The City Series (Book 3): Instauration

by Lyons Fleming, Sarah

  “New love is terrible.” Roger puts a finger gun to his head and pulls the trigger.

  “It really is,” I agree, though it’s not at all. “What’d you bring us?”

  “Not even a thank you? Just what’d you bring us?”

  “I’m too hungry for manners. Feed me.”

  Roger laughs while I follow him to his bag. He pulls out various canned goods, a bottle of wine, boxes of pasta, two heads of broccoli from our greenhouse—a thought I wipe from my mind before I become murderously angry—and a handful of candy bars. “You want the broccoli first, right?”

  “Of course,” I say, ripping open a Snickers. There are enough for everyone, which means I don’t have to share. I take a bite and moan. Peanuts, caramel, and chocolate might be better than sex, or what I remember of it. I take another bite, then another, unable to pace myself the way I should.

  “I wish I could get more through the gate, but this was pushing it. I couldn’t get near my other stash.”

  I swallow and cram the remainder of the Snickers in my mouth. “I need about four hundred of those.”

  “What?” he asks. “Meow for hungry toes? Didn’t anyone ever teach you not to talk with your mouth full?”

  My snort turns to laughter, never a good idea with a mouthful of food. I’m going to choke to death on a Snickers, which seems a fitting way for me to die. Roger pats my back while I concentrate on chewing until I can swallow the last bite. “I said I need four hundred of those. Also, thank you.”

  “I’ll work on the candy bars. You work on being ladylike.”

  I wipe my mouth with my hand. “Like so?”

  “Exactly.” He slings his empty bag on his shoulder. “I have to get back.”

  “Okay.” I’m a little disappointed, and that makes me more than a little uneasy. It’s not a romantic kind of disappointment, but the kind where your friend decides to go home when you thought the night was just getting started. “I’ll walk you out so we can tell Indy.”

  Chris, Julie, and Casper have been conscripted into the soccer game on the path, and Jorge comes down from Chelsea Market in time to join them in thanking Roger for the delivery. “Sure,” Roger says. “I told Sylvie they should come next Friday, if that works.”

  Jorge tugs at his ponytail. “As long as it works for them.”

  “If Indy agrees,” I say.

  I expect some hesitation, but she nods. “Next Friday.”

  Paul presses his lips together. When Indy looks his way, he forces a thin smile that she returns before she gnaws on a finger.

  Roger squares his shoulders. “I’ll watch out for them,” he says, likely because not a single person looks keen on this plan. “I promise.”

  “You’d better,” Casper says, so quietly I almost don’t hear. Roger doesn’t, just as he doesn’t notice Casper’s hand on his sword’s hilt.

  “Bye,” Roger says to me. “Try not to choke to death before then.”

  “Find me more chocolate and I’ll have a reason to live.”

  “Will do.” He salutes us before he heads down the path. The soccer game recommences, though less enthusiastically than before, and Casper watches Roger’s figure recede into the distance.

  “Want to go in?” I ask.

  “Not yet. I want some air.”

  I follow Casper to a bench and light a cigarette, then wave away the smoke with my other hand. “Sorry, I’m thinking you didn’t mean smoky air.”

  “It’s okay. My mom and dad smoked like chimneys. That’s why I don’t.”

  “Ah, one of those.” I squint at him. “You went the other way instead of joining the team.”

  “I guess. My mother would cough for a half hour every morning. It sounded like she was dying.”

  “And that didn’t make you want to start? Weirdo.”

  A dimple I’ve never noticed appears in his cheek. “It was tempting, but I resisted.”

  “You were smart. That doesn’t surprise me. I’ll bet you were a straight-A student and all that, too.”

  “Not really. I’ve never been great at anything. Like, I do okay, but there’s nothing special about me.”

  He says it matter-of-factly. Maybe he had normal parents, but someone messed with his self-confidence. “That’s not true. I saw you and Kieran—you’re getting badass with that sword. And you’re nice and you’re funny, though I wish you wouldn’t make fun of yourself so much.”

  Casper shrugs and stares down the tracks. “Roger’s gone.”

  “What do you think of him?” I ask, since it’s clear Casper is done talking about Casper.

  “I still don’t trust him. But he spent so long bothering me that maybe I never will.” I take a drag and nod as I release the smoke. I shouldn’t forget how Roger treated Casper, and how much I disliked him. Casper sighs. “He’s our only option. Isn’t that all that matters for now?”

  “You’re right,” I say. “Told you you’re smart.”

  76

  The temperature has dropped below freezing again. Our weather expert, Artie, has bet Kate a Snickers bar it will stay there for the next few days, a bet she says she’ll be happy to lose. In preparation, we’ve readied the empty rooms for Mo and Farina’s people. Their heat is going fast, but they won’t risk moving thirty people and their possessions downtown until it’s safe.

  Mo has brought their one boat down the Hudson to the hotel. The battered canoe could’ve been driven down on a truck roof, but I get the feeling Mo likes adventure enough to create some where it’s lacking.

  “Did you two ever climb mountains?” I ask when he and his wife, Pilar, arrive carrying it over their heads.

  “Not yet,” Pilar says.

  She removes her hat after they set the boat down. Her curly brown hair has natural streaks of auburn and her cheeks are a rosier tan than the rest of her, as though she’s perpetually sun-kissed. The lines around her eyes seem to smile even when she isn’t. She’s lithe and muscled and bursting with energy.

  The second she sees Leo, she ropes him into a game of football—meaning soccer—while I walk Mo to our Chelsea Market lab. “You should know I have a crush on your wife,” I say.

  “I don’t blame you. I do, too.”

  “It seems like she should live in Colorado or something.”

  “Last year, she went to her job every day, nine to five. She was a court reporter, and sometimes she’d cry at night because her carpal tunnel hurt so bad. We were both working for retirement—that’s when we’d finally get to live and lose those ten extra pounds, you know? Then this happened. She never wanted to give up, not once, even when I did.”

  These are my favorite stories. No matter how hard the world sucks, there are people who make the best of it. They grow stronger and kick ass and become women who canoe down the Hudson for the fuck of it.

  “I might be in love with her now,” I say. “So watch out.”

  Mo laughs as we enter the Market. In the kitchen, he looks over the bottles of nitro we’ve made. They sit, corked with rubber, in a water bath that keeps them cool.

  “Why don’t you use the lids?” he asks.

  “You don’t want friction,” Kate says. “Any grinding in the threads and—boom. Or that’s what I’ve been told. That’s one rule I don’t plan to break.”

  “Smart move,” Mo says. “What do we do with it?”

  “We’ll make some of them into gelatin like we did the first batches. It’s a bit more stable. Depends on what we want to blow up. I like knowing it’s here.”

  She pats the rubber tub that holds the jars. Mo flinches a tad. “Yes, she’s crazy,” I say. “But as long as you know the rules and follow them, it’s not that bad.”

  “They’re both crazy,” Louis says with a small smile, though he hasn’t been the same since he learned about Teddy’s bombs. If I were Teddy, I would avoid coming within a mile of Louis for as long as I valued my life.

  I motion at Kate. “I can only aspire to be as crazy as this one, but I’ve wanted to blow up Walt
for a long time.”

  “We thought we saw an explosion the day Walt came to StuyTown,” Mo says. “There was smoke in the sky.”

  “Smoke?” Kate asks. “That wasn’t us. There was barely any gunfire.”

  “I know that now. Yeah, orange smoke. Turned out it was across the bay, down by the Verrazano. It went away pretty quickly. We guessed it was a flare or something.”

  “A flare?” I ask. My voice sounds distant under the ringing in my ears, and I grip the counter to stay on my feet.

  “Sylvie, are you okay?” Louis takes my arm. “Are you sick?”

  I swallow and wet my lips, look into Mo’s concerned face. “Orange smoke? You’re sure it was the same day?”

  “Yeah,” he says. “Why?”

  I try to speak, but I can’t breathe. Kate’s face looms before me. “Sylvie, what’s going on?”

  “Eric,” I whisper. “He had flares in his jacket. Orange smoke.” I turn to Louis, desperate now, because I’m scared to believe what I remember. “He was wearing his brown jacket when he went in the river, right?”

  Louis nods. I sink against the counter. Eric made it down the river. He set off a flare, asking for help, and I didn’t see it. I didn’t help him. I would’ve jumped in the river and swam there, used a fucking inner tube, floated with all the shit and debris and zombies. I would’ve done anything at all to save him.

  Kate’s expression floods with sympathy. “Oh, honey, you didn’t know.”

  I stare at the checkerboard tile floor, then take in the rows of bottles and lab equipment. All the things I’ve been doing while Eric waited for someone to come. My stomach lurches. Every part of me feels sick. I pull from Louis’ grip and head for the door.

  His boots follow, but Kate says, “No, Louis, let her go.”

  Indy and Paul find me on the top terrace of the Whitney. I can’t see the Verrazano from here, but I watch the water. The stinking, fetid water that I assumed killed him in minutes. In all likelihood, it did eventually, through hypothermia or infection.

  Paul’s hand settles on my shoulder. Indy envelops me in her arms to stop my shivering. I’m so cold, and my feet burn as badly as they ever have, but it’s nothing more than a little taste of what Eric must have gone through.

  “Kate told us,” Indy whispers. “I’m so sorry.”

  I hug Indy tighter, then bury my face in her neck and allow the tears to come. All the ones I’ve held back because there were other things to attend to. Other people to save. I spent so much energy getting over Eric, pushing away his memory, that I never allowed myself to believe he could be out there. I felt strong for that, and now I feel stupid and heartless. Merciless.

  Jorge says to tell on yourself. I’m afraid that if I don’t, guilt will push me over the edge. “I should’ve looked for him,” I whisper.

  “No.” Indy holds me at arm’s length, her eyes full of tears. “No. This isn’t on you.”

  “I have to check,” I say. “I’m going to Brooklyn. Mo will let me use the boat.”

  We have four nights and five days before we leave for StuyTown. If he made it out of the water, he might be okay. He would’ve come for me if he were able, so it’s up to me to find him. If he’s in Brooklyn, he’d leave a note at the Vale of Cashmere. If there’s not a note, I’ll take the canoe to the bridge and look for his body. After that, I’ll let him go for good.

  “I’ll come with you,” Indy says.

  They may think I’m crazy, but crazy is what I’ll be if I have to wonder forever. I can’t walk through the gates to StuyTown without having tried. I finish packing my bag and walk the hall to Indy and Paul’s room, where I stop at voices coming through the door.

  “…if anyone could, it’s Eric,” Paul says. “But it’s been over a month.”

  “I know that,” Indy says.

  “In the dark is worse. Wait until tomorrow. You can at least ask her to do that, since she won’t let me come.”

  Paul offered, and I refused. I won’t be responsible for making Leo an orphan. Indy and I will leave in the middle of the night to take advantage of the next low tide. The temperature dropped into the teens a few hours ago, which means the Lexers should be mostly frozen by morning, and we’ll be at Brooklyn’s shore before dawn. Prospect Park—the Vale of Cashmere—is a quick bike ride up Flatbush Avenue. We’ll be there and back before the temperature can rise. With thawed zombies, the trip would be that much more difficult, if not impossible.

  “I’m not asking anything,” Indy says. “You want to ask, go right ahead. But would you let anyone you love be out there alone? If I thought I could find Eli, I’d leave at night in the middle of a hurricane. And you know Sylvie would come with me, no questions asked.”

  Paul’s response is muffled. I wait a minute before I knock at the door. Indy swings it open. She’s bundled up the way I am, in hat and gloves and multiple layers of clothing.

  “You don’t have to come,” I say.

  “Shut up.” She smiles her toothpaste commercial smile. “Girls’ road trip!”

  “You mean river trip.”

  “Whatever.”

  I enter to find Paul sitting at the end of their king bed, elbows on his knees and chin in his hands. He glances at me, then returns to gazing at the wall. They’ve had a week together—really together—and I’m taking Indy from him in the last few days they have left.

  “Stay,” I say to Indy. “You can’t come. I’m sorry for asking you.”

  “You didn’t ask, remember?”

  “Well, then I’m uninviting you.”

  Her brows meet above her eyes. “I invited myself, dumbass.”

  “She’s going, Rossi.” Paul stands and wraps his arms around Indy from behind. “So shut up and let’s get both you dumbasses fed and in your boat.”

  “Isn’t he a charmer?” Indy pats where his head rests on her shoulder. “I’m going to miss him so much.”

  I search their faces and find no trace of irritation. Maybe they doubt the success of this mission, but they understand. They’re here the way they’ve been here since Eric disappeared, and there’s no way to pay them back except to do the same for them if and when I can.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  “Try not to die,” Paul says, and Indy whacks him. “Ow. I’m getting tired of girls hitting me.”

  “Then stop being an ass,” Indy says. “And you don’t get to call us girls. You call us women.”

  “Womyn with a Y,” I say, and Indy whoops.

  Earlier today, we lined up cars and trucks across the West Side Highway, from the hotel to an old pier on the water, so that Mo and Pilar had a safe spot to dock their canoe. I thank them for use of their boat and say goodbye to the others. I save Leo for last, covering him with kisses so that he’s laughing when we leave with Kate, Jorge, and Paul, all of whom will escort us through the dark to the pier.

  I walk between Kate and Jorge. The voice that whispers Eric could be alive grows louder with every passing minute and will likely leave me an old woman waiting for her boyfriend to return. Even if it’s denial, hope is better than abject misery, at least until I’m sure.

  “You think this is crazy,” I say, to which they make halfhearted protests. “It’s fine, I get it.”

  “Not crazy,” Jorge says. “We don’t want you to be disappointed.”

  I take his arm in mine. “Do you remember the house across from the brownstone? The woman who stayed with her husband even though he was infected? Of course, he bit her and she turned, but not before she finished him off with a cast-iron pan.”

  “I remember,” Jorge says.

  “I thought she was stupid and love was stupid. How dumb could she be to think they’d escape the same fate as everyone else? I thought it was ridiculous to hold onto some deranged hope just because she loved him so much.” I keep my eyes on the ground. “I kind of feel like her right now.”

  Kate steps over the median that separates the north and south lanes, then stops and turns before me. “Sylvie
, the world used to be full of dreamers and deranged hopers, and most of them probably ended up like that woman. But we’re the only dreamers left, so you might as well make it as deranged as you can. Why the hell not, right?” She takes my face in her hands, and her smile seems wistful in the bluish light of the moon. “I’m hoping right along with you.”

  Tears warm my cheeks before they chill in the bitter cold. “Okay,” I say. “Why the hell not?”

  77

  A rowboat on the Hudson was no fun, but a canoe is worse. This one has a wide, flat bottom, and Pilar’s assertion that this feature makes it as stable as a yacht forces me to admit that often the people who survive and kick ass are also completely out of their gourds.

  Indy yelps as the canoe tilts for the tenth time in five minutes. We have a flashlight taped to the bow and covered with cloth to mute the light. With the moon so bright, we can make out the bulkier items, but we need assistance to see the smaller ones. Like the Lexer we just passed, who scratched his finger bones along the fiberglass and gave us both a heart attack.

  Something clunks against the bottom. The canoe rocks back and forth. “Shit!” Indy yells.

  I drop my paddle on my lap and grab the sides as water sprays. I refuse to consider all the aerosolized germs misting through the air right now. When the boat settles, I gasp, “This could be the worst idea I’ve ever had.”

  “Thanks for inviting me,” Indy mutters from behind.

  “I didn’t, if you remember correctly.” I’d turn to say it, but we’ll flip for sure if I do. “Sorry, I am not a boat person.”

  “And I am?” she asks. “I grew up in Brooklyn, too, for fuck’s sake!”

  “All right,” I say. “We watched television. What the hell do people do in canoes?”

  Indy is silent for a moment, then she says, “They row on one side. One person on the right and the other on the left, and switch to the same side to steer. We probably should’ve had this conversation earlier.”