A New Day in America (33 page)

“The water’s always moving,” he tells her, soothing, like he’s reading her a bedtime story. “The ocean’s always turning. The rivers always move forward. The water flows and never returns. The water divides the land and divides the soul. It runs deep as the earth and shallow as sand. The softest element in the world, but strong enough to break rock. It can flow, it can crash. It runs at its own will and can form the shape of a bottle or cup. Finite as a canteen, and waves that surge and recede without end. The river passes along the rocks and retains nothing, and as the river eventually finds the ocean, it finds freedom.”

***

He leans forward and kisses her cheek. She still sweats, but less and less. Her color is less yellow now—more red. She’s still hot, but cools by the hour. Her breathing is slow, in and out.

Breathe. Breathe
. The soft in and out of sleep.

She can’t remember what she called herself the last time someone asked. She’s Emma. Or Sarah. Or Clara. No one asks her much anyway. No one has asked her today. She waits in a disorganized crowd. She stinks so bad she’s forgotten what stink is. The world just
smells
, and once in a while, when she gets away from all the people and there’s grass and trees, it doesn’t.
But that’s when it’s dangerous. That’s when you have to be afraid, when you can’t smell the people
.

Emma or Clara or Sarah used to be afraid all the time. Men terrified her. They would always look at her like she was a tray of desserts.

A skinny woman turns to her. She sees the scar on Emma or Clara’s face and looks concerned. “You know I used to be fat,” she says. She’s talking about the old life. “I used to
diet
, can you believe that? There used to be food that I would make sure I didn’t eat. I wish I could slap myself back then,” says the skinny woman. “Wish I had eaten until I was so fat I’d never need food again.”

People would always talk about the old life. But Emma or Clara or Sarah had never known the old life. As far as she can remember, the world was always like this. She was always scared and hungry. Men always looked at her like dessert.

“I had a job at Weight Watchers! You fucking believe that?
Weight Watchers?
”

“Weight Watchers,” she repeats.

“You don’t remember?”

“Sounds familiar,” she says. Emma or Clara doesn’t like talking to people, especially about the old days. They never understand why she doesn’t remember. She’s too
old
not to remember. They think she’s being funny. Or they think she’s stupid.

“
Familiar?
Everyone knew Weight Watchers. Jenny Craig?”

She shakes her head. The woman looks at her with pity.

“I’m Renee, sweetheart. What’s your name?”

Clara Sarah Dara Emma. Emma

“Emma,” says Emma.

Renee has big, tangled red hair, and her skin hangs from her face.

They hear a roar of motors in the distance.

“Is that them?” Renee asks as she spins her head to look. “Fuckin’ bikers. Guess not.”

Now she’s going to ask me more about who I was
.

Emma’s oldest memory is the man with the black hat. They were running from the explosions. Hoards of them running. People clawing each other to get away. People falling and trampling on top of other people. Emma even remembers stepping on some fleshy, bony parts as she ran alongside (
who? Man? Child? Son? Husband?
) Someone. The world was on fire. The city was shaking. Buildings were falling. Death was everywhere.

And then whoever she was with was gone. She remembers a person’s skull crushed like a melon and lots of blood. Only
she
kept running. Running until the man in the black hat stood in her way. He was watching her run. Everyone around was going one way, and he was looking the other way. He was looking at her, and when she tried to run around him, he tackled her. His breath
stank
. That was back when she knew what smelled and what didn’t. He looked at her like he knew her.
Did I know him? Or did he only know me?

The next thing she remembers is being chained in a small room. He never allowed her any clothes. He fed her whenever he felt like it. He raped her whenever he felt like it. She was chained to his bed, and he would sleep next to her. He would call her
Clara (or Sarah?
) and pretend she was his wife. He had a rash. She could see it every time he took off his black hat. The rash grew bigger by the day. One day he didn’t wake up. Maggots lived in him.

But she was still chained. She screamed and cried for a whole day before anyone heard her. When someone did hear, they were men. They brought her with them, but kept her chained. They thought it was funny. She promised she would give it to them for free, but they said there wasn’t any fun in that. They kept her and two other girls chained in a truck. They travelled, looking for food and guns and women. They all got rashes. So did the women she was tied up with. Soon they all died, too.

She got out of her chains. She wandered the city, begging for food. Men still looked at her. They smiled at her. She would run. She found a knife and found a mirror and cut her face. Men didn’t look at her the same after that.

Big convoys of soldiers would bring crates of food to Tompkins Square. She would wait every week and make sure she got enough grain to last her.

Only there is one soldier who keeps looking at her. She gets scared every time the food comes, and she’s scared now. Renee can tell.

“Why are you so squirrely?” she asks.

“I hope we get some food,” says Emma. She doesn’t want to mention the soldier. He looks like more than a soldier—like he’s in charge, some powerful general. That’s the last kind of man she wants to deal with. He has gray hair and gray eyes and is well shaven. Every time they bring food he’s there, and he looks at her. Even with the scar on her face, he looks at her, out of all the people in the crowd.

The convoy comes. The crowd in Tompkins Square begins to cheer. They clear out of the way for the trucks to pull up. Soldiers hop out and open the backs of trucks and start tossing bags of grain into the outstretched hands of the crowd. Emma gets excited at first, and then she sees the gray man.

Even his eyes are gray, and his skin is just a shade pinker than his hair. He has a young look, for all his gray, and fierce lips. He wears mirrored sunglasses. She feels him staring at her anyway.

Emma holds out her hands. Renee catches a bag. Emma still has nothing. The general still stares.
McCatherty
, she thinks for a second, but doesn’t know where the thought came from.

He jerks his head toward her. Her heart races. He lifts his sunglasses. His eyes are terrifying. She wishes she had slashed off her
entire
face, so no one would ever look at her like that again.

He’s getting out of the truck. His boots hit the dirt.

Emma turns and pushes back through the crowd.

“Where are you going?” asks Renee.

People trust soldiers, but she knows better. She’s seen soldiers do too many terrible things. She thrusts her way through the people. She looks back, and sees the general moving through the crowd after her. She had waited for seven hours for a spot near the trucks, and now she doesn’t care. She has to
get away. Get away
.

Soldiers meet her on the other side of the crowd. They look at her suspiciously. She darts, and they run after her.

The soldiers block her in with their guns. She stops, turns, and sees more soldiers holding their guns sideways to herd her. They are telling her to do things, but she can’t hear. She drops to the ground with her hands over her ears, sobbing.

A hand grabs her arm and lifts her.

“No!” she screams.

It’s him. The man with the gray face. It’s worn and weathered and old. But he’s
young
. His eyes are vicious.

“Emma,” he says, searching her eyes.

“No, no, please,” she begs, ripping her arm away and running as fast as she can.

The wind blows through her face.
Not again, please not again. He’s more dangerous than any of them
.

Another pair of soldiers blocks her way. She tries to rush past them, but they grab her and lift her, kicking in the air. She tries to pry his fingers apart, but he’s too strong.

So she bites. She bites and tastes blood. He cries and drops her to the ground.

She sees his knife strapped to his boot. She grabs the handle and slides it out.

“
NO!
” a voice calls.

It’s him again. The gray general.

“Please, Emma, I’m General McCatherty!
Don’t do it!
”

Don’t do what?
She wonders.

And she’s holding the knife to her own face.

The blade is touching her cheek. She’s ready to cut it off. She
wants
to cut it off. Like she should have done a long time ago.

“I’m not Emma,” she says, unsure.
Then why did I pick Emma, if I’m not Emma?

“Do you remember who you are?”

She doesn’t answer, the blade shaking in her fingers. A drip of blood tumbles down her cheek.

“You’re a
congresswoman
,” says the gray general. “We have met twice before, once in Virginia and once in D.C.”

Dangerous
, she is sure.
The most dangerous. All these men will do anything he says
.

“What are you talking about?”

He makes a short nod.

Hands rip the blade away from her hand.

A
bang
slams into her head, and everything is black.

***

She opens her eyes. She’s in a small room. Her head throbs. Her hands are chained to a chair.

The gray general is sitting across from her.

I knew it. This one. The worst, the worst
.

She jerks her wrists against the chain, and they snap back. She tries with all her might, until her wrists are blue and bleeding.

“Please hold her,” says the general with his nasty eyes.

He looks annoyed at her. So furious. She can’t imagine what he’ll do.

“Please hold still, Emma, we’re not here to hurt you.”

She rests in the hard grip of his men.

“Emma Wolfe,” he says, leaning back in his chair and letting go a deep exhale. “Emma Wolfe, alive.”

She realizes that there’s a bowl of hot steaming soup on the table in front of her.

“You want some soup? I’ll unchain you if you promise not to try and hurt yourself. You are safe here.”

She doesn’t believe him. But she’s hungry. And he has her anyway. She has no choice.

“OK,” she says.

They unlock her cuffs, and she grabs the spoon and slurps down the soup.
Chicken
. She can’t remember ever eating chicken, but she instantly knows what it is.

“I thought I recognized you before. That scar on your face—did you do that?”

Emma nods, engrossed by the soup. “The men. Men like you. Keeps them away. They don’t like me like this.”

“Emma, what do you remember of your past life?”

“The day the sun went black.”

The general looks at his men.

“Emma, what I’m going to tell you may come as a great shock to you,” he says carefully. “It’s been a year since that day. We’ve lost virtually all prominent members of the government. The cabinet—not a trace. Now, I told you that you’re a congresswoman, right?”

Emma nods, her stomach filling up.

“Emma Wolfe, you were the Speaker of the House at the time when we lost the lives of the president and the vice president. By right of succession,
you
, Emma, are the President of the United States.”

He stares at her. She stops eating. She’s so full she wants to puke.

Theo Black Gangi is the author of A New Day in America and the breakout crime thriller Bang Bang. His stories have been anthologized in First Thrills, edited by Lee Child; The Greensboro Review; The Columbia Spectator; and The Kratz Sampler.

You can find Theo on:

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Author website:
theogangi.com

Character website:
nostradamusgreene.com