Survivor (6 page)

T
he morning was bright and my eyelids were heavy. I rolled from my side to my back and stared up at the ceiling. For a moment I forgot where I was. I'd slept well, by far the best sleep I'd had these past thirteen days.

It was a quarter-past nine. I stretched out, my back aching from this too-short makeshift bed. Just a few more minutes of sleep. I let myself doze, then sat up with a start, feeling sick. Twenty-past nine! I jumped up. I had to get to Rockefeller Plaza, to be there on time in case Felicity showed.

All my clothes felt dry as I pulled them on and Rachel had laid out a clean T-shirt and hooded jumper next to my jeans. I noticed there were a dozen or so radios on the table; walkie-talkie type things for the zoo staff to communicate with each other. I tried them all, but the batteries were dead.

Some cereal and long-life milk were set out, but I left the breakfast untouched. I put two radios in my backpack as well as a charging unit. I'd take them to 30 Rock, charge them up. Rachel needed a generator here, and I'd bring her one of those as soon as I could. I pulled on my shoes and ran downstairs, my backpack over one shoulder.

Rachel was in an enclosure feeding and watering some monkeys. I watched, silent, hopping from one foot to the other and unsure whether I should interrupt. I waited for her to come out.

“You're heading off?” she asked as she walked by, seemingly too preoccupied with the morning's work to stop and chat. She didn't sound surprised.

“For a bit,” I said, running to catch up with her.

She stood up, wiped her brow, and hefted a big tub containing sad-looking fruit and vegetables, chopped and broken and sprouting here and there. She added a scoopful to a bucket, hesitated, then added a little more.

“When will their food run out?”

“Four days for the big cats,” she said. “Not long after for the other carnivores—sea lions will run out in six or seven days. Rest have maybe a couple of weeks' worth.”

“Right,” I said. “I'm on it.”

Now I had surprised her. She couldn't hide it from her voice. “On it?”

“I'll bring back food,” I said, zipping up my coat. “As much as I can carry.”

“I don't expect you to do that.”

“How else will they eat?”

She looked at me, paused at the entrance to the tropical bird enclosure, and put the feed bucket down.

“You're serious?”

“Sure!” I said. I slipped the backpack properly across both my shoulders. “I'm headed out anyway, and they need food.”

“You're going right now?”

I checked my watch, nodded.

“You're going to look for that girl?”

“I left her that note.”

“But what if—” A worried look passed over her face. She'd seemed certain that Felicity would be okay, so who was she worried about—herself, the animals? Or me? I couldn't work it out.

“I'll come back this afternoon,” I replied. I knew what she had been going to say:
What if she doesn't show?
Maybe even some version of,
What if she's dead?
“I'll bring back as much food as I can find.”

Rachel nodded, and I stepped forward and hugged her. She didn't move, and she felt so small in my arms. I moved back. She didn't have an expression other than exhaustion, and she went back to work. I didn't mind if she didn't believe me, I was just looking forward to seeing her reaction when I returned with another survivor and more food for her animals than she could have imagined.

 

Twenty minutes later I was at the corner of Fifth Avenue and East 57th. The skyscraper that had stood on the corner, between 57th and 56th, had come down, blocking the intersection entirely. It must have collapsed last night—there was no snow on the debris, but it was ankle-deep on the ground all around it. There was occasional movement as rubble shifted. I looked through some of the wreckage. There was a bent mail trolley that wouldn't push straight; a leather couch that stood on its side, not a scratch on it; a smashed television; an unbroken wineglass; a dismembered foot, as white as the snow.

I backtracked east to get around, moving fast, keeping to the center of the road so I'd have time to run from any Chasers that might leap out of a dark storefront. I stopped at the next block. There was money blowing from a bank's open door, a steady stream of worthless paper.

I scanned the road for footprints. The snow here was virginal: light, fluffy, a Styrofoam landscape under the winter's morning sun. I looked north and south along Avenue of the Americas. There was a whistling or sucking sound, constant but faint. Wind through broken buildings, maybe. I pressed on, walked out to the middle of the next white intersection, the snow crunching loudly underfoot. Blinding white and contrasting dark shadows in each direction. I turned south—

The ground beneath me gave way.

My feet fell through the snow—my legs, my waist, my chest disappeared down a hole in the street. My chest hit hard, knocking the wind from me. I flung my arms forward, my hands dug into the snow, clawed at it, fighting for breath.

I was sliding down, down into a hole in the road that had been iced and snowed over, cloaked in an invisibility blanket. I tried to hold on, to get any kind of grip to slow my descent, but my gloved fingers were sliding through loose snow on frozen ground, my feet dangling into what I imagined was an open manhole. When it was just my head above the ground level, my hands lost all purchase. I fell into the darkness.

T
he wind whistled around me. A shaft of sunlight penetrated the gloom as snow poured softly from the street level above. I could have been in a giant hourglass, the sands of time set to drown me.

This was no manhole.

I had landed on a steeply tilted ledge, a large chunk of broken road hanging by pipes, but I was slowly slipping down, deeper underground, the street level getting farther and farther from my reach.

Below me was a subway tunnel—I saw the glinting tiles of a platform, illuminated by the shaft of daylight above me, the howling of the wind as it whipped through like an express train. The next fall would hurt.

I grabbed hold of an edge of the asphalt, on my side, my feet hanging off the bottom edge. I tried pulling myself up, but my handhold gave way, a chunk of road-base crumbling away, and my fingertips and palms ground along the snow-covered surface. I was falling again, moving fast and hard through open space.

The impact of landing knocked the air out of me and I could hardly breathe. I was flat on my back, winded, my near-empty backpack having broken my fall. My chest felt tight, crushed. Something sharp bit into the back of my leg—I sat up quickly, alert.

It was dark all around but for the shaft of daylight in which I sat, as if I were at the bottom of a crumbling well. Snow from above whipped around in the wind and stung my eyes. I crawled into the shadows and listened.

Amidst the sound of the gale ripping through the tunnel I could hear dripping water, what seemed like a constant stream of run-off into a pool. Slowly my eyes adjusted and revealed a little more around me—the walls were white and I could pinpoint where the sound of wind was coming from, passing through the tunnels, being sucked out through another hole in the street above. When I shifted farther I could see there was the faint glow of daylight to my left.

But it didn't feel right down here. Didn't smell right.

I slipped my pack off my back, as quietly as I could, and fumbled with the side zipper. My hands felt raw, one glove had fallen off and the bandages beneath were ripped. I found my wind-up flashlight. I flicked the switch but the dull illumination did little, so I wound the handle to build the charge and it shone brightly.

A mass of people were crowded around, all turning as one to stare at my light.

Chasers.

 

Their faces were pale and ghostlike and they all looked my way. There were a hundred at least, sitting and standing on the subway platform, and more huddled on the tracks. All of them were staring at the light, staring at me. I scrambled to my left, flashlight in one hand and backpack in the other.

I stumbled and bumped into a Chaser—another one, a wall of them. They were blocking my path, but I pushed through them and towards the faint glow of daylight at a far wall. I checked behind me. They hadn't moved, they were silent, unfazed.

They were all the docile ones, those content to make do with water.

I could hear the constant dripping into pools and could make out a progression of figures sipping from it using cupped hands and reused bottles. So many of them, mesmerized by my light.

I could have cut myself open in that fall and they would have seen my blood as an offering—maybe that's how it started, how they turned from one kind of infected to the other: that first easy taste. I could become trapped—could end my life down here. These streets were ready to eat you alive. I shuddered; cold, the creepy someone-walking-over-your-grave kind of feeling.

A new noise: a shuffling, bumping, hum through the main pack, getting closer. There was movement among the masses, someone pushing and shoving their way forward. I wound the flashlight brighter, tried to see farther back behind me, the way out of here. Further commotion as someone pushed their way through the crowd, the Chasers nearest me parting aside.

A Chaser burst through, given a wide berth by the others. He looked at me and wiped the back of his sleeve across his bloodied mouth.

I turned and ran.

 

I hit a turnstile at a full run and somersaulted over it, landing in a mess and struggling to get to my feet.

The Chaser clawed at the back of my bag, caught me.

I swung around and hit him with the bottom of my closed fist to the side of his head, and the way he'd held me and the surprise of my fight made him lose his footing and he was knocked to the ground.

I vaulted an overturned vending machine, almost at the glow of daylight that shone down the snowed-in stairs out of here.

The sound of my pursuer behind me, back in the chase.

I took to the stairwell as fast as I could, panting my way through the thigh-high snow drift. I looked back and he was there, five paces behind, and behind him—all those Chasers. Some watching, some not, so many eyes witnessing this hunt, so many haunted gazes about to see more brutality. My hand stung and I looked down at it. Red blood dripping freely onto white snow.

I was almost at the top, and my legs burned from the effort.

I looked up. Icy snow covered most of the exit, but there was a small hole leading out. I held my bloodied fist out in front of me like a battering ram—a warm stream of fluid flowed through my knuckles as I clenched it.

I smashed through, almost tripped on the final step at street level and scrambled across the road.

The Chaser emerged. Those eyes. Only for me.

I ran for my life. Stumbling through the street gridlocked with smashed cars, sliding over a cab's bumper, the crash-bang of the Chaser shadowing me.

Around the corner, I turned immediately into the dark interior of a convenience store. I scanned my surroundings and rushed to a spot in the store where I could see the front door through the smashed windows. I slid down in the aisle and squatted on the floor, my head resting against a shelf, staring into middle-distance at the doorway, a bright rectangle of gray-white daylight.

A silhouette filled the space.

I inched backwards. Enclosed by darkness, my pulse chattered my teeth as I tried to calm my breathing.

He came into the store. Short and wiry, alert. Hunting.

I reached behind my back to the side pocket of my pack. Silent movements by me, the uneven rhythm of his gait as he treaded the aisles looking for me. The Glock pistol was in my hands and it shook—my whole body was shaking. My shoulders were tight, and I couldn't breathe properly.

I remembered holding this gun the first time. As my finger had slipped into the trigger guard, it'd felt both dangerous and comfortable. But part of me had wanted to be rid of it, to throw it away. Then I'd become more nervous as my target approached, as if I were invisible. I remembered pointing it at a boy, gaunt and tired, no less a victim and refugee than I was.

Now, I put the pistol into my coat pocket. I didn't want to shoot anyone, not now, never again. I stayed there and watched him for three seconds that dragged on like three hours. I had to move. I visually measured the number of strides to the front door, and ran for it.

The Chaser appeared at the end of the aisle in front of me—caught me by the backpack, dragged me right off my feet.

“No!” I yelled and reached into my pocket, swinging up my gun hand as his head bent down to mine—the heavy butt of the loaded pistol connected with the side of his head.

He fell on top of me—a dead weight—and lay there, motionless but for the tiny in-and-out motions of air as his chest rose and fell. He'd live, for now. I squirmed and wriggled my way out from under him.

When I left the store I clung close to the outside of the buildings, hugging one facade and then the next. That hole in the intersection was a dark mouth into hell, another reminder that this city could eat me alive at any second.

R
ockefeller Plaza looked as I remembered it: the snow-covered fire engines, the massive crater where the ice rink used to be.

I walked around taking in the familiar surroundings, and seeking out someone undeniably real. A new piece to this puzzle that I was sure would somehow lead me home: Felicity.

I checked my watch: almost 11
A.M.
If Felicity had shown when I'd said I would, then I was too late. The only movement now was the flapping of flags, the only thing I could feel was the cold of the wind cutting through my layers and whipping around the buildings.

There were some footprints in the snow. I followed them, lost in the pattern that led me across the street to the NBC News studio where they merged with other sets—large, haphazard in their direction. My ears pricked as a far-off explosion echoed around the buildings, but then it was gone as quickly as it had come.

As I stood just inside the entrance of 30 Rock I recognized the smell: so comforting, like coming home. All seemed as I'd left it. I thought about making a quick trip upstairs, to pack some gear, but the clothes and food and whatever else I'd stockpiled up there I could find anywhere, far closer to street level. But the thought of being high above this city, in a place I knew well, seemed so tempting. Just a quick look . . .

I took out my flashlight, wound the plastic handle for a minute and flicked it on. My hands shook with the prospect of what was ahead, a balanced mixture of excitement and fear. The LEDs were very bright, but did not penetrate far into the darkness of the lobby, nor spread out wide. The stark white-blue light sucked the life colors from everything that I scanned the beam over. Back in that subway station, it had turned those pale faces of the Chasers into something even more frightening, as if their skin were translucent, their eyes black beetles, their shadows darker than they ought to be.

I entered the gloom of the fire escape, the pistol in my other hand, and looked around. Two nights away from here and nothing seemed to have been disturbed. I shut the door behind me. The silence was so familiar. But this wasn't home. This was empty fear far outweighing any excitement.

I left the ink-black stairwell and sucked in the cold air of the bright winter's day around me. This shattered lobby wasn't comfortable. That journey upstairs in the pitch dark was no longer a choice for a better time. I backed out the door of the lobby and took in deep breaths, sinking to the cold paved ground. I couldn't go up those stairs again. I didn't want to know what I might find.

 

I remembered seeing an overturned postal truck on the block past 49th Street. It was still there, lying on its side, the mail that had spilled into the street from its rear doors long since covered with water, snow, and ash. I squatted down and shone my flashlight inside the truck—nothing, no living thing. I pulled out a couple of massive bags of mail, then tipped them out and folded the empty canvas bags into my backpack.

I headed back along 49th the way I'd come, trying to work out my next move. I could radiate out from here and search for signs of Felicity. I looked back to 30 Rock, looming large behind me, the low winter sun hitting its zenith to the south; it would be warm up there in that tower, behind the glass, in that sun.

“Which way?” I said out loud, shuffling through the snow and kicking an empty Coke can. “Which way do I go?”

Like I expected an answer. The mind draws conclusions from anything and everything, and I knew my own answer was what my gut was telling me: head south. Was that the pull of home? The lure of more sun in the day? Or did I need to head someplace else to get to where I really needed to go—check out places below Midtown I'd yet to see, look for easy routes off this island. But I resisted the call of the south—today I had to meet my promise, which was to bring food back to the zoo. Tomorrow was a different day.

I walked into a darkened grocery store, the way lit by my flashlight alone. The dim daylight filtering through the front windows only penetrated so far. There were a dozen or so mobile phones on the front counter, their boxes and packaging ripped open and scattered around the floor, like someone had been searching for something. I tried a few—some dead, some missing their batteries, one working and showing no network. The landline phone was smashed, its pieces on the floor. The cash register was open and empty but for small coins.

The first thing I did was to find some antiseptic and dressing, and some new gloves, and wash my newly cut hand by the light of the window, the wound not as bad as the bleeding suggested. I undid my pack, pulled out the two canvas postal bags and began to fill them with a mix of canned goods.

A shuffling noise, coming towards me, made me want to run. My flashlight wouldn't reach the entire length of the aisle. I wound the charge handle—the loudest thing I'd ever heard—and the beam grew brighter. I could just see—

A dog. A Labrador cross. His big sad eyes shone back at me, ears down, face friendly.

“Hey, boy . . .”

He didn't respond, just watched me.

I reached out to him and he growled, showing his teeth. He was lean but not skeletal; he'd been scavenging all these days. I looked through the shelves of tinned food, popped several cans of cat food and tipped them near him on the floor. He edged closer, wary, sniffing the air, his eyes never leaving mine as I backed away and left the store.

After a few blocks dragging the bags behind me, I found a well-stocked deli. Its windows were blown in, and snow had drifted inside the broken glass and through the open door, filling the front half of the shop. I made my way through it slowly, carefully, until it was just a dusting on the tiled floor. The display counters were all dry goods, grains, and pastas, along with jars of pickles and preserves.

I bagged coils of cured sausage and salami, some vacuum-packed portions that still looked good. The next fridge was overpowering in smell and contained cheeses—some wheels looked about as heavy as me. I collected as much as I could stuff into a bag.

I had so far packed supplies for the zoo's hungry mouths and plenty that was good for us. The other bag I filled with bagged and boxed grains and cereals, dried and tinned fruits, some staples. I added some containers of honey, long-life milk, and jars and cans of the odd delicacy—artichokes, olives, cheese, pickles; things I guessed Rachel might like. I looked forward to showing her all this food, taking my time to reveal it item by item, to share my spoils with someone, with another person like me.

This would show Rachel that I was trustworthy, that I was willing to support her and her quest. Question was, would she reciprocate?

 

I dragged the bags behind me. Each weighed easily forty pounds. I kept going like that for the rest of the block, then stopped, rested, arms on fire and hands aching. I sat on a cab's roof looking up and down the street. At this rate, it might take me until nightfall to get back to the zoo. Worse, the bags might spill their contents, damaged by all the scraping against raw asphalt in the patchy snow, or from where they had snagged on sharp debris.

“New plan,” I said out loud. “Try some cars.”

Every one of them in the street that looked like it could get moving, I tried. None would start. Some ticked over, and a cab almost caught, only to have the battery die out at the penultimate crank of the starter-motor. I thought of Dad's old Ford in which he'd taught me to drive, how we had to push-start that sometimes. Maybe I could push one of these, but there was no room to pick up momentum, and with the snow and rubble on the road it was near impossible to shift them beyond rocking back and forth on the spot. After half an hour I'd muscled a little Volkswagen enough to roll two feet in the snow. I'd bagged all this food and I was stuck here, wasting time.

I needed a truck like the one driven by those army guys. Or maybe I could put something like a metal panel under the bags, something smooth-running if used like a sled, to pull the bags up to the zoo. Even if I had to take one at a time; one today and come back for the other one tomorrow. That could work.

I walked away from the stuffed mail bags towards some wrecked cars, scanning around for something to use.

“Stealing mail?” a man's voice asked.