by Frank Tayell
“If they could,” Sholto said.
“If they couldn’t, and if they were alive, we’d have seen smoke,” Nilda said. “And in the months since, who in their right mind would have come to New York? Everyone saw the videos of the outbreak, didn’t they? It’s the one place everyone would have steered clear of.”
“Are there airports on Long Island?” Jay asked.
“Have you heard of JFK?” Sholto said.
“That’s there? Cool.”
“Why?” Nilda asked.
“I was thinking we could clear the airport in Newfoundland and repair the runway,” Jay said. “And then we could fly here.”
“Possibly,” Nilda said. “But probably not soon. But this… this might be the answer. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Thaddeus, if you took the launch ashore, could you travel to all the bridges before nightfall, and check whether they’ve been demolished?”
“Depends on what state the streets are in,” he said. “But I can give it a try.”
“Perfect. And did you get through to the admiral?”
“She’s waiting for the Courageous to reach St John’s before the Ocean Queen departs Faroe,” Sholto said. “She wants to know if the harbour really is too narrow for the cruise ship before they set out. But they’re ready to go. All they have to do is load the people.”
“Tell me if I’m wrong, then,” Nilda said, her grin struggling not to take over her entire face. “You described Port-Aux-Basques as Eldorado. You gave it that name because people fled before they could use up all their food and fuel, yes? Well, isn’t that what might have happened on Long Island? If the bridges are gone, no one drove away. They couldn’t, right? The diesel will still be in the fuel tanks. Yes, we want books. We want information. We want clothing. We want pretty much everything, but that is New York. Everything in the world was there, everything you could ever want, and everything you never knew you needed.”
“I’ll get the launch ready,” Sholto said.
“I can go ashore too, right?” Jay asked. “It’s New York, Mum. Please.”
Nilda frowned. “And if I say no, you’ll only keep asking until I say yes. Chester’s going, too. And if you come to a single bridge that’s intact, you return. I’m going to call the admiral. We’ll see if anyone on Faroe, or in Canada, can tell us where we’ll find a deep bay on Long Island.”
“Do you think she means a bay deep enough for the Ocean Queen?” Jay asked, his eyes glued to the map.
Chester’s eyes were glued to the approaching shore as the launch bounced and skimmed across the waves.
“Could be,” Norm Jennings said, from behind the wheel. “It’s a warmer anchorage than Canada. No electricity, though.”
“And no food,” Sholto said. “People might have fled, but they’ll have stayed put until hunger forced them to flee.”
“What do you think, Chester? Did Mum say anything to you about the Ocean Queen coming straight here?”
“Nope,” Chester said. “And it’d be the admiral’s call.”
“Because that land up at the north of Long Island was all wooded,” Jay said. “And there was no snow. Unlike Newfoundland, we wouldn’t have to wait until it melts before we could plough it.”
“Doubt there were many tractors in New York City,” Chester said. “But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves.”
“Speaking of ahead,” Norm said, “there’s a jetty.”
“Where are we?” Jay asked.
“Not far from Brighton Beach,” Sholto said. “Gravesend Bay.”
“Gravesend? That’s in England,” Jay said. “I knew the Canadians were cheating by stealing all their place names, but I didn’t think the Americans did, too.”
“Jay, what’s the name of the city we’re about to step ashore on?” Chester asked.
“New… Oh.”
They went ashore near a wide-windowed multi-storey water-view building from which balconies sprouted like mushrooms. Leaving Norm to guard the launch, Sholto, Chester, and Jay headed inland.
“So this is New York?” Jay asked as they left the quayside. “It smells weird.”
“That’s probably the garbage trucks,” Sholto said, pointing to where three were nearly blocking the shore-road ahead of them. They weren’t stopped end-to-end, but nearly side-to-side with the rear facing the sea, the three cabs facing inland.
“Were they put there to block access to the harbour?” Jay asked. “Maybe to buy time so they could escape by sea. There are no ships here, did you notice?”
“I did,” Chester said.
“There are bones,” Sholto said. “Human. Beneath the garbage trucks.”
Coated in a thriving colony of sea-fed green slime, the ossuary had lain undisturbed for months. The bullet holes in the engine blocks were of a similar vintage. Nonetheless, Chester unbuttoned his holster, laying a hand on the gun as he peered along the road beyond.
“Seems quiet,” he said.
A fluttering of wings erupted from beyond a rusting jeep, fluttering away from them, disappearing into a…
“Is that a theme park?” Jay asked. “Cool.”
“We’ll check the ticket prices on our way back,” Chester said. “All right, Thaddeus, this is your turf. Where do we go?”
“That broad road in front of us is the parkway,” Sholto said. “It follows the coast, and we want to do the same.”
“On foot?” Jay asked. “Or could we find a car? Oh, can we get a yellow taxi? That’d be cool.”
“We walk until we find some bikes,” Chester said. “And then we cycle. And until then, we’ll walk quickly. How well do you know Long Island?”
“Not counting today, I’ve been here three times,” Sholto said. “So don’t rely on my local knowledge.”
“Is that a cop car?” Jay asked, and ran ahead before Chester could urge caution. He wasn’t sure why he felt caution was necessary except there was something sinister about this urban island. It was a feeling he’d had before, in London. The sheer mass of the conurbation ahead acted like a black hole, twisting distance into time. Entire days now lay between him and the open countryside far, far beyond.
All four doors of the police cruiser were open. The front was empty, but a corpse lay in the back, dead, its skull nothing but ruined fragments.
“A zombie, I think,” Jay said.
“Someone infected, picked up by the police soon after the outbreak,” Sholto said. “Turned in the car. The cops abandoned their vehicle here.”
A glimmer in the passenger footwell caught Chester’s eye. “Here, that’s a rusting screwdriver with a head sharpened to a point. If the cops had picked up someone, and assuming they were carrying this, shouldn’t it have gone into an evidence bag?”
“Does it matter?” Jay asked.
“Probably not.”
“Everything’s bigger, isn’t it?” Jay said, as they continued along the road. “Bigger and smaller, and emptier and fuller all at the same time.”
“You’ll have to explain that one to me,” Chester said after he’d replayed it a couple of times.
“Like the cars seem bigger until you get up close. And the buildings are taller until you look up. And the roads seem wider until you look back.”
Chester looked behind. “Yeah, I see what you mean. There’s nothing behind but a trio of white flecks, flocking above the road. I think the seagulls are following us.”
“You see that sign?” Sholto said. “That’s a sporting goods store, just up ahead.”
“You mean a gun shop?” Jay asked.
“As in real sports,” Sholto said. “The CEO was lobbying for a federal cycle-path programme. Admittedly, he wanted the prototype built between his main factory and a new suburb he was a key investor in, but I think they sold bikes.”
After another hundred yards, they saw another sign. A monolithic set of garish initials sprouted from the roof of a large shopping complex hugging a wide parking lot, and now inside a formidable barricade made of garbage trucks and r
azor wire.
The garbage trucks had been parked across the entrance, and then along the fence that ran around the parking lot’s perimeter until they met the walls of the store’s buildings. Around, in front, and on top, the razor wire had been dumped as often as unrolled. Tangled within it were bones and the desiccated frames of the undead.
“They’re dead,” Jay said, prodding a corpse with his spear. “Killed, though.” He sniffed. “There’s that smell again. Is it the sea? Or is it the lorries?”
Chester was more interested in the open truck door. The vehicle had been parked side-on to the road. The razor wire had been cleared and cut from around the door. On the other side, the other door was also open.
“Fifty bucks says they took the bikes,” Chester said.
“A hundred says there were no bikes here,” Sholto said.
“A million says you’re both wrong,” Jay said.
“You owe me a million quid each,” Jay said. “But it’s the holidays, so I’ll be generous. You can each pay me half.”
There were bikes in the sporting goods store. A complete display of a hundred in various shapes and colours, all still chained, and untouched by anything except time.
“So they created barricades, and they fought a few battles, but they didn’t touch the bikes,” Chester said, as he picked the lock on the massive chain securing ten bikes to an O-shaped pole whose sparkly pink paint couldn’t disguise that it was an anti-theft device embedded deep in the concrete floor.
“It’s a good sign, right?” Jay said. “Sort of proves this is like Port-Aux-Basques.”
“I’d say the lesson is that nowhere is like anywhere else, not anymore,” Sholto said “And that’s nearly an hour gone already. We need to pick up the pace if we’re to get to all the bridges today.”
“There. Done,” Chester said.
“Wait a second,” Jay said. He ran to a wire basket by the register and pulled out a wooden baseball bat.
“I think your spear is better,” Chester said.
“Oh, this isn’t for zombies,” Jay said, grabbing the bat and then a plastic-boxed ball from a stack on the table where they were priced at twice as much as the bats. “I always wanted to have a go at baseball.”
After a tortuous ten minutes tugging the bikes through the truck’s cab, they began cycling. They would have managed far more than ten miles an hour if they’d not been brought to a sudden halt when the road ahead of them disappeared. Water lapped across the asphalt, around the trunks of trees ornamentally parked along the verge, all the way up to the sea-view apartment blocks, where it washed through the broken ground-floor windows.
“I guess this is why no one took the bikes,” Jay said.
“Check the Geiger counter,” Sholto said, but Chester had already taken it out of his bag.
“Normal enough,” he said. “Could have been a bomb out in the bay, but the radiation’s dissipated.”
“Or a miss from when they blew up the bridge,” Sholto said. “But if it was a blast, it was a big one. The ground’s given way.”
“But we’re not giving up, right?” Jay asked.
“Not even close,” Sholto said. “We’ll head inland.”
It was easier said than done. Following the map was impossible, and cycling nearly became so. Narrow roads were packed with stalled cars, littered with bones buried beneath months of mud, and sometimes completely blocked when entire buildings had collapsed. All that prevented Chester from declaring they should return to the ship was the lack of zombies. There were plenty of corpses, and most clearly belonged to the undead, but they had been killed months before. Long Island might not be the land of plenty they’d first hoped, but it was still an island with promise.
When they found their way up to the raised roadway of I-278, the going became easier, but it was increasingly obvious they’d set themselves too ambitious a task for the time available. But if it took them two days, or even three, to survey the bridges, so what? Time wasn’t as pressing as all that. In fact, it wasn’t pressing at all. It was warm here, compared to Canada. Though the bikes’ wheels rattled over the bumps and debris beneath the thick mud, the ground wasn’t swaying. There was even a view, up here on the fly-over road.
“There’s the sea!” Chester called, pointing between the buildings. “Jay, the sea. Thaddeus, where are we?”
“Sunset Park, I think,” he said.
“Wait,” Jay called, stopping.
Chester braked.
“What is it?” he asked.
Jay was tugging the binoculars from his bag. “There’s a ship there,” he said.
Chester peered into the distance. There, on the shore, clearly run aground, was a large vessel, mostly white with an occasional flash of red.
“Why the interest?” Sholto asked.
“No, look again,” Jay said, raising the binoculars before passing them to Sholto. “Look at the prow. Do you see?”
“What am I looking for?” Sholto asked.
“A maple leaf,” Jay said. “That’s a Canadian ship. Not just any ship, either. That’s a ferry, isn’t it?”
“Maybe,” Sholto said.
“Can you read the name?” Jay asked.
“Can’t see one,” Sholto said. “Want to take a look?”
Jay took the binoculars back.
“You think it might be the missing Nova Scotians?” Chester asked.
“They had to have gone somewhere,” Jay said.
“There’s a maple leaf, and it’s red and white, so I’d say it’s Canadian, but I don’t think it’s a ferry,” Sholto said.
“Let me take a look,” Chester said, but he couldn’t make out any more details than the other two had described. “I guess they could have made it over the ruined bridge at high tide, tore some part of the hull, and ran aground afterwards.”
“Right, exactly,” Jay said. “That explains why they didn’t go back to Nova Scotia, because they’d wrecked their ships.”
“My explanation was more a desperate grasp at how the ferry might have ended up here if it arrived after the bridge was destroyed,” Chester said. “I don’t think it’s likely.”
“But we should look,” Jay said.
“At the ship, you mean?” Sholto asked. “My money’s on no. There’s no smoke down there, and why would any survivors of a shipwreck have stayed close to the shore? Why would they have stayed here in New York? If they were the missing Nova Scotians, they knew a harvest was being gathered outside Digby. If that was their ship, they’d have headed north, on foot, to the place they knew had food.”
“Oh, yeah, I s’pose,” Jay said. “But maybe they left something behind. A journal or something.”
“If we go down there, we’re not going to make it to a single bridge today,” Chester said. “My vote is we stick with the mission for now, and come back to that ship tomorrow, after we’ve called the admiral to call Annapolis to ask for some more details about the vessels that left. You happy with that, Jay?”
“Sure,” he said, though he didn’t sound it.
When the raised interstate branched northwest to closer coddle the coast, they descended back to street level, following Fourth Avenue towards Flatbush and the Brooklyn Bridge. Despite Sholto’s occasional efforts, it wasn’t a scenic tour.
A bitter smell intermittently hugged odd sections of the road, a dank cloying fug that vanished at the intersections where crosswinds had flushed the air clean. From the uniformity in bittersweet timbre, acrid overtone, and the acidic taste left at the back of his throat, the entire city was rotting.
“London didn’t smell this bad,” Jay said, almost accusingly.
“It’s not the most unpleasant stench I’ve come across in the last few months,” Chester said. It wasn’t the smell of death, except the slow death of this multi-island city. Precisely how long New York had before it finally succumbed depended on the severity of the coming winter, but he was increasingly sure that something natural had submerged the coastal highway. “Be glad yo
u had a chance to see the city while you could,” he added. “I know I am.”
“It’s like, New York is a muffled echo of London,” Jay said. “A distorted mirror. A non-identical twin.”
The vehicles squatting on sidewalks would have been just as at home on pavement. The road was wider, and absurdly straight, but covered in a familiar semi-decayed mat of plant and human debris, mixed with gnawed bones, sprinkled with forever-colourful plastic. The buildings were taller, with none less than three storeys high. Broken windows and broken-open doors were occasionally barred with furniture. Jagged cracks ran up the cracked brickwork, while rainwater ran down from blocked guttering. Ahead, far, far ahead, a giant tower block jutted into the sky. Where, in London, the sight-lines of ancient cathedrals and younger monuments had been preserved, here it was monolithic mega-scrapers. Giant sky-rise towers jutted upwards, emerging from the horizon like the hilt of a knife buried into the earth.
Yes, it was an echo of London. It was like everywhere Chester had been in Europe, except here he was seeing it after a few weeks of living aboard the wide-open sea, after the zombie-free communities in Nova Scotia and Faroe, while in Newfoundland, he’d only had eyes for the dead undead. They were here, too, the dead. But these had been killed. Every single corpse had a crushed skull.
“The zombies were killed, and no one buried them,” Jay said. “Do you think that’s the source of the smell? No way!” he exclaimed, his enthusiasm returning. “Look at that! They’re real!”
“What’s that, mate?” Chester asked.
“The school buses really are yellow!” Jay said, a living bundle of excitement.
“Surely you knew that?” Sholto asked, slowing his bike.
“It’s like red buses in London,” Jay said. “You see them on TV and stuff, and it’s just a bus in a bright colour, but that doesn’t mean you don’t want to take a photo.”
All three came to a halt a few dozen yards from the rearmost school bus. The buses weren’t entirely blocking the road but stopped in a staggered trio, one after the other.
“They created a funnel,” Chester said, pointing at the alley to the left, stoppered by an electric runabout nearly wedged in the narrow entrance. “They blocked the side roads and alleys to create a funnel.”
