The City Series (Book 1): Mordacious (31 page)

“Why don’t you leave? Don’t you have boats?”

“You’d think,” Ren says, voice inflected with anger or sarcasm or both.

Jerry sighs. “After they blew the bridges, every boat and raft in New York was on the water, trying to get across to Jersey. Who do you think went out to try to keep order?”

“You guys,” I say, even though it’s unnecessary.

Jerry’s face is stone, but his eyes spark. He stops at the entrance to the rectangle of buildings. “They bombed the water to keep them from reaching shore. Between the explosions and the rough water and the collisions, they didn’t make it back.” He holds up one finger. “One boat. That’s all we have.”

“Jesus,” I breathe. Bombing the unoccupied bridges was one thing, but taking out civilians in boats was mass murder. They didn’t show that on the news.

“I’ll serve my country until the day I die,” Jerry says, “but I won’t serve a government that kills its own citizens. We’ve taken in everyone who comes here, and we won’t stop doing that. But if the president or a senator shows up, they can take their chances on the streets.”

“Who’d they think was on the boats, anyway? Zombies?” Ren asks me with a growl, although it’s not a question. “It was already too late. Jersey was full of Lexers.”

“Of what?” I ask.

“That’s what we call them. For Bornavirus LX. The Army guys started it. It stuck.”

“Anyway,” Jerry says, “we don’t talk much about it inside. Some of the spouses are here with their families, and they have enough to deal with without reliving it again.”

I nod as we walk into a small lobby. Offices have been converted to bedrooms with blankets on the floors. The people who sit on the blankets—children and parents and old folks—look up almost disinterestedly as we pass. They remind me of war refugees with their vacant stares and ill-fitting clothing. Ren tells me that they arrived when there was nowhere left to go.

“I saw some buildings when I came in,” I say. “Does anyone live there?”

“That’s Coast Guard housing, where I lived with my wife and daughter,” Ren says, “but it burned, so now we live in the offices.” His eyes shift to the end of the long hall.

“Go on,” Jerry says to him. “We’ll see you tomorrow.”

“But I’m supposed—”

“Get the hell out of here and have dinner with your family.” Jerry points to me. “Unless you want to watch the new guy shower.”

Warren and Blake chortle. Ren thanks Jerry and takes off. Jerry turns to me. “He’s barely slept since this started. Works all day and then stays up half the night watching for Lexers. We were all right until a wave came through the third day. Knocked the gates to the ground and got to the apartments. Maybe a candle went over, but we couldn’t fight the fire. Had to watch it burn. Ren’s wife and daughter made it out, but most didn’t.”

We turn a corner and pass more doors and people before I realize we’re in a different building of the rectangle. The dimly lit, white-painted halls look the same, but the view out the windows has changed from grass to a parking lot. Jerry leads us back outside through a door at the end of the hall. We’ve made it to where they’re erecting that fence, and now I can see the hodgepodge up close. Wood, corrugated metal, chain-link and, I can’t help but think, a whole lot of optimism.

Jerry frowns at the fence. “I’m not kidding about the fort. We’ll break it apart and move it up here, or we’ll figure out how to make it livable if we need to. We don’t have enough manpower to do everything and keep watch, so it’s been slow going.” He motions to the small square building in front of us, which boasts a giant propane tank sitting on the back of a flatbed out front. “That’s the galley. Got this from not too far away. There’s another one, too. We’ll have fuel longer than we’ll have food to cook with it.”

“How many people are here?”

“Well, we had some people here already. Plus Army Reserve and Parks Service. Seems we get new people every day.” Jerry eyes Warren and Blake. “What’re we up to now?”

“We started with four hundred, went down to fifty, and now we’re over a hundred again,” Blake answers.

“What are you doing for food?” I ask.

“Besides what we had on hand? We’ve cleared out what was left of two supermarkets and every store and restaurant nearby. Should keep us going for more than a few months at least. We’ll branch out to other stores, I guess.” He points at the Verrazano. “Fort Hamilton is right across the bridge. They have a big commissary—a full size supermarket—and an exchange. Might still be stocked, since no one’s alive to eat it.”

“What happened to them?”

“The VA hospital. You been to any hospitals in your travels?”

“I avoided them,” I say. Hospitals are full of zombies—Lexers. Inside, outside, everywhere. I don’t think a single person who was inside a hospital could have survived. I know one person who works in a hospital—Maria—and I’m sure she’s with Cassie, who is best friends with her oldest daughter, Penny.

“Right. Well, they took in the infected and that was the end of that. Fences went down. We radioed and shot off flares to signal anyone hiding in the fort, but we got nothing.”

“How about the rest of Brooklyn?”

“Fires, and the last I heard before we lost comms was that the water was out. A lot of Manhattan burned. Gas lines, maybe. There are still parts of it left, and a few Safe Zones. Someone was broadcasting, but they didn’t answer our radio calls. What they’re doing for food, I don’t know.”

“Are you going to plant any food?” I ask.

Jerry pulls at his mustache. “I guess we’ll get around to it. We’ll walk you back to the barracks. Like I said, we still have water, though the pressure’s gone down. Must be a break in the lines somewhere. You know New York City water is gravity-fed?”

I nod. I did know that, although it didn’t stop my parents from storing a barrel in the basement of our garden apartment. I want to sit him down and tell him exactly what I think he needs to do: fill cisterns because if there’s a leak in the line somewhere, water might run out soon. Even if it doesn’t, the pipes will freeze in the winter. Get that fence built while the rest of the residents tear up grass for gardens. Find seeds somewhere, anywhere. It’s spring, so it shouldn’t be hard. If they’re heirloom seeds, great. If not, try to find some for next year and focus on food for this one. Maybe the Lexers will be gone by then—maybe not—but, either way, winter is going to be cold and people will be hungry. But he doesn’t strike me as a dumb guy, so I bite my tongue and follow him across the grass of a courtyard in the rectangle.

I can’t stop thinking about it, though, and I lose the battle with silence. “If you don’t start preparing the ground now, the harvest might be too late in the fall. It’ll take a lot of work to rip up that grass. The soil probably isn’t great, but if you can fertilize you might get a decent yield.”

“We’ll get to it,” Jerry says offhandedly. Blake’s eyes slide my way as if he has something to add, but he doesn’t speak.

Summer is the time to eat what grows and can’t be preserved. All that food with far-off expiration dates should be saved for lean times. But it’s not my place to lecture him. I want a shower and a good night’s rest, that’s all.

“Eric will bunk with you,” Jerry says to Blake. “Try not to kill him in his sleep, Petty Officer Rush.”

“Yes, Chief,” Blake says.

Jerry shakes my hand. “I’ll see you in the galley.”

I thank him and follow Blake a few steps before I turn back. “Why’d you let me have my weapons? I could’ve been lying about my sister.”

“Son, when was the last time you looked in a mirror?” Jerry asks. I think about it and then shrug. He shows teeth as white as his beard. “You look like a fellow who spent the week trying to get to his family. You’re a goddamn mess, now go clean up.”

Chapter 43

I saw what Jerry meant when I looked in the bathroom mirror. That chunk of Outerbridge left a gash and bruise on my forehead. My hair is so greasy it’s no surprise I stopped having to push it out of my eyes days ago. I haven’t been short of food, but my dirty, newly-bearded face looks leaner. Overall, not so bad. Except for the gash, I could be backcountry hiking.

The shower was cold, but the soap lathered enough to shave and everything rinsed down the drain. It’s probably feeding into the water that surrounds New York now that the sewage treatment plants are offline, but I’d be more concerned about the untreated sewage going straight out to sea. I prefer not to think about what was in the Arthur Kill this morning.

I put on the clothes I found on my way here. After considering the effluent in the Arthur Kill, I plan to toss the clothes that got wet. I can always find new ones, and it’ll lighten my pack for tomorrow.

Blake rests on his bed and drops his issue of
Maxim
when I emerge from the shared bathroom. The room reminds me of a college dorm: institutional single beds, though one has been removed and given to their refugees, desks and dressers and assorted pictures and posters tacked to the wall.

“What you said about the gardens,” he says, arms folded behind his head, “you’re right. But the Commander is more concerned with getting the fence up.”

I pull soggy clothes from my pack and pile them on the floor. “So why aren’t you out there digging?”

“Dude, I just got off a fifteen-hour shift. I’m eating and going to sleep. But I’ve been thinking about the best places to plant.”

“You know about gardens?”

“I’m a farm boy. Born and raised in Iowa. Did a lot of weeding for my mom.”

Blake rises from his bed and walks to his desk. He hands me a sheaf of papers covered with drawings of the park, including where the new fences will stand. Inside and outside the fences are sketched-out areas labeled with plant types. It’s a thoughtful effort that considers incline and sunlight and access to water.

“Did you show these to Jerry?” I ask.

“Nah.”

“You should. You couldn’t do much better than this.”

“What do you know about gardening?”

“I’m a city boy who did a lot of weeding for his mom. It looks great. Don’t forget you’ll need some good-quality inputs—I’m sure the soil is poor. You might want to add in the possibility of using fish as fertilizer, since you’re near the water.”

Blake cocks his head. “That sounds like more than someone who did some
weeding
.”

“I’m interested in that stuff. I took a few years off to travel, so I started late, but I would’ve had a doctorate in Environmental Science one day.”

“One day?”

I hand him back his papers. “Pretty sure I won’t have a chance to defend a dissertation.”

Blake’s laugh is hollow, and he sits at the edge of his bed. “Yeah. We’re pretty much fucked.”

“But we’re alive. Fucked, but alive.” I pick up my clothes. “You guys have a laundry? Someone may want these clothes once they’re clean.”

“We can throw them in the pile on the way to the galley.”

Blake leads me down the hall. The rooms hold men, mainly, but I catch sight of a few women here and there. I think of Rachel when one with a knot of dark blonde hair looks my way. I could’ve left Rachel here while I went into Brooklyn. She would’ve been safe.

Blake punches my arm. “C’mon, loverboy. An hour here and you’re already looking for some?”

I didn’t realize I’ve stopped to stare. She’s cute, but now that I’m clean I barely have the energy to walk to the galley, much less woo someone into my bed. A bed I don’t have. I shake my head. “She reminded me of someone.”

We walk in silence to the front door. My boots are bogged down by the thought of Rachel. It’s a failure I’d rather keep to myself. As archaic as it might be, I felt duty-bound to protect her, and I didn’t. There’s a fine line between being called chauvinist and chivalrous these days, but Dad was old-fashioned that way. He never doubted my mother and Cassie could kick ass—he just made it clear he would do everything in his power to ensure they didn’t have to. It rubbed off on me somewhere along the line, and since Rachel—a feminist down to the tiniest bone in her body—never complained, I must not be a total jerk.

Blake shows me a large bin in which to dump the clothes and we make our way to the end of the line outside the galley building. Jerry beckons us to where he stands with another man, this one wearing a full Coast Guard uniform.

“Damn,” Blake says, “the Commander.”

“What’s wrong with him?” I ask.

“Nothing. He just scares the shit out of everyone.” I laugh and walk on.

“Commander Riley,” Jerry says, “this is Eric Forrest. He came in today and is leaving tomorrow for Brooklyn.”

The long-nosed, pale-skinned man evaluates me with a raised brow. “That’s a dangerous trip.”

“I know it is, but my sister’s there.”

“Coming back here when you’ve found her?”

“We’ll head upstate to where our parents had a house. It’s set up with food and water.”

“I suggest you come here and wait until it all blows over. The roads are bound to be impassable.”

This guy
is
commanding; I’d be a little afraid to disagree with him if he were in charge of my life. Since he’s not, I say, “I think it’s the best place for us, and we’ll plant a garden right away. Speaking of which, Blake’s drawn up some plans for a garden that I think you should see.”

Blake’s eyes turn circular, and he gulps when they turn to him. I continue, “He has plans for where specific plants would thrive. You could probably find seeds and soil amendments at the closest home improvement store. It’ll help you get through winter.” I eye the line growing behind us. “You’ll need it.”

The Commander takes in the quiet crowd and then fastens shrewd eyes on Blake. “Have those plans on my desk at 0800 hours,” he says. “I already ate, so I’ll leave you to it.” He strides away, long arms swinging.

“Fuck,” Blake says to me with a groan. “You threaten to kill me and now you do this?”

“What?” I ask, already well aware. But Blake needed a nudge, as did the Commander.

“I’m going to be up all night. So much for sleeping.”

Jerry pounds Blake’s back with a square hand. “You’ll be fine. I’ll give you time off for a nap tomorrow.”

“You’ve got solid plans,” I say. “Just clean them up a little. Make them pretty. He probably doesn’t even know what he’s looking at.”