We scale it and drop to the path. The last streaks of light in the sky allow me to read the sign that informs us we’ve hit 20th Street. “Will we stay up here tonight?” I ask.
“It’s safest.” Kate takes Paul’s arm. “I know you want to get home. Sorry about this, kiddo.”
“It is what it is,” he says. “I’d rather get home alive.”
The tracks widen again, the path turns to wood, and a sunken amphitheater comes up on our left. There’s enough light left to see the path and the plants, but it’ll be too dark to see anything soon. We pick up the pace to where a glass and steel building sits. Though many buildings are only feet, even inches, away from the tracks, this is the first whose entrance opens onto the High Line. “Anyone have to go?” Kate asks. “The park bathrooms work.”
We use the facilities and wash the grime off as best we can with cold water, then head for a dark tunnel made by a brick building that crosses above the tracks. “What street is this?” I ask.
“Sixteenth,” Roger says. “The old Nabisco factory. It’s Chelsea Market now. Was Chelsea Market.”
I shake my head. I’ve been gone from this city too long, and Chelsea Market means nothing to me. Nowadays, I wish I’d cared a bit more about what was going on here.
“Fancy food and gifts downstairs,” he explains. “With offices upstairs.”
Beneath the building’s overhang, the path splits, with one upper and one lower section. Likely where the tracks split years ago. A pedestrian skyway and more tracks connect to another factory building across the street.
“Why doesn’t anyone live here?” I ask.
Kate takes a seat at one of the café tables and chairs in the upper walkway. “They did for a while, but they got infected somehow. We cleared out the bodies this winter, once they froze. They’d done some planting and they had water, since Chelsea Market is six stories.”
New York City’s gravity-fed water can travel up six floors. Any higher, and you need to pump it to individual apartments or to a water tower that sends it down. Water towers are how we get our water in Stuyvesant Town.
Paul blows into his hands and rubs them together. It must be forty or just above. Though I can’t see the Hudson only a block away, a cool and slightly foul breeze gusts off the water.
“What say you we hole up inside?” Kate pushes back her chair and gets to her feet. “These old bones need to rest.”
The Chelsea Market building had no direct access onto the High Line, except by large windows in the brick wall that makes up one side of the tunnel. The previous tenants broke through the brick and added a metal door, however, and we file in after peering through the windows with a flashlight.
It’s too dark to explore, if I had the energy to do it. The most I can tell is that it’s a huge space with white walls and office furniture. A small seating area has couches and chairs, modern enough to be somewhat uncomfortable, but an improvement on sitting in the wind at a café table. Paul and Kate leave to check the bathrooms. I sink into a round-backed chair and let my head fall. It feels like three days ago that we started for Central Park in the morning sunshine.
Kate returns, flashlight in hand, and announces working water. She stops at Roger’s chair and sets a hand on his shoulder, skin pale in the gloom. “How are you doing? Do you have enough meds?”
“Fine.” He keeps his eyes on the patch of sky visible out one window. “But I need to eat. Anyone else hungry?”
I’m not, but I get the feeling he’s uncomfortable having what could be perceived as a weakness. “Starving,” I say, and open my pack. “I have two protein bars, crackers, and—” I pull an unfamiliar lump from the bottom and bring it into the light on the table. It’s the Snickers bar Sylvie bought at the store and kept for herself, though she said her plan was to hoard it for a chocolate emergency.
“What?” Roger asks.
“Sylvie put this in my bag.”
“Is that weird or something?”
“If you knew how much she loves chocolate, you’d know she doesn’t give it up easily.”
“That means she loves you more than chocolate,” Kate says.
“Maybe,” I say, “but I wouldn’t bet on it.”
Paul lumbers over to a couch and drops with a resounding thud, followed by a groan. “I thought that’d be softer. What is this place, anyway?”
“Could be Google,” Roger says. “They had a lot of office space in the building. Time Warner Cable, Major League Baseball, and YouTube, too.” I hold out my bars, Snickers included, in case he needs extra sugar, but Roger shakes his head. “I have, thanks.”
Paul takes a protein bar and I eat the other, while Kate extends something small and round to Roger, who hesitates. “Eat it,” she says. “And don’t argue.”
“Thanks, Mom.” He brings it to his mouth, and the unmistakable juicy crunch of someone biting into an apple follows.
“Apples?” I ask.
“There’s an apple tree on Chrystie Street,” Kate says. “We have a few left from the fall.” She shakes a Ziploc bag in front of Roger, rattling its contents. “Walnuts. Good for you.”
“I have food,” Roger says, his tone that of a sulky kid.
“What do you have? Cigarettes don’t count as food.”
Roger laughs and takes the bag. “You’d think I would’ve died before I met you.”
Kate opens a package and pops more nuts into her mouth. “Be quiet and eat.”
We do, in a comfortable silence. I think I hear distant groans under our crunching and rustling, and I try not to fixate on whether the streets will be passable come morning or what Sylvie is doing tonight. Maybe drinking, like Kate said. I hope so. I could use a drink myself.
A while later, Roger excuses himself. He stops at the hall entrance. “Yes, Kate, I’m checking my sugar.”
“Such a good boy,” Kate calls after him, then sighs heavily once he’s gone. “He needs to eat better. Better levels mean he needs less insulin, and sometimes it seems he doesn’t care that we only have so much. We’re using expired insulin and saving the unexpired for later. It’s working so far.”
“They say drugs work well past the expiration date,” I say. “At least some of them, depending on how they’re stored.”
“Let’s hope that’s true.”
Paul’s hand rasps on his chin before he mumbles, “That sucks.”
I imagine the end of my life foretold in refrigerated vials. I could die tomorrow, or next year, or in fifty years, but not knowing is one of the reasons you keep on. Discouraging isn’t a strong enough word for a situation like Roger’s. I’m sure Sylvie could think of a better one.
12
Sylvie
I gave up pacing my alcohol consumption four hours ago, but I can only reach a level of drunk that falls short of passing out. Everyone remains in the apartment, and the kids sleep like a pile of puppies on blankets we brought from the bedrooms. Elena sits in a chair by my side of the couch, casting nervous glances at Felix and Aurelia, though they’re rosy-cheeked and peaceful under a comforter.
“Elena,” I say, and she startles. “Sorry. Are you okay? Do you want another drink?”
Elena nods, sniffling like she might cry. I might cry with her. In order to head that off, I stumble to the dining table, where Micah catches me when I trip the last three feet.
“Thanks.” I grip the table and scrutinize the assorted bottles. “I need a drink.”
“Yeah, I can tell.”
“Shut up. It’s for Elena.” I notice Rissa on his other side. She faces Micah, face soft with alcohol and body as inviting as possible without disrobing. “Hey, Miss Riss. What’s shaking?”
“Just talking to Micah,” she says, her smile drunk with delight. Though she’s been forced to grow up in many ways, she remains a girl in the throes of puppy love, which both she and I would like requited. Micah’s absolute denseness on this subject, however, is murdering my dream, and Rissa’s. “We were talking about work. I started doing janitori
al, too.”
I know why she switched, but I’m sure Mr. Dense doesn’t. “How’s that going?”
“It’s not so bad—like cleaning your house. Sometimes you find cool stuff people threw away.”
“It’s more fun now that you’re there,” Micah says. Rissa glows at his praise. “It was totally boring before. Brother David says he likes to treat it as a meditation, which is great for him, but not for me.”
“We want to Qualify,” Rissa says. “The next round is coming up this week. Are you going to do it?”
“That’s the plan.” If Eric doesn’t return, I don’t know what I’ll be doing. If Paul doesn’t return, I’ll be mother to a six-year-old. If both Paul and Eric don’t, I’ll be a single mother, which has been my number one fear since being raised by a disastrous single mother myself. I shove that thought away and lift a bottle of vodka.
“Micah’s been showing me stuff,” Rissa says. “Like, guns and things.”
“She even knows what they’re called,” Micah says, “unlike some people here.”
My laugh is loud and drunken. “I can shoot them, and that’s all that matters. But I need to work on rifles. What are you guys doing to practice?”
“Just dry firing,” Micah says. “I keep telling her to ask Eric or Paul for help, but she won’t.”
Rissa scrunches her forehead in a cute way. “Because you’re a great teacher. Did you know Micah wanted to be a teacher? An art teacher.”
I slop vodka into a cup and add what might be lemonade. “I did not know that. Why haven’t I ever seen you drawing or anything?”
Micah hides behind his hair. “Because he doesn’t want anyone to see,” Rissa says. “But they’re beautiful. I wish I could draw like that.”
“Me, too. But we have other talents. Mine, for instance, is getting people drunk.” I push the cup into Micah’s hand because he’s altogether too sober.
“Mine’s probably cleaning toilets,” Rissa says with a slight pout.
“Yours may be yet to be determined,” I point at her, “but I promise it has nothing to do with cleaning toilets.”
“Yours is optimism,” Micah says to Rissa. “Finding the good in everything. She takes things no one wants and makes them useful or pretty—she used to do it in Sunset Park. Today she went home with a bag of stuff.”
“That’s just garbage-picking,” she says.
I pour vodka into a new cup, using one hand to steady the other. I mark Elena as a cranberry and orange gal and locate the two canned juices across the table.
“Except you don’t find the good in yourself,” Micah says. “Stop putting yourself down all the time.”
I take a break from libation-making in the pause that follows. Rissa stares at Micah, lips parted. He watches his feet. “I mean, I guess I do it, too. But you shouldn’t, you know?”
“Okay,” Rissa whispers.
“I wish I’d been better at it when I was your age.”
The joy deserts Rissa’s face at essentially having been called a baby by her crush. “Hey, Rissa,” I say. “Is there more cranberry juice in the kitchen? Can you check?”
She walks away blinking. I glare at Micah, who smiles like he’s the proud supplier of important revelations to young folk. “Are you being deliberately obtuse or are you just plain stupid?” I ask.
His smile drops. “What?”
“Rissa. She’s so into you that—” I wave a hand when my brain refuses to cooperate— “I don’t even know. And then you say when I was your age, like she’s sucking on a pacifier.”
“We’re only friends.”
I bend backward and slither halfway to the floor. “She’s practically melting for you. Good God, man, you’re killing us both!”
Micah’s cheeks flame. “She’s eighteen.”
“You’re twenty-two!” I practically scream, then lower my voice. “Four years is nothing. I mean this in the nicest way possible, but you don’t strike me as the worldly playboy type taking advantage of a younger girl. I mean, I’m sure you’re not a virgin—”
I slap my hand over my mouth. Unsurprisingly, drunk me has taken this too far. I didn’t think Micah’s face could get redder, but it’s the color of fire engines and Macintosh apples. Through the pass-through, I see Rissa leave the kitchen empty-handed, as I knew she would, since I sent her in there on a wild goose chase.
“Sorry,” I whisper between my fingers.
Micah sputters, “Of course I’ve…”
I stare at him wordlessly, he stares back, and then we both lose it. Micah bends at the waist, wiping away tears, while I clutch my stomach and howl. Thankfully, April intercepts Rissa on her way to us.
I fan my face to cool it down amidst hitching breaths. “Micah, I really didn’t mean that in a bad way. You’re shy, that’s all.”
Micah’s gaze darts to Rissa. “Guillermo would—”
“Guillermo’s not here,” I say. “And, if he was, you might be the one person he’d allow to date his sister. He liked you a lot, and he trusted you.” Micah chews his lower lip, swallowing hard. “But only do it if you want to. She’s going to fall for you like a ton of bricks, if she hasn’t already.”
Micah scratches his forehead in what I suspect is an attempt to scrub this conversation from his brain. I pick up my cup. “Okay, I think I’ve said enough.”
“More than enough. Thanks for saying that about Guillermo, he was…” Micah shrugs. His father left a lot to be desired in the Dad department, and I think Guillermo gave him some of the approval he never received.
“It’s the truth.” I wiggle my cup. “Alcohol is my truth serum.”
I depart for the couch, though I don’t miss the way he dumps his drink into his mouth when Rissa closes in again. Elena peers into the cup I hand her. “Is it strong?” she asks. “I don’t like to drink too much around the kids in case they need something.”
I nudge Jorge’s foot with mine where he talks with Indy on the couch. “Elena and the kids will stay here tonight,” I say. “Jorge’s the designated parent. Right?”
“What’s two more?” he says. “Have some fun.”
She relaxes before she swallows the first sip. I mouth Thank you to Jorge, who winks, and I settle down with my own cup.
13
Eric
Sleep eludes me. I drift off time and again, only to be woken by a noise that must be in my dream, since there’s no trace of it in real life. Finally, I grab my flashlight and head for the bathroom. I inspect the desks on my return, but they’ve been cleared of all identifying papers. Maybe whoever lived here used them for fires; they had to stay warm somehow.
The orange glow of a cigarette ember moves in the dark by the windows. I make my way over. “Hey,” Roger says. “Can’t sleep either?”
“No, but not long until sunrise.” He extends his pack. I pull out a smoke, then light it with the pocket lighter that’s come in too handy recently. “Thanks.”
“I was about to go outside. Want to come?”
“Sure.”
We ease open the door so as not to wake the others and walk from under the overhang to an open part of the High Line. The path glows faintly under the moonlight and a blanket of stars. I lean on the railing and watch the Hudson shimmer with the soft reflection of the moon in the garbage-free spots.
I like it here. The High Line is outside and open, yet safe. I don’t know that there’s enough space to grow a decent amount of food, but the thought of getting away from boxed-in StuyTown has me sucking down my cigarette a little faster. Of course, enough room for gardens doesn’t solve the problem of livestock or other sources of protein. And our measly seeds—now that mine are gone—wouldn’t sustain us. Central Park is where it’s at, but I wouldn’t count on being welcomed there.
At SPSZ, we had a reserve of stored food, and we had the means to make more. Our goats and chickens were flourishing. Eventually, we could’ve traded with StuyTown for rabbits. We had a cushion in case crops failed. The only thing under us now is a
quick fall into starvation.
“You hear that?” Roger asks.
I turn down my thoughts. A faint hum comes across the water from Jersey. My brain wants to believe it’s the distant drone of machinery, something powering up, but I recognize that buzz—it’s zombies. A lot of zombies.
“I thought I saw more bodies in Jersey, but it was hard to tell,” Roger says. “If it’s what it looked like, it’s packed over there.”
“Great,” I say. “There’s no leaving now.”
“You were leaving?”
I extinguish my cigarette on my boot sole. “Maybe. We were thinking about trying for upstate. There’s not enough food here, and it’s crowded. How much longer does everyone have, realistically?” Roger is silent. I remember who I’m talking to and say, “Shit. Sorry, man, I didn’t mean—”
“It’s fine. It’s nice to be spoken to like someone who doesn’t have two years to live.”
“Is that how long…?”
He releases his breath slowly. “Don’t know. But that’s when all the insulin will be expired. If it lasts that long.”
“That sucks.”
His laugh holds no humor. “Yeah. Anyway, what exactly happened at your Safe Zone?”
I tell him. He asks questions about Kearney and Walt, about SPSZ, and sounds markedly upset by my answers. Maybe Roger isn’t so bad when you get to know him, which I’ve found is the case with most people.
“Are you planning anything?” Roger asks. “To get back at them, I mean?”
I think of what Paul said, and I think of our possible starvation. I consider the zombie mobs in Jersey, and how they likely cover the East Coast. I shudder in the breeze when I picture Sylvie wasting away to nothing, her eyes huge in a skeletal face.
“Not now. But I’m going to kill him one day. Sooner than later, I hope.”
The words feel right. I won’t do it without Sylvie, but I’m going to kill Walt one day, for so many reasons. Not for my own pride or revenge, though I admit those are part, but because he took away everything, from people’s lives to our future sustenance. By stealing our safety net, he continues to threaten our lives. But, aside from all those reasons, I have no doubt he’ll be back.
The City Series (Book 3): Instauration Page 9
