She nodded, but could not pull her eyes away. She trailed the scene slowly, from that distant tangle of cars to the street directly in front of them. The fallen body closest to them was a woman that looked to be her age. Her eyes were still opened, looking blankly at the bumper of a car that was less than two feet away from her head. It looked like she’d been dead for quite some time, as her eyes had taken on a dry, dusty look and her face was—
“Olivia!” Paul hissed. It was the equivalent of a shouted whisper and it snapped her out of her morbid fugue.
Paul started walking forward and she followed close behind him. She made herself look at his back, though her eyes tried to wander. She knew it might very well unhinge her mind if she stared out at the death all around her but she also had to know. She had to know what she was escaping so she could better defend her decision to leave the relative safety of Little Learners.
All of this happened while I was inside, in that building, feeding kids while Mickey and Minnie smiled and sang and waved and oh my God, this is madness, this insanity, how can I—
That quickly derailing train of thought was interrupted by the sound of a gunshot. It was not very far away but it did sound as if it were muffled somehow—not out on the street, but indoors. She waited for another gunshot sound but there was nothing. Just one—a single, lonely gunshot somewhere indoors. She wanted to cry as she realized what this likely meant.
“Hey, ‘Livia?” Joyce said in her ear.
“Yeah, sweetie?”
“We still outside?”
“Yeah. We’ll be outside for a while. Why?”
“It’s quiet. Where are the car sounds? All the people talking?”
Olivia bit on her lip for a moment, trying to come up with an appropriate response that didn’t tell her nearly everyone in the city was dead. The best she could come up with was pretty weak and she hated herself a bit for the ease in which she delivered it.
“It’s all part of the adventure. Just shush for now, okay?”
Joyce nodded and buried her blindfolded face into Olivia’s shoulder. Meanwhile, Olivia watched Paul just two steps ahead of her. She kept her eyes on his back, noting his wide shoulders and mild slouch. She’d found herself wondering what sort of shape he was in for his age. How had he handled this day? Did he feel guilty that he’d lived while so many others had died? Had his life really been spared by nothing more than the surgical masks they were wearing?
Two blocks into their walk, Paul came to a stop. He looked down to the sidewalk for a moment and then back to Olivia. He looked a little disgusted as he shook his head. “Sort of a ghastly sight up here. We can cross the street to get away from it, but we’ll just have to cross right back over three blocks further up to get to the truck I found. Your call.”
Olivia looked to the street and saw the endless stream of bumper to bumper cars. In a Saab close by, the driver was leaning forward, his head on the steering wheel. There was another shape in the passenger seat but Olivia could not see it clearly. They were both dead, motionless, forever trapped in a traffic jam. For them to get to the sidewalk on the other side of all of this traffic, they were going to have to literally climb over cars. It would be hard enough in the first place, but even harder while carrying a four year-old girl that seemed to be growing heavier by the minute.
“Just keep going,” she said. “I won’t look.”
Joyce shifted on her shoulder and said, “Look at what?”
“Nothing,” Olivia said, her tone a little snappy. “Just…you just hush and wait okay? It’s all part of the adventure, okay?”
“Okay,” Joyce said, but the doubt was evident in her voice.
Paul started walking again, and Olivia followed. And of course, her traitorous eyes strayed away from his back. She had to look. Paul’s suggestion that it was so bad was almost like a dare.
There were three bodies sprawled out in front of a small Bank of America. One (or maybe all of them, from the looks of it) had thrown up considerably. It was splattered all over the sidewalk. But there was blood, too, and a lot of it. Once Olivia’s mind was able to process those grotesqueries, her deductive reasoning tried to process the scene. One of the men held a handgun in his right hand, barely clinging to his dead, stiff pointer finger. This man was lying by the front door, his head barely propped up and staring directly at Olivia and Joyce as they passed. The other two men had fallen in a heap on top of one another. One of them had been shot point blank in the face. There was so much red, so much ruin, that if she had not seen the teeth, Olivia may not have recognized it as a face at all.
She looked away, her eyes going to her feet as she struggled to keep from getting sick. She shuddered and let out a little pout of terror that badly wanted to be a scream.
“Sorry you had to see that,” Paul said ahead of her.
She could say nothing—mainly because there was nothing to say but also because she feared that if she opened her mouth, she was going to make the sidewalk even messier than it already was.
“How much farther?” she said through clenched teeth.
“Two blocks,” he said. With his own head still down and not looking back he said: “Almost there. You okay?”
“Mmm hmm…”
“Yeah,” said Joyce. But even she didn’t sound so sure.
Olivia held the girl close as they continued to walk forward. She kept her eyes on Paul’s back and this time, they were there to stay.
***
When Paul saw the three men in front of the bank, his thoughts had turned back to the scene at Reid’s Drug and Sundry that morning. Was that really this morning? he wondered. It seems like weeks ago. Years ago…another life ago.
But he was more alarmed that the sight of the man that had been shot in the face barely even fazed him. After everything he’d seen and endured today, it seemed almost trivial. It was the equivalent of living in the city for so long that the sight of homeless people became so common that you stopped even noticing them. It hadn’t even been twelve hours of this nightmare yet and he was already accustomed to such grisly sights.
He’d also heard the single gunshot a few blocks back. He’d jumped slightly and his hand had moved to draw his Glock, which was holstered on his hip in the same way it was when he was on the job. He wondered how many that had not died from the sickness had taken their own lives today. The atrocities all around him were unspeakable, almost unthinkable. Sure, in a world where common colds were spread easily and wearing surgical masks were pretty much the norm in city’s with high populations, there had always been that thought of what if. What if some massive flu or super virus came barreling through the world? So many had come and gone, leaving their mark: SARS, H1N1, COVID-19. In the back of the mind of just about everyone living on this shiny blue rock, surely there was the speculation that one day this would happen. And when it did finally seem to be happening, surely there would be some that would rather end it with a bullet or a noose than the constant fear and worrying as the world died all around them.
It was a dreary thought brought on by the sights around him. For the most part, Paul did his best to follow his own advice. While he did not have a back to look at, he did keep his eyes on the sidewalk, and not on the cars and bodies in the streets. He led Olivia and Joyce through the carnage and for the remainder of their walk did not come across anything as dismal as the scene in front of the bank.
When he came to the corner of Fleet Avenue and 71st Street, he turned left. He’d made the walk earlier not only to find some wheels, but in the hopes of finding a way out of the city. He wasn’t sure if Olivia was going to be the biggest fan of his idea, but it was the only one they had. They weren’t quite in the middle of the city, but close enough to make escaping it with the crazy traffic jams next to impossible.
He was glad that 71st Street wasn’t as bad as Fleet. There were still some scattered bodies here and there, but this stretch of the street had been mostly spared when compared to some of the other parts of the city he’
d seen today. There were even sections of the road that weren’t absolutely blocked off by bumper-to-bumper traffic. It was one of the reasons he had been so easily able to spot the NYC Fire and EMS truck when he’d left Little Learners the first time he’d visited by the back door. It was standard fire department red, a sort of hybrid of a 4x4 pickup and Emergency Services vehicle. The front bumper had a protective metal barrier around it, arching back just enough to hide the blunt edges that were there to get things out of the way in emergency situations. The back was boxy and a little awkward, not quite as large as the back of a standard ambulance but it could be used as such in a tight situation.
“There’s our ride,” Paul said, pointing to the truck.
“And you already looked it over?”
“I did,” he said. There was a very small part of him that wanted to be irritated with her for questioning him, but he understood. She was caring for a child that was not hers and she had just left the known safety of a building that had kept them sheltered all day. She had a right to ask as many questions of him as she wanted.
“I just don’t see how we can get out, though,” Olivia said. “These streets are absolutely packed.”
“They are?” Joyce asked. “But it’s so quiet!”
Paul saw a flicker of anger dash across Olivia’s face at the girl’s question. But as the anger passed by, he saw it for what it really was: sadness. Olivia was absolutely heartbroken that she was having to lie to the girl about what was going on. He assumed at some point they’d have to tell her the truth but for now, Olivia clearly wasn’t ready to face such a task.
“Well, if you look straight ahead, you’ll see that the street is mostly clear. It should be somewhat clear between 72nd and 80th Street. Maybe even more.”
“How?”
“Military protocols. Ever since 9-11, there have been blueprints on how to handle a disastrous event. Part of that blueprint included making sure military vehicles could make it through the city. The only way to do that is to close certain thoroughfares off.”
“But if they’re closed off, can we get on them?”
“I guess we’re going to have to find out,” he said. “The real trick is going to be making it this half a block or so between the truck and 72nd.”
They hurried to the truck, crossing the street and making a point not to look at the fallen police officer in the middle of the road, just a few feet away from the splattered proof that he’d died from the sickness.
“Make no mistake,” Paul said. “This isn’t going to get us far. When we come to the end of that military route, I’ll be surprised if we make it another block after that. But I’d rather be in a car, separated from all of it, you know?”
“Absolutely,” Olivia said. “You won’t get any argument from me. But after that…what’s going to be the best way out when we can’t pass through in this truck anymore?”
“The most logical is walking to and through the Lincoln Tunnel, but—”
“No,” Olivia said sharply.
“Yeah, I figured it would be a nightmare.”
“I saw footage today on Facebook, and…no. How about the George Washington Bridge?”
“That’s what I was thinking. It will still likely be crowded and is going to mean some extra walking, but not nearly as bad as that damned tunnel.”
Extra walking, he thought. I’ll say…we’re talking almost a hundred blocks through this nightmare…
The mere thought of it had him wondering if they might be better served to just head west, towards the Hudson. Surely there’d be a Port Authority boat they could take just like they’d taken this truck. But something about the idea of being on the water in the midst of all of this seemed horrific. It also didn’t help that he had never driven a boat a single time in his fifty-two years of life.
With the afternoon light starting to dissolve into dusk, the dead and stalled cars in the streets started to cast long, meandering shadows all around them. Paul walked to the passenger side of the truck with Olivia and opened the door for her.
“That was another plus,” he said as Olivia looked inside the cab, doing what he could to put some sort of positive spin on things. “The doors were unlocked. Keys hanging right there in the ignition.”
“And there was no one inside?” she asked, giving him a grave look. Her expression transformed a simple question into one with much more weight. What she was really asking was: “Did you have to remove a dead body from this truck?”
“No, there was no one inside. It’s like it was left here just for us.” The last comment was meant more for Joyce than Olivia. Realizing what this little girl was going to have to endure in the coming days made him regret taking them with him. He hated the harsh reality of that thought, but there it was.
He slid in behind the wheel and started the engine. It felt oddly normal, as if the world was not dying and going to rot on the other side of the door. He looked over to Olivia and saw her hugging Joyce tight against her.
“You girls ready to roll?” Paul asked.
“Roll where?” Joyce asked, looking up. Despite the grim scene outside, Paul could not help but smile at the girls’ appearance, nothing but a streak of pale skin between her eyes and cheeks, the rest covered by the makeshift blindfold and the surgical mask and framed by her blonde hair.
“Oh well, we can’t tell you that just now,” Paul said.
“That’s right,” Olivia said. “It’s all part of the adventure.”
Joyce cocked her head and even through the mask, Paul could almost see the uncertain frown on her face. “We leaving? Should we tell Mommy?”
The comment stung Paul’s heart, so he could only imagine what it did to Olivia. Although he could only see Olivia’s eyes because of the mask, it was enough; he watched the woman’s heart break as something in her eyes went dim. Tears sprang out of those troubled eyes and a single gasp of sorrow escaped her throat.
“You okay, ‘Livia?” Joyce asked.
“Mmm hmm,” Olivia said, clearly not trusting herself to speak.
Paul did his best to break the tension, to give Olivia some sort of emotional reprieve. “You know,” he said, putting on his best kid-friendly tone, “we maybe should, but we can’t use the phone right now anyway.”
“Part of the adventure?” Joyce asked with a teasing voice reserved specifically for two people that were in on some great secret.
“That’s right. Now…you keep that blindfold on a bit longer and just sit tight. Okay?”
She nodded, adjusting her blindfold with her little fingers, and Paul found himself wanting to weep for her, too.
Chapter 15
The first few streets were just about as clean as Paul had hoped. Sawhorses and sandbags had been thrown down along the edges, keeping pedestrians from getting onto the pavement. There were still a few bodies strewn here and there and some, he saw, were military. He saw two men pressed firmly against sandbags along the edge of 84th Street, both with helmets adorned with plexiglass masks over their faces and automatic rifles in their hands. The barricades were broken only to allow room for military vans and trucks, parked helter-skelter in the streets and slightly up on sidewalks.
The intersections were closed off by more sawhorses, as well as fluorescent orange and white barrels. Given that there had been practically no time to set up an effective roadblock, Paul was impressed the military had gotten even this much done. It made him once again wonder just how much the Coast Guard had known, and how early they’d been able to start trying to prepare for what they feared might be coming.
Whatever it was they thought was coming, he thought, I’m sure they weren’t expecting it to be this bad.
Coming to the second intersection along the route, he had to slow the truck down and nudge a sawhorse out of the way with the right bumper. It fell away easily but there was a ragged sort of crunching sound as one of its legs went under the truck’s tires. Both Joyce and Olivia yelled out; Olivia seemed like she might jump right through the roof
of the truck at any moment.
“Just some wood,” he said. “We’re okay.”
When they came to 85th Street, Paul saw the first real obstacle to their route. It wasn’t just that their route appeared to have been cut off, but how it had been interrupted. While all of the bodies involved were very much dead, they still told a tragic story that was easy to piece together.
There were at least twenty bodies in the street, all sprawled out in a way that indicated they had been rushing in the same direction when they fell. The reason for their falling was apparent; the dead soldiers and countless spent rounds on the pavement gave it away. If Paul’s assumption was correct, this group of people had decided to hop over the barricade and go rushing towards the military. It was a dumb reaction, but one that Paul sort of understood. Society had long ago become such that when things went to shit and the military stepped in to help but without any real semblance of an answer, they were seen as the bad guys. Being a cop in New York, Paul understood that all too well.
Now, though, he was faced with a dilemma. He was pretty sure he could get by the pile of dead bodies and to the sidewalk, but he was going to have to roll over a few of the corpses. Morally, it disgusted him. But the alternative was getting out and huffing it on foot. If his hunch was right, they’d have more than enough walking ahead of them, and he wanted to save as many steps as he could. Plus, the idea of getting out in the midst of all of those dead faces with little Joyce did not strike him as the best idea.
“Another bump coming up,” Paul said. “Hold tight.”
When he veered to the right to get around the bodies, he thought he may actually get away with just crushing a single hand and a wrist. But the turn was not quite enough and the only mercy afforded to him was that he did not see the faces of the two bodies that rolled under the truck. The hollow noise they made as he passed over them made him feel slightly sick to his stomach. Olivia seemed to understand what the noise was as well because she let out yet another tortured moan.
It Falls Apart Series | Book 1 | It Falls Apart Page 12
