A New Day in America (11 page)

Pa goes into his bag and takes out one of the needles. Nay is sick of needles, but she doesn’t say anything because of the serious way Pa gets when he sticks the needle in the clear little bottle and sucks out the fluid. He seems scared when he sticks the needle in her shoulder. Her shoulder is really starting to hurt in this numb way. He takes off her shirt and sticks the needle in. He’s gentle, but the stick is painful. Then he runs his fingers over the bumps on her back. The bumps seem to be climbing toward her neck and lower down her back. Pa sighs and smiles at her and then turns to the window
.

He stares for a minute, smiling off somewhere. Then he sees something. He sits all the way up. He moves quickly. He grabs his knife and his gun
.

“Naomi, stay here, no matter what!” Pa says, and he is out the door
.

Nos watches the street as Leila and the dogs walk outside to a blue Chevy pickup. When she’s gone he feels the absence of her beauty, The room throbs with its power.
Damn fine woman
.

When Leila opens the car door, the three pits leap inside one by one. She shuts the passenger door and tosses her pack in the pickup. Then she stops. She holds still too long, her attention fixed off somewhere Nos can’t see, like someone’s told her not to move. A boy rushes up into view and clocks her with the butt of a rifle and she drops.

He hears voices. Leila is surrounded. The young one is on top of her. Can’t shoot the fucker, Leila is too close. He has to get down there.

“Naomi, stay here, no matter what!” Nos manages to say before he rushes downstairs.

McGinnis and his kid are hiding behind cars in the garage. Nos glides to the door.

“Leave ‘em be,” McGinnis calls.

The pickup truck shakes with the power of the dogs against the windows. Leila is on the ground. She is surrounded by men in white sheets. Some hold torches. Some hold guns. Some have hoods covering their faces. Some have bare chests, bald heads, and swastikas tattooed on their white skin. Some of the swastikas are branded on.

Nos grinds his teeth.
The problem with the fucking apocalypse is you’re stuck with all the people who were ready for the fucking apocalypse
.

The kid opens a strip of duck tape.

“How ‘bout we muzzle
you
, you sweet bitch?” he says and tapes up her mouth.

Nos studies the area and reminds himself to keep his pulse rate down. He’ll have to kill them, he figures.
Probably all of them, being practical
. Nostradamus Greene was always practical when it came to killing.

The pickup rocks with the riotous dogs. The clansmen line up as two hold her down, and the boy says something about how he spotted her first. “Dibs,” he says.

Think
,
think
. He draws his sidepiece. Too many to open up right here. They might just shoot her. He could slip over to the pickup and let the dogs out, but they would get shot.

He crawls underneath the pickup on his belly, slow and unseen. The ankles of the clansmen holding Leila down are standing before him. The boy is bent on his knees, unbuckling his cowboy belt. He rips her shirt and licks along her neckline. The duct tape muffles her cries. Nos feels her tremors of helplessness.

It’ll be tough
. Take out the two first, then do the boy quick and dirty and drag Leila under the car. Real tough. No high ground. Pure melee: badly outnumbered.
Fucking impossible
.

The boy stops. Looks. A relief washes over Nos. He hears the bells chime. Steady in rhythm. The missionaries chant. The preacher calls to the clansmen.

“Stop! In the name of the most holy Lord Jesus Christ! Stop!”

Nos needed a miracle, and here they came, chanting in the break of pure day. The missionaries.
Those self-righteous bastards
.

The Grand Master and the preacher go back and forth, each more righteous than the other, getting nowhere fast. The Grand Master says she’s a bitch and that all this damnation is her fault and everyone like her. The preacher says all deserve salvation. The boy ignores the talk. The monks make a barrier in front of the boy and Leila.

“Please, my child, release her,” says the preacher.

“
Fuck
you,” the boy spits out nasty, like rotted fruit. “I aint your child, Jesus freak.”

The dogs pound in the car. The boy unzips Leila’s jeans.

Time
.

Nos draws his knife and slices the Achilles of the two clansmen. Blood sprays like a busted water pipe. He points his Sig at the boy, but now Leila has him. She grabs his wrist and snaps her legs in a triangle tight around his neck and shoulder. Her thighs lock onto his neck, and her calf cranks his head. His shoulder digs into his own throat. He turns bright red. She puts both hands on the back of his head and pulls him into the choke. He taps as if she cares. The choke is
tight
. He wheezes and goes limp.

She pulls the duck tape from her mouth.

“You want me? You got me!”

He is passed out and limp, but she squeezes tighter and he gurgles.

“
Too good a death for you
,” she tells him.

Nos climbs from under the car. The clansmen rush the monks and shove them aside. Four oafs break through and meet the cold nozzle of Nos’ Sig.

“Get down on the fucking floor!” says Nos.

One raises his rifle, and Nos plugs him.

The other three stand off and spread out to surround Nos.

“Get down on the fucking floor!” he says, thinking he should stop talking and start shooting.
Be practical
.

“Drop your gun, faggot.”

“Coward.”

“We’ll have your fucking head.”

“Eat your brains.”

“And your little girl.”

“Play football with her head.”

“We’ll fuck her first.”

“Of course.”

“Of course.”

They are trying to get to him.

It’s working.

They think that’s a good thing.

They’re wrong.

“Get down on the fucking floor!” he orders, and they almost listen.

Instead they rush him.

He shoots the first in the head. The other two slam him against the pickup. He drops the gun. Maybe on purpose, he isn’t sure…There’s two of them. He wants to feel them break with his own hands.
Not practical. But fun
.

They try to roll him on the ground. Nos pushes them back and stands up. He bounces on his toes, and they put up their hands.

Starts with a leg kick. Last thing the skinhead expects. Shin to knee, bone on bone, but Nos can’t feel it. Hits like a Louisville slugger. The skinhead’s knee breaks. Home run. Third guy that day that won’t walk anytime soon. The other guy comes throwing haymakers. Doesn’t come close. Nos slips and punches him in the throat. He doesn’t get up.

A wounded clansman climbs into Leila’s truck and drives off with the door open, bleeding a trail onto the dirt road.

“
Fuck
!” Leila shouts.

The dogs are out and chasing the others into the brush. A skinhead tries to hop away with a pit bull clamped on his ankle. The skinhead falls and the dog bites his throat, digs in with his teeth and violently shakes his neck. The skinhead convulses in the dirt, and the dog fixes his grip and doesn’t let go.

Blood is everywhere. A few bodies roll on the ground. Some crawl away. Some don’t move. The kid who started this whole mess lies where Leila released him. He isn’t breathing.

Nos follows a trail of black blood to where the preacher lies. He’s bleeding badly, with his flock kneeling and praying beside him.

“Please, let me,” says Nos as he crouches beside the preacher.

The preacher has both his hands on his heart. Nos covers them with his two hands the way the preacher had held his just yesterday. Blood pools under the missionary’s crusty fingernails.

He’s been stabbed. He bleeds from his chest. He doesn’t have long. Leila kneels beside him as well and the five of them hover.

The preacher’s bloody hand slides from his heart and smacks a bloody handprint on top of Nos’ hand with surprising strength.

“You see the power and courage of the heavenly Lord our God. He led me to this moment, and now I go without fear or regret. Let me save you, my son,” he says. “Let that be my last deed on this earth. Accept the Lord Jesus Christ as your savior.”

To the last
, thinks Nos.
To the very last
. He holds the preacher’s bleeding hands. The best he can do is smile.

“It is my purpose to save souls. I am meant to save yours before I pass. I am sure of this.”

The preacher’s flickering consciousness verges the abyss.

Leila lays her hand on top of the preacher’s, making layers of hands and blood.

“You saved me,” she says. “Bless you, you have saved my very soul.”

***

It’s barely daybreak. The violence was so quick and now it’s over. Naomi could only watch so much from the window. Snatches of craziness. When Pa comes upstairs he’s breathing hard, and there’s blood on him. She looks at the blood, and he follows where she looks and sees the blood like he hadn’t noticed until then
.

“It’s OK,” he says. “It’s not my blood.”

He packs up everything and picks her up and carries her downstairs
.

The man at the garage is red and flustered
.

“You know what you did?” he asks Pa. “They’ll come back. They’ll take everything.”

“You knew,” says Pa. “You knew they’d come. You offered your room and took our money, and you knew.”

Pa stares. The red-faced man is quiet
.

“You’re lucky I’m leaving you here alive,” he says and walks out
.

The sun is high and bright like a normal afternoon, and the lady is outside with her dogs putting herself back together. Her shirt is torn. She cusses and says her stuff is gone. Her food, her clothes, her dog food
.

The men in white with the candle flag are walking away, carrying someone covered in a sheet. There are two men on the ground, and they aren’t breathing. One is the boy from before with the foul mouth. She wonders if her father killed him
.

The lady is still upset. She paces, angry. Pa puts Nay down
.

“We could follow them,” says Pa. “Get your truck back.”

“I never want to lay eyes on them again,” says the lady. “Animals. No, not animals,” she says and looks at her dogs. “Animals have their nature intact. Those are a virus.”

Pa has trouble looking at her. Leila is stripped down and trembling to her core. Naomi knows that face: Pa is thinking. Deciding
.

“That caravan offer still stands?” Pa asks
.

Leila smiles. “You got room for a few beasts?”

“We’ll make room.”

“Look, I don’t know how to thank you, how I can ever repay.”

“No payments. I don’t know why, but I have a feeling about you, that you would do the same for us.”

She smiles. Her smirk is back. Nay already recognizes the smirk and feels like she’ll remember it as Leila’s forever. She looks deeply at Pa, even as he looks away. “You don’t know how right you are.”

Leila chuckles when she sees the NYPD van.

“You a cop?”

Nos shrugs. “Nope. Just robbed one.”

The dogs ride in the back with Leila. Naomi rides in the front and seems uncomfortable. She looks back to Leila like she belongs in the front. Nos just drives.

They ride the familiar rumble of the road. The woods fly by the windows like the trees don’t know it’s the end of the world. Nos digs in on the gas pedal and pushes the van up around a hundred miles per hour and Leila laughs when he takes his crazy turns. They drive as the sun sets and night falls. Leila offers to drive, and Nos says he’s fine. They stop when the girls have to go to the bathroom. Nos isn’t tired. Must be that morning’s action running through him. He drives on through the night.

When the sun rises, Nos has to leave the highway to scavenge for gas. The company would rather not leave the safety of the road. Nos finds some cars up abandoned driveways. He sucks the fuel from their tanks with a tube, and Leila says
yuck
. Naomi giggles.
Yuck
, she repeats.

They get back in the van, and Nay quickly hops in the back with the dogs.

“I can’t take your seat, princess,” says Leila.

“I want to play with the doggies,” says Naomi.

It’s strange to have a woman in the passenger seat. As Leila shuffles in his periphery, Nos, at times, forgets that she’s not Yvette. Where their banter was easy and natural before, they are quiet now. Nos feels like he’s been set up on a blind date by Naomi.

“Why you heading West?” Leila breaks the ice.

“Beats the shit outta East,” says Nos.

“Hmm.”

“You?”

“Same,” she says.

“Really?”

“Sure. I can play that cagey game, too,” she says.

Nos isn’t sure why, but he doesn’t want to tell Leila about how sick Naomi is. There’s no good reason he can think of. But, practically speaking, it’s always best to reveal as little as necessary.

“I’m going to try and find my brother,” says Nos.

“Oh right. Indiana.”

“He’s on a military base out there.”

“Were you two close?”

“Not especially.”

“So why go find him?” she asks.

“Nothing’s more important than family,” says Nos, thinking of his father’s corpse back in Brooklyn. How his father’s best friend didn’t even know who Nos was. But he knew Tommy.

“If you say so. In my experience, family is just the people you happen to be stuck with due to which womb you happened to come out of.”

Nos wonders if she’s trying to get under his skin.

“Family is who we support and who supports us, when no one will. When the world ends.”

“And yet every shady cutthroat and scumbag is in somebody’s family.”

Naomi pushes her head between them and listens.