The Eternal War

CHAPTER 73

2001, New York

Sergeant Freeman squinted bleary-eyed at the hazy sky. Beyond the strip of Manhattan, beyond the broad and sedate Hudson River, was New Jersey.

‘The South.’

Freeman realized that where he and young Ray were huddled, near the top of a tall building he guessed must have once been a bank or something — right here, was the closest he’d been to actually even seeing the South. From where they were sitting on dust-covered stools, looking out of a cracked window frame, it looked no different to the crumbling ruins in which he’d been living for more years than he cared to remember. The rising sun coming up behind them picked out the skeletons of dockside cranes, twisted and contorted; the rusting hull of an old Sherman Ironside, a navy ship scuttled nearly seventy years ago when the South made their second assault on New York.

He shuddered as a fresh breeze sent dust devils spinning across the open floor. The wall to the east was completely gone, exposing a cross-section of the building’s many floors. He turned to look at all the old office things — typewriters, filing cabinets, desks and chairs — all of them coated in a thick layer of plaster dust and pigeon droppings.

The sun was filling this floor, streaming in where the wall should be. He shaded his eyes from the glare. If he squinted a little, he could just about imagine how this office must have once looked. Busy with activity. Busy with smartly dressed young men moving purposefully, making money. And the big-framed windows looking down on New York, on all that promise and wealth and hopefulness. A doleful smile slowly pulled on his leathery face.

‘Helluva view folks musta had from up here,’ he muttered.

‘’Sup, sir?’

Freeman shook his head. ‘Ain’t nothing, Ray. Just an old man’s nonsense.’

‘It’s darned cold.’

‘Sunrise’ll warm us up directly, son.’

He rubbed his hands together. The young lad was right. It was cold up here. Wind chill an’ all. He should’ve asked the colonel if they could have taken a brazier up here with them. At the very least, several flasks of hot water or some such.

Ray was looking up the long west side of Manhattan island. Thin tendrils of smoke in the distance signalled the canteen fires of other Southern regiments. ‘You reckon them other regiments upriver gonna join us too, sir?’

‘In due course … I’m sure. We just gotta make a show of things for a while.’ He glanced back at the hazy labyrinth of bomb-ravaged Brooklyn. ‘Our boys and them Southern boys … we just gotta make us a stand. Show them others upriver that we all are serious ’bout this rebellion. That we finally finished with this war.’

Freeman doubted it was going to be that simple. More than that, he sensed that same doubt in their colonel.

Bed’s all made up now. Nothing left to do but sleep in it.

‘Sir?’

Freeman turned back to Ray. ‘What is it, son?’

‘What’s that?’ The boy was pointing. Freeman followed the direction of his finger and squinted once again to make better use of his old eyes. It looked like thunder clouds on the horizon. Made sense. They were due rain sometime soon.

A row of heavily stacked clouds.

‘Pass me them field glasses, Ray.’

The young man fished them out of a pouch and passed them to the sergeant.

‘Now then,’ he said, fumbling with the lens-focus dial. ‘Let me just get a …’

The bell grabbed Maddy and hauled her out of a troubled dream. She opened her eyes and found herself staring at the springs of Sal’s bunk above. For a moment, with the gentle glow of the light bulb above casting a patchwork of shadows from its wire grille, and the hum of the computers, she thought all was well once more. That the idea of a civil war still being fought across the rubble of New York had been nothing but her sleeping mind’s fun and games.

But then the long clattering trill of a bell again.

She turned her head and saw Colonel Devereau jerking awake in one of the armchairs. He reached out and unhooked the phone from its cradle on the table.

‘Yes?’

Maddy swung her legs on to the floor as Wainwright stirred and Becks ducked under the shutter and entered the archway.

Devereau nodded solemnly as he listened. Then finally: ‘Good man. Come back immediately.’ He hung the phone up on its cradle.

‘They’re coming.’

A moment later they were all emerging outside, stepping into the glare of morning. She followed the colonels along the trench, pressing past grim-faced men already mustering, checking their webbing, their ammo pouches, their carbines, buttoning their tunics, replacing forage caps with hard helmets. Up a short stepladder and out of the horseshoe-shaped trench, she joined them on the open ground sloping down towards the borderline and the river.

A motor launch was steaming across the glass-smooth water towards them, leaving a rippling V in its wake.

Becks stood beside her. ‘They are here.’

Looming low in the sky above Manhattan like an archipelago of floating islands, a fleet of giant sky carriers had arrived.