A New Day in America Read Online Free PDF

skyline: abridged. Nos thinks the skyline looks like a king’s crown—skyscrapers line the outer rim, but nothing stands within. The tallest of buildings are reduced to rough nubs standing in piles of rubble. A raincloud of debris hovers. The island extends into the north beyond sight, as New York City rots on its deathbed.
    They ride on with reluctance. The bridge is bumpy from the wrinkled road. The light darkens as they enter the concrete swamp. There’s no sign of life, though it’s sure to be lurking.
    They ride the FDR around the bottom of Manhattan. The East River now eats at the edge of the highway, and Nos can see the dampness where the tide has reached the city proper. The Battery Park tunnel is collapsed—no telling whether the blast or the water was responsible. He turns and drives the bike through the streets. The financial district is quiet. Weeds have sprouted from cracks in the sidewalk. He hears the scuttle of rodents and the flutter of wings and the
plop
of water. As they get closer to the river above the subway, the foliage thickens. The street is cratered even worse in Manhattan than in Brooklyn, and the water runs almost two feet deep.
    They reach the area affected by the blast from the nuke. People called the bomb
The Big Apple
. Nos and Nay pass where the sidewalk curls upward like a pitch tent from the vacuum of pressure. A drainpipe juts up from underground. The iron girders of old buildings are stripped bare and twisted and covered in bird shit. As they cross Astor Place, he sees the motion of that hellish wave as it tore through the city. Every building is destroyed; towers crushed into dust. The rubble has sat still for long enough for a coat of brownish-green growth. Vines crawl in and out of window frames and wrap around exposed beams. Nos is surprised at how quickly nature works. Only a year and greenery has already rooted the mulch of the Empire city.
So soft is stronger than hard
.
    He cannot get used to the open sky. This is New York City—referred to as simply ‘The City’ by anyone like him who grew up in Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, Staten Island, or the Bronx. Towers are supposed to be everywhere. You should only see a narrow zigzag of the sky when you look up. When he would visit as a kid he would try to find the stars at night, and he never could. The skyscrapers wouldn’t let him.
    He feels the tallest buildings tower over him, like an amputee might still feel their lost limb. He thinks the skyscrapers are there, and then he stops and looks, and they’re gone.
    The only buildings still standing are at the very edge of the blast. He sees some way uptown, maybe as far as Harlem. If the remains of the skyline is a king’s crown, he thinks, they’re standing on the head of the king. He looks around and chuckles.
If Manhattan is a crown, then the king is a corpse
.
    Long live the king
.
    ***
    Nos remembers the weeks following the blast where day would break with no light, and the black rain drenched the city as far as Ft. Green like tears through mascara. He watched through his scope from his roof as dehydrated people drank the radiation poison that would kill them within days. Then he and Nay began wearing masks. He began drinking again, all the booze Yvette had allowed in the house that past year gone before the first week was over. That was around when he and Nay had the talk.
    “Mommy’s not coming home.”
    “Where is she?”
    Nos choked like a peach pit had lodged in his throat. Naomi, on the other hand, was just fine. She was curious and alert.
    “A better place.”
    There must have been tears in his eyes because she now looked at him harder, still curious but scared, too, because Pa never cried. She hadn’t yet made the connection with her mom.
    “You OK?” she quizzed.
    “Yes, sweetheart. You’ll be OK, too,” he said, even as he realized she still didn’t know why she shouldn’t be.
    “OK.”
    “Mommy’s not coming home. Neither is Jay or