we’ll just overwrite the old version virally,” said Carmen. “That’s how we do releases.”

My mouth was hanging open. “So, this is sort of an attack meshnet?”

“Well, we’d ask permission from Midtown first,” Chas offered doubtfully.

Amen1’s nasty Popeye weighed in. “Fucking secure it anyway you want, moron…” Further expletives deleted. His point was that Chas didn’t have a prayer of writing a hacker-proof protocol layer. Popeye would easily hack through anything he came up with, and prove it to him.

Cam looked perfectly ready to dismiss anything Popeye said out of hand, just because of how badly he said it. So I jumped in and said, “I afraid I agree with Popeye.”

“I don’t,” said Genghis. “I think if Chas wrote it, and Popeye’s team bullet-proofed it, it could work. The ‘attack meshnet’ scheme means that we can plug any vulnerabilities we miss.”

I attempted, “Does anyone besides me have a problem with the ‘attack meshnet’ concept?”

“Not really, Dee,” Genghis replied with a shrug. “Viral is viral.”

“What I want,” Cam said firmly, seizing control of the controversy back, “is no spam. No denial of service attacks. No trolls. Bad actors are shut down. Reverse-911 type messages get priority delivery. Local traffic before long-distance. I want good traffic. I want to kill bad traffic. The Internet sucked that way. The meshnet doesn’t have the throughput to suck that way.”

“Actually,” allowed Chas apologetically, “without that kind of control, it would be kinda hard to scale up from a few thousand users, to a few million. Each phone would be too bogged down. Conveying messages of no interest to that phone owner.”

“So is it technically feasible?” Cam repeated doggedly.

A long silence.

“Fuck!” Popeye eventually exploded. “Yeah…”

“Yes,” Genghis confirmed. “We can make that happen. Is that all we need for today?”

-o-

Once everyone had disbanded to pursue their technical dreams and visions, Cam perched on the desk beside me, ankles crossed casually, doing his best to look open, vulnerable and friendly. The man had that sensitive boyish look down pat.

I wasn’t buying it anymore. I frowned back at him.

“Why are you so opposed to control on this meshnet, Dee?” he asked.

“I wanted to get the meshnet into people’s hands – helping people help themselves – as fast as possible,” I said mulishly.

Cam nodded thoughtfully. “So why wait?”

“You just –” I stopped, and reconsidered. Under this plan, the new software would just overwrite any previous version of the meshnet encountered out there. Which meant we didn’t have to wait on any new features to be implemented. We didn’t have to wait on anything. “Duh…” I said, wincing.

“Dee?” Cam said, with a boyish smile, eyes dancing, “you did a phenomenal job getting us this meshnet. For the whole Apple. I can’t thank you enough. Do you think the rest of us could take it from here now? Let you get back to Project Reunion?”

I sighed, and gave him a sheepish smile. “This isn’t my fight, is it. I’m just in the way.”

“I didn’t say that,” said Cam. “And I don’t believe that. Seems to me, you found me a perfectly operational meshnet, ideally suited to my circumstances. But also, you brought me the best meshnet development team possible, to make it even better. But they weren’t good enough at security. So then you got me the best hackers to ensure security. That’s a triumph all around, Dee.”

I nodded. “You’ve got a good team in place now. It’ll work.” Cam was laughing softly at me. “What?”

He shook his head in amusement. “Any advice you’ve got for me, any time, girlfriend. I’m all ears. You ought to learn to take a compliment, though. You done good!” He rapped his knuckles on the desk. “C’mon, let’s leave the techno-elves to their work. We need to get back to our own.”

-o-

That was easier said than done. I was stuck on Long Island until mid-Monday by the continuing nor’easter that had me so seasick the day after Thanksgiving. The storm got a whole lot worse before it got better. My phone stayed resolutely in its shielding pouch, my email unchecked, for security. I hate security. Being incommunicado left me climbing the walls in frustration. An Internet addict cut off from her drug of choice is a terrible thing.

And to think, once upon a time I used to enjoy travel. Nowadays it always went horribly wrong somehow.

That night, Sunday, we were back at Camp Suffolk, Tom’s quarantine. At long last, the PR web team broadcast the documentary of Project Reunion investing Staten Island a month ago. Like the Thanksgiving coverage, everyone in Camp Suffolk was tuned in, enthralled.

Dwayne cried, in Cam’s arms. Tom cried in mine. The raw footage had held me spellbound, even with all the mechanics and boring bits, fast forwarding and rewinding. The final video was devastatingly good.

Amiri Baz and Emmett did a face-to-face update at the end, where Emmett admitted that this all happened a month ago. Pennsylvania had been led to believe Project Reunion would launch at Thanksgiving. But the first quarantine graduates were released from Camp Yankee that very Sunday. A few clips of those refugees showed in a box on the screen while they talked.

As the credits rolled, a much healthier Ty Jefferson, now a free man, sat down in a restaurant in downtown Greenwich Connecticut. He lunched with the Camp Yankee garrison commander – Bridget Merryweather – and Major Papadopoulos, Resco of Fairfield County, where Greenwich lay.

“We’ll miss your smiling face at Camp Yankee, Ty,” Merryweather assured him.

Jefferson laughed out loud. “I’m not going anywhere. Except back to Staten Island. Just as soon as we’re done with the evacuation.”

Chapter 24

Interesting fact: Ohio’s offensive did capture the executive branch ark at Raven Rock Mountain, but not President O’Donnell. He and his family were extracted by Pennsylvania forces minutes after the end of his final address. Ark-mates claimed that his forbidden slip of their location was a cry for help. Virginia’s offensive was more decisive. The Speaker of the House, broadcasting in video from the Congressional Ark in Virginia, declared O’Donnell and his Vice President impeached by vote of the House and Senate. Next in the line of succession, she declined to claim the Presidency in advance of March and the final stage of the Calm Act. The Presidency was left vacant.

Among the six-day mountain of email awaiting my return to my keyboard – Cam had a point, about killing spam – I received a notice from the West Totoket Cocos, Jamal and Delilah, the militia head honchos in my little corner of Connecticut. Congratulations, I had placed in the top half of my community in agricultural production for the year. Not a very lofty accomplishment, given the general level of vegetable gardening skill in suburban America. But nice of them to acknowledge me.

I almost missed the second paragraph. Those ranking in the bottom half of agricultural production would lose their land, and be consolidated into condominium housing. I qualified for a subsistence lot increase, and was awarded both sides of my block. This was already a done deal, having been proposed, debated, and voted through while I was busy with Project Reunion. I’d missed a couple meetings of the West Totoket agricultural committee.

Nothing ever seems to happen when you show up for committee meetings. But God help you if you miss them.

I flew next door in a panic, to pound on Mangal and Shanti’s door. No answer. I peered through the now uncurtained window. Furniture gone, boxes everywhere. I turned away just as the door belatedly opened.

“Hi, Dee, welcome home!” Shanti cried, with a big smile and a quick hug. “We expected you back Friday, didn’t we?”

“Yeah!” I said. “Then someone bombed New York while I was there. And somehow I got stuck out on Long Island.”

“I’m amazed you still travel,” said Shanti. “You’re very brave.”

“Look, Shanti – I just got the email from the civic association, about my new land grant,” I said. “I… Gah! You don’t have to leave! If it’s my land, you’re certainly welcome to stay on it!”

She beamed, folded her arms, shook her head. From long exposure, I recognized Shanti-of-steel when I saw it. “No, it’s fine, Dee. We have our own building for the Indian community. In Maple Common condominiums. It’s much closer to town, for Mangal to work at Amenac. We’re already half-moved. And looking forward to it.”

My heart sank. “Shanti… You’ve got to believe me. I had nothing to do with this. I’ve been so busy…”

“It’s fine,” she insisted. “You’re in our hearts forever, Dee. No matter where we go. I hate to think what this past year would have been like, without you.” She hugged me again. And gently but firmly closed the door on me.

I gazed around the neighborhood from Shanti’s stoop, in the gathering dusk of early December. I saw no one, no lights coming on in the windows. I swallowed. That was my job last summer, to teach everyone on my block to grow vegetables. But then Zack had died, and I…dropped the ball.

Now I had an even bigger farm to drop the ball on. I’d have to hire laborers from the condos and supervise them half the year. And drat it, Zack’s old house with its livestock wasn’t on my block. I wondered who ended up with that land grant, and how much time I had to evacuate my livestock.

Welcome home, to the next new normal.

I dragged my feet in dread to the house on the other side, fearing that Alex’s household might have decamped, too. But no, thank God. It had never occurred to Alex and Shelley and Trey that any of that nonsense applied to them. We were family. We just didn’t quite fit under a single roof. I hugged them all, and received huge congratulations on the weekend’s blockbuster Project Reunion broadcasts. That made me feel much better. It was close enough to 6 p.m., so we all trooped back to my kitchen, and visited while I slapped dinner together.

And soon they were gone. I had the house all to myself again. Compared to the happy madhouse of Camp Cameron on Long Island, or Adam’s house-tugboat on Staten Island, or Emmett’s destroyer in New York Harbor, it sure was silent. Sure, Emmett ‘lived with me.’ Except, of course, that he didn’t. He’d lived here for a week, over a month ago. And now the whole block was mine. I tried to feel privileged.

I tried to feel anything at all, aside from alone and intimidated. I gave it up and worked in my office until I felt sleepy enough to give up for the night.

Emmett called just as I was snuggling in. “Missed you, darlin’!” he said. “You were offline a long time.”

“Oh, you would have been too busy to talk to me anyway,” I murmured.

“Uh-huh,” said Emmett. “You alright, Dee?”

I told him about how I now proudly owned my block. I’d graduated to a real subsistence farm. Sort of. “Was this your plan, Emmett? If you’d stayed? Kick everyone out of their homes –”

“Whoa, darlin’,” he said. “DJ carried through on my plan, yes. But the plan was to let the Cocos lead. They were supposed to get together with their communities. Lay out the information, how agriculture was going, how we could improve. West Totoket has an agricultural committee to decide that stuff. Hell, you’re on that committee, aren’t you?”

“I’ve been busy,” I growled.

He sighed. “Darlin’, maybe you don’t agree with what they chose. But it was up to the community to decide. Then they run their new plan for a year. All the Cocos in greater New Haven, different plans. Then publish their results. Compare the results, with each other and with the non-Coco areas. Adjust. Repeat. No revolutions. Just social change, done gradually.”

New Haven County wasn’t wall-to-wall Coco districts. The Cocos had grown popular, their districts well-managed, and their ranks swelled to several dozen. But most of the area still got by with the old local governments, answerable directly to the Resco. West Totoket was the only corner of Totoket township with a Coco, for instance. Lucky us. Well, last winter Zack’s militia was shooting looters. The Army provisioning details barreled through non-Coco districts, taking whatever they wanted. We’d felt pretty lucky then.

“Well. I’m glad they didn’t try to kick me out of my house,” I whispered, with a catch in my voice.

“Uh-huh,” Emmett said softly. “Wish I could be more help with the farm, darlin’.”

“I was thinking about that,” I said. “That’s…not realistic, is it? You do Army. This summer was a fluke.”

“Yeah.”

I stroked the phone and begged myself to talk to him. Burble on. Be brave or funny or sexy or just gossip. There was no end to all we could talk about. I loved him. I was honestly fascinated with what he was doing in New York now, dying to know how Pennsylvania’s attack changed his plans. But my throat felt closed. I swallowed a couple times. It didn’t help.

“I love you, Dee,” Emmett said. “It was so good to see you. Bad enough Pennsylvania attacked. Wish they hadn’t stolen our last night together.” He waited. I didn’t speak. “I hope we can talk tomorrow, darlin’.”

“Yeah.” Say something, dammit! I exhorted myself. But, “Good-night, Emmett,” was all I managed.

-o-

“Dee! Good to hear from you!” Pam Niedermeyer greeted me over the phone, a couple days later. “What’s up?”

“I need advice,” I said. “Army wife advice. You have a minute?”

“Sure! I’m not an Army wife, though.”

“Yeah, but you know how this armed, service – how all this works,” I said. “And I don’t have a clue. This long-distance relationship thing.”

“Well, yes and no,” Pam said. “I mean, John is Coast Guard. His schedule is screwy, and he travels for work. But usually he’s home at least a couple nights a week. He was away at school for six months a while back. That was tough. But he wasn’t like overseas getting shot at, or coming home with PTSD, or anything.” She sighed. “Though, he does get pretty upset sometimes about duty here. Enforcing the New York borders had the whole Coast Guard near mutiny.”

“John didn’t take it out on you, did he?” I asked.

“Like he’d dare. Hell, no,” said Pam. “Dee? Is Emmett taking stuff out on you?”

“No! No, that’s not it,” I said hastily.

“You can’t put up with that, not for one minute, Dee,” Pam insisted. “If it happens, it is not you. Especially in the Army, those guys go through living hell. If he’s having trouble with what he’s seen, what he’s done, he needs to talk to other guys who’ve been to that same hell and found the path out. You can be supportive. But you can’t be a punching bag.”

“No, really, Pam!” I cried. “Thank you, but Emmett would never, ever, hit a woman. I don’t think so, anyway. It’s not that. It’s…I just…”

“Lonely?” Pam suggested.

“Yeah. I mean, I wanted a partner. And I got one. He even moved in with me. For a week.”

Pam sighed. “And now he’s living in New York Harbor. And you’re wondering if it’ll ever be any better.”

“Something like that,” I admitted.

“Well, good news and bad news,” said Pam. “The bad news is, probably not. I mean, I’ve met Emmett, and John talks about him. Project Reunion, New York, that’ll probably end. Maybe not as soon as you expect. But then there’ll be the next campaign. And the one after that. It’s what he does, and he’s good at it.”

“Yeah,” I said. “You saw the special Sunday night, of him investing Staten Island?”

“Dee, the whole world saw that special. That was a triumph!”

“Yeah. Yeah, it was. And he looked so alive, so happy, you know?”

“Don’t get maudlin, Dee,” Pam said firmly. “He looked pretty damn happy with you on his lap, to me. He’s having the time of his life, sure. And the good news is – so can you.”

“What?” I missed the turn on that one.

“That’s the good news,” Pam said. “You – like me – are a smart, capable, tough, independent woman. So what if I can’t rely on John to pick up the kids at soccer practice. I can do it myself. Single mothers do it all the time. Unlike them, I’ve got his full income and support. With John, I have a best friend with benefits. We can do couple stuff. But my social life doesn’t revolve around him. I live my own life. So do you.”

“That’s true.”

“So were you a recent divorcée or something, Dee?” Pam inquired.

“Me? No! No, until this past year, I never really had anything, um, serious,” I admitted.

“Then the world went to hell, and you started clinging?” Pam suggested.

I scowled. “I do not cling.”

“You cling.”

“I do not cling!”

“That’s my girl.”

I groaned. “I can’t believe I clinged. Clung.”

“I can,” said Pam. “I tried it on John myself. He was like, ‘who are you, and what did you do with Pam?’ Around the same time you and Adam went to Montreal.”

“Adam told you about me?”

“Oh, yeah!” Pam assured me. “Adam likes you! He’s still stuck on you. I probably shouldn’t tell you that. You’d have to be blind not to see it yourself, though.”

“Maybe so,” I said. “Well, no, yeah. I still like him too.”

“Is that the problem?” Pam asked. “You’re tempted to give Adam a try again?”

“No! Well, I don’t think so. I just… Maybe it’s what you said. I’m scared of the world and want my teddy bear.”

“Your big, strong, tough, protective teddy bear,” Pam clarified. “Who can defend you from anything the world throws at you. Even Homeland Security and a near-death sentence.”

“I do really like that about Emmett,” I had to admit.

“And who wouldn’t? Nice bod, too,” said Pam. “Face not as pretty as Adam’s. But Adam’s over the top, anyway. Everyone thinks he’s gay, he’s so gorgeous. Really ticks him off, too. Well, much as anything ever ticks Adam off. Thing is, Dee – Emmett is protecting you, whether he’s here or not. They have a brotherhood. I heard you were just out on Long Island, with Cam. Emmett thought you were in danger, but he was busy. So he passed you to Cam, knowing that Cam would protect you with his life. I’m sure there’s someone else watching you at home.”

I sighed. “Yup. I got people.”

“Well, do you really need sex every night? Got toys?” Pam prodded. “We tried phone sex and cybersex while John was in…school. Your relationship might still be a little young yet to get a good laugh out of that, though.”

I laughed out loud. “I can’t believe you said that!”

“Sure you can,” said Pam. “Dee, that’s just obvious. So I give. What else is bothering you?”

“What if he doesn’t come back?”

“He looked pretty set on you, to me,” Pam opined. “I think he wants to keep you.”

“Yeah, no, not that. What if he doesn’t come back here?”

“You don’t want to follow?” Pam asked.

I gulped. “New York is a nightmare.”

“Hm,” Pam said, suddenly thoughtful instead of joking. “Well, could I make a suggestion?”

“That’s what I was hoping you would do,” I said. “Am I being shallow and selfish and –”

“Suggestion one,” Pam cut in firmly. “Don’t call my friend Dee names. Suggestion two. Not wanting to live in the Apple Core right now, means you’re not insane. I think Emmett is the last person who’d want you there, if it isn’t safe.”

“That’s true,” I murmured, then chuckled. “He almost sent me straight home when I showed up for Thanksgiving without his permission.”

“Well done!” Pam said. “Suggestion three is the main one, Dee. Stop letting the future gang up on you. Do you remember, just one year ago, what we expected? Two years ago? We really don’t know what to expect next. I think that’s what makes us clingy. It’s just…unnerving. But if you like him, and he certainly likes you, couldn’t you just wait and see what happens? Enjoy what you can?”

“I have a farm.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The West Totoket civic association gave me a farm this weekend. I’m a farmer now.”

Pam cracked up laughing. “Oh! I’m sorry, Dee. Um, congratulations!” She kept laughing.

“Thank you,” I gritted out.

“Oh, while I’ve got you on the phone, Dee,” Pam added, “I thought it would be nice to have you and Emmett over for a Christmas party. We can do it whenever he’s free. I hope you’ll come!”

That actually stopped my breath a moment. I’d just been thinking that. That one of the problems with Emmett being away was that we could never do normal things like attend a Christmas party together. “Please,” I breathed. “That would be really nice, Pam. Thank you.”

“Good! I look forward to it. Any time!” Pam said. “And best of luck with that…farm thing. Talk to you soon, Dee.”

“It does make sense,” I told myself defensively, after we’d hung up. “I liked having a partner to farm with. And planting crops is a long-term commitment. What if Emmett won’t come home to my farm?”

Yeah, after Pam laughed at me, I had trouble buying it, too.

-o-

Emmett was vastly relieved that night when we spoke. He told me he’d been going nuts because I wasn’t telling him what was wrong. He was sure I was about to dump him. He’d even called Cam that day at lunchtime and grilled him about everything I’d said or done on Long Island. (I was gratified to hear that Cam told Emmett to ask me, not him.) If I hadn’t opened up to him tonight, Emmett was about to beg General Cullen for emergency leave to come home.

I finally admitted I was overwhelmed at the idea of farming the whole block by myself.

“Dee, darlin’?” he asked. “You can give it back. Just keep the three houses worth of garden, and give back the rest. Keep some chickens for the eggs.”

I blew out a long breath. “Wow. I was really bent out of shape, huh.”

“Uh-huh,” he confirmed. “Although. It’s still not that much land. Too much for intensive vegetables like you’ve been doing, sure. Too much work. But you could keep the whole other side of the street in hay for Cow and the goats. Grow simple cash crops in the rest. Corn. Beans. Squash. Just take your time, Dee. Think it through. Nobody needs to plant in December. Figure out how much work you can handle, divide by two, work from there.”

“They only gave me the land because I got high yields,” I worried.

“So? If you can’t produce, you give back half the block next year. More likely, half the gardeners take on more than they can handle. Bugs, disease, drought in July, flood in August. Next October, they’re begging to cut their land in half. And there you are, still producing eggs and milk like clockwork, plenty of food for yourself, and two out of three cash crops survived.”

I laughed softly. “I was thinking this was too much to do, without you here to help. And then you helped from there.”

“Darlin’… You take too much on. I think gardening is just a hobby for you. Could be wrong, but I think you’re too smart. Too curious. Too… I dunno. I could have been a farmer. I love the land, the livestock. But it wasn’t enough for me. Full time? I’d be bored out of my mind. You know?”

“I like working on Amenac, the PR interviews, the meshnet project,” I agreed. “I think you’re right. You know, I still feel guilty telling you my stupid problems.”

“Don’t. Ever,” Emmett said. “That’s the only way I can be home with you now. Escape the Apple Core’s problems for a few minutes. Be with you. I want to do what I’m doing. I’m having the time of my life. But God I miss you, darlin’.”

I snickered. “Pam Niedermeyer suggested phone sex. Actually she said we probably hadn’t been together long enough.”

“Uh-huh. Pam Niedermeyer is a troublemaker.”

“She invited us over for a Christmas party, whenever you’re free,” I said wistfully.

“What a great idea!” Emmett cried with enthusiasm. “Let’s do that! We could invite Cam and Dwayne too.”

“Invite them to Pam’s house? That’s a bit pushy even for you, Emmett.”

He just laughed.

I sighed. “Can you make it home before Christmas?”

“I’ll make time. Somehow.”

Chapter 25

Interesting fact: Amiri Baz won his second Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on Project Reunion.

“How do you feel, Colonel MacLaren?” the reporter Amiri Baz asked, on one of New Haven’s half dozen train platforms.

It was a brilliant sunny day out, 63 degrees with a strong breeze off the Sound. Probably set a new record high temperature for the day, but that was common.

The day of the mid-December Christmas trains had finally arrived. Small releases over the past couple of weeks had worked out the kinks. The Camp Jersey and Camp Upstate quarantines were intentionally kept one week behind, Camp Yankee taking the lead. The first mass release – over 80,000 refugees – was already barreling toward us from Port Chester New York, 50 miles west down the railway. Emmett and Amiri had arrived an hour ago on a smaller train, carrying the volunteers from Camp Yankee to run the transfer circus about to explode into New Haven Station.

Emmett snugged me to him around the waist. He said, “Uh… Come on, Amiri. You know I hate that question.” We laughed.

“That’s why I asked it first,” Amiri said. “Saves time editing.”

“How do I feel. Scared, terrified, nervous,” Emmett said, casting around. I believed him. His emotions were probably all over the map today. Mine, too.

“Proud,” he finally stumbled upon. “Honored. I’m just…overwhelmingly grateful to be here. Thankful to everyone who’s contributed to Project Reunion. The outpouring of love and generosity. In the armed forces. Throughout the Northeast and beyond. Today…is really Christmas for me.” He teared up. Well, I did too. He kissed my forehead and hugged me tighter.

“See? You survived the question,” Amiri teased him. “So what happens here today in New Haven?”

They took their time back-and-forth to get good video clips explaining that. Trains from New York couldn’t simply turn left at New Haven to head north to Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire. Most refugees would exit their first train and transfer at New Haven. The refugees actually bound for New Haven would arrive here last, after the traffic for points east and north cleared out. Likewise, refugees headed for Fairfield County and the New Canaan branch train line west of us, the ones with the least distance to travel, would leave Port Chester later still.

Emmett’s face lit up, and he said, “We have two very special groups on the first trains today.”

Santa and his elves thundered up the stairs and out onto the platform, jogging into position to meet the front cars. An empty train and more elves waited on another platform, accessible from here by taking the stairs down to an underground concourse below, that linked all the platforms. Santa was in full padded red suit. Most of the elves had to make do with a pointy red or green hat over combat fatigues.

“Christmas train from Port Chester arriving on track 10,” blared the loudspeakers. “Front half of the train to exit first, and transfer to North Pole on track 14. Repeat, North Pole Express on track 14.”

The Christmas train was immense. Every year on the New Haven line from New York, they used to run these monster trains, that overflowed the train platforms by several cars on either end, to handle the overflow holiday traffic. Beefy soldiers in camouflage blocked the train doors from inside, no doubt praying that the conductor kept their train doors closed until their cars were called to exit.

“Christmas train from Port Chester arriving on track 6,” blared the loudspeakers again, before the first train even came to a halt. “Front 10 cars to exit first on track 6, and transfer to Union Station main hall for ground transportation.”

Emmett grinned and led us to stand by the forward glassed-in stairwell on our platform, out of the traffic pattern but with a good view. The doors slid open for the front cars that fit on the platform. Emmett traded a relieved thumbs-up with the Marine guarding the closed train door a few feet away from us.

“Ho, ho, ho!” yelled Santa. “Who’s coming with me to the North Pole?”

Skinny kids, but no longer emaciated, began pouring out of the front train cars, accompanied by their volunteer chaperones. All ages, two through twelve. Each wore a winter coat, good shoes, hat and mittens in the springlike weather. They might have been horribly intimidated by all this, but not with the familiar Santa hamming it up and guiding their way.

“Where exactly is the North Pole?” asked Amiri Baz. “For our adult viewers.”

“Burlington, Vermont,” supplied Emmett. “The North Pole Express is an orphan train. Some of the more damaged children will continue on to Quebec. Most of these children came to us from Brooklyn. We announced the day we’d be accepting refugees. When we showed up, first responders in Brooklyn had rounded up all of the orphans, all the homeless children they could find. Told us to take them first. Passed them to us,” Emmett choked up. “Hand to hand, like a bucket brigade. They’ll be getting new families for Christmas.”

Emmett and I didn’t even try not to cry, as a river of children scampered down the stairs next to us. A couple elves stood in front of us, to firmly direct traffic down these stairs, instead of skipping around to the next stairwell. These kids had grown up with train and subway platforms, after all. We grinned and waved to them. The refugees still bottled up on the train waved beside us.

North Pole traffic slowed for the children who needed carrying or crutches or wheelchairs. Emmett jerked his head back to indicate the stairs behind us. “We need to move before the floodgates open.”

We headed down the still-empty opposite stairs. Below, burly elves sat on orange traffic-blocking sawhorses in the concourse, to defend the track 10 to 14 reserved North Pole transit zone. We turned the other way and rushed up the concourse for the escalators to the big Union Station hall.

Rushed as much as we could, that is, and politely. Beyond track 6, the concourse was full of mostly elderly, frail refugees moving the same direction we were. Lacking the magical resilience of childhood, the seniors were still emaciated after a month at Camp Yankee, open sores on their faces still struggling to heal.

When the escalators deposited us up and out, into the big hall, my eyes lit up. My old friend Jean-Claude Alarie stood on top of one of the station’s beautiful solid oak bench-islands, above the sea of confused elderly humanity.

I tugged on Emmett’s elbow and pointed, with a grin.

“What’s this?” Amiri asked. He and his camera crew were ever vigilant, hungry for the spontaneous shot.

“That’s our other special group,” Emmett explained. “Jean-Claude Alarie is with Doctors Without Borders. He travels with a gran caravan. The gran caravans have full amnesty today, to pick up new members. Elderly refugees only.”

“You actually know these outlaws?” Amiri asked.

Emmett tilted his head to yield the question to me. “Jean-Claude is a friend of mine,” I agreed. “Actually, Emmett met him the same night he met me,” I said sweetly.

“Uh-huh,” said Emmett, with a crooked smile.

“My knights in shining armor, come to save me and Amenac from Homeland Security.” I grinned unrepentant. “Jean-Claude’s caravan blew up the HomeSec building that night. I was surprisingly OK with that, at the time.”

Emmett cut in to provide a more politically prudent sound-bite. “Jean-Claude Alarie and his gran caravan stayed with us last winter in New Haven County. They solved some survivalist problems for us up toward Litchfield. They made a good peacekeeping force. They moved on in the spring. You have enough footage of us yet, Amiri?”

“Um… So you sorted all these refugees before they left Camp Yankee?” Amiri asked.

“Yes!” said Emmett. “The first weeks, we did a lot more sorting here in New Haven. That was too complicated to scale up. So now, yeah, they’re sorted before we load them onto the trains. And refugees may be held back or moved forward a week, to group them by where they’re going. Anything else?”

Jean-Claude and I were already waving to each other. I spotted DJ and Liddy too, with New Haven’s reception committee, come early to watch the circus.

“That’ll do, I think,” Baz agreed. “We want to interview the refugees and volunteers. Any more good photo opps with you, before you head back to the Core?”

Emmett grinned. “Not going back to the Core. I’m taking a few days leave. Surprise, darlin’!” I threw my arms around him in delight.

After a kiss, Emmett turned back to Amiri Baz. “I might visit the Totoket railroad station tonight. Peek in on the family reunions, and people picking up their new refugees. I’d like to see the other end of all this. But that’s in Amenac’s back yard. You want to film someplace else.”

Emmett pulled his right arm over my head, and reached for Amiri for a heartfelt handshake and hug. “Happy holidays, Amiri. See you back in the Core, gang.” He shook hands with all of Amiri’s production crew, and happily turned in his lapel microphone.

At last, we were free to socialize our way through the big New Haven train station ticket hall. Jean-Claude displayed the same Gallic dramatic flair as always. He insisted on kissing Emmett on both cheeks. Emmett resisted the temptation to kiss him back, though I did. We soon let Jean-Claude get back to work, reassuring fragile elderly refugees that it was indeed true. In the gran caravans, they were actively sought and wanted.

My heart ached with gratitude for the caravans for this. No one ever really forgets that childhood pang of being the last chosen, the one rejected by peers, unwanted for the team, left out. Home is where you’re wanted. I teared up again at the thought that these tough, amazingly resilient oldsters had found a home, with Jean-Claude and his crazy legions.

Moving on, DJ mock-cried on Emmett’s shoulder. “When will you come home, boss?”

Emmett just laughed. “I hear you’re doing great things, DJ.”

“They hate me,” DJ reported, looking aghast. “People blame me for the ag reforms. I didn’t dictate the ag reforms!”

“Uh-huh,” said Emmett. “Repeat after me: ‘You need to take that up with your community coordinator.’ Use that sentence. Lots. If an ordinary citizen is griping to you, they’re talking to the wrong person. Especially in New Haven. You’re not that guy anymore. Don’t undermine your Cocos, or you’ll get hammered from both sides.”

DJ moaned, “Yeah, yeah…”

In contrast, Liddy was euphoric. She insisted she was off soon to the Bronx, to join a mission with her church group. I wasn’t sure whether to believe her. The idea of an elderly wheelchair-bound double amputee moving into the Apple Core – to live and pray! – was the last thing I would have expected.

Emmett, however, gave her a high-five and a hug. “You raise the rafters for me, Liddy! Let me know where to join you, Sunday mornings in the Bronx! Dee, Liddy brought me into her church in New Haven.”

“Absolutely, Emmett!” Liddy cried beatifically. “We shall raise a joyful noise unto the Lord! All through that Big Apple!”

“You went to church with Liddy?” I asked, as we moved away. “What kind of church?”

“Evangelical,” Emmett replied. At my astonishment, he chuckled and squeezed my hand. “Zack warned me not to mention that up north. Yeah, I’m a born-again Christian, darlin’. Don’t worry. I won’t try to convert you. But I do love a good rowdy church service.” He shrugged. “I used to take Liddy to church in New Haven. She’s a lot of fun. Heart big as a planet.”

“I never suspected this about you,” I said in consternation.

“Uh-huh,” he said wryly. He tugged my hand toward the great outdoors.

“Let’s go home,” he invited.

-o-

Emmett grew quieter as we approached home. Fortunately, his homecoming was a surprise, so I didn’t have any plans or preconceptions. He tentatively drifted into the bedroom to change out of his dress blues, trailing a finger along furniture and framed prints on the walls, once familiar.

I imagined I knew what he was feeling. Coming back from my first semester away at college, my year abroad in Japan – returning to a place where the people and things were the same, but I’d changed, grown, become unfamiliar. Home looked small and strange. I let him be for a few minutes, and set out a late lunch on the table.

He smiled when I knocked on the bedroom door before entering. He’d already changed into his favorite worn button-up jeans and button-down shirt, a Christmas-y dark green today, with soft grey ragg socks, his uniform neatly stowed away.

“I should call Pam about that Christmas party,” I said, taking a seat on the bed. Near him, but not too close. Not crowding him. “Would tomorrow or the next day be better?”

“Next day,” Emmett said. “Dee, there’s something I –”

“Emmett, I’ve been meaning to –” We spoke at the same time, and laughed bashfully. “You first,” I invited.

“No,” he said softly. He lay down across the bed, up on his elbow to face me, picking at the bed comforter. “You first.”

“Um,” I said reluctantly, “I’d been meaning to ask you about your ex-wife. I’m not sure this is the time for it.”

“God. Why?” he asked, rubbing his face. “Scratch that. What do you need to know?”

“How you’re healing, I guess. It keeps coming up. Cam said ‘good luck with that,’ about our relationship. You blew up at me calling you ‘honey’ that time. Just thought…if we could air that out? Maybe you’d feel safer with me?”

I couldn’t read his expression at all, but it didn’t look good. Then he bolted for the bathroom to throw up. I followed slowly, to hand him a cup of water and perch on the bathtub rim. “I withdraw the question,” I murmured.

He closed the toilet and laid his head on folded arms across the seat, legs unfolded across the bathroom tile floor. He started talking dully. “I shouldn’t have married Susie. She was fun. We had a lot of laughs at first. But I thought my career needed an army wife. She didn’t want that life, didn’t want to be a wife. But I bullied her into it. She was right. I was wrong. It was ugly. I caught her in bed with another man, cheating on me the second time, maybe more. I hauled off and was about to hit her. I couldn’t believe I’d become that person. I stopped myself and walked out. Applied for a divorce. She was happy to grant it. Dee, we never even lived together, really. Not even two years, beginning to end.”

I smoothed his forehead. “I’m sorry. That must have been really painful. But Emmett, how long are you going to beat yourself up about it?”

“Doesn’t bother you?” he asked.

I considered the story. “Sounds like two people who made a mistake. I’m a little concerned by how much power you think you had. You bullied her. You almost hit her. But it seems to me she had the upper hand. She didn’t want to be married. She won.”

“Thank you,” he whispered.

“Kinda sucks not to be omnipotent, doesn’t it,” I said. He sighed. “Emmett, you’re not a bully. And you couldn’t bully me if you tried.”

I wasn’t entirely sure this was true. No question about it, Emmett was domineering. But that came from a place of being decisive and confident, not from disrespecting me. He could steamroll me when I was unsure. But when I knew what I wanted, he respected that.

Apparently it was the right thing to say. He looked, if not happier, at least unburdened a little. He placed a hand on my calf. “Dee… I love you. I love your place here. And while we’re in the bathroom….”

“Hm?”

He swallowed, then whispered, “Cullen asked me to plan what’s next for New York City. After Project Reunion. Darlin’, I’m not coming back. Except to visit.”

“Oh.” Maybe that shouldn’t have been a surprise. But it hit me like a sucker punch. My eyes welled tears. “Can you… No. You don’t want to fight it. Do you.”

“Those bridges burned down. I do not get along with General Ivan Link. And Connecticut doesn’t need me. New York needs me. I admire General Cullen. I like working for him. Dee, I can’t ask you to follow me into the city. Not now, but… I do love you, girl.”

“Don’t you break up with me,” I told him. We were both crying. “Don’t you dare.”

“No,” he agreed. “Partners. Dee, I don’t know what I’m asking you to do.”

Crying together hurts. But it does make you feel closer. Despite that yawning pit of despair that was New York City.

-o-

We walked to the Totoket train platform in the evening, to see the new migrant citizens as they arrived. We both felt too raw to get dragged on camera, so we hovered at the back. Like most of the small throng in the parking lot, we carried lit candles in lanterns cut from old plastic soda bottles. Aside from a couple electric lights on the train platform itself, Totoket was quite dark. Seasonable cold had blown in again, under leaden clouds. A hundred candles glowed brightly.

Delilah and Jamal, the West Totoket co-Cocos, stood on the platform with a few militia and our local pastors. Occasionally, they tried to lead the crowd in singing Christmas carols, to half-hearted success. My camera woman Kyla was armed and recording by their side. I spotted Mangal and Shanti and their south Asian cronies in the crowd. Unusually traditional bright silks peeked from beneath their winter coats. A folding table below the platform stairs, staffed by pre-teens, offered cups of eggnog and hot cider. A big sign hung from their table, colored by the kids, proclaiming ‘Welcome Home!’

The singing faltered and stopped, as the drumming vibration and clatter of the train approached. Brakes squealed the train to a stop. The train doors opened on a single car. Maybe 50 refugees emerged onto the platform, then down into the parking lot, to quiet murmurs of welcome. After only a few minutes of disembarking and head-count double-checking, the train doors shushed closed. The train chugged back to life and departed, to bear its remaining migrants further east up the coast.

New Englanders and New Yorkers are among the world’s least outgoing people. The match-making had already been negotiated via Amenac, pictures and introductions exchanged online. To our shy northeastern souls, this amounted to an excruciatingly intimate way to meet complete strangers. Feet dragged across the parking lot, as dread and commitment drew homeless and homeowners reluctantly together. Mangal and Shanti claimed a fragile Jain woman in late middle age. Their Nepalese friends welcomed a man on crutches with two school-aged children. The final inches of separation were broached, as hosts offered physical support to help the newcomers to waiting electric cars, or a bus for those who had no private transportation. Half of the migrants carried no more than the clothes on their backs.

As the crowd dissipated, a clump of six refugees huddled below the platform unclaimed. I couldn’t stop crying, at the thought of being left there, like a bride abandoned at the altar. We’d gone to so much effort at Amenac, with thousands upon thousands of volunteer hours, to prevent this ever happening. But still, in the end, some people had made a promise, and then not shown up. I felt mortified for Totoket that it was happening here. But tonight it must have been happening all over New England. It damned well better not happen when the North Pole Express pulled into Burlington with those orphans.

“Should we…?” I asked Emmett, sniffling.

We’d talked about it, whether to take in some refugees ourselves. But our situation was too unsettled. Our entire lives already revolved around Project Reunion. Emmett suggested we were doing enough, in our own way. More than enough not to feel guilty. And we deserved space to ourselves at home outside of Project Reunion, for the little time we had there together.

He hugged me close. “They’re OK, Dee. See? The Cocos and the pastors will take good care of them. They’re part of the plan, too. Let’s leave them be.”

“But you worked so hard, and –”

“Shh, darlin’,” Emmett crooned, holding me close. “It’s all good enough. It’s not a perfect world. Not full of perfect people. Dee, today, all of it – this was a win. Or at least, no one’s called to tell me any real disasters. And I kinda think they would. Especially General Link. He likes chewing me out.”

I snorted a laugh, snuffled myself back together, and nodded. “Congratulations, Emmett. Well done.”

“Congratulations to you, too, Dee,” he murmured. We waved good-bye from a distance and walked home, our small candle lanterns lighting the way, tiny glimmers down winding cold dark roads.

Chapter 26

Interesting fact: Liddy Maxwell, and several others from her church in New Haven, did move to the Bronx that winter. Around the same time, Amenac implemented a new cyber-currency system, that allowed people to donate online from their food tax credit balance. Liddy’s Bronx Gospel Choir used it to sell recordings of their live performances. The cyber-currency could be cashed in for extra food deliveries direct to their community from outside the Apple.

The Niedermeyers’ home was gorgeous. Wood-framed, sided in grey cedar shakes, it rose from a beautiful wide front porch that wrapped around octagonal corner towers, replete with windows. Pam or John clearly loved to decorate. Green garlands snaked along the white porch railings, accented with shining golden bows. Living long-needle pine had been cut fresh for the elaborate garland on the door, lashed in red velvet ribbons, strong fresh pine scent wafting from resin-heavy pine cones. It all looked picture-perfect for Christmas, especially with the half foot of white slush dripping everywhere in the angled December sunlight. The weather was schizophrenic that week.

Alex and I traded unhappy glances, dressed in our best and feeling seriously outclassed. Alex looked back nervously at my practical but battered electric car, out of place in the beautifully landscaped semicircular drive, hitched to a seedy little livestock trailer. Boris the billy goat glared out malevolently. I nervously shifted my hostess gift, a homegrown spinach quiche freshly thawed from my freezer.

Emmett couldn’t care less what the Niedermeyers’ house looked like. He just rang the doorbell. This was answered promptly by a smiling teenage version of Pam, just about Alex’s age, assured in her officer’s-kid hostessing skills. An older boy nearing adulthood helped wave us in and take our coats. Not being bald like his father, the boy also seemed to favor Pam. They introduced themselves as Bets and John Jr., or JJ.

Poor Alex stood frozen like a deer caught in headlights. Despite Pam and John waving us on to the living room, Emmett and I tarried in the entry hall to encourage Alex past his teen gauntlet. “D-do you like goats?” Alex finally managed.

Wow, Pam’s kids were well-trained. Bets barely blinked an eye. “Goats are cool,” she agreed blandly. JJ nodded judiciously.

I took pity on Alex and mixed in. “The goats are for Major Cameron,” I offered. “Alex, Bets and JJ are Captain Niedermeyer’s kids. Major Cameron doesn’t have children.”

Alex looked momentarily crestfallen. Then Bets realized that we meant there were actual goats, right here for the petting. She squealed in delight, and the teenagers were off and running.

“Watch out for the –” Emmett began to call after them, but gave it up with a shrug. They weren’t listening. We continued on to greet the Niedermeyers and the Cameron-Perards.

“Machiavelli’s guide to the holidays,” Emmett said, sharing handshake and hug with Cam. They both laughed, and John Niedermeyer as well.

“What was that?” Pam asked sharply. I was giving Emmett a sour look myself, though he’d casually moved on to trade hugs with Dwayne.

“Inside joke,” John excused.

“About that,” Emmett said. “Could I talk to you two in private a moment? Excuse us.” John led Emmett and Cam into his den, and closed the door.

“They’re working at a Christmas party, aren’t they?” I said in dismay. “I’d apologize for Emmett, but he’d just do it again. Never off duty.”

“I don’t think it’s that,” Pam said cryptically.

We helped ourselves to slices of quiche and other treats from the lavishly decorated table, and settled down to socialize. I tried to squelch myself from asking Dwayne how the meshnet roll-out was coming along on Long Island. But then he brought it up. Avoiding talk of Resco business, politics, and Project Reunion, simply wasn’t going to work with this group.

Our menfolk emerged eventually, cheerfully bonded. “Sorry about that, darlin’,” Emmett told me. He wrapped himself around me on the couch. “I had to clear something with John and Cam. You know that SAMS thing that came up at the summit dinner? I worked on vetting the Calm Act, and the Resco manual and stuff?”

“John and Cam were SAMS, too,” I ventured. “You did seem to know each other awfully well.”

Emmett nodded, and stole food from my plate. “We were roommates at Leavenworth. That’s a secret. Even the other SAMS don’t connect us as a team. John and I didn’t work together outside the apartment. And Cam wasn’t officially SAMS. So, had to ask before outing them. But it wasn’t fair, you being the only one in the room who didn’t know.”

I said, “I think I did know. I just wasn’t allowed to say so.”

“Uh-huh,” Emmett said, with a grin.

“Well, I’m glad!” Pam said. “Pussy-footing around was tiresome. So Emmett, Cam. Now that the Penn war is over, are you backing the Reconstitutional Convention?”

Since Thanksgiving, without even a puppet U.S. President anymore, agitation was mounting across New England to open a constitutional convention of the Northeast – the recon-con. The Great Pumpkin blogger was especially strident.

“I’m not convinced the Penn war is over,” Cam said apologetically. “More like a stalemate. Ohio and Virginia put peer pressure on Penn. But Penn still has all of the arms and supplies that were supposed to come to General Cullen and Link. And Cullen’s still a pretty soft target.”

“You make it sound like a contest between generals instead of states,” I said.

“They’re the military governors under martial law,” John said. “Penn’s Tolliver has just the one state. But he’s ringed by super-states – Cullen’s New York–New Jersey, allied with Link’s New England, Schwabacher’s Ohio–West Virginia, O’Hara’s Virginia–Maryland–Delaware. Sondi O’Hara is an admiral, by the way, not a general.”

“Alright, a black woman!” Dwayne cried in enthusiasm. “Nobody ever said that. I thought the military governors were all old white dudes.”

“You have a problem with white men?” inquired Cam dryly.

“Yes, sweetie,” stated Dwayne. “I do.”

“I have a problem with military dictators,” Pam said sourly. “It’s time for that to stop.”

“Is Link willing to allow a constitutional convention?” Emmett asked her. “I wouldn’t, in his shoes. I know Cullen’s told him we won’t go along with it yet.”

“We?” Dwayne asked. “You’re on team New England, too, Emmett.”

“No,” Emmett said, looking at Cam. “Cam and I work for General Cullen. We’re New York Rescos now.” He pressed my hand gently as he said it.

“I thought Long Island transferred to Connecticut,” Cam said with a frown.

“I strongly suggest that you forget you ever said that, Cam,” Emmett said softly. “We don’t want an argument over Long Island coming between Cullen and Link. Do we.”

This visibly didn’t go down well with Cam. But he sighed. “Sir,” he acknowledged.

“Sir?” parroted Dwayne. “Emmett’s your CO now?”

“Sounds that way,” agreed Cam.

Emmett waggled a so-so hand. “We’re both Rescos in the Apple zone. I do outrank Cam.”

Pam looked even more unhappy. “Emmett? You don’t think Cullen will join New England for a new constitution?”

“Cullen’s already told Link no,” Emmett replied. “New York–New Jersey isn’t ready to emerge from martial law. Parts are. Western New York, on the Great Lakes – they’re in pretty good shape. But right now the focus is on Project Reunion. We’ve barely started on the Apple. South Jersey and eastern Long Island are isolated. Penn’s a threat. Cullen doesn’t think Link should drop martial law, either. Not until Boston-Prov is resolved.”

“You agree with him,” John accused.

“For New York, yeah,” Emmett said. “I was surprised that Mora didn’t censor what Cam said on his interview with Dee, about the social levels in the Resco manual,” he mused.

“Carlos and I talked about it,” said Cam. “I felt it would help get us volunteers. To say that there is a plan. There is a model. We’re not just flailing around in desperation. We will proceed from level 1 to level 2 in an orderly fashion. Mora agreed.”

“I’m not criticizing,” Emmett said. “Just surprised how well it worked. You framed the public conversation. In New Haven, DJ got a lot more cooperation than we expected on land use reform. People want to step up to level 8. I never thought that would work.”

I scowled. Clearly I was in the minority, a ‘winner’ who didn’t like land use reform.

“You lost me, Emmett,” said John. “How did we go from the recon-con, to Resco community levels?”

Emmett frowned thoughtfully. “I wonder if that would work to reframe the recon-con question. Our goal right now is not to forge a new democracy. Our goal is to uplift devastated communities back to level 5.”

“Level 5!” said Cam. “In the Apple zone? Ambitious much, Emmett?”

“Aim high,” Emmett replied, with a crooked grin. “You’re more likely to reach it than I am, Cam.”

Cam leaned forward intently. “Reach it,” he echoed. “For what, Emmett?”

“I’ll be Resco for the Apple Core,” Emmett told him quietly.

“The whole Apple Core?” John asked, horrified. “New York City?”

Emmett tilted his head. “We’ll see. I have Project Reunion for now. But I guess that’s what I’m saying, Pam. I don’t disagree with you, or the Great Pumpkin. We’ll need a new constitution. It’s just, I have a job to do. So does Cam. What helps me more? I think martial law does. I think people in New York need food. Water. Sanitation. A chance to survive. Then rebuild. Basic needs first. Democracy? We don’t have the tools to hold elections. It’s too soon.”

Cam nodded thoughtfully. “I watched elections in the Middle East – I’m sure Emmett did, too. It isn’t as easy as it sounds.”

I was gratified that Emmett told me before them, about continuing on in New York after Project Reunion. Somewhat less gratified that business took over the Christmas party. After this little bombshell, the three SAMS roommates went deep into brainstorming mode. Dwayne and I left them to it, and shifted to sit at the dining table to socialize. Pam reluctantly joined us.

But our group just got onto a different political tangle, as I shared my little farming distraction with Dwayne and Pam.

“Sounds like they’re trying the model we used for Windham,” Dwayne told me. He’d been Coco for Windham township in Windham County, before leaving with his husband for Long Island. “Too bad you missed the local debates, Dee. I think you’d kinda like it.

“The idea is stewardship, instead of private property,” Dwayne explained. “Even the houses. You get right of stewardship over the house, and a bit of land around it. But you have to manage it well, or lose it. Care for the land well, and you become steward of more. Take on too much, next year you get less.” He laughed. “I would have had 8 acres next year. Oh, well.”

“I don’t know why they gave me so much,” I confided. “I only grew enough for us.”

“Emmett used to help you?” Pam prodded.

“Oh…” I said. “Zack and Alex managed the livestock, then Emmett and Alex. Yeah. I should probably give some land back. But I still feel obligated to at least try, you know? Come up with a plan. Though I don’t know how much livestock is appropriate, for Alex. He’s good. But he’s just a kid. Anyway. I’ll figure it out.”

“You can do it,” Dwayne assured me. “Remember, you’re just the manager. You hire labor when you need it. It’s that manager part that you can’t delegate to a kid.”

“When did you learn Emmett wasn’t coming back, Dee?” Pam asked gently.

“Just the day before yesterday,” I said. “It’s been a rough couple days. We just kinda laid low yesterday.”

“Welcome to the life of an Army wife,” Dwayne quipped.

“Not a wife yet,” Pam observed. “There’s still time to escape.” She cocked an eyebrow at me.

“Partners,” I said. “Lovers, too, but… We’re partners. Project Reunion, the farm, Amenac, raising Alex. After we talked the other day, Pam, I realized. I do like my independence. You know what I want? After, like, two years of being partners, when we can’t imagine breaking up anymore? Then I’d want to get engaged. But only engaged, you know? Then set a date to get married, like two years after that.”

“That!” Emmett cried. I hadn’t noticed that the ‘husbands’ had stopped talking behind us. Emmett suddenly took a knee by my chair, and clasped my hand, with his happiest slow grin. “Dee Baker, will you do that with me? What you just said?”

“What?” I asked, distracted. “Hang out together another two years, then reconsider?”

“We’ve been partners a year in February,” he quibbled. “Say yes.”

I laughed, and replied, “Sure. Why not.” Thus cementing my single-with-benefits state for at least another three years, it seemed. It felt strangely secure and liberating at the same time.

Instead of a kiss, Emmett froze. “What was that?” Suddenly he bolted to the front door. When he opened it, Boris the billy goat barged right in. Emmett managed to tackle the goat before it could do any damage indoors, and dragged it back outside again.

“Cam! Dwayne!” Emmett called. “Come meet your Christmas gifts!”

The Niedermeyers and I hung out on the porch to enjoy the show, while Emmett gave Cam and Dwayne a crash course in goat herding. The teens must have left the trailer unfastened while they wandered off. The two pregnant nanny goats were easy enough to apprehend. Dwayne seemed to bond with them.

Boris was another story entirely – 200 pounds of masculine menace, who could leap onto the top of my car in a single bound, then turn around to leer at the men. Fortunately, Cam enjoyed the male dominance games. I could have done without the hoof dents on my car.

Leaving Boris with Alex had been a bit much to ask. Bunnies were more his speed. I explained to the Niedermeyers that I’d requested Emmett find a new home for the monster. These days, plenty of people in Totoket had billy goats to breed with our does. Alex and I didn’t need to deal with Boris.

“Command presence, Cam,” Emmett encouraged, laughing at him. “Show him who’s boss!” And yet again, Cam was sliding face-first into the slush while Boris hopped nimbly away.

Boris returned to gloat, flapping his long velvety ears in a tease. Cam finally caught the beast around the ribcage, and manhandled him into the trailer. Cam and Emmett shook hands in triumph.

This adventure led to further present opening, once Cam changed into dry clothes. My favorite was a small package for Emmett, that General Cullen in New York had sent along. That was sweet all in itself, that Pam or John had arranged for a present from Cullen to be waiting here. Emmett read a couple pages of hand-written letter, then opened the package to dangle a cross on a chain. Unlike his father’s, this cross was the current military design, simple arms of stainless steel, battered and bent. Emmett took it in his fingers and read the engraving.

“Kansas City to NYC, Love Dad,” he murmured huskily. “Cullen found it in the West Point chapel.” I hugged him, and he laid his head on mine gratefully.

“Emmett’s dad was special forces. KIA,” John Niedermeyer explained quietly to Pam.

Cam commented, “Follow a guy like that to hell and back.”

“Uh-huh,” said Emmett thoughtfully. “Cam. You and I should talk more. I’m sorry about that. This weekend is crazy – Camp Upstate and Jersey do their first big refugee releases Monday. Let’s start next Wednesday?”

“You’re on,” agreed Cam. “I’d enjoy that.”

“What did you and Emmett get for each other, Dee?” Pam asked. “If I may ask.”

I rubbed Emmett’s neck. He was sitting on the floor, leaning back between my legs, with me on the couch. “A quiet day yesterday. No presents. No family dinners. No New York. Lots of back-rubs and bath-tubs and quiet.”

“It was awesome,” Emmett said, leaning his head all the way back. “Just what I needed. Monday… The big debut for Camp Yankee was incredible. Haven’t cried so much in one day since my dad died when I was twelve.”

“How did you get time off now?” asked Cam. “Seems like a tricky time for it.”

“I called Link a…never mind,” Emmett replied. “Cullen called back. Told me to take my time coming back to New York.”

Cam laughed. “I’ve always wanted to call Link an expletive deleted. Did you enjoy it?”

“Uh-huh. I really did,” Emmett confirmed with a grin.

It was truly good to finally have couple friends, for Emmett and me as a couple. I loved Mangal and Shanti, and Shelley and Trey next door with Alex. But they weren’t peers like the Niedermeyers and Cam and Dwayne. Friends Emmett could depend on, and me.

I saw Emmett off at the train the next morning, and got back to business on PR for Project Reunion.

Chapter 27

Interesting fact: When people joined the meshnet on Long Island, they received a Help Wanted ad – We Pay in Food, All Skills Needed. Major Cameron’s team planned to use this to compile an inventory of people and skills. But one of the first ten respondents pointed out that the quarantine already collected this information. After that, it was a matter of days before experienced public works crews were located and back on the job.

Winter spun by quickly. For one thing, it was about the mildest winter I could remember in Connecticut. Climate change was a factor, of course, but our local winters ran the gamut as far back as I could remember. Some years we had bitter arctic winters, blowing straight down from the Canadian Shield, snow-clad from Thanksgiving to April, with temperatures plunging well below zero. And then there were other years like this one, where snow fell and melted within a day. More often than not, it fell as rain in the first place. The mild winter was a great mercy for the survivors in the Apple.

I saw Emmett again before New Year’s. General Cullen convened a mid-course review for Project Reunion, held at a hotel in Greenwich this time. Even I was impressed when I cobbled together everything the software and media teams had contributed. My presentation got the second longest standing ovation of the summit. The longest, of course, was reserved for Emmett.

By then, all four quarantine camps were graduating refugees at full capacity, nearly 200,000 people a week. They were no longer strictly quarantine camps, though. Once Clarke Whitfield’s falsified data was out of the way, CDC researchers found that the weaponized strain of Ebola had died out months before. Illnesses of starvation and bad sanitation they had in plenty. But there were no confirmed new cases of Ebola. The four-week program at the camps continued, though, for careful feeding and rehabilitation before release.

The only major mid-course correction was that Admiral O’Hara of the Virginia states, and General Schwabacher of the Ohio, urged a joint offensive against Pennsylvania to take back the Northeast’s strategic supplies. They were satisfied that Project Reunion was well run, and approved of expanding it. Homeland Security, working jointly with agents infiltrated into Pennsylvania by General Cullen, believed they’d located the caches. Obviously, I didn’t attend the meetings where they planned their strike. Neither did Emmett. But the more supplies they liberated from Penn, the longer Project Reunion could run, and the more New Yorkers would be released for resettlement.

January brought little news of the Penn war, largely because it was censored out. In the end, outnumbered and faced with ethical instead of territory demands, Penn’s other military leaders chose to execute Tolliver and sue for peace. They had to relinquish three quarters of their food stockpiles, most of which New England’s Link graciously ceded to New York’s Cullen. They didn’t release details of what happened to the rest of the war materiel. Emmett told me they had to fork over most of that, too.

They never added a Camp Penn. Instead, Camp Upstate and Camp Jersey scaled up and started sending refugees to Pennsylvania within weeks. Camp Yankee also ran an extra couple weeks, processing 150,000 more settlers for New England than originally planned.

We learned that Penn never lost power or Internet internally. They’d just interdicted the Internet at the borders. Most people inside were in good shape. One Penn Resco came in at level 9 on the 10-level Resco scale, breaking Cam’s previous record performance for the Northeast. Cam was miffed, but conceded that Penn had better raw agricultural talent to work with. None of Penn was below level 3, not even Philadelphia. The level 3’s were ark fiefdoms like those in New York and New England. There were some bizarre new religious enclaves in Penn, some home to people the Northeast thought long dead and gone.

Bygones gradually became bygones, once sensible people were talking to each other again.

The meshnet release was a huge success. I didn’t have much to do with it anymore. But it spread like wildfire throughout the Apple and Long Island.

I bowed out of the PR interviews, too, mostly. There was just too much work to supervise on the PR websites, between the refugee matchmaking and people lost-and-found and volunteer coordinator databases. The steering committee collared me and demanded that I manage more, and travel less. Kyla and Jennifer continued with the human interest stories for the broadcast series. Amiri Baz and his team kept up with the more dangerous reporting. They all did a much better job of it than I could, anyway. They didn’t get sidetracked trying to fix things the way I did.

I never aimed for upper level management at UNC, back in my corporate days. It felt downright odd to have a full-time job doing that now. Not at all what I’d envisioned when Mangal and I recruited the Amen1 hackers to help us publish weather reports a year before. At least I still telecommuted. But my inbox rapidly grew to rival Emmett’s. He wryly recommended some management texts he’d enjoyed, and encouraged me to hire assistants.

-o-

I tried to give some land back to the West Totoket agricultural committee. I showed them my tentative plans. I told them I wasn’t sure I’d be able to carry through for the whole season. That I might still find a way to reunite with Emmett somewhere, somehow.

My farming neighbors studied my plans and declared themselves delighted. They assured me that whenever I needed to walk away, they’d be happy to take over. We’d just split the proceeds for the year.

In other words, they weren’t any more eager than I was, for the back-breaking years of effort to convert lawn and asphalt into productive farmland. Getting the land onto the right path in spring was a lot more than half the battle.

The ground never froze that winter, so I acquired a tiller and a day laborer. I had the worker slowly slice strips of sod from the lawns, and lay them out to grow on unused driveways. For this year, I was shooting for alternating stripes of grass and forage legumes on the livestock lawns. Prepping the crop yards, without the stripes of grass, would have to wait for spring. Otherwise the rains would just wash the bare soil down into the street.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy being a farm manager, instead of a farmer. I made up the plans and acquired the tools and material. I spent a half hour or so teaching someone else step by step how to carry out the work. Then I went back to my office while they did the grueling labor for hours of follow-through. It was downright orgasmic. Especially the part where they were grateful for the chance to work for food – no guilt. My land grant came with an impressive food credit budget to pay these people. The Cocos made hiring a breeze.

I’d like to say I learned my lesson, and didn’t take on any more side-projects. ‘Uh-huh,’ as Emmett would say.

-o-

My next big distraction came from my day job. I was alone in my office at the end of January, reviewing feedback and plans on the PR broadcasts. Early signs of worthwhile competition were brewing. But at that point, we seemed to produce the most popular new ‘television’ programming in the U.S., so far as I could tell.

My phone rang. “Hold for the Speaker of the House,” my caller announced.

“The what?”

“I am speaking to Ms. Dee Baker? General manager of the Amenac and Project Reunion websites?”

“This is she,” I agreed, bemused. The most general of the managers, anyway.

“Then please hold for the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.”

I idly clicked a record button on my computer, and put the call on speaker.

“Ms. Baker! Thank you for agreeing to speak with me,” the next voice said. She sounded familiar from her speech announcing President O’Donnell’s impeachment. Not that I’d agreed to speak with her, exactly. “I’m hoping you can help me broadcast a series of statements regarding the Calm Act.”

“An honor, Madam Speaker,” I replied, lost. “But, you seem able to do that on your own?”

“My speech in December didn’t reach anyone,” Speaker Krause complained, “until Project Reunion re-broadcast it.”

“Ah. You want to speak to our viewership. Well, I’m sure we’d mention anything of interest in your broadcast.” Probably edited, I didn’t add. Though apparently we both heard it.

“I understand you will spin this for your audience, Ms. Baker. I’m not a fool,” she sniped. “I’ve dealt with the press far longer than you’ve been pretending to be a journalist.”

I contemplated the hang up button, but courteously gave her 10 seconds before applying it. I smiled for practice during the silence. You can always hear a smile over the phone.

The Speaker sighed, and apparently recalled that she was asking me for a favor. “What I’m hoping for, is to frame the announcements with interviews and a retrospective. Explain the Calm Act, its three phases, and its accomplishments. A Calm Act special report.”

This time I was honestly struck dumb.

“Ms. Baker?”

“I’m…listening,” I managed. The Calm Act’s primary accomplishment was to lose over a hundred million American lives. Apparently you can hear flabbergasted over a phone as well.

“The Calm Act was necessary,” Speaker Krause insisted. “We need to explain that. And set the stage for the final phase.”

“Final. Phase,” I echoed. What, kill off the rest of us?

“Our announcement in March, of the final phase of the Calm Act,” Krause said.

“Which is?” I asked.

“We will announce that in March,” she said primly. “But it’s important that people be properly informed, to understand what the final phase means.”

“Is it?” I asked. “I’m sorry, Madam Speaker, but I…question the relevance.”

“You what?”

“If Project Reunion did as you asked, and filmed a special on the Calm Act, I don’t believe you would care for the results.” I let that hang for a few moments, then continued, “Here in New England, we no longer recognize the authority of the U.S. Congress. Because of the Calm Act. There is no President. I don’t know what the Supreme Court is up to, and I don’t really care. But to say what I would like to say about the Calm Act – what I know to be true about the Calm Act – is a violation of the Calm Act. Catch-22.”

She snorted haughtily. “Well, I don’t know what you think you know about the Calm Act –”

“More than you think,” I interrupted. “Madam Speaker, Project Reunion is open to doing the same sort of treatment for your…announcements…as we did for President O’Donnell’s. But if you open up the Calm Act for discussion, there will be truth spoken. Possibly more truth than you bargained for. Are you willing to inform HomeSec that Project Reunion is free to discuss the Calm Act? Candidly? Are you prepared to hand over the full text of the Calm Act, and let us publish it, with commentary? And do I, on Project Reunion, have any desire to publish that at this time? I suspect the answer is No. As my mother used to say, ‘all that is true is not necessarily helpful.’”

After a long silence, Krause asked, “You no longer recognize the U.S. Congress?”

“You passed a law intended to cause the deaths of 40 percent of the American people,” I replied acidly. “And then you hid in an ark, to exempt yourselves from the consequences.”

“That was necessary to assure continuity of government –”

“You achieved discontinuity,” I said flatly. “You do not represent me. Or anyone else.” With an effort, I backed off a little, and allowed, “But we’ll be interested to hear what you have to say in March.” So that we can hang you with it.

“I see,” Krause said. “No, I don’t suppose this will work. Good day, Ms. Baker.”

Still shaking with anger, I called Carlos Mora next, blessing him for his forethought in buttering up Homeland Security these past few months. I played my recording for him.

His first comment was, “Glad I’m not the only one with anger management issues. Dee, next time someone pisses you off like that, try to get off the phone. Say you’ll call them back or something. Granted, that’s not easy when you’re furious.”

“Yeah, no,” I agreed. “Carlos… Is it in PR’s best interest to open this can of worms?”

After a pause, he answered tangentially. “Is Emmett coming home next month to plan?”

“Yeah, for a couple weeks,” I agreed. “Is Link doing this plan-a-thon thing for New England, too?”

Emmett had told me General Cullen wanted to meet March’s announcement with his own concrete plans, for what New York–New Jersey intended to do after this phase of the Calm Act was over. Cullen’s officers were required to submit proposals before March 1.

“Yeah,” Carlos replied. “Our theme is dismantling the interior borders in New England. Including Boston-Prov. Reintegrating as a regional economy. That’s our response, no matter what Congress says. The future. Where we are, where we’re going. Washington’s out of touch, but we’re on the ball. Dee, send me this recording. I’ll talk to HomeSec and set up a steering committee meeting for PR. Let’s define our own special report for March.”

Chapter 28

Interesting fact: The North Atlantic Oscillation climate pattern causes Europe and North America to alternate on cold winters. That winter was especially warm for the U.S., but possibly millions died of record-breaking cold and snows across Europe and Russia. Overall, of course, the year was the warmest on record. Again.

God, it was good to have Emmett home in February! Sort of.

I mean, it was wonderful having him home. That was an unqualified, enthusiastic win. For a couple scant weeks, we actually got to live together, eat together, hold each other. A few days here and there wasn’t long enough for him to ever unwind. Emmett wasn’t in combat in New York – or at least, he never admitted any combat to me – so he didn’t exactly suffer post-traumatic stress. Except that everything about the conditions in the Apple Core was traumatic, and Emmett was under crushing stress all the time.

I don’t know how real Army wives did it. You’re so eager to see your man again. Then he comes home and you’re tiptoeing around on eggshells trying not to spook him while he spins down. At least Emmett cried easily. That was probably one of his greatest strengths, that he could recognize when he was miserable and overwhelmed and just cry, and let it go. If he ever lost the ability to cry, I’d worry for him.

Unwinding didn’t seem to make him any happier, though. After a few days, he was no longer taut as a bowstring. No longer breaking out in tears several times a day. But the difference between planning Project Reunion, and planning the future of the Apple Core, was just day and night. In October, he’d been a whirlwind, inspired and inspiring, a man on a mission. In February, he worked splayed out on my living room floor. He glowered at my big display, sifting through untold gigabytes of data. A mountain of crumpled paper grew in the corner around a wastebasket, plans scratched out and scrapped.

I helped him sometimes, when he could slice off a concrete subproblem for me to take and run with. That morning I’d provided him with maps of where to clear out the city canyons for flood plains, allowing margin for storms and a 10-foot ocean rise. Which communities needed to move, which subway lines to close and fill with rubble.

I thought that was constructive. I thought it would improve the city immeasurably, to level out the building and asphalt clutter, and surround it with greenbelts and marshes. Granted, the residents might feel differently. And although leveling buildings was easy enough – we had the munitions – clearing rubble, and turning the poisoned industrial brownfields back into living land, was not. Emmett thanked me with a kiss, subdued, and rubbed his head while he rummaged the maps, as though he were trying to rub away an incipient head-ache.

I kissed the crown of his head, as he did to me when I was working, and went out for a walk. Noon was my call-Cameron time of day, and today I thought I could use it.

“What can I do, Cam?” I asked, after describing my unhappy not-hubby. “I know, I know. ‘Ask him that.’”

“Well, you could ask him,” Cam allowed. “Sounds to me like funk, though. Emmett on a mission is a force of nature. And he doesn’t funk easy. But if he doesn’t have a vision of how this could work, a theory, a germ of a plan – then this planning is just torture. Although…”

“Yeah?” I prompted.

Cam sighed. “I probably shouldn’t say this. But I will. What if it’s not New York that’s bothering him? You…aren’t planning to move into the city with him. Are you.”

I froze. Even my breathing was shallow. “I… He hasn’t asked me to do that.”

“He hasn’t asked you to do that,” Cam theorized, “because he loves you and considers it tantamount to inviting you to live in hell with him.”

I stood on a driveway, toeing one of my sod stripes. There was drizzle and ball lightning that day. I’d learned to ignore those. Sometimes ball lightning exploded near you. Usually it didn’t. Even the explosions hadn’t killed me yet. After a while I just got tired of living in fear of the damned things. They existed here. So did I.

“Did you ask Dwayne to move to hell with you, Cam?” I eventually asked.

“No. His idea,” Cam said. “When Dwayne heard about the conference on saving New York, he asked if we could sign up to save Hoboken. His home town. Then during the conference, I thought maybe Long Island might make a good compromise. He jumped on the idea. Long Island isn’t hell, Dee. My plans are coming together nicely. I think this year will be a lot of fun. Lot of work. But a lot of fun, too.”

“You don’t like the city?”

“No,” said Cam emphatically. “Four years at West Point, and I went down to the city twice. The first time was New Year’s Eve, a million strangers at Times Square. Hated it.”

I’d lived in Stamford for several years, about the same distance. I wasn’t tempted to try the New Year’s in Times Square thing even once. “I wish Emmett were going to Long Island,” I breathed wistfully. “New York… Cam, I love him. And I wanted to help New York. But living there…”

“Maybe that’s what you need to talk to him about,” said Cam. “But you know – I’d love to have you and Emmett here on Long Island. Just saying.”

“Is it up to him?” I asked, hardly daring to whisper it.

Cam laughed. “Was it up to him to save New York? Dee, Sean Cullen is our commanding officer. Not our mommy, not a dictator. When your boss gives you a job you can’t do, it’s up to you to tell him, and renegotiate. But in this case, it’s not that Emmett can’t do it. Not exactly. And he probably wants to do it. Sorta kinda. He also wants to be with you.”

“Thanks, Cam,” I said in a small voice, and signed off with him. I sadly reflected that Emmett and I should have had this conversation months ago. Since we hadn’t, that probably meant that both of us were afraid to talk about it.

-o-

“Emmett? Can I help?” I asked, when I got back. He had a resource spreadsheet open on the big screen, calculating something. I took this as a good sign. You need a fairly good handle on a problem to set up an equation for it.

“Sure couldn’t hurt, darlin’,” Emmett replied. He pulled me down to the floor beside him, leaning back on the couch, and put an arm around me. He kept control of laptop, mouse and keyboard. Typical. I ordered my itching fingers not to make a grab for the mouse just yet.

“New theory,” he said. “Spreading resources too thin is a complete waste of resources. If it’s not enough to make a dramatic difference, it’s…piffling. Piffling won’t get us anywhere.”

“I buy that,” I agreed. “Kind of like the community coordinators here in New Haven. You assigned them big areas, but they each chose to control a choke point and do it well.”

“Right. Sort of right,” Emmett agreed. “This time, all the communities I’ll bother with already have militia control. Or cops or whatever. Instead, we’re focused on uplift. A half dozen communities, uplift all the way to level 5. As cores, to work out from.”

“Level 5 being,” I said, frowning, “more or less equal power to townsfolk and militia, sharing economic benefits equally. Right? Why six?”

“One for each borough,” Emmett said. “Calling the Jersey cities on the Hudson a sixth borough. So anyway, I think the six can get to a pretty good model community standard of living. And thin coverage elsewhere. Restore the water mains and sanitation, power and Internet, at least to community centers, part of the day. Food deliveries.”

“Food deliveries in return for work?” I asked.

He nodded. “We have plenty of work.” He sighed. “Then I only have to find food-earning work for the people in the model communities. The rest can clear rubble. At first.”

“You hate this plan,” I observed. This plan called for city-wide public welfare in return for public works projects, funded on charity from outside the city. As Resco plans went, prizing local sustainability above all, this plan rated an epic fail. “There isn’t any real reason to suppose these model six communities will uplift the others. Instead of the weight of the others dragging them down.”

“Uh-huh.” Emmett sighed and rubbed his neck. “Have a good walk?”

“Yeah. I had a long chat with Cam…” I was reluctant to bring up the moving-to-New-York thing directly. Especially if Emmett was finally coming to some kind of peace with his planning process. “Emmett? Did you visit the city much while you were at West Point?”

“Hell, no. Country boy,” replied Emmett. “Field trips upstate, outward bound type stuff. Rock climbing. Camping. Skiing. Hunting. Loved upstate. Hated the city.” He gnawed on a thumb.

His phone rang, and after a few words, Emmett put General Cullen on speaker. The general invited us both to a Resco planning session, at the hotel in Greenwich again. Someday he hoped to have a convenient location in New York instead of Connecticut. But for now, Greenwich was more accessible, with Emmett and Cam coming through Connecticut, and Pete Hoffman coming up from New Jersey by water.

“Dee, I’d be most grateful if you could attend,” said Cullen. “I’ll invite the wives and husbands as well. But you’ve always been an equal partner with Emmett on Project Reunion.”

“Thank you, sir,” I said. “I hate to give up any of my few days with Emmett.”

“Agreed,” said Cullen. “And meeting in person like this will slow things down. But I think it’s worth it to get better plans. Emmett, feel free to take a few more days at home to compensate for the meeting.”

No doubt about it. Sean Cullen was better than Ivan Link at making his people want to do their damnedest for him.

-o-

The meeting in Greenwich was more intimate than I expected. General Cullen wanted to decide policy with his top Rescos, not hold a convention. Colonel Pete Hoffman attended from New Jersey, Lt. Colonels Ash Margolis of Poughkeepsie and Tony Nasser of Buffalo, plus Emmett and Cameron and myself, and that was it – seven people in a comfortable hotel meeting room. Unlimited snacks and water, plenty of elbow room for computers and paper and putting our feet up on spare chairs.

“First lightning round,” Sean Cullen announced. “Old hands first, to show our new people how we do things. Today is for brainstorming. Shirtsleeves and first names only. Pete? Plans and key issues for South Jersey.”

Pete, Ash, and Tony were succinct, and crystal clear, reporting plans for their own direct areas and on behalf of the other dozen or so Rescos of Jersey and upstate. That lightning round finished up with a rather daunting whiteboard list of issues, I felt. But they were used to their problems. I was glad to hear that the Project Reunion migrant status was ‘so far so good’ on the receiving end. The refugees were settling into their new communities.

Cam went next. In only four months on Long Island, his progress, metrics, and plans were eye-popping. His people were already decently fed and getting stronger every day. He expected to be food-sufficient this year, and tax-paying by next year. Only the eastern half of Suffolk County, but even that was huge. Emmett beamed congratulations and shook his hand. I traded Cam a high-five.

“My God,” said Ash. “Cameron, how the hell did you do all that?”

“I have Dee to thank for some key contributions,” Cam answered. He started counting on his fingers. “Her PR interviews brought in an excellent crew of Coco adventurers. Her meshnet gave us communications without infrastructure. She gave me an incredible satellite inventory of land and tech assets.”

Cam grinned and added, “Oh, and the quality of life goal. We’re cold and hungry and can’t afford squat. But we have this beautiful island. There’s all sorts of fun we can have for free.”

“I didn’t do it,” I said, shaking my head.

“You did,” Cam insisted. “Laundry. You can’t afford food, but at least your shorts don’t have to chafe.”

I laughed. “Alright, that much. But beyond underwear, the rest was all you. And Emmett found you food. And the Coast Guard gave you transport.”

Cam nodded. “No question. I’ve had incredible help, Ash.”

“Superb, Cameron,” Sean Cullen interjected. “I want to hear more about this satellite inventory. Do we all have this technique?”

Cam and Emmett grinned at the mulish expression on my face. “It’s OK, Dee,” Cam twitted me. “Think job security for your friend Reza. Not you.”

Cullen let the meeting devolve into fifteen minutes of fun with maps as a sort of mid-morning break. But then he dragged us back to business. “Now for our problem child. And Emmett, by that I’m referring to the Apple, not you. Your work has been miraculous, outstanding in every way. Yet our problem remains. Let’s start with Project Reunion status.”

That status report was easy. Emmett had been tracking completion of the migrant goals for four months now, and Project Reunion was drawing to a close. The original relocation goals were complete, Camp Yankee shutting down. The project was in extra innings at Camp Jersey and Camp Upstate to supply the bonus refugees that Penn had agreed to accept as part of the peace treaty. Emmett started out relaxed and practiced, and grew increasingly tense as he drew toward the shutdown phase.

“Let’s stop there a moment, Emmett,” said Cullen. “We’ve had some major positive surprises since the planning phase of this thing. Food – massive increase in our food budget from Penn and Wisconsin. Disease – Ebola died out. Targets – migrants increased by 35%. But the most intriguing was structural. You found viable communities in the Apple Core.”

“Viable?” quibbled Pete Hoffman. “Surviving. But not sustainable.”

Cullen frowned, but nodded slowly. “What’s our status in there now, Emmett?”

“Within the month, we’ll be down to five million people in the Apple zone, including Long Island. Nearly two million migrated out. About one million remain in the Apple Core. Food –”

“Hold off on that,” Cullen interrupted with a wave. He pointed to the whiteboard. “We need transportation. We need to reintegrate South Jersey and Long Island with food and power distribution. Unless South Jersey would rather join Virginia or Penn. Pete?”

“South Jersey wants to reunite with North Jersey,” Pete insisted. “You won’t get rid of us that easy, Sean.”

Cullen smiled wryly. “Not trying to get rid of anybody, Pete. But you see my point. I don’t see any way around reintegrating the Apple Core. It’s a choke point. We could bypass it to the west. Reintegrate the Jersey corridor next to Penn. But that still leaves Long Island stranded.”

Only then did I catch on that Cullen was revisiting the case for leaving the Apple to its own fate. Emmett to my left looked sad. Cam to my right looked mutinous. Before he could mix in, I said, “It leaves five million people stranded.”

Pete Hoffman sighed. “It was always the weak part of the Project Reunion plan. Once we’d given all the help we could give, and it still wasn’t enough, then what? Now we have a much smaller intractable problem, and several million people better off.”

“They bought the rest of New York–New Jersey their lives,” said Emmett softly. “You were in no shape to withstand Penn.”

Pete nodded slowly. “That part was sheer genius, Emmett.”

“Agreed,” said Cullen. “Emmett’s pulled some rabbits out of his hat. But I suspect he’s out of rabbits. And what’s left… Emmett, I hope I’m not out of line to share this with Tony. That you helped to write the Resco manual? The rest of us already knew that.”

Emmett shrugged a fair-enough. He nodded to Tony Nasser of Buffalo, who was duly impressed.

“Me, too,” said Cam. That raised three pairs of eyebrows, but not, I noted, Sean Cullen’s. I wondered who told Cullen. “I wrote the tech base chapters. Helped Emmett test the militia chapters.”

“And you, Emmett?” Cullen prodded.

“Subsistence agriculture,” admitted Emmett. “And testing the IEDs and car bombs.” He didn’t look enthused. After being officers in the Middle East for years, I imagine it rankled to unleash their nemesis IEDs – improvised explosive devices – in the U.S.

Cam defended, “A car bomb does wonders for morale when you’re outnumbered.”

Cullen looked amused. “My point, gentlemen, was that neither of you focused on cities. For cities above half a million, the Resco manual seems to suggest we not even try.”

Cam winced. Emmett murmured, “I wanted to save Kansas City. I got outvoted.”

I squeezed his hand under the table, and said quietly, “New York isn’t Kansas City, Emmett. Different order of magnitude. Literally.”

“Not in population. Not anymore,” argued Emmett.

Cullen gazed thoughtfully at Cam and Emmett. “Alright. Emmett seems to think there’s some hope for applying the Resco model to New York City. What do you have so far, Emmett?”

And Emmett brought up his maps, his plans to date. Getting the water mains and sanitation back on line, and enough power to run those. About 50 organized communities in 6 boroughs, including the Jersey City–Hoboken pseudo-borough. The floodplains plan. His chosen six level 5 model communities. Ferry services linking them. Sketched in food distribution.

He sighed. “That’s as far as I got.”

“Your confidence level doesn’t seem high, Emmett,” Ash observed gently.

“No,” Emmett agreed. “Oh, and some key personnel resources. Adam Lacey, the leader of the ferry engineering team, quit the Coast Guard. He’s interviewing engineers for me, and sketching out the mechanical plans. All of the PR camp commandants want to become Rescos. The guy on Camp Jersey asked for Jersey-borough. Camp Upstate wants the Bronx. Camp Yankee hopes to grow inward from Port Chester toward the Apple Core. Camp Suffolk wants a slice of Long Island, eventually. A lot of people want to continue as assistants in the Apple Core.”

Ash inquired, “Emmett, do you think those people want the mission? Or do they want to stick with you? Stay on a winning team, sort of thing.”

Emmett swallowed uncomfortably. “I don’t know. I feel like I’m letting them down.”

Pete Hoffman shrugged. “I’m as unconvinced as Emmett with this plan. But I couldn’t do any better.”

“Oh, I think these plans aren’t half-bad,” said Tony Nasser of Buffalo. “Emmett, if you don’t want to execute, that’s fine. I saw your role as moving these New Yorkers into new lives outside the city. Not taking on the city itself. You’ve got a hell of a gift for planning.”

“It’s a good start,” Cam agreed. “But we need transport. The Long Island railroad back up and running. Metro North lines to Connecticut and upstate. New Jersey Transit. And Emmett, I’d prefer you farming out on Long Island, with me. You don’t belong in the concrete canyons. Long Island has a lot more people than the city now. Lot of smaller cities, and big agricultural potential. I’m spread too thin.”

Sean Cullen stared pointedly at Ash Margolis.

Ash nodded slowly. “Yeah. Emmett, no way I’d take the Apple Core from you, if you want it. But I’m from Manhattan. That’s my city. My second can handle Poughkeepsie.”

Sean knocked on the table. “Let’s stop there for lunch. I need to leave now, but I’ll meet you for dinner. I’m told that today is Dee and Emmett’s one year anniversary, from the day they met.” He smiled at me warmly. “My aide will upgrade our dinner plans accordingly. So, this afternoon. I’d like you to jointly brainstorm a plan for the whole Apple Zone. Who, is not the issue. What, is the issue. What do you jointly recommend we do.

“Emmett,” Cullen continued, “you have dibs on the Apple Core. But for this afternoon, I suggest you let go and plan for what someone needs to do. That might help loosen up your thinking.” He smiled and dismissed us for lunch.

I didn’t budge, as Emmett’s colleagues filed out. Emmett rose to leave, but sank slowly back to his seat and raised an eyebrow at me. Tony Nasser shot back a smile and closed the door to give us privacy.

“Adam left the Coast Guard?” I opened with. It seemed more neutral than my real point.

“Uh-huh,” Emmett breathed. “Dee, we can gossip later.”

“Pick Long Island, Emmett,” I said softly. “Please? We could live together there.”

He swiveled his chair to face mine and took both my hands, hunched over, arms on his knees. He didn’t meet my eyes. “Darlin’,” he said softly. “The biggest problem here is not that I hate New York, or that I’m scared of the job. It’s big. I can handle big. The problem is you.”

“Us?” I suggested hopefully. “Us being together.”

He met my eye. “You’re married to your land in Totoket, Dee. Not me. I’m a soldier. My work isn’t in nice peaceful places.” He dropped his eyes and let go my hands. “You can follow me into hell-holes. Or we can have a long-distance relationship most of the time.” He swallowed painfully. “Darlin’, I respect you, and your work. But you’ve got to respect mine.”

He stood and traced my face with a finger. “I do love you, darlin’. This afternoon… Let me work with the guys.”

Chapter 29

Interesting fact: Alaska and Minnesota officially became Canadian provinces the same week.

“Emmett MacLaren! Dee Baker!” the restaurant hostess gushed. “It’s such an honor to meet you!”

Emmett blinked uneasily, and attempted a smile. I was, if not used to it, at least slightly broken in. The other ‘wives’ and I had been fending off the celebrity treatment all afternoon. Dwayne caught less of it than I did, while we wandered the market day crowds in Greenwich. But even he gave a half dozen autographs. I lost count of how many people begged for mine. I had time to work out a stock response.

“Thank you so much for your support of Project Reunion,” I told the hostess, with my best gracious smile. I towed Emmett into the restaurant to give the hostess space to gush over Cam and Dwayne, and General Cullen in turn.

Emmett and I were famous. Odd how that didn’t come up much in our daily lives.

“Guess we don’t get out much,” Emmett commented, glancing back over his shoulder at the hostess.

“You don’t get that from the troops in the Apple?” I asked.

“Well, maybe,” he admitted. “Civilians are new. Pops! Carlos! DJ!” Emmett broke out in a huge grin in surprise.

Apparently Cullen’s aide had contacted the local Connecticut Resco, Major Papadopoulos, while seeking a dinner venue for our one-year anniversary bash. Pops had taken this as an invitation to join the party, and brought a couple friends along. Emmett and Cam were promptly swallowed into a mini Connecticut Resco flock reunion.

Even I got a warm hug from Mora. “Congratulations on a year’s partnership with Emmett, Dee. Hell of a ride! Great thing for all of us that you two teamed up.”

Emmett grabbed Mora in a hug next. “Thank you for everything, Carlos. I’m so glad you’re here! You met Carlos that day, too,” he reminded me. “Carlos was the one who thought saving Amenac had possibilities. I thought you were trouble.”

I laughed. “You were both right.”

“Colonel Mora!” General Cullen butted in jovially. “Good to see you again! No poaching, I hope. Not fair to use our little celebration to lure your Rescos back to New England.”

“All is fair in love and war, sir,” Carlos intoned piously. “Isn’t it, Dee?”

Before sitting to the fabulous surf and turf dinner, Emmett managed to eddy me out for a quiet moment together. “Darlin’, I’m sorry,” he murmured in my ear. “I just said we met a year ago today. Not that it was our anniversary. I know it was your anniversary with Zack. Not me.”

I blinked back tears and held him tight. “Thank you. Now maybe I won’t have to say it and ruin the party.” I thought I’d been hiding my feelings better than that, holding up a masquerade of glowing pride in our one year anniversary. It helped, to have Emmett acknowledge Zack tonight.

“Uh-huh,” he crooned, hugging me tight. “Carlos knows, too. Our partnership did begin that night. Just not how they think. I love you, darlin’.”

It was enough. I wiped my eyes. No one thought anything of my crying, except excess emotion on this happy occasion. I got into the spirit of it and had a grand time. Despite the details being skewed, it was true, after all. We were partners, and we made a difference in the world. I especially enjoyed the way Emmett grabbed my hand for emotional support after each round of the staff coming out to beg his autograph.

Yeah, being famous would take some getting used to.

-o-

We didn’t pretend to a romantic anniversary night afterward. Despite killing numerous bottles of fine New York wine, lots of laughter and a couple dances, Emmett and the other New York–New Jersey Rescos went back to work after dinner. I returned to face our hotel room alone.

Emmett woke me when he got into bed, well after midnight, by softly smoothing the hair away from my face. “Wanted to check in with you, darlin’. You alright? Should I have just let you sleep?”

I shook my head no. “Cried for Zack,” I admitted. “I love you, Emmett. I miss him. He wouldn’t have gone off to New York and left me,” I grumbled, and softly punched Emmett. “Hard to remember his face anymore.”

“Uh-huh,” he murmured, and held me close. We both cried, but only a little. “Let’s not call this our anniversary again,” he suggested.

“Deal.”

-o-

The next morning, General Sean Cullen and I were back in the conference room, for the Rescos’ recommendations. To my surprise, Tony Nasser took the lead and presented, as the one with the most objective distance from the Apple problem. He might shift out of Buffalo this year. But he’d stay in western New York. One of these leading Rescos needed to keep his eye on the vast area upstate.

“The unifying themes,” Tony Nasser began, “are three. Transportation – reunify New York–New Jersey. Uplift – our communities to level 5 and above, including the Apple Zone. Borders – a path to dismantle all internal borders.”

“Good,” said General Cullen, nodding. For this morning, brainstorming mode was over. They were back to officer manners.

Water and transport was the first layer map Nasser showed on the big screen. Almost as succinctly as he’d given plans for Buffalo yesterday, he laid out the goals for restoring water, sanitation, power generation, and rail lines. Rail to be restored first up the Hudson River line to upstate for food supply. Next to hook back up to Connecticut and New England. Rail restoration in Long Island and New Jersey would start in parallel from their far ends, and work inward toward the Apple Core. Local transport within the Apple Core to be dominated by ferry service, aided by trucks for food, until long distance rail was restored.

Tony added another layer to the map, for demolition. “This issue was a bit thorny. Eighteen communities need to move. Their new locations need to be cleared first, existing populations absorbed. The remaining population is less than a tenth of what it once was. These blue areas are in flood plains. We choose to leave a ten percent housing margin for growth, and no more. Pick the best distribution and commercial properties, again no more than ten percent. All other buildings come down.”

“What was thorny?” Cullen prompted.

Emmett replied. “I thought everyone should be housed below the 6th floor for zero-elevator access…a lot of complications. Ash pointed out that relying on elevators is only a problem if you don’t have sufficient backup generators and fuel. I didn’t know what priority to give demolition. What to do with all that rubble, and whether to bother.”

Ash weighed in. “Sir, I want the communities to decide most of that. We lay down the law. You guys can stay, but you guys have to move. You can keep the best fifteen percent of these structures, but demolish everything else. Within that, let them own the detail decisions. But get some sunlight in there, start the land healing. This is an entirely new city we’re building.”

Cullen nodded neutrally. “Continue, Colonel Nasser.”

The maps came down, and a bulleted list of goals took its place. “Feed everyone. As soon as practicable, all people in the Apple Core get 1800 calories a day or better. Major Cameron’s model is working, to rebuild the workforce. Apply that here. Full sanitation too, as the waterworks reach each community. Full employment, hired by New York–New Jersey to clean up this mess and rebuild. Gradual shift to industry. Initial industries to be spare parts distribution, and battery manufacture. Encourage private ventures to evolve.”

“Spare parts?” Cullen asked.

“Yes, sir,” Nasser replied. “The city used to have ten times as many people. They had stuff. They have warehouses full of stuff. Before demolition, each building to be inventoried and worthwhile stuff removed. There’s little point in setting up industry to manufacture things we have in such colossal supply. It’s a distribution problem. Colonel MacLaren suggested Ms. Baker and Amenac could advise on how to get that business up and running.”

I nodded a noncommittal so-so. “I agree that it’s a distribution problem, more than a software problem. We can talk.” Cullen waved for Nasser to continue.

“Food security,” Tony said. “Food self-sufficiency is not a realistic goal for a city. Our aim isn’t to satisfy local food needs, but to reduce reliance on transportation for fresh food, and ensure interrupted supply isn’t a disaster again. So, food production at about an 800 calorie per day level. Year round fresh greens. Full nutrition for children’s developmental needs.”

Cullen pursed his lips. “As a whole, New York–New Jersey would remain above food self-sufficiency?”

“Absolutely, sir,” Nasser confirmed. “Net food exporting overall. Even the Apple Zone should be food self-sufficient within a couple years, when you include Long Island and North Jersey. The time frame is constrained by livestock biology. Increasing flocks and herds takes time.”

“Alright,” said Cullen, and waved for him to move on.

Next up was staffing. “We believe the project needs three Rescos. That brings each Resco down below four hundred thousand people. Eventual lead Resco is either Emmett or Ash. The problem here is that rehabilitation begins in parallel to the end of Project Reunion. Which means Emmett is trying to ramp down Project Reunion and do the hardest part – ramping up – on Project Rebuild, before other Rescos are available. We recommend that Ash join Emmett, effective immediately, to get this started.”

Cullen scowled. “I will not commit half of my top Rescos to New York City. This is temporary. Six months, tops. Then one of you has to go. Four lead Rescos, and four regions – New Jersey, Metro, Long Island, Upstate. Distribute yourselves accordingly, gentlemen.”

“Understood, sir,” Emmett and Ash chorused.

Tony added, “We have more work to do before we finalize Resco assignments for the year, sir.”

Cullen nodded. His tone softened. “Emmett, this is assuming you’re willing to stay with us? I know General Link would very much like to have you back, to tackle Boston-Prov. General Schwabacher has made noises about Ohio, too. He’s very fond of you. We owe you, Emmett. Big-time. Whether you stay or go. We’d very much like you to stay.”

“I’m not done here yet, sir,” Emmett agreed softly. “If you’ll have me. Tony?”

Tony Nasser flipped the display to a map of a new city, born from the rubble and agony of the old one, side by side with a pencil and watercolor concept drawing. The map showed 50 mini-cities, integrated residential industrial agricultural zones, islands in a sea of green, spanning islands in a sea of blue. The concept drawing showed a high-rise apartment block in the background, with food growing vertically up its face, lower buildings beside it. The foreground was green space, trees and community gardens, chickens and goats. I recognized Will’s art style – my graphics designer from Amenac – and his neat lettering in the legend. Calm Park.

“Calm Park?” asked Cullen.

“Burial grounds, sir,” said Emmett, with a catch in his voice. “Each community will have a Calm Park. The artist who drew this for me, Will… Well, never mind.” Cullen motioned for him to continue. “Will suggested a pilgrimage, of sorts. To walk all fifty Calm Parks of New York City. A walk for atonement. Each one could have a plaque, telling the community’s story, or listing the dead. And maybe a dedication to a state as well. Kansas Calm Park, and so on.”

After a few moments of silence, Cullen said huskily, “Gentlemen, lady, someday I would very much like to make that pilgrimage with you.”

Six quiet voices agreed, including mine. Emmett’s voice beside me said, “Amen.”

“And you believe this is do-able?” Cullen asked Emmett and Ash.

Ash volunteered, “We have outstanding public works in New York. These people are tough and skilled. They led the nation in climate change preparedness. A lot of them are still there – they chose to stay. It’s a hell of a lot of work. But they can do it.”

Emmett added, “The vision will sell. Lot of greenbelt. But the mini-cities preserve the character of the old city.”

Ash nodded emphatically. “Harlem, the West Village, Central Park, Chinatown, Lower East Side, nightclubs and bagels and knishes – we can keep the city’s soul. New Yorkers can get behind that.”

Cullen nodded. “Looks like a plan. Well done, gentlemen. Thank you for your hard work. Ms. Baker? As Colonel MacLaren’s partner on Project Reunion, do you approve?”

I was taken aback by the question, though not as badly as the officers were. Emmett pursed his lips.

“I trust Emmett, and Cam,” I replied hesitantly. “In terms of Project Reunion, the city is only one part. This part looks good.”

General Cullen sighed. “Agreed. Gentlemen, I need to leave. We did resolve the key sticking point, plans for the city. But I hope you’ll address the rest of the Apple Zone together this afternoon. Seek a coherent vision. A path to dissolving the borders. Since you’re here.”

General Cullen left them to it, and so did I.

Chapter 30

Interesting fact: Based on Amenac and Project Reunion polls, public approval of the U.S. Congress was below 5% in March, to greet the announcement of the next phase of the Calm Act. This counted ‘they’re better than nothing’ as approval. The number of people who said they ‘strongly approved’ of Congress was statistically insignificant.

I settled in to watch the death of the Calm Act with the PR team, at Dave’s Amenac loft in Totoket. Not the whole team – the reporters were out filming responses, and Emmett was on duty in New York. But Carlos and Dave, Mel and Popeye and Will, Shelley and Trey were here. Mangal and Shanti sat next to me on the floor. We made a big potluck dinner affair out of it.

We’d been chatting up this special report for weeks, encouraging people to watch live. We provided vote buttons and online discussion threads to make it a participatory event. Most of us had computers open on our laps, in addition to the broadcast up on the big screen. We had to keep on top of any technical glitches, of course. Also, the first votes on any live poll would be ours.

The Speaker of the House would address the nation at 7 p.m. Our program began at 6 p.m. After the Calm Act, What Next? declared the big screen, with a countdown timer. Will did us proud on the graphics, which featured a slow procession of the iconic images of Project Reunion. With one minute left, the slide show stopped on Ty Jefferson in a wheelchair, under the white flag of surrender on Staten Island. Overflowing bowls of buttered popcorn took strategic positions as we settled in to watch, and the countdown dropped to zero.

“Good evening. This is Amiri Baz, for Project Reunion. This segment of tonight’s special report was pre-recorded on March 13th. On March 15th, the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives is expected to declare the second phase of the Calm Act over, and announce the third phase.

“Tonight we’ll be speaking with the military governors of the Northeast. By video, we have Army General Ivan Link of New England.” Link nodded from the screen. They each did, in turn. “Navy Admiral Sondi O’Hara of Virginia–Maryland–Delaware. Army General Charles Schwabacher of Ohio–West Virginia. Air Force General Seth Taibbi of Pennsylvania. And joining me in person, on a Navy destroyer in New York harbor, Army General Sean Cullen of New York–New Jersey. And our own Project Reunion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Emmett MacLaren.”

Emmett was not thrilled to be there. The military governors were way above his pay grade. But he’d acceded to Amiri’s request on the grounds that this was a Project Reunion communication. Whatever he was feeling, he hid it well.

“General Cullen,” Amiri selected, “what do we expect from the Speaker’s announcement?”

“We don’t know, in detail,” Cullen replied. “What we do know is that phase two of the Calm Act was set to expire on March 15th, or when the U.S. population fell to 200 million. Whichever came first.”

“Oh, my God,” said my neighbor Trey, Shelley’s boyfriend, possibly the only one of us in the loft who didn’t already know this. The on-screen vote at the moment asked whether you knew the purpose of the Calm Act was to cull the population, Yes or No. Trigger fingers brought the initial results to 20% Yes, but that slowly fell toward 5%.

Cut to raised eyebrows on Amiri Baz. “Are we allowed to say that?”

“It’s the truth,” Cullen bit out. “The goal of phase two of the Calm Act was to reduce the U.S. population to sustainable levels. These were my orders.”

Amiri pounced. “You were ordered to murder –”

“No,” Cullen interrupted sharply. “I was ordered to establish and maintain the borders until those conditions were met. Neither I, nor any soldier under my command, was ordered to kill civilians. We were ordered to keep them in place, and let them die,” he clarified bitterly.

“You disobeyed those orders,” Amiri observed gently. “With Project Reunion.” The camera angle widened to take in Emmett and Cullen, who simply nodded.

“If I may,” General Schwabacher broke in. “There was an Army team assigned to vet the Calm Act before it was published. The members of that team – rightly – do not choose to be identified. But I do not feel that I have that right. I was their commanding officer on the project.”

“You supervised the vetting of the Calm Act?” Amiri echoed for clarity. The camera briefly visited Admiral Sondi O’Hara, who looked shocked. None of the others looked surprised, so we didn’t show them.

“Yes.” Schwabacher frowned. “What you need to understand is that the borders and the Calm Act were instituted to protect viable sections of the country from being overrun and destroyed by refugees fleeing non-viable regions. Climate change has been kind to us here in the Northeast. Relatively. But our vetting team was working in Fort Leavenworth Kansas, where prospects were already…unspeakably grim. The goal of the Calm Act was not to reduce the population to 200 million, but rather to protect 200 million from being dragged to below 100 million by resource wars. I believe it accomplished that,” he ended softly.

“Was that the projection?” Amiri clarified. “That without the Calm Act borders, twice as many people would die?”

“Yes,” Schwabacher confirmed. “The vetting team confirmed that. Not only would more people die, but the quality of life of the survivors… Well, the entire continent would fall into war and chaos. The Calm Act was a crash program for a soft landing. Without it, we’d all be in the same position as New York City.”

“Does everyone agree with that statement?” Amiri asked. “General Link.”

“I have great respect for General Schwabacher,” Link replied. “And General Cullen. Everyone here. And I know the talent General Schwabacher had vetting this. I’ve spoken to several of them, in fact. I believe them. This could have been a lot worse. In Europe, Asia, Africa, South America – it has been worse.”

“A program note,” Amiri said. “We took a break for the military governors to compare notes. So what do we expect now? General Schwabacher, you seem to be the best informed on the Calm Act.”

“I don’t know what the third phase says,” Schwabacher confirmed.

“I don’t care what the third phase says,” said Cullen. “The lives of people in New York–New Jersey started improving immeasurably when we set aside the Calm Act.”

“Colonel MacLaren,” Amiri picked on next. “You seem to disagree.”

Emmett shook his head slightly. “Amiri, a lieutenant colonel does not gainsay a 3-star general.”

A mutter from the military governors was summed up by General Cullen, Emmett’s commander, sitting beside him. Cullen flourished an open-handed wave of invitation. “Permission to speak freely, Emmett. We’d like to hear what you have to say.” It was zero risk. The guests had the opportunity to review this episode and request changes.

Emmett nodded. “Well, a couple things. I don’t concede that Project Reunion violated the Calm Act. Because it wasn’t done by force. And I believe that was the main point of the borders – to prevent neighbors from taking each other’s resources by force. I’d expect the third phase of the Calm Act to say what happens to those borders now. And to the authority of the military governors. But…”

“But?” Amiri prompted.

“We don’t care what the Calm Act says about that,” Link answered. “New England has its own plans. Beginning with dismantling the internal borders, including Boston-Providence, in a controlled and orderly fashion.”

“We’ve decided,” Cullen confirmed. “New York–New Jersey plans to rebuild. In peaceful trade with our neighbors, all represented here today.” He waved to the video screens next to Amiri. “Our goal is ambitious, and probably long term. We want all of our citizens living at level 5 and above.”

In the loft, Mel asked, “Were all of New Jerkzey’s people at level 5 before the Calm Act?” We shushed him. Though I suspect he was right – they probably weren’t. And Cullen needed to come up with a new name fast, before ‘New Jerkzey’ caught on for New York–New Jersey.

“We are allied and at peace with our surrounding neighbors,” Taibbi confirmed hastily from the big display. “Pennsylvania will abide by the terms of our…capitulation…to New York and Ohio and Virginia. Regardless of what the Calm Act says. Our planning process is behind our neighbors. Because we were cut off from the outside world, and we’re under new management. But our plans will hinge on peaceful trade, and a successful conclusion to Project Reunion.”

“Admiral O’Hara, I understand you’re in a very different position,” Amiri prompted.

“Yes,” O’Hara said gratefully. “Virginia–Maryland–Delaware is different. D.C. and Baltimore are under Army martial law, yet a Navy admiral is overall military governor. Our external borders are controlled by our neighbors. Our civilians feed the eastern seaboard Navy. We also have Army resource coordinators, very good ones. I have to say that greater Virginia’s future plans, as a region, are not well developed yet. However, certain resources of the Navy are unfrozen as of March 15th. We are prioritizing requests as we speak, to help with the rebuilding. And the eastern naval blockades will continue intact to protect us all from external threats.”

Actually, the Navy had unfrozen all their assets early to help with Project Reunion in New York. But she didn’t go on record admitting to that. It wasn’t her call, anyway.

Amiri asked, “So you don’t command the eastern seaboard Navy?”

“I do not,” O’Hara confirmed. “That would be Admiral Huyck for the Northeast. I’m the military governor of Virginia–Del–Mar.”

“And your relations with your other neighbors, not here with us today?” Amiri asked.

“We are on good terms with the Carolinas and Kentucky–Tennessee, thankfully.”

“General Schwabacher?” Amiri asked. “Your situation is also rather different.”

“Yes,” Schwabacher replied. “Although I’ve come to the same conclusion. Ohio–West Virginia has its own plans, regardless of what the Calm Act prescribes. The Calm Act was written years ago. They foresaw what they could. Now we face current reality. In our case, we’ve been pleased to help stabilize the northeast. Ohio and West Virginia make a great team. Kentucky–Tennessee is a good neighbor. To our west, there are…more uneasy pairings. Indiana–Michigan. Illinois–Wisconsin. Those marriages were not made in heaven. Ohio must remain strong. But eager for peaceful trade. We hope to revive our industrial base, jointly with Pennsylvania.”

Amiri nodded thoughtfully. “So none of you plan to relinquish martial law. Regardless of what the Speaker says on March 15th.”

“I’d like to answer that one,” Cullen offered. “In the Apple Zone, we still have dire living conditions. The entire national infrastructure has collapsed. We have no currency, broken transportation, chaotic food distribution, unreliable power. If it weren’t for the Rescos, like Colonel MacLaren here, most Americans watching this broadcast would be living in conditions at level 3 and below. They would not have the luxury of watching us tonight by Internet. We continue to be buffeted by severe storms. These conditions warrant martial law. If we relinquished it at this point, we would backslide.”

The voting widget switched over to ask, Do you believe martial law is still needed in New England? Yes or No. Viewers would receive a region-specific question, also at the level of their military governor. People outside the U.S. weren’t shown the voting widget or the results. People in Amenac’s loft with me got to see results from all regions. New England, home to the Great Pumpkin and the Recon-con, had the lowest approval for martial law in early polling, at about 60%. New York–New Jersey had the highest approval, at 98%, followed closely by Penn. Greater Ohio and Virginia–Del–Mar ran around 75%.

General Link chimed in. “The Rescos were added to the Calm Act by General Schwabacher’s Army vetting team. I’d like to point out that whatever this third phase is, the Army did not vet it. The Resco program has been an enormous success. But we were very limited in Resco availability. With peace, we can shift more officers into Resco roles. Shift troops to restoring infrastructure. That’s what we intend to do in Boston-Prov. Though I’ve lost two of my most outstanding Rescos to General Cullen, Colonel MacLaren and Major Cameron in Long Island.” Link attempted to smile graciously. “When you think ‘martial law’, think Rescos.”

The poll in New England got slightly more pro-Resco, if not pro–martial law, rising to 65%. People were free to change their vote until the question changed.

“What about restoring democracy?” Amiri prompted. “Reuniting the United States?”

General Schwabacher responded, “That’s a very interesting question. When my team vetted the Calm Act, the most dire consequences came from trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together again, if you will. No, we’ve paid a horrific price these past two years, on a crash program to de-globalize and re-localize. We did it to save the planet, and ourselves. I agree with General Link and General Cullen. Now’s the time to rebuild from the ground up. Stay local.”

“May I still speak freely, sir?” Emmett asked General Cullen. “As a Resco, I believe part of that localization is true, direct democracy. Most communities under a Resco are more active democracies today than they ever were. Your vote matters. Directly. Immediately. Do you vote for your military governor, or your Resco? No. That’s a military meritocracy. Not a democracy. I’ve served under three of these governors – they merit our trust. As we go forward, from the ground up, democracy will play an ever larger role. But I don’t see that as either-or, martial law or democracy. We have both. Now.”

Amiri nodded, and said, “We have time for just a quick round. Briefly, I’d like you each to sketch your vision for your region. I understand this is pretty much regardless of what the Speaker announces. General Link? How about you start us off.”

Our polling widget changed over to Do you believe New England is on the right track? This one had five levels of Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree, with a midpoint of Mixed Feelings.

Link replied, “Borders dismantled and New England reunited. Increased travel and trade and standard of living, while maintaining safety and order.”

Schwabacher for Ohio–West Virginia: “Sustainable clean power. Re-industrialization. Agricultural production. Good jobs. Maintain order and a strong defense.”

O’Hara for greater Virginia: “Our plans wait on the Speaker.”

Taibbi for Pennsylvania: “Complete Project Reunion. Focus on agricultural trade with New York–New Jersey, and re-industrialization with Ohio–West Virginia. Steel and power.”

Cullen: “Complete Project Reunion. Restore transportation. Short term, Rescos everywhere. Medium term, level 5 or above everywhere.”

Amiri said with a broad grin, “I have to follow that one up. I understand one of the new ‘Rescos everywhere’ is our own Colonel MacLaren, Resco for the Apple Core. What are your plans, Colonel? What’s next for New York City, after Project Reunion?”

“Recruit more Rescos?” Emmett quipped back. “That’s true, by the way. Lieutenant Colonel Ash Margolis already joined me in the city as a second Resco. This year – clean water and sanitation. Power. We’ve already established communications everywhere. Rebuild communities. Jobs. Trade deals. Food.”

“You’ve got your work cut out for you, all of you,” Amiri said admiringly. “Thank you all for speaking with us. We’ve gone a bit overtime, but we’ll give our viewers a 5-minute break. And return with the Speaker of the House, slightly delayed.”

And yes, that last part was by design. PR would not broadcast the Speaker’s speech without viewing it first. We reserved the right to slice, dice, or simply refuse to show it. Carlos Mora and Mel were already huddled in a corner wearing headphones, previewing the live feed from the Congressional Ark. They didn’t look happy.

I was still glued to the big display. One side showed our continued bio-break programming, the polling results across regions. Over 90% of eligible viewers participated in our polls. The response was solidly in favor of the military governors and their plans, even O’Hara’s ‘wait on the Speaker’ non-plan. Apparently she was in tune with what greater Virginia wanted. It made sense that the Washington D.C. region had higher hopes of the Federal government than the rest of us.

The other side of the screen displayed website traffic, echoed from my computer, as Mangal and I poked through the unusual patterns. Popeye and Dave and Will watched over our shoulders, equally enthralled. Overall traffic was lower than for our popular specials, of course. Politics. Most people would wait for highlights on the grapevine at work tomorrow, rather than take time for boring politics. But the weather was cooperating with high viewership in the Northeast. Yesterday favored preparing the fields. Today we had a lost fragment of arctic cold visiting, for a bone dry hard freeze under deep blue skies, with whipping winds. A good day to stay indoors.

But relative traffic outside the Northeast was higher than normal, and grew steadily during the course of the program. We’d caught the attention of the eastern half of the U.S., especially the other super-states mentioned by name – Indiana–Michigan, Illinois–Wisconsin, Kentucky–Tennessee, and the Carolinas.

I popped a quick note off to Emmett. He’d appreciate knowing that his old home range of Kentucky and Missouri were watching him, that they cared.

“Guys,” Carlos barked at us. “Your stats can wait. This can’t.”

-o-

The Speaker of the House had just finished laying out, in brief but brutal detail, the case for the Calm Act, the statistics that had inspired Congress to pass the law by such overwhelming majorities. She sketched the goals and accomplishments of phase 1 and 2, including extraction from all foreign ‘entanglements.’

I feared for the integrity of Emmett’s molars as he ground his teeth when he watched that part. He was not OK, to put it mildly, with the unilateral world-wide withdrawal of U.S. troops and bases. Our forces simply picked up their toys and exited, as fast as transport could scramble, without even a week’s notice and planning, a full-scale rout under enemy fire in some places. I suspected most armed service members felt the same way. And that Speaker Krause’s glib treatment had just earned their permanent and active hatred.

Speaker Krause’s Calm Act progress summary continued with impacts to date on climate leading indicators like carbon dioxide levels and emissions. And ‘progress toward sustainable population distribution,’ an extra opaque euphemism for the largest mass murder – premeditated, first degree murder – in history.

“Dammit, Carlos,” I said. “Did we have a mature audience warning on this?”

“Yeah, we caught it in time. Amiri live on video. Profoundly disturbing, we strongly urge parents, yada-yada.”

I was glad of that, at least. My jaw hung open in horror as Krause barreled on, in calm and reasonable tones, to explain her infographic comparing the estimated 120 million American deaths in the past two years, to the 80 million lives snuffed out over 6 years in World War 2. She summed up with ‘this is discouraging,’ possibly coining a new catch phrase. But then she went on to explain that the American death toll ‘wasn’t so bad,’ by presenting another infographic showing how small that really was, in comparison to the deaths of over 2 billion in the eastern hemisphere.

“Cut it,” I bit out. “We will not air that!” Mangal would have beat me to the veto, except he was in the bathroom retching.

Popeye had his head tilted, just staring at the frozen infographic in morbid fascination. Mel spoke for both of them. “Give her rope, Dee. Let her hang herself.” Dave looked sympathetic to both viewpoints, theirs and mine.

Carlos gnawed on a lip. “I OK’d a slice-and-dice. We’re chopping at each segment, inserting Amiri’s reaction. Warnings that it’s about to get worse. Distancing PR from her tone. But uncensored.” He cracked his neck and shoulders, to relieve the strain. “Could still change our minds. Amiri’s comments expand our delay.”

I nodded agreement, and gave him a half-hug. He shot me a sharp look at that. But I think he appreciated it. I glanced down at my phone. Emmett headed the list of my text messages. KILL HER, was his comment. I chose to interpret this is as venting, not an order to terminate the broadcast.

We resumed our preview to hear Speaker Krause confirm that phase 2 was over, effective immediately, and that phase 3 was now in force.

Then she officially disbanded the United States of America, and abolished martial law.

Chapter 31

Interesting fact: The famous preamble to the United States Constitution was added by the Committee on Style. It reads: We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common Defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Despite dying of curiosity, we had to handle the fallout there at Amenac–Project Reunion headquarters before watching any more. General Schwabacher called Carlos Mora directly to demand – demand – that Project Reunion either stop broadcasting that woman, or black out Ohio–West Virginia. While Carlos handled Schwabacher, I had to leap in and direct Amiri, who was broadcasting live and stalling, basically.

“Ah, I have a live spokeswoman on the line,” Amiri pounced. “Dee Baker, public face of Amenac and the Project Reunion websites. Dee, you’re on with me live. I bet it’s a madhouse up there in Totoket, at PR headquarters.”

I sighed. I should have expected that he’d put me on the broadcast. “It sure is, Amiri,” I agreed. “Say, we have a slight problem, um, continuing this broadcast of the Speaker of the House. I’d like to apologize to our audience –”

“We’re not responsible for what Speaker Krause is saying,” Amiri assured me. “She is. We couldn’t have foreseen this.”

“Exactly, Amiri,” I said gratefully. “Here at headquarters, we’re scrambling to preview the broadcast, decide what to do about it, and figure out how, all at the same time. While our jaws are hanging open. I have never, as an American, been so profoundly offended and ashamed of what a politician was saying. And when I think back on some of the sound-bites I’ve heard over the years – that’s saying a lot. Here at Amenac, we are not big on censorship. But to have this…insensitivity…promulgated via the Project Reunion servers. That’s just too much. Project Reunion is a humanitarian mission. I feel violated.”

Amiri easily kept up his end of the banter. “I understand completely, Dee. This reminds me of that awful presidential race. Was it 2016?”

“So many idiots over the years,” I replied. “I don’t want to remember them. Aha! I’ve just been handed an announcement. General Charles Schwabacher – we just met him, on this broadcast. He’s the military governor of Ohio–West Virginia. He commanded the Army team that vetted the Calm Act. Anyway. General Schwabacher promises to clarify and restate the content of Speaker Krause’s speech. ‘In non-inflammatory and appropriate language.’ As quickly as he can get around to it. The problem here, Amiri, is that Schwabacher wants us to either stop mirroring the Speaker’s speech, or black out Ohio–West Virginia from our broadcast.”

“I see that on the chat feed, Dee,” Amiri confirmed. “He’s ordered his troops to log off and stay off. Called Krause’s speech ‘offensive, incendiary, and destructive of military discipline.’”

“Well, I can’t disagree with that,” I said.

Amiri chuckled. “Colonel MacLaren just ducked his head in here and said, ‘Amen!’ Well, that, uh, restatement will be welcome. But I think we need to tell people something here tonight. Oh! Eureka! Dee, I have a video feed from the Resco of Long Island, Major Cam Cameron.”

“Thank God,” I agreed. On air, unfortunately. I scrambled to equip myself with microphone and video camera.

“Hello, Amiri! Hi, Dee!” Cam greeted us, with a relaxed and assured smile. He sat back on a couch, wearing everyday cammies in Tom’s office. “Greetings from Camp Suffolk! I’ve been designated as a replacement spokesperson, standing in for General Cullen and Colonel MacLaren tonight. We’d like to say a resounding ‘ditto!’ to General Schwabacher’s request that you black out Speaker Krause.”

My video feed went live, immediately joining the screen with them. “Request granted,” I said, and gave my best smile. “We’ve also heard from General Link of New England. Project Reunion will not mirror the rest of that speech. Cam – Major Cameron – have you seen through to…?”

“I was watching the direct feed from the Congressional Ark until just a minute before I joined you. She was still speaking.” Cam managed to say this without the slightest concern. I bet the man was an awesome field officer under fire.

“Well,” Amiri stepped in bravely. “Which of us feels they can adequately paraphrase the third phase of the Calm Act.”

I was about to punt when Cam surprised me by offering first.

“I can do that,” Cam said smoothly. “I’d like to preface my remarks, though. For all members of the armed services watching tonight. I’d like to remind you – as you know – that you are under the orders of your commanding officer. So am I. I am speaking to you tonight because Colonel MacLaren ordered me to jump onto this broadcast and speak to you.” He smiled at the camera, attractive, assured, amused. “We do not take orders from an offensive crazy lady we saw on the Internet. No matter what her title is. We obey our chain of command. And until your commander tells you otherwise, your orders are unchanged. Carry on.”

“Excellent point, Major,” Amiri underlined. “‘As you were,’ soldiers and sailors, right?”

“Absolutely,” said Cam. “Now as to what Speaker Krause said tonight, that caused such an uproar. To quote Shakespeare’s Macbeth, ‘It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.’ She essentially said the United States is no longer united, no longer functioning as a nation, and hasn’t been for over a year. Part of phase 3 of the Calm Act is to observe that the U.S. doesn’t exist anymore. Which is painful to hear, for a patriot. And it begs some important questions. But the real problem, I think, was that she said it so poorly.”

“With the entire speech,” I concurred. “Said very, very poorly.”

“Yes,” agreed Amiri. “Thank you, Major Cameron. The way you just said it, it’s hardly upsetting at all. It’s sad. The way she said it – it felt like a sucker-punch.”

Cam nodded, and said, “Fortunately I was watching the broadcast with my husband. Dwayne has a wonderfully wicked sense of humor. We have a white board here, where he tracked ‘mortal insults’ and ‘catchy phrases.’ Like ‘this is discouraging’ to describe the greatest loss of human life in history.” Cam chuckled darkly. “The wine helped a lot, too.”

Cam sat forward and gestured with his hands, to boyishly share his perspective. “The thing is, this woman lives in a greenhouse. She’s completely cut off from reality. Surrounded by delusional friends who agree with her. They probably didn’t see a thing wrong with what she said. They don’t live in our world. Literally. If you look at it that way, and realize that disbanding the U.S. means we’re rid of them. Well,” he chuckled again, “shucks.”

Amiri didn’t even try to keep a straight face. “That wasn’t all, though,” he reminded Cam. Yes, and this was the part that I was ever so grateful Cam was handling, instead of me.

“Oh, no!” Cam agreed. “Then, in her ark-hole wisdom, Speaker Krause went on to declare all borders within the United States abolished. Martial law abolished. All military governors fired. All armed services disbanded. With the thanks of a grateful nation – sure!” He laughed out loud, hard. “Well. Eff. You. Too. Speaker Krause. Again, to the armed services. I can’t speak for the military governors you serve. But if they want to discharge you, I’m sure they’ll let you know. Don’t hold your breath. I know my chain of command does not take orders from offensive crazy ladies they hear over the Internet. They just…don’t.”

“And that’s the core problem,” Amiri stressed. “Speaker Krause claimed the authority to wipe out the martial law and order we have under the military governors. While offering nothing to replace it. Just – chaos. Naturally, the governors object. I object. And I think we just saw that the people approve of the plans the governors outlined for us.”

Cam nodded, relaxed. I sat in awe of his composure. He couldn’t possibly be this indifferent to Krause’s attack on the martial law governments, everything Cam and Emmett had spend their last several years to build, a new structure to give the American survivors a fighting chance. Dwayne handed Cam a sheet of notes, which he rapidly reviewed.

Amiri inquired, “Did you get a cheat sheet there, Major Cameron?”

“Yes! My husband watched the end of the speech for me,” Cam said. He looked up from the page and grinned. “Our mortal insults list got longer. The rest of this…sound and fury…can wait for General Schwabacher’s restatement..” He spun the paper across his couch like a skipping stone.

“There is one more important issue, though,” Cam continued. “So here we are, under martial law. Our country is disbanded. Sad, but true. Much less sad when I contemplate the Congress we’ve left behind. But, for over a year now, there has been no commander in chief. It isn’t urgent. We manage. Nothing has changed since yesterday. But it might be helpful to have an abbreviated form of the Reconstitutional Convention.”

“A recon-con helps? How?” I asked, surprised.

“A very simple re-constitution,” Cam said. “For instance, New York–New Jersey. I hope General Cullen isn’t furious with me for this. But, a first pass constitution that says, first, we are New York–New Jersey. Don’t worry about the name. We could argue about that for years.” We all chuckled. “We are a sovereign nation. Our form of government is martial law. Our leader is General Sean Cullen. The succession is…just list four people. By name. Don’t try to define them by roles or anything. This constitution to stand until extended and amended. Period. And voilà. We have a country, and a new commander in chief.” He shrugged.

“That’s certainly simple,” agreed Amiri. “But does it accomplish anything?”

“For New York–New Jersey?” said Cam. “I hope not. I hope we’ve agreed to that much. But it does state, formally, what we’ve agreed to, who we are. We are a country. We can enter treaties and establish a currency.

“But notice that even that much might be harder for other super-states. For instance, New York–New Jersey and New England already decided a while back – amicably – that we are separate. But General Schwabacher suggested that some state pairings west of Ohio might be unstable. And inside New England? I’m from New England. I was a Resco in New England. And today I don’t know which states would agree that they’re one new country. Rhode Island? Maine is negotiating to join Canada. Massachusetts is one member? Or remains split in two? Are there even separate states in the new New England? And – my respect to the Great Pumpkin, I love her blog. But until a recon-con can agree to that much, anything more seems a bit ambitious.” He shrugged.

Another voting widget appeared. Do you support a simple constitution for New England? The choices were Yes,
Not Now, and Not that Simple.

“Interesting,” Amiri said. “We actually have the Great Pumpkin available to join this conversation. She pounced when Major Cameron brought up the recon-con.” Amiri grinned. “Are we wired up yet?”

“Pam!” I cried involuntarily.

“Hi, Dee! Everybody,” Pam said with a smile.

Amiri smiled. “The Great Pumpkin is unveiled with us tonight. Pam Niedermeyer, isn’t it? Of New London, Connecticut.”

“Near New London, yes,” Pam agreed. “I apologize for hiding behind a pseudonym. But at first, I didn’t want to embarrass my husband. He’s a Coast Guard captain. He’s the highest-ranking Resco in New England, actually. Dee and Cam and I know each other.”

Amiri nodded. “Ms. Niedermeyer, as the Great Pumpkin, you’ve agitated mightily for a recon-con, the Reconstitutional Convention. What do you think of Major Cameron’s suggestion?”

“Well first, I could hug Cam,” Pam said. “That was a very sensible suggestion. To keep it dead simple for a first round constitution. Don’t get bogged down. Just declare ourselves countries. Grant enough powers to be getting on with. Though I think he skipped that part. Cam, you even mentioned these – the power to establish a currency and enter binding treaties and levy taxes. That should be explicitly stated, even in a first draft constitution.”

Cam nodded a fair enough.

“But also,” Pam continued, “I believe we need a bill of rights from the start. A list of what the government cannot do, freedoms that cannot be violated.”

“You look like you disagree, Major Cameron,” noted Amiri.

“Not in principle,” returned Cam. “But my goal was to not get bogged down. Keep it simple. Rights and freedoms – we’ve been bogged down there for a quarter millennium. There’s also a conflict with martial law. Under martial law, some rights and freedoms are superseded by the imperative for public order. Like, the Calm Act.”

Pam nodded without agreement. “There is also the complication of the sea-going armed services. The Coast Guard, Navy, Marines, Merchant Marines, even the Air Force – none of these fit neatly inside these super-state borders. My husband’s Coast Guard territory extends from New Jersey to Maine.”

Cam nodded. “Excellent point. Well, Pam, should I withdraw my suggestion?” He smiled in challenge.

“No! Not at all,” Pam said. “What I really loved about it, was that you re-framed the discussion to show that there are military needs to be met by a constitution. We are not knocking the military. That was in our last Constitution – in order to form a more perfect union, provide for the common defense, and promote general welfare.”

“The preamble to the Constitution,” Cam quibbled. “Added by the style committee, wasn’t it? But I grant you the point. Right up front, our Constitution stated the reasons why we were doing this. We needed a deal to meet military payroll, and to hash out the laws.”

Pam sat back satisfied, and waved a hand in acquiescence. “We need a new deal. As Americans, we want a Constitution that states clearly, ‘here’s the deal.’”

The poll results for New England, at least, were running fairly equally divided between Yes, Not Now, and Not that Simple.

I cut in, “Amiri, I’ve really enjoyed this conversation. Major Cameron, Pam Niedermeyer, thank you for helping us…salvage this program. But before we end, I’d like to recap. Even without a new Constitution, and with the United States now officially defunct – democracy is still working here. The military governors, who spoke with us in the first hour – they listened to their people. They weighed input from military subordinates, communities, public opinion on Amenac. The polls tonight weren’t votes. They weren’t input. They closed the loop.”

Amiri nodded. “The viewers clearly confirmed that their leaders got it right. And, as a program note, Project Reunion will publish General Schwabacher’s restatement of the content of the speech from the Speaker of the House. So, keep an eye out for that. Or, of course, you could visit the Congressional website and judge for yourself.” And we signed off.

Chapter 32

Interesting fact: Military governor Admiral Sondi O’Hara, of Virginia–Delaware–Maryland, bowed to public pressure and ‘liberated’ the Congressional Ark. She turned out all remaining Representatives and Senators and their families, about 440 of them. The other 95 had either never entered the ark, or already chosen to leave. Transportation to their home districts was not provided.

Cam called in May, to ask for my help again. The latest batch of quarantine graduates on Long Island had turned up Maisie Mora, Lt. Colonel Carlos Mora’s younger daughter, now fourteen years old.

Maisie had managed to hide and lie her way through the quarantine’s attempts to get her real name. The relocation camps took great pains to extract real names, especially with unaccompanied minors. Children often had some relative somewhere outside the Apple Zone, someone who’d bend over backward to take a surviving child. Frustrating their efforts, many surviving teens lied about their names, refused to give their stories. The camps persevered. But Maisie wasn’t on the lost and found search databases. She was ill with Ebola when Carlos last spoke to her by phone, her mother and elder sister already dead. Carlos considered Maisie to be confirmed dead.

Maisie nearly escaped into a life of anonymity on Long Island. But Cam gave a speech to the Camp Suffolk graduating class each week. Dwayne spotted the girl in the crowd, and recognized her not as the younger daughter, but the spitting image of Carlos’ elder daughter of a couple years back.

The girl was hysterical, and vehemently denied being Maisie Mora. Her name was Syringe, and always had been. Cam caught her out by saying, “But Keith misses you, too, Maisie.”

“Keith is autistic,” she sneered. “He doesn’t miss anybody.” Then she realized she’d slipped. She wailed in panic until the medics sedated her. She was returned to the quarantine hospice ward, for safe keeping.

“My God,” I said to Cam. “How can I help?”

“Could you tell Carlos?” Cam asked. “And get him to hold tight for now? We’ll work with her here. But when Maisie’s calmer, maybe you could help ease her into the reunion with her father?”

I called Carlos’ brother Manolo first. I told him I had good news and bad news for Carlos, and needed the whole family there to support him. Then I visited them at home after dinner. I was glad I took precautions. Carlos would never lay a hand on me. But I could never have stopped him from bolting straight for Camp Suffolk. Manolo tackled Carlos to the ground and sat on him while Carlos sobbed.

Manolo caught my eye, nodded to me in respect, told me I’d done the right thing. His wife quietly showed me out.

A few days later, I collected Maisie from the ferry in Bridgeport, and brought her to my house. Her father and brother visited every other day for a week or so. Carlos had done his homework, reading up and attending a workshop on adopting a refugee. They arrived exactly on time, like clockwork, never early and never late, never pressing. Between times, Maisie went to refugee support group meetings in Totoket. Alex or I walked her there and back.

It was Keith who eventually broke through to Maisie. At the end of a visit, Carlos invited his daughter to come home again, as always, and was rebuffed again. This time, Keith walked forward, looked her in the eye, and held out his hand. She touched it in slow motion, with just the pad of her finger, an experienced elder sister of an autistic boy. But he grabbed her hand in return.

“Where’s Mom?” Keith demanded.

“Mom’s dead,” Maisie admitted. “Jessie too. I watched them die.”

Keith let go her hand and walked to stand staring at the door, rocking back and forth, waiting to leave. “Keith doesn’t care what you’ve done, Maisie,” Carlos told her. “Neither do I. Just that you’re alive. You’re safe now.”

“I was a whore, Daddy!” she wailed to him in pain.

“Hell, Maisie,” Carlos told her hoarsely. “You did what you had to do. You survived. I’m proud of you. My brave baby girl.”

She went home with them that day. It wasn’t easy. But Carlos looked happier every time I saw him. After a few weeks, he pulled me aside at a Project Reunion meeting. He shyly, proudly showed me a new selfie wallpaper on his phone. Carlos, Maisie, and Keith, flopped in tall grass, all three grinning. What beautiful children Carlos had.

It wasn’t easy for the resettled refugees of New York. We learned not to expect too much of them. But above all, they were survivors. The ones who gave up, did so before they graduated the camps. The ones who made it out to new lives in New England, adapted.

-o-

My onetime fiancé Adam Lacey held his wedding on a Staten Island ferry in July. His bride was that other Coast Guard engineer, Kate Monaghan, who’d been stuck on Governor’s Island while I slept in Adam’s tugboat cabin at Thanksgiving. Apparently it was her cabin, too, by that point. In July, she was eight months pregnant, which clearly showed in the fit of her uniform.

Adam wore a dove grey formal suit with tails and ascot, that made a mere tux look plebeian. He glowed like some prize Edwardian duke, come to claim an American beauty heiress. Kate was rosy-red with pregnancy and a sailor’s sunburn, ordinary middle class, and rather horsey of face. They were obviously head over heels in love with each other.

The setting was perfect, the cool ocean breezes a mercy in the July swelter.

The whole festive wedding party was completely at odds with the grubby orange ferry. The front third of the passenger deck was cordoned off for our private party, while the rest was in service carrying regular passengers around the ferry’s city circuit, Staten Island to Manhattan to Brooklyn and back. The natives were still thin and none too clean, but no longer skeletally emaciated. Eyes no longer red, faces no longer covered with weeping sores, lips uncracked. They’d had almost enough food, and clean water, for a couple months now. I stared back at them staring at us. They seemed cheered, or at least amused, at our cluster of well-fed, well-dressed, healthy aliens partying in their midst. They were accustomed to the line of marines on duty enforcing the yellow do-not-cross tape.

I wondered if the New Yorkers were more angry, or more grateful, to see us healthy and strong and there to help them, who’d fallen so low. Perhaps they were as ambivalent on that point as I was. If it were me over there, I’m not sure anything could ever fully quench my rage. I was grateful for the marines, but embarrassed to believe we needed them. Or worse, that we deserved them.

Of course, Adam and Emmett took their armed guards for granted. Their force levels were going down, not up, over time. The occupying army from the suburbs mingled more with the vanquished, as disease levels fell and order spread.

Adam and I had caught up by phone back in February, after Emmett surprised me with the news that Adam had left the Coast Guard to serve as Emmett’s engineering advisor. It took an engineer to vet engineers, and the Apple needed to hire plenty to get its infrastructure and railroads back up and running. Eventually Adam hoped to shift full-time into urban agriculture and hydroponics. He wanted to leverage the work he’d started as an arkitect on Ark 7, to green the buildings and Calm Parks of New York. And then there was Kate, his second in command and new fiancée. One of them had to go, because they couldn’t keep serving together. Adam was delighted to set the Coast Guard aside again, for her and the baby.

The timing of the wedding, so close to Kate’s due date, wasn’t a symptom of a last minute decision. They just needed a house ready for the baby more urgently than they needed a wedding. Their tugboat home was a dream bachelor pad, but not ideal for childrearing. Adam insisted on a house with servants, power, hot and cold running water, and laundry. I could sympathize with that.

Creating a safe neighborhood had taken some doing, of course. But Adam and Kate’s house near the Staten Island Ferry Terminal was ready in June when he called to invite me to the wedding, ecstatic. I hadn’t seen his Staten Island enclave yet, or any other. I’d been too busy on the farm front to visit New York lately. For the wedding, I sailed down to the city on the Niedermeyers’ yacht, with Cam and Dwayne and Alex. We only barely made it to the pier in time to catch the ferry. Though Adam would have waited for us and commandeered the next ferry if we were late. John Niedermeyer was his best man.

The captain of the ferry officiated, of course – for today, the chief of the merchant marine engineers I’d met on Adam’s tugboat. Kate’s maid of honor was another Coast Guard commander. Adam in his finery was the only one at the altar out of uniform.

I say altar figuratively, of course. They used a small white-draped folding table. Pam and I brought flowers from our gardens in Connecticut. Pam’s elegant carnations and ferns were rapidly converted into a bouquet for the bride and a lapel spray for Adam. My tall and gaudy vases of snapdragons and gladiolus graced the table. After the vows, our flowers moved onto the buffet tables. I’d brought along 20 pounds of strawberries, a small mountain of late sugar snap peas, and 30 pounds of cucumbers for the buffet, too. Navy stewards snatched the food away from us when Alex and I boarded. Our offerings reappeared by the time the service ended, beautifully arrayed on Navy trays and platters, cukes sliced and seasoned.

To my amazement, the food tables were set up by the cordon line with the natives, yellow tape running down the middle, half the food for the guests and half for the random native commuters sharing the ferry with us. Even at community potlucks, I hadn’t seen so much food arrayed at a party in years. As food prices shot up before the Calm Act, providing a meal at a wedding reception had fallen out of fashion. It seemed the other out-of-town guests had donated generously, too.

The champagne and modest wedding cake, on the other hand, stayed well away from the cordon.

Once I’d found him in the throng, Emmett and I stuck together through the ceremony and the receiving line. Alex stayed with the Niedermeyer teens, and planned to stay on their yacht for the night. The trio were the youngest children anyone had considered appropriate to bring into the city. Emmett was quiet, as was I. We drifted apart to socialize after the formalities.

I was chatting with Amiri Baz when Adam claimed a dance with me. The boom box was nothing fancy, but someone had put great thought into composing the play list.

“You look gorgeous, Adam,” I assured him, on the dance floor. “And happy!”

“Deliriously happy,” Adam agreed. No cold feet or altar jitters for this one. “I wanted to thank you, Dee. Even though it wasn’t you and me, you still brought me here.”

I laughed. “How do you figure that?”

“In every way,” he said sardonically. “But especially… I would have stayed with the arks, if it wasn’t for you. My family is still in their ark. Most of the people I grew up with. I’m not as bold as you are, Dee. I tend to follow the herd, go with the flow. When you decided you’d rather stay on the outside, you made me look at that.”

I’d wondered where his father and brother were. I’d seen their photos, professional modeling shots. They weren’t hiding in the crowd. Unlikely as it seemed, gorgeous Adam was the dirty-faced member of the family, the boy who’d loved tinkering as a mechanic instead of cashing in on his looks.

“I’m sorry your family didn’t come today,” I said.

“It’s alright,” he denied. “We’ll visit them in the fall, with the baby. I’ll tell them about the reconstruction business opportunities in the city.” He laughed. “That’ll tempt my brother, at least. Kate’s from Garden City. Long Island. Her family didn’t make it. Confirmed back in April.”

We were dancing to a second song, and I was hogging the groom. With an ex-girlfriend, dancing a third time would be pushing our luck, for both of us. Time to wrap this up. “You’re bolder than you give yourself credit for, Adam. Thank you for everything you’ve done. For New York, and for me.”

“We’re not saying good-bye, Dee,” Adam pointed out. “In fact, I’m still hoping you’ll be our neighbors here in the city. Either way. We’ll stay in touch. Right?”

“Absolutely,” I agreed, and let him go with a hug and a kiss. Adam prudently danced with his bride again at that point, and I danced with Emmett. By then the two of them had been standing together watching us. Though it looked like Emmett kept Kate laughing.

“Any regrets?” Emmett asked, once we were dancing.

“No,” I said. “Not for either of us. It’s good to see him so happy. You?”

Emmett didn’t answer right away. “A big wedding’s not my style,” he eventually managed. “We’re about to come around to Brooklyn again. Let’s leave this party early. OK?”

Chapter 33

Interesting fact: Project Reunion, the interstate military effort to transport migrants outside the Apple Zone, officially ended in April with the closing of Camp Upstate and Camp Jersey. Camp Suffolk continued its march westward on Long Island as a local public health measure. The Project Reunion website did not end, nor change its name. Its leadership felt that the spirit of the mission continued.

I frowned a question at Emmett, not understanding the suggestion that we leave the wedding early. We hadn’t even broken the cake yet. But he didn’t elaborate.

We retrieved my overnight bag and waved our good-byes. We joined the ordinary passenger throng waiting to disembark at Brooklyn. Four Army M.P.’s detached to escort us. The natives shrunk away, giving us a wide berth. There was a lot of muttering and finger-pointing from the crowd, as the onlookers told each other who we were. Emmett ignored them and watched the approaching shore.

“You’re being formidable,” I told him.

“Uh-huh,” he said absently. “Sorry. Just…want to show you my new place.”

“What? When did you move to Brooklyn?” He’d been living out of a small dumpy apartment in the Staten Island quarantine zone since Christmas, upholstered in ugly plaid. Or he’d been sleeping there, at least. Seasickness had become an issue with getting a decent night’s sleep, living on a destroyer out in the harbor through the winter storms.

“Moved in last week,” he said. “Thought I’d surprise you.”

I nodded judiciously. “Not really fond of surprises.”

Emmett barked a laugh. “No. Me neither. Sorry.” He sighed. “Guess I’m nervous. What you’ll think of it.”

Because…? But I left it at that. There was too much ogling to do right then, as we disembarked in Brooklyn. My eyes drank in the bustling surroundings. By the docks, our route led through a warehouse district. To the right, wagons and trucks and porters carried in plates of glass and salvaged wood for storage and distribution. The warehouse to the left seemed to specialize in electronics. An army of dumpsters collected up the rejects.

Emmett halted and glanced down at my pretty open-toed dancing heels. “Do you have any…?”

“Yeah,” I agreed. I fished my deck shoes out of my bag and switched, right there on the street. I’d have to watch my step even in deck shoes. Broken glass was everywhere, glittering painfully bright in the summer afternoon sun. Fortunately I wore sunglasses. The natives all wore something over the nose and mouth, despite the grueling heat, and protective eyewear, to keep the billowing dust out.

I hacked a cough. Emmett fished a clean handkerchief out of his dress uniform and offered it to me. Apparently he didn’t have another. “I have…socks,” I suggested. “Oh, wait! Tissues.” So I held tissues over my lower face, while Emmett deployed the handkerchief.

The breeze off the water died out, blocked by the warehouses. My crisp cool peach cotton party dress was developing a brownish peach fuzz of dust. And we passed on into the land of reclaimed bricks. Whole blocks on either side rose in massive ziggurats. After the buildings were razed, Emmett explained laconically, teams sorted out the reusable bricks. Broken bricks filled in the empty foundations, or abandoned subway lines, or were broken up further as an ingredient for soil for the greenbelts. Very industrious. Very dusty.

“You cut down the trees?” I asked. Based on the dirt squares in the sidewalk and the surface-level stumps, this had been a tree-lined avenue once.

“Apples did that,” Emmett replied. ‘Apples’ was polite slang for the survivors in the Apple Zone. “Burned them for fuel. Hardly any trees left alive in this city. Can’t blame them. Ash has new trees on order, from all over. Small ones. We can start planting them, end of August. Not here in the warehouse zone, though.”

The next block was dustier yet, though the apples hosed this one down to control the dust. “Greenbelt,” Emmett explained. This particular stretch was still a rubble-belt at the moment. But it was leveled and attractively graded small rubble. The wide avenue we walked on was left intact. All the abandoned cars were gone. Other streets to right and left were rubbled over. Knee-high retaining walls of brick separated the sidewalk from the greenbelt-to-be. Planting this swath in the heat of July would be a waste of good seed. The natives were just building the substrate here for now, a giant mixing trough.

“The smell…” I said, not really wanting or needing an answer.

“Solids from the wastewater treatment plant,” Emmett confirmed. “And… They were planting the bodies last night when I walked through here. Maybe a half foot deep under the gravel.”

I flung my arms around him for a hug. He held me, harder than I expected. “It’ll be beautiful,” he said. “Soon.”

“What a horror to watch,” I replied.

“If I can order them to do it, I can damn well watch them do it,” Emmett said harshly. But he swallowed and pressed me closer, kissed my forehead. He promised, “Not much farther, darlin’. Three more blocks.”

It hurt to watch Emmett seeing this fresh through my eyes, and finding it horrible. But it was horrible. This whole damned city was a horror. And I felt like a coward and a cad for putting him up to tackling this, while I stayed home on my placid little farm, in my pretty green town of Totoket, amidst the clean salt marshes and the maple woods and the blue-gray waters of the Sound. While Emmett watched them cart in rotted bodies, Alex and I were partying on the Niedermeyers’ yacht yesterday evening. Like the man said, I could damned well face what I’d helped to do. My heart broke for him, though. This was ghastly. And this was on a good day, after nearly 9 months of Herculean effort.

An island of buildings rose ahead of us. This particular enclave seemed to have selected a hollow 9-square downtown concept, similar to New Haven’s, with a block-sized giant town green in the middle. Some structures had been torn down even in the outer blocks, leaving gaps.

“Is that safe?” I asked, pointing. One of the empty foundations was filled with water. Kids and adults splashed and played in it as a swimming pool. Not very many kids. Project Reunion had relocated all the orphans, and gave evacuation priority to families with children. But some families chose to stay.

Emmett smiled briefly. “Re-engineered as a pool, Dee. They didn’t just fill a foundation hole with water. It’s sealed. Water pumps and filters, lots of chlorine. Not very deep. We’re just decorating with reclaimed brick these days.”

Indeed, we were approaching new brick structures, built on the outer edge of the sidewalk. These were about 4 by 4 feet square, and stood waist-high on me. My eyes widened as I saw into the first one.

“Romaine lettuce! How handy!” I laughed. “Is this a cold frame?” Cold frames were planting boxes with optional transparent lids, for growing greens in winter. In warm weather, they were simply boxed garden plots, sometimes with cloth covers to keep out the bugs. I used see-through tunnels at home instead, but cold frames were a similar idea.

“Yup. We call them apple boxes. Don’t pick anything,” Emmett warned. “You see that woman? With the green flag? She’s open for business. Picking from this box would be stealing.”

“I won’t pick,” I promised. But I did poke, into the soil, to see what it was made of. This particular one seemed a blend of potting mix, fine-grained pulverized brick, and God knew what else. “Huh. It sure grows well.”

“Yeah, Dori’s one of the best street farmers,” said Emmett. He drew me along. “Hey, Dori! What do you have for us today?” he greeted the green flag woman with a big smile.

“French breakfast radish, Colonel!” the elderly apple replied, with a gap-toothed sincere smile. “Mild and refreshing! Perfectly ripe today. Six a buck.”

The official name of Cullen’s new currency was the Hudson dollar, but everyone called it a buck. Similarly, New England was beginning to retire the tax credit concept in favor of the clam. The neighboring currencies were set deliberately unequal in value. They traded at somewhat over three bucks to the clam at the moment. The currencies were electronic only. There were no coins or paper bills, no untraceable cash.

Emmett and Dori tapped cell phones to complete the transaction, and Dori handed us a half dozen small elongated radishes, with all their leaves. “Be sure to wash the roots,” Dori admonished. “Leaves are fine.”

“You really want to wash all of it,” Emmett confided in me, before I could crunch into a root. He knew I wouldn’t have bothered in my own garden. I just picked ’em and ate ’em, even fresh from the soil. “They use sewage tea for fertilizer.”

That made sense. And erased any temptation for me to eat the radish before washing.

The green inner square showed what the outer rubble belt aspired to become. Several hundred yards on a side, it was already planted for pasturage near the brick walkway we took across it, with plenty of young clover and grasses. My experienced eye spied the starter strips of lawn sod, laid in to help kick start the microbiology. A few young saplings had even been installed by the walkway before the onslaught of summer heat. Further away were garden plots and some chickens. I couldn’t be sure from this distance, but it looked like some buildings facing the square had cucumber vines growing up their south faces. Even the dust abated here in the green zone. They were off to a great start in here.

I slipped an arm around Emmett’s waist, and beamed up at him. “This is really pretty, Emmett!”

“Thank you,” he mouthed, though no sound came out. He cleared his throat, and pointed. “That house is mine. Center one.”

Most of the buildings ringing the green were six to twelve stories or so, many with storefronts at ground level. The group of three Emmett pointed to, however, were classic Brooklyn brownstones, isolated by green lots to either side. Despite the stress on growing food everywhere else, the brownstones grew flowers, bright and cheerful portulaca and nasturtiums in big built-in planters at the top of their broad front steps, and in window boxes above.

I gazed up in awe from the foot of those steps. The brownstone looked perfectly renovated, in loving detail, better than its New York Knickerbocker glory days of centuries past. Three and a half stories high – the lowest servant floor sank below street level – plus crown molding. The front bowed outward to either side of the central stairs, curved to provide bay windows for the interior. There were elegant moldings and fiddly bits everywhere, and a painted cast-iron railing.

The brownstones weren’t actually brown. The set of three were painted in sandy shades of cream, rose, and tan.

“Did you say ‘house’?” I inquired. Before, such a double-wide brownstone would likely have been split into a dozen apartments. Really expensive apartments at that. A whole brownstone…

“Last sold for twenty-eight million,” Emmett supplied. “It’s nice.”

“Nice,” I echoed faintly.

He nodded dismissal to our guards and headed up the steps. A middle-aged apple housekeeper opened the door for us before we reached it, and curtsied us in.

The house was even more gorgeous inside. A golden wooden staircase rose in front of us. To its left, a formal dining room. A formal living room to the right, gleaming with wood from floor to chest height on me. Above the paneling, creamy plastered walls rose to ceiling molding. True to Emmett’s taste, the room capitalized on its polished bare wood floor. An unfussy conversational grouping of beige leather couches and chairs formed a small island around a fireplace.

Emmett immediately kicked shoes onto a shoe rack, and ripped off necktie, jacket, and dress shirt just as quickly as he could peel them off. His undershirt was sopping with sweat, as was his hair and every other part of him, probably. That dress uniform was not ideal for a summer day. And it wasn’t much cooler indoors. The beautiful windows were all wide open.

“Will sir need his uniform again today?” the maid inquired, taking his cast-offs.

“No, thank God,” Emmett replied. “We expect four more guests for dinner tonight, Gladys. Six total. Casual, something light. Out in the garden, I think. They should arrive in an hour. Maybe later.”

“Yes, sir. Perhaps a salad nicoise. And will madam need the dress again today?” she asked.

“Please, call me Dee,” I invited with a smile. I’d never had someone speak to me in the third person before. It was creepy. Especially with a harsh Brooklyn accent. “I don’t have another dress with me. Emmett?”

“Just the Niedermeyers and Camerons tonight,” Emmett explained. “The kids are staying on the yacht. With guards.”

“Oh, nice! I guess I will want my dress then. And salad nicoise sounds perfect. Were you a cook before, Gladys?”

She shot me a look of pure hatred, quickly tamped to pursed lips and eyes cast down to the floor. “I’ll carry this up for you,” she hissed. She grabbed my overnight bag and stomped up the staircase.

“Apples hate it when you ask personal questions,” Emmett observed mildly.

“I think I caught that,” I agreed. “What did she do before?”

“Never asked. She hasn’t volunteered a word about herself. Just, ‘Gladys.’ She does a good job.”

“That is so weird,” I complained.

“Some things take time, Dee,” he murmured softly.

Emmett pointed and led me toward the back of his fancy new house. Beyond the formal living room, through glass French doors, was a beautiful library, turned into Emmett’s office. He had two computer displays on his huge oak desk, in addition to his laptop and tablet, plus a giant screen on the wall that rivaled my living room display. Extra box devices blinked their LED heartbeats.

I did a double-take. “You have full power and Internet!”

“Cell phones and meshnet, too,” he agreed. “Indoor plumbing. Fridge, stove, laundry. Even air conditioning. I just don’t use it.”

“Your library could use some books,” I suggested. Built-in shelves of gleaming wood stretched empty from floor to ceiling.

“Books are easier to burn than trees,” Emmett responded shortly. He continued to the back…garden. Those weren’t just windows at the back of the library. He stepped aside to wave me through another set of French doors, still solemn.

“Oh…” I said, rapt, face breaking into a smile. “You have a tree.”

A strip of deck stepped down into a surprisingly large brick-walled garden. The walls were perhaps 8 feet high. From the deck at the half-story first floor, I could see across the tops of the other gardens filling the core of the roomy block. But Emmett’s garden was fairly private at ground level. It stretched perhaps 75 feet back, as wide as the house, around 30 feet. Near the deck, a modest-sized maple tree cast dappled shade over a bricked lounge area, complete with teak furniture. A narrow lap pool stretched the length of the garden, with plantings in the narrow strip between the pool and the wall on that side. Against the back wall stood a quartet of brick 4x4 planters like the ones on the street, currently barren. I drifted down the long brick walkway to look at them.

“Soil,” I said wonderingly.

“Uh-huh. Not sure I did the right thing there,” Emmett replied. “There was garden soil, but the walls block the sun. Figured higher was better. Maybe room for some chickens, too.”

“It’s gorgeous, Emmett!” I said. I wanted to throw my arms around him. But he remained aloof, leaning with hands on the brick raised planter bed before us. I sat on its edge and looked up at him. “Talk to me, Emmett,” I whispered.

“It’s hot,” he sighed. “Let’s change into bathing suits and get into the pool.”

“In a minute,” I agreed. “What’s wrong?”

It took a minute, and a slow Ozark minute at that. But I waited him out. “Is it good enough, Dee?” Emmett finally murmured. “For you to live here? With me.”

“You want to stay here,” I said, dismayed. “Not just to September.”

“No,” he said. “Maybe. I don’t know. I just want you with me.”

“Emmett, is this an ultimatum?” I asked, eyes narrowed. “Are you breaking up with me, if I don’t move in?”

“No.” He turned to perch on the brick beside me, hands between his knees. “No threats. I love you. I don’t want anyone else. Just want you here with me. Wherever we go next. Please. It’s just too hard alone.”

It cost him to ask, to beg. But if he felt this way, watching Adam’s wedding must have been excruciating. With this house and garden, he’d bent over backwards to please me, to make a place for me, where I wouldn’t hate living in New York. I wasn’t likely to love it anytime soon either. And I doubted I could make friends among the apples. New Yorkers were none too friendly before the epidemic. They seemed downright squirrelly now.

In New York, I’d live under curfews. Never leave the house without armed escort. Socialize with the occupying armed services, separate and above the apple natives, like some bizarre throwback to the British Raj. Enjoy maybe the only tree left in Brooklyn, walled off from the voracious hordes of human tree predators. No more kayaks and beaches, marshes and woods and apple orchards, squirrels and raccoons. Yet.

But there would be. If I can make him do it, I can damn well watch him do it.

I’d been quiet more than a minute. Emmett sighed defeat. “Never mind.”

“Yes,” I said. “Whatever you’re up to, I’ll face it with you. I believe in you, Emmett.” I squeezed his knee. “Partners.”

“You’ll…?” Emmett asked, daring to look up at me.

“Yes. With you. I love you.”

He clutched me tight. I smoothed his back, his hair. I was afraid for a moment he was going to ask me to marry him right then and there. But no. “Thank you,” was all he said.

“We are leaving in September. Aren’t we?” I asked doubtfully.

“If you want,” he promised. “Gotta warn you, though. I’m pegged as a remediation specialist now. Got offers from all over.”

I laughed. “I bet. We’ll figure it out.”

“Together,” he agreed.

“At least the weather is improving,” I said wistfully.

Emmett sighed. “Don’t bet on that.”

“We made changes in time,” I insisted. “Huge changes. This year hasn’t been so bad.”

“Uh-huh,” said Emmett.

“What.”

“You don’t want to know,” Emmett said.

“Yes. I do.”

“I believe God gave us a break. Because we – the whole Northeast – were willing to save New York.”

I shot him a look that said, You’ve got to be kidding me. But what I said was, “It’s better, Emmett. Rain fell in the Dust Bowl. Some.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Tell me.”

Emmett sighed. “We did the Calm Act because we had to, Dee. The facts haven’t changed. We just got a breather.”

My eyes narrowed. “So… Does that mean you’ll choose your next assignment by what you think God wants?”

He grinned crookedly, and whispered in my ear, “You only think that’s not what you love about me.”

“Oy, Emmett!”

“We’ll decide together,” he promised. “And stay together, I hope.”

That wasn’t entirely comforting, I reflected. After all, we’d chosen Project Reunion together.

Welcome to the next new normal.

From the Author

Hope you enjoyed Project Reunion! If you want more, I’m writing further installments in the same universe, and I’m eager for beta readers.

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I’d really appreciate a review on Amazon. Reviews help sell books. But also, I’m energized by feedback, to write more, faster, better. Reviews tell me that people care. So please leave a review – no matter how short – and help me create the next book.

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Acknowledgments

As always, I’m deeply grateful to my test readers. This time around, a thankful shout-out to Andy Berry, Brett Jarman, Barbara Booth, Beth Grem, Rob Kaye, and Julia Novak. Of course, any mistakes are my own.

And thank you, for reading my book. Especially if you’re so kind as to post a review on Amazon, or to tell someone else about it, or drop me a line. Books take a long time to write. Feedback means so much to me.

About Ginger Booth

Ginger Booth is a writer and programmer. She's worked in the seismic industry, semiconductor electronics, academic research in biology and environmental science, and online teaching simulators. She lives in shoreline Connecticut, with crops spilling out the balconies and down the driveway. Contact her online at books.gingerbooth.com.

Books

The Calm Act series:

End Game – got a date for the end of the world?

Dust of Kansas – a prequel short story, the birth of the Calm Act

Project Reunion – the sequel to End Game, saving New York City

Nonfiction:

Indoor Salad: How to Grow Vegetables Indoors

E-Cigarettes 101: How to Start Vaping

E-Cigarettes 102: DIY E-Liquid

Table of Contents

Maps

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

From the Author

Acknowledgments

About Ginger Booth

Books