by James Phelan
“Jesse, are you okay?” Daniel asked.
“Yeah,” I said.
“You’ll be fine. But I think it’s best if you don’t tell the others about what happened to Caleb just yet. It’ll . . . spook them.”
“Yeah, okay,” I said. It seemed reasonable enough, since that news carried a weighty fear: Be wary of being out in the streets, for, if your luck’s run out, you just might become a Chaser, one of the damned . . .
Bob waved us through the open roller door. Daniel drove forward, pulling the monster vehicle inside the base of the complex. We got out as the big steel door slammed shut behind us.
Inside the receiving bay, by the glow of the headlights and some handheld flashlights, I could make out a group of people headed towards us: about a dozen women and men who quickly made short work of lugging in the gear. Everyone greeted me in passing.
Practically everyone wore evidence of survival: some had their arms in casts, another couple limped past on crutches. No one’s face was unblemished by a bruise or scar. I imagined how misplaced Caleb must have looked, sailing in on his gleaming motorbike, looking young and fit, maybe even confident. Of course, I knew what was on the inside, but had they seen that?
“Hi.”
“Hello.”
“Hi.”
Despite all that had gone on in this city, inside these words was a little piece of normality, of people making the best of being survivors. As I watched them shuttling about, stowing the gear we’d brought, it pricked the hairs on the back of my neck in a good way. Just like sharing information with Bob and Daniel, this sight—of survivors so happy to see me and to see a fresh batch of supplies—made me wish I had more to give. There was a girl about my age, maybe a bit older; I almost tripped because I was looking at her while trying to lug in a bin of food with Bob handling the other side.
“Hey, watch it, little buddy,” Bob said.
“Sorry.”
He grinned, catching me looking back at her.
“What?”
“Nothin’.” He was still all smiles and I felt my face flush red. “Yep, there’s still girls around.”
I was embarrassed. “I know.”
“She’s nice.”
“Shut up.”
He laughed. “Ah, to be a teenager again. Better you than me.”
We dumped the food down in a hall full of supplies, where a couple of people inventoried and sorted the new stock. It was warm and dry in here, so different from the building back at the zoo where Rachel and Felicity would be hunkering down to weather this storm.
“Come on, I’ll show you around,” Bob said.
Up a level, there were chairs and couches scattered throughout a reception area, people lounging and resting, talking and listening, reading and playing cards. Their enjoyment was infectious. A group of kids ran about, playing some kind of tag game. Carried on the breeze of an open door out onto an Astro Turfed pier-turned-golf-driving-range was the heady smell of a barbecue, which made my stomach groan and my mouth salivate.
Around a corner behind a screen were a couple of people lying on makeshift gurneys: closer, I could see that they were patched up with bandages but they didn’t seem too badly off. Bob noticed a drop of blood fall from my gloved hand as I put it into my pocket. Even though I was among many wounded, I didn’t want to signal the weaknesses that could overcome me at any minute. I was alone, after all, just one person who maybe would need to act with the strength of many to persuade them to part from their safety net. The safest way to get home was to head north—because the contagion was worse in the warmer climes—and be among as large a group as possible. We couldn’t wait for more attacks and for the Chasers to become more ruthless.
“We’ve got a doctor here,” Bob said. “I think he should take a look at that hand.”
“Surgeon, actually,” a tall, tanned man said. He was fifty or so, taut leathery skin with an orange-ish tan, thick black hair brushed just so. “I’m Tom.”
“Jesse,” I said. I noticed that the pretty girl I’d seen in the receiving bay was watching me from across the room, talking to three younger kids. She was shorter than me, and had sandy-brown hair in a ponytail. Cheerleader kind of pretty.
Tom addressed me as he put on latex gloves and used scissors to cut my torn glove off.
“Sorry?” I asked, through gritted teeth as he poked and prodded.
“I asked you if you were planning on staying here.”
“I, ah—”
“He’s sheltering with us until the storm passes,” said Daniel, falling in next to me. “Then he can decide what he wants to do.”
“Your hand will be fine. It needs a cleanup and dressing; I’ll have someone attend to it.” He put a wad of gauze on my palm, then took off his gloves, and tossed them into a bin and moved on to the other patients.
“Don’t mind him,” Daniel said. “He likes to seem important—first impressions and all that.”
I understood. “Yeah, that’s cool.”
“Come on,” Daniel clapped a hand on my shoulder. “I’ll introduce you to some friends.”
He gestured to Bob, who was back to filming his documentary or whatever. I followed Daniel, who seemed to be headed for that girl, and I tried to do my best not to make a fool of myself. I remembered getting tongue-tied when I’d met Felicity, but surely that was the effect of finally meeting her after days of longing for her company, right?
What was so special about this girl? She was pretty, sure, but I couldn’t let myself be distracted by her. I had good reason to be here now, and I’d make sure they all soon knew that we had good reason to leave.
We approached the group of teens. One guy, thirteen maybe; a girl his age who was strikingly similar, and another who resembled the comic-book guy from The Simpsons.
“Paige, this is Jesse, our guest for the day,” Daniel said. “Paige’s father is Tom, who you just met.”
It was her eyes that entranced me and it took me a few seconds of staring to figure out why: not just the perfectly shaped almonds, the long dark lashes: it was her irises. They were different colors, one brilliant blue, the other a dark green-brown.
“Oh, okay.” Damn. Why did she have to be related to him? “Hi.”
“Hey.” Paige looked at me as if I was a novelty, some kind of new toy.
“Paige, could you show Jesse around, get him sorted out for lunch?”
“Sure,” she said, a little too chirpy.
“Your father’s getting someone to see to his hand.”
“I can do that,” she replied, all smiles.
Daniel clapped my shoulder again, and left for the terrace looking over the pier into the murky Hudson River. Bob stayed behind, filming me, Paige and the others nearby. He crouched a little and slowly panned around in a tracking close-up.
“Bob, you can stop that now,” Paige said. He did as he was told and went in search of something else to document.
Paige produced a medical kit and opened it on the table. “We’ll get you cleaned up,” she said, her chair facing mine, taking my hand in hers.
“Okay,” I said.
Paige’s hands were small, soft but cold. She was well-tanned compared to others here but a similar tone to me—it was summer back home in Australia. I flinched when she touched me, her fingers on my hands and wrists, ticklish, electric, real.
“Hurts?”
“A little,” I said. I felt my cheeks blush. I tried thinking of cricket. “Where are you from?”
“L.A.,” she replied. She washed my hands with a damp cloth, using sterilized water from a plastic medical squeeze bottle, cleaning out the grazes, reopening the deep cut on my palm. I couldn’t stop looking at her face, her skin, her eyes. Every now and then she’d connect with an exposed nerve ending and I’d cringe.
“Might sting,” she said, spraying disinfectant on my hands.
“Ouch.” It hurt but I was glad—it took my mind away from her smile.
She stuck some bandages on the heels of my
palms, which I’d grazed raw. She wrapped the hand that was still leaking blood in a tight padded bandage.
“Job done.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“Feel okay?”
“It’s great,” I said. My hands were painful, but they rested gently in her lap, held by her own, as she looked into my eyes. Her expression was full of doubt. Not her own, I realized, but a reflection of mine.
“What is it?”
“It’s—nothing,” I said.
In leggings and a tight sweater, Paige’s look and manner reminded me of a couple of the popular, untouchable chicks back at school, the ones who always seemed way out of my league; but here she was, here we were, talking. I decided not to look at her body anymore. As we got up and made our way through the room I tried to keep next to her, in stride, and said “Hi” to at least a dozen people she introduced me to.
“Hope my dad was nice to you.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“It’s just he’s so busy, running around treating everyone who passes through here,” she explained. “He’s, like . . . frustrated I guess—like all of us, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“You wanna put your pack over there?” she asked, pointing to the doors that led to the terrace.
“Okay,” I said. I put my pack down next to some others, hung my FDNY coat over it, looked at the Glock pistol’s handle hanging out the side pocket. I reached for it—
Her tanned hand touched my arm as if to hold me back. “You won’t need that here,” she said. “We’re safe here. If that’s what you’re worried about.”
“Oh, no, it’s cool. I’m just—”
“You’re just—what?”
In that moment, I’d lost any ground I’d gained between us. How could I bring up what I needed to say? I just want to know if you guys will leave with me—as a group, safety in numbers and all that.
“Hungry?”
I smiled, saved from the moment. Be patient. Get to know them. “Yeah, starved.”
“Come on then,” she said, reaching out to lead me by my good hand. “I’ll show you where the food’s at.”
5
I don’t know why I hesitated to leave the gun behind—we were safe behind these walls, with all these people, right? I nodded, and took the pistol out, ejected the magazine, pulled back the slide so that the round in the chamber popped out. I tucked the empty pistol deep into the backpack’s side pocket, zipped it up tight, then pocketed the ammo.
“I just thought—I mean, there’s kids around,” I said, “and I’m used to always having it loaded and—”
“It’s cool,” she said, smiling. “Come on, let’s get you fed.” I followed Paige down the walkway, into a putting green where the barbecue was set up. There were a couple of guys cooking away—they had piles of the cooked meats I’d smelled stacked up on a table, while others served people with scoops of pasta salad and tinned vegetables. There were literally hundreds of condiments on another table, where people queued and helped themselves to pickles and sauces and sauerkraut; another table had stacks of cups and giant steaming urns labeled COFFEE, TEA, COCOA. People sat around in little groups, chatting and eating, a constant hum of conversation.
“What is it?” Paige asked.
I looked across at her, realizing I’d just been standing there inside the doorway, watching, my mouth hanging open like I was catching flies.
“I . . . I’ve kinda dreamed about coming across a place like this.”
“Like this?”
“A refuge, full of life,” I said. “I haven’t seen so many people like this, not for ages. And they’re all—they all seem, so—”
“Normal?”
I nodded.
“That’s a cycle on a washing machine.”
I smiled.
“Normal. It’s a cycle—”
“Right, got it,” I said, following her inside.
“I so understand if you want to sit on your own,” she said. “If you’re a bit shell-shocked by all this.”
“No, not at all,” I said as we approached a table. On the way in we collected a plateful of food each. We sat down next to a woman whose ears were wadded with gauze, with a bandage wrapped around her head like a headband. It reminded me of bodies I’d seen, of people who’d bled from the ears and eyes, as if the concussive force of the explosions had expanded inside their heads. I’d seen a lot of things that I never wanted to be reminded of.
“Jesse, this is my stepmom, Audrey,” Paige said. Audrey smiled at me. She was pretty, far too nice-looking to be with Tom. Paige wrote something on a little spiral-bound pad and Audrey read it and looked at me and said: “Hi Jesse.”
She put out her hand and I shook it. It was soft and warm. She looked at my bandaged hand, where the blood had soaked through, with concern.
“Drink?” an older lady asked me. She stood by our table, with a tub of little juice boxes.
“Thanks,” I said, taking an apple juice. Paige took one too. The old lady winked at me as she left.
I ate a piece of steak with some fried onions and tomato sauce, a big slice of fresh warm bread on the side.
“Have you not eaten in a while?” Paige asked.
“I have, but . . . it’s—I was going to say, ‘it’s a long story,’ but I guess it’s just that I’m hungry and exhausted today,” I said through a mouthful, then I made myself slow down. I tried to eat with more decorum, to give a better impression—but then I bit the inside of my cheek. I hid my pain with a drink of juice and tried to smile.
“Where have you been living?” Paige asked, reading off her stepmother’s pad. Pity, I’d have liked her to ask such a question of me of her own accord.
“30 Rock, mainly,” I said, eating some pasta salad. Oh man, this food was good—plenty of basil pesto, cheese, and olives. I added some dried chili flakes.
“30 Rock—as in the TV show?”
“Um, I guess that’s where they set it—there’s a TV studio in there,” I said. “It’s the GE Building, at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. Big and safe, above the city. I stayed on the sixty-fifth floor, the Rainbow Room. Great view—and there’s observation decks above that. Well, I mean the view wasn’t great—but it’s high, you can see a lot from up there.”
“How does the city look?” Paige asked.
I put my fork down for a moment, and described the destruction I’d seen. She wrote all this down for Audrey. Audrey smiled, gave a little nod of approval, and said in a little, tired voice that clearly couldn’t hear itself: “How—many—people—were—you—with?”
“None, there,” I said, picking at my food now, pushing it around, my appetite disappearing as the memories rose inside me. “It was just me. I was on a subway when the attack happened—”
I told them my story. Not from the optimism of my initial airplane ride from Melbourne to New York, nor those first few exciting days of being in this bustling city, the introductions when I arrived at the UN leadership summer camp, making unlikely but cool friends, but from the moment of the attack—that moment when we all became the same, when we all could be labeled survivors. I told my story from when I emerged from the subway tunnel, to describing in more detail what I’d seen from 30 Rock.
Then I explained about Anna, Mini, and Dave. Of all the kids on the UN Ambassadors camp, the four of us had got along best. We’d become a good team. Although maybe we’d just spent a little too much time together, because the conversation on the subway as we headed for the 9/11 memorial was more fraught than usual.
But it was nothing compared to the panic when the subway car tilted and the lights flickered. A vast ball of fire chased the train and sent us crashing to the floor, awaiting the oblivion that came—first, darkness and pain, and then, a last exit for them. For me it began what was to be the delirium of my first twelve days of being alone. But I broke from my solitude—I had to. I had more than cherished the memory of those friends. I’d made them live on in my mind right up to the moment where I was at last a
ble to accept that they were dead and that if I were to survive, I needed to rely solely on myself.
I waited for Paige’s notes to catch up. The gentle rhythm of her writing, the faint scratching of pen on paper, put me at ease; as if it put a distance between me recalling and telling the events, reminding me not only of the importance of information, but of sharing in whatever humanity might be left.
“That’s so awesome of you,” Paige said. “I mean, there’s no way I could have survived all that on my own, like no way.”
I told them about Rachel and Felicity at the zoo. I suspected that Bob and Daniel would filter the story of Caleb’s transformation when they felt it was time. I’d told my story, and it took the rest of my meal and a half block of chocolate, while Paige sat there and ate the other half. Her stepmother had two cups of tea and twenty new pages of closely written words in her notebook. I’d thought it was hard enough being a survivor without means of communication, and not knowing what had happened and who did all this: imagine being in her situation, wholly dependent on others to hear for her.
Audrey had tears in her eyes when I told her and Paige that I had to let Mini, Anna, and Dave go, on my way to the 79th Street Boat Basin. Especially Anna . . .
“Because . . . they would have held you back?”
“Yeah, that’s right.” I nodded, wondering if I sounded totally nuts to the point where Paige’s dad might try to put me in a straitjacket. “They’d kept me sane—well, if you could call it that. They kept me company during my time at 30 Rock, through the briefest of glimpses and conversations. Then, when I was being chased, I knew I could survive out there alone, and I was right: letting them go helped bring me here, right?”
“You must miss them.”
“I—yeah, I do. But mainly I regret that I couldn’t do anything to save them.”
Audrey cried, then Paige put an arm around her shoulders. A single tear fell from her blue eye and several more were held there, on her long eyelashes. I blinked away some tears of my own, and let out a funny noise, part whimper, part embarrassed cough.
