by Dan Wells
Were people already looking for them? The salvage run was scheduled to go overnight, so no one should miss them yet—unless Marcus had told someone the truth about where they were going. She wanted to trust him, she couldn’t think of a single reason not to, and yet he had refused to help. He had refused to come. She needed him with her more than she needed the rifle she was holding, and yet…
They stopped by a massive parking lot, acres across from one shore of the peninsula to the other. The bridge was blocked at the mouth; they crept forward to find a makeshift barricade of old cars, now long abandoned. Skinny and Scruffy stood watch while the rest of them heaved and pushed, hooking up the horses to clear a path through the wreckage. Kira forced herself to stand tall in the wagon as they crossed the bridge, the tallest thing for hundreds of yards in every direction. It terrified her. That was why she did it.
The far side was more open than the peninsula, full of fields and trees instead of abandoned buildings, and Kira breathed more easily with the airport far behind them. The openness lasted only a few miles before they plunged back into the city, following a wide avenue past shopping centers and close-pressed homes of wood and brick. Most of them were crumbling in on themselves, vine-covered ruins in a hungry jungle.
A cluster of cars in an intersection were charred and blackened by some ancient fire—an accident, maybe, or the central bonfire of some long-forgotten riot. This was a bigger city than East Meadow, denser and more populated than any of the places Kira had visited on salvage runs and other trips. The section of the island east of East Meadow had caught the RM virus with dignity, gathering their families and dying quietly in their homes. The outer boroughs of New York City, on the other hand, had fought back harshly, lashing out at themselves when there was no other enemy to fight, and the city showed it. Now it was empty.
Kira had grown up in the shadow of the Nassau hospital, the tallest building in East Meadow and, she had assumed, the tallest building in the world. The distant Manhattan skyline destroyed that illusion almost as soon as they got to Brooklyn. The road cut almost straight northwest, but Jayden pulled out a new map and guided Haru through corners and side streets, sometimes sticking to the main roads and sometimes taking long detours around them. After a few miles they halted by an overgrown cemetery and watered the horses in a pond, and while they drank, Yoon and Scruffy tied thick bundles of old T-shirts around the horses’ hooves to muffle the sound. As Kira watched, a family of antelope crept out from the distant trees—beautifully striped, with delicate spiral horns. They nibbled on the green shoots growing up between the headstones, then sprang into motion in perfect unison, bolting away at desperate speed. A deep black blur followed close behind them.
“Panther,” said Yoon.
Kira pulled her rifle closer. “Good to know.”
“Panthers are supposed to be night hunters,” said Yoon. “This doesn’t fill me with confidence.”
They climbed back into the wagon and continued moving, following the convoluted path on Jayden’s handmade map. The buildings got larger as they approached Manhattan, and once in the late morning they paused in the shadow of a thirty-story apartment complex, waiting for nearly an hour while Jayden peered carefully around the corner. Skinny slipped into the building beside them, and Scruffy disappeared behind a line of cars. Kira leaned close to Haru.
“What are we doing?”
“There’s a watchtower at the end of this road,” Haru whispered. “Two men and a radio, watching the line for any Partial movement. There’s no good way to avoid it, so we’re waiting.”
“Waiting for what?”
“They’ve got to pee eventually.”
“Seriously?” Kira peeked around the corner cautiously, seeing nothing. “I can’t spot anything.”
“That’s the point,” said Haru, pulling her back. “We know where to look, so Jayden’s got a bead on him. As soon as he moves, we move.”
“And then we get seen by his partner,” said Kira. “If this is as easy as you guys make it out to be, anyone could sneak across.”
“We only make it look easy,” said Jayden, lying behind a car with binoculars mounted on a tripod. “We’re just too damn good at our jobs.”
“Even the most dedicated watchman gets lax after a decade of never seeing anything,” said Haru. “More than likely his partner’s asleep from taking the night watch. Be patient, but be ready to blaze the instant we give the signal.”
Kira sat down on the curb, looking up at the high buildings surrounding them. Every now and then she saw a feral house cat creep through the rubble, or watch her from a windowsill. Minutes seemed to last for hours, and in the bottom of the steel and plaster canyon, Kira couldn’t tell how much time was truly passing. She started tossing bits of gravel into the street, trying to land them in the open window of a car across the way, but Gabe stilled her with a meaty hand.
“I know the watchmen can’t see it, and they probably can’t hear, but it’s safer not to do that anyway.”
Kira smiled sheepishly. “Yeah, sorry, that makes sense.” She saw a flash of movement from the far side of the street and looked over to see Scruffy waving from behind a broken wall.
“How did he get over there?”
Jayden raised his hand. “Get ready.”
Yoon grabbed the reins, and Kira jumped to her feet, swallowing anxiously. Jayden paused, his hand in the air, and suddenly dropped it.
“Go!”
Yoon flicked the reins and the horses leaped out, muffled feet thudding across the asphalt. Kira jogged along with the others, glancing up again at the watchtower, but still saw only empty buildings.
They reached the far side and pulled the wagon behind the wall of another building, and Jayden peeked back out with his binoculars. Scruffy emerged silently from the shadows.
“How did you get over here?” Kira asked.
He shrugged and climbed into the wagon.
“He’s still not back yet,” said Jayden, eyes glued to whatever he was watching. “And I don’t hear any radio traffic. I think we’re still secret.” He ducked back behind the wall and stood up. “Let’s go.”
Skinny joined them a few blocks later, appearing out of nowhere and climbing into the wagon.
“He didn’t see us,” he said simply.
Jayden nodded. “Perfect.”
They continued to dodge and weave through the buildings, keeping to low, narrow streets and using the map to avoid the Defense Grid watchmen. They stopped at a large stone courthouse, and Yoon began unhooking the horses.
“You can’t see it from here,” said Jayden, “but we’re only a few blocks from the river. There are two bridges right next to each other, and a single watch post that covers both of them. We think we can sneak across, but we’re leaving the horses and the wagon here.”
Kira looked at the forested park across the street and imagined it full of more panthers, hiding in the shadows. “Is Yoon staying with them?”
Jayden shook his head. “I’d rather have an extra gun in Manhattan and risk walking home.” He pointed up the steps to the courthouse. “We’re going to put them in there and hope nothing happens.”
The stairs were too steep, and the wagon too heavy, to risk pulling it up as well; they carried up the gear by hand and carefully walked the horses up the narrow granite steps. The courthouse windows were broken, of course, but the heavy doors were more or less intact. Yoon took Gabe and Kira to the park across the street, cutting armloads of tall grass with a thick, curved knife and carrying it back to the horses. They pushed the desks into a makeshift corral and blocked the doors closed with a set of heavy metal couches. It occurred to Kira that if they didn’t make it back, the horses would be trapped inside forever. She shook the thought from her head.
The soldiers checked their weapons carefully, making sure the barrels were clear, the chambers were loaded, and the moving parts moved the way they were supposed to. Kira examined her rifle as closely as she could, studying pieces of the weapo
n she’d never even thought about before, realizing for the first time that her life literally depended on them. The chamber was fully loaded, plus she had more clips in her backpack, cinched tightly to her back, and two more in easy reach on her belt. Gabe revved his minigun, checking the rotation of the barrels, and shouldered a massive backpack full of ammo. Jayden slung his rifle over his shoulder and examined a pair of semiautomatic handguns on his hips. Skinny and Scruffy bore long-barreled rifles with thick sound and flash suppressors. Haru’s gun was short and versatile with a collapsible stock; Yoon had a similar gun, plus the long, wicked knife strapped to her back.
Jayden clapped Kira on the back. “You ready?”
No, Kira thought, I’m cold, and I’m hot, and I’m tired, and I’m terrified, and I’ve never been less ready for anything in my life. She forced herself to smile.
“I’m ready. Let’s go attack some super-soldiers.”
The bridge started by the courthouse, and they were on it for nearly half a mile before they reached the water. As they neared the edge they dropped down to hands and knees, crawling below the rim of a waist-high wall, a tiny strip of concrete that would shield them from the sight of the invisible watchman on one of the buildings above. Skinny and Scruffy crawled ahead, marking traps and defusing trip wires for the rest of the group to pass through safely. Even with the marks, Kira sometimes couldn’t see what each trap was supposed to be.
She imagined a vast Partial army hiding in the skyscrapers across the river, coincidentally—or not—choosing this exact moment to mount an attack. The traps were down; the door was open. Was she betraying humanity?
No. She was saving it. She clenched her jaw and kept crawling.
Brooklyn had surprised Kira by making tall buildings commonplace; Manhattan shocked her completely by making those giant buildings seem small. The island was a mountain of metal, stretching so high into the clouds it seemed to be literally scraping the sky. The base of the city was a carpet of green—parks and trees and strips of grass had long ago overrun their borders and stretched out into the streets, seeds finding cracks and roots finding weak spots until the asphalt had become warped and broken, and the roads had become a forest of new growth. Kudzu crept inexorably up the sides of buildings, coating the bottom stories in a layer of vines and leaves so thick the buildings themselves seemed to be growing out of the ground.
As their bridge reached the far side of the river and stretched out into the city, they finally stood up. Kira found herself at treetop level in a literal urban jungle. Birds nested in the vines and rain gutters, and feral cats prowled cautiously through the latticed framework of exposed offices hundreds of feet in the air. She heard a baying of hounds and, she was certain, the distant trumpeting of an elephant.
“They should call this Animalhattan,” said Gabe, shooting Kira a quick smile. She grinned and nodded.
“Everybody stay down,” said Jayden. “We know Brooklyn pretty well, but this is all new territory. We shouldn’t see any Partials here, but it doesn’t hurt to be careful.” He pointed to a pale building just a block or two to the north. “That tower will give us the best vantage point over this section of the island; we’ll go up, get the lay of the land, and move on from there. Stay close and try to keep quiet.”
Kira crawled after the others as the bridge angled down and curved through a stand of towering trees. Ground level was a whole new world—a schizophrenic blend of forest and junkyard where Kira had to be extra careful with her footing. The sheer mass of the skyscrapers around them resulted in more debris than usual—shards of glass and chunks of stonework, bits of plaster and crumbled drywall and untold reams of paper, some of it blowing free and some of it half-decomposed in a thick accumulation of dirt, leaves, and fungus. Long green tendrils wrapped around faded soda cans, wove through the spokes of rusted bicycles, and clung fiercely to the sides of old taxis and buses and road signs.
Kira and the soldiers followed the road carefully, picking their way between leafy cars and rusty trees and piles of unrecognizable rubble. When they reached the pale building, Gabe set watch at the bottom of the stairs, and the rest climbed as high as they dared before Haru grew worried about stability. Twelve stories proved to be enough—this part of the island was mostly government buildings and apartments instead of giant office buildings, giving them an unobstructed view of the terrain to the north.
“That strip of deeper green was probably a park,” said Jayden, pointing northeast. “Looks like it goes at least ten blocks, and those trees will give us good cover.”
“They’ll also slow us down,” said Haru. “We should pick a wide street and head straight up the middle.” They debated for several minutes, while Yoon leaned out the neighboring window to coo at a pair of brightly colored birds. Kira studied the skyline, trying to drink in as much of the city as she could. Were there any landmarks she could use? Distinctive buildings she could find and remember if she ever got lost? As her eyes rolled over the cityscape, she saw a thin white line that seemed to be moving—a reflection, maybe, or … no. It was smoke. She pointed to it.
“There’s a fire. Do you see it?”
Jayden and Haru stopped talking, following her finger with their eyes.
“Just beyond those three brown buildings, the ones sticking up.”
“I see it,” said Haru. “It’s not a house fire, it’s too small and controlled. I think it’s a campfire.”
“It’s a chimney,” said Jayden, peering through binoculars. “Someone’s living there.”
Kira frowned at the distant smoke. “Living or camping?”
“I didn’t think there was anyone on the island,” said Yoon. “Why would someone still be living here alone?”
“It might be a watch station,” said Haru. “A Partial outpost.”
“It’s too low for a good watchtower,” said Jayden. “It’s just a small government building, maybe three stories at the most.”
“A Partial camp, then,” said Haru, “like Kira said. A patrol or something, stopped for the day.”
“It doesn’t have to be Partials,” said Kira. “It might just be some weird old coot who didn’t want to leave his home.”
“There’s no way anyone untrained could have made it this far without setting off an explosive,” said Haru. “We should check it out; if it’s Partials, we can set up an ambush and save days off our trip.”
“And if it’s just a refugee, we risk exposing ourselves unnecessarily,” said Jayden. “Anyone crazy enough to survive out here is also paranoid enough to know we’re coming, and to shoot first.”
“You’re the one being paranoid,” said Haru.
“You’re damn right I am,” said Jayden. “If ‘crazy hermit with a gun’ doesn’t scare you, how about ‘Partial trap’? They might be setting this up just to lure us in and catch us.”
“They don’t even know we’re here.”
“We’ll stay alive longer if we assume that they do,” said Jayden. “I don’t want to get near it.”
“Noted and overridden,” said Haru. “We go toward the smoke—but we’ll go carefully. When we hit those three buildings Kira pointed out, we’ll climb one for another look, and we’ll send Nick and Steve around the sides to look for anything out of the ordinary.”
“You’re not in charge,” said Jayden. “You’re not even real military anymore.”
“That’s my wife and child back there dying,” said Haru. “You can try to take command away from me, but I’m not going to make it easy.”
“That’s not how it works, Haru.”
“The scouts are on my side,” Haru hissed. Skinny and Scruffy shifted slightly, as if subtly reminding the others of their presence. “What do you have, a couple of girls? We’re going to the smoke.”
In a heartbeat the room turned cold and still, each person looking at the others, gauging their distance, watching their hands.
Jayden gritted his teeth, visibly swallowing his pride. “We’ll have to use the radios to coordinat
e,” he said. The tension in the room eased. “Channel thirty-five, with no real locations in case the Partials are listening in. We’ll call the target building Holly, and the three towers next to it Max; Partials are Fred and humans are Ethel, assuming they’re wearing uniforms we can use to identify them. Anyone we can’t identify is Lucy.”
Jayden sketched out a quick map of the city, marking the smoke and any other landmarks he could find. The trip back down the stairs was tense, but nothing happened. Haru explained the plan to Gabe, and they set off through the city, climbing frequently on top of cars to get a clear view over the saplings that filled the street. Kira noted key buildings as they passed them, and stopped in surprise when she saw a lean black horse nibbling grass from a gutter. The horse looked back at her, whickered primly, and turned and trotted away down a side street. Yoon watched it go with almost wistful appreciation.
“You like horses?” asked Kira.
Yoon nodded. “Horses, dogs, cats, you name it. I had a pet penguin for years before I joined the Defense Grid.”
“Why’d you join?” Kira asked. “Why not become a vet or a rancher or whatever?”
“Because my mom was a soldier,” said Yoon, shrugging. “At least I’m pretty sure she was. I remember she had a uniform—navy, I think. It was blue. I have a picture somewhere.” She paused a moment, then leaned in closely and whispered, “Keep your eyes open. We all knew Haru was a blowhole, but I never thought he’d challenge Jayden like that. And Nick and Steve are his guys, not ours.”
“What about when we split up?” Kira whispered. “That will change the power structure.”
“Nick and Steve are a lot more dangerous when you can’t see them,” said Yoon. “Them leaving isn’t going to set my mind at ease.”
Kira watched Haru like a hawk all afternoon, but nothing happened. They reached the three apartment buildings—actually five, now that they had a better angle to see them—and Skinny and Scruffy split off on their flanking missions. Haru led the others to the northern building, and they picked their way carefully through the lobby and up the stairs. The building smelled strongly of rot, both plant and animal, and Kira pulled on her face mask to blot out the stench. They reached the top floor and quietly popped the lock on an apartment door. The family was still inside, leathery skin stretched tightly over old, dry skeletons. A swarm of rats scurried back into the walls, leaving a dead sparrow half-eaten on the floor. Jayden kicked it away and crept to the window.