The Swing Voter of Staten Island (14 page)

“Have you ever committed any terrorist acts?”

“Would it bother you if I did?”

“Nothing you can do would bother me.”

“Just for that, I’m gonna count this as a second date,” she kidded.

By 11 o’clock, the sulfuric odor had intensified as the land turned to marsh. After another hour, Bea pointed at a hill to their right. Large craggy rocks surrounded its top like a crown.

“Up there somewhere is the hole Jackie Wilson supposedly bore into the old sewer system when he was trying to fix the drain.”

Uli felt a dull pain in his lower back and the arches of his feet. He sighed, wiping the sweat off his forehead.

Bea knew she should’ve brought a canteen, and sensed that he was tuckered out but too proud to say so. “Would you mind if we returned now?” she asked.

“Really?”

“It’s going to get a lot hotter and we still have a long walk back.”

“Good point.”

Turning around, they hiked back up the hill they had just descended. At the first clearing, the stench diminished and they sat down to eat the remainder of their food.

When they were nearing the canoe, moving through a bog of tall grass, they heard something rushing toward them from several hundred feet away. Bea sniffed in the direction of the rustling.

“It’s probably one of those feral pigs,” Uli speculated.

“No, they run off when they hear people.” Stepping backwards, she asked him, “Do you remember where we left the canoe?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Take it and paddle back across the airfield,” she said, then suddenly dashed off in the direction of the sounds they’d just heard.

“Wait a sec!” he called out.

“Go, I’ll catch up!” she yelled back. “Just do as I say!”

“Wait a second!”

He tried to follow her, but in a moment she had vanished. He continued heading where he thought she had gone, but soon the landscape was totally silent. Feeling vulnerable in the maze of tall grass, he rounded back toward the Bay of Death before him. As he approached the canoe, he heard a galloping sound from several directions at once. Climbing up onto the limb of a dead tree, he could see the top of the grass rustling from a couple hundred feet away. Then he spotted it in a small clearing: The large brown razorback of a wild boar, complete with a sharp pair of dark gray tusks, was charging toward him. Before he could react, he heard a second boar coming at him from the opposite direction. Dashing through the tall grass, it moved like a wave, passing right alongside of him and intercepting the first boar. The sound of insane squealing filled the air. He watched as the first boar, which had to be at least a couple hundred pounds, was tossed up above the grass before slamming back to the wet earth.

Uli used the opportunity to race to the clump of bushes where they had left the canoe. He pulled it across the muddy bank, into the water, and floated out. Looking back to the shore, he wondered what to do about Bea. Suddenly, something very large plopped right into the front half of the canoe, almost catapulting him into the toxic sludge.

Uli leaned back instinctively to keep from tipping over and quickly realized it was Bea who had jumped in.

“Where the hell were you?” he gasped.

She was winded and covered in sweat. He carefully climbed over to her and found that she was freezing.

“You okay?” He put his hand to her face, causing her to flinch. She seemed to be elsewhere.

“Give me a minute,” she said, still panting. Her shirt was nearly torn off.

“Where did you go? Why did you run off!” He hugged her tightly to him, trying to get her core temperature up.

“A minute,” she said, pushing him away, still trying to catch her breath.

Uli picked up a paddle and started rowing them across the large basin.

A
s they neared Tottenville, Uli noticed someone on the far shore staring out at them. It was an older, slightly hunched man, and though Uli wasn’t certain, he thought it might be Rafique. Then he saw the figure limp away. When the canoe glided onto shore, Tim and a small entourage walked stiffly over to the river’s edge.

“Uh oh, I think we’re in trouble,” he said.

“I can’t imagine why,” Bea responded.

Tim asked if he could speak to Uli alone. Getting out of the canoe, Uli watched as two of the chief’s sidekicks led Bea away.

“You just missed the afternoon bus,” Tim said sternly.

“I wasn’t planning on catching it.”

“Well, you can’t stay here.”

“Why not?”

“Look, the curfew has been lifted, so unless you have further business with Rafique …”

“I don’t understand.”

“There is a limit to the amount of people we can feed and house here. Hell, there’s a list of applicants waiting to join us. We simply can’t let anyone just live here.”

“I was only hoping to spend a few more days here.”

“There’s another bus at 6. Please get on it.”

“Where did they take Bea?”

“This place doesn’t run itself, she has chores to do like everyone else,” Tim said, then walked away.

When Uli called out to Bea, a group of large men who looked like security staff walked over in tight formation.

“I just want to talk to Bea.”

“Well, she doesn’t want to see you,” said the biggest of them. “Now please go.”

“I’m not leaving until I’m convinced that she’s safe,” he declared.

“Then you’re going to make us remove you by force,” the man responded, and reached out to grab Uli. Without thinking, Uli pulled the man forward, sending him to the ground. When a second man lurched at him, Uli swooped low and flipped the guy over his back.

“Don’t touch him!” Tim shouted in the background. Everyone took a step back. “I’ll tell her to speak to you when she’s done with her chores.”

Although Uli offered to help one of the men to his feet, the guy got up on his own.

Realizing that he couldn’t fight the entire tribe, Uli walked over to the main road. The security team followed at a distance. Uli sat up against the only tree and waited. The guards finally walked away.

Over the next two hours, Uli tried to figure out what could have offended the tribe. Eventually he dozed.

B
y the arid and hilly landscape, Uli instantly knew he was back in Asia Minor and felt a palpable sense of dread. He noticed the young family he had seen dining earlier—minus the father. It seemed that a few days had passed. The beautiful mother, now filthy and exhausted, was clinging to the hands of her two toddlers. The three of them were standing at the rear of a long bedraggled line of a hundred or so women and children—all dressed in heavy turn-of-the-century garb, covered in the dust and dirt of the unpaved road—moving tiredly in the burning noonday sun.

He watched them all shuffling along like sleepwalkers. Some in slippers, clothing torn. Others in long, heavy dresses that were frayed at the hems. Hair matted, caked in dirt and grime. White powder crusted around the sides of their chapped lips. From the scabbed wounds and bruises along their arms and faces, it was clear they had survived some sort of attack.

Uli sensed that their men had already been slaughtered. The slow line was being led by two short, fat soldiers. A third soldier was bringing up the distant rear. It appeared that they had already walked miles through the dust.

As he shifted positions for a better view, Uli could see a gang of beefy men hidden up ahead behind a mound of large rocks. As the refugees approached, some of the younger men in the gang bolted out to grab them.

An older man with an eyepatch and walking stick took off after the younger marauders. Amidst screaming and shouting, a fight broke out. Uli realized they were battling each other for the prettiest girls in the group—though none of the women were much younger than twenty-five. All the teenage girls must have already been taken.

When a young attacker tried to grab one of the women, she kicked him. The youth punched her hard in the face, then tried dragging her away. Before he could get very far, however, a large older woman, perhaps the young woman’s mother, raced up and gouged her fingers into his eyes. She knocked him backwards, but another man approached, pulled out a dagger, and calmly slashed her throat. As she fell to the ground gagging, the teenage attacker took out his penis and started urinating on the dying woman.

The daughter was too tired to even rise from the dirt. When one of the other soldiers yelled at the throat-slitter, the teenager stopped pissing on the dying woman and instead kicked the daughter in the ribs, stomping her midsection until she started to cough blood.

Uli noticed that none of the men actually had guns—they didn’t need them. As a mother and her two children tried to march past the small band of now-retreating attackers, one of the men grabbed her daughter. The little girl let out a high-pitched shriek and her brother froze in terror. The mother tried to hold her daughter around the waist. Uli watched as one of the men tore off the back of the young mother’s lace shirt, then ripped her corset down, exposing her breasts, before knocking her to the ground. Another older man lifted the screaming girl over his shoulder and walked off up a hill. Realizing that the man had abducted the little girl, the first attacker raced after him to recover his prize. The terrified boy ran over to his weeping mother, who struggled to her feet, half-naked and bloody. Without even glancing at her screaming daughter being carried away, the mother pressed on with her son.

The other men let them pass, as they were busy clubbing some of the other prisoners. Once hit, the victims either stumbled onward or simply collapsed to the ground, too exhausted to do anything else. None of the attackers finished them off. Apparently, there was no point in humiliating people who were nearly dead.

He awoke to the sensation of something trickling down his neck. At first he thought it was just sweat, but when the delicate sensation moved upward, he flinched, fearing it was a spider. Bea was kneeling before him, stroking his head with one hand and holding a brown paper bag in the other.

“Sorry,” she said. “You looked so much at peace, I didn’t want to wake you.”

“I was having some weird dream,” he replied as he rose to his feet. “It was almost a continuation of something I saw at the Goethals.”

“It might not be a dream,” she said. “You know how sometimes you get really good TV reception if you place the antenna in a certain place?”

“Yeah.”

“This place has another kind of reception. Dreams here are far more vivid. Some think it’s a form of communication.”

“Tim seemed really pissed off,” Uli said, changing the subject. He didn’t care for all her hocus-pocus. “Maybe we weren’t supposed to talk about that thing at the Goethals.”

“Actually, he asked me to help you think about it.”

“Oh?”

“You have to understand. He’s never had a vision about some mysterious stranger coming, and he’s never taken a stranger out to the Goethals,” she said softly. “You’re here for a reason.”

“What reason could that possibly be?”

“I don’t know. Neither does he. But he does know that whatever your purpose is, it’s not going to be achieved hanging around here.”

“Do
you
want me to remain here?” he asked.

“Look, I’m sure we’ll meet again, but for now I actually agree with him.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“What were you going to do twenty-four hours ago when you walked out of your meeting with Rafique?”

“Frankly, I haven’t given it much thought. I don’t have a home or job, I don’t even know who I am.”

“I promised not to counsel you. All I can say is trust your instincts,” she said, “and be very careful. Rescue City is as divisive and deadly as any prison yard.”

“At least tell me why you ran off when we were on the other side of the basin today.”

“It’s a little embarrassing,” she said. “I’d rather not go into it.”

“I really need to know.”

“I thought that animal was stalking us because of me, and I was trying to lead it away.”

“It was a wild boar,” he said.

“Yeah, well, I just began menstruating. I figured he caught my scent and I was trying to draw him away from you. In case you didn’t notice, I’m very fast.”