by Cross, Amy
Cooper's gone.
Caroline Jones
Fifteen days ago
"She's definitely dead," Reed says, resting two fingers against the side of her neck.
It's been a few minutes since Chloe stopped moving, and I've just been sitting here, staring at her body. I've got blood all over my hands, and I can't stop looking at the flesh that has grown over the whole of her face. She looks like some kind of ghost, with no features at all, and even the slits I cut over her mouth have vanished. I feel as if I'm about to burst into tears, but as long as I don't move or say anything, I'm going to be okay. I just need to sit like this forever, and never move again.
"Do you think they'll come?" I ask eventually.
"Who?" he replies.
"The ambulance." I take a deep breath. "Do you think they'll come, or will it be like everything else?"
I don't know," he says, clearly in shock. He stares at the body for a moment. "Did she say anything before it happened?"
I shake my head.
"Caroline," he continues, before grabbing my shoulders and turning me to face him. "Did she say anything at all?"
"No."
"She didn't say she was feeling ill or anything?"
"She was drinking a lot," I say after a moment, my voice sounding weak and fragile. "I noticed she was drinking a hell of a lot. She was trying to drink when I came in."
"But nothing else?" he continues. "She didn't say she was feeling sick?"
"No."
"What the hell happened?" he asks, staring at the body. "It's like her face just sealed shut, like her body closed itself off to the outside world."
Before I can say anything, the door opens and a smartly-dressed woman walks into the bathroom. She stops dead in her tracks when she sees Chloe's body, and then she lets out a shocked gasp before turning and running back out. Once she's gone, however, there's no indication of any panic.
"It's still happening," I say through the tears. "They're still forgetting."
"Come on," Reed says, grabbing my arm and helping me to my feet, before taking me over to the sink. "We need to clean you up," he continues as he takes my hands and gently guides them into the stream of water. The blood starts to wash away, although some seems to be staying behind and he has to get some soap and start washing my hand properly. "You did everything you could," he says after a moment. "You tried."
"I should have found a way," I mutter. "I should have done something. I should have cut a hole in her neck. Like, a tracheotomy or something."
As I finish speaking, the door opens and the smartly-dressed woman walks in once again. This time, she gets almost over to the bathroom stalls, before stopping and staring at Chloe's body. Letting out almost the exact same gasp as before, she turns and runs back out.
"Every time she leaves," I say, my voice trembling with shock, "she forgets. She'll be back in a few minutes."
"This is insane," Reed mutters.
"I should have saved her," I reply, looking down at Chloe's dead body.
"You're not a doctor," he replies, turning the tap off and grabbing a towel. He takes a moment to dry my hands. "You must have been in shock when you walked in. I..." He looks down at the body, which is still on the bathroom floor, surrounded by a pool of blood. "We have to go to the authorities," he says eventually. "This is way beyond anything we can deal with. We have to go and get help."
I nod, but my eyes are still focused on Chloe's body. I've never seen anything so horrific in my life, and I feel as if all I can do is stare and stare at the blood. With all the craziness that's happening right now, I can't help wondering if somehow Chloe might magically get back up and be okay. If people can forget entire other people, and if a man named John Lydecker can seemingly be duplicated across the entire city, then why can't Chloe just come back to life and be fine again? As crazy as it seems, I can't stop myself from staring at her body and watching for any sign that she might be starting to recover.
"We should go now," Reed says. "Caroline, there's nothing we can do for her now. We need to get out of here before..."
I wait for him to finish. "Before it happens to us?" I ask after a moment.
He opens his mouth to reply, but he can't seem to get the words out.
"That's what you were going to say, isn't it?" I continue. "You think this could happen to us. You think we're going to die like that. Why shouldn't we? If it happened to Chloe, it can happen to us too!" Starting to panic, I realize that at any moment, my mouth could start to seal shut, and then I'll end up on the floor, suffocating in my own skin. Everything Chloe did in the past few hours, Reed and I did too, so it stands to reason that we're going to be next. "I can't die like that," I say, starting to hyperventilate. "I can't -"
Before I can finish, the door opens and the same smartly-dressed woman comes strolling into the bathroom for a third time. She stops immediately and stares down at Chloe's body.
"No!" I shout, running over and grabbing her before she can leave. "Look at her!"
"Caroline -" Reed starts to say.
"Look at her!" I say firmly, holding the woman in place. "Do you see what's happened to her?"
"I don't..." She stares at Chloe's body. "Is this, like, some kind of special effect? Please tell me it's a special effect!"
"It's a dead body," I tell her. "She died in here a few minutes ago."
"Caroline, don't do this," Reed says.
"I'm making her remember!" I shout, still holding the woman in place. "I'm making sure that this memory goes so deep into her mind, she can't ever forget what she's seen!"
"Let go of me!" she says, clearly starting to panic. "This is assault! If you don't let go of me, I'm going to call the police!"
"You have to remember!" I tell her. "Look at the blood! Look at her face! She suffocated! She died in agony, in fear and pain, right here!"
"Get off me!" the woman screams, pushing me against the wall before turning and running out of the bathroom.
"Do you think she'll remember?" I ask, staring at Reed.
"We need to get out of here," he says, sidestepping the question.
"What about her?" I ask, looking down at Chloe.
"We'll leave her here for now," he continues. "We'll make sure someone comes back for her. We'll tell the police, and they'll come and move her body."
"We can't leave her here," I tell him, shocked at the idea. "We can't just leave a dead body on the floor of a bathroom!"
"Come on," he says, hurrying over and grabbing my arm before leading me out of the bathroom. "We'll get someone to come and move her," he says as we head through to the main part of the coffee shop. "For now, we just need to move as fast as possible."
"Wait," I say, stopping as I see the smartly-dressed woman standing over by the counter.
"I think there's something wrong with your bathroom," she's telling the guy who works here. She sounds a little irritated, but it's clear that she doesn't remember what happened. "I went in, and..." She pauses, and for a moment she seems a little confused. "I don't know," she says eventually, "but you need to fix it, whatever it is." With that, she turns and hurries out.
"Did you see that?" I ask, turning to Reed.
"We're going to the nearest precinct," he replies calmly. "It's almost 7am. We're going to find someone, and we're going to tell them what happened, and we're going to make sure they don't leave us. Okay?" He waits for me to reply. "That's our plan, Caroline. It's a good one, and it's going to work. Do you understand? We have a plan now."
I nod.
"Come on," he continues, leading me by the arm as we head out into the cool New York morning, which is already getting busy. "Don't look back. Just focus on the fact that we're going to sort this all out."
Taking a deep breath, I allow him to lead me along the sidewalk. In a strange way, it's comforting to see that the city seems to be running normally. There are people hurrying in all directions, making their way to work, and it's clear that despite everything that's happened over the past
twenty-four hours, the world doesn't seem to be falling apart. I'm just going to have to trust that Reed's right when he says that we can get to the bottom of everything, and I still haven't dismissed the idea that somehow Chloe might come back to life. Right now, given -
Suddenly I stop in my tracks as I see a familiar face coming toward us through the crowd.
"Caroline?" Reed asks, turning to me. "What's wrong?"
"Lydecker," I say, staring straight ahead and watching as Lydecker walks toward us, with his eyes fixed on me. He's wearing exactly the same clothes that he was wearing in Reed's apartment earlier, and he has one hand tucked inside his jacket.
"It's okay," Reed says as he spots him. "Just -"
Before he can finish, Lydecker pulls his hand out from under the jacket and aims a gun straight at us. No-one else seems to react as he fires, sending Reed tumbling to the ground. I open my mouth to shout for help, but Lydecker is just a few meters away now as he turns the gun toward me and fires again. I feel a sharp pain in my shoulder, and I'm send reeling back down onto the sidewalk, smashing the back of my head as I land. Barely able to stay conscious, I stare up as Lydecker stands over me and aims the gun straight at my face.
Part Three
Countdown
Dr. Stef Grant
Today
"Gone?" Lacey says, staring at me with a shocked look on her face. "What do you mean, gone?"
It has taken me at least an hour to get back to the ticket hall. There's so much water flowing along the passageway, I had to move at a snail's pace, holding onto the railing and inching forward. With no light to help me see the way, I was forced to rely on the hope that by moving against the incline of the gently sloping corridor, I've eventually get back up to the ticket hall, and at one point I had to negotiate a fork in the path. Finally, I saw the faintest hint of light up ahead, and by the time I got back to the hall, there was a hint of sun lighting up the top of the steps, and I saw Lacey cowering by the entrance. When she saw me, she stayed where she was, and I had to fight my way across the hall until I reached the bottom of the steps.
"He's gone," I say again, barely able to comprehend the enormity of my words. "He's..." I pause as I replay in my mind, for the thousandth time, the moment when Cooper was swept past me. "He's not coming back."
"You mean the zombie guy?" Lacey asks, clinging to hope. "Or..."
"Both," I tell her. "They were swept down into the deeper tunnels. They must have drowned by now." As the words leave my mouth, I feel a shiver pass through my body. My haz-mat suit has kept me dry, but I'm cold and in the back of my mind I'm vaguely aware that there's a danger of hypothermia, but all I can think about is Cooper. He's gone. After all those years, and after everything we went through together, he's gone.
"Well, we have to..." She pauses. "We have to... Are you sure?"
"He was swept way down into the station," I reply, setting out the details as much for my own benefit as for hers. I need to be absolutely certain that there's no chance Cooper could have survived. The one thing I can't handle right now is uncertainty, or the thought that he might be trapped somewhere down there. In the circumstances, drowning would be the quickest and least horrific way for him to have died. "The whole system's flooded," I continue. "Once he was under there, in the dark, there's no way he could ever have found a way out."
"But maybe he found an air bubble," Lacey stammers, refusing to accept the truth. "Maybe -"
"Then he's going to suffocate!" I say firmly, interrupting her. "He's going to be trapped there, in the dark, running out of air, maybe even trapped with that thing, whatever it was, and..." My voice trails off as I try, for a moment, to imagine how awful it would be if he had found an air bubble. "No," I say finally. "The odds of that happening are a million to one. Less, even. The most likely thing is that he was swept underwater, maybe unconscious if he was lucky, and he drowned. Simple. It's already over."
"But we have to -"
"No!" I say, raising my voice. "Just accept it! He's dead! If he's not, then he's going to die slowly and even more painfully over the next few hours, so let's just hope that he died quickly!" I pause, and in the gloom of the morning sun I can see the moment of realization spreading across Lacey's face. "It's better this way," I continue eventually. "At least he didn't suffer too much. It was relatively quick. Not like..."
"Not like what?" she asks after a moment. "Us?"
"We still have a chance," I reply, my voice trembling.
"So if I get swept down one of those passages," she says, "would you come and look for me? Or would you assume that I was dead as well?"
"It'd be suicide to go back down there. There's nothing we can do to -"
"I thought he was your friend," she replies.
I stare at her for a moment, feeling a kind of cool anger settle throughout my body. "If you keep up like this," I say eventually, "I might just throw you down there. Got it? Getting out of here is going to be tough, but at least there's a chance. You need me, so maybe you shouldn't be going out of your way to piss me off. Barring an absolute miracle, there's no way Cooper could ever have survived going underwater down there, and I for one do not intend to torture myself by clinging on to the hope of a miracle, especially since it would only mean that he'd die more slowly and more painfully, with more time to be aware of what was happening to him. If you can't deal with that, at least shut up."
We stand in silence for a moment, with the only sound being the howling storm that continues to rage above-ground.
"We can't stay down here," Lacey says eventually.
"At least that's something we're agreed on," I mutter. "Our only chance of survival rests on finding Sutton and the boat. Cooper was right when he said Sutton would have made for shelter. He's almost certainly somewhere nearby, and he's got food and water. We can wait out the storm if we just manage to get to him. We're going to need to signal him. Give me the gun."
"What gun?" she asks.
"Your flare gun."
She stares at me, looking as if she has no idea what I'm talking about.
"We each had a flare gun," I reply, sighing at her complete lack of preparedness for this mission. "Cooper and I used ours in the tunnels. You have one in one of the compartments of your suit."
"I don't think so," she says helplessly.
Figuring I don't have the energy to argue with her, I reach down and feel for the flare in the left leg of her suit. Sure enough, I quickly find the compartment, unzipping it and pulling out the flare. "See?" I say. "Flare."
"Wow," she replies. "What else is in this thing?"
"The flare will work in the rain," I tell her. "It'll only last about a minute, but if Sutton sees it, he'll send up his own flare, and that's how we'll get a rough idea of where he is. We'll then follow his flare until we find him."
"In the storm?"
"In the storm."
She pauses. "What if he doesn't use his flare?"
"Then he's asleep, or dead," I reply. "Either way, he should be keeping an eye out for it. He'll be expecting us. Given the weather, it's not as if he could have just turned around and left. He is somewhere around."
"Okay," she replies, "when do we launch this flare?"
"No time like the present," I tell her, before grabbing hold of the opposite railing and starting to make my way up the steps. By the time I get to the top, I pause for breath, and I see that the storm seems, if anything, to be getting worse. The scene is one of utter desolation: rivers of water are flowing rapidly along the street, and many of the trees in Battery Park have been blown over. I swear to God, it's as if the storm is determined to wash away the entire city. "Wait here," I say to Lacey, who has joined me in the entrance of the subway station. "If we're lucky, there should be some good news pretty soon."
Without waiting for her to reply, since her opinion is completely irrelevant to me, I start wading out into the street. A strong wind is whipping the driving rain all around me, but at least the flow of water isn't strong enough to sweep
me off my feet. I struggle to get out into the middle of the street, and eventually I turn back to see Lacey sheltering in the entrance to the station. To be honest, there's a part of me that's scared to fire this flare, because if Sutton doesn't reply by sending up his own flare, our situation is going to start looking much worse. Scouring the waterside for the boat will be a nightmare if we don't have some clue as to where we should start. Still, I'm not going to give up. Whatever else happens, I'm not going to let myself die out here.
Holding the flare gun up and aiming at the sky, I can barely keep my eyes open as the wind and rain continue to howl around me. Finally, taking a deep breath, I pull the trigger and a bright white-and-red ball of light flashes out of the gun, shooting higher and higher until it explodes hundreds of meters up above the city. I watch as the flare is tossed about by the storm, but so far it's working. For a couple of minutes, it burns in the maelstrom before finally, inevitably, it starts to die, and eventually I watch as the last embers fall back down. Now, there's nothing to do but wait. Hopefully, Sutton has seen the flare, and even now he's struggling to find a flare of his own. If all goes according to plan, it should only be a minute or two before Sutton responds.
I wait.
Nothing.
"There!" Lacey shouts suddenly, her voice barely audible above the howling wind.
Turning, I see that she's right. A white-and-red flare is shooting into the sky from somewhere to the north-west of our position. I stare in wonder at the flare as it burns, and finally I allow myself to believe that it's real.
"Is that him?" Lacey shouts.
I nod, my eyes still fixed on the flare.
"Where is he?"
"I don't know exactly!" I shout back at her, as the flare starts to die. Finally, I turn to Lacey, who's still cowering in the entrance to the subway. "Sutton's alive!" I shout. "We have to go that way! We have to find him!"
