Project Reunion (42 page)

To my amazement, the food tables were set up by the cordon line with the natives, yellow tape running down the middle, half the food for the guests and half for the random native commuters sharing the ferry with us. Even at community potlucks, I hadn’t seen so much food arrayed at a party in years. As food prices shot up before the Calm Act, providing a meal at a wedding reception had fallen out of fashion. It seemed the other out-of-town guests had donated generously, too.

The champagne and modest wedding cake, on the other hand, stayed well away from the cordon.

Once I’d found him in the throng, Emmett and I stuck together through the ceremony and the receiving line. Alex stayed with the Niedermeyer teens, and planned to stay on their yacht for the night. The trio were the youngest children anyone had considered appropriate to bring into the city. Emmett was quiet, as was I. We drifted apart to socialize after the formalities.

I was chatting with Amiri Baz when Adam claimed a dance with me. The boom box was nothing fancy, but someone had put great thought into composing the play list.

“You look gorgeous, Adam,” I assured him, on the dance floor. “And happy!”

“Deliriously happy,” Adam agreed. No cold feet or altar jitters for this one. “I wanted to thank you, Dee. Even though it wasn’t you and me, you still brought me here.”

I laughed. “How do you figure that?”

“In every way,” he said sardonically. “But especially… I would have stayed with the arks, if it wasn’t for you. My family is still in their ark. Most of the people I grew up with. I’m not as bold as you are, Dee. I tend to follow the herd, go with the flow. When you decided you’d rather stay on the outside, you made me look at that.”

I’d wondered where his father and brother were. I’d seen their photos, professional modeling shots. They weren’t hiding in the crowd. Unlikely as it seemed, gorgeous Adam was the dirty-faced member of the family, the boy who’d loved tinkering as a mechanic instead of cashing in on his looks.

“I’m sorry your family didn’t come today,” I said.

“It’s alright,” he denied. “We’ll visit them in the fall, with the baby. I’ll tell them about the reconstruction business opportunities in the city.” He laughed. “That’ll tempt my brother, at least. Kate’s from Garden City. Long Island. Her family didn’t make it. Confirmed back in April.”

We were dancing to a second song, and I was hogging the groom. With an ex-girlfriend, dancing a third time would be pushing our luck, for both of us. Time to wrap this up. “You’re bolder than you give yourself credit for, Adam. Thank you for everything you’ve done. For New York, and for me.”

“We’re not saying good-bye, Dee,” Adam pointed out. “In fact, I’m still hoping you’ll be our neighbors here in the city. Either way. We’ll stay in touch. Right?”

“Absolutely,” I agreed, and let him go with a hug and a kiss. Adam prudently danced with his bride again at that point, and I danced with Emmett. By then the two of them had been standing together watching us. Though it looked like Emmett kept Kate laughing.

“Any regrets?” Emmett asked, once we were dancing.

“No,” I said. “Not for either of us. It’s good to see him so happy. You?”

Emmett didn’t answer right away. “A big wedding’s not my style,” he eventually managed. “We’re about to come around to Brooklyn again. Let’s leave this party early. OK?”

Chapter 33

Interesting fact: Project Reunion, the interstate military effort to transport migrants outside the Apple Zone, officially ended in April with the closing of Camp Upstate and Camp Jersey. Camp Suffolk continued its march westward on Long Island as a local public health measure. The Project Reunion website did not end, nor change its name. Its leadership felt that the spirit of the mission continued.

I frowned a question at Emmett, not understanding the suggestion that we leave the wedding early. We hadn’t even broken the cake yet. But he didn’t elaborate.

We retrieved my overnight bag and waved our good-byes. We joined the ordinary passenger throng waiting to disembark at Brooklyn. Four Army M.P.’s detached to escort us. The natives shrunk away, giving us a wide berth. There was a lot of muttering and finger-pointing from the crowd, as the onlookers told each other who we were. Emmett ignored them and watched the approaching shore.

“You’re being formidable,” I told him.

“Uh-huh,” he said absently. “Sorry. Just…want to show you my new place.”

“What? When did you move to Brooklyn?” He’d been living out of a small dumpy apartment in the Staten Island quarantine zone since Christmas, upholstered in ugly plaid. Or he’d been sleeping there, at least. Seasickness had become an issue with getting a decent night’s sleep, living on a destroyer out in the harbor through the winter storms.

“Moved in last week,” he said. “Thought I’d surprise you.”

I nodded judiciously. “Not really fond of surprises.”

Emmett barked a laugh. “No. Me neither. Sorry.” He sighed. “Guess I’m nervous. What you’ll think of it.”

Because…?
But I left it at that. There was too much ogling to do right then, as we disembarked in Brooklyn. My eyes drank in the bustling surroundings. By the docks, our route led through a warehouse district. To the right, wagons and trucks and porters carried in plates of glass and salvaged wood for storage and distribution. The warehouse to the left seemed to specialize in electronics. An army of dumpsters collected up the rejects.

Emmett halted and glanced down at my pretty open-toed dancing heels. “Do you have any…?”

“Yeah,” I agreed. I fished my deck shoes out of my bag and switched, right there on the street. I’d have to watch my step even in deck shoes. Broken glass was everywhere, glittering painfully bright in the summer afternoon sun. Fortunately I wore sunglasses. The natives all wore something over the nose and mouth, despite the grueling heat, and protective eyewear, to keep the billowing dust out.

I hacked a cough. Emmett fished a clean handkerchief out of his dress uniform and offered it to me. Apparently he didn’t have another. “I have…socks,” I suggested. “Oh, wait! Tissues.” So I held tissues over my lower face, while Emmett deployed the handkerchief.

The breeze off the water died out, blocked by the warehouses. My crisp cool peach cotton party dress was developing a brownish peach fuzz of dust. And we passed on into the land of reclaimed bricks. Whole blocks on either side rose in massive ziggurats. After the buildings were razed, Emmett explained laconically, teams sorted out the reusable bricks. Broken bricks filled in the empty foundations, or abandoned subway lines, or were broken up further as an ingredient for soil for the greenbelts. Very industrious. Very dusty.

“You cut down the trees?” I asked. Based on the dirt squares in the sidewalk and the surface-level stumps, this had been a tree-lined avenue once.

“Apples did that,” Emmett replied. ‘Apples’ was polite slang for the survivors in the Apple Zone. “Burned them for fuel. Hardly any trees left alive in this city. Can’t blame them. Ash has new trees on order, from all over. Small ones. We can start planting them, end of August. Not here in the warehouse zone, though.”

The next block was dustier yet, though the apples hosed this one down to control the dust. “Greenbelt,” Emmett explained. This particular stretch was still a rubble-belt at the moment. But it was leveled and attractively graded small rubble. The wide avenue we walked on was left intact. All the abandoned cars were gone. Other streets to right and left were rubbled over. Knee-high retaining walls of brick separated the sidewalk from the greenbelt-to-be. Planting this swath in the heat of July would be a waste of good seed. The natives were just building the substrate here for now, a giant mixing trough.

“The smell…” I said, not really wanting or needing an answer.

“Solids from the wastewater treatment plant,” Emmett confirmed. “And… They were planting the bodies last night when I walked through here. Maybe a half foot deep under the gravel.”

I flung my arms around him for a hug. He held me, harder than I expected. “It’ll be beautiful,” he said. “Soon.”

“What a horror to watch,” I replied.

“If I can order them to do it, I can damn well watch them do it,” Emmett said harshly. But he swallowed and pressed me closer, kissed my forehead. He promised, “Not much farther, darlin’. Three more blocks.”

It hurt to watch Emmett seeing this fresh through my eyes, and finding it horrible. But it was horrible. This whole damned city was a horror. And I felt like a coward and a cad for putting him up to tackling this, while I stayed home on my placid little farm, in my pretty green town of Totoket, amidst the clean salt marshes and the maple woods and the blue-gray waters of the Sound. While Emmett watched them cart in rotted bodies, Alex and I were partying on the Niedermeyers’ yacht yesterday evening. Like the man said, I could damned well face what I’d helped to do. My heart broke for him, though. This was ghastly. And this was on a good day, after nearly 9 months of Herculean effort.

An island of buildings rose ahead of us. This particular enclave seemed to have selected a hollow 9-square downtown concept, similar to New Haven’s, with a block-sized giant town green in the middle. Some structures had been torn down even in the outer blocks, leaving gaps.

“Is that safe?” I asked, pointing. One of the empty foundations was filled with water. Kids and adults splashed and played in it as a swimming pool. Not very many kids. Project Reunion had relocated all the orphans, and gave evacuation priority to families with children. But some families chose to stay.

Emmett smiled briefly. “Re-engineered as a pool, Dee. They didn’t just fill a foundation hole with water. It’s sealed. Water pumps and filters, lots of chlorine. Not very deep. We’re just decorating with reclaimed brick these days.”

Indeed, we were approaching new brick structures, built on the outer edge of the sidewalk. These were about 4 by 4 feet square, and stood waist-high on me. My eyes widened as I saw into the first one.

“Romaine lettuce! How handy!” I laughed. “Is this a cold frame?” Cold frames were planting boxes with optional transparent lids, for growing greens in winter. In warm weather, they were simply boxed garden plots, sometimes with cloth covers to keep out the bugs. I used see-through tunnels at home instead, but cold frames were a similar idea.

“Yup. We call them apple boxes. Don’t pick anything,” Emmett warned. “You see that woman? With the green flag? She’s open for business. Picking from this box would be stealing.”

“I won’t pick,” I promised. But I did poke, into the soil, to see what it was made of. This particular one seemed a blend of potting mix, fine-grained pulverized brick, and God knew what else. “Huh. It sure grows well.”

“Yeah, Dori’s one of the best street farmers,” said Emmett. He drew me along. “Hey, Dori! What do you have for us today?” he greeted the green flag woman with a big smile.

“French breakfast radish, Colonel!” the elderly apple replied, with a gap-toothed sincere smile. “Mild and refreshing! Perfectly ripe today. Six a buck.”

The official name of Cullen’s new currency was the Hudson dollar, but everyone called it a buck. Similarly, New England was beginning to retire the tax credit concept in favor of the clam. The neighboring currencies were set deliberately unequal in value. They traded at somewhat over three bucks to the clam at the moment. The currencies were electronic only. There were no coins or paper bills, no untraceable cash.

Emmett and Dori tapped cell phones to complete the transaction, and Dori handed us a half dozen small elongated radishes, with all their leaves. “Be sure to wash the roots,” Dori admonished. “Leaves are fine.”

“You really want to wash all of it,” Emmett confided in me, before I could crunch into a root. He knew I wouldn’t have bothered in my own garden. I just picked ’em and ate ’em, even fresh from the soil. “They use sewage tea for fertilizer.”

That made sense. And erased any temptation for me to eat the radish before washing.

The green inner square showed what the outer rubble belt aspired to become. Several hundred yards on a side, it was already planted for pasturage near the brick walkway we took across it, with plenty of young clover and grasses. My experienced eye spied the starter strips of lawn sod, laid in to help kick start the microbiology. A few young saplings had even been installed by the walkway before the onslaught of summer heat. Further away were garden plots and some chickens. I couldn’t be sure from this distance, but it looked like some buildings facing the square had cucumber vines growing up their south faces. Even the dust abated here in the green zone. They were off to a great start in here.

I slipped an arm around Emmett’s waist, and beamed up at him. “This is really pretty, Emmett!”

“Thank you,” he mouthed, though no sound came out. He cleared his throat, and pointed. “That house is mine. Center one.”

Most of the buildings ringing the green were six to twelve stories or so, many with storefronts at ground level. The group of three Emmett pointed to, however, were classic Brooklyn brownstones, isolated by green lots to either side. Despite the stress on growing food everywhere else, the brownstones grew flowers, bright and cheerful portulaca and nasturtiums in big built-in planters at the top of their broad front steps, and in window boxes above.