Reapers (4 page)

She read a Terry Pratchett novel and watched the moon move on the waves. She didn't expect Dee back that night, but she waited to dress until ten o'clock—she had no clock, but she'd learned to read the stars well enough—and then donned black from head to toe, including a cap over her dark hair. She brought binoculars and a heavy pistol. The community hadn't weathered any raiders for close to three years, but you never know when you might run into wild dogs.

The night was cool and smelled of the lake. A low breeze rattled the leaves, the first of which began to fall in fluttering silhouettes. She had a five-mile walk ahead of her, but that was fine. Would ensure the Tolbert home was fast asleep. These days, people tended to go to bed not long after the sun.

The lake washed calmly at the shore. Perch and bass broke the surface with silent ripples. She followed the path, avoiding crunching leaves. An owl screeched from the hills. After a few minutes of brisk walking, she warmed inside her clothes.

She kept one eye out for lights and one ear out for voices, but encountered no sign of human life until she circled the lake and crested the short ridge above George Tolbert's fields. A quarter mile away, his house sat on the north shore, perfectly dark.

Even before she got out her binoculars, she could tell there was something wrong with his fields.

They were patchy. Scraggly. Several portions were blank brown dirt. As if his irrigation lines had failed, which made no sense, given that she knew he had a hand pump in case the solar system went awry. She scanned the moonlit fields through her binoculars, ensuring she was alone, then left the safety of the sweet-smelling maples and minty pines and walked to the edge of George's wheat. She knelt beside the breeze-tousled stalks, plucked one of the long-tailed heads, and rolled it between her palms, popping the kernels from the dry sheaths. She raised them to her face and sniffed. Typical faint smell of grain. Looked fine, like opaque brown rice. No obvious sign of bugs or rot; hesitantly, she popped the wheat in her mouth and chewed. The kernels were hard, but broke down soon enough, tasting like unleavened bread and pasty gluten.

She pulled another couple heads and put them in her pocket to take a closer look back at the house. As she walked back to the treeline, leaves crackled uphill.

She shrank against a pine bole and peered into the darkness. Moonlight tried and failed to penetrate the canopy. Leaves crunched again, furtive, but with the particular rasp of a big animal trying to hide its noise.

She wasn't alone.

3

Lucy brought only the essentials. Water, food, first aid kit, couple knives, several baggies. Her umbrella and a box of shells. With luck, she'd be in and out of Manhattan within a couple days. Without luck, or anyway the wrong kind of it, and she could barter buds or leaves for anything she wound up needing.

The bridge to the island was a tall steel suspension job with latticed towers and a whole lot of cables. She was halfway across before she saw the soldiers.

The Hudson River flowed far below, muddy green in the morning light. They had erected a barricade behind the suspension tower at the other end of the bridge and she thought about finding another, but if they had this bridge staked out, no doubt they'd claimed the others, too. She sighed. At least she'd had the foresight to stuff her shells inside a tub of oatmeal with a false bottom. She strolled up to the concrete blocks set across the lanes. Two men stood behind them in gray-white modern urban camo, black rifles slung across their chests.

"Hey, beautiful morning, ma'am." The soldier had one of those braying city accents that sounded like he'd been cheering the Yankees too long. He looked her up and down and stepped around the concrete barricade. "Here for a Broadway show?"

She let her umbrella hang beside her leg. "You still have those?"

"Nah, just like to see if people believe me." He got out a clipboard and clicked a pen. "Name, citizenship, and business in the city?"

"Lucy Two. Like the number. Last I checked, I was American. And my business is wondering why you got to know mine."

The other soldier waved a fly off his shoulder. The first man finished scribbling and glanced up from his clipboard. "This is the sovereign nation of Manhattan, ma'am. We let anyone in, and we'd be running a zoo instead."

"I'm here to find a friend."

"Uh huh." He returned to his paperwork. "Where do you intend to stay during your visit?"

"Well, I don't right know. With her, I suppose."

"And her name and address?"

Lucy stuck out her lower lip. "You mean to tell me you got the name and address of everyone in town?"

He smiled. His teeth were getting yellowed and he was missing his upper left eyetooth. "What kind of a government doesn't?"

"Then maybe you can tell
me
where I'm staying. My friend's name is Tilly Loman. She in your records?"

"Our records?" He glanced at the other soldier and honked laughter. "We kept those here, we'd be operating out of Shea Stadium, not this little shack. Try City Hall. Are you armed, Ms. Two?"

She smiled teasingly. "I got here, didn't I?"

"Unregistered firearms aren't allowed inside Manhattan. You got anything goes boom, you need to leave it with us. File advance notice at least 48 hours prior to your intended departure and we'll see it's ready for you on your way out."

Lucy looked dubious. "I don't know if I should do that. I heard New York was mighty dangerous."

He laughed again. "Not since Giuliani, ma'am. And these days we keep it even cleaner."

"Well, all right." She knelt and unstrapped the .22 pistol from her ankle, then dug into her bag for her spare clip and little green box of ammo.

The second soldier took these from her, examined the pistol's serial number, and opened the slide. "This a .22?"

"That's right," Lucy said. "Hits hard enough if you know where to aim it."

He handed it back. "These are fine. But nothing higher caliber. Understand?"

"Fair enough."

The first man leaned over her bag and sniffed. "You got anything else we need to know about?"

"Oh, I wouldn't think so."

"Marijuana is a controlled substance, ma'am."

"Is it?" She widened her eyes. "I just use it to trade for food."

"Nah, I'm just fucking with you!" He brayed at his own joke and glanced at his friend, who chuckled for the first time. The first soldier winked at her. He was handsome enough, in an Italian way. "You're our first visitor in three days. Got to do something to pass the time, know what I mean?"

"I think I take your meaning." A joint materialized in her fingers. "Would you care to test it? Make sure I'm not bringing anything too nasty 'cross your borders?"

"I'd only stop you if it weren't nasty enough."

Lucy lit up and passed it over. He nodded appreciatively, smoke tumbling from his mouth, and handed it to his coworker, who accepted it without looking, still writing details on his clipboard.

"Tell you what, Lucy." The first soldier blinked at the hazy white sky, as if seeing it for the first time. He frowned and squinted at her. "Normally I'd say, hey, this girl she sounds kind of iffy, but I get the feeling you know your way around. So I got a deal for you."

"What's that, sir?"

"We got special housing for tourists, visitors, and immigrants. If you go straight to City Hall and let them know you'd like a room, I can let you inside."

"And I can ask for my friend, too."

He tapped the side of his nose. "Exactly, Lucy. Exactly. And then I'll know where to find you and see if you want to go out for a drink, you know?"

She grinned lopsidedly. She'd expected these boys to be puffed up on their own authority, but she liked this garrulous little asshole. "Are all New Yorkers like you?"

"Oh no, ma'am. I'm one of a kind."

His name was Phil and he gave her a laminated passport and opened the waist-high aluminum gate through the barrier. As she entered, he swept his arms to the towering skyline.

"Welcome to New York, Lucy Two. I hope your stay is a good one."

She touched his shoulder lightly as she stepped past the fence. Two steps beyond, she cocked her umbrella on her shoulder at a rakish angle and turned back to him with a smile.

"It's sure off to a fine start. Y'all have a good day, won't you?"

"Y'all too," Phil said, making the worst pass at a Southern accent Lucy had ever suffered to hear. She laughed and shook her head and walked down the warm pavement sloping toward the city.

And holy shit, what a city. A strip of green fronted the Hudson, but beyond that it was wall-to-wall apartments standing so close you'd hardly have room to take a deep breath. Way south on the lower third of the island, the Empire State Building stood as proud as a stiff prick, its spire piercing the underside of the sky. Dozens of other towers loomed hundreds of feet into the air. She'd seen her fair share of big cities, but this was something else. Like God's own vision of how a city ought to be.

Phil had warned her it was a hell of a walk down to City Hall, but helpful young man that he was, he'd directed her to a place where a girl might get a bicycle. She exited the freeway at Broadway, just like he'd told her, and walked south, counting down the streets to 168th. There, at a stamp-sized park forested with dinky trees, a fat man sprawled in a lawn chair, shirt off, catching the warm fall sun on every inch of his round gut. As Lucy neared, he blinked at her through his aviator shades.

He gestured to the lot across from him, which was filled with four tidy rows of bicycles. "Let me guess, you're here for one of our fine fleet."

"Sure am."

"Passport?" He held out his hand and she gave him her laminated card. He inspected it, mouth half open. He had a husky accent that was downright unfriendly to its R's and she associated it with the TV shows about city firefighters. "Okay, here's the deal, little lady. You want a bike, you got it. No questions, no fees, no problem."

"Sounds like a heck of a deal."

"A government's got to provide for its people, don't it? All you got to do in return is bring it back when you're done. You can do that here or at any of our other stations, which I have helpfully marked on this map." He handed her a tourist map marked with a half dozen bright red X's. "You think you can do that for me?"

"No doubt." She met his sunglass-visored gaze. "I got to say, you boys run a tighter ship than I expected."

"If you don't do right by your people, how you expect them to do right by you?" He waddled over to the bikes, unlocked one, and scribbled her information on a clipboard. "And I wish you a good day."

She saddled up and pedaled down the street, turning to give the man an airy wave. She was beginning to wonder if she might not have use for her umbrella after all.

She whisked down the streets. Downtown, the smoke from a couple fires mingled with the haze, but she didn't see much sign of life along the brown project housing that spoked from Broadway. Half the shop windows were smashed but there was no glass in the street. She didn't smell much beside the humidity and her own fresh sweat. Why, if they had working sewers and running water, she might not ever leave.

Broadway turned into St. Nicholas. She biked easy, pacing herself for the long ride. After a couple-three miles, the towers clambered higher and higher, gothic white stone and classy glass and steel. A block to her left, apartments overlooked an unbroken stretch of green.

She cut left and rode along Central Park. It smelled like leaves and dew and manure. Some of the grass had gone to seed, but most had been converted to crops, neat sections fenced off with wire. A cow lowed from the trees. Lucy pedaled slowly, watching a man and a woman hack at the weeds with hoes.

She was so taken aback by these signs of civilization she crashed into the back of a dusty yellow cab.

The collision was low speed and she came out of it with nothing worse than a scraped palm and a bruised rib. After that, she kept at least one eye on the road, which was clear of traffic and as wide as you could want. At the south end of the park, she crossed paths with another biker, who saluted with two fingers and sped away, knees pumping. She coasted through block after block of glossy office towers, but didn't stop until she was two blocks up from the terraced heights of the Empire State Building. There, she drank water and took a good long breather.

The rest was good for her. She'd been goggling like a country yokel. All right, so they had some vestige of a proper city. A
gov
ernment. Big deal. The world used to be lousy with such things.

Perspective restored, she continued downtown past clothing stores and pharmacies locked behind metal grilles and brownstone apartments humble enough that they likely didn't rate an elevator. Way downtown, the buildings climbed again. She followed a slanting street all the way to City Hall, a regal place that looked like the shameless offspring of a ritzy hotel and a German castle. A soldier stood out front, assault rifle hung across his chest. A block away, Lucy stopped and got out her little mirror and combed her hair, which had gone frizzy from the humidity.

She walked her bike up to the soldier, who inspected her passport and nodded her inside.

"You'll keep an eye on my bike?" she said.

"If you come back and it's not here, I'll carry you home myself."

She snorted and went inside. Austere stone led to a rich walnut reception desk complete with receptionist, but Lucy stopped cold. Something was wrong. The world had gone the wrong hue, like when you been out in the dazzling sun and you go into a shady room and your eyes can't seem to make it out.

The lights. They were white. And steady. They had electricity.

Well, la dee da. She strode up to the woman at the desk and smiled and handed over her passport. "I was told you had a place for me to stay?"

"You mean our guest housing," the woman said. She was young and pretty and had the generic northern accent. "Is this your first visit to Manhattan?"

"And the way y'all are treating me, it won't be my last."