Zone One by Colson Whitehead Read Free Book Online Page A

and allergy tablets, travel size if possible. These products had kept them running in the old world, if only by placebo effect. The soldiers availed.
    After they finished trading glory stories over their personal hauls, the conversation turned to speculation about the cigarette-salvage possibilities of Manhattan. A lot of people had taken up smoking lately. News of a potential NYC operation was starting to get out, and that morning’s couriers from Buffalo disseminated gossip about the latest operation down South, a hydroelectric plant brought online. Then one of the snipers—Gibson was his name—told a story about a skel bonfire gone awry, which broke everybody up. The skel on top had been neutralized, but a chunk of his brain was still sending orders, apparently. The fire activated the creature so that it looked like the skel was “break dancing” in the flames. Mark Spitz had been laughing with the rest of them, more on account of Gibson’s deadpan delivery than the anecdote, when his head was suddenly encased in lead and his vision went on the fritz. It was as if he’d been hit on the head with a pipe—he’d actually been hit in the head with a lead pipe in college, when a gang of townies had invaded the Spring Concert looking for trouble. In retrospect, this drowning sensation was the first indication that something started to go wrong with him when he came in from the wasteland.
    He needed air. Mark Spitz ducked through the plastic tent flaps and lost himself in the rows of cabins, staggering between the red-and-yellow nylon tents containing the new arrivals who were also spending their first night at Happy Acres. He sensed them stiffening at his slow footfalls, which made him sound like one of the dead. They poked a head out, then calmed themselves and withdrew. He wandered toward the line of sodium lights at the far edge of camp. There they were, behind the fence, lit up, regimented, droopy with promise: the holy stalks, up to his chest and disappearing into the darkness. He’d been eating three squares a day, listening to actual jokes, seeing whole ragamuffin gangs of kids—when was the last time he saw more than one kid at a time? And now, fresh corn. The miracles turned routine. They pushed up like weeds.
    “Back away from the fucking corn, dude.” The two guards pointed their weapons at his head, at two of the five recommended skel-dropping points. The sentries couldn’t have been older than sixteen. He didn’t begrudge them their duty. The crops were important. The crops separated today’s iteration of humanity from last year’s. He waved the rifles away and gaped. It was funny: up against the gate, shivering in the slight wind, they were almost an army of skels approaching the camp’s delicious signs of human life. Half the stuff was probably going to Buffalo, but that didn’t matter. It was still a wonder. Mark Spitz backed away from the fucking corn.
    The Lieutenant said, “And again, please ignore the scuttlebutt about what they use for fertilizer. What else, my young friends, what else? Supposedly the new incinerator is going run double our capacity, so you know what that means—”
    “Ash Wednesday!” yelled someone in the back.
    “And Thursday and Friday.” The Lieutenant consulted the feed and informed them that a senior board member of that juggernaut clothing empire had turned up at Victory’s Sword and magnanimously pledged his company’s goods to the effort. The Lieutenant allowed his troops a minute, and then told them to simmer down. It would be difficult to describe their enthusiasm as unwarranted. The company cultivated four product lines: an upscale boutique providing sophisticated apparel fit for a day at the office or an evening out on the town; a mass-market suite of sensible, everyday basics; modestly priced designs for the cost-conscious consumer; and a recently acquired purveyor of plus-size lingerie that had fallen on hard times but had been turned around by the