I grab my suitcase and keep pace with them past the outdoor tables of the hotel’s restaurant. We reach the stairs. Zombies don’t understand the complexity of staircases, but they could crawl up if they want to badly enough. I drag over a table while Casper grabs metal stools from the bar, and we drop them at the bottom to buy time.
Two flights up, we come upon a rectangular opening in the concrete pillar. Likely put there for the High Line view, the restaurant’s metal and glass awning attaches to the pillar on this side and the tracks on the other. We could climb through and walk the awning to the park railing.
Casper runs up the last flights of stairs and returns bathed in sweat. “Locked,” he says about the fire door.
A clatter comes from the base of the stairs. Indy scrambles into the opening and carefully drops her duffel and pack onto the awning, then lowers herself backwards. I jump up after, ready to grab her if the awning goes. She falls to the glass as gingerly as possible, body tensed. When nothing crashes to the ground, she rushes up the slope to the park’s railing, dragging her bags behind her.
I go next. I’m not afraid of these heights, since it’s fifteen feet at most, but I am afraid of crashing through to hungry Lexers beneath. The metal creaks but doesn’t give way, and I haul myself, my pack, and the suitcase to the park, where Indy lifts them over the rail.
“He’s heavier,” she says with an anxious glance at Casper. He may now be on the thinner side, but Casper is a big guy with muscle, easily weighing half again as much as I do.
“I’ll get his bags.” I return to the awning and slide to where Casper waits. “Give me Eric’s pack and the duffel.”
Casper feeds them through, and I bring them to the tracks, letting out my breath once I’m on solid ground. He steps onto the awning. It creaks and shifts. A crack races from beneath his feet toward the edge. He freezes, his mouth in an O. “It’s going to fall.”
“No, it’s not,” Indy says in a lulling voice. “Just come.”
Casper digs in his toes and runs up the slope. He reaches the rail, and we drag him over as the awning pitches at an impossible-to-climb angle and then slides to the street with a shattering of glass.
The three of us land on the ground and listen to the hunger below. “I knew it was going to fall,” Casper says, out of breath.
“Me, too,” Indy says. “But I had to get you off there.”
Casper lets out a short laugh. “Think they’re here yet?”
I rise on the concrete-planked path, strap on Clarence, and take my suitcase handle. We’re to meet in the Chelsea Market building, a couple blocks’ distance away. We were in the sewers long enough that someone must be there. I shouldn’t expect Eric. He could take a day, maybe two, to arrive, and I hope he wouldn’t chance dying to come sooner.
The gardens on either side of the walkway are overgrown and turning brown. We’d hoped to come this fall and pull the plants, find a hiding spot for emergency supplies, and look into heating possibilities for the future. None of it happened, and now we’re surviving instead of living once again.
We pass beneath a building under construction, then the 14th Street staircase we intended to use, where we left the gate latched tight but unlocked on our previous visit. The path splits, with a garden separating the sections. We pass the wooden lounge chairs and a long strip of pebbled concrete planks edged by a steel grate. From lunch break visits, I know it’s a fountain in the warmer months, in which a half-inch of water cascades along the stone to the grate. Little kids loved to run through, toes kicking up water, while adults cooled their feet.
The door of the brick Chelsea Market building opens before we reach it, and Paul exits, relief softening the chiseled lines of his face. “It’s them,” he calls inside the door.
Leo bursts out a second later, looking so perfect and alive that I crush him to my chest before I remember how filthy I am. I set him down and take his hand. “I don’t want to get you germy.”
“Is Lucky here?” Indy asks.
Paul shakes his head. Her eyes water, and her hand lifts to her mouth before she pins it to her side. He puts an arm around her when she shivers, rubbing her opposite shoulder with his free hand.
“Eric?” Paul’s tone is so soft and unlike him that it’s a dead giveaway of his worry.
I shake my head rather than try to explain. I don’t think I can explain. Already, my throat has closed at the thought. “We’ll tell you inside,” Indy says.
Paul grabs my suitcase, then takes the duffels from Casper and Indy with a grunt. Jorge hovers on the other side of the door, and he hugs me and Indy. I sink into his arms with a shudder. I’m freezing, even out of the wind. “I was about to come looking,” he says.
Kate, Julie, and Chris stand in a grouping of couches. Brother David enters from the hall and notes my surprise at his presence. “I was on a roof at First Avenue and came around the loop,” he explains. “I thought by then everyone had gotten out, and that Lucky and Micah had taken Lincoln with them. I saw movement in the Oval, but I couldn’t get a good look without being seen.”
“Micah’s inside,” I say, “but we didn’t see Lucky.”
Brother David crosses the floor to Indy. “I would’ve stayed had I known. He could be on his way right now.” She attempts a smile that falls flat, but she presses a grateful hand to his arm as she quakes from cold.
“You need to get out of those clothes,” Kate says. She points us to the bathroom in the hall. Indy and I bring our packs and change silently in a flashlight’s beam. This time, my clothes are dry due to being in doubled Ziploc bags, and I leave my soaked boots off for now.
Indy’s cheeks glisten, and she heads into a stall to blow her nose. “I shouldn’t have left,” she says. “I should’ve found him.”
“We’ll get him out.” I don’t know what else to say.
Back in the windowed room, Casper sits on the couches with the others, finishing up our story. I’m glad I don’t have to. “Could you tell where Eric was hurt?” Jorge asks me.
“Maybe his leg? I don’t know. We were far.”
Kate stands. “You’re still shivering. Eat something.” She motions at where the soaked bags and suitcase have been emptied onto a desk. “This is great. I’m glad you thought to stop there.”
“Indy did.”
“Good thinking,” Paul says.
Kate hands out small packages of cheese and crackers—the kind with soft yellow cheese you spread with a red plastic stick. I peel back the clear plastic cover, but the thought of eating is abhorrent. I hand it to Leo, perched beside me.
“Leo, you just ate,” Paul says.
“I can’t,” I say. “It’s already open.”
Leo waits for Paul’s okay and digs in, offering me the last cracker. I take half and chew it a thousand times, then drink water to wash it down. We sit in silence until a motor revs on the street, and I bolt out the door and race to the staircase.
Louis appears first, then Artie, and I tell myself it doesn’t mean anything that Eric isn’t with them. They went down the FDR, he went in the water. Louis seeks me out, places a heavy hand on my arm. “Walt took us to the riverbank to kill us. Eric escaped, but he went in the river.”
“We saw,” I say. “We were shooting from the roof.”
“We wouldn’t have made it without you.” A glimmer of a smile is followed by a bleakness that makes me dizzy. “Eric was badly hurt.”
I nod. The wind blows my hair into my face. My socked feet are freezing on the concrete surface, yet I can’t move. “Did he say anything? Where should we look?”
“Sylvie, he was stabbed.” Louis’ right hand rises to his rib cage, then falls, and my heart plummets along with it. “There was a lot of blood. He was weak. Artie and I walked down the FDR before we left. He wasn’t there.”
I know what he’s saying, but Eric will find a way. He always finds a way. I won’t believe that he hasn’t. “Where should I look?” I ask again.
Louis’ expression pleads
with me to make this easier on him. But I can’t. I won’t. I fold my arms over my chest and wait for his answer. After several false starts, he says, “He told us not to wait. He said—he said he was dying.”
The platform shifts beneath me, as though the elevated tracks have sprung their bolts. My head fills with a hiss, my body with the tingle of disbelief. The universe wouldn’t do this. Not Grace’s universe. Not Brother David’s God. It wouldn’t finally give me all these people to love and then take them away one by one until I’m alone again. Grace always said the universe teaches us through experience, but there’s no lesson here I haven’t already learned. I know people die. I know they leave. I know the heartache of having nothing and no one.
Indy rubs my arm. Up and down, up and down. But I won’t take her comfort. To do so would mean I believe, and I don’t. Eric always, always comes back. He’s a human boomerang.
Paul asks Louis things I barely hear. Where? How long ago? How bad was the blood? Were there zombies in the river? Every question produces a mental image of Eric in the water, each as terrible as the last: drowning, losing blood, bitten by a Lexer, hypothermia.
Paul’s shoulders drop another inch with every one of Louis’ answers. Then he faces me, his lower lip trembling, and gathers me in his arms. His chest bucks once and then again and again. Paul is crying, and the awfulness of that is realer to me than any awful thing I can imagine. A great, heaving sob rises from my belly.
The universe would do this. It has done it. There’s no lesson, no Great Plan. Only a reminder that lives end in horrible, unjust ways every day. And, though a year ago I would’ve run away, I hold on to Paul as tightly as I can. It’s only a matter of time before one of us is gone, too.
I stand by a window, numb. Or trying to convince myself I am, though it doesn’t work as it has in the past. Every time reality slips out, I push it back in its compartment. We don’t know for sure, we don’t have time, we have to make a plan—all things I tell myself to keep the grief at bay.
I listen to the discussion. For whatever reason, Walt hasn’t gone for wholesale slaughter this time. Lucky is okay, a fact that made Indy clutch her heart. Micah and Rissa are alive. Micah stood up for Lucky. None of the kids were hurt. If they stick together, maybe they can escape, or we can figure a way to get them out.
Walt was once Jeff, Roger’s brother. Kate and Louis say he and Roger were close. They lived together, went out the gates together, and Roger did what his brother asked without question. Roger, who gave me cigarettes and brought up Walt at every opportunity. Who allowed his brother into our home, knowing what he’d done before. He made excuses for Walt that day in the guardhouse, as though he knew what Walt was thinking. He must have. The times he disappeared for days, he could’ve been in Brooklyn. Keeping them apprised of our plan as it unfolded.
I told Roger of Eric’s hatred for Walt. I made it clear Eric wouldn’t forgive, and, in doing so, I likely signed his death warrant. I pull at my shirt collar, but there’s nothing to account for the strangling sensation at my throat. My hands are cold, my legs are weak. No matter how deep my breaths, my lungs scream for more. I move from the window, drawing in as much air as I can. It’s not enough.
The discussion stops. Jorge’s at my side a moment later. “Mami, you okay?”
“Can’t. Breathe.”
I fold over, hands on my knees, suffocating in an invisible noose. Paul holds my arm, Jorge asks me questions. They’re using up all my air. I push away, lean against a wall. My breaths wheeze. Vision darkens at the edges.
“Does she have asthma?” Kate asks, rushing to a small bag.
“No,” Jorge says.
His hands flutter by my face. I’m drowning like Eric must have. Full of the same terror he must have felt. Leo watches with round eyes from Indy’s arms. I want to tell him I’m okay, but I don’t lie to Leo. In a long string of not okay moments, this is the most not okay I’ve ever been.
Kate nears with a water bottle in her hand and a blue pill between her index finger and thumb. “Can you take this, honey? It’ll help.”
The pill sticks to my tongue and the water won’t go down. I spit it to the floor. Kate picks it up, holds it to my lips. “Chew it. It won’t taste good, but it’s fine to chew.”
I get the paste past the blockage in my throat and then sink to the floor. Kate sinks with me, her warm hands on my stiff fingers. “You can breathe,” she says. “You’re breathing right now. Your body knows what to do, and it’s breathing. Okay?”
I nod and try to tame my panic.
“Good,” Kate says. “Now you tell it when to breathe. With me. Ready?”
She draws in air slow and steady, then lets it out. I do the same. At the tenth breath, air finally reaches the bottom of my lungs, and I drop my head to my knees. Someone lays a coat over my back when I shiver. I’m wet again, drenched in sweat.
Kate keeps her hands on mine, her pressure gentle, her voice soft. It reminds me of Maria, and I can’t stop the tears any more than I could the day she died. Kate quietly orders everyone away. “You had a panic attack. Have you had one before?”
I shake my head while silent tears stream. The terrifying anxiety has turned to a thick, oppressive sadness. I’m not sure I can go on with a burden this heavy. I’m not sure I want to, even if I could manage it somehow.
“I gave you Valium. I probably should’ve given you half, but…” her grip on my hand tightens, “I’m so sorry, honey.”
I sob anew at the thought of how empty life will be without Eric, and how so short a time together won’t make up for the suffering that lies ahead. I tried so hard to change—I did change—and this is my punishment. I always knew it would be. I reminded myself again and again, and then I stopped listening.
Kate pulls me to her shoulder, fingers brushing hair from my wet cheeks. “I know,” she says.
She does. It’s in the way she shows no sign of moving, of doing anything other than letting me cry. No platitudes or gentle shushes. No promises I’ll be okay. My eyelids lower. My limbs relax, grow heavy, and Kate settles my head in her lap while I welcome the sweet nothingness of that blue pill.
50
I wake to gray light on a makeshift bed of cushions. Indy sleeps, forehead creased, on her own cushions nearby. Paul and Leo are in another corner, Leo tucked deep into Paul’s arms. I vaguely remember being led through a workplace in Chelsea Market to this room—a private office with large paned windows, polished concrete floors, and a glass wall that cordons it off from the main area.
It comes rushing back, like a sneaky ocean wave that knocks you to your knees. Eric in the river. Walt in our Safe Zone. Tears spring, unbidden and unwelcome. I rise on shaky feet and enter a cubicle-filled space outside the office bedroom. A flashlight on a desk provides light in the dark bathroom down the hall, and then I stumble back to my cushions, praying for more sleep. I don’t want to be awake. I don’t want to dream.
I find dreamless sleep in a pill bottle by the head of my bed, along with a bottle of water. Someone, likely Kate, left them just in case. I take another and lie down, tears streaming until I float away.
I wake to gray light again, though it must be afternoon. People talk in the cubicle area, but I don’t care what they say. The bottle is still here. I take another pill, stick three in my pocket, and close my eyes. During the night, I creep to the bathroom then return to my bed.
Indy wakes me several times. Every wakeup is punctuated with that same wave of cold reality, and each time I murmur something to make her go away. At one point, she sits cross-legged beside my bed while I cry, her face puffy and pouches beneath her eyes. As soon as she leaves, I take another pill. I’m well aware this was my mother’s escape, and even that knowledge doesn’t bother me as it should.
Indy shakes my shoulder. “Sylvie, it’s been two days. You need to eat.” Her face is inches from mine. I nod before my weighted lids close again. “Sylvie! Wake up!”
I lift one eyelid. “What?”
“Please wake up.” She twists her hands together. “I need you to get up.”
If I get up, I’ll have to talk. I’ll have to make plans that don’t involve Eric. It’s warm under the blankets they scrounged from somewhere, and it’s even warmer under my blanket of benzodiazepines. I turn on my side, reaching for the bottle, and find bare floor.
“Gone,” she says. “No more.”
Jorge appears, pulls up a desk chair, and sits with his face set in fatherly concern. “Mami, we love you. You can’t medicate this away. Let us help you.”
Maybe it’s his kindness, or the tears in his eyes, that makes my own tears roll. They don’t understand that if I start, I’ll never stop. Worse still is that if I start, I’m not sure what I’ll do to make it stop. “Please, just one more,” I say. “I’ll get up tomorrow, I swear.”
“I need you,” Indy says. Two tears race for her chin. “What about Lucky? I need your help.”
Her words tug at my heart. The universe has been just as cruel to her as to me. I shove the thought of Lucky away, of all of them. I don’t want to care. Caring is what got me into this in the first place.
I close my eyes, and she pokes me. “Stop,” I mutter.
“No. You’re not doing this. You’re not going to slowly kill yourself. People out there need you. People in here need you.”
“No, they don’t,” I say.
It might’ve been true once, but I don’t think it is anymore. Maybe they don’t need me the way they need oxygen and water, but they want me around. They love me. I just don’t want to love them back anymore.
I reach into my pocket. Before they figure out what I’m doing, I’ve swallowed a pill. I throw the covers off at their shocked expressions and walk to the bathroom. Someone’s hung the flashlight outside, and I bring it in with me. I sit on a toilet and lean my head against the stall wall. Maybe it’s my imagination, but I can already feel the pill easing the pain, blurring the lines.
The City Series (Book 3): Instauration Page 34
