Ron answered, “I trained nearly a hundred kids for you. They know as much as I do. Let them train others. You got your money’s worth out of me.”

The smile crept back across Timmy Jim’s bony face. “Tired of bein’ a slave, huh?”

Ron nodded.

“Can’t say I blame you.” Timmy Jim walked over to the window and pushed the curtain aside to look down at the street for a few moments. Then, turning to Ron, he said, “Lemme tell you somethin’. When they shut down New York City . . . when they officially called it closed and evacuated everybody . . . they didn’t let us out.”

Ron looked up at him. “Us?”

“The blacks,” Timmy Jim said. “The Puerto Ricans. The poor people in the ghettos in Harlem and the upper West Side and all. They didn’t let any of ’em out.”

“The City was evacutated, emptied,” Ron said. “The only people who stayed were like Dewey, people who hid out until they declared the City officially closed.”

“Bullshit. Oh, they took out the whites, all right. Rich and poor. Irish and Italian and WASP and all. They got out okay. But they kept us inside. When we tried to get out, they beat us back with clubs, electric prods, water cannon, lasers—they didn’t let us out, man! They closed this City and wrote it off as a dead loss and claimed all of us were dead.”

“No, that can’t be . . .”

“It sure as hell was,” Timmy Jim said, his fists clenched at his sides. “That was why they closed the City down, man. The real reason! Wrote off all the welfare cases. Officially they no longer exist. One touch of the computer’s tape and poof! all them records erased.”

Ron couldn’t believe it. “They left you here?”

“They left us here, baby. Left us to starve, to freeze, to be rat bait. They left us to fight with each other and kill ourselves off.”

“Holy God.”

“God’s got nothin’ to do with it,” Timmy Jim answered. “Anyway, don’t you know He’s black?” He smiled ruefully.

“Is this really true? They closed the City to get rid of you?” Ron asked.

Timmy Jim nodded. “That’s why the Muslims took charge. We had to get some organization. Had to figure out how to live, man. There was some people Outside who was willing to give us a little help. Smugglin’ in food, stuff like that. But it was nowhere near enough. No way. Not even the black market was enough. But we managed. We survived.”

“And now . . .”

“And now, instead of fightin’ each other, all the Muslim brothers are united. We fight the white gangs. That keeps us together. In a few more years, all the gangs will be together.”

“United by your plan to invade the Outside.”

“That’s right.”

“And you’re afraid I’m going to warn them, out there,” Ron said.