by Rob W. Hart
THE LAST SAFE PLACE
Rob W. Hart
1. NOW
The sky is black overhead, fading to dark purple above the Brooklyn waterfront. I close my eyes and listen. The wind isn’t blowing. I can hear the lapping of waves against the storm walls of the island, the distant chirp of birds, and the groans of the undead carrying across the water.
People insist it’s my ears playing tricks on me, that the harsh animal noises they make can’t travel this far. I don’t believe them.
I crouch down on the lip of the storm wall. My shirt is still damp with sweat wrung out by a recurring nightmare. Always the same: A wave explodes against the island and shatters into a stream of bullet casings. They cascade around my legs and push me onto my back, carry me past the shoreline of New York City, out to the middle of the ocean. I wake up when I drown.
The water here just explodes into white froth.
Task at hand. I get up, follow the curve of Castle Williams around to the front gate, running my hand along the red sandstone wall. It’s rough under my fingertips, not showing its 200-year age. This building will outlast humanity. Which at this point wouldn’t be that much of an accomplishment.
Sophia isn’t in the courtyard and I don’t see her on the ramparts. I climb the stairs to the top, pause, bang my aluminum bat against the stone five times to get her attention.
She’s leaning over the railing, staring off at the skyline of Manhattan, the buildings shrouded in darkness. Her head is freshly shaved, military style. She says long hair can be pulled back to expose the throat. The buzz cut doesn’t work for her face. Not that any of us is trying to impress anyone else lately.
I take a spot next to her and she inclines her head slightly to acknowledge my presence. We look in the air, for a light, for smoke, something other than a bird. It’s been two years and three months since we saw something in the air, but we keep on looking.
And we watch the throng of rotters, crowded at the Whitehall Ferry Terminal in Manhattan. We can just barely make them out, a pulsating band in the darkness across the water.
They move like insects, in quick, unpredictable jerking motions. Sometimes when you look at them they’ll freeze, like a roach when you turn on the kitchen light. Like maybe if it’s not moving you won’t see it.
But instead of darting away from you like a roach would, it comes right at you, limbs flailing, scuttling over any surface in its way. They’re not fast, but they’re determined.
The view on the Brooklyn side of the island is the same. They’re lined up on the BQE, on the docks of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Hundreds of thousands of them, and that may be an optimistic estimate.
They know we’re here. I don’t know how. Their vision isn’t great. Smell might be a factor. Thankfully, they’re dumb. Epically dumb, or else by now they’d have figured out a way to get us, monkey at a typewriter style.
It helps that they’re afraid of the water. They reel back from it, sink like stones when the crowds surge and the front lines are pushed into the harbor. Some people think hydrophobia means the epidemic was rabies-based. I think it’s not worth wasting time to think about.
The wind stirs. It’s getting chilly. Tomorrow I’ll need a light jacket. Winter is hovering just over the horizon, waiting. Food and medical supplies are low. This year will be rough. Not that the past two were easy.
Sophia taps me on the arm, snapping me from my early-morning haze. She points down Andes Road, at trees and empty roadway.
I don’t see anything so I shrug at her. She passes me a pair of binoculars and says, “At the top of the road, near the dock for the Manhattan ferry. There’s someone walking around.”
It’s still dark. Without electricity, it’s not common to see anyone out until the sun is coming up. I stare at the spot where she’s pointing but don’t see anything, tell her, “Could be someone out for a stroll.”
“They were stumbling. Maybe someone had too much to drink,” Sophia says.
“We don’t have much booze left on the island.”
“They’re making mead in one of the spare buildings now. You didn’t know that?”
“Waste of resources. I’ll take a look.”
As I’m walking to the stairwell Sophia calls to me. “You ever miss it, Sarge?”
“Miss what?”
“Being a cop. Handling real crime shit.”
I laugh. “I pulled the overnight in the East Village. Most of what we did was clean up after kids too drunk to see straight.”
“So not much has changed?”
“Nothing ever does.”
*
By the time I get there, of course, I can’t find the bastard.
This part of Governors Island is mostly empty. A handful of administrative buildings we don’t have any use for, and the three ferries we keep moored to the island for Plan B, in case we ever need to get away.
And go where? We could head south, around Staten Island and down the Jersey Shore. There are beaches down there where the horde might be thin, but we’d need a place to shelter everyone, and quick. Up north isn’t even an option. The winters would be too harsh. One heavy snowfall would be enough.
This is to say, plan B isn’t well-formulated, but it’s something.
I stop and listen. Quiet. If someone is stumbling around they should be making noise. Hopefully Sophia was seeing things.
I’m right on the border of Upper Gov, the mix of brick and yellow-painted homes where the island’s upper class resides. Which means if someone is out for a drunken constitutional, it’s going to be some asshole who’ll treat me like I’m a glorified rent-a-cop, and not head of security for a community of more than three hundred apocalypse survivors.
Titles still matter, even after the collapse of society.
Another ten minutes and the sun will be up. That’s ten whole minutes where I can’t see much. I shrug the bat off my shoulder and carry it alongside me, looking for signs of movement. Just because I know everyone on this island doesn’t mean some of them don’t make me nervous.
The air fills with the smell of festering meat in a wet cardboard box.
That happens sometimes. The wind shifts and the smell of thousands of ambulatory rotting corpses descends like a fog. This is the part of the island where it’s the worst.
The island’s proletariat are crowded into the apartment buildings on Lower Gov. They lack the amenities and comfort, but the smell is much less brutal, especially during the summer. Funny, the lengths the upper class will go to keep up appearances.
The smell gets stronger, and I’m about to pull my shirt up over my nose to block it when I realize there’s no wind to carry the stench.
Then I hear shuffling behind me.
The image takes a moment to process: The rotter coming at me, falling forward over its own feet. The last one got cleared off the island within two days of us getting here. Since then I’ve only seen them mainland.
This one looks different. The proportions of the body are off, the arms slightly too big for the frame and the legs heavy and unbending. Its skin like papier-mâché, grey and pallid, applied in a rush and left to dry in clumps.
The training takes over. I take a batting stance, feet squared to my shoulders, knees bent, bat up and over my shoulder. Let it get close. I pop my hips and swing, aim for the head.
Instead of the hollow THUNK that rings in my ears whenever it’s too quiet, the bat hits with a CLANG, like it struck stone. The thing comes off its feet an inch and arches back in the air, landing on the roadway.
My heart is only racing a little. I consider my options. Doc needs to see this but I can’t carry it to the medical building. Gas is in low supply but this j
ustifies pulling out a golf cart. I spin in a circle, to make sure it’s the only one. It has to be the only one.
My concerns become much less important when the thing begins writhing on the ground at my feet, trying to right itself.
The blow to the head should have killed it. I’ve never not killed one with a single swing, and I’ve killed hundreds of them with this bat. I crouch down next to the body, out of its reach. I should have split the skull clean in half. Instead there’s a dent and a faint crack.
Up close now I can tell it used to be a man. Its eyes have since clouded over, its hair fallen out, leaving brittle strands of black sticking out of its scalp. The flesh is thick and translucent. The thing looks up at me, helpless. I wonder what its name was. Then I stop thinking about it.
I stand and swing three more times, straight down into the skull. On the third swing, it stops moving.
*
The rotter is stripped and sprawled out on an old operating table. Its skin is a topography map of dead black flesh and lumps of a grey stone-like material. The remains of its face are twisted in an accusatory glare.
This long and it still bothers me to kill these things. Maybe I should be worried. Or maybe that’s the only thing keeping me human.
Doc uses a hammer and chisel to break off a piece of its stone skin, then puts it on a table. He smacks it with the hammer and cracks it into pieces. We rub the shards between our fingers. They’re rough and slick at the same time, like rocks coated in a thin layer of bacon grease.
“Dude,” he says. “I do not know. Did you really find this on the island?”
“Near the Manhattan dock.”
He hands me a bottle of alcohol. I pour it over my hands and into a sink, but there’s still an oil-like coating on my skin. I scrub at it with some soap and that helps. Doc stares at the body, pushing a pile of blonde hair out of his eyes.
He picks up the shirt the thing had been wearing, the style and color indeterminate. It’s covered in brown stains and slime. He sniffs it, shakes his head, says “Fuck me,” and touches the tip of his tongue to it.
He immediately pukes. I come close to joining him but manage to hold it back. I hand him the bottle of alcohol and he takes a big swig and rinses his mouth. He retches again. I yell at him even though I don’t mean to. “Why would you even do that?”
“Right. I should have just run it through my electron spectroscopy machine. That would have made much more sense.” He coughs and spits.
“But, Doc, c’mon.” The shirt is balled up in the corner where he threw it. The sight of it makes my throat seize again. “Why?”
“It tastes like salt.”
That makes me forget the sick taste in my mouth pretty quick.
Just to be sure I heard right I ask, “What?”
“That thing. It was in the harbor. Some of the decomposition is consistent with water, and it tastes like salt.”
“Okay. One thing at a time. What do you mean, some of the decomposition? Why does this thing look like it’s got rocks in its skin?”
Doc tapped on the shards on the table. “It’s not stone, exactly. It’s organic. I have no idea what it is.”
“I thought you went to med school.”
“A year out from graduating. I didn’t ask for this job. You should be impressed that I haven’t killed anyone yet.”
“Fine.” The body is festering. I open a window and stand by the stream of fresh air. “We have books, right? Medical books?”
“I know every one, back and forth. We don’t have anything on corpse decomposition.”
“How did this thing get onto the island? They can’t swim. They don’t have the coordination for it.”
“Maybe it walked.”
“Across the bottom of the harbor? It’s not a flat surface, and it’s not an easy climb onto the island. The storm walls are steep.”
Doc nods. “But on the southern and eastern shores there are rocks.”
“These things aren’t mountain climbers. They don’t have the dexterity. What they do have is the brainpower of slugs.”
Doc shrugs. “I don’t know.”
If the island isn’t safe anymore then I’ve got three hundred people to move. Most of them are weak, starving, angry, and I’ve got no place to put them. Plus, there’s June. The move could kill her.
It’s too early to make that call. I need to see what’s going on across the water. I hoist the bat onto my shoulder. “If these things are changing, we need to know.”
He nods. “You’re going mainland.”
I want to say something tough, maintain the badass image people like Doc hold me up to. But I can’t. It’s all I can do to keep from shaking.
When I can speak without my voice cracking, I tell Doc, “We go see Reginald. First I need to go check on June.”
“How is she?”
“Dying, still.”
*
The sun is out. Beautiful day, pending doom aside. I shield my eyes and cut across the parking lot to Craig Road. It’s the long way around but I want to take a look at the shore. Make sure there aren’t any more of these things walking around. The road is quiet but that doesn’t stop me from peeking over my shoulder every few minutes.
I pass people on their way to work, to tend the water farm on the east side of the island or the sanitation facility at the south end. They nod or wave or say things to me. I smile and acknowledge them but I’m too distracted to even notice who’s walking past me.
My building, the largest of the four and closest to the island’s southern end, is just coming to life when I reach it. There are people hanging laundry out windows, kids in the fields cutting down the high grass. Across the water the Freedom Tower catches the glare of the sun, still unfinished.
Miss Olsen is on her knees, hands dug into the earth, tending to the vegetable bed outside the entrance. Her gray hair pokes out from under a sun hat and her eyes are shaded by obnoxious plastic sunglasses. She looks up at me and says, “Those kids were out here again last night, talking until all hours. When are you going to do something about it?”
I stop, breathe deep, respond through clenched teeth. “I did do something. I told them to keep it down and they listened.”
“They’re still too loud.”
“There are dozens of empty apartments in this building. Why not move to one further away from the quad?”
“It shouldn’t be up to me to move because you don’t want to do your job.” She gives me a hard look, but then catches a glimpse at the smears and chunks of grey matter still clinging to the baseball bat dangling at my side. The stern face melts.
I shrug. “The kids are fine. Let me know when they break a law.”
She mutters something at me. I turn back and tell her, “The world ended, so maybe calm the fuck down and be happy you’re alive. How about that?”
She scoffs. “I’m going to file a complaint.”
“With who?”
She says something else but I ignore it, head inside.
That wasn’t professional, but some days these people grate on me.
If June were well, I’d take her someplace lightly populated where we could ride this thing out alone. Someplace I didn’t have to worry about people who think the world is still turning, and only around them. If I didn’t owe a couple of chits to karma, that’s exactly what I would do.
The lobby is empty, save the folding table and metal chair we use as a makeshift desk. The rook is manning it. He thinks I don’t remember his name because I call him rook. He doesn’t get that he needs to earn a name.
He’s a ball of nervous energy; tanned, shaved head like Sophia, with a body like a featherweight. He’s got a round face and an easy smile. Ask him to do something and he’s off before you finish the sentence.
When he sees me he jumps up from the desk and salutes, says, “Morning, Sarge.”
“Don’t salute me, kid,” I tell him. “We’re long past that bullshit.”
He looks disappointed and I ke
ep walking, but then stop and call him over. “How are things?”
“All quiet, sir.”
I poke my finger into his chest. “When I get back down here I want Sophia waiting for me. Have someone replace her on watch.”
“Yes sir. Can I ask what’s wrong?”
“Nothing to be worried about,” I tell him.
*
The rubber bands of the paper medical mask snag on my beard. I don’t know that I even need to wear it. My immune system kicked the bug in a few days. That, and my breath gets hot underneath and condenses on my face so I can taste that I haven’t brushed my teeth in a week.
But after watching June these past two months, better to be safe.
She doesn’t stir when I come into the bedroom. I sit on the floor next to her. Only her head is poking out from under a scratchy, grey blanket. Her hair is plastered to her forehead with sweat. I touch it, light so I don’t wake her up, and it feels like the top of a stove.
Her face is sallow, skin wrapped so tight around bone it’s almost translucent. She looks nothing like the curvy little artist slinging drinks at the saloon by my precinct.
I was a cop with a face like a boot and the conversation skills of a bag of hammers. She fell in love with me anyway. Could we all be so lucky.
There are things to do and I should go but I can’t. Can’t will myself to stand. Leaving means I have to get mainland, which means I may get myself dead. That, or I could come back and the pneumonia could have finally torn through her. I want to stay here, now, with the two of us alive, and that can be enough.
I stare at the paint peeling on the walls. At the tile scored down to the subfloor and the meager pile of canned beans and vegetables in the corner. At the one window with glass on it, and the other fortified with plywood. There’s a leak somewhere. The heavy aroma of mildew hangs in the air. I can smell it through the paper mask.
Sometimes I miss our little house on Staten Island. Other times I really miss our little house on Staten Island.
There’s a hand on my foot. June is smiling at me, not without a great deal of effort. She says, “Hey.” Her voice is heavy and low, like she’s working muscles to form the words.
