Zone One by Colson Whitehead Read Free Book Online Page B

smart management of their new parent company. All the clothes were well crafted regardless of their price point; the company kept abreast of the latest fronts in cheap child labor. “The entire corporate family is open for business,” the Lieutenant said, “for any item with a retail price of under thirty dollars. Check the price tags, fellas! If you need new skivvies or a sweatshirt or something.”
    “Can’t get no sweatshirt under thirty dollars!”
    Someone in the back, at one of the undesirable tables by the toilets, countered that it was easy enough to acquire a sweatshirt for less than that sum at the bargain store. Another seconded this assertion.
    “Gary’s getting some big-lady teddies,” yelled one of Gary’s old cronies.
    “We think it feels good under the mesh—you should try it,” Gary said, baring his gray teeth in a line. Everyone who worked with Gary quickly adjusted to the man’s habit of referring to himself with the first-person plural. He was a triplet, one of three brothers. The other two perished on Last Night, but Gary continued to speak for their collective, maintaining what Mark Spitz assumed was a lifelong practice of presenting a united fraternal front to all who did not share their precise genetic makeup. It was a disturbing vision, Gary and his other versions standing in their mobile home’s kitchen demanding sweets or more cartoons, much more disturbing than hearing a man in combat fatigues relate the enthusiasms of ghosts. PASD had as many faces as there were uninfected, and, as was the case with the Wasteland Starers, you took someone else’s particular symptoms as harmless foibles. Simple courtesy, lest they take objection to yours.
    Mark Spitz resolved to pick up some new socks. Now that the anti-looting regs were in effect, everyone—soldier and civilian and sweeper alike—was prohibited from foraging goods and materials belonging to anyone other than an official sponsor, whether it was Southern whiskey or all-natural depilatories. Food was exempt—juice boxes were still legal tender in some parts of the country—but for the most part, no more stealing, people. There had been laws once; to abide by their faint murmuring, despite the interregnum, was to believe in their return. To believe in reconstruction.
    The prohibitions were hard to enforce, however, for obvious reasons. The civilians in the camps could be policed, as most never left the perimeter, but untold Americans still walked the great out there, beyond order’s embrace, like slaves who didn’t know they’d been emancipated. The sanctioned salvage teams were largely unsupervised and the soldiers had personal needs that escaped the classifications on requisition forms, did not have ID numbers. Officers confiscated contraband when it was flaunted in their faces—designer sunglasses and the robust leathers favored by motorcycle fans of both serious and dilettante persuasion—but they had better things to do than babysit. Kaitlyn, in deference to the hall-monitor part of her disposition, kept watch on the two men under her supervision, Gary especially, and for good reason. He’d been a master bandit before the rise of the camps and, in addition, rather enjoyed Kaitlyn’s shrill intonation when she used her discipline voice.
    Buffalo created an entire division dedicated to pursuing official sponsors whenever a representative turned up, in exchange for tax breaks once the reaper laid down his scythe and things were up and running again. (Additional goodies the public would never find out about weeviled the fine print.) There were understandable difficulties in tracking down survivors in positions of authority over, say, the biggest national pharmaceutical chain or bicycle manufacturer, but they strolled into camp from time to time, with the typical scars but eager to contribute. They generally put a price cap on their goods or specified a particular product in their brand family, one not too dear, but their