Speaking of lies... there were probably a few hundred people out, in this area alone, on this cool fall night. So how many people were in Manhattan in total. Thousands? Tens of thousands? There was life in the air, a sense of electricity, something he had not felt in a long time. He looked at the people passing in the dim light, at the way they walked and they conducted themselves, and listened to their conversations. Something was different here, yet familiar, something that he could almost just—
Yes, he thought. That was it. They walked past another storefront, and inside, jazz was playing—horns and saxophones — and there were the sounds of clapping and shouting. He knew what was different.
They were alive. They weren’t afraid. Concerned, perhaps, about getting enough to eat and staying out of the Army’s way. But they didn’t worry about censorship or decon camps or the police checkpoints for residency permits. Nope. They were just free Americans, living secretly in an open city and—
Oh, no, he thought.
The parking garage basement. The supplies. The barbed wire. The barricades. The riot sticks and shields. The crates of CS gas. And the British paratroopers? Sure. Now it made sense.
And he knew, it struck him so hard it made him nauseous, what was being planned for these brave survivors before next year’s inauguration.
~ * ~
‘There,’ Sandy said. ‘That looks like the right place.’
Up ahead, at the street corner, was a lit subway entrance. Sandy added, ‘You don’t think it’s a trap, do you?’
‘No, I don’t,’ he said, bringing his attention back to the here and now. ‘It’d be bad for business. But keep behind me anyway, okay?’
‘All right.’
The steps were clean, the letters ‘PS 19’ had been spray-painted in bright red, over the old IRT sign. They descended, and the light grew stronger. The stairs turned to the left and he saw that the light was coming from lanterns, set along the walls and the floor. Ahead of them was a barrier, made of sandbags and scrap metal, and behind it, two young men lounged on high stools, rifles across their laps. They wore Yankees baseball caps, patched blue jeans, and heavy corduroy coats. Both looked like they were trying to grow beards, but still had a way to go.
One of the men stood up and casually raised his rifle. ‘You guys got business here, or you looking for somebody?’
Carl looked again at the piece of paper he held in his hand. ‘We just came from the Village Traders, from Al’s. He said to ask for Jim.’
The man stepped around the barrier, rifle held loosely in his hands, and Carl guessed that he was in his early twenties. ‘Can I see the pass?’
Carl held it out. The man looked at it and handed it back. ‘Yep, that’s Trader Al’s mark, all right.’
The man still behind the barrier laughed. ‘Bet you he didn’t give you that for free.’
Sandy spoke up. ‘No, he didn’t. He was a demanding fellow.’
The closer man said, ‘That he is. You’re not from here, are you?’
‘No, we’re not,’ Carl said, changing their story just a bit. We’re journalists. She’s from the Times of London and I’m from the Boston Globe, and we’d like to see Jim.’
‘Sure,’ he said, turning. He snapped his fingers and said loudly, ‘Hey, Paco. Get over here, we got a little escort work for ya.’
From the gloom emerged another man, younger than the other two, but dressed like them and with a rifle slung over his shoulder. At first Carl had thought that the barrier was a bit silly, not really strong enough to hold anyone back, but now he saw how it made sense. It was a checkpoint, and there were probably more armed men and other barriers, deeper within.
Paco was dark-skinned and working on a mustache, instead of a beard, and he was doing better than his friends. He came around the barrier and Carl was surprised when he stuck out a hand and shook with Carl, and then with Sandy.
‘Did I hear you right, you two are newspaper reporters?’ Paco asked, his face friendly and eager.
‘You certainly did,’ Carl said.
‘Oh. Well, welcome to New York.’
Sandy laughed. ‘Thank you. That’s the first time anyone’s said that.’
~ * ~
TWENTY
As they went deeper into the old subway station, Paco kept up a running commentary, talking and asking questions, and Carl found himself answering in one or two words. There was so much to take in as they walked along the old cement and tile corridors that he could hardly keep everything straight. It was like the dead husk of New York City had been peeled back to reveal a busy and thriving world that no one knew existed. There were shops set back in the walls, selling everything from shoes to kitchenware, and people moved by in polite lines looking at what was for sale.
Walls of plywood and lumber had been erected, with names painted on the sides, and it looked like there were residences behind them. He looked into an open area and saw school being taught, children sitting down with tattered books in their hands, a male teacher gesturing before a blackboard. In another area a weaving workshop had been set up, and he realized with a start that, like Trader Al’s wife, every man and woman at the looms was blind.
The corridors were noisy with talk and music, and were lit with oil lamps and an occasional electric light that wavered in strength. He found it hard to grasp and could not believe, again, and again, what he was seeing. They took a moment, to check on the injury to his neck — the bleeding had already stopped—and Sandy spoke up, awe in her voice.
‘This is like the Blitz,’ she said. ‘People living underground in the tube system during the war.’
Paco spoke up. ‘London, right? I thought you was British. Accent and all that. Not that I’ve ever met someone from Britain. I just hear the announcers’ voices on the radio.’
‘The Beeb?’ Sandy asked. ‘You listen to the BBC?’
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I like the way them guys talk, all nice and proper. And the news is better than the States’ stuff. Most of the time, the domestic news is boring crap. Can’t half believe what you hear anyway. Whaddya guys doing here in New York?’
‘Working on a story,’ Carl said. And working on trying to get out of here.’
‘That so? Well, you came to the right bunch of guys, that’s for sure. We’ll be there in another minute or two. Hey, speaking of news, how are the French and Germans doing?’
Sandy said, ‘In doing what?’
Paco stopped, an amazed look on his face. ‘The trip to the moon. Don’t you guys know about that?’
Sandy looked slightly embarrassed, and in a way, so did Carl. Here was a young man, in his late teens or early twenties, living in an underground world, unknown to anyone in the United States, and he seemed oblivious to his surroundings, only curious about what was happening out in space.
Carl spoke up. ‘The Germans and the French are sending rockets up from South America, at Guiana. They’re building a space station, called Eagle’s Nest, and in a couple of years, they’re going to try for the moon. If the money holds up.’
Paco nodded. ‘Cool. Hope we get television in here by then.’
They went down another short corridor, this one lined with metal desks and chairs and typewriters salvaged from the city overhead. Paco talked briefly to a man sitting outside a wooden door, who was also dressed in a New York Yankees cap and corduroy jacket, and had a sawed-off shotgun across his lap. The man was older than Paco and had an even more impressive mustache, and when he looked at Carl, Carl recognized the attitude. A gatekeeper, suspicious of everyone and anyone who came to see his boss.
‘Can I see that pass from Trader Al’s?’ the man asked. Carl passed it over and the man looked at it, and then at Paco and said, ‘No weapons beyond the door. Paco keeps an eye on your knapsacks as well. You’ll get five minutes with Jim, that’s it.’
Carl said, ‘I’m sorry, but who is this Jim?’
The man snorted. ‘Man, you must be out of touch. This here’s Jim Rowley, head of PS 19 and o
ne of the most important guys on this island. You’re two lucky folks, to see him on such short notice. But we like to do favors for Trader Al, whenever we can.’
Sandy looked down the dark corridor and said, ‘I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but I’m just a tad wary of letting our stuff out of our sight. It’s all that we have right now and—’
Paco interrupted. ‘I’ll keep an eye on it, miss, honest to Christ. This is PS 19—we do things straight around here.’
Carl also felt uneasy but he wasn’t sure what else they could do. He undid the belt that held the Colt .45 and they set their knapsack and satchel on the ground. Paco took an empty chair and sat down, a wide smile on his face. ‘Not to worry,’ he said, ‘they’ll still be here when you get back.’
The guard knocked twice on the door, and then opened it. ‘Jim,’ he said, ‘two guests of Trader Al’s, looking for some business.’
Carl and Sandy walked into the room and the door slammed shut behind them.
The room was small and smelled damp. There were two large bookshelves, filled with leatherbound volumes and paperbacks. A metal desk stood in the center of the room, on a frayed rug, and two empty chairs were set before it, their split leather coverings fastened together by gray tape. Two electric lights swayed from an overhead cord. A young man in a heavy green wool sweater, also wearing a Yankees cap, looked up from a ledger book he was examining and motioned them to sit down. His face was heavily scarred on one side, and Carl noticed the collection of wrinkles around the eyes. He tried not to stare at the man’s face, or what was set on the wall behind him: a framed photo of John F. Kennedy, with HE LIVES printed at the base.
‘Have a seat, have a seat,’ he said, gesturing before him. ‘The name’s Jim Rowley, and I’m in charge of PS 19. I’m told you’ve done business with Trader Al’s and you want to work a deal with my guys. What’s the proposal?’
Carl reached into his jacket and pulled out a dirty business card. ‘I’m Carl Landry. I’m a reporter and photographer with the Boston Globe.’
‘And I’m Sandy Price, from the Times of London,’ Sandy said. ‘I’m afraid I don’t have any business cards. You’ll just have to trust my accent.’
Jim looked at the Globe card and leaned back in his chair. ‘Boston and London,’ he said. ‘You two sure are a long ways from home. What the hell are you doing here?’
Carl looked at Sandy and Sandy looked at Carl, and he said, ‘We came here to do a story about New York City.’
‘By your lonesome, or with the Army?’
‘With the Army,’ Carl said.
‘What happened, you run away from your escort?’
‘You could say that,’ Carl said.
He grinned. ‘I could, but I won’t. Yesterday there was some gunfire, up on Greenwich Avenue. Jeep got shot up, a bar messed up. You guys know anything about that?’
Sandy said, ‘That was us. We were ambushed and our escort was killed.’
The grin remained. ‘So why are you here? Why didn’t you go back to the Army?’
It was Carl’s turn. ‘The way the ambush was set up, we’re not too sure who’s out there. If they’re with the Army or not, well, I don’t think we care that much. We just don’t want to run into them again. Which is why we thought going out on our own made sense.’
Jim put his hands behind his head. ‘Yeah, that does makes sense. Regular Army’s an okay bunch of guys. They’re just here to do a job. They leave us alone and we leave them alone. It’s the Special Operations guys that give us a hard time, the Zed Force.’ His eyes narrowed a bit. ‘That’s one little problem with you two. If you are Zed Force, well, you’re going to be in for a rough time of it. We don’t like those guys.’
‘Why?’ Sandy asked.
‘Too true blue. The regular Army, they’re live and let live. They figure if and when this crappy island is ever open for business, they’ll let the city and the cops deal with us. The Zed Force guys, though, they want everything cleared out. Make this place nice and pristine. Not let anybody know that we’re here.’
Carl thought again about the supplies he had seen. Barbed wire and CS gas and plastic restraints. Not now, he thought. Save it for later.
Carl said, ‘Truth is, Jim, I don’t think anybody out there knows you’re here.’
‘Of course they don’t,’ he said. ‘Army controls this place, controls your newspaper, right? Don’t have to say more than that.’
Carl looked around the small room and said, ‘A school, right?’
Sandy looked confused. ‘What did you say?’
He felt more confident, seeing the smile still on Jim’s face. ‘That’s why you’re named PS 19—for Public School Nineteen. Am I right?’
‘Quite.’
Sandy asked, a tinge of confusion in her voice, ‘You mean, you’re schoolchildren?’
Jim came forward in the chair with a start. ‘No, not children,’ he said, his voice more harsh. ‘You want to hear a story? Write this one down, miss, about how a bunch of us in PS 19 grew up overnight, ten years ago, when the grown-ups screwed up big time.’
She did as he suggested, opening up her notepad and uncapping her fountain pen. ‘All right, I’m writing. Tell me what happened.’
Jim spoke clearly and carefully, like he had practiced this for years, waiting for the chance to tell his story to an outsider. ‘It was in October. PS 19 was an elementary school, a few blocks from here. Couple of hundred kids. I was in sixth grade, the oldest class level. The sirens let loose and the teachers brought us down to the basement, where we ducked and cowered against the walls. We were crying and we were scared, and right then and there, I knew things were wrong, ‘cause a couple of the teachers, they weren’t there with us. They had run away, to go back home to their own families.’
He rubbed his fingers along the edge of the ledger. ‘At first we thought it was another drill or something. We knew about the missile crisis, we knew that things were scary. But things were always scary back then, you know? Crisis and summit meetings and air-raid drills. And then, just a few minutes after we got into the basement, there was a loud, rumbling boom, followed shortly by another, and then a while later, a third. Each time, the floor shook and things fell off shelves and part of the ceiling even collapsed. We kids were screaming and even the teachers and the principal were scared.’
He looked up, a faint smile on his scarred face. ‘That’s something else, you know. Kids are so tough that I think we would have been fine, except that the teachers were scared. When you’re a kid and the teacher is scared, then you know you’re in a very bad place.’
‘Was anyone hurt in the basement?’ Sandy asked and Jim -touched his face, saying, ‘I guess you’re asking politely about this. No, it didn’t happen in the bombing. My face got this way ‘cause some hungry dogs thought I’d make a great lunch, a few years back.’
‘What happened after the bombing?’ Carl asked.
‘Well, we were crying and a lot of kids had peed themselves, and then the power went off, so we were in candlelight for a while.’ His face darkened at the memory. ‘Those next couple of weeks were tough, very tough. Some parents made it to the school to pick up their kids, and you had some kids leaving, and their friends staying behind, crying. Those of us who waited for our parents, God, we missed them so much. After a while the teachers started drifting away, one by one. Can’t hardly blame them for wanting to find out what happened to their families, though we did blame ‘em at the time. But a couple of them stayed on, Mrs. Bouchard and Mrs. Callaghan. Two real old-timer teachers. They tried to keep us organized but it was tough. We lived in the basement, scared of the fallout, scared of what was going on up on the streets. We lived on awful canned water and some biscuits and hard candies, and one day, Mrs. Callaghan, she said she was going to go to the local precinct station, maybe five or six blocks away, to see if we could get some help from the police. She left and never came back.’
Carl realized he was hanging on every word, watching the young
man’s lips move, trying to see what was going on behind those dark eyes of his. Jim cleared his throat. ‘Then, a few weeks later, when we were getting low on water, Mrs. Bouchard got dressed in her hat, coat, and gloves. She must have been near retirement age, but she was there for us, day after day. She was the last one. We were about sixty kids left from the school and she looked at me, ‘cause I was the oldest. She said that she was going to the local fire station. Her dear departed husband, as she liked to say, he had been a firefighter and she was sure that the firefighters had stayed behind to take care of their city. I remember that’s what she told me.’
Resurrection Day Page 33