People Park (44 page)

THE DECISION
was sudden and collective: people started climbing down onto the tracks, hands were offered, children were passed below into strangers’ arms and reunited swiftly with their parents,
the exodus downtown began. A contingent chained up to block the
electrified rail. Just keep going, someone advised, stay calm, stay together, we’ll get there together.

The old man couldn’t get down. Blocking Pearl’s way, he wagged his cane into the empty space, crouched, extended a foot, retracted it again. Someone pushed past Pearl muttering, Enjoying the show? This person took the fellow under his armpits, two other people supported his legs, together they lowered him down.

The first person asked him, You okay to walk? and the old man laughed, twirled his cane, said, You go on, don’t worry about me, I got here fine, I’ll get out at my own speed. But they wouldn’t, instead yoked his arms over their shoulders. Am I a wounded soldier? the man laughed, embarrassed, yet allowed himself to be carried.

Ignoring a woman asking for help with her stroller — why’d she bring a
stroller
? — Pearl hopped down, she had to find her son. As she walked she leafed through the
Grammar
, though this was dicey, she had to keep checking her footing from one tie to the next, and the text was a mash of arcane language — An Object of Whose Possession He Is Jealous, A Victim of the Mistake, A Cause or Author of the Mistake
. . .

Gip’s face hovered in her thoughts, a pleading look in his eyes, but she couldn’t picture the rest of him — bodiless, an apparition. She returned to the Table of Situations, and there it was, the book’s final chapter: Recovery of a Lost One. Pearl flipped to it greedily. But the section was blank, all the way to the end, page after page wiped clean.

Pearl stumbled, nearly fell, someone seized her arm, told her, I gotcha — probably best to save the book for later, to which Pearl replied feebly, I’m trying to find my son. Someone passing heard this and laughed: She’s trying to find her son! and someone else said, You’re the only one, lady! And the person who’d helped her, a woman in a Y’s cap, suggested, We’re all trying to find someone, hey?

Shaded by the cap’s brim the woman’s eyes were kind: she’d spoken not from scorn, but solidarity, and her grip was gentle. People streamed past, giving them room. If you’re all right, said the woman, we should get going. Looping arms she and Pearl, as teammates in a three-legged marathon, rejoined the march.

Y’s fan? Pearl asked. The woman said, You bet. I used to play for them, Pearl said shyly, and her arm was squeezed and she was told, I know, I know who you are
. . .
Pearl, right? This was dizzying — her own name, spoken aloud, amid all this! Like being kissed. Yes, she said, with the grace of a prayer: Pearl. That’s me, yes.

They spoke of their families — the woman was searching
for her two girls, they’d stayed over at friends’ places in Bebrog.
While she’d dispatched herself to find them her husband, an
NFLM
Helper, was rescuing stranded westenders in a catamaran. People Park’s where everyone’s going, she said, that’s where I’ll
find my daughters. What conviction, Pearl thought, tightened her
grip on the
Grammar
, leaned close, and said, What about my son? Don’t worry, the woman said, he’ll be there too. Everyone will.

Pearl’s spirits warmed: such faith! And all of these people, together, how could they be wrong? But after a few minutes of walking in silence the woman tensed. Up ahead, where the tracks curled inland, more walkers joined the procession at Bay Junction Station. So many, whispered the woman. Her grip loosened, her pace slowed. And here they were, hundreds of refugees, from both sides of the platform, pouring onto the tracks.

Keep talking, Pearl wanted to say, tell me it’s going to be all right. But the crowd had become oppressive, each person’s mouth pressed to the back of some stranger’s neck. No one could speak, the tracks were so full of people, all those people, still more people
. . .
With a sudden heave from behind, Pearl’s arm was knocked free. She reached for her friend, but the crowd enfolded her, the Y’s cap slipped away.

Stopping was impossible. People were wedged in so tightly Pearl couldn’t even turn to look back. Already she struggled to recall the woman’s face, her voice, the hope shining in it, the warmth of her body against Pearl’s — gone, all of it gone. Except the cap, the logo, that last image of it sucked into the mob. And now she was trapped alone inside this mechanical push toward People Park, the site of the crime, and the only place her son might be.

AS A GUNSLINGER
with a pair of pistols, Noodles pointed two fingers, thumbs extended, at the sky. One of the newscopters was swooping down toward the Thunder Wheel.

What’s happening? said Wagstaffe, videoing. Are they going to take us out?

What do you mean,
take us out
, said Magurk, glancing around for a weapon.

Rescue us.

Oh. Are they?

Griggs said, Noodles?

Noodles nodded, nodded.

Wait, are you just nodding, or is that a yes?

He nodded some more. The newscopter hovered, gusts from its propellers flattened the men’s khaki jackets. Griggs’ crusty hairdo twitched as if electrified.

A rope ladder flipped out of the chopper’s cabin, unfurled, and hung.

We can’t get out, said Wagstaffe, because of these fuggin harnesses.

Noodles stopped nodding. He frowned.

Isn’t this what Helpers are for? said Magurk, snatched Griggs’ walkie-talkie, shouted into it, Hey, who’s there, who’s this?

It’s Walters. And Reed. Is that the Special Professor? Good lookin out.

Right, right, good lookin out, said Magurk. Silentium too, and all that.

Sorry, we still haven’t found Favours. We’re hoping someone scooped him up —

No, no, this isn’t about that. Though, hey, keep trying. Listen, we’re stuck on top of the T-Wheel. We need someone to let us out.

We?

The
HG
’s.

Oh. All of you?

The rope ladder dangled. Griggs strained for it, couldn’t reach.

Walters, said Magurk. Do you have a boat?

Yeah. Reed’s skiff. That’s how we’re looking for Favours —

Listen, forget Favours. Get over here. Bring a saw.

But what about —

This is an order, growled Magurk. Favours will be fine. You need to let us out.

Good lettin out, said Walters with a sad laugh.

Hurry up. People are starting to notice us.

THE TRAIN ROUNDED
the island’s southwest corner and dry land appeared: high on a hilltop a cluster of huge houses sat untouched by the floodwaters, beneath it the neighbourhood was lost under a leaden swamp laced with emerald veins. The smell was sour, it flooded Kellogg’s nostrils and made his eyes weep.

I’m not actually crying, he assured Elsie-Anne.

The
PA
announced Knock Street Station.

Ignore the announcements, gasped Bean, between pulls on his inhaler. We’re not stopping anywhere, it’s just straight through to Whitehall, and the ferry —

And then we’ll go home, cracked someone behind Kellogg, and grim laughter flitted batlike through the car.

Well of course, said Bean. That’s the plan: then we’ll ferry you home.

The train whisked through Knock Street Station. Below a trio observed this from the roof of a house. Their faces were invisible inside pulled-up hoods, they seemed relaxed despite the water rising all around. They seemed, Kellogg thought, to be waiting for the train, watching it expectantly — almost hungrily — as it headed into the Zone.

Next stop, Upper Olde Towne, said the
PA
. Upper Olde Towne Station, next stop.

Nope! screamed Bean.

On they went, clacking and swaying. We’ll be there soon, Kellogg
told Elsie-Anne.

Very soon, Dad, she said, and closed her eyes.

From the tracks came a thunderclap. The train lurched, skidded, all the riders were pitched forward and cried out in one voice. Kellogg turtled over Elsie-Anne to shelter her from the pile-on, bodies heaped upon his back, a foot connected with his face, his mouth filled with a tinny taste. And then they lurched to a violent, screeching stop.

Everything was still. Resting at a crooked slant, the train hissed.
A few yards ahead and above was the half-built dome of
UOT
Station.
Gingerly, people disentangled themselves from one another.

Is everyone okay? screamed Bean, and fell into a fit of coughing.

There was a streak of blood on the floor beside Kellogg’s head, was it his own, he couldn’t tell. Annie, he said, you okay?

We’re okay, Dad, she said. But —

A savage groan of metal, the struts buckled, the tracks fell away. As a child released into its bath, the train slid into the flooded street. Riders scrambled away from the bottom end as it went under, water swam up blackly around the windows, the car filled with screams.

Kellogg grabbed his daughter. Annie!

The train eased to rest: half-submerged, half in the open air.

The water’s coming in! — Help! — Everyone stay calm!

A mad scramble. The sounds were primal, shrieks and yelps and groans, panicked babbling. And the water gurgling in.

With Elsie-Anne in his arms, Kellogg climbed to the top of the car, someone grabbed him and pulled him up, he was being helped! He huddled among strangers on his knees, someone climbed over him, someone else was sitting on his back. Beneath his body he shielded his daughter.

Please! — Holy fug someone open the doors! — Don’t do that! You’ll flood the car! — Not at this end, we’re out of the water here! — Let me out before we sink!

Kellogg dabbed blood from his teeth. Annie, he whispered, it’s okay, we’re going to be okay. But his daughter didn’t respond, she’d gone limp in his arms.

The doors were pried open. In came a stench of sewage and rot. Everyone out, someone cried. In pairs people jumped. With
grim purpose Kellogg crawled toward escape, Elsie-Anne held close, two by two people went tumbling from the train, vanished —
where? And then he was next.

A tepid breeze. Hundreds of people splashed around below, the train drooped from the tracks like a vine from a slack wire. A voice yelled, Go! Kellogg was pushed. The slap of the water was sharp and quick. It knocked Elsie-Anne from his hands. Kellogg sank, reaching blindly for his daughter, he screamed a torrent of bubbles, the sour dark water filled his mouth, somewhere in this abyss was a city, drowned and pulling him down.

VIII

WALL:
the cart struck it hard and the Mayor tumbled free, arms scrabbling to break her fall — and found herself landing soundly on two feet. She kicked her left leg, then the right, wiggled her toes, sidestepped, shuffled back, did a little jump. And then, restraining her happiness, she narrowed her eyes and declared, As well it should be, touch green.

An overhead light came on. She was in an elevator. The doors closed, the cables cranked into motion, and up it took her. There was no gauge of floors, but the little tin box accelerated, faster and faster, lifting her higher. The lights flicked off, then on again: the elevator, now glass, rose out of Municipal Works and climbed the Podesta Tower with views of the city all around, most of it submerged under black lacquer.

They’re all going under save me and you
.

To the west, yachts and various pleasurecraft had formed a leisurely armada, abandoning Kidd’s Harbour on strips of white wake. Upon the roof of Old Mustela Hospital patients and staff waved vainly at the media helicopters making passes above, but they just swooped away, onlookers only, not here to intervene. Farther north, at Upper Olde Towne Station something had gone wrong, the Yellowline had collapsed, a train was upended into the swamped street.

There was movement out there too, a cluster of multicoloured dots, people spilling from the train. Some climbed up to tracklevel, others dropped into the flood. And as she reached the viewing deck, with a shudder the Mayor thought of the bottomless alleyway at F Street and Tangent 10: underwater now, while chaos raged on the surface.

She walked out onto the deck, still hesitant, stockings torn. Though she felt hungry. Or not hungry, but hollow. She touched her midsection. Nothing there. She patted, passed a hand through: just space — no torso at all. She was two arms, two legs, and a head, her jacket drooped emptily.

The deck turned. Gloomily the Mayor surveyed the eastend. The incoming water had almost reached Orchard Parkway, chasing residents inland. Cars, their roofs loaded with suitcases and boxes, had been abandoned amid thousands of pedestrians, some pushed shopping carts or pulled wagons loaded with parcels and bags and boxes, others floated rafts buoyed with dumped-out bleach bottles, all of them converged on People Park.

IFC
Stadium’s parking lot resembled a beach at high tide. The rides at Island Amusements seemed to struggle out of the water, gasping for air. The deck rotated west, toward the setting sun: the Necropolis evoked a kneecap jutting from a filling tub. Nothing looked like itself, everything looked like something else. Though maybe it was just easier to make sense of things that way.

Some of the Mews escapees doubled back to help with the
UOT
Station rescue. One lavish pleasurecraft stopped to collect folks stranded on the Dredge’s roof. But instead of bringing them to People Park, it shuttled them off to the mainland. Rats, thought the Mayor, abandoning a sinking ship.

The elevator whirred to life, zipped down to the lobby, collected someone, brought them back up. The Mayor tensed. The doors opened. Standing there was Diamond-Wood, heaped over his crutches. He grinned sheepishly. Draped over his shoulders was her mayoral sash. You’re okay, he said. Good.

IN SINGLE FILE
Gip and Olpert followed Pop from Mustela Boulevard through the gates of the Necropolis, Olpert had shed his chaps, they’d gone sodden and heavy, he traipsed along shyly in his skivvies and the shaggy coat. Pop lectured as to why, historiographically speaking, the squabs were flying home to roast.

Speaking of aviants, you are savvy to the birds that used to impersonate these here tombs? An urbane legend, prehaps, though valid.

I don’t, said Olpert.

Not
you
. It was the boy upon whom I requisitioned.

Gip blinked.

Young man, said Pop. Bend me your ear! And you too, evil one, whom might learn a thing or two things.

But Olpert’s thoughts were elsewhere: his grandfather’s grave was nearby — where? He looked around, felt disoriented, it’d been so long since he’d last visited
. . .

Well these birds, said Pop, they had gotten lost on their way enmigrating somewhere else, or had been someone’s pet, or came over on a ship, a stow-in. But on any rate, it was very colourful, a
parrot
of some sort, to actualize there were in fact two: a male and
a female. Now the male only had one wing, on the right side, and the
female only one wing, on the left, and where the missing
wings should have been, you see, the male had a bit of bone in the
shape of a key. And the female, do you see whence I’m getting toward, young man? The female of course had the enmatching
lock
.

Gip’s eyes filled with light. Wow.

Shall I continue, said Pop.

Yes!

Well, said Pop, how do you think they flew?

They locked together, said Gip.

And then?

And then the one with the right wing —

The man.

He did the flying for them on the right side.

And the woman?

She did the flying on the left.

And thus way they flew. Betrothal’d.

Gip nodded.

Should we go? said Olpert, with a glance at the darkening sky. Night’s coming, he said.

Pop glared at him.
I
say when we sully firth — he paused — and hence? It is now.

But wait, said Gip, what happened if one of the birds died?

Well, said Pop, that’s exactly what transposed. One of them died, and so the other couldn’t fly, and so he was, I believe the anecdote finalizes, forewhence the ban on such animals in our fair city, plucked from his nest and eaten by a dog.

ARMS AND LEGS
thrashing, Kellogg scanned the water for Elsie-Anne. All around him people scaled fences and lampposts, others grasped at anything floating by — planks, water jugs, other people.
Across the street, a woman atop a schoolbus stared with astonishment
at the jagged bone poking through a hole in her forearm. Beside her five people in a huddle formation were either scheming or praying.

The names of missing loved ones rang out, Kellogg joined the chorus: Elsie-Anne! Annie! But there were too many people, he couldn’t see anything, the water roiled, the world reeled, the reek of the flood so thick in his mouth it seemed a dead and festering thing had been laid on his tongue to rot.

Though maybe she’d never jumped. At tracklevel two cars remained railbound, from which the other four hung. Up top people gazed dazedly across the chasm that separated the severed section and where the tracks resumed on the far side of
UOT
Station, there was no way to Whitehall except by water. Helpers began pulling them away, steering an exodus back downtown. Might Elsie-Anne be among them somehow?

An aristocratic-looking couple breaststroked past as if out for a leisurely dip at the beach. In Kellogg’s periphery someone floundered in the water, a gargly voice choked, Help me, help me, was sucked under, came up sputtering —

Kellogg swept his arms over his head and dove, saw nothing but murk, veered in another direction. The water had the odour and consistency of that foul brown juice that collects in the bottom of trashbins. It tingled on his skin, stung his eyes. It was too much. He surfaced, gasping, Annie, Annie!

An eerie hush closed around his voice. All around people slopped and splashed through the water, calls for help, yelps and shrieks and sobs, but nothing lingered, the air seemed incapable of sustaining sound.

Annie! he cried again, but the word was vacuumed up and lost.

Then: Dad.

There she was, on the balcony of a Laing Towers apartment. Kellogg swam toward her, climbed up, took his daughter’s face in his hands, and kissed her, long and hard.

Annie, I’m sorry, he blubbered, hugging her. I’m sorry, honey. I’m so sorry.

Familiar saved me, she said. He carried me on his back.

You’re such a good swimmer. I forgot. I’m sorry I forgot, Annie.

Kellogg let her go — she was bone-dry. The sweatshirt was slightly askew, her left nipple winked at him, he adjusted it for modesty. But otherwise Elsie-Anne appeared unscathed, in fact she seemed to have never entered the water at all.

Her eyes were distant, those of a war orphan in some televised campaign. Who was this girl, this ghost of a child who drifted
through the life her parents laid out for her? A stranger. She gazed
through him, past him. Kellogg shivered.

People were climbing up from the flood to join them on the balcony and those of the adjacent apartments, a Helper —
Dack
,
his beard wilty and dripping — among them. Dack knocked, then shouldered the apartment door open and ushered everyone inside.

Let’
θ
go, Dack lisped. Water’
θ
ri
θ
ing. Get to the roof. We’ll radio a pickup.

While people squeezed past, Elsie-Anne stared dreamily into the floodwaters.

Annie, said Kellogg, come on, it’s flooding, we’ve got to go.

Not flooding, Dad, she said with a canny smile. It’s sinking. The city’s sinking.

Θ
ome kid you got there, fella, Dack told Kellogg, and disappeared into the building.

SAM WAS AMONG
the poplars, branches scrabbled the underside of his door-raft. The light was deepening. Soon it would be night, soon he’d enter the south side of Lakeview Homes, and as he paddled he thought of Adine, waiting for him in the living room, there’d be no one home but the two of them and whatever was on
TV
. Okay Adine, he said aloud, I’m coming, the work’s almost over and we’ll be together soon okay.