Zone One

People carried themselves differently in the thrall of PASD. Per Herkimer, each was marked. Everyone he saw walked around with a psychological limp, with a collapsed shoulder here or a disobedient, half-shut eyelid there, and that current favorite, the allover crumpling, as if the soul were imploding or the mind sucking the extremities into itself. Mark Spitz sported this last manifestation from time to time, in maudlin moods, only unwrenching when adrenaline straightened him out. Anyone with perfect posture was faking it, overcompensating for entrenched trauma. In the Lieutenant’s case, the man’s movements were marked by a distinct reluctance, the slightest gesture requiring a hesitation before it could be completed-it needed to be vetted, triple-checked before morose execution. The input could not be trusted, as if the logic of the lost world were struggling to reassert itself: Surely this is not happening.

He spotted Mark Spitz and his hand ratcheted up to a slow come-hither wave. “Sit, sit, sit,” he said. His thumb was pressed to his temple and his index finger was embedded in the middle of his brow as he squinted at his desk.

“Have your file right here,” the Lieutenant said. “On sponsored paper-they browbeat some recycling magnate into giving the okay. Writing on paper like in the Stone Age. Used to be everything was in the cloud, little puffy data floating here and there. Now we’re back to paper. You hear people talking, they miss cable TV, basketball, they miss local organic greens cold-washed three times. I miss the cloud. It was all of me up there. The necessary docs and e-mails and key photographs. The proof.” He coughed into his fist. “Now it’s evaporated. Least we still have the old-fashioned clouds. What about you?”

“Me what, sir?”

“What do you miss?”

Mark Spitz sat up straight. “Traffic.”

“And where do you fall on the question of cumulus versus cirrus?”

“The puffy ones.”

“Cumulus! Has its plus sides, the Rorschach thing, but I’m a cirrus man born and bred. Can’t beat a coherent layer of cirrus, self-organized, covering the sky. Sunset, bottle of Shiraz, and the usual double entendres? The way we used to do it. Nonetheless, I see where you’re coming from, young man.”

The Lieutenant glanced between the file and Mark Spitz to confirm the man before him. As the Lieutenant talked, his manic delivery gave counterpoint to the physical hesitancy. “Says here you did a good job mopping up I-95, adjusted to the transition from camp life to active duty. Except for an incident on a bridge? Some people, you know. But you made it out, that’s the important thing, right? ‘The mighty Phoenix shall spread its wings.’ What do I call you?”

“Mark Spitz is fine,” he said. It was the truth. “It’s caught on.”

“Wanted to make sure. People like to be called what they like to be called. Served under Corporal Kinder?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Fucking idiot. Part of the brain trust working on phase one around here, forgot to cap the island.”

Mark Spitz had heard tell of the so-called technical difficulties, but he wanted the Lieutenant’s description of it. He was starting to like this character. He’d been forced to endure such a low variety of PASD in Happy Acres-a host of inappropriate staring, unabated drooling, and compulsive finger-sniffing-that the man’s almost sophisticated strain was refreshing. Urbane and citified compared to that bumpkin sniveling.

“We have to quarantine the island,” the Lieutenant said, “so we can clean it out. The subways, the bridges, tunnels. Secret exits most people don’t know about. Civilians anyway, but we do, we have the maps. All kinds of holes in the island of Manhattan. It’s startling. They do the big sweep of Zone One, guns blazing, turkey shoot, put the wall up, but then they notice something. Every day there are more and more skels up at the wall. The marines cut them down-you saw the. 50-. 50s on your way in. But still. Proper ordnance is not the point. Everybody’s, What the fuck.

“They finally have this big confab, right down the hall in fact, General Carter’s down from Buffalo and he wants to know what the problem is, where they’re all coming from. Because there’s too many to only come from uptown. Then one of the bright boys asks, ‘Is it possible they’re using the George Washington Bridge, maybe?’ Like they’re commuting from Jersey. Then it hits them. They didn’t shut it down above Canal. All that shit is still wide open. Lincoln Tunnel, GWB, Triborough, all of it. Plum forgot. All these skels visiting the Big City like they did before all the shit went down. Piling into tour buses for a Broadway matinee.”

“Wow.”