by James Phelan
Will he come back here? Will he remember this place?
I pushed those thoughts from my mind and flicked off the flashlight, looking out of the door, up and down the street. No movement, no sign of anyone, not even Chasers.
I couldn’t take the bike, not in the dark, not right now. I’d come back for it, maybe tomorrow.
I flung the backpack by the door, ready to take with me, and shone the flashlight up to the top of the stairs. I pocketed Caleb’s notebooks. I moved to leave, then turned back. I wrote another hope note, this time in big block letters on the whiteboard. I only hoped he’d be able to read it.
Five minutes later I was out on the road, the weight of the backpack and a can of gasoline in each hand slowing me down. I made it a block before I had to take a break, but soon I reached the corner of Fifth and 57th, the view north clear, the faint popping of rifle rounds going off in the heat of the explosion just audible.
Or maybe someone was still there, fighting.
I took a deep breath. The zoo was about seven blocks away. I pressed on, thinking of nothing but how the straps of my laden bag were cutting into my shoulders, how Rachel would need this extra gas for the generator, how loud my breathing and heartbeat sounded. How much my head ached. How good it would be to see Rachel and Felicity. How it would feel to see the smiles of my friends.
I’m not afraid to be alone.
And I’m not on my own. Never have been, never will be.
39
I stopped, just for a moment. Heavy cloud cover swept in, the moon packed away for the night. I waited for a silence that would not come for my breathing and heartbeat and the sounds carried on the breeze that came from the east. An occasional gunshot. A single, dull explosion. A stifled scream.
My legs were shaking, but I had made it. The stone pillars that marked the stairs down to the arsenal building at the zoo. I collapsed to the ground, on my hands and knees, then sat there in the snow, looking up and down Fifth Avenue, at the whiteness around me. It was hours old and untouched: no one had passed through here in a while, perhaps not since I had left.
I had no energy in me. It was tempting just to rest for a bit, but my friends and their warm company were just a few more steps away. I looked down the stone stairs, slippery with ice. I stood, and slowly made my descent; legs wobbly, head throbbing, hands aching.
What will I find here?
I banged again on the front door, the broken glass rattling. I could see myself in the reflection, but I couldn’t see beyond the barricade I’d built—yesterday? This morning? Was it still today?
I could hardly stand and it took everything I had to climb those few steps up to the entrance. If the girls did not hear me, I’d have to sleep out here for the night. I did not have the strength to haul myself up and over one of the tall steel fences. Here would have to do. I rested my head and closed my eyes. A moment later I jolted awake.
“Hello?” I tried to yell their names, but the sound that came out was weak and barely made its way into the building.
I sat there by the doors. I shone the flashlight around, but then switched it off, the nothingness that surrounded me melding with the night. I felt a lump under my hand, on the ground. Curious, I flicked the flashlight back on.
A little black pebble lay there next to me in the snow. It was worn smooth, almost translucent, like that volcanic glass Apache Tear I’d dreamed about. I switched off the flashlight, removed my right glove and put it in my hand. It felt warm.
Just then, I was bathed in light. Felicity appeared, shining a flashlight down to where I sat on the doorstep.
“Jesse,” Felicity smiled, “hang on, I’ll help you.”
They helped me get warm by stoking the fire ablaze with sparking split logs wrapping my shivering body in blankets, and rubbing my back. Hot sweet cocoa coursed through me and woke me up.
I told them about the entire evening; about hiding in the plane wreck, and finding Caleb at his parents’ place. And then I told them about the explosion of the recovered missile—and what it had done to my friend.
“Caleb was in the wrong place . . . he was just trying to save a wounded man,” I explained. “He just wanted to do something good, you know? He just wanted to save something.”
Felicity had been staring at me, her eyes wide, but at that she burst into tears. Huge sobs shook her small body and I moved to comfort her.
“He’s—He’s one of them,” she said, over and over.
Rachel just sat there, silent, staring into the flames. “It’s not safe here anymore,” I said, facing the fire. I turned to Rachel. “I’ve tried to be patient, but we have to move now, Rach. It’s time we left. We need to find the other survivors at Chelsea Piers and head north. It’s the only way.”
Felicity was quietly nodding, backing me up, but Rachel didn’t respond.
“Rachel? Don’t you see? We can’t stay here anymore,” I said again. “The Chasers are getting smarter every day. They know how to get in here now. It’s only a matter of time before they do it again. And maybe next time they’ll find us—it’ll be one of us dead, not just an animal.”
Rachel finally met my gaze. Her eyes blazing with anger.
“Not just an animal?”
“You know what I mean.”
“It’s the Chasers and the—the whoever-the-hell are piloting those aircraft, they’re the danger, they’re the problem.”
“We can’t defend against them, Rach, you know that,” I said. “Not the three of us here.”
“And what about the animals, Jesse? What about them? You think I can just leave them here? Just walk away and leave them? You know I can’t go, and I won’t. This is my life, this is my choice.”
“Rachel, please . . .” Felicity reached out to her, still sobbing, but Rachel stood up and pushed her away.
“No!” Rachel yelled. “Ever since you arrived, both of you, you’ve done nothing but talk about leaving. So leave already! I’m not stopping you!”
I stood. “And you’ll just stay here, alone.”
“I survived this long.”
“You’re not listening!” I said. “This isn’t yesterday, or last week—it’s getting worse.”
“I’ve made my choice and I’m staying.”
“Well, have you stopped to think that this is not just your life, Rachel?” I asked. “It’s not just your choice. You think I can leave you here alone? Think we can do that? You think that’s an easy thing to do? You’re being selfish.”
“Jesse, if Rachel—” Felicity started but Rachel cut her off.
“No, let me make this easy for you, Jesse: I don’t want you here anymore. Don’t need you. Everything was fine before you showed up, and now look! I was fine on my own before, and I’ll be fine on my own again. Go and look for your group, go and be with your Chaser friend! I’ve got enough here to care about.”
She stormed from the room, the door banging shut behind her.
I’d finished packing, there was nothing left to do. Felicity sat in the corner, watching. Rachel was nowhere to be seen.
“You’re not coming, are you?” I said.
Felicity sighed. “You don’t need me, Jesse. Rachel does.”
I nodded. “Is she okay?”
“She’s keeping busy, which is good,” she said. “She’s trying to take it in, but I think it’s good, for her own sake, that she really knows what the stakes are now.”
“That death’s around every corner?”
“That and worse.”
“Yeah,” I replied. “Do you think she’ll come and say good-bye?”
Felicity shook her head.
“Tell her not to worry about me.”
“She will, no matter what I say.”
Felicity came in close and kissed me on the cheek, pausing beside me a little longer than she had to. She was warm, her lips so soft. Outside, it was a black predawn, full of snow and wind. But when she smiled again, the day brightened.
“You know,” I said, “you’ve got t
he best smile.”
She beamed. “Thanks. Yours is awesome too.”
This isn’t home. There’s a voice in my head. It’s me, a part of me, but I cannot control it. It questions and reasons and rationalizes, and it remains—eternal as that southern hemisphere sunshine I imagine will be waiting for me back home. Madness? Who’s to say? Maybe someone will call it that some day, some psych-something head-shrinker, some school counselor, maybe even my dad. Cool. Let them all analyze me and let me be there with them, wherever it is that they are, listening, talking, basking in that glow.
Felicity and Rachel need to stay on at the zoo for now, caring for the animals. I get that. I know Rachel doubts Caleb’s revelation; the prospect of a whole group of survivors seems unlikely, given that the three of us remaining have only had contact with each other all these days. But I believe him, trust him; I have no reason not to. I want to meet the group at Chelsea Piers. I want to get home and the safest way for that to come about is to be with as many survivors as possible. I have to find out what happened at home, just as Caleb had to—to hell with the consequences or what it might take.
I’ve waited too long for help that has not come. It’s eighteen days since this city was attacked, and there has been no relief, no help on the horizon, no armada or airlift to offer salvation to those of us who need it. Bombs or missiles or whatever have rained down and in the hour it took me to emerge from a subway tunnel the entire city was devastated, but that wasn’t the worst of it. Eighteen days since has shown me the worst. And I know now that at least one of those who survived, uninfected by this virus, has been infected since. I cannot become like that; having survived days and weeks battling whatever’s thrown at me only to become one of them.
Who knows what I might find on this trip. I’ll be looking for a group of survivors and the only evidence of their existence is that my friend Caleb told me about them. Not in great detail, but he told me there was a group and that they had been talking about leaving this place. If they’re there, as he said, they’ll want to leave, just as he said. If they’re not there, then they’ll have already left. The possibility is enough for me.
I will be alone again but, hell, we do it all, everything, on our own. We enter this world alone and we leave it alone.
Meanwhile, I walk these streets full of hope. I may be the killer and the victim, but there’s more to me than that. I’m a survivor.
The story continues in
Quarantine
The final installment of the Alone series, available
October 2013!
Keep reading for a sneak peek at the exciting
conclusion . . .
1
We buried the snow leopard in the morning. The three of us stood in the mist that came with the winter’s dawn, the empty streets of Manhattan as quiet as they’d ever been since the attack. The lonely gray light sucked the color from everything but it was all we had to work by as we dug into the earth. A dark stain of frozen soil covered the animal’s mate, who we’d buried just the day before, two lifeless forms in stark contrast to a blanket of fresh white snow.
It was Felicity who insisted on the funeral, not Rachel, the animal’s caretaker. Maybe it was Felicity’s way to keep me here a bit longer, in the hope I’d change my mind about going; or in the hope that while I stalled here a miracle would come—rescue by whoever was left. Not that we knew who was left, not for certain. That’s why I needed to leave the safety of these fortified zoo grounds, yet again. Exploring the unknown was our best chance for survival.
In the snow-leopard enclosure of Central Park Zoo we held a little ceremony of sorts, silent and stoic. Felicity didn’t cry but Rachel did—just falling tears, no sound of sobbing. My two fellow survivors, standing next to me, remembering these beautiful animals that had never done anybody any harm, killed by violent figures in the night, those with an unquenchable bloodlust.
There was a bang-crash of a building coming down, probably nearby on Fifth Avenue.
“That was close,” Felicity said, spooked.
I nodded, words obliterated, for the sound had roused all the animals left in the zoo, waking them from their mournful chorus into a symphony of alarm, as if they knew that their tickets out of this life were loosely hanging chads.
“I hate it when they do that,” I said, close to Felicity’s ear, the cries of the birds and the sea lions assaulting my own. It was like trying to hide from Chasers near a car and setting off the alarm—it drew unwanted attention. In a silent city, we were now clearly in focus. “On such a clear morning, this sound’ll carry all through the park . . .”
So far this morning the Chasers had stayed away, as if out of respect for the properly dead. I was kidding myself by thinking that—they didn’t need emotions, just as they didn’t need normal food or shelter or warmth. At least, that was true of the predatory Chasers, the infected who would hunt you down, the ones who’d survive. Ironically, those whose contagion was wearing off—who were technically getting better, their faculties returning—were worse off. By the time they improved enough to find food and shelter, it would be too late; if the aggressive Chasers didn’t pick them off, one by one, the harsh winter would.
If my friend Caleb was one of the weaker kind, I could search him out, look after him. But he was a bloodthirsty Chaser, and there was no reasoning with them, as I knew from experience. The only resolution to a conflict with them was death. Was there any hope for Caleb? Probably not. Could I give up on him? No.
My packed bag was on the ground. I’d been ready to bug out of the zoo when the leopard died, but now I had doubts. I felt guilty about wanting to leave. I’d tried my best to calm and soothe Rachel. She’d said harsh words, what I felt might be final words . . . and then all our conviction, on both sides of the debate, came undone with the sudden ceasing of a heartbeat.
How callous that sounds, but that’s what it had come to: the death of an animal and what came with that had kept me here.
At the thought of leaving, my body felt weak with exhaustion. This time, I told myself, it would be different. It had to be. All I had been doing these past two weeks since the attack was moving from one false touchstone to the other—from 30 Rock, to Central Park Zoo, to Caleb’s bookstore, looking for a safety that was no longer possible, if it ever had been. I told myself I was helping, I was doing good, getting one step closer to escaping, to getting home . . . when all I’d really been doing was retracing my steps. Now I needed to make progress, real progress, before—
Before what, exactly? Maybe the uncertainty was the worst part. About twenty percent of New York’s cityscape had been destroyed in the initial attack. But every day since then there had been new fires and explosions, buildings falling one by one, here and there, as if to remind us that there was more to come. There was another act—maybe several more—to be played out. They weren’t finished with us yet—whoever they were.
“You should sleep,” Rachel said, jolting me out of my thoughts.
Neither of us had slept in the night and we both had full days ahead. “So should you,” I replied.
“I’m not the one going out there,” she said.
“I’ll be fine.”
“Well, at least rest for an hour, then go.”
“I can’t,” I said. “There’s no way I can sleep right now.”
She wiped the back of her sleeve down her face, her breath fogging in the cold. We watched Felicity trudging towards the main building, heading off to rest. Or maybe she was giving me and Rachel time alone. I got the feeling that Rachel had something she wanted to say to me.
“Rach?”
She looked at me, her eyes wet.
“What’s up?”
“Jesse . . . you know it wasn’t your fault right?”
“What wasn’t?”
“What happened to Caleb.”
“Yeah?” I said, crossing my arms around my chest. “Well, I brought us all together, didn’t I?”
“Jesse—”
&nbs
p; “I coaxed him into finding out what had happened to his friend, his parents, so I have a right to feel just a little bit responsible.”
“Everything—everything you’ve been doing these past few days has been for us, for our survival.”
I’d tried to do the right thing. I’d spent so long denying the reality of events myself I could recognize the same behavior in Caleb. You need to feel it, I told him, remembering that I’d forced him to visit his parents’ place. He hadn’t been able to express the horrors of what he’d found but it was pretty clear he’d seen more than he needed to. It had reminded him just how much he’d lost—he lost everything; he’d lost it all.
Then I remembered.
“He—he ran to help that fallen soldier last night,” I said. “He ran into harm’s way, to help a stranger. I—I might have run away from the danger.”
“What are you getting at?”
“He ran to help. I didn’t. I didn’t know what to do. All I did was run. So when Caleb needed me—when he really needed me—I failed him.”
“But there’s nothing you could have done to prevent it.”
Her words hung in the air for a moment and my breath steamed in front of my face as I studied the newly disturbed dark earth and deep snow in front of us.
“You weren’t there, Rach.”
“It was beyond your control,” she said.
“You didn’t see that blank look in his eyes. You didn’t see him feeding on that dead soldier—drinking him, like some kind of wild animal.”
“But I know how you feel.” She looked at me hard. “Just like what happened to my leopards here; taken from me. Could I have stopped it if I was out here that night? No. They would have killed me too.”
“Caleb was protecting me, Rach. Don’t you see?” I walked around the enclosure. “It could have been me—it should have been me, if any of us. I’m the one who’s been itching to trek out of this damned city. I’m the one always pushing—”
