“And when you set out to sell lifestyle body products, you sold the shit out of them. Besides, it wasn’t all bad—Indy told me about the anti-bullying campaign. Maybe you got someone to think twice before they picked on someone, maybe you made a bullied kid feel less alone, and I know for sure you made people cry. You should be proud. Of all of it.”
Sylvie gazes at the floor. I hope she’s letting the words sink in because I meant every one of them. She lifts her hands, wiggling her fingers. I take them in mine, and she yanks me to the desk. “I love you.”
“Yeah?” I ask.
She wraps her legs around me and leans back. There’s no trace of get out of my face, only that chocolatey warmth. “Yeah.”
She raises her face, lips parted for a kiss, and her tongue darts into my mouth. After a minute more, her legs tighten, and she releases a soft, breathy moan. That sound, through lips rosy and plump with desire, gets me every time.
“I always wanted an office desk tryst,” she whispers, “where you toss everything to the floor and go at it.”
I’ll give her whatever she wants, if it’s within my power, and you can bet I’ll make this happen. I sweep everything behind her—calendar, monitor, desk organizer—to the floor with a crash. She laughs into my mouth and hooks her fingers beneath my belt in the quest to get ever closer.
Voices come from the open space outside her door. Sylvie pulls away with a groan. “They’ve foiled my fantasy.”
“And mine,” I say, mentally talking myself back to a reality that doesn’t include Sylvie half-dressed on the desk beneath me.
“Since when?”
“Since now.”
“It would’ve been great, too.” She presses close to be sure I catch her drift, then leaps to standing as our group files through the door.
“You’re evil,” I murmur.
“You love it,” she says.
Chris points to the debris on the floor. “What happened here?”
“Office supplies accident,” Sylvie says.
No one is fooled, but they are amused. Jorge moves to the framed magazine cover, his face lit with fatherly pride. “Damn, mami. Look at you.”
They crowd around the picture while Sylvie shrinks into herself. Indy grins over her shoulder, then turns back to the wall. “I love this. You look like you’re about to kick ass. Advertising ass. Any ass.”
“That’s because the photographer was driving me crazy,” Sylvie says.
“You’re famous!” Julie says. Kate and the others from StuyTown buzz in agreement, and even Roger, Mr. Anti-Establishment himself, seems impressed.
“Pretty cool, Rossi,” Paul says.
Sylvie’s shoulders come down from her ears. I knew they wouldn’t think less of her, but Sylvie is her own worst critic. I take her hand, and she gives my fingers a gentle squeeze that conveys her pleasure. “You’re still evil,” I whisper.
“You still love it,” she whispers back.
28
Sylvie
Between my office and the others in the building, the trucks are close to full. We sell smaller packaged foods in the store, and much of this will be added to the shelves, along with pens, paper, tape, other office supplies, and the full line of Essentials Lifestyle Body Products. We’ll have to split the ten percent between us all, but it’ll bring in a lot of credits.
We’ve split into rotating teams of stair carriers, truck loaders, and guards. I was not disappointed when my stair shift ended and I was sent to guard.
“Too bad credits can’t buy ammo,” Eric mutters, stacking a filing box in the back of a box truck.
It was said to himself, but I answer, “It’s a good thing they can’t, otherwise I might shoot you for bringing that picture.”
Eric does not appear the least bit sorry that he’s the new owner of a magazine cover with me on it. “You saw that?”
“Yes, I saw that.”
“And?” he asks.
I don’t have the heart to take it from him, and maybe my outlook has shifted a little. I’m not going to shout about my old job from the rooftops, but I’m done being ashamed. “And you are not hanging that in our bedroom.”
“I agree, it’s more of a living room piece.”
He jumps from reach before I can kick him. Paul snickers.
“Keep laughing if you want to lose your kid’s babysitter,” I say.
He grins, then heads to the lobby with Eric and Landon while Indy, Casper, and I keep watch. We’ve been quiet enough not to draw mobs, though a few Lexers have just rounded the corner with purpose in their stagger. They haven’t seen us yet, but they’ve heard us or smelled us or sensed us with their zombie sonar.
Sweat rolls from Casper’s temples to his chin. I don’t know what he killed prior to the zombie when he Qualified, but this is the first time he’s been out since StuyTown became a Safe Zone.
“Four.” I make a pfft noise. “We’re good. Just get the nearest first.”
We step onto the concrete benches in the small plaza to wait for the coming figures. Casper stands between us, sword in a shaky hand. The moment they see us across the street, their noises rise in volume. This would be fine but for one—a barrel-chested zombie whose basso profundo groans echo like a foghorn.
“Ah, crap,” I say, and hop down with Indy.
I prefer to kill from up high, but another minute of this and every zombie in Midtown will arrive. He’s tall, so I do my take-out-the-knee kick. He crashes to the ground with a deep groan cut short by Indy’s knife.
The next three have sped up more than usual, bringing them too close to Indy. I shout as she spins directly into the thick arms of a woman not much smaller than that first Lexer. I don’t worry at first—Indy is lithe and strong—but fear strikes when her knife hits the ground and the woman’s mouth nears the exposed skin of her neck. Indy tosses her head. Her arms are pinned at her sides. Forget fight; she can’t breathe in that arm-vise.
I step on the downed one’s stomach in my haste to get to her, screaming, “Casper!”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see him move too slowly and tentatively to be of use. The woman can’t find the right angle at which to bite Indy, but the man closing in on Indy’s face has a perfect route. I yank him by the remains of his denim jacket and punch my chisel into his eye, then spin for the woman.
Paul is already there, his knife in the woman’s ear. She drops beside the fourth Lexer, who wears Eric’s knife in its skull, the black handle at a jaunty angle. He has every right to love that knife the way he does.
Indy bends, hands on her knees, and gulps in air. Landon appears with his machete and takes her elbow. After a couple more breaths, Indy straightens. “Thank you,” she says to Paul and Eric.
Paul shrugs and walks away. “Are you okay?” Eric asks.
Indy watches Paul, brow lightly creased, before her face smooths. “All but my pride.” She uses her gloved hands to wipe at the zombie schmutz on her leather coat while we head for the plaza.
“Did Sylvie tell you how she had to rescue me from a big one when we went upstate?” Eric asks, and Indy shakes her head. “I’ll tell you what she told me: We’re all going to need to be saved at some point, and you’d better hope it happens because, if it doesn’t, you’re dead.”
“I also called him an idiot,” I say.
Finally, Indy smiles. “Of course you did.”
“Go clean up and help load,” Eric says. “I’ll stay with Sylvie and Casper.”
Indy and Landon move to the trucks. Eric motions to where Casper has retreated, wan and wilted, to the concrete benches. “What happened?” he asks.
“He got scared, I think. It’s different when you’re in the open and more than one is coming. I’ll talk to him.”
I don’t blame Casper—the first time you stand your ground while a zombie comes at you is terrifying. I only wish he hadn’t frozen when Indy’s life was in danger, for our sakes and his. He must be embarrassed, likely ashamed.
“Let me try,�
� Eric says.
He makes his way over. Casper barely looks up when Eric begins to speak, but he eventually says a few words. Eric responds, gesturing in the air as though telling an exciting story, bends at the waist, and then puts a hand on Casper’s shoulder. Casper laughs. I can’t hear a thing, and my nosy side wishes I could.
“Shouldn’t have let him come,” Roger says from behind me, then raises his hands when I whirl around. “Before you start calling me names, I’m not putting the kid down. He’s too soft. It’s not a bad thing.”
“No, he isn’t,” I say, though it’s more that I hope Casper isn’t too soft. “And I already used my best name on you, so don’t make me have to think up a new one.”
“Overgrown gutter punk was your best?”
“Better than bitch. At least mine was creative.”
“I guess you were good at that,” Roger says. “Stuff’s all downstairs. Just need to finish loading. I’m going to check the avenue.”
“Okay.”
He strolls away, then stops. “Landon didn’t move when that zombie had Indy. He did, but only after Eric and Paul were halfway there. I was in the lobby and didn’t see what was happening until after they took off.”
He continues down the block. Every last one of us, including Roger, would’ve run to help if it were Landon. It’s an unspoken code that keeps people alive. Landon did come, even if he was too late to do anything, though his unwillingness to follow the code could be the reason for his late arrival.
Eric and Casper appear at my side. “What was so funny?” I ask.
“Nothing.” Eric winks at Casper, and I love him more than I did a minute ago. He can’t bear stray things any more than I can.
“I’m sorry, Sylvie,” Casper says. “I won’t freeze like that again.”
“I know you won’t.” I pat his arm and say to the both of them, “They’re almost done.”
“Why don’t you check where we are with that?” Eric asks Casper.
Casper trots off, sword swinging at his side. “What’d you say to him?” I ask.
“It was a guy thing.”
“So, penises?”
“Yup,” Eric says. “Penises.”
After an eyebrow raise that pronounces me insane, he watches the corner, and it occurs to me that I might be another of his strays. “Am I your stray cat?” I ask. “You brought me home and fed me because I was lost?”
Eric turns to me, appearing as unconvinced of my sanity as he did a minute ago. “No. You’re the stray cat who broke into my house and tried to attack me when I got home, thinking you owned the place, but then you liked me enough to stay.”
I laugh and kiss his cheek. “Touché.”
Roger rounds the corner in a jog, and it’s obvious what he’ll say before he opens his mouth. “We’ve got company. Lots of it.”
Eric’s hand goes to his holster. “Can we make it out?”
“If we move.”
We spin for the trucks. Jorge sees us from the steps, tosses his box into the cargo area, and yanks down the door. He lets out a sharp whistle. “Let’s go! Everyone in.”
The drone of a giant mob grows close enough to hear. Everyone scatters, leaping into vehicles. Kate gets behind the wheel of the van, and Julie and Chris follow her in. Paul waits for me and Eric outside the van’s door.
“Indy?” I ask when we near.
“In her truck.” Paul points his chin to where Indy sits with Landon.
I jump in our van. Indy waves from her front seat when I peer out the window. I talked myself into giving Landon the benefit of the doubt, but I don’t doubt he’d save himself at her expense, and I want her in here with us.
Kate pulls out, tires squealing, then races around the corner onto Fifth Avenue. A block away, a solid wall of Lexers moves north from downtown. Kate watches in the rearview to be sure the trucks make the turn as we blow past the broken windows of Lord and Taylor.
“Shit,” she says. “Why’s Roger alone?”
“He told me to get out and ride in here,” Casper says.
In our hurry, I hadn’t fully registered Casper’s presence in the back next to Paul. Louis ended up with Jorge in the rush to get the vehicles out. “Why?”
“He said he didn’t want to have to save me.”
I’m going to have to think up some new names for Roger after all. I clutch Eric’s arm as Kate careens around the corner of 42nd Street. I’ve heard about Kate’s driving, and, if Paul admires her skills, she must be crazier than he is.
This theory is supported at the next intersection, when she narrowly zips between two Lexers, missing both by inches. “They’re down there, too,” Paul says of Madison Avenue.
Kate guns it past the columned front and golden roof clock of Grand Central Station. Park Avenue flashes by in an instant, but it’s enough to see more coming. We’ll be safe on the FDR, if we can get to First Avenue before the mob reaches 42nd.
We fly past the burnt bottom of the Chrysler Building. “They’re on Lex,” Chris yells at Lexington Avenue.
Kate tosses the radio to Chris. “Tell them to go to Central Park if we can’t make it to the FDR.”
Chris does, then waits for their replies as we zoom across Third Avenue. Jorge and Louis call in, then Landon and Indy, but the third truck doesn’t answer. “Roger,” Chris says into the radio. “Roger? You copy?” He spins in his seat. “Casper, you see him back there?”
Casper peers out the rear window on his knees. “No, two trucks. Shit, the Lexers just came onto Thir—”
The van screeches left onto Second Avenue, throwing me into Eric so forcefully that my breath is shunted from my lungs. The passenger’s side scrapes the first of the encroaching mob and thumps up and over a body. Julie yelps as she hits the far wall of the van, and Brother David helps her return to their shared seat.
“Everyone okay?” Kate yells.
I right myself and see she’s extended her arm in front of Chris, although he’s buckled in. Clearly, we should all be buckled in. Kate slows briefly at 44th Street. Chris checks First Avenue and shakes his head. She keeps going. The two trucks ride just behind. Both are covered with gore, and part of a severed arm hangs from one’s grill.
“Is there another way onto the FDR?” Eric asks.
“Not a quick one,” Julie says. “Except where we were ambushed, and we’re past that.”
We peer down every street to First Avenue. Mobs everywhere. When we hit 65th, Kate speaks into the radio. “Let’s do Central Park. We might as well.”
“They won’t like that,” Louis radios back.
“Too bad. We’ll give them Post-it Notes or something.”
Louis’ chuckle comes across the radio, followed by, “Sounds good.”
Kate tosses the radio to Chris. “Had to decide now. The radios won’t work up there.”
The truck has slowed enough that I no longer fear for our lives. We pass five straight blocks of burnt buildings before we turn west along a side street of high rises and tenements in the Upper East Side. At the stately apartment buildings of Park Avenue, Eric says, “Cassie’s boyfriend Peter lived somewhere around here.”
“Probably the cheap rent.”
“You could’ve afforded it,” Paul says. I punch his arm.
It was only recently that I had more money than I knew what to do with. I thought about leaving the city once I got my bonus, but there was nowhere I wanted to go, and Grace was nearby. I planned to hunker down in my not-so-expensive apartment until I figured it out.
Kate slows the van. “Here we are.”
The stone park walls are the same, as is the Met Museum down the block. The new fence behind the stone is tall, forbidding metal. Kate beeps twice, checks the street, and then walks to the gate. After a word at a peephole in the metal, the gate slides open.
Kate returns to the driver’s seat and pulls through. “This should be fun.”
We travel along a park path where squirrels romp in tall grass and race up and down trees; the squir
rel lifestyle hasn’t changed much. I don’t know Central Park well, since I stuck to Prospect Park growing up, but I know from Eric’s description that we’re in the section with the Great Lawn, which should be just ahead.
Kate stops at a group of people who stand before a crosswise-parked truck on the path. “Teddy came down to see us. How nice,” she says, opening her door. “Anyone care to join me?”
We follow her out. Two men and two women flank a gray-haired man who seems familiar. I look closer. A little less refined-looking now that he wears jeans and a chambray shirt, but his I’m-in-charge-here demeanor is the same. “I know him,” I whisper to Eric. “That’s Ted Buckley. He made his money in pharmaceuticals but was starting a new airline next year. Blaze got the account.”
“Did you like him?” Eric whispers.
“Not even a little,” I whisper.
I only met him once, and that was enough. He had roving eyes, and the occasional roving hand, according to the women who had to suffer through more than one encounter. If he stood beside you, good old Teddy would put his flesh on yours in some way. Palm on your shoulder blade, hand on your waist, closer inspection of your necklace where the backs of his fingers were sure to brush your skin. I’d intended to leave Bryce with ideas, but I planned to be long gone before their account took off.
“Teddy,” Kate says. “How are ya?”
“Can’t complain,” he says with a magnanimous gesture at his Safe Zone. I’m not surprised he has the best Safe Zone in Manhattan. And it’s only fitting that he sends the people he feels are superfluous to StuyTown.
“We need a place for the night, or a ride through your gates to the FDR, if you would be so kind. Got into a bit of a jam in Midtown and had to come up here. We have our own food and can sleep in the trucks.”
“What were you doing in Midtown?”
“The usual,” Kate says. “Sylvie used to work in Midtown. We were checking out her office.”
Teddy nods. His eyes skate over me, then my chest, then away, and I thank all that is holy there’s no sign of recognition. “How’d that soil work out for you?” he asks. He hasn’t offered us a place to stay, and he’s making sure to remind Kate of his charity. The man is a real treat.
The City Series (Book 3): Instauration Page 19
