“It was you. I believe he said your words to him once were grow the hell up. Of course, it wasn’t the first time he heard them, but it might be the last. Today was a show of my gratitude.”
“Thanks.” I don’t want to thank him, but StuyTown Sylvie would. As long as I’m her, I ask, “Does that gratitude extend to getting out of this place? Just for a short trip.”
Walt crosses his arms with a musing sort of frown. He looks less than pleased at my request, but I think he likes that he has something I want. “That’s a big ask.”
I’m in too deep to stop now. “We’ll take Roger with us. We have some stuff hidden that we want to get, and we want to look for Indy’s boyfriend. We left him surrounded by zombies, but now she feels the tiniest bit guilty about it.”
Indy is as surprised as I am by this new chapter to our story. I came up with it on the spot, but I need to escape this place to get my head together. I want to tease Jorge that Jin is still dumb as a brick and see how close they are to bringing down Central Park. We can’t do much until we know.
“Lost love?” Walt asks Indy.
“More like lost like,” she says, throwing me a dirty look.
“Admit you feel bad about him not being here,” I say. “Confession is good for the soul.”
Indy sighs heavily and ignores me.
“Roger said you’re scrappy,” Walt says. “Let’s see how you do for the next week, and then we’ll talk.”
“You got it, boss,” I say. “Can I call you boss?”
He laughs. If I can keep him laughing, maybe he won’t see it coming when I stab him in the back. “It does have a nice ring to it,” he says. “Enjoy your day, ladies.”
We walk on. When he’s out of earshot, Indy hisses, “Are you insane?”
“Might as well plant the seed now. Don’t you want to get out of here?”
“Of course I do, but—”
“And would Sylvie and Indy not ask? I mean, they don’t need anyone’s bullshit, right?”
“But why the boyfriend thing?”
“Did you not notice every guy staring at you when we Qualified? It was like they were thirsty and you were a big, fizzy glass of ice-cold Pepsi.” I have a protective aura around me thanks to Roger. If I notice anyone giving me the once-over, they look away fast. Indy isn’t so fortunate, if the Roger situation can be categorized as good fortune. “Now they’ll know you’re broken-hearted that we left your boyfriend high and dry. And they might be scared of you because you’re an asshole for leaving him there.”
She rolls her eyes. It’s no mystery where Lucky got that habit.
“Poor Paul,” I whisper as we approach the inner gate. “Left him like a sucker.”
“You want to know who’s an asshole?”
“Nope.”
I link my arm through hers and wait for Wyatt to open the gate. “Heard you passed with flying colors,” he says, stroking his beard. It’s going white, though the hair on his head is still blond. “See you on a roof soon. Congrats.”
“Thanks, Wyatt,” Indy says.
Our jailers’ attitudes toward us changed the instant we passed, and it’s only been twenty minutes. If this keeps up, we’ll be besties in a week. Inside the gate, April sits on a bench with Ed, the second guy on the gate shift, who’s on the short side but musclebound to a frightening degree. She leans back, eyelinered eyes half-closed and chest out, as he talks in her ear with his hand on her thigh. I slow at the sight, and her smile drops infinitesimally. Once we’re past, she laughs at whatever he says.
“That’s what she meant about a plan?” Indy asks.
“I hope not.” April is the worldly type, but her self-destructive streak might run deeper than I thought. “Let’s go see the kids and tell Brother David we passed.”
I steer Indy into Miss Anabelle’s classroom. All school moved to the daycare in our absence, which was opened to an adjoining office space, likely so all the children can be put under lock and key quickly. The screaming is deafening. Kids run in circles and talk at desks and yell at each other over board games. Brother David stands in the center of the open space with more kids hanging from his robe, and he raises his brows in question when we enter.
Indy gives him a thumbs up. He swings a little boy to the floor and comes our way. “Congratulations, though I had no doubt you’d succeed.”
“Thanks,” I say. “It’s a madhouse in here. What do you people do all day?”
“It’s free time. Controlled chaos.”
In the corner, a blond kid picks his nose and eats what he finds. I cover my mouth while I gag. “You’re going straight to Heaven for doing this job.”
Brother David smiles as Bridget joins us. I’ve never liked her much, but she greets me and Indy warmly. “I’m glad you’re safe,” she says.
“Us, too,” Indy replies. “Do you work here now?”
“I move around,” she says. “I still do concierge, but Walt has me make sure everything is running smoothly. Is anyone else okay?”
I didn’t love Bridget before, and I don’t trust her now. She’s the one council member Walt didn’t kill, and now she’s his hired help. “No idea,” I say. “Indy and I escaped, but anyone else must have gone out a different way.”
She pinches her lips as if she isn’t buying it, but the chance of her saying anything against us to Walt is slim. Not for the first time, I’m grateful for Roger’s help. I don’t like that I’m grateful, since it’s the least he can do, but this would be impossible without him.
“Indy! Sylvie!” Emily waves to us from her table, where she plays Connect Four with Chen.
We take the opportunity to escape the conversation, arriving as Emily drops in a red checker to win the game and then does a dance in her chair.
“She always wins,” Chen complains.
“Can I play?” a kid asks.
It takes me a minute to realize it’s Dominic, Denise’s son, as his hair is less puffy and the sneer is gone. Emily rises from her seat. “Sure. Play Chen.”
I step back, but he lines up his red pieces with no apparent recognition of me, the grownup who threatened to blind him with sand. Miss Anabelle comes to my side. “It’s nice to see you and Indy. You should visit more often.”
“Kids aren’t really my thing,” I say. “No offense.”
She shakes her head the way she would at a naughty student she likes despite their naughtiness, making her Lego earrings swing. “We welcome all visitors.”
Indy kneels beside Emily to watch the game, and Dominic gives Indy a shy but gratified glance when she congratulates him on a good move. My throat tightens at the thought we took away his only parent. I don’t know with whom he lives or if anyone cares about him. Denise was a murdering bitch, but she was his mother, and she’s currently rotting away in the Javits Center like a discarded banana peel.
“How’s Dominic?” I ask Miss Anabelle. “He lost his mom, right?”
“He’s doing well. He lives with me, did you know that? In many ways, his behavior has improved. Emotionally, sometimes, he’s worse, though that’s normal after such a short time. But the bruises are gone.”
“Bruises?”
“His mother hit him. From what he said when we were learning about the human body, he’s broken some bones. But he won’t tell me how.” She gazes at him with affection. “He was a good little boy in a bad situation.”
Miss Anabelle is the type who says that about every kid, but I once had the thought that it wasn’t Dominic’s fault he was a brat, and maybe it was more apt than I knew. It’s possible the men we killed were decent fathers, and though they may have deserved that fate, it’s their kids who suffer. But our kids suffered as well, and neither they nor their parents deserved it.
“Are you all right?” Miss Anabelle asks.
I clear my clogged throat and find I’m close to crying. “Fine. I just—I feel bad. He’s lucky he has you. Don’t give up on him.”
“I never would,” she says, and I believe her.
87<
br />
Eric
We drove the long way around to Sunset Park, walking the final blocks when the Lexers reach their coldest in dead of night. Ice crystals glittered on their skin when we braved a light besides the moon. They came for us slowly, but they’ll speed up when we put our plan in action. I’d hoped for freezing temperatures, if only so Guillermo and the others would be safer on the ground.
I broke into the back of the six-story apartment building on 44th Street, and now I wait on the roof as the sun rises. I’d forgotten about the small decorative tower at the corner of the roof, similar to a bell tower, that provides perfect cover for me from both eyes and bullets. It hides my foggy breaths as well, which have grown more frequent as the minutes tick by.
This is what I waited for, what I wanted. It’s bittersweet, in a sense, because I was fighting to live in peace with Sylvie. I still am fighting for her, whether or not we’re together again, but this serves as a vexing reminder of how far apart we are.
One figure stands on the school roof, and another two men keep watch a block down, on a roof by 6A. The one on the school is directly across from me, staring into space while he stomps his feet against the cold. He’ll be the first to go, since he has no one to raise the alarm once he’s gone. Though my rifle shot will give me away, the two down the street will likely spend a few seconds thinking it was he who fired.
I check my watch. Everything should be in position. If not, it’s too late. The north side of my tower has two small window slits. I prop the rifle in one and peer through the scope. A scope isn’t necessary for him, though down the block it will be.
He chooses this moment to lean against the ledge, huff into his hands, and then stretch his arms above his head. Center mass on display as though offering himself for the cause, and I’m not about to let that go to waste. I pull the trigger, knowing it’s a perfect shot, and barely wait for him to fall before I have the rifle in the arch-shaped window catty-corner to the slits.
The bang rolls and rebounds through the park. The two men by 6A move quickly toward this side of their roof, one with a radio to his mouth. I hear the squawk of his voice from the school roof as I center the scope on his chest. Two shots, and he’s down. Swing the rifle a foot to left. Another two, and the guy beside him falls before he can do more than turn tail.
A volley of gunfire comes from blocks away. They’re giving it back to us now, to Guillermo and the others who’ve taken the farther posts. I almost leap from my skin at the boom from Gate 6A. A truck roars in and down the block, returning fire to someone I can’t see. My job is to stay here, and I will for now, but I don’t like being so far from the action.
A man and a woman, likely the guards from 41st Street, run along Seventh Avenue toward the rec center. They could lock themselves in and mount a decent defense.
“No, you don’t, fuckers,” I say. I’m not losing anyone this time.
I breathe in, get my crosshairs on the man, and hit him low when he jumps to the curb. He staggers, clutching his belly. I know firsthand how that hurts, but my sympathy has gone as cold as the frosty air. The woman screams, her banshee wails carrying like a church bell, and I miss her when she bends to the man, who’s fallen to the street on his knees.
My second shot rips through her neck, spattering the man with the contents of her artery, and he turns my way, his face a blood-stippled mask of astonishment. He doesn’t move. Perhaps he knows he can’t save himself, and he’s not going to die crawling on all fours. Or he’s shocked into immobility. Either way, I pull the trigger. He settles on his side, mouth still hanging. I suppose he didn’t expect this chilly, peaceful morning to end in bloodshed. I know how that feels, too.
Smoke rises from near Fifth Avenue. Even with the scope, I’m blind to what’s happening. We have a respectable number of people. Mothers and fathers, some of whom haven’t left Annunciation in over a year, volunteered to come along. They’re as tired of Walt’s bullshit as the rest of us.
The first Lexers limp through the gate onto 44th Street, heading for the smoke, and they’re followed by more. We have a few radios set to a seldom-used channel, and I lift mine to say, “Bodies coming your way from 6A. Repeat, bodies coming your way from 6A.”
“Got it,” Guillermo answers. A truck’s horn blares three times. The signal for Get up high.
Screams come once the bodies advance into the smoke. It’s not clearing as it should, and I’m not going to wait only to find my friends dead. I crawl from my tower and take the stairs down, limping fast.
I’m still outside the gates. I find my way into the now-unguarded school and out the front door onto Seventh. The park is the safest bet. I climb the stairs, favoring my bad leg, and skirt around the greenhouse. My greenhouse.
An orange glow comes from the row of limestone houses between Fifth and Sixth, where Guillermo and most everyone once lived. Flames lick out the windows. Through the haze, I make out a few shouting people who run into the street wearing pajamas. The Lexers meet them where they stand, and their screams rise anew.
This fire wasn’t us; likely someone set it in order to escape. I pass the chess tables and make my way to the benches at the top of the garden, where I see what might be the three someones at the bottom of the hill, heading from the hubbub toward Gate 5B. We have people outside the gate, but I assume these guys are smart enough to have a less conspicuous way out.
The park sits above street level, and they won’t be visible to Guillermo and the others. I run after them. They’re not evading us again, even if I have to rebreak my leg to stop them. When they’re two hundred feet away, I sight and fire. The middle one goes down, and the other two turn with guns raised. Crack-crack. Number two falls.
The third fires his pistol over his shoulder and misses. I hit him square in the ass as he takes off, and he falls face-first, gun flying and arms splayed on the ground. I make my way down and pull my pistol as I near. Two dead, but the third is breathing.
I yank him over by his shoulder, ready to finish him off, and Emilio’s dark eyes meet mine. His breath comes in gusts and his face is screwed up in pain. He’s the only one we wanted alive, and here he is, as though the gods have deemed it so.
I keep my pistol on him and grab the radio. “I have Emilio in the park by Fifth Avenue.”
“What the hell are you doing—” Guillermo’s laugh turns to a cough. “All right. This is over, anyway.”
The fire is larger now, and black smoke fills the sky a hundred feet above the buildings. It’ll be crawling with Lexers soon. I use my good leg to kick Emilio in the hip that holds my bullet. He lets out a piercing scream. It’s gratifying in a way that makes me slightly ill, but not ill enough to resist kicking him again.
Emilio is locked in an upstairs room of the lab house, bound to a chair. They think they’ll get information from him, but I was there yesterday, and he had nothing to say. All he does is smirk that fucking smirk. I left before I killed him against everyone’s wishes.
We put up a temporary fence to clear out Sunset Park before Walt returns. The fence was taken down afterward to make getting in that much harder. We’re well-stocked with what was left in the rec center, though Sacred Heart consumed a good bit of our stores. They didn’t eat many potatoes, possibly having enough sense to know they were better planted than eaten. It may not be a huge victory in the scheme of things, but I wanted those damn potatoes back.
Any boats are gone, and they’re what we needed most. What I wanted most. Without a boat, we’ll have to find one, wait to cross the bridge when the Lexers freeze, or hope the High Line visits in the canoe soon. We can reach the water near us when the Lexers are thawed, but a trip to the Brooklyn Bridge is sure death.
Sunset Park’s goats have a new pen on the monastery grounds. Christian, along with a few other parents, are building a barn for them and a coop for the chickens. Anaya scowls when I carry a load of lumber claimed from a neglected backyard shed and drop it at the building site.
“Last one, I promise
,” I say. “I’m done for today.”
She hammers a nail as though it’s my thick skull. Christian, who has a tad more of a sense of humor, makes a mocking stern face behind her. She spins, hammer in hand, and he goes back to the frame with a serious expression.
“That goat is pregnant,” she says.
“Betty?” I ask.
“Is Betty the one who’s a jerk?”
“Yup.” Neither time nor motherhood has softened Betty, who will still ram you for no reason other than the fact that she’s a goat. “She’s a good mother, though. And she makes a ton of milk. Getting the milk out takes finesse, but it can be done.”
Especially by Paul, who’s stubborn as a goat himself. I miss him. I even miss his obnoxious comments. This may be the longest we’ve gone without talking in close to fifteen years, whether in person or otherwise. I’m sure he and Leo are having a rough time of it with Indy and Sylvie in StuyTown.
“Eric,” Joe calls from halfway across the grounds. He waits patiently as I make my way to him, then says, “Emilio’s not giving us anything. Not a word. I don’t think he knows much.”
“Then why is he still here?”
“Thinking that myself. He’s asking for you.”
“You’re kidding,” I say, realize I’ve said that to the most un-kiddingest man alive, and then nod. “Fine. Let’s go.”
Upstairs in the house, Emilio’s hands are cuffed to either side of a school chair. He’s looking fairly battered, which pleases me, but his smirk gets under my skin. He must know it, too, because it comes alive when I enter the room. Guillermo stands against the wall, arms crossed and glowering. Dennis and Susan haven’t been allowed in for fear they’ll murder him straightaway.
“What?” I ask Emilio. “Are you planning to tell us anything about Walt or do you just want to shoot the shit?”
“You know why I burned the houses?” he asks, snubbing my question. “So you couldn’t have them.”
“We didn’t want the houses, asshole,” I say. “We wanted you. And look who’s cuffed to a chair.”
The City Series (Book 3): Instauration Page 59
