The New Order Read online

  Maybe I should tell you that this is the way Jefferson would have wanted it. Like, he wouldn’t want me to grieve too long; he wouldn’t want me to stop living. Honestly? I think he’d be really jealous. But he can’t be jealous, because he’s dead.

  He’s gone, and with it first love is gone, and everything that attached to it, my soul, whatever. I’m stuck here with what’s left.

  This is what I would want for me if I weren’t me, and I was telling me what I wanted for me if I were me. That I not be alone in this world. That I fight my way clear to a life.

  And maybe this would seem better if I had a really romantic scene to report, like it would be more forgivable if it were more dramatic, with clenched jaws and running after trains and tears and feverish embraces.

  Instead: It’s late at Rab’s place. Michael and Soph have headed home. A pot of spag bol sits on the carpet, plates piled on the tea table. Two empty bottles of plonk, one with the cork stuck inside. A saucer with Soph’s spent rollies. Old music coming from the speakers.

  I curl up with my head on Rab’s lap. It’s been that way awhile—the slippery slope of touch—at first it was like putting your head in the lion’s mouth—ta-da! We did it without any sexual tension!—and it became the new standard—maybe it’s possible for boys and girls just to be friends and to touch and be close and there’s no harm done.

  And then Rab strokes my cheek, and it feels good. But I put my hand on his to stop the feeling good but then it becomes us holding hands. And he leans down and kisses me. And it feels good, better than anything has felt in a long time, and everything after feels good and keeps on feeling good.

  This is life.

  And it feels healthy, if my saying everything that’s on my mind and finally being able to speak the truth to someone is healthy, which it’s supposed to be, right? He doesn’t have that thing where he’s jealous of somebody who came before him. Which makes sense, of course, only not making sense has never stopped anybody. Rab says everything I’ve seen and everyone I’ve known and loved is part of me, and it’s me, all of me, that he wants to know.

  Rab asks me about Welsh and the whole soft-sell, free-pastry interrogation thing we’ve got going on.

  Rab: “What do you think they want to know?”

  Me: “Everything. But Welsh seems to get especially interested when we talk about current events, or then-current events, like what happened right around when What Happened was happening. Like not just what was on the news but what I saw happening.”

  Rab: “Why you? I mean, no offense, but you weren’t exactly at the center of things. Why are you the one they set up at Cambridge? Why not that kid Captain? Or one of the others?”

  Me: “The others escaped before…”

  Rab: “Donna—these people don’t do things by accident. If the Reconstruction and the government thought the others were of use, they would be here.”

  Me: “Because I’m the only one left. Well, me and Captain. They liquidated everybody in quarantine a couple of years ago, right?”

  He looks ashamed and angry. Nobody wants to talk about that.

  Rab: “Yes. They had to. Well. They said they had to. It was agreed on in Brussels.”

  He means the European Union. They had a protocol for everything, including, it turns out, what to do with a global pandemic.

  Me: “Well, there you go. I’m special.”

  I smile.

  Rab: “Yes, you are special, you are a special, special, most wonderful creature. But in addition to that… there must be something. Tell me what you were up to that they might be interested in.”

  So I tell Rab what I haven’t told Welsh.

  Me: “Well… there’s this thing I haven’t said. Right? You may not know this, but I was South Korea.”

  Rab: “Excuse me?”

  Me: “Yeah, South Korea, Model UN. Do you guys have that here?”

  Rab: “No.”

  So I tell him what it is.

  Rab: “I’m imagining you in one of those dresses that looks like a tulip.”

  Me: “It’s not like that. You don’t wear national dress. You study up the issues, like the US military presence and the standoff with North Korea and whatnot. You make speeches. So, anyway, our teacher was very rah-rah and used to take us to visit the actual UN. She had connections there, some functionary or other. So we got to see the General Assembly and hear them talk and stuff.”

  Rab: “Interesting.”

  Me: “Not really. You’re thinking it’s all Cuban Missile Crisis and that general dude holding up a fake vial of anthrax, but actually it’s more like one schmo after another making a speech about the same boring commemoration of this or that. But there was one time where it was really interesting, which is when Mrs. Geleitner got us in to see the opening remarks that the president was going to make at the big meeting on the Sickness.”

  Rab: “Wow.”

  Me: “Yeah, it was pretty intense. Everybody was up in arms about how the Russians and the Chinese were blowing it off, and security was nuts. The president had, like, a zillion Secret Service guys with him, and this was when they started open carrying—like, they obviously had guns and stuff besides their cool suits. And there was this whole entourage of, like, power-suit ladies and an army officer and stuff—and a general-type guy, and he had this kind of puffy briefcase. Very dowdy. Anyhow, the president was about to give a speech when we heard these big booms from outside. It was some kind of terrorist attack, only it was sort of half-assed, thank God. Everybody was freaking, and the Secret Service was all human-shielding the president, and UN security told us we had to leave in an orderly manner. So pretty much that was that.”

  Rab: “Where did the president—”

  Me: “Oh! Except I was within, like, twenty feet of the president, which is as close as I ever got to a president. His entourage was heading out, and I heard something about a secure room.”

  Rab: “And then what?”

  Me: “Then I headed back home and switched on the TV, except the TV was gone. Blank screen. That was how it was those days. No Internet, the TV gone, no news, only rumor.”

  Rab: “What happened to the president?”

  Me: “Look, I know this sounds nuts, but everybody and their uncle was getting sick. I really didn’t have time to think about it. It was the least of my worries. I had been thinking about quitting school anyhow, but my mom insisted I go, like it was going to make things normal or whatever. So I go on a field trip, and somebody tries to blow the building up. I know that sounds pretty extraordinary, but shit like that was going down all the time.”

  For a moment, Rab’s eyes look glazed over, like he’s cogitating deeply, chewing over a bone. Then he comes back.

  Rab: “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…”

  Me: “It’s okay. I feel okay telling you. Anyhow, I never told Welsh that.”

  Rab: “Why?”

  Me: “Because he wanted to know. Like, really wanted to know. And I don’t trust him.”

  Rab: “But you trust me.”

  Me: “Of course I do.”

  Actually, I don’t.

  Call it cynicism. Call it an inability to take life as it comes. I don’t know. But lately, I’ve been getting the feeling that this is all too good to be true.

  That is to say, everything that happened from the moment I woke up in the bed in the Old Guest Room. The Shirley Temple moment. Seeing Rab staring at me in the noodle restaurant. His approaching me at the college bar. His patience. His goodness. His ability to listen.

  What, I’ve begun to think, if he’s just another kind of listening device?

  Maybe it is a sign of low self-esteem. Like, maybe I can’t believe that I rate this sort of attention from him. That would be damn embarrassing, if I turn out to be wrong. Still, I hope I am. Wrong.

  I wake up alone, which is odd. Rab usually stays, or at least says good-bye.

  He’s not in the sitting room, so that covers the entirety of my domain. Maybe he’s down in the ba
throom. That’s one of the charming eccentricities—read: incredible pains in the ass—about the rooms at Trinity. Most of the bathrooms and showers are at the bottom of a stairwell if they are in your stairwell at all; in fact, I have to go all the way down and walk through the colonnade to the next staircase along to find a shower. It’s kind of a drag having to cruise through a fifteenth-century courtyard in a bathrobe with wet hair.

  When I get to the bottom of the staircase, barefoot for better sneaking, Titch is not at his usual post on his tortured metal chair, nor is Taut Guy. That’s strange.

  The air is chill and clear, Nevile’s Court is a flitting hologram caught in the silver-blue gaze of the moon. My feet catch the chill of the stones. I marvel for a moment at the beauty of it, the hushed secrecy. All the drunk students are in bed and the libraries are in hibernation and there is no one but me and the nightingales.

  But then—I hear a serpentine whispering and a vague thrumming as the deep pocket of the arcade beneath the Wren catches the low notes.

  Three figures are silhouetted against the green-gray of the Backs of the Cam at nighttime. One is gigantic, unmistakably Titch.

  I slink along the wall, out of sight of the silhouettes, who haven’t noticed me and continue their hissing. I creep slowly past M staircase, closer and closer.

  I take in another face—it’s Welsh.

  He’s talking to Rab.

  Rab: “There isn’t much time before she notices I’m gone.”

  My legs give out, and I slide down the wall to sit on the pocked marble. I so wanted to be wrong about this. My heart makes one last stab at an explanation—maybe Welsh ambushed Rab at the bottom of the stairs and is giving him the third degree, or trying to talk him out of something, or trying to talk him into something.

  But it doesn’t sound that way.

  Welsh: “Get her to repeat the story. Verify the details.”

  Rab: “It’s taken long enough to get to this. She’s very closed. If I push on this—”

  Welsh: “There isn’t much time.”

  Rab: “Is it necessary to—”

  Welsh: “Yes.”

  Rab: “Fine. But I think you’ve got what you need. We should wrap it up or—”

  Welsh: “Or what? Ah. You’ve gone native.”

  Rab: “She’s not a native. Nor is she the enemy.”

  Welsh: “That’s where you’re mistaken. She is a native. She’s a tribeswoman from a savage land. We are explorers in that strange country. And there’s a ways yet to go.”

  Rab: “I should get back.”

  I make my way quickly and quietly along the colonnade and then up the stairs and, my skin still prickling with the sense of betrayal and anger, I slip into bed and wait.

  THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED to Hafiz, the last survivor of the United Nations School.

  When the shit hit the fan, Hafiz, son of an Indonesian delegate, and his classmates retreated uptown from Cooper Plaza to the UN complex itself. Special security arrangements had been made for the families, and it was reassuring to the diplomats to have their children nearby with chaos erupting through the rest of New York.

  Things went the way of all flesh in the compound, as elsewhere, and before too long, there was nothing but teens left—a sort of supertribe of kids from all around the world.

  Unfortunately, they found it difficult to live up to the high purpose of the UN; factions formed, often around linguistic, religious, or ethnic lines. They fought over the control of the food supplies that had been laid in at the complex, and when there was nothing tangible to fight over, they fought over old or new grudges. What made it different from the way things were Before was that the old balance of power (if it was actually balanced at all) didn’t matter. It came down to the size of the teenage population of each delegation. Africa was the continent with the most countries, so for a while, they all faced the unaccustomed situation of being in charge, until the Europeans and Asians teamed up to fight them. Then the Oceanians came in on the Africans’ side, and for a time, there was parity as each side whittled away at the population of the other. The few Americans had either fled to their homes or been summarily dispatched by all and sundry for one historical crime or another. For a while, the North and South Americans had maintained an alliance, but they fell to squabbling and liquidated one another. And then the rest fought over their meager treasures. By the time we found Hafiz, everyone was dead or gone, and he alone was left to tell the tale.

  This he did, pointing out the heroes and villains of the story, whom he had installed in the seats formerly occupied by their delegations. They sat in total agreement and amity, slowly decaying as Hafiz endlessly reworked the diorama.

  Hafiz took some convincing when it came to removing all the bodies, but once we began, he took to it with a sort of creative fervor, constantly tweaking the pile that grew and grew behind the Secretariat building. I’ve begun to think that he is just looking for something to manifest a little control over, so we let him rearrange the corpses as he will. At first, he wanted to organize them by geographical origin; then he rethought it and, in a burst of energy, shifted them around according to political alignment. Since we are going to light them on fire anyway, it seems beside the point. In fact, it seems deranged. In fact, it is deranged. But it is preferable to his dogged attempts to keep us from dismantling his “work of art” in the Security Council chamber.

  We need the space. The Gathering of the Tribes is coming, and I think it best to clean the Security Council of murdered kids.

  Whatever it took for Hafiz to survive the massacres and melees, he seems pretty harmless himself, soft-handed and doe-eyed, a willing and able guide through the darkened labyrinth of the complex.

  As we set the torch to the pile of dead, I find Hafiz at my right shoulder. “Beautiful,” he says. When I look at him, he explains, “The end of the old world order. The ashes that are needed for the phoenix to rise. Right?”

  “Maybe,” I say.

  “Always,” he says. “The hope of a new world smells like the burning flesh of the old.”

  I remember the platter of roasted human meat—shank, in retrospect—that the Ghosts tried to feed us in the library. If they’re still alive, no doubt it is because they are still preying on the rest of us. What will we do if they appear at the Gathering? What sort of crimes can be forgiven?

  Can mine?

  By the next day, the Council chamber is ready and people have started arriving. My tribe and the Dead Rabbits keep order and give the lay of the land.

  Security is lax. There’s no question of getting people to give up their weapons—everyone’s too keyed up and paranoid. May as well ask them to give up their clothes. Instead, we let it be known that we’re operating on a strict eye-for-an-eye policy. Each tribe can nominate a security chief who’s responsible for their tribe’s behavior. Really, they’re glorified human collateral, but people are so nuts about titles and distinctions that they take the job willingly.

  The Harlemites, led by Solon, arrive. The Fishermen from South Street. The Hop Sing Boys. Chelsea and Clinton. Gansevoorts, Meats, Fourteens, Thuggees, Baseball Furies, Lady Killers, Buckley Bums, West Siders, True West Siders, One and Only West Siders, Heads, Knicks, Flatirons, and a hundred tribes I don’t know. There are even delegates from the Drummers, looking about as stoned as I remember. But no sign yet of the Uptowners.

  Finally they arrive, a jarring combination of gray suits and camo. Fifty strong, the delegation barges its way into the hall, ripples of anger and fear spreading out from their vanguard.

  I’m at the front, by the vast horseshoe-shaped table, trying to figure out some sort of seating plan with Hafiz, Chapel, Brainbox, and Peter. I head up the aisle toward the Uptowners, my heart drumming against my rib cage.

  I’ve known they would come, hoped they would come, feared they would come, and now that they are here, I don’t know what to do. Grudges are easy to come by in this assembly, but the Uptowners have collected more than anyone else. They run th
e middle of the island, netting everyone they can in the market that’s run out of the Bazaar at Grand Central; those they can’t co-opt or dominate, they kill. And only they can tell me where the rest of my tribe is to be found.

  I hear a familiar voice. “We can start now.” And Evan steps to the front of his delegation.

  I’d counted on his having been crushed in the collapse of Donna’s old house.

  But I never was particularly lucky.

  Carolyn and her posse have filtered up from the round table. She steps right up to Evan, eyeballs him as his soldiers tense up.

  “You remember me?” she says.

  “Sorry, babe, I got a lot of bitches.”

  Evan was born to be punched. But we can’t have a fight break out before the Gathering even begins.

  “Stop it, Carolyn,” I say.

  “He knows where our friends are,” she says.

  “I know,” I say. “We’ll get to that. But not this way.” Carolyn looks at me, her fury transferring. “Please,” I say.

  She steps back. Evan smiles. “I see you still need to muzzle your females,” he says.

  “When this all blows up,” says Carolyn, “I’m coming for you first.”

  “Let’s go now,” says Evan. He reaches for the nine millimeter where it sits in a chest holster.

  “Easy.” I hear Solon and turn to see him and his soldiers standing behind me. A slick, 3-D-printed AR-15 emphasizes his point. “Let’s all relax. See how this goes before we start to fussing and fighting.”

  Harlemites and Uptowners face one another, guns out and up, me in the middle. An overblown scene from a bad action movie. The moment balances on a pinpoint.

  “Go on, Jefferson,” says Solon. “Like the boy said. Now you can get started.”

  Again a seething sea of faces. A hundred different groupings, a thousand, a menagerie of aspects and types. The only thing they have in common right now is that they are looking at me and wondering why the hell they are here.