The Stone War

by Madeleine E. Robins

  “What happened to them?” There was no laughter in McGrath’s voice, just a kind detachment that made it easier to speak.

  “I don’t know. Irene probably kept them in her apartment until it was too late. I saw what happened to their building. If they were in there I don’t see how they could have survived.”

  “You don’t know, then.”

  He thought about it for a moment. “I know. They’re dead. I don’t know how I know, but I’m certain of it.”

  She didn’t question the statement. “You weren’t with them. You and your wife divorced?”

  “Almost four years ago. No, I wasn’t there.” It felt like a confession, enormously difficult. “I was away when this happened. It took me until this morning to get back into the city. I was so certain that nothing could really touch them in that goddamned fortress they lived in. The boys—” he stopped. His throat was thick with anger. “Shit. I should have been here.”

  “You don’t think you could have kept it from happening, do you?” For a moment Tietjen heard Frank Corliss’s voice in McGrath’s words. That same dry common sense puncturing his self-pity. “I saw it, some of it. Even if you’d been in the city, downstairs in the lobby of their building, even, there might not have been any chance for them. It was too damned fast. Random. And too—” She stopped.

  “Too what? What did happen? What did you see?”

  “All I saw was what happened in the subway. And only in that one station. I mean, I don’t know what happened in other places, other subway stations. By the time I got out—”

  “What happened where you were?” Tietjen interrupted. “I’ve been trying to understand, piecing things together that I’ve seen.”

  “I was going downtown to a harp recital at NYU. A friend of Ellen’s was playing and she sent me the ticket. Ellen is my younger girl; I was staying at her apartment, sitting for Dermott. I don’t imagine Ellen ever took the subway when she could avoid it, but I rather like them; must be because it’s a novelty for me. Country girl. Do you know the Lexington Avenue station at Seventy-seventh Street?”

  Tietjen nodded.

  “I thought I’d given it plenty of time: that line is always slow. There was quite a crowd waiting. More as the wait went on—late rush hour, you know. Both the guards were up at the token booth chatting with the girl in the booth—I remember because I thought they’d be in a hell of a lot of trouble if they were reported. After a while I thought I heard the train coming; I could see the light reflect on the tiles at the end of the tunnel, you know the way it does. It took me a moment to realize that it wasn’t right. It sounded wrong. What I heard was angry voices, kids’ voices, like a whole group of kids walking in the tunnel.”

  Tietjen thought of the crowd that had passed above him in Westchester, that angry roiling sound of a human sea. He nodded again.

  “I thought someone should make them stop. I thought, they’ll be hurt when a train finally comes. But the guards didn’t seem to hear anything, just went on talking with their rifles slung over their shoulders. And it got more wrong. I really wasn’t sure if I was just going crazy or what. Something changed about the air in the station, or the light, everything seemed to be moving, the air shimmered around everything. I couldn’t tell if the motion was a train coming; it just felt like a rumbling in the air itself, just a motion, as if the air was rippling through me. I’m not saying this well.”

  “You’re saying it just fine. Don’t stop.”

  “I thought maybe I was having a stroke: my ears were ringing. Things had an aura. I knew that what was happening had to be more than just a gang of kids on the track. And there were kids on the track, not a handful but dozens, carrying lanterns. That’s what the light was. I saw them just before it happened. Gang boys in leather jackets and headbands and those helmets, carrying lanterns and flashers, yelling.”

  McGrath stared at nothing as she spoke. Tietjen shook his head, not disbelieving, trying to follow the vision that held her.

  “I started backing away. At last the guards came down from the booth and had their rifles out. I didn’t want to be in the middle of that.” She pushed a lock of white hair behind her ear in an absent gesture. “You know that birds and animals are supposed to know when an earthquake is going to hit? The dogs howl and the horses become frantic, birds startle and just keep flying? I felt like that. I knew something was about to happen. All I could think of was that I had to get away from that track. That’s probably what saved me: I was already up the stairs and crouched down beside a big metal garbage bin. When it really started I could hear the screams of those kids on the tracks; the last thing I saw was the walls of the tunnel just closing up on them like a hand. That was when I really thought I was going crazy.”

  “Why?”

  She did not answer immediately. “For a moment. For just a very little moment, I was closing that hand on those boys. I could feel them between my fingers, I could hear them screaming. I was glad to feel it. Then I saw what was happening, and I knew it wasn’t me, but I couldn’t stop it happening, and—A girder hit the garbage bin and wedged me in between it and the wall. I thought that was it. Everyone around me was dying.”

  She rubbed insistently at a patch of tar on the back of her hand. “When I got to the Met, do you know what that crazy man lured me in with? Hot running water. And he didn’t even have cold water. Do you think there will ever be hot showers again?”

  Tietjen thought of places distant from New York, the Connecticut countryside he had driven through, no signs of disaster save those which the refugees brought with them. That might have changed too, by now. “I’m sure of it,” he lied.

  She looked at him, saw him this time. She smiled.

  “How old are your kids, John?”

  “Chris was seven. Davy was five.” He did not notice the shift in tenses from her present to his past. “Good kids, you know? Sound, I mean. As good as any kids with parents as far apart as Irene and me.” He let himself see the boys, Davy’s face shining up at him, open like a small, serious flower; Chris watching him sidelong, looking for small cues and shared secrets. He relaxed against the crate, thinking. Then roused himself. “But you must have lost—what, a grandson? How old was he?”

  McGrath looked puzzled. “Grandson? Oh no, Dermott: Ellen’s cocker spaniel. I was dog-sitting. Since Ellen was away it was a nice opportunity to come into the city. Better than bringing the damned dog out to Cos Cob—”

  “That where you live?” He pictured orderly houses on half-acre lots; quiet streets. He could see a neat white-haired woman living in one of those houses, being mother, Scout leader, volunteer. What he did not see was McGrath as that woman. Too many odd angles and unexpected corners, despite the smooth exterior. An oddball.

  She was talking. “—wouldn’t get out under any circumstances. Never saw a lazier animal in my life. As for grandchildren, none of my kids have had kids. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? I thought I was a pretty good parent, all those years. Ellen’s in Majorca on a company jaunt; when she hears about New York the first thing she’ll do is think of Dermott. The second thing she’ll do is to arrange to move to San Francisco. New apartment, new dog.” Her tone was almost painfully dry.

  “Ow.” He could not think of anything else to say.

  McGrath leaned back next to him, gingerly at first, as all her motions seemed to be, testing the reality of the structure before she would trust it. Then she relaxed fully. “I’m being honest. I love Ellen, but I don’t kid myself about her. Kids do take you for granted, and that’s okay. But it can get to a point where it’s not okay, and it went way past that point with Ellen and me, years ago. My fault; probably all my fault. I hold on to hope too long.”

  One of the candles flickered, then guttered out. The basement room seemed colder in the dimness. Tietjen could not think of anything to say; when he thought of his own kids what he remembered most clearly was their expression that said he was unfathomable; loved but unfathomable. He would never have a chance to m
ake himself understood.

  “So, what do we do tomorrow?” McGrath asked out of the dimness, startling him with her assumption of complicity.

  “I hadn’t planned anything specific. Start salvaging and wait for rescue troops to show up, I guess. You have any ideas?”

  “Salvage sounds good. I could use a little of that. How long do you think before the army or someone—”

  Tietjen shrugged. “The last thing I heard, the president was waiting for a formal request from the city governor. Wherever he is.”

  “In other words, we’re probably on our own for a few more days.” McGrath stretched. “Then definitely, some sleep is in order. How wonderful to sleep lying down—that was the worst thing about being tied up, I think.”

  It was as if her words triggered all his muscles into a state of rubbery fatigue. “Shall we camp here tonight?” He hoped she would say yes.

  “Of course. I’m too tired for any adventuring right now.”

  Better the devil known than something worse unknown and unplanned for. “Let’s see what we can find to make this place a little homier.” He offered McGrath his hand. After a moment she took it and got to her feet carefully. They began to investigate the cellar again.

  There was not much of help: some bundles of ancient newspaper, dank and yellowing; three split cushions from the banquette seats in the dining room, the stuffing plumed out of the tears and smelling of mildew.

  “Better than nothing,” McGrath said doubtfully. Tietjen nodded. While she tidily stacked the dishes they had used to one side of the stairway, Tietjen laid out the cushions, covered them over with a thick layer of newspaper. “Wish this were the sort of place that used tablecloths,” he muttered. McGrath grunted agreement.

  At last they bedded down. The cushions were every bit as uncomfortable as Tietjen had expected they would be. He lay in the dark, listening to unfamiliar sounds of near silence, the woman’s breathing, a dripping of water from somewhere.

  “John?” Her voice was young in the darkness. Tietjen wondered how old she was.

  “Yeah?”

  “Go to sleep. We’ll start in the morning.”

  Tietjen fell asleep.

  5

  TIETJEN and McGrath found an apartment building on Fifth Avenue and East Seventy-second Street, one he had admired for years for its graceful entry, the granite stringcourse that separated the second and third floors, the hokey cast garlands and escutcheons above the windows on the upper floors. They stood on the street looking at the building, trying to read it.

  “Does it have what we need?” he asked McGrath.

  “What do we need?” she asked back. From a pocket she took out a pen and a distressed, scribbled-on envelope and made ready to take notes.

  Tietjen thought. “Space. Water. Drainage. Adaptability. Power’s probably impossible right now, so don’t worry about that. Uh—ease of cleanup—” A squeamish way of saying Not Too Many Dead Bodies. “Can you think of anything else?” he asked.

  “Not really. I won’t know the stuff we overlooked until it’s critical.” She smiled crookedly. “Should we go in?”

  They slipped in between the fractured steel grating that webbed the first floor, and went exploring. The lobby was dim; no power meant no lights, and the grating and debris in front of the building kept out much of the sunlight; still, they could see enough, and in the doorman’s desk they found flashlights. They played the lights over a civilized grouping of couches and armchairs, the marble-fronted doorman’s desk, fake Art Deco light fixtures, marble-tiled floor. The lobby branched left and right to two stairways; the elevator was on the right. There was an elderly woman, several days dead, wedged in the door of the elevator; her coat was soaked with blood but Tietjen didn’t see a wound. His stomach lurched at the sight, and he knew they would have to get her out, carry her body away.

  “I hope I can do this,” McGrath said, a step behind him. “Let’s—let’s come back to her, shall we?”

  They backed away and found that the left-hand stairway led to the basement. They went looking for the super’s office, and found it and the super himself, a neat, white-haired man slumped over his desk, unmarked by death. The master keys for the building were in a case over his desk, carefully labeled. Twelve floors, seven apartments per story on all but the first, which had three—eighty all told. For a moment the two of them stood looking at the keys and the super, knowing they’d have to lug him up from the basement. Eighty apartments, maybe with bodies in all of them. Tietjen quailed at the thought, but said as briskly as he could, “Let’s check the rest of the basement first, then go up to the top and work our way down.”

  The rest of the basement was clear. With jumbles of keys in their pockets, Tietjen and McGrath climbed thirteen stories—and then another: Tietjen wanted to check out the roof. The building had a good-size water tank; Tietjen climbed up the rickety steps to peer in and was pleased to see that it was nearly full, and that the water didn’t seem brackish. Even better: the building next door, which was several stories higher, also had a water tank. Maybe they’d be able to siphon water from it, too. McGrath sat on the roof, leaning against the doorway, her foot holding the door ajar just in case, and watched him without comment.

  “So, is the news good?”

  Tietjen smiled. “So far, the news is good. We’ve got a starter water supply.”

  It was nice on the roof, the sun was shining and gave a little warmth, and the wind wasn’t too stiff. If he went to the street-side he had an unimpeded view across the gray, skeletal shadows of Central Park, and beyond to the West Side, which was a mystery of silent buildings that glittered in the sun. Tietjen was reluctant to go downstairs hunting for bodies, but the day was already several hours old.

  “You game?” He offered McGrath his hand to pull her up. She took it with a firm, cool clasp and stood at once.

  “I kinda gotta be, don’t I?”

  So they started searching on the twelfth floor. The first three apartments were empty, but in the fourth they found another body. Like the super, this one looked peaceful and there were no marks on him that Tietjen could see. It wasn’t pleasant, though: the smell in the room was nauseating, and the body was bloated, pale, and icy cold. Tietjen found himself swallowing over and over again, just looking at the thing; he had never touched a dead human. He turned to look at McGrath, and saw that she was rummaging through a closet. He thought for a moment that she was deserting him, losing it, having some sort of justifiable breakdown at the thought of moving the body.

  “Sheets,” she said tersely. She was pale, and kept her eyes on Tietjen when she worked, but she found a couple of sheets, shook them out next to the corpse, and knelt at its feet. “Let’s roll him up, and we can carry him by the ends.”

  Tietjen blinked, then went and knelt at the head of the corpse. “You’re brilliant,” he said as lightly as he could—while not breathing through his nose.

  She shook her head. “Squeamish. On a count of three?”

  They rolled the corpse onto the sheet, rolling it over and over. Tietjen kept expecting arms and legs to break off or the belly to split open and spray them with blood and ichor, but the body was cold, solid, and—as they found out when they started to drag it out of the apartment—very heavy. They left windows open when they left, to air out the smell, then went down the hall to look for more bodies.

  In the end, they were lucky. The next two bodies they found were like the first—awful, but normally awful. Then they found one which was something much worse: a young woman with tumors all over her body, gray, semisolid things that grew out of bloody sores. One tumor spread across the lower part of her face, and Tietjen thought she must have suffocated on it; it was scarred, and her fingernails were bloody, as if she had tried to rip it away. Neither Tietjen nor McGrath said anything for a moment. Then McGrath mumbled “Excuse me” and went out into the hall. For a minute Tietjen stood where he was, afraid to interfere but just as afraid that she might run. He followed and found her
in the hallway, crying. The ghostly white shapes of the three sheeted corpses they had dragged down from upper floors lay near the stairway, and seemed in the darkness of the hall to give off a dull light.

  “I’m sorry,” McGrath said. “I’ll pull myself together.”

  Tietjen patted her shoulder awkwardly, not knowing what would help. “I was hoping you’d let me cry too,” he said as lightly as he could.

  She turned her face up to him and smiled tearily. “That is very sweet of you. You can cry if you want to, but I’m okay now, really I am. If you want your turn at bat—”

  He shrugged. “Well, maybe I’ll cry later. I want to get this done today. I don’t want to sleep with that in the building.”

  “Amen,” McGrath said. They went back to work.

  There were only fifteen corpses, and of those, only three were stomach-turning grotesqueries. It took them until midafternoon to search the whole building, wrap the corpses, and drag them downstairs to the lobby. Tietjen’s stomach was growling, but he could not handle the thought of food with so much death around them.

  “So now what?” Barbara asked.

  “Get them out of the house, burn ’em,” Tietjen suggested.

  They found a building across the street where one side had collapsed, leaving a pile of rubble and a small clear space. Tietjen found a furniture dolly in the basement, and they loaded up the corpses three at a time, rolled them over to their burning pit, and went back for more. Every muscle in Tietjen’s body ached unbearably, and he was so used to the sickish smell of decay that the cold air outside was almost a shock. They stacked the bodies on top of each other, and Tietjen realized he didn’t have matches.