by James Phelan
I slammed on the brakes at the intersection of 47th and Park Avenue, but the car kept moving under its own inertia and bumped against the roof of an overturned white van. I winced, half expecting the airbags to go off but they didn’t—maybe police cars didn’t have airbags. In the snow-coated streets the white van had been well camouflaged. I looked around for a while, afraid the noise would have alerted Chasers to my position. There was nothing. I got out of the car, leaving it running and the driver’s door wide open. Just yards beyond the van was Park Avenue. What I’d failed to see from inside the car was the unexpected; before me was a veritable mountain. A building that had once stood on the corner of 47th and Park was now a snow-covered mass of rubble that stretched across the street. For a moment I wondered if I should get the gun out of the car, then swore to myself I’d only be thirty seconds as I climbed on top of the van to look around.
The road to the north was in ruins—it looked like a bomb had struck the two high-rises between 47th, 49th and the Waldorf Astoria, which was still standing on Park Avenue, a stubborn symbol of better times. This intersection was impassable.
I got off the van and quickly walked back to the car, imagining the whole time there was something behind me, creeping silently in the snow, hunting me down. I locked the doors, put the car in reverse, did a seven-point turn to bring it around and headed back along East 47th Street. I drove more quickly this time, then turned left onto Madison Avenue and headed south. I slowed and checked the map on the passenger seat, sometimes driving over the curb and along the footpath, south to East 41st. At one point I used the car to push a cab out of the way; I gritted my teeth as it scraped along the passenger side. Less than a hundred yards farther on I knew I’d come the wrong way; there was no getting around the pile-ups in this neighborhood. I’d have to get out and walk.
I kept the car idling and looked around for a while, checking my mirrors constantly. There was plenty of gas in the tank and I wasn’t afraid to wait it out, ready to reverse off at the sight of anyone who’d heard me scraping my way past that cab. But the coast seemed clear. I imagined that as soon as I shut off the engine, Chasers would come out of nowhere and charge at me and I’d have to back all the way up Madison until I could turn around. I wondered if I could put the car into a hand-brake turn like people did in the movies. I checked my map for the fourth or fifth time, folded it and tucked it into a thigh pocket of my trousers.
Snow began to fall, lowering visibility—that was a good thing. A few deep breaths later, I turned off the ignition and got out.
It was freezing. I’d become so used to being in the car with the heater on full blast that I’d forgotten how cold it was. I considered getting back in the car, reversing up Madison and trying to head west and then south and circle back, but quickly dismissed it.
Yeah, I thought, as I pulled the FDNY jacket out of my bag, I could drive around for hours looking for a route to my destination when it was now just a few blocks away. Before leaving I pocketed the keys and checked the trunk. It contained some traffic cones, two big, heavy riot-type Kevlar vests, a medical pack and a box of accident roadside flares, which I took. My hand rested on the open lid for a while as I looked up and down the street. There were man-sized lumps in the snow. They reminded me of a book I’d read as a child, in which the adults in the story insist a drawing of a boa constrictor that has swallowed an elephant is just a hat. The mind sees what it wants to.
I took one vest out, shut the boot and headed south. The vest was heavy over my shoulder so I decided to put it on over my coat and then the backpack over that. I was moving around like the Michelin man, but I felt bigger—safer and taller.
I walked south and snow began to fall in thick, silent sheets. Without the heat of a busy city or the snow ploughs, it settled where it fell, quickly becoming firm and ankle-deep. I looked up; the sky was heavy and dark. I thought of Anna, Mini and Dave in 30 Rock. I thought of watching DVDs and listening to music and drinking hot chocolate. I walked faster.
I realized we’d need to plan for future trips. There were heaps of cars around with keys in the ignition. I tried a few and found that only one in every five or six still started—mostly the taxis and police cars, but also a couple of vans. I began lifting up their passenger-side windscreen wipers. I hoped I’d be able to come back and do this with my friends—check which cars still worked and mark them on a map, like I was doing now. Maybe we could even catalogue them in more detail—record how much petrol each one had, what kind of cars they were. Park a few good ones close to our building.
I came across a few courier motorbikes, but they either wouldn’t start or were too heavy to push upright on my own. I also found a scooter with half a tank of gas—you could probably run around the city all day on that. For a second I thought about taking it but then realized it would probably slow me down—there were too many places where the road was impassable, even for such a small vehicle. Plus, it was actually noisier than most of the cars I’d started. I’d hate to be on it and not hear a Chaser approaching me, or be surprised by another mountain of rubble and have to get off and walk anyway, having attracted every Chaser within earshot.
Still, it would have been a great thing to have in 30 Rock, for mucking around with on the roof, but there’d be no way I’d get it up all those stairs. Pity.
Thinking about our temporary home I checked my watch: almost three o’clock. I’d been moving far too slowly, spending time messing around with cars. I knew I should start heading back, do the rest of this trek tomorrow at first light. I’d never been afraid of the dark before, but since the subway. . . I didn’t want to be trapped out here. Not in the dark. Not alone.
Despite the time, I decided to continue on for a bit longer. As I walked eastward along 40th its buildings seemed to bear down on me. I climbed over wrecks of cars, scrambled over rubble, around a crater. At the corner of 40th and Second Avenue I stopped and took off my pack and had a sip of water. As I put the bottle back I saw the Glock and pulled it out—
Scurrying behind me. Squirrels? No; rats, two of them, darting past me. Across the street I saw my reflection in a window but it didn’t look like me. I saw a man in a big fire coat and a Kevlar vest, and although I couldn’t make out the gun in his hand I knew it was there. I practiced bringing it up into a two-handed aim at my reflection. I did this three times—
More rats. At least eight or ten, a group of them running past me in almost the same direction as the last group. Those little critters were organized. I looked around to see where they were running from and saw another group of rodents. There must have been thirty or more, dark browns and black-grays against the brilliant white snow, and before they were past me I heard a new noise. A rumbling. It grew in volume to the point where it was as if I was in the middle of a thunderstorm.
I watched as a building came down on the other side of Second Avenue, the only major building on the block between 41st and 40th, falling as if in slow motion. Not that it was slow—in under five seconds it had fallen into itself like a house of cards coming down to a rapid drumbeat soundtrack. Before the dust started billowing out I was blown off my feet and flat on my back. I couldn’t breathe. The noise of the final moment of the building’s collapse was deafening and I shut my eyes and covered my face with my hands to protect it from the debris. I lay there for several minutes, trying to catch my breath.
At last I stood, bending over at first to cough up some grit, then I straightened up and started, swinging the pistol towards a figure in the shop window. It took me a few seconds to recognize myself—I looked like a ghost. I was covered in powdered concrete from head to toe; only my face was partially clear.
I trudged on in the snow, more slowly now, the gun heavy in my hand, snow on my shoulders, dust still clogging the air, and twenty minutes later I realized I’d walked without taking in my surroundings. I felt sick with fear of the unknown. All I wanted to do was to sit down and rest and maybe sleep until all this passed. Then maybe I’d wake up and thi
ngs would be normal again. Better than normal. Mum wouldn’t have left and Dad wouldn’t have married anyone else; I’d sleep in on weekends and hear Mum and Dad laughing from the kitchen; I’d go fishing with Dad and it would be summer and we’d never leave each other or fight about anything.
Minutes later I reached the Queens Midtown Tunnel and was shocked back into reality. The tunnel was impassable and I saw things inside—horrific things—that I hope I won’t ever have to talk about. Thousands of people must have tried to escape Manhattan here, but fire had claimed them and it was a death worse than anything I could have imagined. There was still some heat coming off the smoldering plastic and rubber and fuel, and the smell sent me away faster than the sight.
I ran blindly south, the gun held high, wishing I could confront the people responsible for all this. I threw up two blocks later and there was some blood amongst the bile and I heaved until I was dry and my eyes watered. I washed my face and mouth with water from my bottle, then started moving again. My legs felt heavy, my pack too. I was exhausted. I walked in the snow and I was alone and I wanted nothing more than to shoot whoever had done this.
11
I walked slowly across Stuyvesant Oval, forgetting where I was or what I was doing, listening to my feet crunch in the snow. The sound reminded me of something from my childhood, but the memory was so faint it disappeared before I could grab hold of it. On the other side of the oval was a maze of brick apartment blocks that looked uniform, but not in a crappy, fake, Truman Show kind of way—these were big tall totems, built around the mid-twentieth century. Maybe earlier. The trees out front looked like they were upside down, their bare branches splayed out like roots reaching for life, each one separating into ever smaller offshoots. I knew there was a name for patterns that reproduced themselves like this, but after five minutes I still couldn’t think of it and then I got fed up because I was spending too much time in my mind.
I sat on the edge of a small frozen fountain and opened my bag, and discovered a little book tucked in the side. I was surprised but in another way I’d almost been expecting it. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. I opened it and there was a note tucked inside the front cover, from Anna:
This is my dad’s favorite book and he read it when he was your age. Good luck and come back soon. A.
Her writing reminded me of my own but it was neater, as if she wrote slowly and deliberately. Her letter A was a simple, nice touch and I remembered how her lips had felt on mine. Straightaway I felt guilty for even thinking about it. Maybe it was a reaction to extreme stress—the desire to be close to someone after witnessing all that death. Thinking about my friends made me wish they were here, sitting by me in the cold, but I knew I had to do this alone.
As more snow fell I moved to the steps under an apartment block’s awning and looked more closely at the book’s cover. It had a picture of someone wearing a yellow headscarf, sitting in a little boat among some water lilies. The boat might have been in a river or the sea. No, it would have to have been still water with the lily pads sitting there like that, undisturbed but for the passage of the boat. I tucked the book into my jacket’s side pocket, the gun hanging heavy in the other, and pulled the hood up over my head.
As I headed east between the vacant buildings I kept asking myself: Why? Why did this happen? With each footfall in the snow, I thought: Why, why, why? Then: Who? The Russians? North Koreans? Chinese? French? The CIA? I laughed. Musing in this way was a sign that perhaps I was becoming as crazy as the people who’d done this. Clearly what had happened here was the act of madmen. Smashing apart a city, blowing it up and infecting the survivors . . . Who would want to hurt so many ordinary people? There could be no reason for this kind of attack, no justification.
I exited Stuyvesant onto Avenue C and stopped to check my map. I was close to the East River. I considered entering one of the nearby apartment buildings and heading to the roof for a view of the river, but the thought of walking up a dark stairwell without my friends . . . Despite their warnings I decided to take a risk and go to the riverbank. It was really close and I’d come so far. I had to know for Dave—for all of us—if the bridges were still standing.
I tucked the map away and held the Glock in my hand as I walked east. The snow was still falling steadily and I reasoned that if there were any Chasers at the river they wouldn’t be able to see any further than I could. The wind was stronger as I neared the water, and the powdery snow billowed and eddied around me, stinging my face. I wondered if I’d have Dave’s courage if I was confronted by a Chaser. I wondered if even he would have the courage to do it again.
In less than five minutes I’d reached the spot where East 25th Street ended. I took a pedestrian passage under FDR Drive and came out to see a small, grassed strip that was fenced off from the East River. It was empty: not a Chaser, animal or person in sight. The water was misty and I waited there in the cold until the view cleared. From this position, according to the map, I’d have a good view to the south.
What I saw when the snowfall eased made my heart sink. I felt Dave’s distress and disappointment as if he were right there with me. I was glad he wasn’t—I didn’t want him to see what I was seeing.
The Williamsburg Bridge was down. The big supports were still intact, but the middle span was a mess of twisted road that plunged into the water. A sailboat was on the river, moving aimlessly like it had broken its moorings. I watched as it drifted slowly, taken by the current—
A noise. I cocked my head to the side and listened harder, but I couldn’t hear anything apart from the sound of the wind and the lapping water.
There it was again; a shuffling sound. Coming from the tunnel under FDR Drive.
I ran a few paces to get a look. Someone was coming. They were just a shape in the darkness, a silhouette against the light at the end of the tunnel, moving towards me at a fast, rhythmical pace. The gait of the damned; the stride of a Chaser.
I pulled the slide back on the Glock; a round was already chambered so a bullet fell to the ground. Part of me wondered why I didn’t just throw the gun into the river behind me. Instead, my finger found the trigger guard. It felt familiar, dangerous.
The figure was nearing. Soon I’d see his face. I tried to keep my hands steady and thought about firing some shots as a warning over the head of the advancing—
Boy.
No more than my age. Same height and size, an average-looking teenager. His features were gaunt and pale, like he was malnourished and tired. A refugee from a war zone.
“Stop!” I shouted. I had a vision of the man Dave had shot and my finger tightened around the trigger. I could do this. If he came any closer I would shoot. “Stop!”
He kept advancing towards me. My hands shook. His eyes moved, but he wasn’t looking at me, he was looking at the East River behind me. It was as if he didn’t even notice me. He passed me, not five paces away, scaled the fence, went to the water’s edge and dipped his hands in. He scooped up the frigid water and brought it to his mouth. At the first taste he spat it out violently, a reaction to the salinated river. When he’d stopped gagging, he stood and gazed at the water as longingly as I imagined I would gaze at a rescue boat.
He turned back then and looked at me. His eyes bore no expression, absent like Mr. Lawson’s had been. He kept his gaze fixed on me as he crossed back over the fence and headed towards me. He looked so frail up close, like the wind would blow him over. His face was sunken, his cheekbones pronounced. Maybe he hadn’t eaten since the attack.
“Stop there! Don’t come any closer.”
I kept the gun pointed at him and took a couple of steps back, but his eyes stayed locked on mine. I wondered if he’d heard me, or if I’d even spoken out loud. I’d been on my own for a while; maybe I was forgetting how to talk?
He was one step away from me. When he reached out, I raised my arm to stop him and he fell backwards. He got up slowly and reached for me again; I pushed him harder this time and he stumbled over and lay still in t
he snow. He didn’t seem to have the strength to get up. I felt a rush of pity for him.
I put the Glock in my pocket and pulled out the water bottle from my backpack, unscrewed the cap and bent down to the boy. I could almost imagine him as my brother. I held the bottle to his lips and he didn’t resist or flinch; he let the water fill his mouth and held it there for a while, watching me as he swallowed. His eyes never left mine as I tipped more of the liquid into his mouth, then picked up his hands and held them to the bottle. With my action something seemed to register in him, something he’d forgotten how to do, and he propped himself up in the snow and drank just enough to wet his mouth. His eyes never left mine and they broke my heart as I wondered, Who are you?
I took out an apple and bit it and put the juicy flesh against his mouth. His eyes went wide and he sucked on the cut fruit but didn’t seem to know to bite it. His hands were shaking and the tips of his fingers were black and it’s not without shame and regret that I left him there, bare against the elements. His future and mine, I knew as I walked back through the tunnel under FDR Drive, were linked. He was what could have been and what might still become of me: a shell, a body that humanity had abandoned but for occasional rare encounters with others. The kindness of strangers, I heard Anna’s voice say in my mind. She was starting to sound more and more like the books she read, while Mini sounded like the DVDs we watched and Dave just grew more silent, speaking only when he was angry and saying the things I wished I could say for myself. In a way we all spoke for one another, and as I walked fast towards where I’d left the police car I hoped there would be enough light left in the day to find my way back home to 30 Rock.
