“Where now?” he asked, somehow computing that I wasn’t done yet.
____________
I had him lower in Central Park, on the west side of the Lake. I exited and took it all in. The sun was low in the west, almost behind the buildings lining the park. I was in a post-apocalyptic movie. Parts of the park looked burned down long ago, while others were thriving with green. New York had gone through some heavy riots after the first batch of colonists left.
Then, the government had been in a state of flux, and the people were uneasy. It hadn’t taken much for some idealists to throw a match on the gasoline. Sections of the city were torn down: Greenwich Village was burned from its east borders to the water.
I stepped onto the long grass and surveyed the landscape. It felt damaged and sad here, instead of happy like my old homes had. I was only a hundred feet from the ship, and I turned to head back. This wasn’t for me. I didn’t need the influence of a dead Manhattan circling my head.
I raised a hand to W, letting him know I was coming back, when a gunshot rang out. I stopped in my tracks, scanning the distance, looking for the trigger puller. Another shot echoed across the way, this time striking just beside my feet. It was time to run.
“W, get the ship…” My words were cut off as I tripped hard. My hands jutted out, but too late. I hit the ground hard, and everything went dark.
____________
“He’s gotta be one of them. The damn hybrids come back to kill us,” a voice said.
I blinked my eyes and tried to rub them clear, but my hands wouldn’t move. They were behind my back, and I found myself in a sitting position.
“He’s comin’ to,” another voice said, this one from a woman. Her voice was gruff, like she’d smoked two packs a day since she was in grade school.
I shook my head from side to side and could make out their forms in the dimly lit room. “I’m…” I started to say before my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. “Water?” I croaked out.
“We ain’t gonna waste water on the likes of your kind,” the man said.
I forced the words out of my sore throat. “I’m not what you think.”
“Then what are you? You come down in one of them space ships from the sky. You think we gonna believe you ain’t one of them? We seen those ships before.” The woman was coming into focus. She was old, gray hair hanging limp over her shoulders.
“I borrowed it. I’m a friend.” It sounded fake, even to me.
They looked at one another and both smiled, exposing rotten teeth. The man spoke. “Way I figure, you have the means to help us. We gonna get your help one way or another.”
“Are you two alone?” I asked.
“We ain’t stupid. We gots twenty more men in the other room,” the woman said, but I could see the lie in her eyes. She was scared. Hungry and scared. Was this what the left-behind humans were resorting to? They did need my help.
“I believe you.” I cleared my throat. “I’ll help, but you need to untie me and give me some water.” I tried my best to seem innocuous.
“Beverly, give ‘im a sip of water. Not the good stuff,” the man said. I was worried what the bad stuff was comprised of but accepted the gray liquid as she tilted a cup toward my mouth. It tasted foul, but I took enough to clear the dryness from my throat.
“The hands?” I asked, hoping I could press my luck.
“Not just yet. How are you going to help us?” Beverly asked.
“You’re right about something. That’s a Bhlat ship. But I assure you, I’m human. My name’s Dean Parker.” I hoped using my real name was going to help. With these two, I wasn’t so sure, so it was a gamble.
“Dean frickin’ Parker?” The man laughed now, a throaty laugh that ended in a series of hacking coughs.
“Yes,” I answered.
“The same Dean Parker that stopped those bastards from killin’ us all, eh?” he asked.
I nodded slowly.
“Then you abandoned us… disappeared while the world went to hell. When you came back, you gave away our planet. I wished you let ‘em burn us away. Anything’s better than fighting for scraps.” Beverly leaned against the grimy wall, her sallow face staring daggers at me accusingly.
“That’s not…” I knew reasoning with them wouldn’t work. They had the look of feral dogs. “I’m sorry. I really am. I can help you now. I can make it better.”
“How?” the man asked, his voice a low growl.
“You can come to New Spero. I can bring you there.”
The pair looked each other in the eyes and then back to me. “How can you do that?”
“Untie me, and I’ll show you.”
TWENTY-FOUR
“So this is where you live?” I asked, rubbing my hands as we left the small room I’d briefly been held captive in.
Old Bill, as he’d called himself, led me down the halls of the Upper West Side complex. It was one of the nicer ones, the kind that housed a dozen five-million-dollar units back when they still had any value. It looked like they tried to take care of the interior, but things were breaking down, repaired with improper materials.
“How do you eat?” I asked. It had been a couple of years since the last batch of humans had left Earth now, and that meant food supplies would be running low.
“We gots livestock and farms in the northern parts of the park. Big community up there. Everyone from the area came to New York City when they were left behind. Only problem is holding on to it with the raiders,” Old Bill said as we walked down a hall and out the complex’s lobby.
“Can you show me?” I asked.
“You still bring us to this New Spero?” Beverly asked, her gaze locked on me from the side of her face.
“Sure. If you want to go, I’ll make it happen.” We stepped outside into the muggy evening.
“Wait here,” Old Bill said, and he galloped past the building, down an alley. A few minutes later, I heard the truck before I saw it lurch out of the side road. It was shooting some black smoke from the muffler as he threw on the brakes, stopping right near us. “What are y’all waitin’ for? Get in.”
I looked at Beverly dubiously and walked around the truck. The slender woman got in, sitting front and center in the old pickup truck. I sat shotgun, rolling the window down.
“How’s the fuel situation?” I asked, knowing it had a shelf life.
“Not great. We got wise after a while. Worked hard to store as much as we could, usin’ them stabilizers and whatnot. Someone smarter than me came up with that. Paul. You’ll like him,” Old Bill said.
The truck pitched forward, and I clasped my seatbelt on. It was one of the old kinds with no shoulder strap, just the one you wrapped around your waist. It dug in, and I loosened it, wondering if I should even use it or not. The way this old codger was driving, I didn’t feel safe without it on.
He turned down Central Park West, heading north. He drove in a one-way for a while, then on the wrong side of the road. Most cars had been cleared, and nothing sat in the way any longer. He had free rein of the city. We traveled at a slow twenty miles an hour for a while, then he urgently turned a sharp right, as if he’d remembered the corner too late. We skidded, and entered the park.
“Welcome to the Newer York. Please have yer passports ready for the ticket lady.” Old Bill laughed like he’d made the world’s funniest joke, then ripped toward bright floodlights. The sky was dark now, and the lights cast an explosive white blast across a fenced entrance. I couldn’t see anything past the lights and squinted to make out a few forms in towers at each end of the large wooden gate.
The truck parked to the side, and I let Old Bill get out first. If these people had guns, which I was willing to bet they did, they were pointed at me right now, and I wasn’t going to give them a reason to fire.
“It’s okay, boys. This is a friend of ours,” Beverly said as she got out on Bill’s side of the truck. I counted to five and got out the passenger door warily. I still couldn’t see under the light
s, but the gate began to slide open, and two figures walked toward us.
“Old Bill. Haven’t seen you in a while. Did you see the ship in the sky a while ago?” a man in brown coveralls over a green sweatshirt asked. He had a thick beard, not unlike my own at this point, and he wore an old baseball cap, half hiding unruly curly hair.
“I sure did. That’s where we found this fella,” Old Bill said.
“Is that so?” The man in coveralls walked over to me, still holding an old rifle. He appraised me from a few feet away, and I figured I’d take the chance to introduce myself.
“Dean. Dean Parker,” I said, sticking my hand out to him slowly.
“Is that so?” he repeated. He stared at me for a few more seconds before meeting my handshake. His grip was strong and quick. Two pumps, and he let go.
“It is,” I answered. “This looks like quite the place you’ve built up here. What’s your name?”
“I’m Paul. Can’t see much under these lights. Why don’t you come inside, and we can talk? I’d love to chat with the Dean Parker.” His voice told me he was skeptical of who I was claiming to be. I was okay with that.
He led us inside the gates, and now my eyes began to acclimate to the light. We were inside a fortification within Central Park. Storage containers had been moved here, along with some log cabins built within the high metal chain-link fences. It was impressive. LED solar string lights were everywhere, wrapped along the inside of the fences and over dozens of trees, casting enough light to see by. More garden lights were staked along the grass in walkways, illuminating the paths so you could see where you were going by night.
“How many people live here?” I asked, trying to guess, but not having any real clue.
“Not a lot inside the fences. Not much room, but we have those we trust living around the city that come to barter, or do work and receive their share of the food,” Paul said.
“You see a lot of trouble?” I followed him further inside the fortification and could smell the pigs and cattle more clearly now that I was inside the fenced area.
Paul’s face hardened as he turned to look me in the eyes. “We see enough trouble. There’s always someone trying to earn our trust, but more often than not, they fail us in some way. Then there are the groups that come with the idea of taking us over. We’ve lost some good people.”
I glanced back to the gate, where the guards held semi-automatic weapons, and understood why. “The world’s a dangerous place, especially when everyone just wants to eat. What happened back when they were gathering people to bring to the portals? You didn’t make it to the rendezvous points for pickup?”
Paul let out a sharp laugh that indicated there was nothing funny about it. “You mean those half-assed attempts at telling us to be picked up to go to some distant world? We didn’t even know if this Proxima really existed. For all we knew, the aliens were getting everyone to go through a portal and into a slave farm for them.”
I hadn’t thought of our own people not believing our government about New Spero. I’d been so naïve. No wonder we still had this many people on Earth. Would I have blindly trusted their word on it? I could have been one of these people, living in Central Park, farming cattle for sustenance. I suddenly felt a kinship toward Paul. “I’m sorry, man. I didn’t know. It’s real. We have our issues, but it’s real.”
Paul staggered backwards, as if he’d been struck by something heavy and hard. “You’re telling me I was wrong?” He sat down on a park bench, and in the darkness, I could see tears glimmer in his eyes. “It’s been so tough. Trying to start over again. Two years, Dean. Two years!” His voice came to a shout, and others were gathering now. I saw a mixture of people, all hard-working men and women. Children ran over, a boy and a girl, giggling at each other.
They’d built a real home here, and I was proud of them. I saw love and hope in their eyes as they looked to Paul, sitting on that bench right then.
“You’ve done an amazing job.” I cleared my throat and spoke up. “Hello, everyone. I’m Dean Parker, and I’m here from New Spero. I can’t take you there tonight, but I can get you there soon. You’ve all been through a lot, and New Spero is still a work in progress. But no one goes hungry. We have law. We have police, we have advanced medical stations.”
A man wrapped his arms around a thin woman. Dark bags hung under her eyes. She was clearly sick. She could be saved now.
“Why didn’t you ever come back for us, Dean?” someone called.
“Why did you give our world away?” a teenage girl asked.
The rumors of my part in the bargain with the Bhlat really had gotten around. “It was the only way for peace. I didn’t know so many of you were here. I didn’t know the Bhlat kept the world intact.” I said the last phrase under my breath, but they still heard me.
More of them began talking over one another, and Paul stood, raising an arm. They fell silent in an instant. “Dean isn’t to blame for any of this. He’s a hero. He’s done more for humans than anyone. If he says he can help us now, we listen to him. I, for one, am not sure I want to leave my home.”
“There’s another option,” I said.
“I’m listening,” Paul said.
“The Empress doesn’t seem to care that there are humans here. As long as no one bothers them, they won’t bother you. Maybe we can take part of the world back. We can send assistance. We have technology that you wouldn’t believe. You can have order and safety back again.” I looked at the emaciated woman and smiled grimly. “And health. You can have stability again.”
They chatted among each other, and Old Bill clasped a hand on my shoulder. “Sorry about tying you up and all. You understand, right?”
I shrugged. I did understand. They were afraid, and I was a threat. “Paul, I need to leave now. I’ll be back. Someone will come with aid, and you’ll be able to choose staying or going to New Spero.”
Paul’s tense shoulders seemed to relax, and he stuck a hand out to shake mine again. This time, he pulled me in for a half hug and whispered in my ear, “This better be for real. They need this.”
“It is,” I whispered back.
After discussing it with the settlers, I answered at least a hundred questions from various people that came together to see me. They all seemed a little happier by the end of it, and hopeful for their futures. A few of them openly cried when I described the Terran sites, and how far we’d been able to go with them. The group swore that those of them choosing to go to New Spero would stick together, because they were family, and it all warmed my heart.
When they finally broke, heading to their homes, Old Bill and Beverly said their goodbyes and headed back out the fence. I was left with Paul.
“Can you give me a tour?” I asked.
“You bet.” He started to walk down the LED-lit sidewalk. “We made homes from the storage units. My wife worked for a fabrication company in the real world. She had some experience with turning the units into livable pods. It was practical, and we could do it with limited supplies, though being in New York didn’t limit us too much.” He pointed at the rows of the units, and it made me think about the base we’d first gone to, with Leslie and Terrance in the back of our truck. They’d used a similar idea, though these units weren’t stacked on each other like the ones at the base had been.
“Makes sense. Good idea,” I said, counting fifty of the units. “About a hundred living here?”
“Nice guess. One-twenty. Some kids. A few babies.” This made Paul stand up straighter, and I shared his amazement at bringing new life into a world like this. It made me ache, thinking about my own baby girl. I missed her and her mother. I wanted all of this to be over, once and for all. It sometimes felt like it never would be, that I’d be on an endless cycle of a new or old enemy coming for me.
“Past the neighborhood, we have a playground.” I saw the equipment and wondered if any of it was in the park before, or if they’d brought it all. I hadn’t visited this northern section of the park that o
ften when I’d lived here years ago.
We kept walking, and I began to realize how large this compound was. “Crops over here on both sides.” Paul spread his arms wide, and I saw corn on the right, and a variety of plants growing on the left. “Potatoes are key. Carrots, lettuce, beans.”
The scent of farm animals thickened as we walked, and we arrived at the end of the complex where cows were fenced inside. There were at least forty of them roaming the grass. Pigs were penned beside them, separated by a waist-high fence. Chicken coops lined the right side. Paul smiled at me. “Good for eggs and dinner.”
“What happens when the cows eat all the grass here?” I asked.
“We’ll move the fence. Just over there” – he pointed to the north – “is prime park grass. It’ll take some work, but we have the motivation. Now I’m not sure what will happen. You promise you can help us?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
He let out a deep sigh. “This was my reality. Every ounce of me has gone into this.”
He’d mentioned his wife. “Where’s your wife?” The second I said it, I knew she wasn’t there. His posture changed in a heartbeat.
“Gone. She left us the plans from her old job for the storage containers and left in the middle of the night for the last pickup to New Spero. We’d argued for days about it and decided not to go. She took our daughter and left,” Paul said.
“Then she’s probably still there,” I said.
“Yes,” Paul said and stood staring into the cow pasture. “I believe she would be.”
____________
“Captain? What took you so long?” W asked as I walked toward him. The Jeep had let me out a hundred yards away, and the robot’s question made me laugh.
Old Enemy (The Survivors Book Six) Page 17