by Rob W. Hart
Reginald’s proposal itches at the back of my skull. If I could get June I could bring her to one of the smaller boats. We could leave this place together.
But there would be no hiding that from June, and she would never forgive me.
Which really might be the only reason I don’t do it.
Someone stumbles in the dark ahead of me. I crouch and wait. Can’t tell if it’s a rotter or someone who’s hurt. Then the wind shifts, choking me with the stench of death.
It doesn’t hear me coming. I build up a little speed and swing the bat. This time I put a little mustard on it, and the skull cleaves clean in two.
Another hundred feet and the gunshots have stopped. They’re replaced by screams.
I steel myself, expect to see something bad when I crest the final hill that’ll lead me down to the apartments. What I find is worse than I would have guessed.
There’s a fire spilling black smoke from one of the upper floors of the south building. Must have been a lantern got knocked over in the confusion. The flames are casting a flickering light onto the field behind the building, where there’s a mix of rotters and islanders, running and stumbling into each other. Bodies writhe on the ground. It’s hard to tell who’s dead and who’s alive.
I hold the bat in my left hand, the SIG in my right, charge into the middle of it. I yell for the people who aren’t dead to head for Castle Williams.
Steve from the commissary swings a 2x4 at the head of an approaching rotter. The wooden board splits over the creature’s cragged skull. They’re too far away and I can’t reach them before the rotter reaches out and grabs Steve’s face, digging a petrified finger deep into his eye socket, probably right into his brain, considering how quick he stops shrieking.
The flames are creeping up the side of the building, charring the brick. It’s getting so big it’s distracting the rotters, some of them stopping to stare up at it. I aim for their legs. I don’t have time to make sure each one is dead. I just need to get them on ground, immobilized.
A woman screams somewhere close to me. I find a freakishly tall rotter wearing a tattered basketball jersey bearing down on Miss Olsen. I swing down, break its kneecap. The thing falls like a tree and as soon as it hits the ground I split its skull. I give Miss Olsen a hand, pull her to her feet.
She runs off without thanking me, which is not at all surprising.
At the entrance to the building there’s a rotter holding onto one of my deputies. The adipocere makes it look like a statue come to life, but still able to move at the joints. It can’t unhinge its jaw far enough to bite so it’s jamming its face against the deputy’s neck. Its hands are dug into the skin, the artery in his neck severed, blood pumping out in tune to the beat of his heart. I smash the rotter with the bat and they both fall to the ground, motionless.
Right inside the lobby is Doc. The contents of his stomach are ripped out and stretched across the dirty tile. The pill bottle is lying on the ground next to his open hand. I reach down, grab the bottle, keep moving.
The stairs are clear. At the third floor I stop, peek around the edge, listen. I can’t hear anything. Maybe they didn’t get this high. I’ll get to June, give her a couple of pills, get her down and across to the east side of the building. It looked relatively clear. If there’s not too many of them I can carry her. This can still work.
Something crashes in the general direction of our apartment. I hold the bat out, creep down the hall. I don’t want to call her name, afraid it’ll flush something out.
When I get right outside our apartment I can hear something rummaging. I glance around the door jam. Nothing. I whisper June’s name. No response. I step in, sweeping back and forth, then swing into the dining room and stop.
Everything stops.
There’s a dead rotter on the floor, its head caved in with my favorite cast iron skillet.
And June is standing over the body, her front covered in blood, staring at me with those milk-white eyes.
She bares her teeth and launches herself at me, her body having forgotten the sickness that whittled it down to gristle. I don’t even have time to get my arms up. We topple to the floor, her on top of me. I get the bat between us.
That beautiful face that I used to wake up early for, just to look at it for a few minutes, is grinding and gnashing toward me. The stench coming from its mouth blocks out the air in the room.
For a moment I consider letting her sink her teeth into my neck. Just to get it over with.
At very least, we’ll be together.
Instead I take my SIG, shove it into her mouth, dislodging teeth until it reaches the back of her throat, the barrel right up against her brainstem.
This is a kindness, I tell myself.
I pull the trigger, and so much of my life comes to an end.
6. THEN
There were three of the milk-eyed things wandering the street between the shoreline and the house, eradicating any hope that what I saw in Manhattan was an isolated incident.
Worse is when I got to the house and the front door was hanging open. I crossed the lawn and put my back against the red brick, found a body lying just inside the door.
It was a man from the sports bar around the corner. A regular who would sit in the back and drink mint juleps and watch baseball. I didn’t know his name.
I stuck my head into the living room and a piece of the doorframe exploded. I squeezed my eyes shut against the shards of wood. A quivering voice called from inside, I have a gun.
That voice. As soon as I heard it, everything in the world was just fine.
I called in to June, told her it was me, grabbed the dead body by the leg and dragged it onto the walkway, then jumped inside and pushed the door closed behind me.
She was standing in the middle of the living room, lit from below by a lamp that tumbled to the floor. Her skin smooth and flush in the soft yellow glow. She was wearing a white tank top and black pajama pants, like she always wore to bed. Barefoot, her hair wild, the off-duty gun I kept in the shoebox in the closet dangling from her right hand. She dropped it to the carpet and it landed with a dull thud.
I crossed the space and picked her clean off her feet, pressed my face against hers until neither of us could breathe. When she pushed away from me enough to see my eyes she asked me why I was crying. I said it was because I was worried.
It wasn’t exactly a lie.
I turned on the radio and the television while we were packing, was met by static and dead air. We stood in the living room after making sure the house was locked up, and she asked, Where do we go now?
Whatever was happening, it was spreading across the city. We’d never make it out. The roads would be jammed for miles. We’d be out in the open and barely protected, sitting in a car that wasn’t moving.
We settled on the watercraft. I didn’t tell her how I got it, just that it was there. We ran for the water, and within moments we had a dozen rotters following us. We jumped on and pulled out, watched as they scuttled after us, tripped on the rocks, disappeared beneath the waves.
June said, We should go to Governors Island.
It was a solid idea. There wouldn’t be anyone there and we’d be surrounded by water. It was a Revolutionary War outpost before it was a U.S. Army base before it was a Coast Guard installation. It had buildings and amenities. Shelter and supplies. And no people. Not a single living or non-living thing. It would be safe.
The last safe place, June said.
7. NOW
The rotters that cross my path disappear from my field of vision. I kill them but as soon as they’re gone I don’t remember how I did it. There’s a vacuum in my stomach, like a black hole collapsing on itself, sucking me into someplace dark.
There’s no other way this could have ended. When I shot that man at the Seaport, the bullet’s trajectory cut a path to this moment. I don’t believe in god but I believe this is proof a higher force couldn’t let what I did go unpunished. I only wish that force had taken me
instead.
Miss Olsen steps out from behind high weeds. Her shoulders jerk like her body is trying to move away from her head. She advances on me. I hold up the SIG but the clip is empty. As she gets closer I consider raising the bat, but instead let it drop to the pavement at my feet.
I should have let June bite me.
What else is there?
Something sharp bursts out of Miss Olsen’s eye. She tumbles to the ground, revealing Sophia, standing with a bow and a quiver of arrows on her back. Another rotter comes at us from the side and Sophia puts an arrow through its gaping mouth.
She runs to me, checks for wounds as I stand there numb to the feeling of her hands on my body. When she gets to my eyes she sees exactly where I’ve been hurt.
She reaches down, picks up the bat and puts it in my hand. “I’m so sorry. But we need you, Sarge.” Then she pulls me toward Castle Williams, where we find a hundred people shoving each other, trying to get inside the gate that can only fit three people across. Sophia pushes us through them. There are shouts about line-cutting. Even in the apocalypse New Yorkers can’t lay off about line-cutting.
The courtyard is buzzing, people running and screaming and trying to situate shaking families and doling out weapons and sleeping bags. At the other end of the courtyard is a pile of rags and broken flesh, cracked and bleeding into the concrete. I nod toward the pile on the pavement. “Who’s that?”
Sophia says, “The Librarian. When the people started coming in they went nuts, didn’t want him locked up in the same place. One of the guards dragged him to the roof and tossed him over.”
“He couldn’t have thrown him outside?”
“It wasn’t a well-planned execution.”
“Who did it?”
Sophia points to a young deputy standing by the stairwell checking his gun, a kid with a harsh face and a blonde buzz cut. I march up to him and throw him against the wall, smash my fist into his mouth. My skin tears on his teeth. He hits the ground and I drive my boot into his stomach.
It’s my voice, I know it is, but the words feel disconnected from me. “He was my responsibility,” I tell him, as I reach back my foot to kick him again. “You had no right.”
Arms wrap around my shoulders, dragging me away. I manage to pull myself free and head back for another round, but Sophia gets between me and the deputy.
I put my hands down for fear of hurting her, kick through the stairwell door and head for the roof, stumbling over my own feet, my vision blurry with tears, until I explode into the open air.
The sky is black overhead. I close my eyes and listen. People down in the courtyard are crying, calling out for help, fighting to get inside.
A short time later, I don’t know how long, Sophia is standing at my side. She asks, “What was that about?”
“I told him I was going to let him go.”
Sophia takes a short, nervous breath. “Why would you do that?”
“Because he tried to help me save June. I think. But that wasn’t even really it. I thought an act of mercy might appease the gods.”
“Sarge, what are you talking about?”
“It doesn’t matter anymore.” I drop the bat.
Sophia comes to me, puts her hands on my shoulders. She’s shorter than me and has to reach up to do it. There’s a tender look in her eyes and I’m afraid she’s going to kiss me. Instead she smashes her open hand against my face. Once, then twice. The cracks ring across the night like gunshots. My cheek throbs.
She speaks through gritted teeth. “I am so sorry about your wife but you need to save whatever this is for later. There are a lot of people on this island who are still alive and it’s our job to keep them that way.”
She reaches back like she’s going to slap me again, but I put my hand up to stop her. The first smack knocked something loose and the second one secured it in place.
There’s a thought that’s been creeping on the edge of my psyche since I shot June, one I was terrified to let in, because it meant acknowledging an abyss inside me. I stop pushing it back, and a sense of relief washes over me like a harsh rain, stripping away the grief and the anger.
We’re in a castle, against things that can’t climb, can’t get through the doors once we shut them. We can clear them out, come up with a new plan.
I’m tired of sitting around, waiting for something to catch up with me. It did catch up, and I’m still alive. There’s nothing left to weigh down my shoulders and push me to my knees. There’s only the job. This place and these people will be safe until I’m dead.
Knowing that might be enough to get me through to sunrise.
I rub my swollen cheek, nod to Sophia. “Thank you. I needed that.”
We walk to the south wall, see the faint outlines of rotters coming up the road, through the tree line. Three dozen, easy, probably more of them behind that.
Sophia asks, “What happened?”
“That’s a broad question.”
“With everything. I thought this would work.”
“We never stood a chance.”
“Why?”
“Because nothing ever changes, kid.” I pull the bat down from my shoulder. “They’re getting close.”
Sophia nods. “Should we head down?”
“Sure,” I tell her. “Task at hand.”
END
ABOUT…
…the author
Rob W. Hart is the website administrator for MysteriousPress.com and a senior editor at LitReactor. He lives in New York City. You can visit his website at www.robwhart.com.
…Governors Island
Governors Island is 172 acres. That might be hard to visualize if you’re not a farmer, so think of it like this: One acre is a little bit smaller than a football field. So Governors Island is a very big place.
When you visit, there’s a wonderful cognitive dissonance to it. There are beautiful homes and massive apartment buildings and administrative facilities, all of them empty and abandoned. This is right in the middle of Upper New York Bay, and Brooklyn is so close it feels like you could reach across the water and touch the shoreline.
The Continental Army raised defensive works on the island in 1776 during the Revolutionary War. In 1783, the island became a post for the United States Army, and later, from 1966 to 1996, the island served as a United States Coast Guard installation.
Castle Williams alone has an incredible history. At one time it housed so many prisoners in the casemates, there wasn’t room for them to all lay down at once. Years later, those same casemates hosted dance classes for children of the Coast Guard families living on the island.
In 2003, the island was transferred to New York State and the Unites States Department of the Interior. Since then, it’s been open to the public on weekends during the summer, accessible by free ferries from Brooklyn and Manhattan. Throughout the season, it hosts food festivals, concerts, craft vendors, and other performances.
The Trust for Governors Island has kicked off a huge capital program to repair the island’s infrastructure and build a new park and public spaces.
If you have a chance to visit Governors Island, do it. Soon, before some of the older, creepy buildings are knocked down. It’s an important, and hugely underrated, piece of New York City’s history.
THANK YOU…
…to my editors Jon Gingerich, Andrea Taylor, Jason Donnelly, Laura Lorusso, Dave Phillips, Matt Pucci, Dakota Taylor, Laura Campbell, Meredith Alder and Jessica Meddows.
…to Michelle Cocozza, for a knockout of a cover.
…to Joseph Nassise, who taught me how to code an eBook.
…to George Romero, because.
…to OpenStreetMap, for their groovy open-source mapping system.
…to my wife Amanda, for reading this a million times, and for endless, tireless support.
LEGAL
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictit
ious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental, and would be incredibly disconcerting.
Copyright © 2012 Rob W. Hart
Table of Contents
THE LAST SAFE PLACE
1. NOW
2. THEN
3. NOW
4. THEN
5. NOW
6. THEN
7. NOW
END
ABOUT…
THANK YOU…
LEGAL
Table of Contents
THE LAST SAFE PLACE
1. NOW
2. THEN
3. NOW
4. THEN
5. NOW
6. THEN
7. NOW
END
ABOUT…
THANK YOU…
LEGAL
