“You did good.” Jessie said and dipped his cupped hands in the water to wash his face.
“What happened to you?” she asked “Did you fall in a dumpster full of guts or something? Ewww. What’s that in your hair?”
“Come here, I’ll show you.” He said and took a step towards her.
“Gross, no.” she said and started back paddling. “You need a real bath, I can smell you from here.”
Jessie splashed her and the girl giggled as she turned into the slow-moving current and joined the others as they paddled for the pickup point across the river. They probably could have paddled back up stream to the island but it would have been hard going fighting the current the whole way. Much easier to angle across and toss the canoes and kayaks in the back of a truck.
“We’re finished.” Wallace said as she came down the embankment. “Boat’s loaded and a few of the deaders found us. They’re stumbling along the tracks, there’ll be more in a few minutes.”
Jessie doused his head in the chilly water, ran his fingers through his hair to comb it out then followed her onto the gangway, untying the ropes as he went. With her help he unfurled the sails and set a course up river. They were fighting the current and the wind but he zig zagged across the water in big, easy arcs. He told her it would take them a while to get there and he could sail it by himself if she wanted to see if there was anything to drink below deck. A whiskey would go good right about now. There was nothing like strong alcohol to wash the taste of undead blood out of your mouth.
The afternoon sun was shining down, the water rushed quietly past the hull and he was feeling content. He shrugged out of his jacket and hung it up to dry as he tacked lazily back and forth across the wide river and let the tension ease out of his shoulders. He’d gone a little mad back there but it was good to get it out of his system. The subdued anger and rage that he carried always seemed to be simmering just below the surface. That feeling of being cheated that he couldn’t seem to shake no matter how illogical it was.
He had made the decision.
He had chosen to send her back.
He had chosen to stay here.
She was better off, the other Jessie was better off and he knew he had to get over the lingering resentment he felt. The wind felt good and he closed his eyes as he rested his hands on the big stainless steel steering wheel. He didn’t even miss her any more if he was brutally honest. How could he when he wasn’t even sure whose smile he was chasing? Who had the Mona Lisa smile? Had it been Scarlet or was it Maddy? Did it matter? He wondered if he could sail a boat across the ocean. Maybe down the coast and to the Caribbean. He wondered if Wallace had gotten seasick. She’d been below for a long time and the sun was almost touching the horizon. It would be night soon. He’d been planning on showing her how to sail the boat and letting her keep it. It was always good to have an emergency escape route.
Wallace had never been on a sailboat before and was a little amazed that it had a bedroom, a small kitchen and a compact bathroom down below. She found shaving cream and razors in a drawer and once she lit the pilot on the tankless propane heater, she had hot water. She hadn’t shaved her legs or trimmed her privates in over a year and it was good to shower, to have the hot water streaming over her and not a lukewarm sponge bath. The bathroom steamed up and it was glorious. She didn’t feel like a soldier, she felt like a woman again. She hadn’t realized how good it was to be clean everywhere, to give herself a quick mani and pedi and be pampered by the thick towels. It was one of the best things to happen in a long, long time when she spritzed a little perfume on her wrists and smelled something besides unwashed bodies. With her hair up in a towel she stood naked in front of the full-length mirror on the closet door. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d looked at herself like that and she wasn’t sure if she liked what she saw. She was different.
She’d been in the National Guard before, a weekend warrior once a month, but her real job had been a real estate agent. She had been in decent shape, maybe a little muffin top that was starting to get out of control, and she had been soft and curvy. The guys she dated didn’t have any complaints. She took care of her skin and spent too much money on her hair. She had been pretty and when she put on a party dress, men would notice. Now she was lean and hard. Her hair cut straight and in a ponytail most of the time. Calf and thigh muscles bulged, her shoulders and biceps were pronounced and her breasts were a lot smaller than they used to be. She cupped them and they barely filled her hands. Definitely not a C anymore. She found ladies sailing clothes hanging in the closet and tried them on. A little big but infinitely better than her ACU’s that hadn’t been washed in a week.
She slipped up the steps and watched him for a moment. His eyes were closed, his face at peace as his hands rested lightly on the wheel. Those violent hands that knew the ways of war. She wondered if they knew the ways of women. If they knew gentleness.
“Hey.” She said softly and a slow smile curled his lips when he opened his eyes. “I left you some hot water.”
“I’ll have to anchor the boat.” He said.
“I’m in no rush.” She said with a smile of her own.
She joined him in the shower, soaped his back and ran her fingers gently over the scars that crisscrossed his body. She marveled and kissed the worst of them. The gunshots and knife gouges. The slashes and roughly healed cuts and wondered at the life he had lived. Wondered why some of them hadn’t killed him. She placed her head against his chest and listened to his powerful heart thud deep and rhythmic.
“You’re not going to stay, are you?”
“No.” he said, his face buried in her hair, the hot water splashing down.
“Will you lie to me?” She asked in a small voice. “Will you tell me you love me? Will you hold me like you mean it?”
Jessie turned her face up to his and kissed her deeply. He tasted the tears running down her cheeks as he breathed in the air from her lungs and felt her need. Her desperate need to let down her guard, to relax if only for a night, to feel safe. To forget the constant struggle and worry and death that was all around her. She needed life to be normal again if only for a few hours. She needed to not remember for a while.
He carried her to the bed and on the gently rocking boat they lied to each other long into the night.
43
Mona Lisa Smile
Jessie floated serenely down the Hudson, the sailboat drifting with the current. The water was clean, it had been long months since sewage and garbage had been dumped and there hadn’t been any storms up river to wash debris into it. The New Jersey side had been razed in places; fires had burnt out of control and the blackened husks of apartment buildings were slowly being covered in ivy. He saw smoke blackened skyscrapers on the New York side but the fires hadn’t spread, they had been contained to individual buildings. There was too much concrete and steel for the flames to take hold like they had on the other side of the river.
He caught glimpses of gray hordes shuffling aimlessly on occasion but remained unnoticed by undead eyes. Every road he saw was jammed solid and when he looked through the binoculars there were still things seat belted in a few of the cars. A semi-truck dangled from the upper deck of the George Washington Bridge but the only sound was the splash of water on his hull and the gulls that called and soared above. He trimmed the sails and cut in at the 69th street transfer bridge, a derelict rusting hulk slowly decaying in the river.
He tied up then climbed across the wreckage to get to shore. He wondered again if he was on a fool’s errand. No one knew where he was or what he was trying to do. He’d only told Natty about it and that had been a mistake, he hadn’t meant to. She’d been prattling on nonstop, making up for a year of not speaking he supposed, and jumping from one song to the next on the phones.
“Oh, my mother loved this one.” She said and started singing along with Nat King Cole as he crooned about Mona Lisa’s strange smile.
“It’s in New York. I’m going after it.” Je
ssie had said without thinking.
She was worse than a Pitbull gnawing on a bone, she wouldn’t let it go. She wanted to know how and why and didn’t believe his reason.
“Because I want to.” He’d said. “I want to hang it above my fireplace.”
It took her weeks but she finally got the whole story, or enough to satisfy her so she’d quit bugging him. The painting reminded him of a girl he loved and he thought it might give him peace. He didn’t have any pictures of her, none that captured who she really was. All the photos taken at the Tower were of her in fine clothing with perfect hair and expertly applied makeup. She grinned for the camera, flashing teeth and having fun. Some snapped from Tombstone, Anselmo, the Island and other places were a hot commodity for a while. Retrievers were putting up notices and paying good coin for the few pictures that had been taken. Most had been of him; she had been in the background or cut off or partially in focus. They had wanted a picture of the Road Angel and they had been taken secretly. Everyone knew he didn’t like the attention.
Her viral popularity had sprung up from the bored citizens of the Tower. They had made her a star, turned her into an overnight sensation and it only grew when she died young. Bastille never let a good story go to waste and gave a moving eulogy. The calls started coming in and it was the same as the stories about him. Many were exaggerations or complete fabrications with an occasional eyewitness telling a true story. Those that had met her in the wastelands remembered a kind young woman who was thoughtful and considerate. They claimed she was as wicked fast as the Road Angel, killed the undead just as easily and had helped him rescue hundreds. Her grace and beauty offset his surliness and scars perfectly, they were a match made in Heaven.
Nearly a hundred different people claimed to be at Fubars and had seen them move faster than greased lightning, ready to kill everyone and everything, when the Road Angel had been startled by a friendly hand grabbing his shoulder. Bastille started calling her the Angel of the Highway, portrayed the pair as tragic and doomed lovers and her legend became larger than life. The Friends of Scarlet, young women who wanted to learn to be bold, had chapters in every walled city.
His memories were jumbled and he confused things that happened with things that happened but didn’t. He remembered a small quiet smile, one that set him at ease. One that let him know everything was going to be okay. That’s the smile he wanted to see, not her hamming it up for the cameras. The one that let him find peace and soothed his soul.
That’s why he was going after the painting.
According to a dozen different collectors in the Tower who were willing to pay a huge retrieval fee, the Mona Lisa was displayed in the main gallery of the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Art on 5th avenue. It wasn’t scheduled to be sent back to the Louvre until after the anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci’s birthday in April. It would be hanging there, encased in bullet proof glass, just waiting for anyone bold enough to go take it.
Jessie double checked his gear after the precarious scramble to dry land, let the low-slung guns find their place and tightened the straps on his pack. He’d never been to this part of New York and he’d hoped the elevated trains that had rattled by his shipping container home in the Cans ran near the museum but he hadn’t spotted any. That would have made it easy, deaders had a hard time walking on the train tracks.
Everything in Manhattan was probably underground and he wasn’t about to go down there. It had been nearly two years without electricity and they were likely full of water and rats. Fighting dried out zombies was bad enough; he didn’t want to think about tangling with a bunch of squishy deaders that had been wading around in a chest deep cesspool for a year. Besides, didn’t New York have an alligator problem in the sewers? He was going to stay above ground, thank you very much.
The museum was a sprawling series of buildings on the other side of Central park, only a mile and a half away but in one of the most densely populated cities in America. He’d seen the state of the bridges connecting the island when he came down river. Complete gridlock, cars bumper to bumper and massive pileups where panicked truck drivers had dropped the hammer and tried to force their way through on the shoulder. He imagined all the bridges in the boroughs were in the same condition. The undead were trapped, there was nowhere to go.
Jessie listened as he made his way under the elevated road and through the overgrown swath of trees but there was only the wind, a far-off flapping of torn canvas and the scree of the gulls high overhead. He made his way past a jumble of cars and walked silently down the sidewalk, occasionally climbing over a car that was parked in the walkway. He kept to the shadows, and under awnings when he could, as he watched the alleys and windows for any signs of life, whether living or dead. Some of the buildings towered high in the sky but most weren’t skyscrapers in this part of town, they were older and only stood seven or eight stories tall. Once he got a few blocks in, the wrecks and stalled vehicles disappeared. Broadway was clear and didn’t have a car on it. He thought that was odd but supposed everyone had tried to escape, bottlenecked the routes out then abandoned their cars when the undead came screaming in.
The streets were eerily empty. A few windows were broken but there hadn’t been time for looting and chaos. The people awoke to screams and screeches and those that had been outside didn’t last long. He imagined tens of thousands were still inside apartments, turned and trapped when they ate the infected meats. He peered up and down the wide avenue and a few dozen blocks up he saw the gray of a wandering horde as it ambled down the street. They were coming straight for him and the street was littered with the debris of their passing. Broken shoes, tattered bits of cloth, chunks of skin that had sloughed off, trampled jewelry, wallets and wigs. The whispering brush of old cloth, feet worn down to the bone rasping on the pavement and the creaking of their joints was a creepy, unforgettable sound. He couldn’t see the end, it was a giant, slow moving mass in continual motion that moved tirelessly down the street.
If he waited for them to pass, he’d be waiting for hours. He stepped out and started a slow shamble, moving at an angle across the road. They didn’t notice and he lumbered along until he could roll under a bus blocking the side street. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say somebody had tried to set up roadblocks back in the beginning. A few blocks later he came across more barricaded roads. The street leading into Central Park was completely blocked, jammed with cars that were bumper to bumper. He hopped over the short concrete wall, disappeared into the tall grass, hunkered low and moved faster. This wasn’t so bad. The dead had amassed into a giant horde. Their numbers were uncountable but at least they were all in the same general area and every street wasn’t crawling with them.
He stopped at the bronze Alice in Wonderland sculpture, checked the Manhattan attractions tourist map then folded it away. Central park was over two miles long but he was getting close; he should be able to spot the museum soon. In the brochure the Mad Hatter, the White Rabbit and Alice were shiny and parts of them gleamed where tens of thousands of hands had rubbed them for luck. Now they were covered in a soft green patina and weeds had forced their way up through the concrete.
He stayed on the walking trails away from the roads and came to the back of the Met ten minutes later. It was a huge, rambling stone and glass building that had been expanded over the years. He found the dumpsters by the loading docks and hopped up to the door. He pushed a stack of pallets out of the way that had been piled against it. It was key card entry like he figured and opened easily. The magnetic locks needed a constant flow of electricity to work. Another little tidbit of knowledge from Slippery Jim.
He flipped on his flashlight, pulled the door closed and made his way out of the maintenance areas. The building was enormous and beautiful with sweeping arches, glass domed ceilings, polished marble floors and filled with priceless works of art. His boots made small squeaking noises and the cavernous rooms were echoey without the hum of thousands of people that would normally fill the spaces on any gi
ven day before the fall. He passed marble statues, hundreds of paintings, knights and horses in full battle armor and paused when he saw the painting of Washington crossing the Delaware. It was massive, twice as tall as him and twenty feet long. He’d only seen pictures of it in books and on the net. He had no idea it was so huge then wondered how big the Mona Lisa was. He’d never considered it. He might have to cut it out of the frame and roll it up but wouldn’t that damage it? It was hundreds of years old, maybe the paint would flake off. He stared at Washington and his men for a long time. He was one of the Founding Fathers. Did that make his dad and Griz Founding Fathers of the new United States? He grinned. If so, then so were Stabby, Scratch and Hollywood. That ought to make a great painting someday.
He took his time, wandered the halls and rooms and saw what there was to see. It was a shame that most of this art would molder away. The building was intact, he hadn’t seen any broken windows yet but there would be eventually. Once the weather got in, everything started going bad in a hurry. He was going to have to spread the word, let the other Retrievers know how easy it was to get in. They didn’t need to learn how to sail, they could use trolling motors on small boats to get in and out. Much of the art could be saved, especially the smaller pieces that were easy to transport.
He found her in a gallery all by herself. He almost kept walking, he was looking for something grand and majestic, another giant painting dominating an entire wall but she was small and all alone. Beyond the drawn purple velvet curtains that framed the door there were velvet ropes and metal stanchions for crowd control. The people could be lined up and hurried past but they weren’t zigzagging back and forth, they were all pushed into a corner. A single chair sat in front of the painting that was illuminated by natural light coming in from the stained-glass dome above.
Zombie Road | Book 8 | Crossroads of Chaos Page 29
