The Immune System by Nathan Larson

Author:Nathan Larson
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Akashic Books
Published: 2015-02-05T16:00:00+00:00

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Activity at 50th and 7th Avenue, me wondering what’s all that . . . milling cops, fire truck. Oh yeah, Lehman Brothers. Keeps getting burned, that space, a move which is purely symbolic as nothing could possibly remain therein. Not like there’s been anything there anyway for years.

Hard right at the former Winter Garden Theater. Right again up Broadway. Nine bleak blocks on and confusion at Columbus Circle. Encounter the largest and most varied assembly of people I have seen on the island since Koreatown was in full swing, before the Chinese cleared 32nd Street entirely.

So many people, and me with not the least clue as to the rumpus.

As I round the traffic circle once more, just to be sure I’m not completely tripping, I take a calculated risk; the joint is heavy with cops and Cyna and varied military goons, and they appear to be preparing to shut off the road . . . silhouettes of workers sitting on Peter Pan and Greyhound buses parked around the obelisk in the center of the roundabout, all apparently waiting for something. Cyna-corp JLTVs parked at odd angles, armed figures coming around toward the larger building to the west.

But none of this is particularly special, and I’m not too concerned about my own ass, because the security types seem entirely focused on the other folks gathered here. Miss Marcia’s people? Primarily women and children, amongst them a few scattered males missing limbs. I spy a couple wheelchairs (which must be considered a luxury item at this point) . . . perhaps a hundred and fifty people, forming a human barrier, blocking the entryway into the former Time Warner center.

“Columbus Circle,” I say.

“Christ, this looks like bloody Damascus,” says Haifa, face pressed to the glass.

Scoff at that. “No ma’am. Ain’t no political drama in New York, baby, not no more. They put the smackdown on that stuff years back.”

“Then what are we looking at?” asks Khalid quietly. And actually, it’s a good fucking question.

The civies are harmless, breakable. They’re all compromised in some sense: too small, too female, too wounded. And not a uniform among them, except a few of those now-familiar Parks Department windbreakers scattered here and there.

Small cornrowed black woman in a torn parka and a denim dress got that charisma, has a megaphone to her mouth, though I can’t hear her over the approaching helicopters. My peepers wide for Miss Marcia, her little girl . . .

Not understanding what these good people think they’re accomplishing. Some sort of paper banner is being unfurled, and I read, DOOMED TO REPEAT, but then the security forces are moving in, somebody opens up a hose and a heavy jet of brown water pummels the assembly, knocking people sideways, and as the Nissan rolls past 7th Avenue I make eye contact with a brown girl, perhaps Colombian or Dominican, maybe twelve or thirteen, no older, who seems to be shouting something, her expression laser-beam focused and not the least bit fearful, just as the butt of an assault rifle is brought down on her skull.

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