The City Series (Book 3): Instauration

by Lyons Fleming, Sarah

  The bathroom door opens and someone steps inside. “Do you have more pills?” Indy asks.

  “Yes,” I say. “Two.”

  “Can I have them?”

  “No.”

  Her feet shuffle on the tile. “You made me get up,” she says, though the fight has left her voice. “I didn’t want to, but I did. And you made me think I had someone who had my back. So don’t get up if you don’t want to. Die in that bed. But you’re leaving your family behind if you do.”

  She leaves as quickly as she entered, and I wait until she’s long gone before I allow myself to cry.

  The pill doesn’t last as long as the others, and it doesn’t stop the tears. Or maybe my mind fights it until I’m wide awake as the dawning sun lights the windows. I pull on my dry boots and coat, then slip my chisel into its holster. Indy doesn’t wake, and neither do Paul and Leo. Before I leave, I take the two remaining pills from my pocket and set them on the toe of Indy’s boot by her cushions.

  I find the exit through the maze of offices and step onto the High Line. It’s chilly for early October in the city, and I tighten my coat as I walk beneath The Standard Hotel toward the Whitney Museum. The path is lined with yellow-tinged trees, and the first of the fallen leaves litter the ground. My eyes are grainy and dry even as they stream. I want to make the crying stop, and this is the only way I can think to do it.

  I enter the museum the way we did the first time. Out the staircase window, across the Hudson, is a sight that almost makes me drop the monocular I took from Eric’s bag. An army of Lexers marches north. It could be they’re only on the coast, but the disappearing people on the radio lead me to believe that’s not the case. When I woke this morning, I didn’t plan to leave the city, but there’s no leaving if I want to. Even if that army freezes, they’ll thaw eventually.

  On the top floor, I stand in the wind at the edge of the café’s balcony until my tears cease, then I lean over the rail to view the eight stories between me and the concrete. Lexers wander the streets beside buildings that increase in height until the skyscrapers of Midtown reach for the clouds, with the Empire State Building’s spire rising above them all.

  My breaths shorten the way they did the other day. I close my eyes and breathe as Kate showed me. In and out, in and out, until it regulates. The ache in my chest, the hollowness, are reminders of what I still find hard to believe: Eric is gone.

  I want to scream. I want to rail against the injustice of losing him. Most of all, I want to exorcise him from my memory. But I can’t, no more than I can pretend I don’t love Leo and Paul, Indy and Jorge. My heart is charred and blistered, but it’s not incinerated. There’s an ember alight under all that ash.

  I can’t compartmentalize as well as Old Sylvie could—or thought she could. But maybe we can meet somewhere in the middle. I could use some of her fighting spirit right now. I’ve moved too many times to be tossed from my home again. I’ve lost too many people to lose any more. If Walt wants a fight, he’s going to get one. He’s going to rue the day he took what was mine.

  Footsteps sound behind me. “Don’t jump!” Paul calls.

  I hear the smirk in his voice, followed by the meaty thwack of Indy’s hand. He comes up on my right, she on my left. They view the city in silence, casting occasional glances my way.

  “Eric once said he liked to go up high for a new perspective.” A tear tickles my cheek, but I let this one stay. “I think it works.”

  After another minute, Indy leans her head against mine. “I’m glad you got up.”

  “I’m glad you got me up.”

  “What now?” Paul asks.

  “We kill those motherfuckers,” I say. Indy side-eyes me with a small smile that I return. It’ll be more complicated than that, but it’s the desired end result.

  Paul’s fingers flex on the rail. “All right.”

  We stand as the sun rises on the city stretched out before us. Blackened buildings, broken windows, dead bodies. I still wouldn’t call it beautiful—beleaguered remains the word—but it’s mine. It’s ours.

  51

  Eric

  Distant voices break through my daze. A yell. Footsteps vibrate the steel beam under my head until they stop, replaced by the sound of lapping water and someone breathing. I don’t know how long I’ve been out here, but surely long enough that I should be dead.

  “Well, shit,” a man’s voice says. A rough, warm hand presses to my neck. “You’re alive.”

  I struggle to open my eyes, but they’re glued shut. The pain in my ribs is scorching, a fire in the belly, and I’m so tired of that, too. Just don’t toss me in the water with the zombies, I want to say. Not that way.

  “I’ll get him over,” the voice calls. So familiar. I know that voice.

  Hands move beneath my shoulders. Searing pain brings tears to my eyes. They loosen my lids enough to open, but I can’t see who has me, only the bent tower of the bridge receding as he drags me toward shore. He breathes heavily with his effort, and I groan instead of scream at every bump. Finally, he sets me down. I fight not to pass out. He’s someone. Someone.

  A face comes into view. Steel blue eyes, gray mustache. No. Of all the people to come, it had to be Kearney. I imagine what he’ll do to me—what they’ll do to me. The water is a better deal. I turn to my side with a grunt, fingers scrabbling to pull myself along the beam.

  “Where’re you going, kid?” he asks.

  He grasps the ankle of my broken leg, and I scream before everything goes black.

  Book II

  52

  Sylvie

  While I took my drawn-out nap, some of the others went to StuyTown. Their report was both discouraging and encouraging, but I wanted to see for myself. This was easier said than done, however, because someone’s dropped zombies into the sewers—and it’s no mystery who that someone was.

  Now, after a crosstown trip that involved various methods of distraction and twenty-something flights of stairs, we stand on the roof of an apartment building across from StuyTown on First Avenue. We have the advantage of height; the people keeping watch on the roofs can’t see us if we keep back from the ledge.

  Our perch allows us a partial view of the Oval, where people go about their business the way they always have. Granted, they’re weaponless and being watched by people I don’t recognize who wear holsters and carry rifles at the ready, but I expected something more dramatic, something to match the devastation I feel inside. Almost everything looks the same, except for the addition of zombies in the streets outside StuyTown, which is no small transformation.

  Fences have been erected. Every intersection outside of StuyTown is closed off—all avenues of entry gated—but the zombies are inside the gates. Over two hundred bodies stretch the length of First Avenue, with the same on 14th and 20th Streets. They wander their enclosure like guard dogs sniffing out the presence of incoming humans, which is exactly why they’re there. No one’s getting across that moat of Lexers without being seen.

  Indy paces the roof, out of sight of their guard. “How about the FDR?”

  “They’ll see us coming a mile away,” Paul says from where he sits, back against the roof ledge.

  “There isn’t a way in that you won’t be seen,” Kate says. “Or eaten.”

  Indy mutters something unintelligible. I pick up the binoculars we found in an apartment—people in New York love to spy on each other—and train them on the Oval. After five minutes, my patience is rewarded: Micah, Rissa, and Lucky walk the path by the fountain. Micah and Rissa hold hands, and all three appear unharmed, though a guy with a rifle keeps pace behind them. “Indy, I see him! Far side of the Oval.”

  Indy is at my side in an instant, and I step away, handing her the binoculars in midair so they remain in the approximate spot. She watches for a minute, hands trembling, and then drops the binoculars by her side. “He’s okay. He looked okay, right?”

  “He looked fine. They all did.”

  Indy nods, then bursts into te
ars that end as quickly as they began. “Sorry,” she says, wiping at her face. “I just—I was so worried and then he’s there, alive…”

  Jorge puts an arm around Indy’s shoulders. “It’s good. We have time to make a plan.”

  Indy sniffles. “What possible plan can we make?”

  Once again, we’re without a steady supply of food and ammo. Twelve people, four of whom had no BOB, have gone through much of our three days’ supply of food since Walt took over. Searches near our end of the High Line have proven fruitless. The food we brought from Roger’s will last another few days. Water is the only thing that’s not a concern.

  Paul gets to his feet at a shout from below. We creep to the edge. From our vantage point, we see close to two dozen people standing on the street inside the gated wall at the First Avenue Loop entrance. A Parks Department pickup rolls down the loop with three people in the bed before it pulls alongside the wall and disappears from view.

  The three people reappear when they climb onto the roof of the truck’s cab, and I pull Eric’s monocular from my pocket. Debra, lover of Precious Moments statues, stands crying between two people who grip her arms. I hiss at the sight of the sour-faced woman on one side. “Denise is there,” I say. “She has Debra.”

  Jorge answers with a curse and moves closer to the ledge.

  Up high, Debra’s wails are thin, but I imagine they’re unbearable down there, since the people in the crowd wear horrified faces they can’t conceal. Denise and the man push at Debra until she climbs to stand atop the thick wall. She turns back, obviously begging. The man sets a knife in her hand and waves his fingers like Go on now.

  They’re making her run the Lexers.

  First Avenue is wide. The chance of crossing through that mob, then over a fenced intersection to freedom, is low. Now that the zombies have noticed her, it’s negligible. Debra isn’t in prime shape, and she has a ten-foot drop into zombies ahead of her, followed by a run. She’s a friendly, mild-mannered older woman. I can’t imagine what she did to merit this punishment.

  Clear, crisp anger dispels the gray veil that’s shrouded the past days. I want to clear the way for her. Murder Denise. Blow them up. Anything other than stand here completely powerless and watch an innocent woman die.

  The inner gate slides open. It’s the same as on Avenue C: brick and cinderblock walls built from the buildings to the street, where they meet at a double gate in the center of the asphalt. The outer layer is wrought-iron, with a solid metal gate set just behind it, which serves two purposes—twice the protection, plus the ability to slide the solid metal aside for observation through the outer gate’s bars.

  It offers the residents of StuyTown a prime view for the upcoming spectacle, and they’re guided toward the gate by armed men while I pick out faces in the crowd. Noli, pale and distressed. Harold, his head down and hands tight at his sides. A woman named Tamara, who always bought pickles and wished me a blessed day, and who now looks as though she wishes this day would end.

  Debra shuffles to the side of the thick wall, away from the center of the mass of Lexers. Denise’s mouth moves before she sneers. Though we can’t hear much up here, it’s obvious Denise is enjoying this, and I would enjoy nothing more than to bash her face in. If I were Debra, I’d run for the gate, slide down a bar, and race for the farthest fence at 14th Street, where there are fewer zombies to drag her down. But I’m not sure I’d make it. The pointlessness of this exercise must also be the point. It’s a lesson. A warning.

  Debra teeters on the edge of the brick. The man on the truck pokes her leg. Her auburn braid whips through the air as she spins with her knife. A moment later, he clasps his cheek in dumbfounded anger.

  “Good for you, Debra,” I whisper.

  She jumps to the street, taking a few Lexers down when she lands, and crawls over their bodies. A man in the remains of a business suit dives onto her. Debra writhes from under him and staggers to her feet, then hacks at the head of a woman who’s grabbed her by the waist, but she hasn’t the experience nor the strength to get the knife through. She yanks away, losing her shirt in the process, and hits the bars of the gate with a shriek that rises over the Lexers and up twenty stories. It’s the squeal of caught prey, the terror of a person who knows this is the end.

  The first Lexer digs his teeth into her pale, freckled back. Harold twitches in place, fighting his urge to help the pathetic woman with her hands laced in the bars. I will him to stay put. There’s no being a hero now, and I couldn’t stand to watch him die, too.

  It’s over quickly once the Lexers converge. When they begin to test the fence for the people behind it, the solid metal slides shut. Two minutes later, the StuyTown group walks the loop into the complex, where they’ll enter the inner gate. Defeat is evident in their halting steps and sagging shoulders.

  I train the monocular where Debra was last seen. She’ll be up soon, unless they’ve gnawed into her skull. A man lifts himself to his feet and stumbles away. Under the coating of red, his face is familiar: Marshall, who’s been at StuyTown since the beginning. Roger never liked him much, which means Walt likely didn’t, and now he’s a zombie.

  I spot more people I recognize. Almost everyone from guard. Michael, Veronica, the father of a kid from Leo’s class. “Look at the Lexers’ faces,” I whisper.

  I scan the mob, unable to get a steady view with the way my hands shake, but I make out faces anyway. All the people most likely to fight—all the ones who Kate trusted—are Lexers. There are plenty of strangers, but there are at least fifty people I know, and this is only one side of StuyTown.

  “My God,” Kate whispers.

  I hand the monocular to Jorge. When he’s done, he shakes his head and passes it to Paul. Kate finally lowers her binoculars, her nose pink and tears streaming freely. I put a hand on her shoulder. She covers it with hers, then pats it and moves to stow the binoculars in her bag.

  Indy and I walk for the roof door arm in arm, maybe because we’d fall if we tried it alone. Jorge, Kate, and Paul follow. Our slow steps resemble the residents just before. This is who we’re up against, and I’m not sure we’re up to the task.

  Our news of StuyTown is met with as much enthusiasm as I imagined. We’ve taken to hanging out in the lounge of a company that prided itself on its quirky workplace. The two-level space is huge, with various couches, modern chairs in primary colors, exposed brick, a short rock climbing wall, and a slide that connects the top level to the bottom—two perks much appreciated by Leo, if not by its old employees.

  He slides down face-first while Paul paces from a silver couch to the paned windows. “There’s nothing we can do?”

  Julie and Chris look on somberly. Kate’s been staring into space with her chin in her hand, and now she straightens. “We have to go to Central Park. Ask for help.”

  Teddy wasn’t inclined to help in the past, but we assisted him with Mo, as per our agreement. We’re going to starve, and, though there’s Roger’s stash, there’s a good chance it’s being watched.

  “Why don’t we go tomorrow?” Brother David asks. “There are trucks we can take, yes?”

  Louis nods. Julie, in the center of a round red chair, wraps her arms around her knees. “I can’t believe they did that to everyone.”

  “They might’ve done it to us,” Chris says. “Roger and Walt might’ve put us outside the gate.”

  Julie shivers. “I didn’t think people could be that cruel.”

  She didn’t see an entire Safe Zone eaten by zombies while the perpetrators looked on. I know they can be that cruel. Indy knows it, too, and the way she nibbles at her index finger makes it clear she’s picturing Lucky in Debra’s shoes. Micah, Rissa, April, Harold, May, Elena, the kids. Any of them could be sent through that zombie gauntlet.

  “They can be worse,” Louis says, his expression far off. “That’s why I left Congo.”

  “That place is messed up,” Chris says.

  “Yes. The people who did it would give you a reason, but
the real reason is that they lost their humanity somewhere along the way.” The room is silent. “I’m sorry. These things happen all the time. Just not here.”

  “In recent history,” Chris amends. “My ancestors didn’t come here for the freedom and French fries.” He attempts a grin, and we smile in return—it’s the first joke he’s made in days. “Seriously, though, do you think Central Park will help?”

  “They’ll have to,” Kate says, her voice firm. “They’re probably next on Walt’s list.”

  53

  We set out for Central Park in two of the trucks StuyTown parked throughout the city. Most Lexers are on the east side by the FDR, where they spent much of the summer and fall, and we don’t have to evade as we’d expected. By Columbus Avenue, it’s practically alarming how few there are.

  A small mob loiters in the square between the squat buildings of Lincoln Center, but we’re past before they get moving. We drive by giant apartment buildings and office towers before the structures shrink around 70th Street, becoming five-story buildings of brick and limestone with stores on the ground floor.

  Entire city blocks have burned, down to the cars on the streets. The black, leafless trees that line the sidewalks remind me of the cabin, where Eric lost hope for his sister but didn’t lose all hope. He must have before he jumped in the river, though, since he said he was dying. The sheer loneliness he likely felt in that moment, and while he died, hounds me at odd instances and in the dead of night.

  Tears threaten to leak. I stare at the scenery, thinking of anything other than Eric, and I slam that file drawer shut. A lifetime of curtailing tears has taught me to stave them off, though it’s harder than ever before.

  “You talk to Teddy, Louis,” Kate says. “I’ll mess it up.”

  “I have a gag in the back,” he says. She smacks his arm.