I struggled against my bonds. But the plastic garbage-bag tie was thick and unyielding. I couldn’t sever it. I tried banging against the fibreglass crucifix, attempting to break it, but got nowhere. It was too strong.
‘Jenny!’ I called above the music. ‘Jenny, can you hear me?’
She groaned.
‘Jenny, wake up! We gotta figure a way out of this—’
And then I heard them, over the music, and I froze.
Two calls in the distance.
‘Weeee-oh!’ then ‘Oooh-we!’
Call and answer, like I’d heard in the abandoned subway station with Bo. Hunting calls.
Someone was down in the park.
At least two someones.
Drawn by the loud music.
Eric Burdon’s voice rose to a howling wail:
‘. . . The only time he’s satisfied . . .!
‘. . . is when he’s on a drunk . . .!’
I began to breathe faster.
I tugged uselessly at the plastic tie. I craned my neck to try and see over the rail into the park.
This was all getting to be too much.
I was losing my shit.
The wall of sound and my whole sorry predicament was bludgeoning my mind—the song’s rambling organ solo blared in my ears; my wrists were now bleeding; the hunting calls kept coming, getting closer.
Misty had put the song on a loop and it played through twice. As it came to the booming crescendo at the end of its third run-through, despair overcame me.
‘. . . I’m going back to New Orleans . . .!
‘. . . to wear that ball and chain!’
As the song began again, I looked up and called to Jenny, trying to rouse her, which was why I never heard him approach me from behind, not until his hand landed roughly on my shoulder and spun me round and I screamed in terror.
HIM
It was Bo.
At the realisation that it was him and not some axe-wielding maniac, I slumped with relief and started bawling my eyes out.
Bo reached over and turned off the music. Blessed silence.
Then he knelt before me and pressed his hands to my cheeks, his eyes locked on mine.
‘Skye, it’s okay, it’s me,’ he said. ‘I went back to the school but you weren’t there. I wandered around searching for you and then I heard the music.’
He looked quizzically from my bound wrists to Jenny above me. ‘What the hell happened here?’
‘Misty and the other girls,’ I said. ‘I think it’s safe to say Misty is unhealthily in love with you. Like, we-have-a-connection in love with you.’
He reached into his pack, looking for his pocket knife. He pulled it out, unfolded it.
‘Cut Jenny down first,’ I said. ‘She’s been up there for a while.’
Bo stood and began sawing away at the ropes binding Jenny to the pink cross. He freed her legs first, then her left arm. With that arm free, she flopped down onto Bo’s shoulder.
‘Wha—what’s going on . . .?’ she moaned, her eyes still closed. But at least she was waking.
Bo began sawing at the final set of ropes tying her right arm to the crossbeam.
When his pocket knife cut through the last bit of rope, Jenny came away completely from the pink cross. As she dropped fully onto his right shoulder in a fireman’s carry, Bo smiled encouragingly at me just as something sharp and pointed sprang out from his chest, spitting a tiny gout of blood as it did so.
At first, Bo didn’t seem to feel it. He just froze on the spot, frowning as if confused. Then his eyes glanced down at the bloody arrow-tip protruding from his chest.
It had entered through his back and emerged right through his heart.
Then his eyes met mine—the expression in them desperate, loving, horrified and helpless at the same time—before they drained of all life and he dropped flat onto his face, not even attempting to cushion the fall.
‘Bo!’ I screamed.
But as Bo dropped I was suddenly able to see the man who had shot him, standing there on the roof twenty yards away.
‘You . . .’ I said.
He was again wearing the American-flag goalie’s mask. This time I saw that he also wore a dirty New York Rangers hockey jersey as well. And he was gripping an expended crossbow.
‘Hello, pretty girl,’ he called.
I was still tied to the base of the garish pink cross. Bo lay dead before me, with Jenny’s limp body draped on top of him. Jenny groaned, blinking back to life.
America Face advanced slowly toward us.
‘I’ve been waiting for you, Skye . . .’ he said. ‘I’ve been waiting a long time. Why didn’t you come back for me?’
I swallowed.
The message on my bedroom wall.
‘Who are you!’ I yelled. ‘How do you know me?’
As he walked, he calmly began reloading his crossbow.
I was now totally freaked out. My mind was a churning mix of raw grief for the loss of Bo and sheer terror at my new predicament. I felt sick to my stomach and panicked in the extreme.
And then I saw it.
On Jenny’s wrist.
Jenny had fallen in such a way that her right hand had come to rest not far from my hips and her ugly black watch was now close to my bound hands.
Clarity returned. For now, survival trumped grief.
I didn’t waste a second. I shimmied sideways and, with my hands still behind my back—still pinned behind the vertical stem of the cross—I grabbed hold of Jenny’s watch.
I didn’t need to unclasp it: I just had to withdraw the little two-inch blade hidden inside it, the blade designed for a kidnap scenario.
America Face clearly didn’t know what I was doing. He was still cranking on his crossbow as I got the blade out of the watch and began using it to saw through the plastic garbage-bag tie binding my wrists.
After a few hurried sawing movements, I cut through the plastic tie and my hands sprang free.
I leapt to my feet and took in the situation.
America Face was twenty feet away; Jenny was at my feet, her eyes opened fully now.
America Face seemed shocked that I was up. He was even more shocked when I snatched up Bo’s fallen pocket knife and hurled it at him.
It wasn’t a great throw, but it was good enough. The knife sliced across his left forearm, causing him to swear and drop the crossbow momentarily.
I seized the moment.
With a final sad look back at Bo’s dead body on the ground—as much as I wanted to, I couldn’t mourn him now—I grabbed Jenny, looped one of her arms over my shoulder, took three bounding steps toward the rail and in a moment of total desperation, with no other options available to me, I decided to test the thoughts I’d had at the unveiling of the crucifix and leapt over the rail, off the roof of the Met.
FLEE
Jenny and I landed on the sloping glass wall below the roofline and immediately began sliding down it.
We slid wildly for about forty feet, creating crude black slashes in the dust-layer, before we rolled to a halt on a flat section of roof that preceded another sloping glass wall.
‘Don’t stop,’ I gasped, pushing Jenny to the next edge and down that slope we went, sliding down it on our asses before the sloping glass wall suddenly went vertical and became a sheer drop and before I could do anything about it, we sailed out into thin air.
We fell through the wild overgrowth of vegetation that had swallowed the park-side of the Met building, the many vines and branches of the trees slowing our fall before we landed with twin thumps in some bushes at the base of the tangle, bruised but okay.
Now Jenny was fully awake. A couple of death-defying slides will do that to you.
She looked at me with wide eyes. ‘What the fucking hell is going on?’
&
nbsp; I glanced up at the roof. America Face peered down at us. He waved tauntingly.
‘Just run,’ I said. ‘We might be able to catch Misty and the others at the well. I’ll explain as we go.’
We raced through the park.
At one point, we stopped to drink some rainwater from a wide puddle on a path. After two days on that roof, Jenny needed it, and we weren’t too proud to kneel down and drink like animals from the ground, scooping water into our mouths.
‘What is this place?’ Jenny said as we resumed our run.
‘We think it’s the future,’ I said. ‘About twenty years into the future. The world after the gamma cloud wiped out most of the population. It’s a long and weird story, but there are two portals that link our time to this one: you come in through one and go out through the other. We’re trying to get to the exit now, before Misty and her bitches close it and shut us in.’
I turned as I ran.
‘Jenny, I swear I didn’t tell anyone about your cuts or your parents. Misty and the others went to the school in this time and read your file.’
Jenny threw me a wry smile. ‘If I had a dollar for every time someone used the they-went-to-the-future-and-read-your-school-file excuse, I’d be a rich woman. It’s okay, Skye. I believe you. When you wake up on the roof of the Met, crucified to a pink fibreglass cross, looking at a taunting placard and seeing the ruins of New York all around you, you develop an open mind.’
We dashed around the Shakespeare Garden toward the Swedish Cottage.
I was hoping that our rather direct method of exiting the Met—sliding down its sloping glass roof—might have helped us gain on Misty and her gang, and it had.
I raced around the Cottage, arriving at the dirt clearing that contained the well—
—and stopped in mid-stride.
Verity sat with her back pressed against the low well, her left foot caught in some horrible-looking metal contraption. She whimpered as she tugged vainly at her leg.
As I cautiously approached her, I saw what the contraption was.
A bear trap.
My mind raced: where did someone get a goddamn bear trap in New York? Then I realised: it was one of the six bear traps from the gruesome exhibit at the Met.
I scanned the ground surrounding the well and saw the other five bear traps from the museum arrayed around it, hidden underneath a carpet of dead leaves and branches.
Someone had laid them here.
To catch us as we tried to leave.
I immediately thought of America Face.
Poor Verity had stepped on this one and its spring-loaded metal jaws had clamped around her ankle with shocking force, and now she was hopelessly caught in its grip.
At that moment, Verity saw me. ‘Skye! Oh, Skye! You gotta help me! You gotta fucking help me get this off! Misty and the others left me behind—’
I can’t say I felt very inclined to help her. Fifteen minutes earlier, when she’d had me at her mercy, she hadn’t been offering to help me.
I bounded past her and jumped up onto the rim of the well.
‘Sorry, V,’ I said. ‘I gotta catch your friends before they shut us in here.’
I dropped into the well, using the knotted rope that Misty hadn’t bothered to take with her, and slid down its length before dropping onto the trash heap.
I bounced off the heap and peered down the tunnel.
I saw three running shadows racing away into the darkness: Misty, Chastity and Hattie, bolting for the exit.
I hurried after them, but I knew in my heart that they had too great a head start.
I ran for about two hundred yards before I saw the exit portal spring to life, abruptly silhouetting the three girls in rippling purple light. I couldn’t be certain, but I thought I saw Misty turn and see me.
Then they jumped through the shimmering curtain and my horror was complete when, a few seconds later—as Misty removed the gem from the pyramid—the square of purple light winked out.
I stopped, alone in the tunnel.
I was now stuck here, stranded in the future.
THE UNCERTAIN FUTURE
I rejoined Jenny at the top of the well.
It was fully night now in the dead city.
My mind was reeling. Bo was dead, we were stuck here, and my own personal nemesis, America Face, couldn’t be far away. Oddly, it entered my mind then that I hadn’t called my father back; he’d be on his way to New York soon and I wouldn’t be able to warn him of the coming anarchy.
I felt entirely overwhelmed. I didn’t know what to do. In my wildest dreams, I’d never contemplated this.
Jenny touched me on the shoulder. ‘Hey.’
She had just rubbed the word ‘BITCH’ off her forehead and she handed me her pocket make-up mirror and a tissue.
I frowned, not understanding. Then I held the mirror up to see my own face and I saw two words written in lipstick on my forehead:
MAN THIEF
A final taunt from Misty. I wiped the scarlet letters off with the tissue. ‘Thanks, Jenny.’
Man thief, I thought. And the man I was supposedly stealing from Misty: Bo.
‘Oh, God,’ I said. ‘Bo. He came to rescue us and then . . . and then that bastard—’
My voice caught in my throat. I clenched my teeth, biting back the tears that were forming. ‘He wasn’t like the others,’ I said.
Jenny wrapped a comforting arm around me. ‘I know, Skye. I’m sorry.’
A few feet away from us, Verity was still whimpering as she struggled with the bear trap gripping her left ankle.
She looked up at Jenny and me, her eyes pleading. ‘Skye, Jenny. I’m so sorry for what we did to you. Please, please help me.’
I blinked back to my senses and stared at her. ‘Misty closed the exit portal. You’re stuck in here with us.’
‘Goddamn, Misty—’ Verity spat as there came a faint whooshing noise—something fizzing through the air—and suddenly an arrow lodged deep in Verity’s chest and she was thrown back against the well like a rag doll, killed instantly.
I spun.
America Face stood at the edge of the tree line, his crossbow levelled.
I grabbed Jenny’s hand and yelled, ‘Run!’
Fleeing through the undergrowth with Jenny, branches slashing against my cheeks, the sounds of America Face stomping through the brush behind us, my mind was screaming.
Think, Skye, think!
We jumped down onto the bramble-covered 79th Street Transverse and raced across its width, heading west.
‘Where are you going, pretty girls!?’ America Face’s voice echoed from behind us.
How can we get out of this time? I thought.
Jenny was evidently thinking the same thing. ‘Skye. If we’re in another time, how do we get back home?’
‘The only way back to our time is through the exit portal in the tunnel,’ I said. ‘It’s under a private garden behind the Museum of Natural History.’
‘And how do you open that portal?’
‘With a special gem,’ I said. ‘An amber gem. There are two of them. Misty’s got one, her mother has the other. You place a gem in a little pyramid at the exit portal. That’ll open the fold in time and get us home. What we have to do is find one of those gems in this time.’
‘All right, then,’ Jenny said. ‘How are we going to do that?’
As we clambered up the other side of the sunken Transverse, I thought about that.
And it suddenly occurred to me that maybe there was a way to do it.
This was the future, created by our past, and I knew some things about that past.
I looked at Jenny. ‘Follow me.’
Minutes later, we crossed the rambling field of grass that Central Park West had become and stood before the San Remo building.
Jenny stared at the graffiti scrawled across the twin towers and the hanging body of Manny Wannemaker.
‘What happened here?’ she breathed.
‘Before the gamma cloud hit, the world went nuts.’ I checked the street behind us before we went inside: no sign of America Face. He must still be in the park.
Up the internal stairs we went.
‘Where are we going?’ Jenny said. ‘Your place?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Misty’s.’
We came to the 21st floor and hurried down the hall to Misty’s apartment.
I kicked open the front door and went straight to Misty’s bedroom.
‘I know where Misty kept her gem,’ I said.
I marched over to her bookcase.
I didn’t dare use my phone’s flashlight—it could be seen from afar—but fortunately the moonlight was strong.
All the books on the bookcase were in the same places they had been back in our time, only now they were covered in moist black dust.
I knew the book I was looking for.
War and Peace.
It was still there. I grabbed it, flipped it open and smiled triumphantly as I saw its hollowed-out core.
Then my smile went flat.
The book’s secret core was empty.
‘Damn it,’ I said. ‘This was where Misty kept her gem. When she fled the city before the riots, she must have taken it with her. Fuck.’
Fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck.
Jenny took the book from me. ‘Kinda smart of Misty to keep her valuables in a hollowed-out book like this. I didn’t think she was that clever.’
‘She isn’t that clever,’ I said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Misty didn’t come up with the idea of hollowing out a book by herself,’ I said. ‘She learned it from her mother.’
My eyes snapped up.
‘Her mother,’ I said, rushing out the door and down the hall, back into the main lounge. Jenny followed, confused.
I stood before the large bookcase that dominated the lounge of Misty’s apartment, scanning the Collins family’s book collection.
It was the same Republican Voter’s Bookshelf I’d seen before: all Ayn Rand and Fox News.
The Secret Runners of New York Page 19
