Survivor

by James Phelan

  I kept moving, flicking on my flashlight to check the numbers on the green canvas awnings over building entries. Looking for a sign of my friend, in one of these buildings, somewhere here.

  Building after building, lobby after lobby, was empty, the street barren save iced-over wrecks and lumps of snow covering the dead.

  Is this where the world ends? Is this how? Does it just snuff us out, one by one, until there’s just no one left?

  I tried to snap myself out of thinking this way. The cold was getting to me.

  I walked on south, trying to stay alert, remembering that we would all leave this place, head north, away from all this.

  A noise. Something breaking, glass maybe, in a building across the street. I ran over, my flashlight off, my back against the wall as I closed my eyes and listened to the sounds in the lobby.

  That face from two weeks ago, looking up at me after he’d drunk from a warm body, flashed through my consciousness. That face I could never forget. Perpetual evil, death at my door.

  The chill of the brick wall crept into my bones. Everything became silent and I looked back up the street at that glow of the building fire. I took a deep breath, and armed with my flashlight and pistol, I moved away from the wall and looked around the doorway into the lobby—to come nose to barrel with a gun.

  “Please—don’t shoot!”

  35

  “Jesse?”

  “Caleb!” I shouted, relieved. “Please, put the gun down.”

  He did, and I shone the flashlight around inside the lobby. It was just the two of us. His coat was undone, his face flushed. He pushed over a coffee table. He screamed. He smashed the butt of his rifle into the plaster walls, knocking holes everywhere. I let him rage, let him vent. He broke the glass windows of the lobby. Smashed them all out.

  “Caleb . . .”

  He was punching at the wall with his fist and hit a timber stud hard. He cried out in pain and slid to the ground, his back against the wall. He was out of breath, his head between his knees, and he cried. For a long time he cried. I watched him. I didn’t know what to do. I felt helpless. I waited by the open doors, keeping an eye on the scene outside.

  “They’re gone! They’re gone!” he said, over and over again. Finally there was silence as his sobbing petered out. He picked up his shotgun and walked out to the street. I followed him.

  “Caleb,” I said. “Mate, I’m so sorry.”

  Caleb didn’t respond, but sniffed loudly and coughed. He aimed his gun and shot at a car, then a building, pumping out live rounds, smashing glass and metal, everything in sight. He blasted away until the gun was empty and then he stuffed a hand into his pocket and reloaded fast.

  I zipped up my coat and followed him and his wrath down the street, along 71st and back towards that building that was on fire. I hoped those harmless Chasers out the front had gone. I knew I had to distract him somehow. I knew this kind of brutal loss changed you forever.

  “Hey, Caleb,” I said, my hand tight on his arm. “I need your help.”

  “How can I help you?” he screamed, pulling free. “I couldn’t even help my parents!”

  “Caleb—”

  His eyes locked with mine and he came at me, pushing me over. “You made me do this!” he yelled. “I’d be happy to have never known what was in there, what had happened at their apartment. You made me see it all!”

  I looked up at him, my friend, being pulled apart by his anger.

  “You had to see it.”

  “Bullshit!”

  “You had to, sooner or later,” I said. “This is your city. You can’t ignore what’s happened.”

  “You think that’s what I did?” He started pacing.

  I sat up on the ground. My friend’s face lit by the moon.

  I said, “It’s hard and it’ll get harder before it gets easier.”

  Caleb was silent.

  “What’s happened is a tragedy, Caleb. I feel it too, but I can only imagine how hard it is for you. But it’s what you choose to do now that counts. It’s up to you, but I’d rather you didn’t give up now—we need you.”

  He turned his back to me and paced some more. He shot at another car, just once, but it felt half-hearted. The rage had passed.

  He put out a hand and helped me to my feet.

  We stopped at the next intersection. I heard something far off in the distance. I watched the sky. Was it an aircraft, or just my tired ears?

  “Caleb!” I said. “Listen!”

  I switched off the flashlight. The two of us standing in the expanse of Park Avenue, looking south, the moon lighting the street like a runway, exposing the carnage that was spread out before us.

  “Do you—”

  “Shh!” he said, his head tilted to the side.

  I knew he heard it too. A rumbling. Getting louder in the crisp night air.

  It was cold and sad and bleak and too much. There was an explosion somewhere, several blocks south. Big. It started a chain reaction—boom boom, boom boom. It went on for twenty seconds or so, no more than a second’s pause between each blast. The ground shook. A car alarm went off somewhere—that was a first. It could have been anything, but nothing good.

  “Come on!” Caleb yelled, and I ran after him.

  We sat crouched behind a car that had crashed into the sidewalk, and watched Park Avenue, all lit up now with burning fires, some raging, some sparking, some smoldering and smoking away into the night.

  “Look,” he said. “A vehicle.”

  I knew what it was: “It’s another military truck. Like the one that was attacked when I first met Felicity.”

  “And that’s not all,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Sounds like a drone,” he said, looking from me back over the trunk of the car, the truck now three blocks out.

  “A what?”

  “A Predator or Reaper drone,” he said, not taking his eyes off the truck that was coming our way, its lights off, driving blind. “A UAV—Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. Doesn’t make sense, though.”

  “Why?”

  Caleb looked at me. His face white and suddenly much older than mine in the moonlight.

  “Because they’re ours,” he said.

  That thought hit me hard.

  “See what I mean?” he said, reading my expression. “Why would we attack our own troops like that?”

  Then, before we could say anything else, the buzzing got louder. The aircraft—the drone—was coming in. It was above us in a second and flashed overhead from the north, deafeningly close, a flash of orange from under its wing and an ear-splitting explosion.

  36

  “Come on!” he yelled, and suddenly I could hear explosions and shooting and the rumble of the truck’s engine at full throttle.

  We ran across Park Avenue, low to the ground, the truck now just a block away and heading towards us fast. I skidded to a stop; Caleb lost his footing on the ice and slid hard against a wall. He grabbed at his knee and stifled a scream. I rushed to help him.

  “You okay?” I said, picking him up.

  “Argh!” he said, hobbling next to me with his arm around my shoulder and taking cover just inside a blown-out lobby. “Knee’s wrecked.”

  “It’s bleeding,” I said, seeing the blood on his hands.

  “Yeah.”

  “Can you walk?”

  “I’ll be fine,” he said, putting his weight on his good leg, leaning against a wall and loading his shotgun. “The soldiers were shooting out from their truck . . .”

  “Yeah, but at what?” I said, peering around the stone column of the foyer, the truck finally passing us.

  Visible inside the open back was Starkey, the soldier who’d spoken to me, leaning against the big container, shooting out at—

  “Down!” Caleb said.

  We both saw them. Chasers, a dozen of them, running towards the truck. One was shot and fell in front of us, squirming for a moment on the icy pavement before facing us.

  I gasped.
“It’s a woman,” I said, taking a step farther back into the foyer.

  “Yeah?” Caleb said, not looking away from her as she laid there, still.

  “This is the first time I’ve seen a . . . a female Chaser, up close.”

  “You thought it was just men?”

  “This violent kind, yeah . . . I thought maybe they were that way because they were already violent or something . . .”

  Caleb pumped the shotgun’s forward grip, readied to fire.

  “Guess it’s best not to assume anything, hey?” he said, and we stood back up cautiously, the truck slowing to nudge vehicles out of the way.

  The Chasers rushed after it, but the soldiers fired back, causing three to fall. Most of the others dived opportunistically on the fresh offerings, but several held back—and then they scattered, two groups splitting away from the chase then taking cover, as though frightened.

  “What are they—” I stopped. The face of one of the Chasers crouched there, bending behind a snow-covered wreck; it was that face I’d never forget, that face I saw in my dreams, that face I’d seen through binoculars from all that way up in 30 Rock. He looked away from the truck, but instead of facing us, he turned and looked up to the sky.

  A buzzing, whining. I knew that sound. We all knew it.

  Somewhere overhead, coming in, closing fast . . .

  “Predator drone’s coming in!” Caleb cried, and we ran back out to the street and away from the kill zone.

  Above us, wings illuminated by the fires that ran down Park Avenue, the unmanned aircraft seemed to hone in to attack. We had only covered a quarter of a block, hugging the buildings, when the blast and shriek of the missile sounded as it tore overhead and then—

  KLAPBOOM!

  37

  Friends. Hope. I can see it all . .

  I slipped out of my thoughts and heard gunfire and screaming, felt heat, movement as if I was being dragged.

  I can see my three friends, the friends I used to know, who’d stayed with me to get me through . . .

  I heard a scream and could feel myself being shoved along the icy ground, forcing my eyes to blink open. In that briefest of seconds I could see a face, but then I slipped away again.

  I’m in 30 Rock.

  “Dave!” I yell into the empty room. “Anna! Mini!”

  No answer. “Dave! Anna! Mini!” I call their names over and over.

  Silence.

  “Jesse! Don’t move! I’ll be back!” Caleb’s voice loud in my ear, yelling, and it reminded me of my father, of home. A reassuring voice, it gave me hope. I began to see how my idea of home had been too simple: it was where my family was. I was beginning to think I knew where they were.

  I sucked in a deep breath; intense pain, as though I was swallowing fire. I coughed and rolled onto my side to see feet shuffling past me in near darkness and the flickering orange light of fire, but no sound. Someone lay on the ground next to me, still.

  Dave’s joke—he never finished telling me on that subway ride. “What happens when you get those people and put them together?” That was the gist of it: four different people, what would you get? I knew now: friends for life.

  I can join them now . . . But Rachel and Caleb are out there. Them and me, and Felicity, makes four. A group, a community, hope. Enough of a reason to go on. I’ll figure it out. I have to. I’m a survivor.

  “Caleb!” I cried, slipping back into consciousness. I could hear gunfire and screams, the crackle-bang of rounds going off in the fire-engulfed remnants of the truck. There was movement from the shadows to my left and I was knocked onto my back. I slid along the icy pavement, crashed against a car, then felt a weight on me.

  A Chaser, dried blood down his front and more around his mouth, still wet, fresh, glistening from a recent feed. He was on me, pinning me down. I could see he had teeth missing. I strained to push him up and away, my hands on his chest as he clawed down at me, scratching my face, pulling my hair, desperate for more. His breath was overpowering, enough to make me retch.

  I pushed up with everything I had.

  BOOM!

  His body went limp and he slid away.

  I propped myself up on an elbow, looking at the mayhem unfolding. Caleb was there in the street, with his shotgun aimed. Caleb had saved me.

  I yelled his name, but it came out hoarse and barely audible.

  He dropped his shotgun, ran over to the overturned truck, still burning, and started dragging a wounded soldier away from it.

  Is that Starkey? No, it’s another.

  Caleb slipped and got up, dragging the man faster, hobbling and struggling with his knee. To my right, three Chasers—running straight towards them.

  “Caleb!” I yelled, louder this time. He looked at me.

  I reached into my coat pocket for the pistol—it was not there. I looked around me, but I couldn’t see it anywhere.

  The soldier in Caleb’s care was missing an arm. His other was wrapped around his rescuer as they headed for me, the three Chasers converging fast.

  CRACK!

  A Chaser fell, the gunshot from my left. I turned to look, it was Starkey. He was propped up, firing from where he sat with his back against a wall. He flicked the bolt on his rifle and aimed again.

  CRACK!

  Another down. The third stopped, looked at the threat, then ran off out of view.

  Caleb’s wounded soldier sank to the ground. I got to my feet in time to see him take his last breath. Caleb was shaking him, telling him to get up. The two of them were backlit against the blazing inferno of what was left of the truck. Its bare frame and the fridge-sized crate were all that remained.

  I ran over to Starkey. I saw he was bleeding badly, his hand bloody from where he’d been clutching at a wound to his stomach. He looked up at me, surprised, with recognition.

  “What can I do?”

  “Get out of here!” he tried to yell at me, his voice hoarse.

  “But I can help.”

  “The truck!” he said. We looked across to its shell. Caleb was there, still just a few feet from it, the soldier in his arms. “We have a missile in there, in the back!”

  I looked at that fridge-sized case on the bed of the truck, flames licking at it.

  “A missile?”

  “An unexploded missile from the attack!”

  I had the image of what it would look like, as described by Caleb, crashed up against a wall in that building.

  “Caleb!” I yelled. “Get over here!”

  “Listen . . .” Starkey said to me, his voice weak.

  I bent down to hear him. There was blood foaming on his lips.

  “When it explodes,” he said, “it will release the biological agent, you understand?”

  “What?”

  “When it gets hot enough, it will blow—it will be like the initial attack on this city.”

  I got it.

  “You’re too close, it’ll get you, you’ll turn into one of them, understand? Get away.”

  “Caleb!” I shouted.

  “Understand?”

  I nodded.

  “Run!” Starkey yelled, shoving me backwards. “You can’t stay here! Run!”

  He picked up his rifle and I started to back farther away, away from him, from Caleb, from the truck.

  I ran half a block, turned at the corner and looked at the burning street that led south, started moving again and looked back. Caleb was a black shape against the flames as he dragged another wounded man from the inferno.

  “Caleb!” I yelled again. “You have to—”

  KLAPBOOM!

  I was blown back against a wrecked taxi, but quickly gathered my strength to get to my feet. I saw the fireball mushroom into the sky and I scrambled over the cab and ran to the next corner to catch my breath. It fogged in front of me as I watched the scene.

  Where’s Caleb?

  I could just make out a couple of figures moving on the ground among the debris. I backed away. How far would this biological agent sprea
d? How fast?

  I kept running down the street.

  Something flared up near the explosion site where the truck had been and I looked back and saw Caleb get to his feet.

  “Caleb!” I yelled, but he didn’t hear me, so I started back in that direction and a fire flashed bright again and I saw . . .

  Caleb. At the dead body of a soldier. Drinking him.

  38

  This is not happening. He can’t be . .

  I shook myself awake. I crossed the street, and approached my friend in disbelief.

  Empty eyes stared back at me, through me. Nobody there. No recognition. Nothing. Just blood around his mouth and an unnerving fixation on me, maybe even on the blood spatters on my face. I knew for sure then that no matter what, even if it came to my own life or his, I could not kill him. Not how he was before, not how he was now. He was my friend.

  Caleb.

  I knew that in the aftermath, more Chasers would arrive en masse, drawn towards the scent of the newly dead. They would be on them, on whoever was left, drinking them, like sharks attracted to blood in the water.

  I ran.

  Why did I have to see him like that? That, as my final image of him.

  I wished I had not known. Anything, anything would have been better than what was burned into my mind’s eye at that moment.

  I arrived at the bookstore. The door was as I had left it. I pushed it open, fished around in the dark, tripping over several times on the mess of gear he had piled in there. I had to collect supplies if we were ever to escape this nightmare.

  I slid down to the ground, sitting so I could peer out the crack of the open door to the street outside. Quiet in here, just the sound of me catching my breath in a big empty room. I looked around me, the flashlight beam searching.

  I took a new backpack from its plastic cover and filled it: a few flashlights, packets of batteries, a couple of pistols and a box of live ammo, some bottled drinks and some chocolate bars. I stuffed in a few clean clothes, all too big for me; they had been stockpiled by Caleb, my friend.