Guy LeCharles Gonzalez

Thursday, October 31, 2013: Sherman Park, NY, USA

Herman Ruth stood perfectly still, partially hidden behind a large oak tree three hundred yards into Leitas Pond Park, directly across from Detective Eric Pearson’s house. It was the first time he’d observed the house, but it was the first time he had company doing it.

His eyes sparkled, as if lit from within, as they moved back and forth between Pearson’s house and the other zombie watching it from the edge of the tree line. When the last light in the house had turned off ten minutes ago, he’d locked his gaze onto the zombie, waiting for its next move.

He knew that it wasn’t one of his, not via a direct line at least, and was curious about its interest in Detective Eric Pearson.

Another fifteen minutes passed before the zombie lumbered off into the park in the opposite direction, obvious from its shuffling gait that it was of inferior origin. He’d realized early on that each successive generation removed from him was noticeably weaker, anything beyond two times removed absolutely useless for anything beyond mere grunt work, and as such, his plans for revenge were taking much longer to bring to fruition than he’d originally hoped.

In the time that had passed since his reawakening nine years earlier, he’d taken his time, been selective with his conversions, and done his research. A lot had happened in the sixty-five years since his death and it was a very different world he’d found upon his return. With each passing year, though, he’d grown more comfortable with his fate, and was able to make his way in the world surprisingly well under the cover of night.

He had important business to take care of with Detective Pearson, but hadn’t been ready to take the next step until realizing someone else apparently had taken an interest in him as well. Watching the other zombie clumsily make its way through the trees into the darkness, he wondered who’d sent it, crinkling his nose in disgust, and debated whether it was time to have a talk with his long-lost relative, Eric.

---

George Herman Ruth, Jr. was nicknamed the Babe during spring training of his first season in the major leagues by teammates in Baltimore who saw him as one of team owner Jack Dunn’s “babes.” He’d always hated the name, especially the implication it gave that he was someone’s property, but with his instant success, word of his talent had spread so fast that he never had a chance to explain his preference for Herman.

He was more successful in explaining his past, though.

The official story was that his parents, a saloonkeeper and his wife, had sent him to St. Mary’s Industrial School for Boys, a strict Catholic institution for orphans and delinquents run by the Xaverian Brothers. He was seven at the time and years later would later credit a Brother Matthias with being “the father figure I needed, to teach me right from wrong.”

As with most American myths, it was true, for the most part, except for the specifics of his parentage. The man whose name he carried, George Herman Ruth, Sr., was in fact married to Herman’s mother. He was, however, not his biological father.

Though President Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation into law as of January 1, 1863, it was a wartime measure that only applied to the states in rebellion, which Maryland was not. It was nearly two years later, on November 1, 1864, before the Maryland General Assembly approved a new constitution for the state that finally made slavery illegal there.

Eric Monroe was born on October 31, 1863, in Huntingdon, Maryland, on the outskirts of Baltimore, to Horatio and Margaret Monroe, black slaves of the Lesser family, who ran a modest horse farm. Because he was born into slavery, despite it already having been declared illegal in the south and Maryland outlawing it a year later, he became what would later become known as a “term slave,” legally kept in bondage to the Lessers until his 28th birthday.

The day he received his freedom, he moved to Baltimore and eventually found work as janitor in a saloon on Camden Street, owned and operated by George Herman Ruth, Sr. and his wife Kate. He worked there for almost three years without incident, before disappearing one night in the summer of 1894, never to be heard from again.

Kate Ruth gave birth to a son in February of the following year, George Herman Ruth, Jr., whose broad, flat nose and olive complexion looked nothing like his father. If anyone put two and two together, they never said a word, but the question ate at Ruth, Sr. every day for seven years until he couldn’t take it anymore and sent the boy off to St. Mary’s.

Eric Monroe had fled north to New York City in mortal fear for his life, changing his last name to Pearson and eventually settling down in Harlem after finding steady work with the New York Central Railroad as a porter. In 1902, he married one Rita Mae Hayworth who bore him two children, Michael and Lula Mae Pearson. Sixty-eight years later, Eric Monroe Pearson would become the first of his descendants to bear his name.

Thursday, October 31, 2013: Sherman Park, NY, USA

Eric Pearson gave the hot water knob another turn, wanting more than anything at that moment to scald away the invisible layer of fear coating his entire body. He winced sharply, but didn’t back away from the steaming spray showering down on him. He’d been standing there for the past 20 minutes and was planning to keep standing there until the hot water had completely run out.

The Department of Homeland Water Conservation could fine him double for the violation, for all he cared.

It was another twenty minutes before the water heater that served his small ranch-style home, tucked away in a small closet in the small galley kitchen, gave in and the water finally began to cool. By then, he’d finished off the last half of a bottle of body wash, lavender-scented to sooth his jangling nerves, and his mahogany skin seemed to glow a faint red.

As a New York City policeman – and prior to that, as a combat infantryman in Iraq – he’d seen some of the worst atrocities the human mind could imagine. From gangland executions and crazed serial killers to minefield amputees and bullet-riddled fellow soldiers, he didn’t believe there was anything left that could knock him for a loop. Especially nothing he’d expect to come across in the sleepy suburbs, where roadkill was more common than homicide.

But Anthony DiBlanco’s mangled remains had done exactly that, knocking him for a loop he was still spinning out of eight hours later, and it had taken almost an entire bottle of Jack Daniels to blur the edges of the still-fresh memory in his mind, and two separate showers to stop his skin from tingling in revulsion.

Fifteen minutes later, air dried and in only a pair of boxers, he was sitting at the small wooden desk in the spare bedroom that doubled as his study, turned on his computer, waited for what felt like forever as it booted up, and opened his internet browser, logging on to Google. He typed in “rottweiler,” stabbing at each letter with one determined finger, and began scrolling through the pages of results, clicking links at random, attempting to fill in the considerable gaps of what he knew about the breed.

On one web site, dogbreedinfo.com, he learned that the breed was allegedly descended from the Italian Mastiff. Bred in the German town of Rottweil, in Wurttemberg, they were practically extinct in the 1800’s, but they began a comeback in the early twentieth century thanks to the efforts of enthusiastic breeders centered in Stuttgart.

“The Rottweiler,” it continued, “is calm, trainable, courageous, and devoted to their owner and family. They have a reliable temperament. Protective, he will defend his family fiercely. These are strong fighters that seem immune to pain. Serious, steady and confident. Firm and careful training is essential for this breed, otherwise you may end up with a very powerful and overly aggressive dog.”

Another web site, pooch.org, contradicted its ancestry, suggesting the Oriental Mastiff instead and tracing its origins back to the ancient Roman Empire. It also referred to the breed’s fabled reputation for viciousness. “In Germany, these dogs were used to drive cattle to the market and to haul meat-laden carts. Butchers also tied their day’s earnings around Rottweilers’ necks so the money would not be stolen or lost. From this, they got the nickname of ‘Butchers’ Dog.’ Germans used the Rottie in military and police work. They also became popular as guard dogs, and television shows did the breed no favors by often choosing Rottweilers to portray mena [sic], ferocious, guard dogs that would kill on command.”

Ironically, it was that negative reputation that TV shows exploited, and drug dealers had openly embraced years earlier, that had made them popular once again in the suburbs with the increase in, and eventual acceptance of, zombie sightings in recent years, as they were widely believed to be the one breed zombies feared most. The evidence for this theory was, of course, purely anecdotal, but enough people believed it that it eventually became accepted as the truth.

Confirming that, within the first three pages of search results, he’d found six different breeders listing “proven zombie deterrent” as one of the primary advantages of owning a purebred Rottweiler.

He typed in “rottweiler zombie” next and was a bit surprised when the search results turned up pages and pages of links to Rottweiler breeders from all around the country, despite the fact that, officially at least, confirmed zombie sightings had been limited to New York City and its immediate surroundings. Ten pages into the search results, his attention beginning to wander as the Jack Daniels worked its way through his bloodstream, something caught his eye. He scrolled back up the page to find it, clicking on the link entitled “Monsters of Quake hate one another.”

He scanned the unformatted page of text, trying to find the reference Google had picked up on. “Quake” was a computer game from the 90s, he vaguely remembered, that featured, among other things, killer zombies and he had apparently clicked on a fan’s homemaed FAQ for it. The “rottweiler” Google had found was one of the monsters in the game, its relationship to the breed of dog, if any, unclear and unreferenced. There was an entry for “zombies” a couple of paragraphs later, though.

“It seems, that they throw their diseased flesh to everything that moves, even to one another. And after that monster comes closer and try to make some damage against them. But I think that only Ogres could ‘blast them into chunky kibbles.’ But I’ve seen ogres only using their chainsaw against Zombies. After some sawing zombies drops down and after a while raises back. Guess twice, who stays ‘alive.’”

Eric shook his head nostalgically, remembering the simple video games of his own youth, like Pac-Man and Donkey Kong, before the graphics had become hyper-realistic and the games’ storylines more violent and nihilistic, at one point instituting a ratings system like the movies, ostensibly to help parents control what their children played. A series of games called Grand Theft Auto, where players took on the persona of a street thug, running the streets committing crimes, stealing cars and killing civilians and cops, all to a slickly produced soundtrack was one of the most popular games with kids despite is rating of M for Mature.

Reading a reference to zombies that was written back when they were still a figment of the imagination was a bit of a surreal, through the looking glass kind of moment for Eric.

After another fifteen minutes of fruitless searching – fruitless because he wasn’t exactly sure what he was looking for – Eric shut down the computer and went to the kitchen to pour himself a glass of water. The “Quake” game stuck in his mind and he tried to remember the specifics of the game. He was pretty sure it was a first person shooter, where the player viewed the game as if through the eyes of his off-screen avatar, giving the feeling of being immersed in the game. He remembered it was especially popular with the computer geek set, for whom a session of blasting zombies and other monsters wasn’t so much a diversion from reality as it was a way to feel in control of some aspect of their lives.

He also remembered that the zombies always came back to life, but couldn’t remember if there was a way to kill them once and for all.

Reluctantly, he let his mind wander back to the DiBlanco house, picking over the periphery of crime scene, purposefully avoiding the kitchen and the horror on it floor. Something was gnawing at him, a fleeting memory at the back of his brain, something his subconscious must have picked up when his stomach had decided to give out.

Leaving the kitchen, he flicked off the light and headed to his bedroom. The digital clock on the pine dresser read 10:30PM. He sat on the edge of his bed and looked around the room, his eyes settling on the bookcase, scanning the spines of the assorted novels, biographies and textbooks, his brain chewing on something he couldn’t make out.

“Sleep on it,” he said aloud. “It’s been one hell of a day.”

---

Across the street, just beyond the first line of trees that separated Rolling Hills Road from Leitas Pond Park, a figure shifted in the darkness as the last light in the Pearson house flicked off.

Thursday, October 31, 2013: West Point, NY, USA

“Trick or treat, Vargas! Time to move!”

Damon shifted under his green flannel bedsheet, slightly damp from a night of fitful sleep, as he teetered on the edge of consciousness, desperately trying to ignore the insistent knocking at his door. Pulling the lumpy pillow over his head in a vain attempt to drown out Captain James T. Merck’s gravelly voice, he wished for another hour of sleep –

“Come on, Vargas! Open it up!”

– but his wish wasn’t granted.

“Alright, alright! Chill! I’m up! Hold on a minute.”

Damon rubbed the last crumbs of sleep from the corners of his eyes as he sat up in his bed and glared at the fireproof door that separated him from the rest of the east wing of the McCain Building, a two-story barracks near the center of what the general public knew as the former site of West Point, the storied United States Military Academy. After the end of the Civil War, in a land grab that rivaled the pioneer days of the old west, it had been sold off to a private investment corporation known only as RevCorp, and shrouded in secrecy ever since.

Rumors included everything from genetic engineering to alien autopsies, many of which often contained at least some small nugget of truth.

Damon took in his room quickly, assuring himself everything was as he’d left it, as he tried to remember where he’d discarded his clothes the night before. Drab concrete walls, one of which was covered by a mural he’d painted himself depicting his favorite superhero, Batman, grim-faced and perched high atop a silhouetted Gotham City, the bat signal piercing the night sky; minimalist furniture, all black and gunmetal gray, standard RevCorp issue; the matching armoire, doors opened, black uniforms spilling out onto the hardwood floor; a small desk with a laptop, an antique banker’s lamp, an analog clock and an empty fifth of Grey Goose vodka.

No drinking glass was visible and Damon instinctively rubbed his temples at the thought, but the dull ache in his head wasn’t from a hangover. That was courtesy of the recurring dream he’d had again that night that had him tossing and turning before finally waking in a cold sweat two hours before Merck came knocking.

The dream was of Diane and Liberty, running through the woods, chasing someone. Or something. It was never really clear which, and it was the third time he’d had the dream in the past week. Each time it had lasted longer and longer, with the latest finally revealing who, or what, they’d been chasing. Whatever it was had already faded in his mind, though, and he poked at it, searching for a hint, but to no avail.

He stood and stretched his wiry five foot nine frame, groaning from the effort, then slipped into a pair of thick black sweatpants that were lying crumpled at the foot of his bed and a gray t-shirt with the word KILLER stenciled across the back in black letters. He walked over to the mirror that hung from the back of his door and shook his head at the sleep-deprived, prematurely graying wreck staring back at him.

He unlocked and opened the door just as Captain Merck’s fist was readying for another round of obnoxious pounding.

“What the hell, Merck? It’s five in the morning!”

“Happy Halloween, Vargas. Get dressed. It’s zombie time!”

---

On the surface, RevCorp was a legitimate U.S. corporation that bought and sold undervalued companies, ideally for a profit. Two behind the scenes members of the activist group, MoveOn, had founded it in 2005 after that organization’s failed attempt at swaying the Presidential elections in 2004. The combination of an aggressive mergers & acquisitions program and the negative reaction of the financial markets to the upheaval caused by the Civil War enabled RevCorp to quickly develop an impressive portfolio of mid-range, seemingly unrelated properties. They had their hands in everything from print and broadcast media, to pharmaceuticals, to the New York Mets baseball team, one of the last teams representing the “blue states of Gomorrah” in professional sports.

Behind the legitimate businesses, though, lie clandestine networks of extra-governmental agencies dedicated to breaking the right’s hegemonic rule and the ultimate reunification of the United States of America. Effectively, it acted as a shadow Department of Homeland Security whose sole mission was to undermine both governments and destroy the status quo.

Damon had been tapped for his writing skills and extreme sensibilities, ostensibly recruited to work at TruMedia, RevCorp’s advertising agency specializing in non-profit organizations, which he turned down twice. Captain James T. Merck had finally coordinated Damon’s “disappearance” in Van Cortlandt Park in 2010, gambling on the revelation of RevCorp’s real mission being the difference maker and their exhaustive research being correct.

In both cases, it was exactly that.

---

“Something’s changed,” explained a bespectacled Arnold Watkins, RevCorp’s resident zombie expert and lead analyst on Project Degenerate. He didn’t wear glasses, as nothing as thick as the lenses sitting in the chunky black frames resting on his beakish nose could be referred to as glasses. He was, to put it kindly, bespectacled.

The three men were standing over a backlit glass table in Watkins’ control room, a transparent map of pre-Civil War New York’s Westchester County laid out across it with a pattern of green, yellow and red dots emanating from a town called Hawthorne, now on the northern edge of New York City. After five years of intense research, Watkins had theorized that Hawthorne, specifically its Cemetery of the Gate of Heaven, was ground zero for the outbreak of zombies that had first been noted back in 2005 by the Department of Homeland Security.

The green and yellow dots were far greater in number and spread out logically over a 200-mile radius from the Cemetery. The red dots seemed more random, in tighter groupings but with no readily discernable pattern.

“The green dots,” Watkins explained, “are confirmed reports of zombie sightings around the region. The yellow dots are ‘incidents,’ places where confirmed reports of zombie attacks have taken place. Typically wild animals, pets and the occasional homeless. The red dots are what we call ‘incidents of specific interest,’ places where zombie attacks on humans have occurred.”

“Humans?” Damon asked. “As opposed to the homeless, you mean?”

“What’s the pattern?” asked Merck, pointing a stern finger in Damon’s direction.

“Well, that’s the interesting thing,” Watkins continued, ignoring Damon’s remark. “At first, we couldn’t find any. We ran several different algorithms, extrapolated the data, even created a couple of predictive models and tried working backwards, but nothing came to light.”

“Other than the fact that you don’t consider the homeless humans?” Damon asked, deadpan.

“Vargas!” Merck snapped.

Damon stepped away from the glowing map table over to the coffee pot sitting on a counter at the other end of the room, steam wafting towards the high ceiling, the smell of freshly ground beans still hanging in the air. He poured himself a cup, stirring in a teaspoon of brown sugar, and blew on it as he turned back to Watkins and Merck.

“Well, we started looking at the places themselves, analyzing demographics and such and last week we hit on something.”

Watkins uncapped an orange highlighter and began circling clusters of red dots, five in all.

“Peekskill, Ossining, Sherman Park, Elmsford and Mt. Vernon. Eighty percent of our confirmed reports of zombie attacks took place in those five areas.”

“Okay,” said Merck.

“Know what they have in common?”

“Besides the zombies, you mean?” Damon asked.

“All five have a higher than average percentage of African Americans as residents, compared to the rest of the region. Sherman Park is the lowest of them, at only about twelve, thirteen percent, but it’s where nearly half of the initial sightings and attacks were reported during the first two years. It’s also only about two miles from Hawthorne, spitting distance from the Cemetery of the Gate of Heaven.”

“Ground zero,” smiled Merck.

“Precisely.”

“So, you’re saying the zombies are a black thing?” asked Damon, a bit more seriously this time.

“I’m not sure I understand how you mean that, or if you’re even serious, but yes, there definitely seems to be some kind of a connection there. Another equally interesting item we came across is the missing persons cases in these areas. Compared to the statistics for the region, each of these towns has an unusually high spike in missing persons being reported, again starting with Sherman Park in 2006, then spreading out from there to Elmsford’s spike in 2007, Ossining from 2008-2009, and Mt. Vernon and Peekskill over the next three years. In each case, the percentage of African American men and Caucasian women are skewed when compared to the region’s norms.”

“What does all of this mean, Watkins?” Merck asked impatiently. A man of action, he despised talking numbers and babysitting number crunchers, especially when they weren’t giving him clear and simple answers.

“Well,” Watkins sighed, “we’re still not sure yet, to be honest. It’s the closest thing to a pattern we’ve ever found, though.”

“Then why the 5am briefing? And the great coffee, by the way.”

“Like I said, something’s changed. Within the pattern, there’s an apparent aberration.”

He pulled out a blue highlighter this time, and began circling a handful of single red dots, all within a 10-mile radius of Hawthorne.

“These five incidents were all particularly brutal attacks on humans, all but one under twenty years old. Last night was the fifth such attack, this time in Mt. Pleasant, here,” he circled an area that, among other things, included the Cemetery of the Gate of Heaven, the Kensico Dam and Sherman Park.

“Sixteen year old male, one Anthony DiBlanco. Local detective responded to the boy’s reporting a zombie sighting in his backyard, says they were eating his dog. Detective gets there to find a couple of broken windows and a door, and fresh Anthony stew on the kitchen floor.”

“DiBlanco? That name rings a bell,” Damon said.

“It should,” Merck said. “Wasn’t that the name of the kid that reported the first credible sighting back in 2006? Claimed it was Babe Ruth eating his dog or something?”

“One and the same,” Watkins said. “Weekly World News paid his parents $500 for the story and it wasn’t considered credible until three years later, after we had started our work here.”

“Odd coincidence?” Damon asked.

“Who knows.”

“What kind of dog?” Damon asked. “This time, I mean.”

“Ah! There’s the change. The DiBlancos owned a rottweiler.”

“Oh, fuck!”

“Not my choice of words but I think it works as well as any in this case.”

2007-2009; United States of America

The United States’ second Civil War finally broke out in 2007, after three years of boiling following the controversial 2004 Presidential election.

Strangled by a two-party political system that over the years had, for all intents and purposes, merged into one, unable to convincingly differentiate themselves on the major issues like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, nuclear proliferation, health care or corporate control of the media, political campaigns had come to depend on so-called cultural and moral issues to rally their supporters. Gay marriage, abortion, reality television and pop singer Janet Jackson’s left breast became the issues of the day.

Unlike the first Civil War, there was little blood spilled, though.

Except for the most radical on either end of the spectrum, the average American was simply too lazy to actually pick up a gun and shoot their brother or sister. At least not for socio-political reasons.

For a perceived slight, yes. But for freedom and basic civil rights, not so much.

No, this Civil War took place quietly but rapidly, an exaggerated version of suburban flight, and its reverse, as cultural conservatives abandoned the cities and the more liberal-minded made the reverse commute. As a result, many urban centers spread out beyond their already sprawling borders, engulfing many bedroom communities and smaller cities in their wake. Non-profit organizations focused on relocating were founded by the dozen, and web sites like Craigslist and Friendster were flooded by people on the move.

On the other side, new cities sprung up across the country, especially throughout Middle America, most anchored by Wal-Marts and Starbucks and Bank of Americas. Home schooling was all the rage and public libraries and hospitals were privatized, sold off to Barnes and Noble and Aetna, respectively.

By the end of 2007, the population of the United States had shifted so dramatically, Congress was forced into recess for six months while redistricting took place to figure out who represented what. When all was said done, the northeast, from Maryland to Pennsylvania to Maine, the lower half of Florida and the entire west coast were given to the Democrats, while everything else was brought under Republican control.

Open elections were suspended indefinitely and martial law was enforced.

In both territories, pockets of resistance existed, some larger than others, and it wasn’t until the terrorist attack on the state of Maryland, highlighted by the detonation of a dirty bomb in downtown Baltimore by Christian fundamentalists that it became clear the moral divide had become a gangrenous wound too large to ignore.

In February of 2009, the President signed off on the Population Redistribution Act, declaring an official end to the bitter Civil War and mandating the relocation of 65 million minorities, non-Christians, white liberals and registered homosexuals – those that hadn’t already deserted to Canada or Old Europe after the 2004 election, at least – to what the Republicans would come to refer to as Gomorrah, giving them the right to self-rule as long as they continued to pay their taxes and allowed a limited military presence outside of key cities. Islam and Jehovah’s Witnesses were banned and their followers deported.

The new country within a country couldn’t agree on a name for itself, self-deprecatingly accepting Gomorrah, and elected two leaders to represent them, Howard Dean, an outspoken moderate Democrat that had miraculously rallied a populist resurgence on the internet by making it easier to donate money to his ultimately unsuccessful campaign, and Janeane Garofalo, a former comedienne and actress who apparently knew the ins and outs of the political game.

Their fledgling government was sponsored by discount retailer Target and the banking giant Washington Mutual, while health care was “temporarily” outsourced to an organization in India specializing in Eastern medicine. Public schools were sponsored by the Ronald McDonald House, while Starbucks, prepared for the split, had quietly spun off a small portion of its business in 2006, naming it Clinton Café and selling half of its locations to the “ambitious new upstart” in key cities.

They were once again content, living amongst their own kind (for the most part), freed from the guilt of feeling ever so slightly superior to their more conservative-minded former countrymen, and relishing their hard-won freedom to enjoy a latté in the middle of the afternoon.

---

Damon Vargas had returned to New York, accompanied by a newly degreed Diane Rodriguez in the summer of 2007. They shared a loft apartment, platonically, on the fully gentrified Lower East Side that Diane had found on Craigslist, lying to Damon about the cost in order to hide the truth about her parentage and inheritance, not out of distrust as much as shame. Truly radical liberals didn’t look kindly on those with too much money and she was worried that her modest wealth would somehow invalidate her efforts in The November 3rd Club.

They’d each found regular work as contributing writers for a couple of local periodicals with relatively moderate voices – Damon with the Daily News, and Diane with New York Magazine – pushing the Club’s agenda with feature articles on influential and controversial artists and writers, thanks to their Club connections.

Diane also successfully pushed for increased coverage of liberal-affiliated events like poetry readings featuring Club-affiliated poets like Victor Infante, Rich Villar and Dawn Saylor, and singer-songwriter concerts for like-minded artists such as Heather Shayne Blakeslee and Liberty Sou, who she’d first meet while covering a show at the Bowery Poetry Club in late 2008, where Liberty worked as a bartender. They’d started dating the following year, casually at first, but after six months, exclusively.

Damon wasn’t much for long-term relationships but was supportive of the relationship as he figured Liberty, more than most artists, had proven herself committed to the cause above and beyond what most others would consider reasonable or tolerable. His twice-weekly column for the News focused on human interest stories that invariably highlighted the effects of administration policies on regular New Yorkers. He’d won acclaim for a series of interviews with Afghanistan and Iraq veterans who’d returned home maimed and unacknowledged, living in underfunded veterans hospitals that the President had been pushing to close for years, despite the new battlefronts in Venezuela and Mexico, and the increasing likelihood of war in Greenland.

After the Population Redistribution Act was signed in 2009, he turned his poison pen towards the new leaders of “Gomorrah,” insisting that someone needed to hold their feet to the fire lest they give in to the status quo. He was debating another run for Mayor when he mysteriously disappeared without a trace a year later, his hybrid Jeep found abandoned deep in the woods of Van Cortlandt Park.

Detective Eric Pearson was the first officer on the scene, responding to an anonymous tip. His partner, Jacob Harrison had called in sick that morning.

---

Anthony DiBlanco celebrated his 11th birthday on the same day the President signed the Population Redistribution Act, a Saturday, three days after his actual day of birth. The party was supposed to a big one as his parents had gone all out, inviting all of the kids in the neighborhood having no idea where their son actually stood on the food chain. They’d hired a clown and a face painter, and had a huge, 20-person ball pit set up in the backyard.

Only two kids showed up: Marvin Baker, his Dungeons & Dragons partner, and an orphan, who lived next door with his foster parents; and little Lorraine Murphy, the shy, scrawny redhead from across the street, the only girl who’d speak to him on a regular basis.

---

Herman Ruth quit his late night grave-digging job at the Cemetery of the Gate of Heaven in the summer of 2007 without giving notice. His occasional partner, Jonathan Baker – a single father and down on his luck recovering alcoholic best known for hitting the game-winning home run for Mt. Pleasant High School’s only championship baseball team, back in 1996 – had quit unexpectedly, too.

Or so it was assumed, as he’d disappeared a few days after Ruth didn’t show up for his third consecutive shift.