The Secret Runners of New York

by Matthew Reilly

  His face had aged considerably: the skin around his eyes was wrinkled from squinting and browned from working long hours out of doors.

  In the three days since I had last seen him, my brother had aged twenty-two years and become a man.

  There was one other thing about him that I should mention: he was wearing a sheriff’s uniform, complete with a shiny bronze star.

  I leapt out of the dinghy and embraced my brother, tears streaming down my face.

  I can’t imagine how it looked to the two dozen people who had gathered at the pier to watch our little boat pull in: who was this teenage girl throwing her arms around their sheriff?

  ‘Blue,’ he said. ‘I’m so glad you made it here. You found my notes? And the baseball?’

  I handed him the Graceland baseball as if it were made of gold. ‘I did. Boy, am I thrilled to see you.’

  Red said hello to Jenny but then he noticed the crowd watching us. He also glanced awkwardly at the buildings behind him, as if checking who was behind their windows. ‘Let’s go to my place and get you cleaned up. Then we can talk.’

  We went back to Red’s home a few blocks from the piers. There Jenny and I showered—in an actual shower although the water was cold—and redressed.

  By now the sun had set, and when I came downstairs, I found Red standing at the kitchen table (it was lit by candles) holding the hand of a very pretty woman and with two outrageously cute little girls in front of him.

  ‘Blue,’ he said, ‘this is my wife, Tabitha, and our daughters, Katie and Skye.’

  I looked down at the smaller one. I guessed she was about six years old. ‘Skye, huh? What a lovely name.’

  In response, the girl hid behind Red’s leg.

  His wife seemed most perplexed by all of this. Her expression was half-jealous, half-confused—my likeness to Red must have thrown her, but she was clearly thinking: Who the hell is this girl?

  Dinner followed.

  Red told Tabitha that I was the daughter of a cousin who had been thought lost in the chaos of the gamma cloud’s arrival. He’d left a message for my family in New York and instructed his deputies to keep an eye out for me if I ever arrived. It wasn’t the best cover story in history, but it was better than saying your sister was a time traveller.

  After dinner, Red, Jenny and I adjourned to his study. Red closed the door.

  He smiled wryly. ‘You had to arrive just before dinnertime, didn’t you?’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Talk to me, please. Tell me about all this.’

  Red sat in the chair behind his desk. ‘It’s been twenty-two years, but I remember the day you disappeared like it was yesterday. I figured you’d gone inside—with Bo and Verity, who also never came back—but then I had to go to the Retreat. For some reason, Misty didn’t go and wherever she was, she must have taken her gem with her, and I couldn’t do anything to come get you. Then the city went crazy and, oh, Blue, I’m so sorry I left—’

  ‘Red,’ I said. ‘Forget it. As far as I’m concerned, it’s been three days. And I haven’t spent a moment of it hating you for not coming to save me.’

  He bowed his head. The timelines of our lives had literally gone down separate paths. What had been three days for me was a lifetime for him and this had clearly weighed on his mind the whole time.

  ‘Tell me about the world in 2040,’ I said. ‘And that.’ I jerked my chin at his sheriff’s star. ‘Can’t say I expected to see you as the sheriff.’

  Red gave a small smile. ‘The gamma cloud wiped out humanity all right. By our reckoning, less than 0.5% of the population survived.

  ‘And most of those survivors are people with what our doctors call “atypical hypersynaptic brain function”. Which is another way of saying that most of them are not exactly friendly individuals: criminals, murderers, rapists, antisocial aggressive types plus the clinically insane.

  ‘A much smaller percentage of the survivors are folks like me: people who happened to be on the right medication at the time or who just took the right vitamins or ate the right foods. Many, strangely enough, were on anxiety medication, which means they’re the exact opposite of aggressive. They’re modest, humble people who somehow survived with all the assholes. It’s like the cloud wiped out the middle and kept only the extremes of people. We’ve tried to gather all the decent ones on this island.’

  So Griff wasn’t entirely correct, I thought. Some of the meek had inherited the Earth.

  ‘What happened after the cloud?’ Jenny asked.

  Red said, ‘In the years after the gamma cloud, the whole eastern seaboard was a mess. Empty cities. Roaming gangs of prisoners. I went to the Retreat—Mom and Todd never made it—but I saw the writing on the wall when it was attacked the first time on March 16 by about fifty of the “Angry Poor” as the wealthy were calling them. I figured a lot more angry people would come later, and they did.

  ‘So late on March 16, I left my baseball there with the message for you, stole a little motorboat and hightailed it out of there. I rode out the gamma cloud alone at Race Rock Lighthouse and somehow survived. I guess Dad’s diet and vitamin regime worked.’

  He stared off into space, remembering. It was so strange to see my brother, my twin brother, looking and acting so grown up. His weary eyes now held half a lifetime of hard experience behind them.

  He shrugged. ‘I couldn’t stay at the lighthouse. So I ventured out, looking for people like me, people who would want to rebuild. How do you rebuild society? One brick at a time, I guess. I met some good people—also met a few bad people. I’ve also killed quite a few people. But the good folks and I rounded up more good folks and we settled here on Rhode Island.

  ‘It’s a great spot to start rebuilding society because it’s big enough to have a couple of power stations and its own water supply, yet it’s only accessible by three road bridges. It’s defendable. We guard all those bridges 24/7, plus all the sea approaches.

  ‘After that, well, we identified the people a new society needs most: doctors, electricians, plumbers. Funny, a new community doesn’t need hedge-fund managers and investment bankers. We’ve managed to restart one of the power stations and get some electricity online again—at least for a couple of hours a day—plus the water mains which allows for flushing toilets. Trust me, the world’s better with flushing toilets.’

  ‘A new town also needs a good lawman,’ I said. ‘An honest man, someone who won’t favour one person over another, someone who can be trusted to enforce the law.’

  Red bowed his head modestly.

  I smiled warmly. ‘You always had it in you, Red. I knew that.’

  ‘I do my best,’ he said softly. He snuffed a rueful laugh. ‘I always teased you that I was older than you. By two minutes. Now I really am older. What about you? What happened?’

  I told him everything: how Misty and her clique had been responsible for the missing girls; how they had brought Jenny into the future and left her for dead; how we had battled the furious Griff and fled New York with him on our tail; and how we had gone to the Retreat not only to find out Red’s fate, but also to acquire Starley Collins’s gem. Without a gem to place in the exit portal, we were stuck in this time.

  ‘But her gem wasn’t there,’ I concluded.

  As I finished speaking, I looked at my brother—now thirty-eight years old, a father and a sheriff—and a great sadness came over me. My trials over the last few days paled in comparison to the years of danger, fear and terror he had endured since the cloud.

  And I realised: this world was now his world. It was not mine. He had lived in it, fought in it, earned his place in it over twenty-two years. I hadn’t.

  And in my heart of hearts, I felt I couldn’t stay. Twins we may still have been, but we were not the same anymore. I wondered if we could even live together in this time.

  Red’s aged eyes met mine and I could see that
he was thinking the same thing.

  ‘There’s also another problem,’ I said. ‘Dad. He sent me a text just before I made this run. He’s going to arrive in New York City—alone and unprepared—right in the middle of all the chaos. I have to find a way back to help him.’

  It was then that a peculiar look crossed Red’s face.

  ‘I’ve got something for you,’ he said as he reached down and slid open his desk drawer. ‘Something I’ve been holding on to for a long time.’

  He pulled an envelope from the drawer and handed it across the desk to me.

  Written on it in a teenager’s hand were the words:

  FOR SKYE

  DO NOT OPEN TILL 2040

  My eyes snapped up. ‘Who—what is this?’

  Red said, ‘When I was leaving Plum Island just before the gamma cloud hit, someone ran into the water after me, chasing my boat, begging to come with me. It was Oz Collins.’

  ‘Oz?’ I said.

  ‘Yeah. I’d chatted with him on the first day I arrived at the Retreat. He wasn’t as bad as the other kids said. I’d heard he was a weirdo, but he wasn’t like that at all.’

  ‘Misty made up all that stuff,’ I said. ‘Set him up.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ Red said thoughtfully. ‘Oz asked about you and I said you were missing, but in those times a lot of people were missing. He gave me a kind, almost distant smile and wandered off. Next time I saw him was when he chased me out into the water as I was fleeing Plum Island on March 16. He also knew it wasn’t a safe place to stay.’

  ‘I thought you said you rode out the gamma cloud at Race Rock alone?’ I said.

  ‘I did,’ Red said. ‘Oz asked me to drop him back on Long Island. He didn’t say why. He said he was going back to the city. So I dropped him off, but when I did, he gave me this envelope.’

  I took the envelope and stepped into the corner of the office to read its contents privately by the light of a flickering candle.

  There was a note inside it and it read:

  Dear Skye,

  I know you don’t know me very well, but I feel I know you. You were kind to me on two occasions that I have always remembered: that time you defended me after my magic act at the talent show and when we talked about our costumes at Verity’s birthday party.

  Some people think I’m weird, but I’m not. I’m just shy. I find it hard to talk to people which is why it was so nice when you chatted with me.

  This may surprise you, but I know about the tunnel and how it works. I visit the other world sometimes.

  I looked up from the note.

  ‘No way . . .’ I said aloud.

  Both Red and Jenny looked at me questioningly but I held up my hand and kept reading.

  Like every little brother in the world, I watch my sisters constantly, especially when they sneak out at night. This is how I discovered the tunnel.

  Sometimes, I would steal my mom’s gem and use it to enter the tunnel. Other times I’d take Misty’s.

  (I saw you once when I was inside: I was up on the roof of the National History Museum but I was wearing my hood, so if I were spotted I wouldn’t be recognised. Another time, I shrieked at your brother down the well. Sorry about that. But I found that screaming crazily at someone was the best way to scare them off.)

  I know Misty is unhinged. She can hate like no-one else. Because of her, I spent a whole summer at military school and everybody thinks I’m a porn-addicted freak. And she hates you because Bo likes you. This is why—I suspect—you are missing now: she has left you stranded inside.

  I also overheard her talking to Griff on the phone, telling him that you would get a gem to him. This was obviously a lie, since I imagine you’re in the other New York. I have encountered Griff there, an older Griff with a shaven head, lurking around your apartment, waiting for you, I guess.

  (I actually tried to warn you about Griff, with a message in your toy kangaroo, which I grabbed in the future. But maybe that was a bit too obtuse or perhaps you never saw it.)

  As I leave Plum Island today, I am taking with me one last thing: my mother’s gem.

  I am going to leave it for you in a secret place so you can find it in the future, open the exit and get back to the present. If I can help you get back and mess up Misty’s plan for you, it would make me very happy indeed. My final revenge on her for that summer at military school.

  I can’t tell you in this letter where I will leave your gem, lest it fall into the wrong hands. All I can say is that I have left it in a place that only you will notice and know.

  I’m not sure where—or when—I will see you again, Skye, but I wish you luck, and I thank you for being nice to me at a time in my life when few others were.

  Best wishes,

  Oz Collins

  March 16, 2018

  I stared off into space, thunderstruck.

  Oz had taken his mother’s gem with him when he’d fled the Retreat.

  There was a way out of here.

  A place only I would ‘notice and know’.

  I handed the letter to Red and Jenny. They read it as I thought some more.

  Oz had been the figure in the hoodie. Like Red, I’d assumed the shadowy figure in the hoodie and the shadowy bald man—Griff—had been the same person. But they hadn’t. Oz had worn the hoodie, while Griff, having shaved off his mop of red hair, was the bald guy.

  When she’d finished reading the note, Jenny came to the crux of the issue right away. ‘Why does he say a place you would notice and know, not just one you would know?’

  ‘That’s the question,’ I said.

  What would I notice that no-one else would? What did Oz know about me—from our few interactions—that he could utilise in such a way?

  And then I got it.

  ‘Stephen King,’ I said aloud.

  ‘What?’ Jenny said.

  ‘If we want to get back to our time, we have to go back to the city,’ I said firmly. ‘Back to my apartment. Back to my bedroom.’

  BACK INTO THE DARK WORLD

  The next morning, after a glorious sleep in a clean bed under a solid roof in a quiet house, Red helped us load up the dinghy with extra gas and food.

  It was sunny for now but black clouds loomed on the horizon.

  ‘A big storm’s coming,’ Red said, handing us a pair of plastic ponchos. I thought I saw him glancing at one of the warehouses beside the dock as he spoke.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, stowing the ponchos on the boat.

  I turned to Jenny. ‘Are you sure about this? You could stay here, you know, in this time.’

  Jenny said, ‘First of all, if my dad’s going to die, I don’t want him doing so thinking I went missing. If I can, I want to find him so he knows I’m safe, and then see out the gamma cloud with him. If you’re gonna face the end of the world, you want to do it with the people you love.’

  She shrugged. ‘I also wouldn’t mind seeing Misty again so I can slap her in the face.’

  We boarded the dinghy. Red’s family—still clearly curious and confused—watched from a distance.

  Red handed me a pistol. ‘Just in case you run into some of the nastier survivors out there. I wish I could give you both a gun, but this is all I can spare.’

  ‘I appreciate it.’ I jammed the gun into the back of my jeans.

  Then I looked my brother in the eye. Wherever I went now, in place or time, I didn’t think I’d ever see him again. He knew it, too.

  ‘You’ve done well for yourself, Red,’ I said. ‘I’m proud of you. Proud of what you’ve become.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Good luck with this place. Bring civilisation back. Someone has to.’

  ‘We’ll try,’ he said. ‘You take care of yourself, Blue. If you get back and find Dad, tell him that I did okay.’

  ‘I will,’ I said.


  We embraced one last time and then I hopped in the dinghy and, with Jenny by my side, we powered away from Newport, leaving its armed citizens and fortified bridges behind us. Red stood on the dock watching and waving until we disappeared behind the headland.

  Our journey back was slow and tough.

  It began to rain not long after we left Newport, and when the storm hit and the Sound became too choppy, we had to take shelter at an inlet and stay there for the night.

  The rain continued throughout the next day, but the wind died down a little, so we were able to work our way back down the Sound.

  After almost a full day of travel, the ruins of New York City appeared on the horizon: a line of jagged skyscrapers—some of them broken—rising into the grim stormy sky.

  I stared hard at them.

  We were going back in.

  We reached Rikers Island just as night fell.

  It was still raining hard, but that actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise since the rain drove the unruly inhabitants of the prison indoors and we were able to pass by the island unseen. Although, just to be safe, we turned off the engine and paddled silently along the Bronx shore.

  Then the wind came up again and another full-blown storm hit, even worse than the one from the day before: rain, forks of lightning, thunderclaps, raging winds.

  Just as the river around us began to get whipped up by the wind, we pulled our trusty little dinghy in to Pier 107 on the eastern shore of Manhattan and climbed out. We would go on foot from there, trekking back to the San Remo via the Upper East Side.

  The wind blasted down the canyons of the city and the rain flew sideways as we came to Central Park.

  We crossed the park and eventually my home came into view: the San Remo building.

  With a final look at each other, Jenny and I went inside.

  HOME

  The hallway outside my apartment was dark and dank. Rain poured outside, drumming against the broken window at the end of the corridor. The occasional flash of lightning lit up the space like a strobe.