The City Series (Book 3): Instauration

by Lyons Fleming, Sarah

  “I thought maybe it would bake if I could heat a pot like an oven.”

  I bite the point off my slice. It’s sweet cornbread, my favorite kind. I wouldn’t refuse butter, but it doesn’t need it. Based on the gluttonous sounds of people chewing and slurping, everyone agrees.

  “Indy,” Kate says through a mouthful, “this is wonderful.”

  “Paul gave me the idea of using one of the extra firebricks to keep it hot in there, like a pizza stone,” Indy says. “I think that’s why it worked.”

  “I gave you a brick,” Paul says. “You made the bread.”

  Jorge chews a bite he’s dunked into his chili. “It’s delicious. Why don’t you sit, Indy?”

  She drops in a chair, aglow with pleasure, then takes a few bites of her chili and breaks a bite of cornbread off her slice. Paul has already finished his, and he stabs a finger at the table to collect the crumbs before he sticks the finger in his mouth. Indy sets a piece of her cornbread by his bowl.

  “No,” Paul says.

  “Yes,” she says. “Cooking makes you less hungry. It’s a scientific fact.”

  It’s hard to grumble with a mouth full of cornbread, but Paul manages. After he swallows, he says, “How do you make everything taste so good?” Indy keeps her eyes on her bowl. He adds, “Except for that quinoa.”

  Indy reaches across the table to shove his shoulder. I remember what Maria said—food is the way Indy shows love. I can feel it circling the room and filling our bellies. For once, it feels as though we’re eating a meal. For the moment, I’m not thinking of what Eric would be doing if he were here, or of how much I miss him, or of my uncertain future. For the first time, I’m not as afraid of it as I’ve been.

  65

  Mo hasn’t shown. I shouldn’t be disappointed when nothing seems to go as we’d hoped, but I had an image of us banding together to overthrow the new world order, our righteousness able to take down groups with far more weapons and individuals than ourselves. Instead, we stand on the roof of a Midtown office building like a bunch of idiots stood up for the world’s worst first date.

  Kate rises from where she sits against the roof wall and brushes off the butt of her jeans. “They’re not coming. It’s three hours past the time.”

  “Maybe they got held up in traffic,” Chris says, which gets a few halfhearted laughs.

  We’re close to where the end of the High Line curves onto 34th Street, so we didn’t have far to trek on our bikes. But we had to climb many flights of stairs, and we could’ve done a bunch of things with today, not the least of which is find food.

  The cold seems to worsen my feet. At one digit below freezing, they’re pure agony. My good feeling from last night—the hope for future me—has stood me up today, too. I’m pissed off again, at the waste of today and the futility of our plans.

  “We’ll give it another hour,” Jorge says, checking his watch like he has all the time in the world.

  “Why?” I ask. “Obviously, they don’t give a shit. We could be finding food.”

  Jorge watches me with an equanimity that makes me both want to rage and apologize. “Today was for this.”

  “Well, this sucks!”

  I stomp to the other end of the roof, behind the water towers, already regretting my outburst. It’s not Jorge’s fault this world is fucked. Roger hasn’t returned, and we have no idea what’s happening in StuyTown. Jorge and Brother David didn’t see anyone else murdered on their stakeout, but they only watched trucks come and go on Avenue C. A hundred people could’ve been fed to the zombies on First Avenue without their knowledge. We need to get in there, and we can’t.

  Brother David arrives at my side in his newly laundered habit, and he points to the Empire State Building. “I never went to the top,” he says. “I always wanted to. I’d planned on it, in fact, on this visit to New York.”

  I often forget he was visiting from Boston when the virus hit. “Who did you leave in Boston?”

  “All the brothers in my order. My father. The kids in our youth program. I’m pretty sure they didn’t make it.”

  “Does that make you lucky?”

  “It makes me alive,” he says. “Luck is a state of mind.”

  “We should have gone to Sunset Park months ago,” I say. “Waiting will only kill more people. All we do is wait.”

  “I think so, too.” I turn in surprise, and he smiles. “Didn’t expect that?”

  “Not really. I figured you’d want to yap about mercy a little more.”

  “I do still believe what I said, Sylvia,” Brother David says solemnly, though his eyes sparkle. “But I think mercy, or reconciliation, is best offered when we have our people in hand.”

  I can’t envision how mercy would look anymore, but that’s a conversation for later. “If Lucky doesn’t make it, I don’t know what Indy will...” I shake my head. “The kids must be so scared.”

  “I’m scared. I’m afraid for them. I promised Susan I would protect Emily. As long as I’m breathing, I said. I should be in there with Micah and the others, finding a way to escape.”

  Brother David almost starved to death to save his flock. There’s no doubt in my mind he would again. There are few truly good people in the world, and, though I may be decent, he puts me to shame. No one else would offer Walt forgiveness.

  “You would’ve stayed had you realized,” I say. “I know you would have. And we’re trying to protect them.”

  “You have more faith in me than I merit,” he says. “But I’ve been meaning to tell you that I’m impressed. You’ve transformed your sadness into a need to protect others from suffering. This is when one could turn bitter, but you’re working from a place of love and compassion.”

  He’s said exactly what I need to hear, as though he knew I needed to hear it. I don’t want to wallow in grief, yet I feel guilty for not doing so. I’ve promised myself that one day I’ll grieve for Eric the way I should, properly say goodbye, but for now there are living people to save, and I’m trying my best to work from that place of love. I’m pretty sure I failed two minutes ago, though. “I think you have more faith in me than I merit. Love and compassion while yelling at Jorge?”

  “We show our love in diverse ways.” He flashes a cheeky grin. “You happen to yell it sometimes. But you might be glad to know there’s a good chance you won’t burn in the hellfires after all.”

  “Thanks.” I face him, shielding my hand over my eyes. “I feel like I know you, and, then again, I hardly know anything about you. Not even your last name.”

  “Buckelew. Friends always called me Bucky. The brothers called me Brother Bucky.”

  “It makes it sound like you have buck teeth.”

  “I did, though the kids at school called me Bugs, as in Bunny,” he says, showing me his perfect white smile. “The miracle of braces.”

  I’m about to ask more when a wink of light comes from a building fifteen stories higher and a half-block away. It could be a trick of the sun, but two figures move swiftly out of sight before my eyes focus. People with binoculars—or worse, a rifle scope.

  “Did you see that?” I ask.

  Brother David nods. “It seems they got our notes.”

  Jorge is at our sides a moment later, eyes full of disquiet. “Let’s go. If they don’t want to meet, then maybe we can’t trust them.”

  66

  The zombies froze last night. One degree below freezing for thirty hours has made them still, though not statues. According to Artie and Louis, yesterday StuyTown drove to an office building and returned with something in their trucks. Today, with no moving bodies on the ground, they’ll almost assuredly return to finish the job, if there’s anything left to finish. This is when anyone with sense would be out scrounging for what’s left in this city, and it’s a matter of opinion whether we’re wasting the opportunity or not.

  Julie, Casper, and Chris have radioed from a building in our line of sight to tell us StuyTown will be at the sleek glass building any minute now. Kate,
Louis, Indy, and I stand in what remains of a convenience store across the intersection and down half a block, far enough to be safe from the coming blast. Jorge, Brother David, and Artie are close by in case we need backup.

  It took two hours to string the tripwire and connect the battery. It took many, many hours of advanced chemistry to synthesize the explosives and build the detonator, the latter made from a combination of stove fuel tablets and other ingredients packed into a rifle cartridge casing fitted with wire. The effort required to walk into a room where I could be blown to smithereens wasn’t any small thing, either.

  “And it all relies on a single clothespin,” I say. The tripwire, the detonator, the whole circuit, is dependent upon the tripwire pulling a slim piece of wood from between two connections on either side of a wooden clothespin. This will complete the circuit that’ll first light the wire, set off the detonator, and then ignite the whole thing.

  Kate stamps her feet to warm them up. “Crazy, isn’t it? I love explosives.”

  Indy throws me a grin behind Kate’s head. The woman is first-class insane. It could be I used to hold the position, but I’ve been ousted by the Explosives Queen.

  “I hear them,” Louis says.

  A steady drone grows louder until two box trucks round the corner. My fingers tingle and I hold my breath. The first truck swings wide and stops at the curb, its doors opening to release its occupants. The second truck trips the wire before it pulls behind, and the four of us sigh in disappointment at the nothingness that occurs.

  “Shi—”

  Kate’s curse is drowned out by a thunderous crash that rattles our windows. The second truck lifts a few inches from the ground. The glass front of the building’s lobby shatters, likely from the large ball bearings we packed around the nitro. Smoke fills the street, obscuring our view.

  “Holy shit,” Indy says. I nod, hand to my mouth. This is what we’re playing with in our lab kitchen, and there’s something both terrifying and satisfying about the sheer immensity of that power.

  We hid the bombs beneath Lexers by the curb, where we thought they’d affect more than one vehicle. And, as the smoke clears some, we see they have. The second truck smolders, though it hasn’t burst into flames, and what we can see of the first truck is dented on the back and blackened on the side. No one runs. No one screams.

  Another minute passes before Kate asks, “You ready?”

  Louis opens the glass door, and we make our way down the block with our guns out. Closer to the explosion, it’s evident the blast was stronger than expected. The man in the passenger’s seat of the second truck slumps to the side, his face a mess of raw, blackened flesh. The driver’s form rests in a cloud of black smoke through which no one could breathe.

  Outside the first truck, three people lie on the sidewalk. The iron-rich scent of blood permeates the air. One rests in a pool of red, the meat of his upper torso scattered in chunks. Another is face down in a puddle. The third, a woman, lies on her side. Her breath drags in, then releases in a whoosh that fogs the air. A hole in her cheek oozes. A gouge in her neck percolates red. More seeps through her clothing. Exsanguination is the word of today.

  It’s every war photo I’ve ever seen come to life. None of this is okay. But our only choice is to kill them one by one with no discretion until they’re gone. It’s what they did to us. The words play on a loop in my mind while Indy and I approach the woman. She hears our footsteps and rolls her face our way.

  I stop short. Denise. Her hair is hidden by a winter cap, and only the undamaged side of her face moves when she gurgles. Her good eye widens and one side of her mouth curls in a snarl. Horror at this end result clashes with the thought that she set this in motion when she refused to work together, when she told Walt our plans, when she talked shit about SPSZ, and when she fed Debra to the Lexers.

  Maria died because of her. Guillermo. Grace and Eli, most likely. Even Eric.

  But that doesn’t change this stinking, grisly reality. I move forward and kneel beside her, where the cold of the concrete seeps through my jeans. Blood runs in small trickles from her neck—red liquid brimming in the hole, cresting the wound’s edge in a thin stream, and then filling again. There’s no way to save her, and I don’t know that I would if I could, but I don’t want her to die alone.

  “F-F-F,” she stutters. “F-F-Fuff Oo.”

  “Fuck you?” I ask. “That’s what you’re saying?”

  Denise’s head moves up and down. She brushes aside her coat as if going for her weapon. I pin her arm to her side and lift her jacket, where my hand freezes at the sight of her holster. It was painstakingly crafted from two colors of leather, carved with flowers, and there’s only one like it in all the world.

  Indy gasps above me. Denise has Grace’s holster, and Eli never would have left Grace alone. They’re really gone. My rage wells and overflows the same as Denise’s wound. She’s not sorry, even now. I’m not sorry, either, only sorry that I didn’t do this sooner.

  “Fuck you, too, Denise,” I say. “Go to Hell.”

  Indy stares down, eyes hard. “She’s on her way.”

  I draw Eric’s knife from where it lives in a sheath on my hip. Denise gulps for air as I slice through her belt to remove the holster. I could finish her off. I want to finish her off, but, more than that, I want her to suffer as long as possible, the way Grace and Eli likely did. Indy pulls me to my feet, and we walk away, leaving Denise to endure the short remainder of her life on the sidewalk.

  The others arrive, faces grim as they take in the scene. Brother David sinks beside Denise, where he uses the hem of his habit to wipe blood from her face and his steady voice recites what could be a prayer. I don’t think it will be enough to save her. If there is a Hell, and if there’s any justice in the universe, she’ll burn down there forever.

  None of the men is Walt. It would’ve been too good to be true. But they make five fewer people to fight. Added to the others, we’ve killed nine. So far, no one is the wiser, and Artie and Jorge tow the bodies and trucks crosstown to the loading docks of the Javits Convention Center to keep it that way. The rest of us clean up what’s left of the mess and check the building. Whatever they planned to acquire today, it wasn’t food. Or it was, and someone else got to it first.

  Our quiet is in direct relation to the force of the explosion, and we work quickly in case StuyTown comes to investigate the noise. It’s one thing to consider blowing people up. It’s another to wash their blood from the sidewalks with buckets of water and retrieve the remnants of your bomb along with chunks of muscle and bits of skin. It leaves me with no illusions that this fight will be enjoyable or gratifying in anything but a gruesome way.

  Even with that, I’d do it over again.

  67

  Eric

  Guillermo brings his plate upstairs to eat dinner with me every night. After last week’s multiple trips down the stairs, I was ordered to bed when pain in my shoulder caused Anaya to fear I’d reinjured my liver; it’s hard to take the stairs gingerly when you’re hopping on one foot.

  I can do a lot, she said, but I can’t do liver surgery. Then she told me I could take my chances and die, or I could lie the hell down. I’ll be the first to admit I’m not the most patient of patients, and I conceded that she was right. A quick movement, a cough, can produce a feeling not unlike the original stab wound. And I want to live, if only to kill Walt once and for all.

  Guillermo eats a bite of the stew-type item they’ve thrown together tonight and says, “We think they’ll be frozen tomorrow. At least enough that we can go out. See what’s going on at Sunset Park.”

  I lower my eyes to my tray. I’d give anything to go with them. Make my way to the bridge and head for the High Line. My surety has worn off, replaced by the thought that Sylvie and the others didn’t make it out. Or, possibly just as bad, that they did, and now they’re at war with Walt. Worst, that they’re dead by Walt’s hand. I have too much time to imagine the possibilities, and, though I’m exh
austed from doing nothing these days, imagining keeps me awake far into the night.

  “We’re gonna check out the bridge, though,” he says, his tone appeasing. “I don’t know if they’ll freeze long enough for us to cross and make it back—”

  “Guillermo,” I cut him off. I hate that my disappointment is so obvious. That I’m so obviously weak. “I understand. When I’m better, and they’re frozen, I’ll go myself.”

  They can’t leave the kids here unprotected. If the Lexers thaw when they’re on the other side of the bridge, who knows when they’ll next freeze for the return trip.

  “No, we’ll go. I’m getting Rissa and Elena out of there.”

  He jaws a bite of stew while he glares at the window. I’m not the only one who feels powerless. Guillermo tried to leave last week, and he was forced back within minutes. It doesn’t help that we sit at the ass end of Brooklyn, hemmed in with the zombies by water on two sides and a highway on the third. If we had a boat, it’d be a different story.

  “Will you do me a favor, but only if you can?” I ask.

  “Of course.”

  “If you go near Prospect Park, will you leave a note in the spot where I took Sylvie on her birthday? The fountain.” He knows the location, as I told everyone where it was just in case. She likely believes me dead, and therefore won’t check the Vale of Cashmere, but it’s where we agreed to leave a message if we were separated.

  “Sure, man. No problem.”

  He’s eager to give me something, and I’ll take it. “Thanks.”

  Bird stretches out between my legs, making himself longer than seems possible. I scratch his head until he purrs. He follows me everywhere, not that I go far. I’m unsure if it’s because he likes me, or because he thinks that if he sticks close, Sylvie’s bound to show up. We both wish that last part was true.

  “The nuns said we shouldn’t keep him.” Guillermo motions at Bird with his spoon. “They said he’d eat too much food. You should’ve heard the kids—they had a fit. So I tell Sister Frances he was Sylvie’s, and then she says God must want them to take care of him, since Sylvie took care of them with the seeds.” He grins. “I think she was looking for a good excuse, anyway.”