I looked up at the ceiling and saw something surprising. “You have electricity,” I said. A few scattered fluorescent tubes sputtered up there. Most were dark or the fixtures were bare but enough light was generated to see our surroundings. “I thought the power was out.”
“There’s a hydrogen fuel cell system. It got put in after the blackout in 2003, when people got stuck down here in the dark. It was only meant for emergency use but we’ve nursed it along.”
“How long have you been down here?” I asked. It had not occurred to me before. “Since the evacuation?”
Jack squinted at me. “There was no evacuation.”
I shook my head. “We saw piles of luggage outside of Port Authority. Signs telling people to keep together.”
He nodded. “Sure. Because people went there and tried to get out and maybe some of them did. But there was no large-scale evacuation. Think about it. Where would people go to? There’s no place safer than this. Except maybe where you came from. The Guard closed the city down block by block, protecting what they could but it was a losing battle. Times Square was the last place there was any kind of real authority. It lasted until maybe a month ago. Those of us smart enough to know that civilization was over came down here. The rest of them got eaten.”
We were interrupted before I could ask any more questions. A woman came up to us, a living woman (I still felt the need to qualify her as such) wearing a full length Louis Vuitton logo pattern coat over a baby tee that read DON’T LOOK NOW. Even in the gloom of the station she wore peach-tinted sunglasses. She had to be at least six months pregnant, judging by the way her belly swelled out from under the shirt. Her nametag read HELLO MY NAME IS fuck you.
“These are our rescuers?” she asked Jack. He shrugged. “They didn’t get very far.” Apparently word of our exploits had already reached the survivors. “Still, it’ll give us something to talk about. Stories of abysmal failure always make for great gossip.”
Jack’s mouth had been a tight line before. His lips disappeared entirely now. He was bristling with disgust or hatred or rage or something but he wouldn’t let himself show it. “They had a good plan, Marisol. It showed real ingenuity.”
“So did plastic belts, darling, but they’re gone now.” She reached out and touched Ayaan’s headscarf. “Britney Spears meets Mullah Omar. How fetching. I suppose I should welcome you to the Grand Republic but it wouldn’t be sincere. There is food for you if you need it. We can probably scare up a blanket without too many fleas in it if you want to take a nap.” She sighed and brushed stray hairs out of her face. “I’ll be right back.”
Jack lead us into one of the concourse’s less crowded corners and squatted down on his haunches. I sat down on the floor, glad for the chance to rest. Ayaan stayed on her feet, occasionally fingering her rifle. I don’t know what she made of any of it. Jack clearly did not intend to talk to us so I broke the ice myself. “That’s a nice shotgun,” I said, indicating his weapon. He pulled it toward himself as if he thought I was going to try to take it away. Probably just a reflex left over from his training. “It’s a SPAS-12, right? I didn’t recognize it with that coating.”
He looked down at the dull black enamel paint on the weapon. “I put a police coating on it because the standard finish glinted too much.”
I nodded agreeably. Just two gun nuts talking here. The SPAS-12, or Sporting Purposes Automatic Shotgun 12 Gauge (the name was meant to fool Congress into thinking it was a hunting weapon—a complete lie, the thing was a military shotgun, a “streetsweeper” in the most violent sense) had been pretty high on my list of weapons systems I’d have liked to outlaw before the Epidemic but I could see its utility in protecting the station against undead attack. “You fire standard shells or do you cut them down to tactical strength?”
“Tactical.” Jack looked away from me for a while. Clearly a man given to poignant pauses in conversation. Finally he gestured at Ayaan with his shoulder (his hands being busy with the shotgun). “She’s a skinny, right? A Somali?”
“A ‘skinny’?” I demanded.
“Just Army slang. No offense meant. I was a Ranger with the 75th.”
He didn’t seem to feel the need to elucidate on what that might signify. Judging by the way Ayaan tensed up and even let out a little gasp I was able to tentatively fill in some blanks. The 75th Ranger Regiment, as I later confirmed, was the outfit that tried to capture Mohammed Aidid at the Olympic Hotel in Mogadishu back in 1993. The outcome of that mission saw the first time in history that a dead American soldier was dragged through the streets of a foreign capital.
“She’s proven herself to be a valuable ally,” I protested, but he quieted me with a look. This, it seemed, was something he wanted to talk about.
“I wasn’t on that detail at the Hotel, I was back at the base playing cards all day. I saw plenty of other shit, though. The skinnies were smart. With all of our training and discipline they still got the better of us. Committed, too. I saw skinnies get shot and drop their weapons and other guys, kids and women even, would run out into fire to pick up the weapon and shoot at us some more.” He shook his head and looked right through me. “We were occupying their land and they wanted us gone. We should never have been there and when Bill Clinton broke contact I was so glad to come home.”
He stared at Ayaan as if reading her, as if her very presence were a report from another place that he could study and analyze. “What I’m getting here is it’s the skinnies who made it through this plague okay, that they didn’t get overrun like we did.” I nodded in confirmation. “I’m not surprised at all. Just do me a favor and keep it to yourself. If these people knew our only hope was signing up with Somalia… I don’t think a lot of them would want to go there.”
I guess that was all he wanted to say. I kept prodding, using my dated knowledge of Army acronyms and slang to try to draw him out but he would only answer in monosyllables after that. Finally he got up without a word and wandered away. Eventually Marisol came back with a couple of blankets for us and a can of creamed corn that Ayaan and I gratefully devoured. It was clearly the best the survivors had to offer. They must have been living out of cans the whole time.
“I see how impressed you are with our accommodations,” Marisol said, watching us eat. “You simply must stay for the show.” Something seemed to change in her, a mask falling away and she sat down next to me. “I hope Jack didn’t hurt your feelings. He can be a bastard, but we need him.”
I had actually wondered about her, not him. What could her bad attitude and lousy jokes actually accomplish down here? I asked a different question. “He’s in charge of your defenses?”
“Sweetie,” she said, batting her eyelashes in a halfhearted attempt to regain her studied insouciance, “he’s in charge of everything. He fixes the generator when it goes down. He organizes the search parties that bring in our food. Do you know how much food two hundred people go through in a day? Without him we would die. Horribly.” She took the empty can from my hand when I’d finished eating. “Of course, I shouldn’t underemphasize the importance of my little hubby. The old man does a pretty bang-up job himself. I hope you’ll stay for his big address.”
Night was falling and we no longer had any way to protect ourselves against the undead. It looked like we didn’t have any choice.
13
“You… you can’t be serious,” Gary said. Mael kept moving deeper into the dark museum, through a sculpture garden lit only indirectly by windows on the outside. “You honestly expect me to believe that you’re going to walk out there into the city and start killing survivors?” As the Druid hobbled along the mummies began to emerge from the Egyptian wing, clutching Canopic jars and heart scarabs to themselves. A supremely frustrated Gary called for Noseless and Faceless to come as well—he didn’t necessarily want to get outnumbered just then. “Anyway, this isn’t where you would do it. There are maybe a handful of people left in this city—”
There were over a thousand of them, when
last I took a peek.
Mael pushed open a door and they stepped through into a spray of colored light. Stained glass windows high overhead showered the radiance down upon them, while massive Gothic arches invited them to press on. Mael stopped and turned to face Gary. The lot of them are in poor shape, lad. Starving—holed up so tight they can’t get out again, or just too terrified to go out scavenging for food.
“So just let them starve to death!”
That’d be cruel. I’m all about mercy, lad. The human race is done for, nobody can question that. It’s taking its time on the way out, though. Imagine how much suffering I’ll save. Here!
Mael had found a glass display case exactly like the hundreds of others Gary had seen. With the help of two mummies he opened it and lifted out a sword. It had been beautifully wrought, once, though over the centuries it had corroded to a dull green patina and the blade had fused with its scabbard. The hilt was worked in the shape of a howling Celtic warrior. Mael twisted it through the air in a wide cutting motion.
She’s not the Answerer, but she’ll do.
“You’re going to kill people with that?”
Mael’s head sagged forward. Try not to be so literal. I just want to be kitted out properly. You won’t help me, then. It’s not ‘your thing’. Very well. Will you play at being my enemy, then? Will I need to go through you to complete the great work? Or will you stand aside and leave me to it?
Gary entertained the notion for a moment but it was pointless. He was no fighter—and he had seen how strong Mael was despite appearances. Mael’s dark energy was enormous and powerful, too. It felt like a sunless planet, vast and round and self-contained, something so big and deadly it had its own gravitational field. “I… I don’t suppose I could stop you. I can try to talk you out of it.”
There’s no debate, Gary. This is what we are. Uamhas. Monsters. There’s good in this world and there’s evil, and we’re the evil. Now either come with me or leave me be, lad. There’s work to do.
Using the sword like a cane Mael lurched forward through the Medieval exhibit and passed into the museum’s great hall. Not knowing what else to do Gary followed, his mind reeling.
Saying no had been his immediate reaction and he knew he should stick with it but Mael’s conviction was a powerful argument on its own. Gary had come to the Druid with his questions, after all. Did he have a right to pick and choose among the answers, discarding the ones he didn’t like?
It wasn’t as if Gary felt any particular allegiance to the living. They’d treated him shabbily enough. He remembered the moment of recognition he’d had when he first saw Noseless on Fourteenth street, when they had seemed like reflections of one another. Gary had called himself a monster, then, and meant it.
He’d spent so much time trying just to survive. He’d made himself a dead freak because it seemed like the only way forward. He’d tried to befriend Dekalb to get himself out of a bad situation. Yet what was he existing for? Simply keeping on had seemed like a good enough motivation before but now—if he did nothing with this second chance he’d been given, had he deserved it in the first place?
He didn’t believe any of this crap about judgment and retribution. But maybe there were other reasons for signing on. Revenge, for one. Destroying all humans included killing Ayaan, and Dekalb too. The fuckers hadn’t listened to him—they’d just shot him like a dog, not even giving him a chance.
Then there was the hunger in Gary’s belly, a wild animal in there kicking at the walls in thwarted need. Working for Mael he’d get plenty of fresh meat.
“How are you going to start?” Gary asked, timidly.
Mael stood framed by the open doors of the Met, the sunlight streaming around his leathery flesh. I’ve begun already, he said, and stepped out into the day. Gary followed and found uncountable eyes staring right at him.
The entirety of Fifth Avenue was clogged with the dead. Their bodies filled the space like a forest of human limbs. In clothes dulled of color by dirt and time, with hair torn or matted or falling out they became a single entity, a featureless mass. White, black, Latino, male, female, decrepit skeletons and freshly slaughtered corpses. Thousands of them. Slaver dripped from their sagging jaws. Their yellow eyes turned in terrifying concert to look upon the Druid. They awaited his command. Mael had assembled an army—he must have been calling them the whole time Gary was asking his questions and miring himself in moral dilemmas.
Gary had never imagined so many of them together in one place—it seemed impossible, as if the world couldn’t support so much weight. Their silence made them sphinxes, unknowable, implacable. No force could stand against them.
For the first time Gary wondered if Mael could actually pull it off. There were so many more dead people than living ones. The few survivors had stayed alive by out-thinking their opponents but if the undead were organized—if one person could lead them, then what chance did the living have? It was time to pick a side.
Mael raised the sword and pointed and the dead surged as a mob up and down the street, splitting as they streamed around the sides of the museum and into Central Park. The sound of their feet pounding the flagstones was like a war drum beating out a savage tattoo. Mael and the mummies fell in behind the throng and Gary caught up with them as they passed a statuary group of three bears modelled in bronze. Gary had seen the sculpture before but had always thought it had something to do with a children’s story. It looked like a totem now, an emblem of a conquering force.
For good or for evil, Gary, I do what I am meant for. It doesn’t matter what we choose. It simply matters what we are.
Though Mael stood only a few feet away Gary was surprised by the sudden entrance of the thoughts into his mind. In the thundering footfall rhythm of the marching dead he expected all words to be swallowed up.
Instead they seemed to echo. For good or for evil: two sides of the same duty. I used to fight to save lives, Gary had told the survivor Paul. Now I take them away.
Do you feel you have some other cause to serve? What else is more important to you? What could be more important than the end of the world?
The mud of the park boiled under the tramping feet of the dead, jumping up in great clods that Gary had to stumble through. They came to a great open space devoid of trees—it must have been the Great Lawn, once—and the dead spread out, forming a wide circular clearing in their midst, an open patch where Mael stood with the mummies. The Druid turned around a few times and finally scratched a mark in the soil with his sword. He gestured at the dead all around him and they went into action. From a distance Gary heard a great rumbling crash and a column of dust rose above the branches of the denuded trees to the south. A bomb must have gone off or a gas main exploded or—Gary had no idea what it was.
“What’s happening?” Gary asked.
The construction has begun. I must have a broch from whence to issue my orders. A fortress, with a throne room.
Which wasn’t exactly helpful, but Gary soon understood. The crowd rippled at its edges and then the movement drew closer. The dead were passing bricks forward, hand to hand. Clumps of mortar stuck to the bricks, some of which were ornamented with fragments of graffiti. The dead must have pulled down a building—that was the crash—and now they intended to use the liberated building materials for Mael’s headquarters. One by one the bricks were laid down, the dead pushing them deep into the mud with clumsy hands. They swarmed around the spot where Mael stood like a hive of ants, totally focused on their task. This was far beyond what the dead were capable of in Gary’s experience, not without an intelligence organizing them from afar. Could Mael actually be controlling them all at the same time? The Druid’s power must be enormous.
Give me a chance, Gary. Work with me for one day. Maybe you’ll like it. Maybe you’ll feel at home being who you really are.
He had felt so much guilt over eating Ifiyah, because he had tried to live up to the standards of living men—in spite of what he had become. The euphoria that had fol
lowed his devouring of Kev had been the most natural thing he’d ever experienced.
Gary started to refuse but he couldn’t. In the face of so much concerted effort, not to mention Mael’s certainty, it seemed impossible to deny what was happening. “One day,” he said, the most defiant thing he could force out of his mouth. “I’ll give it one day and see how I feel.”
Mael nodded, careful not to put too much strain on his broken neck.
14
Shailesh lead us to a good spot where we could lean against one of the station’s pillars. It was the best place to watch the speech, he said. I still had very little idea of what was going on. The lights dipped and the buzz of conversations around us dropped to a low murmur. We were seated looking at an empty patch of station floor. Above our heads we had a good view of the famous Roy Lichtenstein mural. In primary colors and thick comic book lines it showed a New York of the Future: finned subway trains blasting on rockets past a city of spires and air bridges. At the far right a serious looking man in a radio helmet supervised the trains with glowing pride.
From underneath the mural a man appeared, smiling and waving at people in the crowd. Applause broke out and somewhere a violin started playing “Hail to the Chief.”
The man was probably sixty years old. He had a scruffy gray beard and a few wisps of hair on his head. He wore a charcoal grey suit with a tear on one sleeve and a nametag that read HELLO MY NAME IS Mr. President. A discrete American flag pin gleamed on his lapel.
Marisol stood up from one side of the room and bellowed out an announcement. “Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the man of the hour, my beloved husband and your President of the United States of America: Montclair Wilson!”
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