A New Day in America (19 page)

A thin nurse comes out from inside the triage and smiles at Naomi.

“You must be Naomi,” she says.

Naomi sleepily nods.

“Aren’t you a doll? Hi, I’m Nurse Todd, mister…”

“Greene,” says Nos, taking her slender hand.

“Come on and follow me, we’ll get you all situated with a gown and some slippies and run some tests. How’s that sound?”

Nay nods. “OK.”

The nurse takes Nay’s hand and Nos and Leila follow.

The nurse turns.

“Would you mind terribly if only one of you came back? It gets a bit crowded.”

Leila taps Nos’ shoulder and smiles at Nay and sits back down. Nos follows as the nurse leads Nay to an exam room. All the rooms they pass are dark.
Not so crowded back here after all
. The exam room is windowless and beige like a padded cell. The nurse digs a paper gown and slippers out from a drawer. Nos helps Nay dress, and she looks like a blue meringue. They crack the door to the exam room, and the nurse comes right back—all smiles and ‘by Jesus this’ and ‘heavens and mercy that.’ She leads Nay to a testing room where a technician waits in a heavy led vest.

“You can wait back in the exam room for the doctor,” she tells Nos.

“Wait, nurse,” says Nos. He doesn’t want Naomi going where he can’t follow. “What’s this test?”

“Oh, a few things, it’s a whole process—a dosimeter test, blood test—the doctor will be in soon and explain everything,” she says as she walks away, footsteps clicking in the empty hallway.

Three Revelation Guard soldiers march toward them from the way she left. Nos doesn’t like the look on their faces.

He locks eyes with Naomi. They are thinking the same thing.

They turn and walk together back the other way. No words needed.

Footsteps march from the hallway ahead like hoofs in lockstep.
Soldiers in front, soldiers behind?

Nos slows and picks Naomi up and holds her to his chest.

A stack of Revelation soldiers appears up ahead. They hold AK’s and wear desert fatigues and the flaming chalice is painted on in black.

“What do you want?” Nos calls.

The doors burst open at his flanks. Brawny, powerful men tackle him and rip Naomi from his arms in a blur of force. It feels like a hundred hands hold him to the ground.
Nay’s gone
.

Nay’s gone
.

What’s happening?

A boot is pressed against his neck, digging his face into the floor.

She’s screaming from somewhere above. “Pa! Pa! No! Pa!” He can only see the floor.

A pair of black patent leather shoes click and step into his narrow vision.

“Bid farewell to your daughter,” bellows a voice from above, deep and ornery as a grunting warthog. The mad preacher from the ER. “Your daughter is gone. She was lost some time ago. She is already marked with sin and long damned to toil in the fierce eternal fires of His Wrath.”

He hears the
click-clack
of guns cocking. The soldiers walk off. Nay screams and screams and screams until she’s muzzled. Her suffocated cries diminish as the boots march further away.
Marked with sin?

Nos struggles, helpless. “My daughter,” he utters.

“Is gone!” he shouts.

Nos remembers Baker’s words.
Have you seen a single person with that rash in Revelation territory?

“God now holds
you
over the pit of hell much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over a fire! He abhors you! He looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be thrown in that fire! He is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight. You are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes as the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. Tis nothing more than his hand that prevents you from falling into the fire every moment!”

Nos lowers his head and holds still as death.
Conversion at gunpoint
.

“O sinner! You hang by a slender thread! Thus are all that never passed under a great change of heart by the mighty power of the spirit of
God
upon your soul! All that were never born again and made new creatures and raised from being dead in sin to a state of new, and therefore unexperienced a state of light and life, you are thus in the hands of an angry God! ‘Tis nothing but his mere pleasure that keeps you from being swallowed up in everlasting destruction.”

“Save me, Father,” says Nos into the floor. “Save me.”

“Do you wish it so? Pure in heart?”

“I do. I do, save me please.”

“Stand him up.”

They bend to stand him. They reposition, shift weight, and grab Nos under his arms.

Time
.

He spins and tears away from the grips on his arms. He ducks and powers his shoulders into two guts. Two strongmen barrel into two more, and four collapse like a lawn chair. He flips his Sig ready and unleashes four kill shots. The Revelation soldiers die where they lay.

The preacher runs down the hall, and Nos shoots him in his leg. He tumbles and slams against a door.

Nos pulls his pigsticker and hunts the preacher down. Nos grips his forearm and yanks him up onto his feet.

“Where is she?” Nos demands and shoves the knife in his groin. More howling.
Good, but not enough
.

Two soldiers rush from down the hallway with AK 47’s raised to shoot.

Nos turns the preacher around as a shield, holding him up by the knife handle. “I said, where is she?” Nos jams the blade in further.

“
Glory, glory, glory
,” the preacher rants. “Glory in His wrath. Yes! Yes! Glory! Praise be glory! Yes! Yes!”

The soldiers hesitate, sights on Nos.

“Glory! Glory!”

Nos throws the preacher at one soldier as he fires. Bullets tear through the preacher’s black coat. Nos ducks and blasts a round though a soldier’s throat and hammers another into the other’s stomach.

Nos’ leg goes numb. Feels like he wet his pants. Blood gushes on the floor. The one hit in the stomach howls and vomits torrents of red.

The tip of Nos’ knife finds the top of his kneecap and thrusts into the bone.
The screams are good, but not enough
.

“Where is she?” he orders.

“
It is too late for those marked by God? They are consumed by the fires of His—”
he cries.

Nos thrusts the knife in deeper, working the blade through cartilage like carving a turkey.

“Where is she?”

Blood drains from his mouth. “
Kill me, God loves me. You can do nothing to me, my soul is eternal, my soul is eternal, my soul is eternal, I am eternal
—”

“But you will not die, not for hours,” Nos explains. “I will skin you
alive
.”

Nos put his foot on the thigh and hefts his knife out of the knee, releasing a burst of blood. He turns his blade along the man’s shin and saws. The knife’s edge skims along the line where flesh meets bone. The skin peels backwards as he slices toward the ankle. This time the screams are more what Nos had in mind.

“I’ll peel you like a grape.”

“Third floor! Please kill me! Third floor psych unit! Kill me now! Please, kill me now!”

“Fuck you,” says Nos, and he throws the soldier into his puddle of blood.

Nos jets to the nearest staircase. Footsteps are oncoming. He bangs a new clip in his Sig as a soldier rounds the corner. Nos bangs a bullet through the bridge of his nose.

He reaches the third floor and follows the arrows to the psych unit. Two soldiers stand in front of a large door. Nos puts them down and then puts a round in the lock.

The door flies open. The room is full of worshipers.
No children. No Nay. He lied
.

The congregation looks up at him. He’s covered in blood. A preacher stands at a podium. They are terrified.

Back to the hallway. He’s losing time.
Think
.
The Humvees
.

The school buses
.

Nos bowls into the ER, knocking over a crowd of people and firing off into the air.

“
Everybody get the fuck down!”

He turns and pops a Revelation guard twice in the chest.

The ER hits the deck. Except Leila. She looks at him, shocked.

“Have you lost your mind?”

He runs toward the exit.

“They took Nay!”

“What?” The concern on her face is intense.
For Nay? Or me?

“I’m OK,” he blurts. “It isn’t my blood,” he says and runs past her.

He is out the door before Leila can follow.
No time
.

Nos scurries through the parking lot and makes a line for the van. He pops the doors open, and the dogs growl and bark. He snags his rucksack and his .50-caliber and slings them both over his shoulder.

Nos keeps his Sig drawn as Revelation Guards burst from the ER doors, searching for him. A soldier sits on a police bike in the lot, trying to figure out what’s going on as Nos cracks three bullets through his helmet. He kicks the dead man off the bike and hops on. He rides to the road and looks left and right. Nothing. He has to pull out his scope as troops are coming at him from behind. He sees a convoy in the distance on a winding road—a school bus and a Humvee.

He lays cover fire at the guards and takes off through the return fire. The bullets
hiss
. When they are close they
crack
.

He burns up the road behind the convoy. The Revelation is on his ass. Can’t take out the gunners, not yet. Can’t risk the bus flying off the road. Has to wait for them to stop, but at that pace, he’ll get caught from behind.

A soldier stands and mans the mounted .50-caliber.

Nos pulls his Sig, fires, and misses. No better than a warning shot. The bike swerves. He keeps shooting, firing wide. He balances the bike handles and fires. He hits the hull, hits the fuel tank, and then the gunner. Gasoline bursts from the vehicle and gushes onto the highway.

The gunner holds his bloody stomach and grabs the .50-caliber and starts blasting.
Tough motherfucker
. Nos brakes as rounds explode on the pavement in front.

The convoy approaches a checkpoint stocked with heavily-armed personnel at every tollbooth. They don’t stop. Massive tankers wait on the side roads.

He can’t slow down—can’t lose the convoy. If he comes on fast enough, he can burn through.
Only chance. Make it count
.

Nos ducks and accelerates and flushes past the toll dividers. Sirens blare behind him.

He chases the Humvee onto a long bridge.

He’s stuck. Can’t get too close to the convoy, they’ll shoot him down. Can’t fall back, they’ll catch him from behind.
Only one option. Sideways
.

He glances to the vast waters below. They’re closing in from behind. Bullets pop and ricochet. Can’t even see who’s firing from where—just deafening suppressive fire.
No choice
.

He jerks the handles hard to the right. The wheels spin out, and he crouches and skids under an opening of support beams. The bridge slips away from the wheels, and he flies.

Free of ground and sound.

The other children are crying. There are two of them. Nay can’t tell how old they are—maybe older than her. A boy and a girl. They have white-pink rashes like her. She can’t hear her own crying from their noise, but they all cry the same cry, whether for Mommy or Daddy or Pa. A soldier sits in the front in a tan uniform that she’s seen at times on her Pa. He has a big monstrous gun. The soldier doesn’t look at the children no matter how hard they cry. A fat ogre in black with a green face reads from a book and tries to raise his voice above the crying
.

“The wrath of God is His eternal detestation of all unrighteousness. It is the displeasure and indignation of divine equity against evil. It is the holiness of God stirred into activity against sin. It is the moving cause of that just sentence which He passes upon evil.”

The ogre-words mean nothing. Pa is gone. All those men had him on the floor and pointed guns at him, and he couldn’t do anything and neither could she. She cried and hit and screamed until she couldn’t hit and scream anymore. Pa couldn’t do a thing. She had never seen anything he couldn’t do. The ogre keeps talking as the children keep crying, and the road gets bumpy and rattles through the school bus
.

“Insurrectionists against God’s government shall be made to know that God is the Lord. You shall be made to feel how great that Majesty is which you despise and how dreadful is that threatened wrath which you regard so little.”

Gunfire. The bus vibrates with the rat-tat-tat. Nay runs teary-eyed through the aisle to the back where the sound is coming from. They don’t stop her
.

It’s Pa. Her heart lifts. He’s on his bike, and they’re shooting at him. She doesn’t stop crying. Sirens blare from way down the road. Pa shoots the truck behind the bus, but they shoot back, and their shots are stronger. They reach a bridge. Nay feels an arm pulling her away from the back window
.

“Pa!” she cries, holding to the door handle. “Pa! Pa!”

It’s the soldier, but she doesn’t care, Pa is stronger than them all. He will beat them all. He will. He always does
.

Pa falls back, a dot on the bridge. The trucks get closer to him. He stops, the bike skids, and he falls, him and the bike flying way, way down to nothing
.

Nay weeps and weeps into the soldier’s uncaring arm
.

The ogre starts talking again
.

“God will vindicate His dominion as Governor of the universe.”

The bus begins to slow. Nay’s head is in her knees. Her face is stuck to her thighs from the tears. The other kids cry softer. They see something and hush. She looks up. A gigantic roller coaster snakes through the sky. They’re pulling up to an amusement park
.

The bus stops, and the ogre puts nose plugs in his green nostrils. The soldier shoves the kids down the steps and out the door
.