I turned to see Griff arrive at the shore, swearing and gesticulating with rage.
At first, I took us north—my plan was to go up and around Manhattan Island via the Harlem River and then cut through to Long Island Sound—but as I peered northward into the moonlit gloom, I saw that the George Washington Bridge had collapsed, blocking our way.
And so I banked the boat around and took us south down the Hudson. It would take a little longer going around Manhattan this way, but we could still make it.
It was only when we were a full mile downriver that I dared to breathe a deep sigh of relief.
TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH
Cruising around New York in our little dinghy was a totally surreal experience.
It was a still night and the river was like glass. As we glided past the empty city, gazing at it by the light of the moon, the scale of the catastrophe that had befallen the world truly hit home.
Not a single window glowed with electric light. Every one of the many towers of the city was dark. Some buildings had toppled over, others—like the Empire State Building—teetered at extreme angles.
Creeping vegetation covered everything, a deeper black in the darkness, a visible cancer slowly consuming the cityscape.
And then there were the truly bizarre sights.
A dozen container ships—left to drift when their crews had abruptly dropped dead—had washed ashore and now rested against the buildings of downtown. One big oil tanker had managed to wedge itself fully into 14th Street up against the Standard Hotel. Moss and shrubs had half-swallowed both the ship and the hotel, so that it was hard to tell where the building ended and the boat began.
A crashed 737 aeroplane lay on the parkway down near Chelsea. The impact had caused the parkway to collapse. On another section of the road, two enormous Staten Island ferries lay on their sides like a pair of beached whales.
We rounded the bottom of the island and saw the Statue of Liberty.
Lady Liberty’s head and upraised arm were gone, evidently by explosive force, judging by the outwardly bent metal at her neck and shoulder. They now lay at the base of her podium, turning the once-great statue into a modern-day Ozymandias.
Scrawled in red paint on the front of her iconic robes was the chilling message:
SEE
YOU ALL
IN HELL!
Jenny’s eyes filled with tears. ‘It’s all gone. All of it.’
‘And it ended so terribly,’ I said, ‘in anger and violence. What’s wrong with people?’
It was then, as we turned northward up the East River, that we beheld the bridges.
The Brooklyn Bridge was still standing but it was entirely covered in vines. The Manhattan Bridge was half broken: the suspension cables at the city-end had buckled, so the roadway at that end had dropped into the river. As for the Williamsburg Bridge, both of its once mighty towers, eaten away by vegetation, had collapsed, causing the whole thing to fall into the river.
Importantly for us, the fallen wreckage had not entirely blocked the way.
We wound our way past the colossal pieces of fallen concrete and steel, our little dinghy tiny alongside them.
As we passed Brooklyn, I saw a fire atop a warehouse and beside it . . .
. . . a crucified human being.
Jenny stared at it, open-mouthed in horror. ‘What is that?’
Guided by the simple map I had taken from the boat basin, we cruised up the East River before we turned right at Lawrence Point, heading east toward Rikers Island, La Guardia Airport and Long Island Sound.
As we came to the point, I saw a pulsing orange glow beyond it and my heart began to beat a little faster. Then we rounded the point and the prison island came into view.
I gasped. ‘Mother of God . . .’
‘The world didn’t end for everybody,’ Jenny said flatly.
In this otherwise dead city, the prison was alive with light and movement.
Fires burned in every guard tower. Drums boomed. Shadowy figures danced and drank. I saw more crucified figures on the walls, backlit by the firelight. Masked men with guns patrolled the lone bridge that connected Rikers Island to the shore near La Guardia.
This was what Griff had said.
To survive the gamma cloud’s effects on the human brain, one needed to possess either a medically-created immunity or a natural one.
A natural resistance included having dysfunctional or overactive synapses in your brain. That group included people like Griff but also others taking medication for anxiety or depression or post-traumatic stress. But, by definition, that group also included most of the psychopaths and sociopaths at Rikers Island.
Welcome to the new world . . .
I cut the engine.
‘What are you doing?’ Jenny whispered.
‘I don’t want them to hear us or see our wake,’ I said. I leaned over the side and started paddling gently.
And so it took us much longer to pass Rikers Island than I’d hoped. We clung to the Bronx shoreline to the north of the firelit prison island, eventually using the seat-pads of our little boat as improvised paddles. It wasn’t until we had passed Whitestone Bridge that I dared to restart the engine.
As dawn broke on this eerie new world, we powered away from New York City, heading toward the rising sun, cruising up Long Island Sound in our dinghy, forging our way toward Plum Island.
THE RETREAT
It took us two full days to reach Plum Island.
For one thing, our little dinghy wasn’t exactly the fastest motorboat in the universe; for another, well, both Jenny and I simply needed sleep.
Once we were well clear of the city and Rikers Island, we came to a remote inlet near Caumsett State Park and there we found an offshore channel marker—it was basically a hut on stilts about a hundred yards from the shore.
It was perfect. Strung out from lack of sleep and the stress of running for so long on pure adrenaline, I estimate that we both slept for close on sixteen hours, right through the whole next day. I can’t speak for Jenny, but I’ve never slept so soundly.
After our big sleeps, we spent the following night and most of the day after it cruising along the northern shore of Long Island.
It was going on four in the afternoon when it came into view.
Plum Island.
Low and flat, with a weird cluster of white box-like buildings that were both very old and very new, the island rose up out of the horizon before us.
It was a cloudy day and already getting dark. This was the final factor in it taking so long for us to reach Plum Island: I didn’t want to go ashore at night. I wanted to see its secrets in the full light of day.
The Retreat had waited for me for twenty-two years. It could wait another night.
And so we slept on another channel marker till morning came. Then as soon as the sun rose, we brought our little dinghy ashore on Plum Island.
We landed at the island’s main arrival area, a semicircular ring of docks sheltered by a pair of breakwaters.
Broken boats littered the shore; a few helicopters lay upside down beside them. Tossed around by twenty years of storms and hurricanes, the boats and choppers had smashed all the jetties and storage shacks to splinters.
I ran our little dinghy aground near a large white sign that had almost been completely consumed by weeds:
US GOVERNMENT PROPERTY
LANDING PROHIBITED
‘I guess the creators of the Retreat decided to keep the government’s old keep-out signs,’ I said.
Jenny said, ‘You don’t advertise your secret hideaway for the rich and powerful.’
We walked a short way across the island until we came to its largest set of structures, a massive cluster of white-painted warehouse-sized buildings that had once been the Animal Disease Center.
Facing the
waters of the Sound to the north, the compound was, quite simply, enormous. And the features that had once enabled it to keep animal diseases contained had been cleverly converted to allow humans to survive for a long time: water tanks, diesel generators, living quarters and, importantly, airtight spaces for food storage.
It was the perfect sanctuary for the exclusive few to ride out the gamma cloud.
And then I saw the damage.
‘This hideaway,’ I said, ‘didn’t stay secret.’
The damage to the white-painted buildings had not been done by any storm or hurricane.
Hundreds of bullet holes pockmarked the walls. Charred, blasted-open sections of the walls indicated the use of grenades or explosives of some kind.
A battle had been fought here. A big battle.
A lawn of waist-high grass separated the buildings of the compound from the Sound, and after a moment my scanning eyes noticed objects in the grass: dozens of small boats not unlike my little dinghy. Rowboats, motorboats, all kinds of boats lay in the deep grass. They, too, had been tossed by years of storms, but their legacy was clear.
‘The public found out about the Retreat,’ Jenny said. ‘They wanted to get in as well, so they stormed it.’
I nodded. I could picture the scene:
A dozen wealthy families—still wearing their Armani suits and glittering jewels—staring out at an armada of poor people storming the shore in their little boats like an invading seaborne force.
With a final look back at the lawn, I stepped inside the nearest building.
Bullet holes in the walls—shattered windows—dangling fluorescent light tubes—bloody smears on the floor.
Jenny and I strode silently through the wreckage until we came to the area containing the living quarters. The doors were made of thick steel and had rubber seals. Each door also had a vacuum-sealed porthole window of double-glazed tempered glass sunk into it.
Nameplates on the doors identified the families who were to live in them.
As I peered in through the portholes, I saw how the wealthy had died.
Unable to penetrate the fortified airtight apartments, the attackers had cut off the air, suffocating the wealthy occupants. How did I know this? The messages scrawled on the porthole windows in blood or lipstick told me:
I wasn’t sure what was more repugnant: the image of wealthy families trapped in the airtight chambers they had paid a fortune to occupy, slowly suffocating, or the pure hatred of the poor who had caught up with them.
I guessed this was what the French Revolution had looked like.
I found the first apartment I was looking for. The nameplate on it read:
ALLEN
The door to my family’s chamber was open. It was empty. No bodies. No sign of Red. No sign even of his suitcase.
I knew that my mom and Todd had not made it to the Retreat. But Red’s note had said he was coming here.
I began to despair. I needed a sign, a sign that he’d made it.
And then I saw it, sitting all by itself in the back corner of the room:
A bronze-coloured Graceland baseball.
I picked up the gaudy ball, turned it over in my hand, saw the smiling face of Elvis Presley on it—
—and some handwriting.
Red’s handwriting, in black marker, on the ball:
Gone to Dad’s favourite beach house
I exhaled with relief.
Red had made it to the Retreat and then—I imagine when he saw the incoming attackers—he’d fled, but not before letting me know he’d got here.
‘Oh, Red,’ I said aloud, making Jenny spin.
She came over. ‘Your dad’s favourite beach house? What does that mean?’
‘Race Rock Lighthouse. It’s over by Fishers Island, not far from here.’
Buoyed by the hope that Red might have escaped from the Retreat alive, my thoughts returned to my own predicament and my focus narrowed.
I sought out another apartment and found it a short way down the corridor.
The heavy steel door was slightly ajar, its rubber lining holding it loosely in the doorframe.
The nameplate on the door read:
COLLINS
The Collins family did not die well.
The evidence before me was pretty clear: they hadn’t died of suffocation, huddled together in their airtight apartment.
Five bodies, long decayed, lay on the floor. They still wore the clothes they had been wearing twenty-two years previously. Their bags lay in the corner, not yet unpacked.
The partial closure of the chamber’s door had kept animals out, preserving the corpses somewhat. It was only the ravages of time that had decayed them: all five were shrivelled and dry, their leathery skin clinging to the bones beneath. Their fingernails, I noticed, had continued growing for some time after their deaths and looked positively ghoulish.
Mr Conrad Collins—Misty’s father, successful property developer and descendant of the Mayflower—lay crumpled against the far wall, his face all but unrecognisable. His grey suit was riddled with bloody bullet holes. Whoever had shot him had shot him a lot, with an automatic weapon.
Lying beside him, still dressed in a pair of diamante-studded hipster jeans and a tight top, was the dried husk of the girl who had once been Chastity Collins. Two bullets had blown out the back of her head.
Starley Collins still wore a white-and-gold Gucci pantsuit. It too had been shredded by bullet holes.
I stepped closer and moved aside the collar of her jacket, checking her neck.
‘Damn it,’ I said.
‘What?’ Jenny said from behind me.
‘She’s not wearing her necklace,’ I said. ‘The figure-eight one with her gem in it. I was hoping she’d worn it when she came here.’
I went over to the last two bodies. Misty and Oz.
They lay face-down, one on top of the other. I shoved the top body with my shoe.
The dead-eyed faces of two strangers stared up at me. Two poor folk who had been shot during the confrontation.
They weren’t Misty or Oz.
I spun on the spot, suddenly fearful.
Misty hadn’t come here. Hadn’t fled to the Retreat when her family had escaped the city on March 14.
The revelation rattled me. For some reason, I didn’t want to stay here anymore.
I recalled Misty’s taunt from before:
‘You don’t think you and Bo were the first people to leave the tunnel and explore this world, do you?’
Had Misty come all the way out here? Had she discovered what would happen at the Retreat and so had not gone there with her family back in the present?
I definitely didn’t want to stay here anymore.
A quick search of the Collinses’ luggage revealed that there were no gems here, not Misty’s or her mom’s. I had the distinct feeling that Misty had got the better of me somehow, that even now she was one step ahead of me.
‘Let’s go,’ I said to Jenny.
‘Where?’
I looked at her. ‘Since we haven’t got any other options, we follow the trail my brother left behind.’
RED’S TRAIL
Race Rock Lighthouse—my father’s favourite beach house—is actually not that far from Plum Island, less than twenty miles away. But getting there can be a little hairy as you have to sail across a channel that is exposed to the Atlantic Ocean.
After loading up our little dinghy with gas cans filled with fuel, we left Plum Island and arrived at Race Rock several hours later.
Thankfully, the sea was relatively calm and we tied our boat to the little dock that serviced the fairytale-like cottage built on its tiny mount a short way off Fishers Island.
Before they had abandoned it, the last people to come to the cottage had shuttered all the windows and doors, which was
why when I opened the main door, I found the interior of the lighthouse dry and oddly neat and tidy.
It was empty, except for one thing.
A lone envelope on the kitchen table, weighted down under a rock and labelled: BLUE.
I tore it open.
A single line in Red’s handwriting was on the note inside it:
I have gone to the place where Liberty lost.
Reading it over my shoulder, Jenny frowned. ‘Where Liberty lost?’
I stared at the line.
‘He’s being cryptic, in case someone else found this note,’ I said. ‘Red, my dad and I used to vacation up here in the summertime. We’d sail all over the place: to this lighthouse, over to Martha’s Vineyard or up around Rhode Island.’
I thought for a moment. ‘The place where Liberty lost . . .’
And I smiled. ‘I got it. Liberty was the name of a famous racing yacht. The yacht that lost the America’s Cup in 1983 at Newport, Rhode Island.’
It was nearing sunset when, a few hours later, Jenny and I arrived in our little motorised dinghy at Newport, Rhode Island.
I was shocked when I saw men armed with assault rifles standing on all the major headlands, but as I looked more closely at them, I saw that they wore jeans, boots and denim jackets: the clothes of ordinary men, not crazies or inmates or soldiers. As we sailed into the port, I noticed a heavily fortified guardhouse on the Newport Bridge.
A small police patrol boat came out to meet us and at the sight of me, the young deputy at its controls went bug-eyed and he quickly allowed us to pass.
I was very confused by all this and wanted to know more, but as we came to the city piers of Newport, all those thoughts flew from my mind as I saw him standing there, smiling knowingly, waiting for me.
It was my brother, Red.
Only now he was nearly forty years old.
OLD RED
His facial features hadn’t changed—the sparkling eyes, the elfin face—but the body around them had.
No longer was Red a lean sixteen-year-old boy. He was stockier, visibly stronger. His forearms were all muscle.
The Secret Runners of New York Page 21
