by James Phelan
Caleb got the fire roaring and Felicity and I organized some food: a big batch of pasta with tomato and olive sauce. Rachel cleaned herself up, returning as Caleb pulled out a couple of bottles of wine, juice, and one of vodka, and a selection of cheeses and boxed chocolates from his backpack.
“My contribution to tonight’s meal,” he said. “Oh, and this.”
He set up a little battery-powered Bose speaker system and docked an iPod.
“Sorry, it’s on random,” he said, hitting skip. “Rocket Man” by My Morning Jacket came on.
“Nice track,” Felicity said. “Feel free to come over for dinner again.” Her eyes sparkled and I had to stop myself from staring at her for too long.
Rachel sat by the fire, towel drying her short hair. I contemplated apologizing for my lateness but she seemed over it, or maybe it was a bigger deal to me: we’d got here, with the generator, and that’s what mattered most.
I set four places at the desk and brought in another couple of chairs. Caleb poured drinks and Felicity set down the pot of pasta. The warmth of the fire and the sound of the music, it was as normal a scene of life as I could have imagined, and it brought memories from a better time flooding back.
Four places. We were all here. My wildest dreams of achieving a community had come true in a few short days. I started to doubt why I’d want to leave this city and risk breaking us up, but I knew it was what I had to do. It was what I had been working towards—home.
Caleb told the girls about the group of people he’d met at Chelsea Piers. I felt pleased to have known about it before them, it meant I could follow the girls’ interest.
“So there are other survivors out there!” Felicity said.
“Must be a lot more, I reckon, people hiding out in buildings and stuff,” Caleb said.
“And, these ones at the Piers, they’re all friendly?” she asked.
“Friendly enough,” he replied. “Though they’d seen plenty of looting, especially in the first few days, before the true reality of the events settled in.”
“Are they going to stay?” Felicity asked Caleb.
“Not sure,” he said through a mouthful, then swallowed and drank some more wine. “Some want to leave, see what’s out there, but most I talked to seemed to want to stay. They’ve got a few sick, a few kids, so it’s tough to just pack up and go, yeah?”
Rachel nodded, Felicity topped up their glasses. I popped a bottle of mineral water instead, the comforting food and warmth of the room making me sleepy enough.
“They didn’t know what happened?” Rachel asked, plating up some more food for us all.
“They’ve all got their opinions,” he said, “but I didn’t hang around that long to talk to everyone at any length. The general consensus was that it’s some kind of eschatology.”
“Some kind of what?” I asked.
“The final events in history, or the ultimate destiny of humanity.”
“Commonly referred to as the end of the world, or the end of days,” Rachel said, seeing my and Felicity’s blank faces. She was holding her glass of wine in both hands, her elbows propped on the table, the warm glow of the fire on her face. “I took a theology class in college. I think it’s defined as the four last things: death, judgment, heaven, and hell.”
“So, what, they’re a religious group?” I asked.
“Some of them, yeah,” Caleb said, wiping pasta sauce from his chin. “It’s getting them through, whatever they believe.”
“This is an apocalyptic time,” Felicity said. “The end of . . .”
“An age,” Caleb finished for her.
“But some want to leave New York, right?” I asked.
Caleb looked to me. “Yeah, but they’re gonna try and head south,” he said, turning to the others, “which Jesse, here, thinks is a mistake.”
“That’s what that soldier, Starkey, told me,” I said. “But who knows?”
Caleb said, “I said to Jesse that I thought those soldiers, or whatever they are, may have been there to loot.”
“I don’t think so,” Felicity said. “We saw one of their trucks this morning. USAMRIID—they’re a scientist outfit, specialists in virology and combating biological warfare.”
“You seem to know a lot about them,” Caleb said.
“Only who they are. My brother’s a medic in the Air Force, he’s worked with them,” she said. “They’re here to investigate this biological agent, I’m sure of it.”
“But why would their truck be attacked like that?” I asked. “I mean, who would attack it?”
No one had an answer for that.
“Look, I think we should make a decision, though; one way or the other. There’s four of us now. We can’t just stay here, especially now those Chasers are getting so . . .” I trailed off, seeing panic cross Rachel’s face. I looked to Caleb for support. “Maybe we should at least head to the piers? See this bigger group?”
He shrugged and nodded like it was a possible scenario. He turned to Felicity: “Tell me more about this aircraft that attacked the truck.”
Felicity described to him what we’d seen in the street, how the aircraft had come in fast and fired a missile. The two of them talked while Rachel left the room to go check on her patient and I cleaned the dishes.
“Do you think this will get worse?” Caleb asked Felicity.
“Outside of us, of this little group that Jesse has brought together,” she said, “it’s getting worse every moment. Jesse’s right; our best chance of survival is to get out of this city.”
33
I woke up in a cold sweat and with shocking, aching clarity. I sat up on the rug and my head spun so much I had to sit still, not move, wait for my world to stop revolving and the stars to clear from my vision. The room was dark but for the glow of the fire. Total silence. I was at the zoo—I’d made it back, and I remembered having dinner with my friends and talking in front of the fire.
How long had I been asleep? I looked at my watch—five minutes to midnight. Where were the others?
I put my feet to the floor. My T-shirt was soaked through with sweat, my jeans too. I was hot and cold at the same time. I stood, leaning on the chair in front of me for support, and pulled on my jumper.
“Caleb!” I called. “Rachel?”
I walked over to the door, opened it and listened. Nothing. I checked out the window and saw Rachel and Felicity talking in the moonlight as they crossed the grounds to the vet room. Caleb was nowhere to be seen.
I went to the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face.
“Caleb?” I called into the hallway. Downstairs: “Caleb?”
Nothing. He’d gone. I should have known he wouldn’t stick around, that he didn’t want to be part of our group. Or of any group, maybe.
But I needed his help—we all did if we wanted to escape and find the other survivors, those down at the piers. I noticed his shotgun was gone, his heavy coat too. He was out there, somewhere. I went out to the vet room where Rachel and Felicity were tending to the snow leopard.
“He left about half an hour ago,” Felicity said in answer to my question.
“Where’d he go?”
“I don’t know.”
“His parents,” Rachel said, adjusting the IV drip in her sedated patient. “That’s my guess.”
“I have to find him.”
“It’s too dangerous,” Rachel said.
“It’s dangerous for him—”
Rachel looked up from her patient, concerned. “Jesse, don’t be stupid, it’s pitch dark.”
“I’m not being stupid,” I snapped back, and then more gently: “I’ll be careful.”
“You won’t find him like this,” Felicity reasoned. “Why don’t you wait for morning? It’s not too far off.”
I turned to face her. She really was pretty, even with those dark shadows under her eyes. “I think he needs me to do this,” I said quietly.
“He was drunk,” Rachel said.
“Then all the
more reason for me to go and make sure he’s okay.”
“Do you trust him?” she asked, in a tone that made it clear that she didn’t.
“Of course.” I tried to sound more confident than I actually felt.
“Do you believe what he told us?” Felicity said. “About that group of survivors?”
I could see that the girls had talked about this and had their suspicions.
“I do. We all need to,” I said. “That group of people might be our best chance of survival.”
After a moment, Felicity backed me up. “He’s right,” she said. “We need Caleb if we want to find them, you know that, Rach.”
I couldn’t stay a moment longer, there was possibility in the air: if we could meet up with this group, I might just be able to convince the girls to leave.
I went back to the room we’d sat talking in last night and found Caleb’s big map of Manhattan, another half-empty bottle on top of it.
He’s out there, toasted, armed . . . but doing what? And why? He knew we were going to leave together tomorrow, what couldn’t wait?
I took one final look at the map. It was covered in his scrawled notes. There was a big black cross drawn alongside Fifth, down south, past his bookstore, with the annotation “missile seen here.” I remembered him explaining it, how it was unexploded. Then, next to the cross in a different-colored pen, there was another note, written small. I adjusted the flashlight beam to read it: “Maybe this is what those army guys are after?”
Is that where he’s gone? At midnight and by himself? It made no sense.
Had he really met a group of survivors at the Chelsea Piers or had he just craved their existence, willed them into being in his imagination? I recognized some of myself in him, how I’d been those first twelve days. I’d filled the time, I’d made do, done my best to keep sane. Caleb’s denial was palpable. There may have been no sinister undertones, no “black dog” in the distance, but I knew something was amiss. Maybe he let it all out in that notebook, that graphic novel. Maybe that was his secret.
I couldn’t understand him, but I had to trust him.
He was my friend, and friendship now meant more than anything. Still, I banged my fist against the wall in frustration, then again and again until I could really feel it. Another day consumed by this place.
I sighed and started to fold the map, but just as I did I noticed something new, something that stood out for its black circle of permanent marker in the Upper East Side. There was a word, a single word written in clumsy, drunk handwriting: “Mom.” His parents’ house.
I headed north, alert, wary, towards Caleb’s parents’ place. There was almost no breeze, and the streets were full of noises I hadn’t noticed before—a shift of rubble or debris, the creak of a piece of broken roofing. Little, tiny noises that cut into the silence.
The UN building was close to here—it might be gone, it might be burned out. All those people I’d met and spent time with on this camp, gone. Or worse: still there, dead, frozen, broken. I avoided going there with my thoughts. I wanted to go on remembering that place and the people the way I did now. Like Caleb did with his parents. Had I pressured him into thinking about them, into seeing them? What would he be like once he saw what had happened to them? Surely this reality around us was worse than anything we could imagine.
I realized with relief that the UN building was to the south of here anyway, and that I wouldn’t have to pass it. Thinking about it made me curious, but I had enough on my mind as it was; I could wait to hear about the fate of it and its occupants.
At the block between 59th and 60th it looked like a big airliner had tried to land—there was a jet engine in the middle of the road, as tall as me. The buildings either side of the avenue were shattered for two whole blocks, north to south. They were blackened shells. I couldn’t tell if the aircraft was commercial or military—it was wrecked, smashed to shreds, the paint burned off down to bare metal fuselage and the skeletons of the wings. I trudged through the wreckage, trying to find a clear path across, but the snow was thick; it gave way to reveal hollows where debris had created cavities. Too dangerous.
I turned to find a way around.
Chasers.
Four—no, six of them. A pack: six men, not much older than me, but gaunt, malnourished-looking in the dull moonlight, with dark rings around their eyes. Had they seen me? Had they been following me just now? Tracking me? Hunting me? Our positions on the food chain were clear and I had no choice but to act like the prey that I was: I ducked down low and ran.
34
Terrified. Petrified. Stupefied. I hid among the wreckage, not far from where I’d seen them, and was still, as still as I could be. I dared not breathe. I could see a frozen arm before me, sticking out from the snow. It was the color of the night sky. I started to retch, something I’d recently discovered I did when faced with utter fear. I did everything I could not to vomit, to remain silent. The back of my throat itched. My eyes ran with tears.
I felt them nearby, felt their movements around me, heard their shuffling, their murmurs. A piece of aircraft, wing or fuselage less than a hand’s span thick, was all that separated me from them.
I closed my eyes and listened, tried to place every one of them with my ears. One, two, three, four . . . Were there four or six? They could step around and I’d be trapped, my back against this cold metal sheeting, with no way out.
I remembered a movie about a plane that crashed on a remote snowy mountain in South America somewhere, the Andes maybe. It was based on a true story, and the survivors of the crash had to eat the bloated, frozen corpses of the other passengers to stay alive. I wondered if Caleb knew about that? Many of those who survived the crash succumbed to cold and injuries. Those who lived through the ordeal had only done so by eating human flesh. For more than two months they were up there in the freezing mountains, alone.
Behind me, the noises of the Chasers were becoming slightly clearer; muffled shuffling, heavy breathing. I was gripping this piece of fuselage—part of a wing, I think—that was balanced on a steep incline, and I had to be careful not to slip, the ground below had been gouged out and a deep puddle of filth had filled it. I was shielded here from view, the wing hiding me in the shadows of the carnage.
The longer I stayed, frozen to the spot, the more details emerged about the scene that spread along the street. This was like some kind of mass extermination rather than a plane crash; nothing was an accident on this new earth. Aircraft didn’t drop from the sky into a dead city like this—did they? Had they been in transit and not known what had happened here, did they eventually run out of fuel and try to land? No. I bet they’d been shot down.
I’d seen and heard fighter aircraft in the opening days, even on day twelve.
It would be so easy to direct my violence at the Chasers, to go back to 30 Rock or Caleb’s and tool up with some serious weapons, then cruise the streets, shooting them one by one, for keeps; to lessen the danger with violent acts of my own. I could kill with the best of them. I could feel entitled to do so because I knew who I was: a survivor. A goddamn survivor. Who the hell were they?
I had dreamed about one Chaser I’d seen from 30 Rock. I saw his face in so many of those bloodthirsty, opportunistic others. He was a symbol for what I feared. For all I knew, that Chaser was already dead, but his face was burned into my memory. The enemy is this germ, I had heard Caleb say. Maybe, if it came to it, I could beat that Chaser. But a germ?
I zoned out, meditated myself away from the noises, from what I imagined were mouths closing over flesh. I pictured Caleb here with his huge shotgun, blasting away at these monsters one after another, but then my thoughts spun out of control and I realized the Chasers were coming thick and fast—out of nearby buildings, up from the subways—an endless supply, until there would be so many of them we’d be overrun.
Damn this place. Damn it and all it contained.
And, most of all, damn whoever did this, whoever carried out the act leading up
to this, all those responsible. Billions of cells of human beings, reduced to just another form of carbon. Why would anyone have done this? What a waste.
I wanted to be anywhere but here.
I stayed there, still, for fifteen minutes or more, moving myself around so that I had my back to the fuselage, the cold aluminum no longer burning my bare face.
I scanned around, searching the shadows for movement. I heard nothing around me; there was nothing but empty space. I was alone. I let myself slide down to the ground, where I fell in a heap. I sat there on the ledge, my legs hanging down, my toes near the filthy bog below. My arms felt like dead weights, hanging useless by my sides. My legs were asleep from being wedged at such an angle, the fingers on my left hand were red and swollen and my palms ached with cold. My hands shook as I looked at them, bare, and I put my gloves back on. I stared at the emptiness surrounding me, listening. The rustling of animals nearby—I saw a dog shoot across the street, followed by another. The crack-crack of a couple of distant rifle shots to the south.
I headed east, to distance myself. The night was clear and the moon was out. I passed a burning apartment block on Lexington and 71st: a five-story signal fire. Flames licked from the windows, belched out the front door in rolling splendor. It soon spread to its neighbor, a cancerous cell. I used the light to check the map: Caleb’s parents’ house was on the next block east.
There were two people about fifty yards away. I couldn’t be certain whether they were survivors or Chasers, but I saw them watch the fire, take turns to drink from the gutter like animals and my suspicions were confirmed. I had the Glock in my right hand. I could not feel my left hand. I could not feel anything.
Turning to look back down the street, in the warm glow of that fire, I could see those two desperate Chasers. They were standing where I had been, watching the flames, feeling their heat. Little separated us. My heart sank and I knew then, as I had known before, that I would never preempt violence.
