2028, p.13
2028, page 13
The mercy of instinct was all I had going for me as I blandly tagged behind them as we all made our way to the 51st Street subway station to catch the 4-Train down to Brooklyn.
13
The Morning After
May 15
I
knew my bad back would be killing me in the morning, as the hard parquet floor of apartment’s spare bedroom seemed to grip my spine. Sylvia was now finally sleeping soundly in the flimsy couch bed we’d usually sleep in together. But this night I felt it best she’d have it to herself, so I slept on the floor. I heard the soft wheezes of Karen’s snores through the door opened to the living room where she slept hard on the couch.
I concentrated on the sounds of passing traffic on 7th Avenue through the sizzling, thin spatter of rain on the windows, as I found it to be a tonic while I tried to recount the past few hours. The carnage that had happened earlier was still beyond my comprehension as I yearned to keep it all simple.
Aileen had managed to stumble it past the bikers and the PRICE guards. She brought home the news of Barbara’s death. Upon hearing this, Sylvia went eerily quiet and stood frozen in the middle of the room. We all watched her until a minute later, she screamed: “SHIT!” then burst suddenly, unabashed into tears. I stood stupidly watching, while Aileen, also in tears, rushed to embrace her.
Karen, now visibly shaken as the two women embraced, turned to me. “I need to stay with you all tonight,” she announced, her voice trembling. I noticed a tear rolling down her cheek.
“Of course,” I responded.
Aileen, for sure, couldn’t sleep, as I heard her pacing in her bedroom, then taking breaks to go to the kitchen while trying to piece together what had happened. That was what we all were doing—stitching together the why to the how. We were a house in mourning.
It had been promptly aired earlier over the the Kenton/Fox News and Entertainment Network, with its particular spin of victory. The heroic BlueShirt/PRICE forces had taken down an attempt at a revolt against not only the Kenton Administration, but the Real-American people. At least forty “would-be assassins of the truth that had made Real-America great” were arrested—most likely to be tortured, then sent to gulags. There had been fifteen killed, and raw footage showing their bodies lying contorted in death in front of the Kenton Tower, was looped. The footage had been spiced with close-ups of the dying expressions on each their blood-smeared faces; most in wide-eyed fear, others seemingly in peace. Barbara’s face was one of those in peace. All of us were partly traumatized. Alcohol hadn’t helped; coffee and tea hadn’t helped. It was a stalemate, and all we had left was each other, and that did help.
It had been too emotionally devastating and lurid for us to watch all this, but as shattered as we were, we were drawn to it. The more devastating the image, the more we had been compelled to watch in wait for some sort of retaliation.
————————————————————————-
Sylvia awoke before I did, and Karen was nowhere in sight. She and Aileen sat at the kitchen bar sipping on their coffees; cups held in trembling hands. Sleep may have reduced their shock, but not their seething angers. This was no longer a time to mourn, but a time to act, and quickly. The question was how, and how quickly.
I went to Sylvia and placed a reassuring touch on her shoulder, and she placed her hand upon mine; warm on cold. I kissed the top of her head and then glanced toward the window. It was a beautiful bright and warm May morning—as ironic as it was pleasing, and a mockery to our suppressed grief.
“Coffee, Bob? It’s fresh, and there’re some corn muffins, too.”
Routine chatter seemed so surreal in our feckless attempts to play house, like all was normal. “Yeah. I guess I will.”
“Sleep well?”
“Of course not. And neither did you.”
“Was I thrashing?”
“You were,” I answered as I poured some coffee into a mug that needed to be washed. “Between that and Karen’s snoring, and everything else...”
“Karen?” Sylvia wondered. “Karen who?”
“You don’t remember?”
“You know, Syl,” Aileen said. “Karen. She’s the one that got you and Bob out of all that mess. She snuck you out through the Kenton Tower basement.”
“I don’t remember...I was in too much shock,” Sylvia said as she pondered the coffee in her cup. “Yeah. Vaguely. She works for the Kenton organization, something like that.”
“Worked,” I corrected. “For Stanley Saunders. But he threatened her nearly six months back, and she walked off the job. She’s with us now.”
“We’ll see about that,” Sylvia said. “If she worked for the Kenton Regime...”
“She saved your life, hon,” I said.
“She did?”
“You don’t remember?” Aileen asked, choking back tears over her remembrance of watching Barbara die. She had had only time enough to kiss her lover’s forehead before escaping the battalion of Kenton’s BlueShirt forces.
I was then startled by the front door opening abruptly as I choked in fear that PRICE had found us. It was Karen, still wearing her inside-out sweatshirt and some running shorts Aileen had lent her. “Nothing like a morning run to clear a girl’s mind up,” she said cheerily.
“Karen,” Sylvia said.
“That’s me.” She put the bottle of Perrier she’d been carrying down on the counter and spanked the house keys next to it. “Thanks for the loan of these, Aileen.”
“You stayed the night,” Sylvia pressed.
“I did. We needed to be together.” Karen assumed nothing, as everything seemed to be a foregone conclusion with her. “That was some pretty bad shit that went down on us yesterday.”
“It was more than just ‘bad shit,’ Karen,” Aileen said. “It was devastating.”
Karen pursed her lips as she went around us to the kitchen to make herself some tea. “I’m sorry. That sounded impersonal. I really didn’t mean it that way.”
“It’s okay,” Sylvia said. “We’re all a little shaken today. So. Karen. You used to work for the PRICE Commissar?”
“More than that. I slept with the bastard for nearly three years. Saunders is also Randy Montefiore’s assistant, so he’s like Kenton’s third hand man—the hand he uses to jack off with.” I suppressed a chortle. She relaxed her shoulders as she poured the hot water into a mug for her tea, then turned to face us as she leaned against the kitchen counter, dipping her teabag. “Look. I know what you all are thinking: ‘Who’s this bitch suddenly showing up among us who used to work with the Kenton people, while fucking the PRICE Commissar?’ I get it, really. But I also must tell you that that asshole wanted to kill me, because I told him...I told him the news...” She sipped her tea thoughtfully, then stared at Sylvia. “I delivered the news about you being sprung from that Unqutuck gulag. I was just the messenger. He wanted you, Sylvia, in the worst way...like he was going to make you his mission. Instead, he threatened to send me up there to die as a surrogate for you. Again, only because I told him the news. He and Montefiore probably arranged that whole thing that happened yesterday, because someone ratted you and the protest out.”
“Who?” Sylvia asked.
“I don’t work for him anymore, so I wouldn’t know. But I do think this: he probably had PRICE find and arrest someone—a weak link in the Neo-Publica chain—then torture him.” She took another sip of tea, walked to the end of the bar and eased herself on a stool. “They then most likely planted that person as a mole at your speech in the Unitarian church—which I loved, by the way. I think they would have tagged and wired whoever it was to sit in the audience. That’s the way they work.”
Sylvia squared an accusing look into Karen’s eyes. “Okay. You worked for him. How do I know you’re not tagged as a plant?”
“That’s a fair assessment. Operative word: ‘Worked’. Listen, Sylvia, I’m on with you guys. One hundred percent. One...hundred...percent,” she enunciated. “I am, and always have been, a Constitutionalist. And your speech struck such a cord in me, I went home and cried. And I don’t cry easily. Not since I left that shit-hole organization. Me? I take it personally. I want to see that Saunders son of a bitch disappeared. And I know others who do, too...other than you guys. “
“I think she’s serious, Sylvia,” I said. “I watched her kill a BlueShirt yesterday.”
“Really? When?”
“When she saved your life from a bullet aimed for your head...and mine, too I suppose,” I said.
“So, you took a gun to a peace rally,” Sylvia charged, as if she was more concerned about that than all the other things. “It was a peace rally, for God’s sake.” She fumbled around the counter for her pack of cigarettes. Took one out in a trembling hand. Lit it.
Karen offered up a wry smile. “Actually, it was a knife. And aren’t you glad I did?”
“What others, Karen? Who are the others that aim to resist the regime? Neo-Pubs?” Aleen asked.
She took a long sip of tea. “Hardly, and it’s not the regime they’re after. It’s Saunders. They don’t exactly agree with his immigration policies, and the way he treated me. They’ve been teaching me things. Working with me.”
“Working with you?” Sylvia pressed.
“Yeah. Working with me.” She picked a piece of lint off her sweatshirt, even though that was the least of the things that soiled it. She held it to the light and contemplated it. “Listen, Sylvia. I think you know I’m serious.” She held out up her hand. “Do you want me to prove it with a blood pact by cutting my palm? I will.” She looked over at me with cunning smile. “You know I’m pretty handy with a knife. Right?”
“Uh, yeah,” I said. I looked closely at her palm and saw a thin, lightly reddened scar: a prior cut.
Aileen must have seen it, too. “You live in Brooklyn, Karen?”
“Yeah.”
“Where?”
“Carroll Gardens, down to the left, beyond those two big bridges.”
“Ah,” Aileen said. “Carroll Gardens. Now I get it.”
Karen offered a smug smile and a curt nod at her. “Yeah. Right?”
“What does that mean?” Sylvia asked.
“That means you can trust her, sweetie,” Aileen answered. “We need her.”
“Okay, yeah. You do need me. And here’s why. I know guys who know other guys who can, uh...do things. Plus, I know the inside of the Tower and what goes on there. And I know a few secret service guys who don’t like that bitch they’re protecting, and they could be turned. Maybe already have been. I’m just sayin’.” She reached her cup back to the sink, then turned to face us as she leaned against the refrigerator. “So, anyway, I’m out jogging this morning and I usually grab a bottle of water when I’m done. I pop into this deli, and they’ve got the TV on. Looks like Kenton is gaming this thing he did yesterday. He’s planing a big rally next week on the spot where the fifteen—he calls them terrorists— were gunned down. Says he can get a million people to show up, but I doubt that. Anyway, he’s, like, enshrining that place as his own. He’s gaming the Neo-Publica cause, maybe to taunt us out of hiding, or something.”
“You’re kidding,” Aileen said as she shot an inflamed look at Sylvia. “We gotta do something, hon.”
“I think we do nothing for a month, then go large,” I said.
“What does that mean, Bob?” Sylvia challenged.
I never smoked, but under the circumstances, I reached for Sylvia’s pack of cigarettes. She benignly slapped my hand away as she shook her head: unh-unh. I held the hand that had fended mine away. “Just a thought. I’m thinking we come out public and use who we are to our advantage, like Kenton is doing. We look at Neo-Publica as a product.”
Aileen gulped her coffee. “A product? Are you fucking nuts?
“Hold on, ‘leen ,” Sylvia told her. “Bob used to be in advertising. He knows about this.”
Karen folded her arms as she relaxed her stance against the refrigerator. “Neo-Pub. A product. Like Maxwell House coffee.”
“Yeah, sort of,” I said. “Maybe we should announce ourselves through an advertising campaign. Come out of the shadows, nationally and in force. Show them we’re not gonna take this lying down. Show everybody we’re prepared to do some heavy lifting, and recruit who we can. We have chapters all over the country, right. And they marched like we did, right?”
“By the way,” Aileen said. “Anyone hear about how that went? Jesus. I only pray they didn’t meet any forces like we did.”
“I don’t know,” Sylvia said. “News blackout. Hugh back in New Haven probably got some reports, but I haven’t reached him yet. Anyway, Bob. You’ve got my attention. What’s your plan?”
“I’m sort of making this up as I go along, but I’m thinking we should pull all the chapters together. Have a recruitment drive using slick Mad-Ave-type posters with a slogan. It will be underground, of course, but out in the open. Under the Kenton Regime’s noses.”
“What ‘underground but out in the open’?” Karen asked. “How’s that supposed to work?”
“Recruitment will be anonymous, but our message will be clearly out there for all to see. We can even make up the numbers we recruit to draw in more. We need to show Kenton we can be bigger than them. Sylvia, before we marched you said the although there may be a few of us, there are hundreds of thousands of Real-Americans—“
“Americans,” Aileen reminded me. “We’re all still Americans.”
“Of course. Hundreds of thousands of Americans who harbor the same kind of sentiments Neo-Publica is espousing. We need to reach them. Then hold a Kenton-style mass rally somewhere in, I don’t know, some big stadium, maybe. Kenton/Fox News will naturally want to cover that, and we can show them how strong we would have grown.“
“Sure, like Yankee Stadium,” Karen said.
“No. Not in New York. Somewhere central in the country, like Denver.”
“You don’t think PRICE will go there and gun us all down?” Aileen asked.
“Maybe not if we do this right,” Sylvia said. “The time for peaceful protest is over. If yesterday didn’t prove that...”
“We fight force with force,” Karen said.
“More like fighting brand with brand,” I said. “Kenton’s image is also his Achilles heel. We get him there, it’ll hurt more than any bullet.”
“Good point, if we want to gnaw away at him, but we’ll need something more,” Aileen said. “So, Karen, what did you mean, force against force? How do we do that?”
“Like I said, sweets. I know people who know people who know other people that can get something like this done. We need, how you say...equipment? I can help there, too.”
Sylvia smiled for the first time in two days. “Karen? Welcome to Neo-Publica.”
————————————————————————-
Karen burst through the door of Elise’s, Carroll Garden apartment. “Sal! Come out here!”
Elise rushed from the bedroom disheveled by her “afternoon nap” with Sal. “Shut up, bitch. Sal’s resting he’s had a hard day.” She went to the cooler behind the makeshift bar in the living room. “You wanna beer?”
“Sure, yeah. I’m sure he’s had a hard day, girl. Thanks to you.”
“What the hell? Keeps us in shape.”
“SAL!” Karen cried. “Get out here! I’ve got some ... I need to tell you something.” She looked amusedly stern at Elise, “and I’m not going in there to get him. I’ve had enough shock since yesterday.”
“Jesus, Karen!” Sal sputtered as he came from the bedroom, this time fully dressed for a change.
“You’re all dressed up. Goin’ somewheres?” Karen said. “Anyway, grab a beer and take a seat.” She looked at Elise. “Have you been watching the news the last few days?”
“We never watch that shit,” Sal said. “You know that.”
“What? You guys lock yourselves up in that bedroom all the time? Shit, sometimes I wonder if you do anything else but boff each other alla time.”
“Shut up, bitch,” Elise told her as she walked from the bar, two beers in hand. “Here’s your goddam beer.”
“Wha’dya do, Karen?” Sal said as he leaned against the wall with his arms folded. “Wake us up to tell me somethin’ I already know?”
“Sal...” she sipped her beer. “I killed a guy. A BlueShirt.”
This jarred him. “What? C’mon’, Kar. The fuck you did.”
“I did and slipped away through the crowd. I gotta tell you all about it.” Sal listened in rapt concern, while Elise concentrated on doing her nails—her go-to stress reliever— while Karen told them about demonstration, how Saunders might have set the whole thing up, and how she saved Sylvia Morales from being killed.
“Holy fuckin’ shit!” Sal said. “You saved Silvia Morales’ life? An’ you kilt a guy to do it? Holy shit!”
“Sylvia Morales?” Elise asked as she busied herself with a nail file. ”You mean that one who started the whole Neo-Publica thing?”
“Yeah,” Karen said, ”her.”
“And you stabbed a BlueShirt.” Sal stated.
“Right in that place in the jugular where you guys taught me to.”
“No one saw you, Kar? No one can finger you? You sure?”
“Like I told you, Sal. I had my face covered and my hood up. It was sorta dark in the shadows; cloudy and rainy. Besides, with all that other shit going around? No way they could see me.”
“No cameras in the area?” Elise asked.
“Not that I saw, Elle.”
“Yeah, well. As long as they didn’t see you.”
“They didn’t, hon. Not to worry. All they coulda seen was a person wearing a hoodie with a bandana covering her face. My stab was quick. They might have seen a rookie BlueShirt fall to the ground; maybe slipping on the wet street. Any cameras there were looking at a lot of other shit, anyway. I can tell you. It was total chaos.”
