After America (60 page)

“Well, officially, it smells like vanilla, orange peel, and cigars and tastes of sweet fruit, smoke, and a balancing acidity with spicy notes in the finish.”

Both Miguel and Adam stared at her as though she were crazy. Sofia seemed fascinated, however.

“I used to be a food writer,” she explained.

“You wrote recipes?” Miguel asked.

“Like cookbooks?” the boy added.

Sofia shook her head and sighed as though on stage. “No,” she explained on Trudi’s behalf. “I’ll bet you used to write for magazines and stuff, didn’t you? Like
Vogue
or something.”

Trudi smiled, but she looked disheartened to Miguel.

“Yes, Sofia. I wrote restaurant reviews. For magazines and newspapers. Not much call for that sort of skill these days, though.”

“Ah,” Miguel said, suddenly understanding. “I knew a man once who worked for McDonald’s. I used to manage their herds in Mexico. So you would write stories about eating in such places?”

“Oh my God, Papa,” his daughter said as though he’d fatally embarrassed her.

Trudi Jessup, however, seemed to give the question a good deal of thought, and whatever she thought, it apparently amused her.

“Yes,” she said after a moment. “That’s what I would do. I’d eat in places …
like
McDonald’s … and write a story about it. That’s how I came to miss the Disappearance. I was in Sardinia, researching a story for
Gourmet Traveller.
”

“I know that magazine,” Sofia said. “There were copies on Miss Julianne’s boat, after the Wave.”

It wasn’t exactly like a silence fell over them. The Wave had long ago receded, after all. But their good humor was subdued a little.

“I was in Edmonton,” Adam said. “On a school trip.”

“Oh,” Trudi gasped unexpectedly. “You poor boy.”

Miguel wondered what she meant, and she registered his puzzlement immediately.

“Don’t you understand, Miguel?” she asked. “Edmonton was cut in half by the Wave. The city was madness, they say. Pure killing madness.”

Adam nodded, and the candlelight gave him a haunted look.

“It was,” he said. “It was like a curtain of bright sparkles high in the sky. I saw a pair of police cars and an ambulance cross the Wave and crash into buildings on the other side. Another cop ran past me, shouting for people to get back while she was talking on her radio. The Wave reached out and snatched her.”

Adam shook his head.

“I saw her eyes … She didn’t even get a chance to scream.”

Adam shivered.

“This is why we drink,” said Miguel, taking his refilled glass from Trudi Jessup.

“Amen to that,” she said.

New York

Yusuf Mohammed could think of no prouder moment than this as he stood in the shell of a ransacked department store to meet the warriors of his very first
saif.
The store, housed in a grand old building, had been thoroughly looted. Every window on the ground floor was broken, letting in the wind and rain and an acrid smell of burning chemicals from the battle that rumbled a few miles to the south. For the most part his men, all Africans like him, all of them converts to the religion of peace, were recent arrivals. Only Tony Katumu, a former Serengeti National Park ranger, had been in America for more than a month. The others—two Ugandans, one Kenyan, and a lighter-skinned Algerian—had all arrived via the Canadian wastes in the last two weeks. They were all seasoned fighters, but they could not keep the look of wonder from their eyes whenever they moved through the city streets. Even as a tomb, New York had the power to overwhelm a newcomer. Yusuf remembered his own sense of insignificance the first time he had glimpsed Manhattan’s skyline from a distance. He’d felt as though he was trespassing in a burial ground for ancient gods. A blasphemous thought, of course, that he flinched away from the very moment he’d had it.

His men—he was still getting used to that characterization,
his
men—checked their kits one final time before heading out. Around them, in the cavernous ruins of the department store’s ground floor, the warriors of the other
saif
, all of them newly arrived via the overland route from the north as well, were busy with final checks and preparations. They did not look much like an army. No two men were dressed alike, and although most were armed with AK-47s, the rest of their equipment was a grab bag of scavenged body armor, webbing, helmets, packs, and a jumbled bazaar of civilian clothing, bits and pieces of military camouflage, and whatever trinkets each man thought useful or necessary to have. Some carried extra water; some had pockets bulging with energy bars. The men of Yusuf’s
saif
traveled light, at his insistence: their personal weapons and extra ammunition, a fighting knife, two canteens of water and a dozen water purification pills, a map, a small first-aid kit. As the commander of a
saif
, Yusuf was supposed to have the option of night vision goggles, but there were not nearly enough to go around, and he was comfortable fighting in the dark at any rate. Most of the raids he had carried out as a member of the Lord’s Resistance Army had taken place after dark. He also worried about being blinded by bright flashes while he was wearing them.

“Tony,” he said, “I am told you are familiar with the part of the city where we are to fight.”

The former park ranger nodded as he adjusted the sling of his assault rifle.

“When I first arrived in New York, I was sent down there with four men from Dar es Salaam,” he said. “They were bandits, but their clan had negotiated passage and salvage rights in our part of the city in return for providing fighters. I watched over them while they picked over a couple of blocks. But I made my own notes and maps as we had been taught. I know it well.”

“Then you shall lead us down there,” said Yusuf, “once we find out exactly where they need us most.”

The Algerian, a wiry brown-skinned fisherman by the name of Selim whose livelihood had been ruined by the Israelis’ nuclear contamination of the Mediterranean, grinned wickedly. “They want us to go to hell,” he said. “It’s just down that way.”

He jerked his thumb as if to point somewhere off to the south.

The other men all chuckled or grinned. It was nervous laughter. The sounds of battle reached them as a dull volcanic roar rolling up out of the gray distance. Even when the rain fell heavily enough to make conversation difficult, it was still not so loud as to drown out the thunder of the Americans’ big bombing raids and the constant crash of their artillery. Yusuf had learned since becoming the commander of his own
saif
that the island he had been able to see from his dugout on Ellis was the location from which most of the American shelling originated. Governors Island it was called, and the governor of New York, an infidel known as Schimmel, was actually based there, as was the regiment of militia he controlled. They were fighting alongside the army in Manhattan now, and Yusuf had been told that they were not nearly as formidable an opponent as the regular American soldiers he would meet. Indeed, Sheikh Ozal’s lieutenants, who had sat him down and all but overwhelmed him with information and details about the battle as soon as he was elevated to the level of commander, had insisted that whenever he found himself faced by a militia unit, he should press forward at all costs, for if the American line was to break anywhere, it would be there. To that end Yusuf had driven his small band of men to distraction, making them memorize the differences in uniforms and equipment between regular U.S. Army units and Governor Schimmel’s militia, who were very helpfully dressed in gray camouflage, not green and brown.

“While we wait, we should look at those photographs of the American soldiers again,” Yusuf said, drawing a chorus of groans and pleas from his men.

“Not again,” said Selim. “Please, not again.”

As they burned off nervous energy waiting for their orders to head out to the front line, a strange quiet descended. Yusuf turned around and found that Ahmet Ozal and, even more surprisingly, the emir himself had appeared at the rear of the store. All discipline evaporated as fifty or sixty fighters pressed forward to get closer to their leaders. As sworn members of the Fedayeen Ozal, their first loyalty was to their Turkish lord, but the emir was a legendary figure, almost mythical, and his very rare appearances were always eagerly discussed and fondly remembered by the men afterward. The emir never spoke harshly to anyone. He had a knack of remembering a man’s name and the smallest, least important details of his life, if he had met him once before. He was also generous to a fault, often sending out small gifts and tokens of appreciation to the men for their efforts even when his duties precluded him from walking among them. It was rumored that he took no plunder from the city, spending any and all tribute, which was rightfully his, to support the families of his fighters instead. The story of how he had not punished Yusuf for his self-confessed failure of spirit on Ellis Island but had instead rewarded him lavishly for returning to the fold with useful information had spread rapidly through the ranks of the fedayeen. Yusuf, who had expected to be shunned as a coward and detailed into some demeaning or even suicidal role, found himself the object of envy and much good-natured ribbing at having shared the delights of the emir’s personal harem, even if only for a day. The man did not simply inspire loyalty. Looking upon him for the second time in a week, Yusuf understood something his enemies never would: The emir inspired love.

He did not look happy today, however. The dark and somber cast of his features matched almost perfectly the bleak weather and deteriorating news from the front. As the emir weaved his way through and around the trashed store displays, hopping over a mannequin and crunching the broken glass of an empty jewelry cabinet under his boots, Yusuf could not help worrying that something had gone terribly wrong. His worst fears were confirmed as the emir held up both hands and gestured for the fighters to gather around him and be quiet.

“My friends, I bring ill tidings,” he announced. A troubled murmur ran through the small gathering of armed men. “I have had word from the front. The Americans have cut through our allies …”

The grumbling turned much darker and uglier, but the emir hushed the angry crowd with a gentle gesture of his hand. “It is only to be expected,” he said. “They are pouring everything they have into this battle, and our … allies … are not as well equipped or trained as you. Nor do they fight for a higher purpose. We cannot expect them to bend themselves to God’s will and do his hard work when they do not have faith. All they have is their greed. Do not blame them for this. Pity them and forgive them as Allah would.”

Yusuf was surprised to find a tear welling up as his throat tightened. As he listened to the emir, his anger at the failure of the bandits turned to pity and even a little shame.

“Even so, there is now more hard work for us to do. We are preparing a fearsome defense upon which the Americans will perish like sailors dashed against the rocks by a great storm.”

The mood in the room changed again at that. The fighters became more attentive. Yusuf noted his own men clustering around him and lifting their faces expectantly to the emir, who had climbed atop what looked like an old cabinet in a perfume display.

“We need time to ready that defense, and I’m afraid I must ask you men to give me that time. It almost certainly means asking you to give me your lives.”

A single voice cried out. “Our lives! Our souls! For you, anything, my sheikh.”

The crowd erupted in a single roar of agreement. Yusuf found himself shouting along with everyone else.

“There is more,” said the emir, raising his voice to be heard above the clamor but not actually shouting. He seemed to have a way of projecting his words so that they reached right to the back of the assembly. “I’m afraid it is not so simple a matter as laying down your lives in battle. There are women and children in the path of the American onslaught.”

Yusuf was stunned. He’d had no idea any of the families were even on the main island of the city. Although he had no woman of his own yet, he understood that all the families of the warrior-settlers were maintained safe and far away from the fighting. When he thought of them caught up in Kipper’s infernal war, his reaction was identical to that of his comrades—outrage. The emir gestured for calm again before the men’s anger could run away with them.

“A small party ventured downtown a few days ago after we received reports of a sizable food store that remained untouched. They set out before the current fighting began, gathering supplies for the main family camp, when they came under fire from the Americans’ artillery. Soldiers soon followed, and they took shelter, hiding nearby in the public library. They are still there now with just a handful of guards. The American numbers are small, just a platoon of militia, but more will surely follow. We need to get them out, along with whatever supplies they have salvaged, and then we need to hold that position as long as possible.
You
need to hold that position as long as possible. If you can do that, if you can give me the time, I will prepare a trap for the infidel that will break him at last. I ask you now, as men of the the Fedayeen Ozal, my very finest warriors, who is willing to give up his life that our women and children might live and our enemies fail?”

The answering roar drowned out the sound of the rain and the rumble of battle for the first time Yusuf could recall.

They ran, heedless of the rain that lashed at them, sometimes making it impossible to see more than half a block ahead. They ran, heedless of the many pitfalls and traps that lay in their way. Half-submerged wreckage and debris on which a man might trip and shatter his leg. Lethal depths, open manholes, yawning concrete mouths where rusted steel grates had given way and now lay like the jaws of the city, waiting to consume anyone foolish enough to fall headlong into them. They ran, bounding over barricades of crashed cars, darting inside the husks of looted shops whenever the dull chopping thud of rotor blades echoed through the empty canyons above them, warning of the approach of American helicopter gunships. They ran carrying the burden of their weapons and the extra ammunition they had been given, weight they bore by dropping food they would not need. They ran even when their legs grew hot and their muscles trembled and terrible barbed knots of pain spread through their bodies, starting as stitches in their guts and flaring into white-hot incandescent flames that burned their lungs. They ran without checking for snipers. Or mines. Or the cruder man traps left by the pirates and bandits who had passed through here before them. They ran counting the blocks they passed, but only at first. They ran when they lost count, and they ran all the harder when they had no idea how much farther they had to run.