Zone One

The signage was in Chinese save for the Health Department regulations hectoring beneath the pictograms. His mother’s logic held that a strong congruency between patron and cuisine signaled an “authentic place” and that they must serve up primo Chinese, Greek, or Lithuanian cuisine, what have you. Which had never made sense to Mark Spitz: Plenty of American restaurants with a majority-American clientele served crap American fare. Perhaps the emphasis was on the authenticity of its mediocrity.

In their meager bid at becoming regulars, Mark Spitz and Kaitlyn returned to the table they’d occupied at the previous briefing. Gary joined them in the coming weeks, but at that point they’d only been together for one grid, a bland residential stretch on Water Street. Omega hadn’t clicked yet, hoisting their own personal three-person foxhole around wherever they went. That afternoon, Gary squeezed in with some guys he’d served with in Stamford securing abandoned gasworks. The majority of those in the sweeper units had been stationed in the Northeast doing infrastructure work, cleaning out the Corridor as Mark Spitz had been, or doing recon in the key metro areas and industrial clusters, which had been Gary’s previous posting. Mark Spitz arrived at the island without a crew, the only one from the I-95 detail to transfer to the sweep.

The dumpling joint was prepped for service when they shuffled in for their first briefing, but the soldiers knocked the settings into incremental disarray week by week, as if across a single, slow-motion lunch shift. There were thirty of them, teenagers and men and women in their twenties, with exceptions in the form of characters like Metz. Metz looked fifty-something, but of course the late miseries had aged them so Mark Spitz couldn’t say for sure. He had what Mark Spitz had come to call the Wasteland Stare. On special ops, the sweepers were equipped with night-vision goggles that featured gecko protuberances allowing them to see into different spectra; Metz and his brethren were equipped with additional lenses, and through them they gaped at stumps, shreds of structures, a blasted plain, as if through a visor of devastation. Whatever Mark Spitz saw-a typical downtown slop joint, fly strips twisting in the corners-Metz gazed upon an entirely different and cruel landscape. Given the vast galaxy of survivor dysfunction-PASD in its sundry tics, fugues, and existential fevers-the Wastelanders’ particular corner of pathology was, Mark Spitz decided, unremarkable. Everyone was fucked up in their own way; as before, it was a mark of one’s individuality.

Steady raids had depleted the back room of sponsored energy drinks, but there was good word of mouth about the medicinal properties of an enigmatic foreign beverage, bright emerald cans of which were piled in formidable stacks in the kitchen. The sweepers settled at the tables and crammed into the banquettes, sliding across bloodred vinyl. The menagerie of the Chinese zodiac pursued itself on the place mats beneath glass tabletops. Mark Spitz saw it was the Year of the Monkey. Attributes: Fun-Loving Witty Entertaining. Dead fish bobbed in a chunky murk in the tank by the entrance.

The Lieutenant took his roost at the host’s station and informed them that from now on they had to fill out Incident Reports on every engagement. The decor flashed in his aviator glasses in sparks of crimson and gold. Considering the Lieutenant’s nightly bourbon flights, the sunglasses were precious cover for his sensitive retinas, even in the half-light of the restaurant.

Buffalo, he explained, wanted information on the general outline of each engagement, but in particular they were keen for the sweepers to record demographic data: the ages of the targets, the density at the specific location, structure type, number of floors. Fabio, the Lieutenant’s second, had rummaged Canal Street after special equipment for this very purpose. Fabio handed his boss the carton of kiddie notebooks, and the Lieutenant brandished it over his head, pointing out that they were equipped with convenient loops that held tiny pencils. The plastic-covered notebooks were candy-colored and palm-size, brimming with the characters and arcana of a prosperous and long-standing children’s entertainment combine. The creation myth of the product line concerned the adventures of a clever, effeminate armadillo and his cohort of resourceful desert critters. Although the parent company was one of reconstruction’s first official sponsors, until now Buffalo had found little use for their tie-in merchandise, apart from the well-branded adhesive bandages. “Doubtless you will appreciate this example of superior Japanese engineering,” the Lieutenant said, sliding the pencil back and forth.