by James Phelan
“No!” he answered. “They’re on their own comms gear.”
“Surely you can—”
“Flic, we can’t risk it,” he said to her. “There’s something going on here, some kind of cover-up, way back up to the general. We have to get these samples back, so I can head straight to the USAMRIID team to work up the antidote, got it?”
She nodded.
My thoughts of Caleb remained, but I had to see these guys back first. I knew these streets. Another flash of lightning, another volley of gunfire punctured the scene around us. Paul turned and fired a stream from his rifle—perhaps giving our pursuers something to think about: We’re not an easy target, we’re not Chasers, we’re technically on the same side—well, maybe.
The cleanup crew was having none of it: the windows above us blasted out, raining safety glass.
“We have to get off the streets!” I yelled into Paul’s ear above the thunder.
The storm was moving away with a drawn-out moment of final torment.
“Come!” I replied, leading the way along a dark street. Felicity dragged behind me as I pulled her along by her hand, keeping close to the buildings on our left and using the shattered remains of vehicles on the street to provide cover.
We crossed Madison Avenue.
Another flash.
A yell, close by.
Paul.
“No!” Felicity screamed.
We helped him to his feet. I dragged him as well as I could—he’d been shot in the thigh. We rounded the corner onto Madison and I guided them down into a subway station below us, the curtain of heavy snowfall left behind.
I switched on the flashlight on the end of Paul’s assault rifle. Down we went, silent but for Paul’s whimpering.
He fell to the ground in a heap; both Felicity and I were spent.
“We . . . have . . . to keep moving,” Paul said, propping himself up with the aid of a turnstile.
In one hand I held out Paul’s rifle; I hefted his arm around my shoulder and we entered the main hall of the station.
Hundreds of faces, staring back at the light.
Chasers—the docile kind—watched us wide-eyed. A gaunt sea of pale expressionless faces.
“Jesse?”
“It’s okay,” I said, and we pushed and shoved our way through the mass towards the platform. Some moaned and groaned, some were clearly close to death, and the smell . . . “This way.”
The subway tunnel seemed intact as far as the flashlight would penetrate, knee-deep water obscuring the floor beneath our feet. The Chasers watched us at first, then soon went back to their grazing. At the end of the platform we found an open janitor’s closet-cum–staff bathroom.
“This will do,” I said. I managed to put the broken door back in place and latch it shut behind us. We sat Paul down, and he cracked another couple of glowsticks. He pulled bandages from his pack, a kit with syringes and vials, and a tourniquet.
“Is it—”
“I’ll be fine,” he said to his sister.
I shone the flashlight on the wound as he wrapped it up.
“Okay,” he said. Felicity helped him elevate the limb onto a bucket as he eased himself down. “I’m done.”
“Can you move on it?” I asked.
He winced in pain. “No, not all the way back to the quarantine zone—”
“Paul—”
“Not with them out there, Flic.”
“He’s right,” I said. “It’ll get us all killed.”
“So . . . what do we do?”
“Can you wait for first light?” I asked. “Once those cleanup guys are gone?”
He looked up at us and his sister whimpered because we both knew his answer: he couldn’t make it, and those samples had to get back to the QZ fast.
“I’ll go.”
They weren’t listening, they were arguing. Arguments, even now, after all this—only human nature, after all. I switched off the flashlight and the sudden darkness startled them, extinguishing their conversation. I switched it on, and they looked almost guilty.
“Nice one, Jesse,” said Paul, with a smile.
“I said I’ll go,” I repeated. “Paul, I’ll take your pack back to the quarantine zone, via the zoo entry. I’ll send help back here for you.”
Paul nodded.
“No,” Felicity said. “We can’t split up. We can do this: Paul, the three of us can—”
“No, he’s right,” Paul said. “He can send help, a medevac. I’ll be good for a few hours, but hurry, and tell them my injury.”
“But—”
“Flic, I know these streets, I can do this,” I said. I picked up Paul’s backpack and put it over my shoulders. I passed him his assault rifle but he refused it until I insisted. In exchange, he passed me his pistol, which I tucked into the side of my belt. “I’ll be as quick as I can. Don’t move, but if you have to for some reason, I’ll come back here with help and stay here until you can somehow make it back to this spot.”
“We’re not goin’ anywhere,” Paul said. He handed me his night-vision goggles, which I clipped onto my helmet. Felicity hugged me and saw me to the door.
“Help will be here soon.”
Outside the snow continued to fall, the lightning infrequent and the thunder now just a far-off rumble. No sign of those soldiers. I ran north fast, stopping at corners, weighing up the right moment to dash across the streets as lightning flared, saturating the night-vision.
I was at 57th and Madison. With so much snowfall, there were no footprints. It was eerie looking through these things with their otherworldly greenish tint.
The zoo was about eight blocks away to the north-west. I could make it within half an hour at this cautious run-stop-check-run pace, and have the major at the arsenal building send a med team back within an hour. So many times had I passed this intersection, the waypoint between the zoo and Caleb’s bookstore just a block to the east. I had to see. Five minutes, tops. A look and I’d done what I could, right?
The pack on my back was light but I felt its weight with every step; failure to return was not an option, not at all. The thought of what was on my back, that it could somehow be synthesized into an antidote to the worst of this, saving Caleb and countless others like him, was spurring me on as much as the need to send help back to those two below the street. I took off at a sprint.
No...
The bookstore was burned out, still smoldering and aflame in places. Most of its windows had shattered and glass crunched on the snow underfoot. On the single piece of glass that remained in the door was a painted symbol that fluoresced in the artificial glow of my night-vision goggles. The work of the so-called cleanup crew, no doubt. What did that symbol mean for Caleb? I wondered.
There was a noise behind me.
I turned, pulled my pistol and fired in one motion.
A man. I’d fired high. It spooked him; he ran. I recognized the gait, the clothing, the quick glimpse before he’d turned. Caleb.
He was ten paces away when I set off at a flat-out run after him. He must have feared those soldiers, for good reason, and figured that I, in this outfit, was one of them returning to finish the job.
I tripped because the goggles limited my view of my feet. I flipped them up and ran, momentarily blind in the near-complete darkness of the snow-filled night. My eyes slowly adjusted to the gloom. He was just ahead of me. I could hear him huffing and puffing and panting his way forward—he’d grown weak or tired.
“Caleb!” I yelled.
I stopped and from the silence and stillness I guessed that he must have too. I walked slowly forward, expecting to see him materialize before me, stepping through the dense curtain of snow. He was not there.
Lightning shattered the thick blur in front of me. In the murk, I saw the figure of my friend creeping through the broken doors of a department store. I paused, just content to watch him, as if he were an ordinary guy, picking his way over rocks at the beach or something, nothing in mind but the need to
explore. But no matter how long I stayed there I couldn’t guarantee reclaiming the humanity in my friend—it may have been lost forever.
So I got to my feet and followed him.
Inside was a darkness so complete that I couldn’t make out where the labyrinth of aisles and counters began and ended. I’d only ventured a little way in but as I retreated to the safety of the front doors I tripped over abandoned bags and baskets, empty cash registers, and endless power cords snaking into a jumble of wires.
“Caleb?” I called, quietly. “Caleb—”
There was a shuffle to my right, then a crash. I smiled. I couldn’t see Caleb yet but I saw the racks of clothes he’d disturbed tumble to the mess on the floor. I flipped down the night-vision and the world around me became that now-familiar green-tinted dream. I scanned the space around me—nothing but more racks and displays of now-defunct luxuries.
I retreated to the doors, my boots making loud footfalls. My heart raced, not at the possibility that Caleb might surprise me, but at the thought that he wouldn’t. Maybe I really had lost him this time.
More illumination from the wild sky outside lit my path as I crunched my way across, past the windows, to the far side of the store. I passed a storeroom behind a big sales counter. Inside it was dark, of course, but it appeared to be empty. It would do.
I made a lap of the store, keeping the front doors in view so I wouldn’t lose my bearings, taking care to make as little noise as possible. I just had a feeling that he must be here, somewhere. I kept a steady watch, and listened carefully. And then—
Breathing. Soft, rhythmic, human. Right next to me.
I squeezed the pistol tight in my right hand, then, with my left, reached out into a forest of hanging clothes—and pulled Caleb out.
He fell onto me, pushing down to try to knock me backwards. His hands clawed at me. His fetid breath burned hot against my face. I swung my right arm out so the pistol clocked him on the side of the head, and kept swinging. He rolled off me in a heap. I knelt up, ready to hammer again at him if I needed to. But he seemed subdued. Not out cold, but that only happened in movies. He was dazed but full of tremors.
I returned the gun to my belt, and dragged him across the tiled floor by his ankles. He moaned slightly as his face and skin connected with bits of broken debris. At the storeroom I pushed him inside as far as I could. Quickly, I backed out and pushed some steel clothes racks between the doors and the sales counter, to stop them from opening outwards. He was imprisoned there, my friend; a fact which only I knew.
He rattled the doors, in anger or desperation—both, I guess.
“Caleb, this is for your own good!” I told him, trying to reassure us both.
There was more noise from the storeroom in response. I rifled among the looted drawers of the counter, and found a big marker pen. In big, bold letters I wrote across the doors: MY INFECTED FRIEND CALEB IS IN HERE—PLEASE GIVE ANTIDOTE. I signed my name, as if to reinforce my pledge and promise.
Now, I had to get back to the quarantine zone.
Back at Fifth Avenue, I ran north. So close. The weather had eased, and the streets looked marginally less angry than before. From the shadows of an apartment block awning, I scanned the road ahead. The coast seemed to be clear.
I didn’t see or hear a movement. The next thing I knew, I was shot in the chest.
30
The force of the gunshots on my bulletproof vest threw me back against the wall of the apartment block. Slowly, I slid my way down to the pavement.
I fought to breathe, clutching my chest with my left hand, while my right pulled the pistol from my belt. I crawled back to the shelter of the awning, and tried to gauge where my attacker was. I struggled not to cough as my lungs fought for air. Even with Paul’s night-vision, I could see nothing more than an empty street—the familiar wasteland of wrecked vehicles and three weeks’ worth of packed snow.
I thought of Paul. How long would he last, bleeding back there? Four hours? I hadn’t debated the point because of Felicity. But it was obvious he needed help ASAP. Hell, none of us had any time to spare.
In front of me a wrecked car offered another bank of protection. I managed to clamber onto the bonnet, checking to my left and right. I held on, fighting pain, for as long as I could manage. Just when I was about to lose my grip and subside into the snow, I saw them.
Four armed men. Moving close to the ground, fast, down Fifth, to where I’d been shot. I could see my footprints snaking a clear path from them to me. I blasted a few rounds of the pistol straight up into the air. It wasn’t much of a threat, I know, but it might have given them pause for thought. Maybe.
I ran the remaining distance to the zoo. In my mind’s eye I would always picture my first impression of it—as a secure fortress among the ruined city buildings. I had feared its destruction and wanted to be reassured by its survival. In the dark I could just see the outline of the arsenal building. I was about to descend the steps when the stone pillar with the sign attached suddenly disintegrated into a hundred shards. The side of my face stung and burned.
More gunfire rang out. And then I was shot again, this time in the back.
At the bottom of the stairs I was flat on my face. I pushed up, my world spinning from the impact of the hard, icy ground. I could make out soldiers up there in the windows of the zoo’s main building.
“Don’t shoot!” I screamed at them. “Don’t shoooot!”
I tried to get up but couldn’t. I panicked about my pack, about the contagious samples being ruptured, but realized it was too late either way. Keep going, get it back, send help to your friends . . .
No bullets came my way, but flashlight beams shone down on me. I wriggled out of my pack. I looked up at them.
“I’m back—it’s Jesse! I have the sample—please, help me! Rachel!”
The flashlight beams didn’t waver.
“Help me!”
Shuffling, up at street level. I heard talking from the building, then—gunfire.
A spray of bullets, loud and unsilenced, blasted at someone up on Fifth Avenue—at whoever had shot me in the back moments earlier.
There was noise at the doors to the arsenal building. I looked up the entry stairs: in the light of more flashlights I saw Rachel burst out, that friendly army major beside her. They raced down to help me.
“Jesse!” Rachel yelled, “Jesse!”
I told her and the soldier about Felicity and Paul, gave them the address of the subway station, and the army major got onto his radio to dispatch a medevac convoy.
I passed Rachel the backpack.
“Get this to them, the samples are in there.”
“We will, come on,” she said, “I’ll help you up.”
“Rach, I can’t. I can’t move.”
I looked down and so did she: there was a dark pool of blood in my gut—the bullet had blown clear through from my back. She collapsed to the ground next to me.
“Oh, Jesse,” she said, cradling my head on her leg, my face in her hands, “Jesse, hold on, you’ll be okay.”
By now there were a dozen soldiers around us, there to help. One started to uncover and assess my wound.
“Caleb,” I said. “I . . . locked him, in a storeroom, of a store—” I felt faint. I told her where to find him. “Make sure they get him . . . treated.”
She nodded. I was aware of hands pushing a hard stretcher under me. I couldn’t feel my legs.
“Jesse . . .”
31
Dave speaks.
Why can’t you leave?
I speak.
Because I have what I need here.
What do you need? Anna asks.
You, I think, but don’t say. I need you. And you. And you . . .
But—
Now I have new friends. Rachel. Felicity. Paige. Saw Caleb again too—
He’d asked you to kill him.
I couldn’t.
But you could leave us.
You were already dead.
There’s silence for a beat.
And what, you just replace us, that easy?
I shake my head.
None of this has been easy. What was I supposed to do? Rot with them? Wait for death to claim me, not put up a fight, not bother about survival? I say:
If I could have gone your path, I probably would have.
Cop-out.
No, it’s not, really . . . I want to smack Dave, but hey . . .
Well, you didn’t follow us. You’re there, living in my stead.
Is that it? I ask him. Do I have to live for you now?
Didn’t you know? he says.
Don’t listen, Mini says.
I wish I could hug her for it, hold her, my BFF and beyond.
Do what you have to do, she says. Live for yourself.
The other two are silent.
I don’t say any thing—I feel guilt, again, guilt, guilt, guilt. Maybe I shouldn’t feel that way, maybe I should just succumb, join them, for that’s the alternative.
I stand with Anna. The other two walk away, busy. She looks at me as I want her to. So compliant, in the little ways. She’s sixteen like me and she’ll stay that age in my mind forever: she will never fade, because I will not allow it; I will never forget. Her English accent, her beautiful Indian skin, that dark shiny hair, her long-eyelashed eyes and her lips—that bright red mouth, burned onto mine, forever.
Let me go, she says.
I did, I reply. You came back.
You brought me back.
How?
How should I know?
We had stood on the roof of the building at 30 Rock. Sixty-seven stories below, we’d kissed. That was over two weeks ago. In two minutes, I might be dead. Hell, maybe I already am, who’s to say?
Anna asks: Why?
I don’t know.
But you know?
Yeah.
Change it.
What?
Change it.
