Zone One

Annie placed her hand on her partner’s shoulder. It was pathetic, the sight of the two of them moving in their white hazmat suits in a dumb show of consolation. The sabotaged connection. They looked like mascots of a brand of cookie dough, meant to hypnotize the kids between cartoons. Did Annie know someone in Bubbling Brooks, or just the Triplets? In all likelihood they each knew someone there, whether they were aware of it or not: the appallingly friendly security guard from the office complex three jobs ago, or the freckled best friend from summer camp you hadn’t thought of in years. He heard Ms. Macy say the words “isolated incident.”

“You get back upstate,” Chip said, “you tell them we need another crane down here. Maybe two. You can see what kind of volume we get here sometimes.”

Ms. Macy’s fingers trundled to a fresh page in her notebook. She smiled. “From your lips to Buffalo’s ears.”

They left Disposal to matters of immolation and started for the bank. Ms. Macy asked Mark Spitz where Fort Wonton had found him, and he started to describe the operation on I-95 but was interrupted by one of the rooftop snipers, who shouted directions to a machine gunner on the wall. “Over there, dude-the priest!” The gunner swiveled and divested himself of twenty rounds. The sniper cheered and did a jig.

“It’s so quiet in Buffalo,” she said.

Bozeman caught the brief flicker in Ms. Macy’s eyes and said, “The more the merrier, way I see it. It’ll be awhile before Buffalo sends down the manpower we need to finally cap the island, but in the meantime, the more tourists we have streaming in from the burbs, the less we have to neutralize later.” He tucked her elbow into his palm to steer her around the trio of mechanics squatting before the open plate at the base of the grab crane. The machine’s mammoth claw dangled three stories above, stalled over the wall and dripping on the corpses piled on the other side. Pools of blood gathered at the seams in the concrete wall where the brackets held the segments together, a wrinkled skin developing at the edges where they dried. The pools were becoming giant scabs.

“I hope you’ll convey how smoothly things are running,” Bozeman continued. “That we are a vital installation, even if the next summit is far off.”

“You needn’t worry.”

“Though Chip may be right that we might need another crane. Or two.”

It’s different, Mark Spitz thought. Wonton was off-kilter. A vibration insinuated itself, a disquieting under-tremor to every movement and sound. Perhaps it was a higher-than-normal flood of skels at the wall. Had the fusillade paused since his arrival? More likely the loss of Bubbling Brooks. Bubbling Brooks was one of the bigger camps, fifteen thousand people last he heard. What was their sideline, besides the Triplets? Munitions? Pills? It escaped him. Some of these soldiers had worked there, dropped off survivors there. Had family there, maybe. Buffalo will be upset, of course, with this interruption of their timetables. There had to be survivors, he thought. Had to be. But a loss like that, after the recent run of good news, would certainly cripple morale. Above him the snipers trained the scopes, aimed, dropped their targets, moved to the next target in robotic sequence. The soldiers had no other course in Wonton but to avenge themselves on the dead before them, the ones they can see. Do it for Cheyenne.

Bubbling Brooks was bad news. Mark Spitz felt terrible, of course, but he knew that the refuge had done what all refuges do eventually: It failed. What else could you expect from despicable Connecticut? Precisely this kind of tribulation.

They paused at the shiny, worn steps of the bank and held the doors for three passing soldiers engaged in a lively a cappella version of “Stop! Can You Hear the Eagle Roar? (Theme from Reconstruction).” Bozeman told Ms. Macy he’d meet her in the conference room. “You’ll be fine on your own?”

She winked. “This is the American Phoenix. You’re never on your own.”

Bozeman appraised her ass as she went inside. “Wouldn’t mind some of those Buffalo wings,” he said. He dropped his hand on Mark Spitz’s shoulder and switched to his majordomo voice. “I haven’t seen you since it happened. Sorry about your man.”

“What do you mean?”

“Was I not supposed to say anything? I’m such an asshole.” • • •