The Immune System: A Dewey Decimal Novel (Akashic Urban Surreal Series) Read online

Clock my timepiece, which is solar powered, not the best choice in a world without sun, but it looks expensive and works if you squint. The thing giving me an anemic reading: 5:21 p.m.

  Hearken back a couple years. 5:20. That very minute, coordinated demolition—not entirely successful but pretty fucking impressive nonetheless—of the Queensboro, Williamsburg, Manhattan, and Brooklyn bridges.

  My gut rotates: maybe it’s hunger. Maybe something else. Suddenly I wanna be over there lighting a candle myself, and I can’t sanction any rough handling these civies will inevitably be subjected to. Where this spasm of do-right comes from, Jah only knows.

  Draw my Heckler. Not wise on Chinese property but I do it.

  It’s just then the Escalade glides to a polite stop between the churchyard and me, the nonsound of a battery-powered engine, gangsta window tint, burgundy-wine shine even in this ocher haze. Government plates. My douche-chariot.

  A final squint at the church, yet more armed Chinese military kids slinking into the yard from the east, the six scrawny individuals on their knees now, the soldiers barking, weapons out and held high.

  And I’m loping across the boulevard, just on auto, my gun aloft, because we do not harm noncombatants. One of the codes by which I conduct this war.

  My spirit guide intervenes, snatches my collar, saying simmer down. Check lest you wreck yourself. Vibrate for a moment there between engage and retreat . . . then spin and pull open the rear door on the Esco. Slide on in.

  Dig those seats, gently worn leather, real leather.

  No, Decimal. These civies, not your concern. Turf stuff, local doings. I drift above such things, operating as I do on the macro.

  Thick divider separating me and the unseen driver, a white Secret Service agent named Chip. I am told Chip had his tongue removed. By whom is not clear, and this is the extent of what I know about the fellow.

  Opaque glass comprises up the divider. My reflection. Masked cadaver returns my hazy gaze. My near-dead peepers begging the question: how much longer can you stay standing, Decimal?

  Though I’d love nothing more than to just cozy up with some books, a scout like me is expected to debrief in person to my handlers. So it’s:

  “The Ark, Chip . . .” I rattle at the mic on the ceiling, throat thick and tight. Getting the cap off my pill bottle. The Cadillac pulls out, northbound. Drop a blue one down my maw and flip the cap on my bottle of PurellTM.

  We move forth. I do not look back. Shouldn’t dwell, shouldn’t speculate, but amongst that gaggle of Gypsies I swear I saw a child.

  A child. Here in this hole.

  Blinking rapidly on speed shutter, get those pesky grains of sand out my eyes. Only explanation for tearing up like this. Sand in the eyes.

  Hands come away wet and clean—no sand. Again.

  Them peepers, my peepers, in the glass—jerking my coattails, them saying: Oh, you so hard, Decimal?

  Then what are you crying for?

  ___________

  1. Never, ever be punked: a functioning AGHS by any other name is PurellTM, the OG, none other, now and forever. Be ye not deceived. If a so-called AGHS is even a single digit less than 62 percent solid alcohol, your body will in very short order become an overcrowded colony of microparasites and bacteria. Might as well be out snorting oven cleaner.

  _________________

  Some quick geography.

  Manhattan Island has been carved into fillets, the borders of which are continually shifting but can loosely be delineated as:

  Chinese control: Water Street all the way to West 3rd Street, and from the eastern edge of West Street to the western edge of the FDR Drive, and a patch of Midtown, roughly West 32nd and 31st streets from Madison west to 6th Avenue.

  The Drives East and West, as well as the waterfront area including of course the ports and landings, have complex ownership, very difficult to keep track of. A constant source of static, the shit is headache-inducing so we’ll leave it at that.

  The Russians control the stretch of land from West 4th Street all the way up to 30th Street, and the whole shebang between the Drives.

  The Coalition runs the grid stretching from 33rd Street (with the inclusion of the derelict Madison Square Garden), technically up to the northernmost tip of the island at Inwood Hill Park over to 9th Avenue . . . but in reality, they’re not active above 96th Street except for some token patrolling of the major throughways (116th, 125th, 135th, 145th, and so on). Also the small patch downtown from Worth to Ann Street, from Broadway to Gold, encompassing the old City Hall. And, of course—Wall Street, from Broadway to the river.

  And then there’s little old me.

  My little postage stamp, my little pied-à-terre. Running things between West 40th to West 42nd south to north, and the Avenue of the Americas and 5th Avenue west to east. This area, obviously, encloses the Main Branch of the New York Public Library—my crib—and the stretch of concrete formerly known as Bryant Park, which I got paved over six months back cause everybody seemed to get the feeling like they could burn their garbage in my backyard, and in this I include Russians, Chinese, and Coalition alike. The arrogance of that.

  The boroughs? Left in darkness to the various tribes, right along the lines which they had always been partitioned: Brooklyn to the Jews, Dominicans, Polish, and the blacks—the interior. The receding waterline, formerly Red Hook, Coney, Brighton, etc.—to the Russians.

  Staten Island has been entirely evacuated, as every possible inch of land surface now serves as a dump, a metastasization of Fresh Kills.

  Queens is a medieval fiefdom under strict Chinese supervision. That’s all the information I have on Queens.

  The Bronx, that blotch on the map which birthed me, now serves strictly as worker housing, again split neatly into quadrants representing the four major groups: the Chinese (under whose wing fall the Koreans, the Southeast Asians), the Russians (Ukrainians, white Eastern Europeans), the Dominicans (who would rather keep to themselves . . . this including all brown-skinned Latino groups, as well as black Americans), and the Coalition, who to their credit make no real distinction based on ethnicity, although naturally: the lighter your skin, the better off you’re gonna be.

  There is no conceivable need to go to these godforsaken places.

  I look west, through the darkened glass on the Escalade, out across the Hudson.

  What goes down in Jersey? That’s anybody’s guess. I’ve been there twice in my life, as far as I know: once as a young man to an away basketball game in Camden, and once to the airport. That’s it. Its dismal shoreline, never a pretty picture, is now barely visible through the soup.

  What goes down in Jersey? Who cares? Who knows? And we are no poorer for that fact. Are we?

  _________________

  Stressful fucking metal locker rockets me to the top of the shop, ears and pills popping, me white-knuckling it all the way. Shaky at the observation deck I’m issued a gas mask, which I automatic wipe-down with some PurellTM, this documented by several cameras and the deeply bored gaze of palace guards.

  Contemplate the air even at this elevation. Typhi of all motherfucking types.

  Cyna-corp, Cyna-corp, everywhere. My Cyna-corp radar is pinning, legion in their wet suits, that logo, once clearly a stylized C, looking more and more like two Nike swooshes to me.

  Me thinking, I just killed one of you all, and it was too easy. Like Sunday morning. Tough not to get smug when—let’s just be all the way real—you’re one of the smartest cats on the island.

  I’m waved out on the west-facing terrace. Amble onto the concrete esplanade in the way that a gimp in a gas mask can, movement an effort in the heavy winds all the way up here.

  And yonder, the big man hatless, no silly-ass gas mask for the boss, his substantial back to me here, camel-hair floor-length coat, fur-lined collar. Through the thick atmosphere I can make out his gators, the sine waves of his conk. Big man, surveying his fiefdom through a pair of dainty silver binoculars that recall a Dillinger.

  Senator Clarence Howard. Big man presenting a classical silhouette, suggesting a gargoyle on one of those European Gothic cathedrals I never did get to see except in coffee table books—yes, a gargoyle, were it not for his fundamental good looks.

  “The scholar.” Doesn’t turn, doesn’t need to. Basso profundo, as always.

  Don’t respond cause a chopper comes in close enough to drown out any sass I might conjure up. Dip for a smoke, not out of need, more cause a cigarette irks the boss and tones down the sand.

  Lift the gas mask (airborne E. coli) and slide the Lucky between my torn lips.

  Senator Howard bobs his big old noggin like he’s contemplating some profound shit. Fussing with his flag pin. Fingernails against silk, I involuntarily shudder. Though I can’t hear it, I imagine the sound. Wears them nails long, like a woman.

  This hulk of meat, like all of us, has shucked some pounds. Still a linebacker, but his suit jacket billows a touch, vibes at least one or two sizes up.

  Ghetto bird banking away now—me saying, “We straight with Shanghai, downtown, site 1A. Vibe conveyed. No more Russian metals for those boys anytime soon. Got ’em buying American like proper citizens.”

  Man tilts his head, briefly. Intent on something or other in his opera glasses.

  That’s as much as we discuss these matters, my little assignments. Which suits me down to the cold hard ground.

  I hang back, no great master of heights. The senator gestures east, extending an expensively gloved finger, tapping the Plexiglas twice, and holds the binoculars out.

  “Bear witness, Librarian. Come forward, son, and bear witness.”

  Think about it for a moment, huh—

  This after all being the man who stuck a rapier into my girlfriend while her hands were restra
ined, who left her to bleed out on the Brooklyn Bridge. Though our relationship over time has matured beyond these unsavory things, it’s situations like this when I gotta take such history into account, regarding the senator.

  What’s more: could he conceivably know about the sergeant? Impossible. That’s a body that will never be recovered. Way I left it, Ferguson was to be interred like King Tut in the concrete foundation of Tower Five 3.0.

  From the observation deck, I’m gauging the height of the glass, the curvature up top. I’m gonna have to bet it’d be tough to hoist even a 115-pound bag of bile like your narrator over that there barricade, so I drop the dice and lean forward.

  I and I and the big bad senator, nigh on cheek to cheek. Irksome how he wiggles the binoculars, which I accept, thankful for my gloves, me not knowing what to look at.

  Strafe eviscerated Manhattan, vista of black broken up by splotches of overly lit patches of construction, cranes, toy vehicles, buildings partially powered, buildings fully powered and improbably unchanged, more frequent groupings of towers standing dark and dead as the moon, windowless obelisks. Looking north like this, naturally, I’m pretty much only taking in Coalition territory.

  Pull back the fancy binocs, reckon silly is the move, me saying faux-misty, “Time was, shit. Eight million stories in the naked city. Now it’s more like three or four. Ya heard?”

  Senator furrows his brow at this trifle, squeezes the bridge of his nose. Jabs a finger into the thick plastic of the protective barrier. “Son, use the eyes God gave you. Just west of the reservoir. In the park. South of that. Round about 66th Street on the east side too. Up north, west side, closer to the top if you can see that far.”

  I reapply the ’nocs, and despite the dense “cloud” cover I’m able to spy what the man’s on about. This thanks in part to a grouping of choppers, making lazy circles, searchlights creating a PowerPoint-type tableau.

  “Those are some pretty big motherfucking tents. Gotta be a lot of them out there.”

  Senator Howard winces or shivers or whatever, fluffs up his lips like he’s trying to inhale his mustache. “This language. You are one rough diamond, son.”

  “Thought y’all cleared it, the whole park. Walled it off good.”

  Senator lifts a heavy shoulder, pokes the glass again. “The hand of man is a fallible thing, scholar. All glory to the one God. Talking about too large an area.”

  Can’t see anything beyond the southernmost section of Central Park but I get the drift. Say as I hand the glasses back, “So we’re thinking, who are they?”

  Senator does the lip-inhale thing again, manipulating his tiepin. Basso profundo: “What did they call him then, Librarian, that did lead his children into the wild?”

  Here we fucking go. The senator and his Jesus nonsense.

  “Well, boss, heathen that I am, I wouldn’t dare guess, now would I.”

  “Praise his Holy Name. We can speak of the one man Moses . . .” Howard extends his arms, a passing chopper illuminating his just-this-side-of-crazy eyes. “And the children of Israel said unto them, ‘Would that we had died at the hand of the Lord in Egypt, for ye have brought us forth into this wilderness, to kill this whole assembly with hunger.’ Book of Exodus 16:3.”

  Regarding me now like this is some kind of clarification. I give a grunt. Feeling a little woozy, if I’m honest. Might be the altitude.

  Senator rumbling on, “Which is to say, Librarian, this very insubstantial thorn in the capital’s side. Well, now. We could be shod of it in a jiffy, God willing. Yes indeed. Cast them out in a matter of hours.”

  “No doubt.”

  “Indeed. So not unlike the Israelites, it’s probable that these folk are wondering how they got themselves into such a fine pickle.”

  “Sure enough.”

  “And good odds are it wasn’t the light of the Lord led them hence; odds are it was some fool dime-store Marcus Garvey thinking he could make some kind of political point. A false idol. Such futility.”

  I’m tapping out another Lucky, and in doing so note my claw trembling. Bad omen there. An aura, and what’s coming ain’t a migraine. Though I get those too, and fierce. The tremors kicking in. Me trying to stay good, saying, “So cut ’em down. Smoke ’em out. You got machines. Why do you feel the need to relate all this to a lil’ boy like me?”

  Though I know the answer. As cautious as he is with me, he doesn’t trust Cyna-corp either. It’s a tricky one for the boss, who offers the diminished skyline a tight grin.

  “I’m going to issue you a shortwave. As you leave. I truly dislike the sense that I cannot contact you as needed.”

  Shrug. Sure.

  The senator continues, “These are complicated times, Decimal. Matthew said: And then many will fall away and betray one another, hate one another. We have to be alert.”

  “Never sleeping, sir, I feel that.” Thinking, Hmm.

  Vibrates like trouble within the Coalition, the shadow government to which the senator kneels. A grouping of wealthy crackers mostly, some Arabs, politicians, developers, high-level white-collar criminals all. They run everything north of our current position, and are a relatively new crew. But represent those who have always controlled the world.

  The senator nods. “I am not a cruel man, Decimal. And though I would never pause to serve as vessel of the Lord’s might, I’ve no desire to see needless violence done to the Creator’s flock. Wayward though they may be.”

  As my peripheral vision dims, here it comes, I marvel yet again at this sanctimonious motherfucker’s ability to spit vast amounts of verbal cotton candy, and his seeming inability to get to the point. Light that cigarette with effort. My flipper is flapping like I’m trying to hail a cab, but the senator takes no notice, him saying, “. . . person of the people like yourself. They see a uniform coming, we spook ’em. Can’t have our boys just come barreling in. Counterproductive. So a gentleman such as you, of the common class, a soft touch, a casual approach . . .”

  Another helicopter sweeps into the sound field and takes over, me desperately trying to get that cigarette between my lips . . . somewhere the senator droning on, “. . . identify the head of the serpent. Or heads. And then, with God’s guidance, simply remove them . . .”

  And bam, I find myself not exactly recalling the topic of conversation. It happens. Call it a Freddo.

  Through the hazy lens of the Near Freeze, I recognize this man, this is one Senator Howard. I assume I’ve been here awhile, my cigarette nearly down to the nub.

  I am impossibly high above street level.

  Howard mimes covering his ears at someone behind me. I don’t turn around, near-panic, willing my brain not to seize up completely cause I don’t want to suffer a Full Freeze in front of the senator. He’d use that soft spot, oh, trust a man.

  Howard shifts back to me, showing me those Great Whites.

  As my vision wobbles, color begins to slough off—but that’s okay as it’s dark enough out not to matter hugely. My Lucky begins to singe the rubber of my gloves, while the big man speaks once more in the distance . . . that’s me thinking: Ah. Whatever the fuck we’re rapping about, here’s the rub.

  Always delivered with a predator’s smile.

  _________________

  Then there’s the dream, as familiar as sleep itself, almost comforting in its dependability.

  American housing project in winter. My perspective is from the parking lot, which itself is sparsely occupied.

  Sweep through a sad play area. Toddler-size Rocawear sneaker, always one shoe, these urban mysteries. Chicken bones, discarded malt liquor bottles, crushed packs of Salems.

  Proceed.

  This is not a new dream. But—of late a new detail pokes out. I may not be alone here. I may have at least two companions.

  I can sense this at the door, which is caught by a gloved hand that does not appear to be mine. In the stainless steel elevator, I can detect more than one presence, breathing while I do, slightly winded as if I’m coming out of the cold.

  Exit the elevator into the hallway. Key in hand.

  Check my pistol, disengage the safety. Listen at the door.

  Enter when ready. After all: I’m merely coming home.

  _________________

  OTIS, reads the brass plate on the floor of this tiny room with a latticed gate, a masked Cyna-corp sentry and myself in seeming free-fall, plummeting toward Hades, my neurons shooting dry loads, seized up in a Full Freeze. Though the worst has passed, I am near helpless, and weighed heavy with fear.