by Hunter Shea
“It’s dead, too,” she said, rubbing Miguel’s back. She gently handed him over to Max. Miguel fussed until Gabby began stroking his hair.
She watched her mother dash to the kitchen and try the old-time phone on the wall. She dialed, waited a moment, hung up, and dialed again. Taking a moment to compose herself, she gingerly placed the phone back on the cradle.
“Is it over yet?” Gabby asked.
Since they’d been inside, there hadn’t been any more explosions. Even the sirens had gone silent.
Her mother took a long, deep breath. She suddenly looked so tired. She motioned for her to come closer, pulling her to her side and kissing the top of her head.
“I don’t know, baby. I just don’t know.”
11
Daniel and Tim popped out of their cars at the same time.
“Damn thing won’t start,” Tim said, casting a wary glance at the sky. There were just a few glittering remains of whatever had detonated over the city. Dark clouds spilled across the sky, a blossoming tide of oily smoke reaching for the sun.
“Same here,” Daniel said, punching the roof. He looked at Kimball Avenue and saw at least a dozen stalled cars, their doors opened and people milling about the road.
His heart was racing. I have to get home. I have to get home!
It was a little over a mile to his house on the Yonkers-Bronx border. Tim lived at the midway point. They’d often joked about how lazy they’d become, driving to an office they could walk to in no time. It looked like their lazy days had come to an abrupt halt.
“We’re gonna have to hoof it,” Tim said, tossing his briefcase in the trunk.
Daniel slipped the strap of his briefcase over his chest and shoulder. He started running. “Come on!”
Their office was in a converted three-floor apartment building opposite the outdoor Cross County Shopping Center. Daniel would have to practically run the length of Kimball Avenue to get to his house. It’d been a long time since he’d run for anything. He hoped his legs and lungs would hold out, because his heart and brain were going to push them as far as they could go.
He and Tim ran abreast of one another, separating every ten feet or so to avoid crashing into one of the many people who were outside wondering what was going on. Thankfully, there were no more explosions, but the growing plumes of smoke did little to allay his fears.
“I never thought I’d . . . live to see this happen again,” Tim said, struggling to keep his breath.
“But why here?” Daniel said. “Why target Yonkers?”
Neither needed to say the word terrorists. No matter how complacent New Yorkers seemed after 9-11, the very real possibility of experiencing another terror attack was always at the back of their minds. Any intelligent person knew there was no way to prevent every asshole with a political or religious agenda from blowing shit up. To Daniel, it always seemed a matter of where and when.
The where was never, in his mind, Yonkers. And the when, that was always a mystery, one that he hoped would never come to light.
“Maybe we’re . . . just . . . collateral damage,” Tim replied. The tip of his shoe caught in a crack in the sidewalk. He stumbled a few feet, arms pinwheeling, but managed to keep his feet. “The city is only a few miles away. Those motherfuckers.”
Daniel decided it was better to save his breath than get into a verbal rage.
They came to an intersection with a dead stoplight. Two cars had crashed head-on into one another. The drivers were too busy yelling at one another to notice that their world had just been turned upside down.
The absence of the everyday noise of traffic and planes overhead was unsettling. It was as if the explosions had devoured everything capable of sound, except people like the ones in the intersection screaming about who was at fault and demanding insurance cards.
They came to the corner of Ranier Place and Kimball and stopped. Tim put his hands on Daniel’s shoulders. Both were panting, sweat ringing their collars and underarms.
“Look, Dan, get home safe. Try to call me if you can.”
“Jesus, Tim, what the hell is happening?”
“All we can hope for is that it’s over. Get your family and hunker down in the basement. You know what to do.”
“Right.”
As Daniel turned to go, Tim called out, “Hey, check this out.”
Daniel watched as Tim jumped a row of low hedges. He ran back to the sidewalk carrying a bicycle. “Use this,” he said. “I can tell you’re gassed. It’ll get you home quicker.”
“I can’t take a kid’s bike.”
“You can. Bring it back when everything settles down. Trust me, whoever owns this isn’t going to be using it.”
Wrestling with his conscience, Daniel thought about Elizabeth and the kids and how terrified they must be at this moment. He took the bike from Tim.
“Thanks. I’ll see you . . . soon.”
Tim sprinted down his street the moment Daniel put his feet on the pedals.
12
Unlike everyone else, Buck Clarke was not outside sky gazing, waiting for the next explosion. He’d been home, just like every day since his retirement from IBM two years ago, working in his wood shop, when everything went to hell.
His live-in girlfriend, Alexiana DeCarlo, twenty years his junior and the best woman he’d ever come across, shouted down to him from the kitchen.
“Buck! We’re being attacked! Buck!”
He dropped the carved duck he was making as a weather vane for the yard and ran up the stairs.
Several concussions in the distance made the house vibrate. Pushing the blinds aside, he looked out the front bay window. The top of a sizable smoke cloud bubbled up by the Yonkers–Mount Vernon border.
He muttered, “Holy shit.”
Alexiana grabbed his arm. “We have to get downstairs now, Buck.” She had straightened her long blond hair and was wearing a tight tee and short-shorts that hugged her sumptuous curves in anticipation of a little afternoon delight. It wasn’t going to happen now.
“Wait. What are they saying on the TV and radio?”
She nervously fiddled with the remote control, dropping it twice onto the couch. The flat screen blipped to life, showing a woman potting plants in her DYI Zen garden. Alexiana changed the channel to the network news.
Every station was in commercial. It was half past the hour.
“Goddamn advertising,” Buck grumbled. “The fucking place is coming down around our heads, and they have to make sure they give Dunkin’ Donuts their airtime.” He stormed out of the living room and found the battery-operated radio he kept on his dresser. Alexiana followed him into the bedroom. She was shivering. Buck placed a protective arm around her.
“I’m scared,” she said. Her eyes were wet with fresh tears.
“I know, honey, I know. Right now, everyone is.”
He had more success with the radio.
“There have been reports of several large detonations in lower Westchester County and possibly New York City. As of this time, we’re not sure of the nature of the explosions. We . . .”
Buck and Alexiana held their breath.
“Come on, we what?” Buck shouted.
The DJ cleared his throat. “We just got word that authorities have confirmed the launch of at least half a dozen surface-to-air missiles. They’re attempting to locate the source of the missiles. It’s important that—”
There was a high screech over the house, followed by a tremendous crack. Alexiana jumped with a terrified yelp. The radio immediately died in Buck’s hands. He shook it, turned the knob to look for more stations, but came up empty. There wasn’t even static.
Tossing the radio on their bed, he went back to the living room. The TV was in the same condition as the radio. Buck flicked the light switch on the wall. Zip. Everything electronic was fried.
He cupped Alexiana’s face in his calloused hands. “Alex, I need you to go downstairs now.”
“You’re coming with me,” she pl
eaded. The tips of her hair were wet with her tears as she sluiced them off her face with the edge of her hand.
“I will. I need to do something first. You remember the code, right?”
She nodded. Her hands were trembling so badly, he wondered if she’d be able to operate the control panel.
He kissed her softly on the lips, tasting the salt of her tears. “I’ll be right back. You just sit tight.”
Because her legs were so shaky, he walked her down the stairs.
“I love you,” she said, clinging to his shirt.
Buck grabbed his cowboy hat from the peg by his workbench, swatting the bits of sawdust from the brim. “I love you, too. Just remember the code, and I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Buck jogged up the stairs, wishing he’d cut down on all that red meat. He was winded by the time he stepped out of the back door.
13
Daniel couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The big intersection at Yonkers and Kimball Avenues was completely clogged with stalled cars and people. Rolling down the incline, he frantically searched for a gap that would fit him and the bicycle.
Unlike the people he’d already passed who were milling about in stunned silence, the road ahead was chaos. Men, women, and children were streaming out of cars and buses, as well as the bank, diner, Walgreens, and all of the dozen shops in the immediate area. They were in a blind panic. The rush of frantic voices chilled Daniel’s blood.
He pulled on the hand brakes, slowing down as much as he could without stopping. The only way to his house was through the throng.
Why are they all gathering in the middle of the road? Daniel thought. They were like a school of frightened fish, clumping together in an undulating mass. Except schools of fish acted like one mind, instinctually driven to swim from danger. There was no confusion on their part. Sense danger—swim in the opposite direction!
Maybe man had become too complex to function as simply and elegantly as fish.
Dan spotted an opening between a garbage truck and an SUV. If he carefully wound through the shifting tide of humanity, he could shoot through it to the other side. His house was only six blocks from that point.
He coasted down Kimball Avenue, bracing himself as he entered the throng. He made a quick right turn, narrowly avoiding a stroller with a crying baby, then clipped his shoulder into a burly man’s back. Veering left, back on course to the garbage truck, he had to come to a full stop. A woman no younger than eighty fell flat on her back. Her watched her mouth open, crying out, but he couldn’t hear her through the cacophony.
“Are you all right?” he shouted.
Someone pushed him sideways. He toppled over the bike, his shoulder taking the brunt of the fall. Daniel saw stars as lightning bolts of pain radiated from his shoulder to his neck and back. He turned over in time to watch a man in a suit pedal away with the bike.
Wincing as he rolled to his other side, he came face-to-face with the old woman. She struggled to get up. A large, sneakered foot just missed mashing her hand.
“Let me help you,” he said, getting to his knees and placing a hand under each of her armpits. As he stood, she came with him. She felt lighter than a bag of cat litter.
“Thank you so much. God bless you,” she said. She was very unsteady on her feet, so Daniel kept an arm around her, guiding them through the mob.
He spotted the chipped blue garbage truck and pushed forward. The woman was saying something to him, but he couldn’t hear a word. All he could focus on was getting them both out of this madness.
“We’re almost there,” he said.
Her paper-thin hand held tightly onto his own. Other people had spotted the gap and were squeezing through one at a time. The other side of the intersection was clear sailing all the way to where Kimball Avenue went on the incline, leading to the reservoir.
They had just stepped between the garbage truck and the SUV, an expensive Escalade that was now as useful as a doorstop, when Daniel felt a crush of people at his back.
“Hold on! Hold on! Just let us get through!” he shouted to no one and everyone.
The old woman tottered, and he lost his grip on her. Her hip smashed into the lip of the loading bay of the garbage truck. Daniel went to grab her, but he was pushed through the narrow opening.
“Stop! You’re hurting her!”
The old woman’s mouth opened and closed as the hysterical mob forced the air from her lungs. Daniel tried to fight the tide. A woman elbowed him in the chin, a toddler tucked under her arm like a football.
“What the hell is wrong with all of you?” He looked over his shoulder at two converging clouds in the sky—one black as night, the other white as cotton. No one knew what was in those clouds, and they didn’t want to be around when they were overhead. The fear of it was driving them into a frenzy.
Two men wearing hard hats hit Daniel square in the chest as they barreled past. He went down again. Dozens of legs scampered over him. He tucked his head under his raised arms. He was lucky. No one stepped on him during their escape.
When the rush subsided, he rolled back onto his feet. Most of the crowd had left. He saw them sprinting in every direction.
His heart lodged in his throat when he looked to the garbage truck. The top half of the old woman was bent over into the truck’s loading bay at an impossible angle. The crush of people must have snapped her back in two. He ran over to check on her, feeling for a pulse at her neck. Her eyes were open, wide in shock and the final agony of death.
He lifted her out of the truck and carried her over to a patch of grass by the firehouse. The big doors were open, but there were no trucks inside. They must have hit the road the moment the first explosion hit.
No one’s final resting place should be in the putrid belly of a garbage truck. Daniel made the sign of the cross over her and said a quick, silent prayer.
I’ll call the police when I get home.
It was the right thing to do, but he had a sinking feeling the old standards of right and wrong had been upended for the foreseeable future.
14
Elizabeth stared at the front door, surrounded by Gabriela, Max, and Miguel. She clutched the rosary her grandmother had given her for her confirmation to her chest.
Please, Rey, please, Daniel, come home.
As much as she wanted to, she couldn’t cry. Miguel and Gabby sobbed into her sides. Max tried to comfort his little brother, but she could see the fear in his own eyes, hear it in the way his voice shook.
Max, her little warrior whose body was outpacing his maturity. She ran a hand through his thick hair, hoping he couldn’t feel the tremors that had overtaken her.
She let out a startled gasp when there was a knock at the back door.
“You in there, Liz? Dan?”
It was Buck. She extracted herself from Gabby and Miguel’s grasp. “Just stay here,” she said. Keeping to the archway between the dining room and kitchen seemed like the safest place to be, should there be another explosion. It took her three attempts to pull back the latch on the back door.
Buck stood outside the screen door, panting under his black cowboy hat.
“You okay?” he asked.
She nodded. “So far.”
“The kids all home and safe?”
“I’m still waiting for Rey. And Daniel.”
Buck let out a pained groan. “I was afraid of that. Look, I need you and the kids to head on over to my house. Go down the open doorway in the kitchen. At the bottom of the steps, you’ll see a steel door. Knock once, pause, then three times rapidly. Alex will let you in.”
“What?” She clasped her hands together to keep them from trembling.
“Look, Liz, I have a bomb shelter, a big one. Alex is already safe inside. I’ve made preparations for us and your family. It’s the safest place to be right now.”
Elizabeth took a step back. “But I can’t go. Not without my son and Daniel.”
Buck took off his hat and wiped his brow. “You can
. You have three kids who need you right now. I’ll wait here for Rey and Dan.”
She noticed the butt of a gun sticking out of his pocket. He followed her gaze. “Until I know what’s going on, I feel safer with it.” He looked up and said, “Liz, we don’t have time to debate. You have to get the kids to the shelter right now.”
The screen door squeaked when she opened it. She saw the black and white clouds rumbling toward one another.
Buck said, “I don’t know what the hell that is, but I can tell you it’s not good. Now, get your kids and go!”
15
Rey heard a scream and instinctively pulled up, banging his thigh into the corner of a desk.
Dakota Charles stood ten feet in front of him, looking over his shoulder and pointing. Her burgundy hair, normally flawless and cascading over her shoulders like an Eden-esque waterfall, was a matted nest covering half her face, as if she had been tugging at it in a fugue of madness.
He turned in time to see a pair of angry stallions attempt to gallop full-bore into the narrow doorway of the race office. One of them was Bill’s Little Dividend, a five-year-old that most times finished in the money. He couldn’t make out the one on its heels.
The office shook as if it were on the center of a fault line as the horses smashed into the doorway. They were far too big to actually make it inside. Rey recoiled at the sound Bill’s Little Dividend’s skull made as it opened like an egg against the lintel. A splash of blood and something gray and spongy rocketed from its skull, hitting Rey in the face. He immediately gagged, dry-heaving until his stomach hurt.
Dakota kept screaming even though both horses were down, twitching in the throes of fast-approaching death.
Clutching his stomach with one hand and wiping the gore from his face with the other, Rey said, “It’s all right, Dakota. They can’t hurt us. You hear me, Dakota?”
He kept repeating her name because it looked as if she were in shock. He’d read somewhere that when a person is in shock, you should say their name over and over until they come out of it. The connection with their name was like a lifeline to normalcy. It didn’t appear to be working as well as the article had promised. When Rey took a step toward her, she scrabbled backward, nearly falling over a chair on casters.