A New Day in America (17 page)

Tommy chuckles and nods.

“The oldest profession isn’t prostitution,” says Nos, catching Lawlor’s blue eyes. “It’s war.”

“Go to sleep, sweetheart,” says Nos, stroking Naomi’s hair. “We’ve got to head out in the morning.”

“Where’s Uncle Tommy?”

“He’s playing cards.”
And drinking hard. Already good and drunk by the time I left him
.

“And Leila?”

“She’s next door. She has her own room.”

“The doggies?”

“With Leila.”

“Is she coming with us?”

“She is.”

“And Uncle Tommy?”

“That’s up to him.”

“Where are we going?”

“San Francisco.”

“I don’t want to go,” she says softly.

Nos could feel it coming.

“I want to stay here,” she adds.

“I know. But we have to keep moving.”

“Why?”

Another question he’d rather not answer.
Because if I don’t find a cure, hon, you’ll die. And at the moment, this ghost of a ‘Chef’ is our only hope. And the Chef, wherever he is, definitely isn’t on base
.

He can’t figure the right words.
Still. The anxiety before is always worse than the pain after
.

“Because we need a cure.”
There. Simple and true
.

“For what?”

“You. So I don’t have to keep pricking you with needles.”
Simple and half-true
.

“I know there’s something wrong with me.”

The silence that follows is hard to take and impossible to fill. As his mind races for comforting words, she saves him.

“Will you read to me?”

He smiles. She’s noticed Tommy’s stack of books.

As Nos scans the titles on the spines, he doesn’t see anything remotely kid-friendly. Mostly hard-boiled titles like
Hell to Pay, Homicide, Before They are Hanged, The Art of War
, and
The Naked and the Dead
. Then he sees one he could maybe spin, though it’s a stretch. Machiavelli’s
The Prince
.

“Did you find something?” she asks.

“Yes, hon. It’s about a prince.”

Naomi is out cold before he finishes the first chapter, and Nos soon follows. He wakes up around four a.m. Tommy’s still not back. He realizes he’s alone.
First time in a long time
. And he has electricity.

He quietly digs out his son’s old digital camera from his bag and hooks it up to Tommy’s TV. The camera charges up as it plays. He turns the volume down, so as not to wake Naomi.

Same loop of his family he had seen so many times before they left Brooklyn. Jay fake fights his friends. Mikey is too cool for the room. Naomi is a baby
. Feels like forever. Feels like home
.

Yvette looks at Nos from the screen. “Hi camera,” she says.

Nos mouths the words along with her.

A noise distracts him. He doesn’t hear what she says next. Powerful hands are on him.

A knife plunges toward his throat.

He grabs the forearm just in time, pulling the point of the blade away in a violent tug of war. Another arm slides under his neck, crushing his larynx.
Hold onto the knife. Let him choke you
, Nos tells himself.
You won’t black out if he only has one arm
.

But fuck he’s fucking
strong.

Legs fling around Nos’ torso and lock him in place. Naomi shrieks awake. The knife lunges toward his ear, and he yanks it back down, verging on blackout.
Black out and that knife will be in your skull
.

He rams his palm onto the knife handle and jerks back a thumb, feeling a small bone
crack
in his fist.
There’s a sweet sound
.

The knife falls. Nos spins and sends his head into the man’s nose, and a spurt of blood wets his face. Nos crams both palms into the man’s neck and cranks back his chin. He loads up and drops an elbow on his face with all his weight and splits his cheek.

The man doesn’t utter a sound.

He grabs Nos’ head and yanks him down to his chest, tightening his grip. And then he releases. Nos winds up and drops another elbow, but his bone hits the floor.

Pain sings through his arm. The door creaks. The man is gone.

That quickly, Nos and Nay are alone.

The room lights up and the dogs rush in. Leila stands by the door. Naomi is crying. A black pigsticker knife sits beside him. Leila has a look of horror.

“It’s OK,” says Nos, wiping the wetness from his face. “It’s not my blood.” A bright stripe of red is on his sleeve. A splatter is on the floor.

“Pa,” Naomi says, clutching her neck. There are tears in her eyes, and she’s breathing hard.

“It’s OK, sweetie, don’t panic,” he says and lunges toward her. She looks utterly terrified.
The blood
. Nos must look like a nightmare.

Leila goes to her and holds her. Naomi buries her head in Leila’s breast and then comes back up for air.

“Pa. My necklace. My shake. It’s
gone
.”

Nos slams Tommy up against the wall.

“You
motherfucker
!”

Nos jams his forearm under Tommy’s chin. Tommy got so wasted he is still barely able to open his eyes.

“What, bro? What? What the fuck?” he manages, his face pressed against the wall.

“You
told
.”

“I swear I didn’t say a word.”

“I just had a visit from a friend of yours. He tried to fucking kill me and my daughter!”

Tommy pauses to process what he’s just heard. They are in the hallway outside Tommy’s room. Nos wants to break Tommy’s skull. He thinks of Naomi and the look on her face and the tears on her cheek and he almost lets his fist fly.
Let him talk
, he calms himself.

Then hit him
.

“Who?” Tommy asks.

“Who do you think? You were playing cards with him.” There is no doubt in Nos’ mind that Lawlor is the only man on base who could have gotten so close to him.

“Laws?”

“Naomi’s necklace is gone, the vial he was so fascinated by. Here’s his fucking blood,” growls Nos, holding up his reddened sleeve.

“No, there’s no way, it’s not possible. I didn’t say a word. I swear.”

“He knew! He had to. Why else, Tommy? Why else would he try and kill me?”

“I have no clue. He must have figured it out on his own. Or spied on us when you first told me. He’s been creeping around since I got back. I never really hung with him before. He always kept to himself, did all the crossword puzzles in the library, and beat everyone at Scrabble. I played chess with him once or twice, that’s it,” Tommy pleas.

Nos is unmoved. “
He figured it out
? Are you serious?”

“That’s the only option. He must have and then thought the medicine was in Naomi’s necklace. I didn’t say a word. I know I was drunk, but still. I swear. I swear on
Pop
.”

Nos takes that in.
He wouldn’t swear on Pop. He had no reason at all to say anything. I can’t condemn him. Not yet
.

“Tell me what happened last night. Recount your every move.”

Tommy takes a moment to arrange his drink-addled mind. “Poker game. Six of us. I poured up the good stuff. Got lit, really quick. Forgot about how much pain I was in. They were all asking me what went down with the Tooth Fairy. I told the story, made myself sound pretty badass. Got hot, took a few hands, a few dollars, a few strips of dried venison. Lost it all pretty quick. Went down. And… shit.”

“What time was that?”

“Like one a.m. One thirty?”

“You were out past four.”

“I…can’t remember a fucking thing.”

Nos stares at him.
Not yet. His face is already broke. But not his jaw
.

“I guess I blacked out.”

Nos pops him. Tommy stumbles and falls on the floor. Nos had pulled the punch, but he’s so angry he can’t say how much he pulled it. Seventy percent, maybe.

Tommy doesn’t know the difference.

“
Fuck
!” He moans from the floor.

“I trusted you. I trusted you with my daughter’s life. I trusted you to act like some semblance of a human being. Not a drunken punch line.”

He walks to the door to Leila’s quarters and grabs the handle. “
You swear on Pop
,” says Nos. “We’re leaving within the hour.”

Nos paces the room. Leila, Naomi, and the dogs’ heads all follow him back and forth like a tennis match.

“Never trusted that guy. I know he was the one who spread the word about what Tommy said before he shot the Tooth Fairy. If he heard, he was there. If he was there, why didn’t he shoot the Tooth Fairy himself?”

“He’s creepy,” says Leila.

“He was talking about how awesome it is when one man stands off with another. Like he gets off on it. I bet you he let Tommy and that warlord square off just to watch it happen.”

“And now you think he wants to square off with you?”

Nos pauses. “Why me?”

“Maybe he needs some competition. Steel sharpens steel.”

“No, he took the vial. He must have come for the treatment. He must be sick. He
knows
.” His pacing feet grow more violent.

“You really think it was Tommy?”

Nos shakes his head. “Who knows? He blacked out,
he
doesn’t even know.”

“What did you do to him out there? Sounded pretty rough.”

He notices the way Naomi and Leila are looking at him.
They are scared. I’m mad with worry for them, and they are scared of me. What kind of sense does that make?

Nos settles down and sits on the bed.

“That’s better,” soothes Leila. “Now lay down. Use your words.”

Nos obliges. He puts his head on the pillow, hard as it is to be still with his heart and head pounding.

“He had everything. The father, the mother, the support. Our dad barely acknowledged me as a kid. Tommy’s mom was his wife, mine was my mistress. So Tommy had a dad. I had to be good at everything. He didn’t have to lift a finger but to drink and screw off.”

“Look, that’s all well and good, but this isn’t the time to cry about all of that. You told me ‘Nothing’s more important than family.’ Remember?”

“And you said they’re just the people you’re stuck with due to a dice roll. That every cutthroat and scumbag is somebody’s family.”

“My uncle was doing fifteen to life for being a pedophile. My cousin was a crackhead who robbed every one of us a thousand times over. Half the time, my brother sold her the crack she smoked. Now tell me how rough you have it.”

Nos is quiet.
Tommy’s a liability. Lawlor is a menace. Who knows who else knows about the treatment. Naomi is in danger.

Still. Let her speak
.

“You told me that family is who we support and who supports us, when no one else will. When the world ends. I can’t say I agree with you. But I like that you said it. I like it even more that you meant it.”

Women. They make it so hard to be wrong
.

Nos stands in Tommy’s doorway, his rucksack in his hand. The room is dark but for the slant of light from the hall.

“How’s that jaw?” he asks.

“Not broken,” Tommy’s voice mutters from the dark. “Thanks for throwing your left. And thanks for pulling it.”

“I’m sorry Tommy. I shouldn’t have hit you.”

“You had every right. I can’t seem to do right by my friends or brothers.”

“Whatever you’ve done or not done, you’ve taken enough punishment already. I am sorry. ‘Any stubborn man can be right all the time,’” he says.

“’Only a strong man can admit when he’s wrong,” Tommy finishes. “All the times Pop said that. Almost every time, he got a confession out of me. Funny how I can’t remember one time he ever admitted he was wrong.”

Nos nods. “When you’re a father, it’s an easy trap to fall into. You always have to have all the answers, and you get used to it. I can be…touchy when it comes to Naomi.”

“It’s heartbreaking, that rash,” says Tommy. “Look, I know I blacked out, but I can’t believe I’d say anything. I love that little girl, she may be the last of our line. Maybe he drugged me or something, to make sure I didn’t come back to the room.”

Nos smiles. “Or maybe you took a fistful of painkillers and an eighth of moonshine to the head.”

Tommy rises from his bed and becomes half-visible in the hallway light. They hug. Awkward at first. And then it’s not.

The highways wind through the shadow of old America as the NYPD van drives farther from its jurisdiction and into the unfamiliar West. The towns they pass seem suspended in the instant the virus blanketed them—the power of that concentrated strain causing violent deaths within minutes. So cars stand on roads where they were left, sometimes with doors open and bodies covered in the red-speckled rash dead in a desperate crawl. Long stretches of highways have yet to be scavenged. When Nos runs low on gas he takes a tube to the tanks of idle cars and sucks until the vacuum of pressure bursts the vile fluid into his mouth. He spits the gas on the pavement and fills a gas can. He wants to vomit and stinks for hours. Nay covers her nose. The monotony gives him a taste for gas and speed, and he begins to take corners so hard the van tilts and Naomi glares wide like he’s a madman.

They spend nights by lonely fires in the woods off the highway. They’ve run through their beans and ready-made meals and now live off gas station jerky and chips. Soon there are no more cars on the highway. The gas stations are bare and looted. Gas and food are low. Nos doesn’t want to leave the safe and speedy anonymity of the highway, but there is no choice.

Highways open up as they burn through Midwestern states. More and more cars are riding the roads as they pass. Some point at the NYPD van and laugh. Stands emerge on the sides of narrower roads. Cars pull into rest areas. Food is easier to come by. Scavengers-turned-merchants take cash money. Occasional gas pumps work. They pass highway signs with the flaming chalice and toll booths peopled by Revelation Guard Corps.