My stomach rolls at the thought of sorting through bodies of people we knew, examining for signs of rape, causes of death. It’s no surprise Guillermo suddenly looks weary, a decade older than he is. “Who?” My voice catches. “Who did you find?”
“Pretty much everyone,” Guillermo says in a monotone.
I’m afraid to ask. But I have to, if for no other reason than to stop wondering. “Grace and Eli?”
Guillermo lifts anguished eyes, and then he nods.
61
Guillermo gave me Grace’s necklace. I grip the moonstone pendant between my fingers and let the silver chain pool in my palm. It’s shiny, clean, though I suspect it wasn’t always. He also retrieved Eli’s curved knife for Indy and Lucky, which Sacred Heart missed when they stripped the bodies of valuables, though his gun and holster were missing, as was the holster Eli made for Grace.
I didn’t doubt Guillermo’s account, but holding tangible proof that Grace is gone makes it different somehow. Sylvie acts resigned to Grace’s death, but I’m not sure how true that is. How true it will be, when I give her the necklace.
I refuse to consider the thought I won’t see Sylvie again. I despise Roger with an intensity like never before, but he won’t let anything happen to Sylvie. It’s the only thing he ever said that I still believe, and it’s likely the reason he didn’t speak up for me with Walt. If she and the others didn’t escape StuyTown, he’s plying her with cigarettes even now.
This idea is as maddening as it is reassuring. Between Jorge and Paul, I know she and Indy are in good hands. Leo has them all to protect him. I should try to concentrate on the here and now, but I want to throw off my blankets and head to the city. Even if the Lexers weren’t out there, it’d be a pipe dream. I can barely sit up in bed. Between a bum leg, a stab wound, and two weeks of sepsis, I’m weak as a kitten. I peed in a pitcher, but I insisted on heading to the bathroom for all other needs, and I took a two-hour nap after I made the forty-foot trip.
A knock comes at the door, and Susan and Dennis enter. I saw them briefly yesterday, but after a long, tedious talk with Guillermo and Kearney, I was so wiped out that I fell asleep mid-conversation.
I set Grace’s necklace on the nightstand. “Hey. Sit down.”
Susan settles in a chair, hands on her thighs. Her curly brown hair is frizzed out the way it was when we first met, as though she’s been running her hands through it non-stop. She and Dennis found her son, Keith, and his son, Kenneth, though their older sons were in the pile of discarded bodies. For all she knew, Emily was in a different pile, and on the same day she learned her daughter was alive and well, she learned she’s in danger again.
“You look better,” Susan says.
“Sorry about falling asleep on you yesterday,” I say.
“You needed it,” Dennis says.
“Two weeks’ worth wasn’t enough,” I joke.
He smiles where he stands near the plain wood dresser by the door, though the nuns brought an extra chair to my room for visitors. His close-cropped hair has a patch of gray that wasn’t there before, and he has a scar on his temple where Walt’s men bashed him over the head. He lost his wife, Jean, and his older son on that day in March seven months ago, and he’s aged seven years since.
“Will you tell me more about Emily?” Susan asks, twisting her hands together. “I know you’re tired, and we shouldn’t bother—”
“We found her the coolest bed,” I cut in. “It’s a playhouse with a loft bed as the roof. It was in one of the apartments on a top floor, and it made everyone at school jealous. Sylvie got her a new red velvet dress, which she now wears every day, and she named her American Girl dolls Beatrice, Kimberly, and Ramen.”
“Ramen?” Susan asks.
“Hey, I just relay the information,” I say. “She thinks it’s a perfectly reasonable name, and no one can tell her any different.”
Susan hiccup-laughs, wiping her eyes. “She’s stubborn. Rob used to say she got that from me.”
“But sweet,” I say, and Susan’s eyes overflow. “I’m sorry, I don’t want to upset you.”
She shakes her head quickly. “I’m already upset. You’re making it better.”
I tell her every last thing I can remember, down to when Emily, Chen, and May watched as I was led away, and I put as positive a spin as I can on what Walt said about moving them to new apartments. By the time I’m finished, my voice is raspy and my side throbs.
Sister Frances comes through the door bearing a tray, her face pleasant beneath her short veil and gray hair. I’ve never been around nuns for any length of time, and, based on Sylvie’s and Paul’s stories, I figured they’d try to convert me or knock my knuckles with a ruler. So far, they bring me food and tell me they’re praying for a speedy recovery. It’s the best possible kind of letdown.
“Thank you, Sister,” I say as she sets the tray on my lap. She bows slightly, nods at Dennis and Susan, then leaves as quietly as she came. “They don’t talk your ear off, do they?”
Dennis and Susan laugh as I eat a spoonful of oatmeal. Eating is the one thing I’m allowed to do, and if they hadn’t assured me they have plenty of food, I would feel guilty. Whatever they put down my feeding tube kept me alive, but it didn’t maintain my weight or muscle. I try not to look down much, and I pretend it doesn’t bother me that my arm can only just about handle lifting a spoon.
“We should leave you in peace,” Susan says. “Thanks, Eric.”
“Anytime. I mean that.”
She pats my shoulder. After she steps out, Dennis says, “Thank you. She feels guilty. About everything.”
I know the feeling. “You guys made the right choice,” I say. “You found Keith and Kenneth, and I think Emily is okay for now. We’ll figure a way to get her out.”
“God, I hope so. She couldn’t stand to lose her twice.”
I set down my spoon and close my eyes once he’s gone. Positivity is exhausting, maybe even more so than my injuries. I pray I’m right about Emily. About Sylvie. About everyone.
Not only is positivity exhausting, so is walking. Or, I should say, so is crutching. But November is coming, along with cold weather, and I’m determined to be on my feet when the Lexers freeze. It’s been three weeks at the monastery. Though I slept through two of them, this past week has felt like a year. Which is about how long it took me to make my first trip downstairs today.
The nuns’ five-story pale brick building is attached to the giant church that faces the street, though it sits behind the iron fence at the sidewalk—now fortified by metal, wood, brick, and anything else they had handy. Someone always keeps watch in the bell tower above the church, which is how they saw my flare.
Though they still hold school, most of the kids and parents, and kids with adopted parents, live in the school building and offices. The latecomers, like Dennis and Susan, live in the monastery with the sisters, as do several other families. Sister Frances told me that, once upon a time, they had fifty nuns. It’s been lower—around twenty—for years, but eleven of the oldest nuns died after the virus.
It’s quiet for the most part, and the sitting room is an adults-only area with huge windows and plaster walls. My bedroom is on a largely-unused floor, with Guillermo and Kearney nearby. And Kirk, Kearney’s sidekick, who reminds me of Paul with his large stature and blue eyes. He’s surprisingly soft-spoken and mild, especially with the little kids who crowd around him and beg to be carried on his shoulders.
“How’s the leg?” he asks from a couch.
“All right,” I say. The truth is it hurts. My abdomen is the same. There’s essentially nothing you do that doesn’t involve your core in some way, and even my smallest movements remind me of that.
Kirk nods. He’s sitting—just sitting—and it’s driving me insane. If I could run in circles right now, I would, just for the hell of it. He smiles at someone in the doorway behind me. “She down for her nap?”
“Yeah, finally.” A blond woman, maybe my age, comes far enoug
h into the room that I can see her. She’s pretty, with rigid posture, like she half-expects someone will jump from a closet to scare her any second. “She wanted you.”
Kirk grins. “Told you. You should’ve let me do it.”
Her shoulders lower with her quiet laugh. “I know. I don’t like to ask …” She motions to the door. “I promised Sister Mary Anne I’d help with laundry. You don’t have to keep an ear on Nina. I’ll hear her if she wakes up.”
“If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure, but thanks.” The blond woman spins and startles at the sight of me. “Hi. You’re Eric?”
I smile. “I am. You’re…”
“Alice. It’s nice to meet you, but I really do have to go.”
“Okay,” I say. “Nice to meet you, too.”
She leaves quickly, and Kirk watches her depart. “Alice was Joe’s partner’s wife.”
Kearney’s partner, Clark, whom he killed by shoving him into a group of zombies, giving rise to what Sylvie has termed to Kearney someone. Alice was seven months pregnant at the time, and that baby must be the napping Nina. I’m surprised Alice is here, to say the least.
“He beat her,” Kirk says. “Mike Clark. Joe’s partner. It got worse when she got pregnant. Joe was helping her leave him. Turns out, he only had to feed him to the zombies and bring Alice here.”
“Huh,” I say. “Good for him.”
It’s a way different spin on that story, in which Kearney’s the villain and Clark the good-boy cop. I wonder about the woman in the hospital, the one Sylvie and Grace assumed Kearney pushed as well. I think Dawn was her name.
“Alice has trust issues,” Kirk says. “But she’s better. She trusts me, I think.”
“It seemed like she does.” I think it’s true, though his face is so hopeful I have to agree anyway. Hopeful enough that I’d bet my life Alice can trust him, even if she doesn’t yet. Kirk’s the one who came to SPSZ to ask us for goat’s milk, both for Jin and, likely, for Nina.
Kirk looks around the room. It’s nice in an old-fashioned sense, though the piles of needlework and religious books don’t offer much in the way of entertainment. “You want to get out of here?”
“With every fiber of my being, but I’m…” I flourish my hand at myself, not sure how to complete that. Indisposed? Feeble? Pathetic?
“Come to the porch, at least. Fresh air is good for you, like mom always said.”
He rises to his feet with an effortlessness that makes me irrationally angry, then comes forward, his hand out. I move to the front of my seat and ready myself to stand. “I’ve got it, thanks.”
Kirk keeps his gaze across the room, which I appreciate while I inelegantly struggle to rise without a squeal of pain. I get the crutches situated, then start for the door at a pace I’m sure makes him want to give me a kick in the ass. We cross another sitting area, this one not a quiet room, and Kirk opens one of the arched wood doors.
I swing my cast over the threshold and make my way to the porch’s low brick wall. It’s cold, with a brisk breeze, but the clean air is refreshing after the closed air of inside. They managed to reinstate water here, and, with some fuel and a generator, they got the old radiator heat working again. I know gasoline goes bad eventually, though I’m not sure how heating oil fares. If it stays usable, they have a couple winters’ worth of heat sitting in trucks in the front parking lot.
Sylvie and the others said the grounds were incredible, and I have to agree. I’ve seen them from the upstairs window, but I haven’t smelled them and heard the autumnal leaves rustle in the wind. To our left is another building of the same pale brick, and attached to that a newer, darker brick building. Playground equipment sits out back, with about a dozen kids swinging and hanging from the bars while two adults look on.
Between our building and those is a courtyard that connects to the church in front, so that the entire complex makes something similar to a backwards number four. The twenty-foot high wall surrounds all but the front church, though every street-side window is gated with iron.
The ground slopes down from the porch toward what they call the lake: a body of water surrounded by a low stone wall. They had boats—mainly paddleboats—but they were taken by the parents and children who decided to leave Brooklyn early on. Crossing the bay in a paddleboat must have been interesting.
The grounds rise in knolls and hummocks, shaded by giant trees that have grown for decades, if not a hundred years. A large grassed area became a garden, thanks to the seeds Sylvie gave them. I ate the product of those seeds this morning, in the form of dried tomatoes ground to make broth.
Concrete paths cross the grass and parallel the walls. Two girls skip along one holding hands, and Keith and Kenneth kick a soccer ball back and forth on the grass, likely looking how their dads looked long ago. It’s pastoral and idyllic, if you don’t consider what’s outside the walls, or that they’ve been trapped here for months, first by live people and then dead ones.
The chill comes slowly, but, two minutes in, I shiver. My gut spasms, and a sharp pain steals my breath. Though I would’ve hardly considered this cold before, it’s downright freezing now.
“I’m ready to go in if you are,” Kirk says, like the idea has nothing to do with my labored breathing.
I grab my crutches and slog my way to the door. It’s been three weeks. I can’t walk. I can’t go outside for any length of time. Though I try not to complain aloud, I’m tired of hearing myself bitch in my head. And I’m plain old tired. I ease down into an armchair. “I’m going to take a break.”
“Good idea. I want to check on Nina.” Kirk seems to want to say more, but he leaves it at that. I nod, closing my eyes, and hear him stroll away. Lucky bastard.
62
Sylvie
Charlie has seen Mo here and there, and he’s both given us a physical description of the man and mentioned a few spots to check while we sit in his top-floor apartment of a West Village brownstone, where a working fireplace with a metal stove insert makes the room toasty warm. Mischa sits on the wood floor before the white mantel, her paws outstretched.
The exposed brick and buttery leather furniture belonged to the former occupants, but the additions of several cat trees and the piles of blankets are all Charlie. As well as the food. When he opened a closet to show me what was left of the Easter candy he found in the sale section of a store long ago, I might have drooled.
I’m eating an old but delicious Kit Kat that I’ve tried to make last as long as possible. First, I broke the bars apart, then I bit off the very top layer and worked my way down to the thicker chocolate coating and final wafer layer, which I nibbled as slowly as possible. I stare at the very last morsel before I pop it in and let it melt. As much as I’d like to savor it for a week, my hunger won’t allow it. I want to stuff my face with anything and everything. Even vegetables. I’d take May’s green beans, fresh peas, something canned. This is how far I’ve fallen.
Charlie agrees StuyTown looks the same for the most part, though he’s stayed away from the gate. “If you want me to go, I will.”
Julie, on the leather couch with Chris, says, “No. We don’t want you in danger.”
“If you change your minds, let me know.”
Casper sits at the tall wood dining table by the open kitchen, writing down the places Charlie mentioned he’s seen Mo. “Which one would you say we visit first?”
Charlie thinks for a moment. He’s no cleaner than when I last saw him, but no dirtier either. I am considerably dirtier than I was, but so far it’s not helping with zombie evasion. “I’d go to that last place or the Ford building,” he says. “Though I haven’t seen them there for a while.”
We almost plotzed when he first mentioned the Ford Foundation building. The day we searched for Mo, Carmen led us away from there as quickly as possible, assuring us there was no one inside, and she was pretty lackadaisical when inspecting Mo’s trucks and that fire. These days, bodies are easy to find and disguise with fire. Walt d
id it with Kearney’s body.
Carmen doesn’t seem like the kind of person who fails at a mission, and she’s been hunting Mo for over a year—or she’s been pretending to hunt Mo. It’s possible she wanted to help us at Central Park when she asked where we were staying.
I lick the last of the chocolate from my fingers. “Charlie, you know you could live with us. And I’m not saying that for the chocolate.”
Charlie’s lined face creases into a smile. “I do know, little lady, but Mischa and I like it out here. Now that we know where you are, we’ll come by.”
I would argue, but he has it better than most people. He’s content in a way I’ve only ever been in Sunset Park and can’t see myself being again. We chat a while longer, then get ourselves ready for the trip back. Charlie spends a minute in his closet, slams cabinets in his kitchen, and then returns to the apartment door with wrinkled plastic shopping bags stuffed with food.
Julie holds up gloved hands. “We didn’t tell you all of that so you’d give us food.”
“And here you are, getting food in spite of it. Kate never once turned me away, and she had her share of problems feeding everyone. You tell her I say hello, and I’ll see her soon. What’s she up to?”
“You don’t want to know,” Chris says. “It involves explosives.”
“Kate’s one tough cookie.” Charlie turns to me. “There’s some chocolate in there for you and your little guy.”
“Thanks, Charlie.” I don’t bother saying Leo’s not my little guy. He is in the ways that count.
Roger is in The Box when we return. He’s brought us food and good tidings from Micah. “He wanted to write a note, but they search everyone coming and going, even me,” Roger explains. He looks to Indy. “Lucky says he’s glad you’re okay, and he loves you. He said tell my auntie I didn’t forget. Do what’s right, work hard, and get rewarded. Did I get it right?”
The City Series (Book 3): Instauration Page 43
