The crazy, lucky bastard.
Every major city they’d passed in the last five months seemed to be shrouded in a dark mist, a residual, permanent smog formed from the smoke of constantly burning fires.
Manhattan is no different, and as its towers rise up ahead of them Rush can’t help thinking that they look defeated somehow, as though the smog is holding them captive, smearing their reflective façades in a dull grease.
Like the other cities they’d glanced at from offshore there was no way of knowing what was fueling the fires, of breaking down the percentages into how much was civil unrest, out-and-out warfare, or just an energy-starved population trying to keep itself warm.
He tries to peer into the Brooklyn shoreline as it slides past them, to see down streets and past apartment blocks, but the Zodiac is bucking too hard against the waves, shaking his skull with every impact. Easier to stare ahead, at the horizon, at Liberty Island and at that bruised, smeared skyline.
The original plan had been to bring the Dymaxion into the bay, to see if there was a free berth at the Bayonne container port, but when the first Zodiac recce had reported back that a U.S. Navy destroyer was sitting just off Battery Park, Simon had quite understandably dropped anchor out past the Verrazano Bridge. The garbled radio transmissions they’d picked up heading up the coast, from the few stations still broadcasting, painted a confused, often terrifying picture. Civil wars, militia takeovers, military coups, EMP strikes, shadow-government-sanctioned massacres. Some of it was clearly bullshit, badly communicated rumors, fake news, and conspiracy-theory mythology. Most likely, that destroyer was just sitting there watching out for pirates, but maybe they’d not be happy to see unannounced visitors, and it was better to be safe than sorry.
Rush had told them they could drop him in Bay Ridge, and he’d work his way from there on foot, but Simon was insistent he’d take him closer. Pretty soon they’re scouting around the mess of slipways and jetties that explodes into the harbor around Red Hook, until Toby finds somewhere practical to kill the Zodiac’s engines and tie up. Glancing up and down the shore, Rush vaguely works out where he is. It’s only an hour’s walk from here to Scott’s place, he figures. There’s an IKEA near here, a big one. They came down here on his first, and last, visit. They ate meatballs in the café and looked out at this same view.
It was less than a year ago, but it feels like a decade.
He hugs Toby hard and then climbs out after Simon, who has lifted his bag out of the Zodiac for him. They stand for a moment, looking at each other.
“Well.”
“Well, this is it.”
“Sure is.”
It was, Rush realized, the first time since they’d left Ningbo that he’d seen Simon on dry land. He looked uncomfortable, out of place. Physically eager to get back to sea. It was as though this was breaking some theoretical fourth wall for him, stepping across some ethnographer’s line in the sand. His mission was to observe the end of capitalism from the supply chains—from the sea—and to step onto land was to make some ethical break, to go native. Or, perhaps more honestly, to shut down a detached position he’d maintained for himself, an emotional safe distance.
Suddenly he wonders questions he’d inexplicably never asked Simon, about family, home, friends, loves. Connections.
Now isn’t the time.
“You sure you don’t want to come with me?” he asks him instead. “Look for supplies?”
“Nah. Don’t think so. Push up the coast instead, try to find somewhere more chilled to land. Sure you don’t want to come? Last chance?”
“I’m sure. I’ve come all this way…”
Simon laughs. “You have.”
“Thanks. Thank you, man. I couldn’t—”
“Ah, shut up. It’s been a pleasure.”
They hug, and hold each other for a moment. When they separate Rush feels a tear on his cheek.
“Good luck, man,” Simon says. “Hope you find what you’re looking for. I hope you find him.”
“Thanks. You take care, okay? Don’t fucking die out there, Simon, please?”
And then Simon is back in the Zodiac, and it’s motoring away across the calm bay, out toward where the Statue of Liberty stands, somehow looking ancient now to Rush, like the kind of relic of a lost civilization he feels Americans always secretly wanted it to be.
And then he picks up his bag, turns away from the sea, and heads inland.
16. AFTER
Tyrone gives them masks to wear, tattered shells of scratched visor plastic and deteriorating, shredded rubber. Anika holds hers to her face as she walks, trying not to think about who else has had it to their mouth, what germs must lurk. It must be nearly twenty years old, pushed into service far longer than ever imagined by the Chinese factory worker who made it. It’s the same model, she thinks, as the one she used to use when she first moved to Bristol, when she first went out tagging on the Croft. Maybe it’s the same one. The smell of rubber triggers sense memories; the hiss of spray cans, the tackiness of dripping paint on exposed fingers, the splatter of color across clothes.
The women here are splattered with color, too. Anika turns her head to watch them as they walk past their tables, most of which look like they’ve been scavenged from one of the long-shut local schools. Appropriate, she thinks. Even with their faces hidden by their improvised masks—shreds of cloth wrapped tightly around faces, eyes barely protected by old swimming goggles, scavenged plastic sheeting, dead spex—she can tell that’s where most of the workers here should really be. Their childish frames should still be huddled over the same small desks, just in a classroom somewhere, not here. Their heads are down over bowls instead of books, their hands grasping pestles instead of pencils, the red chili dust rising from their tables as they work, pausing only to reach down to the baskets by their feet to refill their bowls with more peppers. The labor of machines transferred to children, Anika thinks. Her mind flashes to Wales, to Land Army camps, to the abattoirs, the blood-soaked overalls of children working in the meat-processing plants. The chili dust scorches her eyes through the useless plastic of the graffiti mask. She looks away, keeps walking.
They follow Tyrone through factory room after factory room, the only thing changing being the colors of the dust. Chili red moves through the spectrum to turmeric yellow, cumin brown. So many rooms, she starts to lose track of where the hell they must be; the buildings behind Stokes Croft have been cleared of their usual occupants and the walls smashed through to build Grids’s spice empire. It’s not until they emerge into one of the growing rooms that she manages to get her bearings.
This was one of Claire’s spaces, she realizes. Familiar but somehow mutated. It feels like the growing tubes have themselves grown, their white plastic bark expanded even higher toward the ceiling. More holes have erupted in their sides in order for more plants—spices, of course—to burst forth in green bloom. The white plastic—some of which was printed right here, most fabricated to Claire’s design in some distant, unseen Chinese manufacturing plant and shipped halfway across the world by now-lost infrastructure—is patched in places by mixed colors: landfill-scavenged material, ancient shopping bags, unidentifiable plastic sheeting. Anything to keep it together. The constant sound of running liquid nutrients, recycled from local sewage, she guesses, fills her ears. It’s gentle, calming, weirdly natural. A welcome break from the chaos of the processing rooms.
Grids is here, his back to them. She knows it is him without seeing his face. He’s studying the tubes, it seems, oblivious to their presence.