Harry Styles and the New York Apocalypse (5 page)

Chatting noisily, Charlie and the Springsteens, along with Jonathan, were ready to start walking to Long Island. It had been decided not to try for Charlie’s hotel until they knew more information, or had official protection. So they came downstairs into the foyer. But, when there are two bodies, bled-out onto the sidewalk, right outside the door, it tends to somewhat delay a departure. They were a man and a woman, hideously disfigured with knife wounds, her lying on him as if they were about to go on a toboggan run - quite surreal. Charlie stopped staring first and looked at Jonathan, who dragged his attention back and tried to offer her a reassuring expression.

‘It’s time,’ said David, girding his loins to unlock the door and step over the corpses.

The street appeared completely vacant, apart from the abandoned vehicles, until a man suddenly appeared, at a crouching run, stopping at their door. He carried a large holdall. It was a bizarre sight for all inside, but he had, in fact, been scuttling between quite a few corpses on that stretch of sidewalk, checking pockets, retrieving weapons. He found nothing of interest on the two corpses outside the Springsteen building, but then his head turned and he looked straight at the four of them inside. Instantly, a gun came up, and as he was only about ten feet from them, they had no chance to run back upstairs - they were pinned on the spot by him. He stood up properly. He was white, in a blue tee-shirt and jeans, his hair crew cut, not particularly good looking; Mr average looter. He tried the door, but when he found it locked he gestured for David to open it.

‘David, no,’ begged Lulu.

David found his key.

‘Darling, that glass is not bullet proof.’

Then the man was in, not aggressively, but more in a vacant manner, as if the recent events had upset the balance of his mind. David put Lulu behind him and Jonathan did the same for Charlie. The man looked around the foyer.

‘Are there only you four?’ he asked, scratching his beard manically with the gun before pointing it at them again.

‘Yes,’ answered David. ‘Only four.’

‘Have you got any food?’

‘A little.’

‘Where?’

‘Here, in my briefcase.’

‘Show me.’

David placed his case down on the concierge’s desk, clicked it open and stepped back when gestured to do so. The man picked at what was left of their supplies, keeping the gun on them.

‘Not many people left on the island,’ the man remarked. ‘But you were about to leave, yeah? Hey, sorry about that. They cancelled the ball game last night.’ He suddenly laughed in a crazy fashion. ‘Can’t play baseball in the dark.’ He moved towards them. ‘Stand in line, don’t hide.’ He saw the frightened Charlie, pointed at her bandage. ‘Are you all right?’ Charlie nodded. ‘Did they do that to you? Listen, speak now while you can. I’ll protect you, lady.’

‘I’m fine, really.’

The man was disappointed. ‘I’m going to frisk you all.’ He laughed again. ‘Frisk. Great word.’ He looked Charlie up and down, but decided he should start with the men. He moved behind David and gave him a quick, one-handed frisk. That found a wallet, which went into the man’s holdall. Then he moved towards Jonathan. His concentration was taken for a second by Lulu calling him a dirty thief, and then he found himself on the floor, disarmed, and with his right thumb now pointing in an unnatural direction. Jonathan was down with him, one knee on his chest, the other on his arm, kicking the gun away while at the same time keeping pressure on the hand with the dislocated thumb. Charlie looked down in total amazement. Through the man’s screams of agony, she tried to understand what had just happened.

David picked up the gun and the holdall. He closed his briefcase and put that under his arm. ‘Out!’ he shouted to the women. They all ran for the door. Jonathan was last. Though he was a quiet young man, who wouldn’t say boo to a goose, that didn’t stop him from being a black belt in karate. He glanced back briefly at the distressed man on the floor of the foyer, then he was following the others up the street.

A block along, having avoided at least ten bloody corpses, they all came to a stop. The street was clogged with crashed or simply abandoned vehicles of every kind. It was eerily quiet. But what held their horrified attention was the crushed remains of a young woman, squashed into a blackened mess of her own blood and brains, who had fallen from a great height, with the shattered remains of her tablet all around her.

***

By sheer pot luck, Liam’s group happened to be on the highway when a horse-drawn, flat-bed, wagon joined the exodus. He jogged forward and asked permission of the elderly driver to hitch a ride, which was duly granted. So they all got aboard - Allison struggling and getting a helping shove up the bottom from Julius. A few people from the group behind them climbed up as stowaways. Sabrina almost tumbled straight off the other side until Liam pulled her back. He removed his hands from her side and left hip and they sat next to each other.

‘How far is he going?’ demanded Allison, dragging her eyes off the impertinent Julius.

‘He wasn’t selling tickets,’ said Liam, ‘so I didn’t press the man. Just be thankful you don’t have to walk for a while.’

Gus passed out their water bottles. There was a cooling breeze, but they were all sweating. Salem was behind them, by then.

‘Julius,’ said Liam, ‘is this a good time to practise with the weapons?’

Julius didn’t get the Englishman’s sense of humour, and said sternly that it was not.

Liam checked on Sabrina’s well-being. She smiled that she was okay. He asked her where Jakarta actually was, and she explained that it was on the north coast of the island of Java.

‘Near Australia,’ she said, seeing his blank expression.

‘Ah, I’m with you now. Have you been on cruise liners long?’

‘No, that was my first contract. My family are going to be so disappointed.’

‘No, they won’t. And if this is happening over there, as well,’ He realised he shouldn’t have said that. ‘they’ll just want to get you home.’

‘Thank you for watching out for me.’

‘You’re welcome.’

Liam took notice of the other people who had climbed onto the wagon. Gus was offering water to them. They seemed an odd foursome, perhaps not even together; the two women were in trendy, casual clothes, but groomed to within an inch of their lives - so much so that their eyebrows looked like they were drawn on. One was blonde whilst the other was brunette. The men were older, in jeans and leather jackets, both looking Eastern European in appearance. Julius tried to engage the men in conversation but they just shrugged and replied with just a yes or a no. Both men were eyeing up the sexy Allison - an easy error to make, thought Liam, as they didn’t know about her awful personality. Julius turned his attention to the women and extracted the information that they were air hostesses, attempting to get back to Boston after a visit to relatives. Now it was clear to Liam that the two couples were separate.

They passed slowly through a small town. Several properties were on fire but there was hardly anyone about.

‘It all happened so quickly,’ said the blonde. ‘How amazing that people went postal just like that, just because their car stopped moving, or their lights went out. Everyone going crazy after just thirty-six hours of power outage.’

The other girl had hold of her phone. ‘I’m going cold turkey not having internet access, but I don’t want to kill myself. What’s wrong with these people?’

‘I just need to get to my boyfriend,’ said Blondie. ‘Boston will be worse than this, but he’ll protect me.’

After they were through that unnamed town, the terrain opened out either side of the highway. They had to negotiate a big car pile-up, then they were off into the middle of nowhere again. Conversation drifted away, with the motion of the wagon making everyone feel relaxed for the first time in a long while. Then, as if specially for the air hostesses, they began to approach the smouldering wreckage of a light aircraft.

‘That’s the third plane crash we’ve seen,’ blurted out Allison. ‘It’s a good job you two weren’t at work.’

Both women stared at her aghast, no doubt thinking about colleagues who had been on duty at the time. Allison didn’t want to look at the approaching scene, so took an interest in the foreign men. One of the men acknowledged her with a nod.

‘You English?’ asked the man.

‘Yes, I am,’ Allison responded in a condescending tone.

‘I was in England last year.’

‘Were you really? Did you enter the country illegally?’

For the first time, Liam was mildly amused by Allison Davies.

‘Sorry?’ asked the foreign man. ‘I from Latvia. I in Lincolnshire, picking potatoes.’

‘Fascinating,’ said Allison, with a nod to emphasise her sarcasm.

‘Near Boston in Lincolnshire.’ He laughed hysterically. ‘Other Boston. Do you know Boston in Lincolnshire?’

‘Not really.’

‘Henry the Eighth!’ he suddenly exclaimed.

‘What!?’

‘I like Tudor England. Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.’

He beamed at a bemused Allison. She was wondering how long she would have to listen to this man. ‘I watch
The Tudors
television series. Do you know of it?’

‘Oh, Christ,’ said Allison.

Joseph Gibbs remained in his fire fighter uniform, although he had already failed to show up for his next shift with the New Haven Fire Department. It seemed appropriate attire to be on the streets with his friends and neighbours, as dusk fell, guarding their homes and stores from the looters. Ben Jones, from the grocery store, was there, with his pump-action shotgun; the two Roughley brothers were with them, and one of them was apparently packing a pistol; Mr and Mrs Woods had come out, carrying his and hers baseball bats, not that Mrs Woods looked like she could do anything with it. And there were nine other people, mostly armed. For himself, Gibbs cradled his beloved Sig Sauer assault rifle.

There were many other people patrolling the area, and some carried weapons. With them was Gibbs’ sixteen-year-old son, Tony, and his friends, under strict orders not to tackle any trouble, but to run and report it. Perhaps if Tony had been with his mother and stepfather in Denver, then Gibbs would have gone to the station for another twelve hours of craziness and frustration, working with no communications and impotently without power - it was like working for the fire department in the early 18
th
century.

A 9/11 survivor, Gibbs was not prepared to be away from Tony this time around. This trouble felt much bigger and weirder than any regular power outage that brought the crazies onto the streets. He caressed his impressive goatee beard as he scanned the neighbourhood. It was the eerie quiet which unnerved him most, only broken by the occasional scream or a very distant gunshot.

Gibbs listened patiently to all the theories about the event being discussed. One person even blamed the Russians. Gibbs was scared, but actually enjoying the camaraderie - something he liked in the fire department. Even Mr Jeter was out of his home, and that reclusive gentleman normally didn’t speak to anybody.

Ben Jones moved across to Gibbs and offered him a packet of cookies.

‘Thanks, Ben. So, tell me, what’s your theory?’

Ben laughed. ‘I’m with the Russian idea. They shut us down in the end. Honestly,  Joseph, I have no idea. I just want to get through tonight without trouble, then see some Goddamn official or a cop showing up in the morning, saying the power’s about to come back on.’

‘But, Ben, it’s not just the electricity supply. It’s energy altogether.’

‘Yeah, freaking scary. Is your lady not in town?’

‘No, she’s working at the country club. I’m trying not to think about her. Should I try to get to her?’

‘Don’t talk stupid, man. She’ll be fine. Lots of good people with her over there. You have to look after Tony and defend your home.’

Their attention was taken by an extraordinary sight. Along the cross junction at the end of the road came four mounted policemen, at walking pace. In day to day life it was rare to see one mounted officer, maybe two together - four was bizarre. People moved to talk to them as they rode by. Gibbs watched one cop lean out of the saddle to reassure a woman, the last rays of the sun catching his helmet. Then they were gone from view behind buildings. Word filtered along, that the police were patrolling as best they could, but that they had no new information to pass on.

‘On our own again,’ said Ben Jones.

Mrs Woods made a big show of holding up her lifeless cell phone, and several people concurred that the situation was indeed desperate because of that fact of modern life. Discussions continued, with Mr Jeter putting his thoughts into the pot. Gibbs turned to see his son and two male friends approaching. Gibbs junior was of a similar build to his father and starting to cultivate some facial hair of his own. They  embraced.

‘What’s up, man?’ asked Gibbs.

Tony Gibbs indicated his friends. ‘We’re going off with a patrol, to check some of the more remote buildings.’

‘Remember what we agreed. Any trouble, you get back here.’

Tony wanted to be cool in front of his friends. He just nodded, let his dad hug him again, then they sauntered off.

‘He’s a good kid,’ said Ben Jones.

‘Yeah, he’s a good kid.’

In the early hours, Mrs Woods had made coffee for everyone, and she and her husband went about distributing it on trays, in mugs and tea cups and an assortment of glasses. Gibbs gratefully drank his coffee. He could smell smoke in the air, which was nothing to do with his fire fighter training; it was just very pungent and suggested a major blaze within a few blocks. The noises of the night had changed; gunfire was closer and there were far more screams and sounds of rage. Gibbs put down his empty mug and checked his Sig Sauer rifle for the umpteenth time.

It was the quiet, unassuming Mr Jeter who shouted out the alarm, causing everyone to turn and face the two clandestine figures, standing where the police horses had been earlier. Two hooded males, teenagers, not obviously carrying weapons, just there, looking at the group of vigilantes. The standoff lasted only for about half a minute, but it seemed much longer, with some people looking at their friends to see if someone should approach the strangers. But then the two men moved off, disappearing behind the corner of a building.

From nearby, automatic gunfire reverberated off the surrounding buildings as if it were a canyon.

‘Mrs Woods,’ said Gibbs, ‘I think you and the other ladies should go inside.’

Mr Woods was in agreement. Ben Jones, alongside Gibbs, finished his coffee, then threw out any dregs. He looked worried for the first time.

Two things then happened simultaneously; young Tony Gibbs and his group came sprinting to them in a highly agitated state, news to impart, fears to express. Then, flares began to drop all about them, spewing smoke out in all directions. Mrs Woods headed inside. The men moved together, keen to hear what the other group had to say and for someone to make an instant decision on the meaning of the flares. Gibbs cocked his Sig Sauer.

Automatic gunfire sounded again, but not just as echoes off the rooftops. They were coming under attack.