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about the medicinal properties of an enigmatic foreign beverage, bright emerald cans of which were piled in formidable stacks in the kitchen. The sweepers settled at the tables and crammed into the banquettes, sliding across bloodred vinyl. The menagerie of the Chinese zodiac pursued itself on the place mats beneath glass tabletops. Mark Spitz saw it was the Year of the Monkey. Attributes: Fun-Loving Witty Entertaining. Dead fish bobbed in a chunky murk in the tank by the entrance.
    The Lieutenant took his roost at the host’s station and informed them that from now on they had to fill out Incident Reports on every engagement. The decor flashed in his aviator glasses in sparks of crimson and gold. Considering the Lieutenant’s nightly bourbon flights, the sunglasses were precious cover for his sensitive retinas, even in the half-light of the restaurant.
    Buffalo, he explained, wanted information on the general outline of each engagement, but in particular they were keen for the sweepers to record demographic data: the ages of the targets, the density at the specific location, structure type, number of floors. Fabio, the Lieutenant’s second, had rummaged Canal Street after special equipment for this very purpose. Fabio handed his boss the carton of kiddie notebooks, and the Lieutenant brandished it over his head, pointing out that they were equipped with convenient loops that held tiny pencils. The plastic-covered notebooks were candy-colored and palm-size, brimming with the characters and arcana of a prosperous and long-standing children’s entertainment combine. The creation myth of the product line concerned the adventures of a clever, effeminate armadillo and his cohort of resourceful desert critters. Although the parent company was one of reconstruction’s first official sponsors, until now Buffalo had found little use for their tie-in merchandise, apart from the well-branded adhesive bandages. “Doubtless you will appreciate this example of superior Japanese engineering,” the Lieutenant said, sliding the pencil back and forth.
    The sweepers groaned and dislodged belches redolent of the mysterious Far East beverage, smudging the air with ginger. The Lieutenant tendered his regrets over the hassle, in his custom. The Lieutenant preferred a light touch, ditching protocol when it served his purposes. Casting himself as the hip young teacher in the high school was part of his strategy for keeping them alive, Mark Spitz theorized. The Lieutenant’s sweepers were a nontraditional brigade to say the least, volunteers from civilian pop. and untutored in the routine malevolence of military code. The training courses and drills of their boot camp had been the split-second decisions and pure, indifferent chance that had permitted them to survive to this moment. (Although it should be added that most of them had received a crash course in basic gun use since the advent of the plague.) Soldiers of the new circumstance. What did it serve to hold them to strict military standards when they were such an unlikely lot: unemployable man-children, erstwhile cheerleaders, salesmen of luxury boats, gym teachers, food bloggers, patent clerks, cafeteria lunch ladies, dispatchers from international delivery companies. People like Mark Spitz, seemingly unsnuffable human cockroaches protected by carapaces of good luck. The Lieutenant’s first priority was keeping their limbs and assorted parts attached to their bodies, free of teeth; then came the trickled-down objectives; and, finally, servitude to the obsolete directives of an obsolete world.
    The Lieutenant’s casual attitude was facilitated by the fact that the sweepers’ primary targets were stragglers. Compared to what the marines encountered in Manhattan during that initial, mammoth sweep, those assembled in the dumpling joint had it easy. Mark Spitz wouldn’t have signed up for the island had it been otherwise, New York homesickness or no.
    “Buffalo, as ever, has great plans