by Hunter Shea
Holding out his hands, he said, “Dakota, it’s all right. I need you to calm down, okay?”
The next scream died a gurgling death in her throat. For the first time since he’d run into the office, her eyes fixed on him. She gave a jerky nod.
“Is there anyone else in the office?”
Aside from the central area that housed four desks, there were three offices, each with their door closed.
“N-no,” Dakota stammered. “They all left me.”
Rey saw dense, pale smoke, like a fog rising from the damp marshes in a horror movie, gather outside the window behind Dakota.
“We have to get out of here,” he said, offering his hand.
Dakota turned, saw the smoke, and hurried to him. “Did something blow up out there?”
Rey sighed. “I don’t know. Come on, I don’t think it’s safe to be here.”
She took his hand. If something this momentous had happened just five minutes earlier, Rey would have considered himself the luckiest guy in the world. Whole elaborate fantasies would have been constructed around the simple act of feeling Dakota’s hand willingly in his own.
Holding her tight, he helped her to gingerly step around the still horses. Dakota’s heels slipped in a pool of warm blood and almost took them both down atop Bill’s Little Dividend’s sweaty haunches.
“Where’s your car?” Rey asked.
“Over there,” she said with an upward flick of her chin.
Rey’s stomach threatened to go into spasms again.
There was no way they were going to get to Dakota’s car.
The parking lot that lay between them and the exit was a nightmarish killing field. Cars were stalled in crazy angles. They had stopped in the process of fleeing the track.
The horses, driven insane by God knows what, had descended on the stranded people and cars like a surge of battle-crazed warriors. Men lay in bloodied, trampled heaps. Those who remained in their cars cowered as horses built like tanks rained blows on rooftops and windshields. The moment they had access into the cars, the horses thrust their mighty heads inside, tearing at the occupants with teeth strong enough to snap bone in two.
The traffic along Yonkers Avenue had stopped, as well. Horses chased people down the main road and side streets. Human wails and horse whinnies rang like a chorus from Hell.
“Oh my God!” Dakota squealed, turning into Rey’s shoulder.
“There’s a shortcut to my house,” Rey said. “Are you okay to run?”
Dakota kicked off her shoes and nodded.
They went back toward the paddocks, where the smoke was creeping. Skirting it as much as they could, they climbed over a chest-high wall and ran across the quarter-mile track. The air smelled strange.
“We have to climb that fence ahead of us,” Rey told Dakota, who kept an even pace with him. It was clear she was a runner. “That’ll take us to the reservoir. We’ll run along it for a little bit and come to another fence. My house is a few blocks past that.”
Before they came to the reservoir fence, a peninsula of alabaster smoke overtook them. Rey’s lungs felt as if they would seize up, but he kept running, faster now to get out from under the noxious cloud. Dakota made the fence first, clambering up it like a spider.
16
The last few blocks were a blur to Daniel. The shock of seeing a stampeding mob kill the old woman brought a cold numbness to his brain as well as his extremities. He ran up the steepest part of Kimball Avenue with ease. If he was tired or winded, his mind was oblivious.
It had only taken ten minutes for the world to come unglued, for people to degenerate to frightened animals.
Where were the police? Was there no one in charge? And what about the air-raid sirens? They’d been reduced to testing them once a year—it used to be monthly when he was a kid growing up in the Bronx around the corner from one of them. Did no one see this coming?
Cresting Kimball Avenue, he turned down Churchill, pumping his legs even faster knowing he was so close to home. He ignored the people around him, some of them running, as well, though in different directions.
Shadows stretched out before him as he veered into his street. He dared to look up. The sun was slowly being obliterated by the foaming clouds left in the wake of the explosions.
When he saw his house, he gave everything he had left to his legs.
“Elizabeth!” he shouted.
The houses around his own were strangely silent. It was as if the madness that had gripped the rest of Yonkers refused to enter his block.
He turned the knob of his front door, giving silent thanks that it wasn’t locked. He wasn’t sure his hands could function well enough to fish for his keys and insert them in the lock.
“Elizabeth! Gabriela! Max! Rey! Miguel!”
Silence echoed back to him.
Where the hell were they? Had something happened to them? Did the kids even make it back from school? Elizabeth could be out now, searching for them down streets littered with dead school buses.
He was about to run upstairs when a voice called out from the kitchen.
“That you, Dan?”
Buck stepped into the living room. He was pale, beads of sweat dotting his upper lip.
“Where’s my family?”
“They’re safe over at my house. I told Liz I’d wait for you.”
Dan felt an enormous pressure deflate from his chest. He had to fight back a surge of tears.
“Thank you, Buck. I don’t know what I would have done . . .”
“You don’t have to thank me. I have a bomb shelter beneath my house. They’re all in there with Alexiana. If you want, you can join them while I wait for Rey.”
Daniel’s heart stopped. “Rey? He’s not home yet?”
Buck shook his head.
Daniel thought hard. Was today the day when he tutored the freshmen after school? Did he still practice intramural baseball? No. He said where he was going to be at breakfast. Elizabeth would know.
As if he were reading his mind, Buck said, “Elizabeth told me he was at the track helping out with the horses. It’s just over the way. He should be home soon.”
Daniel turned to the front door. “Buck, you have no idea what it’s like out there. I . . . I saw a woman get killed because she was too old and frail to get out of people’s way. The sky is turning black with smoke. Nothing works. It’s like the end of the world.”
Buck put a hand on his upper arm. “Just sit tight. Rey’s a smart kid. He’ll get here.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“Then you and me both will find him.”
17
Miguel had his mommy, but he wanted his daddy, too. And Rey. Max was nice, but Rey was the coolest person in his world. Rey could drive, often taking Miguel to his favorite park in the Bronx on weekends, and he was going to be in college. He was like an adult, but he still knew how to have fun. He and Gabby sat on a cot while his mother talked to Alexiana, both of them pacing.
Buck had called this place a bomb shelter. It was like an underground fort, with multiple rooms and all kinds of supplies stacked everywhere. Max was in one of those side rooms now, using—what did Alexiana call it?—a chemical toilet. It sounded dangerous to him. Why would Max want to sit on a toilet full of chemicals?
Miguel guessed the ceiling of the shelter was about six and a half feet high. His dad was six feet tall, and it looked like there would be just enough room for him to stand without hitting his head. The main room was stacked with crates of canned food and big jugs of water. There was a folding table with some chairs around it. One end of the table had plastic bags filled with plates and cups and utensils. There was even a shelf loaded with board games and decks of playing cards. He spotted a few coloring books and a box of crayons. He thought of asking Gabby to color with him, but she would probably say no. And there was no way Max would do it. Not now, at least.
A pair of bare lightbulbs in the ceiling, those curly ones that he was told never to touch, provided
more than enough light to see everything. If he weren’t so scared, Miguel would have loved looking in every nook and cranny of the bomb shelter.
If they were in a bomb shelter, that meant what they all heard before was bombs. Bad people were bombing them.
Why?
He knew from school and listening to Buck sometimes when they barbecued that bad people attacked good people all the time. It was usually because they wanted something they couldn’t have themselves. If they couldn’t have it, no one else could. Miguel felt like that sometimes when Max would get a toy for older kids that he really wanted, too. When he was feeling really brave, he hid them from Max. That way, Max couldn’t play with it in front of him, which would only make his desire to have the same toy hurt that much more.
“Is Daddy coming soon?” he said. Gabby sniffled beside him.
His mother wiped his tears from his cheeks. “Soon, baby. Very soon.”
She exchanged a look with Alexiana that made him think otherwise. She didn’t know when Daddy and Rey would be back. They were both as scared as he was.
He looked up at the sound of a dull thud. The floor and walls shook briefly. His mother’s hands flew to her mouth as she stifled a cry. Alexiana pulled her into a tight hug.
“Why won’t the bad men stop?” he asked Gabby.
She turned away from him, sobbing.
18
A high black fence separated the track around the reservoir from the water itself. Patrol cars used the gravel track to patrol the area on a 24/7 rotation. When Rey was really little, the area around the reservoir had been open to the public. People jogged around it, had picnics in the vast grassy areas, and rode sleds down the hill when it snowed.
After the suicide skyjackings on 9-11, the reservoir had been sealed up and fortified with armed guards. Something as large and easy to access as a major water source became a potential target to be protected at any cost.
Rey remembered seeing the fences go up, new perimeters established, and the host of uniformed men and women who guarded it night and day. At the time, when he was in first grade, he said it looked like they had put the reservoir in jail.
Despite the intense security measures, Rey’s curiosity compelled him to find a way in, which he did, without getting caught. He’d come through the res a handful of times, especially when he was running late helping Nick at the track and had to get his butt home for dinner. Those other times, he kept away from the gravel track, skirting the bottom of the hill and hiding behind trees when the patrols rolled past.
Still holding Dakota’s hand, he looked back and saw a ton of security forces gathering by the fence that separated the res perimeter from the racetrack. He hoped they stayed there.
“How much farther?” Dakota asked, her toned legs pumping so hard, she was starting to pull away.
“Not far. You’ll see the fence by the exit soon.”
The air here was cleaner, untainted by the strange fog. That was a very good thing. Rey wasn’t sure he could hold back his bile if they stayed under the fog much longer.
He couldn’t help noticing how Dakota’s full breasts jiggled underneath her tight blouse. It was jaw-dropping. Again, another moment that would have held far greater importance if not for the fact that their world had been flipped on its ass.
Struggling to keep pace with her, lest their hold on one another break, he focused on getting home.
“You’re . . . pretty fast,” he said.
She didn’t reply. Her mouth was pulled into a tight line. He had to be ten years younger than her and he was gasping. She was still able to breathe through her nose.
They ran. The blinding afternoon sun was turning a deathly, liver-spotted gray. He spied a massive black cloud coming from the east. They were headed right for it. His house was somewhere between them and the cloud. They had to keep going, no matter what.
Dakota shrieked and let go of his hand, swatting at the air, though still running.
A bat had swooped down and gotten its claws tangled in her hair.
“Get it off me!” she yelped, slowing down.
“Hold still.”
They stopped. The bat chittered angrily, its flapping wings battering her head and the sides of her face.
What was a bat doing out in the middle of the day? The explosions must have driven it from whatever dark place it hung upside down in.
Rey jabbed a hand at the bat in an attempt to shoo it away. The bat tried to avoid him, but was still stuck in her hair. She let out a sound that sounded like a distressed, deaf cat.
“Just . . . just cover your face with your hands,” Rey ordered.
He didn’t want the bat to scratch her eyes.
The more he tried to get it out, the more tangled it became, twitching and fluttering like mad.
“Just stop!” he yelled at the bat.
Without thinking, he made a fist, reared back, and punched it in its silver dollar–sized head. The bat immediately went still. Unconscious or dead, he didn’t care which. He was just glad he was able to untangle it from Dakota’s hair.
He placed it carefully in the grass. Dakota skittered away from it, squealing.
“Oh Jesus, I thought nothing could freak me out more than what happened back at the track,” she said.
“We’d better keep going,” Rey said, pointing at the black cloud. “I want to get to my house before that comes over us.”
She didn’t need to be told twice. They were off and running again.
He spotted the fence that faced Kimball Avenue. Almost there!
There was a sharp crack behind them, followed by a kicked-up clod of grass and dirt in front of them. Rey whipped his head around. One of the guards had gotten out of his truck and was shooting at them. There was absolutely no cover between them and the fence.
Another crack.
A bloom of wet heat broke out on his arm. He shouted in pain, skidding to his knees. Dakota turned around. He didn’t have time to tell her to get down before two more shots sounded out.
19
Daniel heard the shots and ran to the window. With the absence of normal, everyday sounds, the rifle shots sounded as loud as cannons.
“You see anything?” Buck asked, coming up behind him.
“Nothing in the front, at least.”
Buck sucked on his teeth. “People are going to turn on each other fast, Dan. If the cars and TVs and radios are dead, there’s gonna be panic. And that’s when the situation gets real bad, real fast.”
Rey’s chest ached.
His son was out there.
Out where the bad people were ready to take to the streets. He’d been around long enough to know how it went. Even things as simple and temporary as a blackout led to looting and beatings and far, far worse.
“I can’t just stay here,” Daniel said, making for the door. Buck held him back.
“When you go out there, which way are you gonna go? You have four choices. You make the wrong one, and you have no chance of running into Rey.”
“Those gunshots sounded close.”
Buck nodded. “They did.”
Daniel feigned resignation long enough for Buck to let go of his arm. The second he was free, he bolted out the door. Buck came after him, but even on his best day would never be able to keep up.
“Please, Buck, stay here and keep waiting for Rey,” Daniel said at the bottom of the stairs. “I just have to see if he’s close, for my own peace of mind.”
The day was morphing into an unnatural night. There was very little blue sky left. It looked like the entire city was burning. There wasn’t a soul outside. Every window and door in the houses around him was locked tight.
Another shot pinged down the street. “It’s coming from there,” Daniel said, pointing to the blocks between his house and the reservoir.
Buck jogged down the stairs. “At least take this.” He jammed a gun in his hand. It was heavy and cold. “If some asshole is already taking potshots, you’d better be prepared to defend you
rself.”
Daniel offered it back. “I can’t. I only fired a gun once, on a range, during my honeymoon at the resort twenty years ago.”
Buck stepped back. “You can. Now, go check it out and I’ll keep an eye out for Rey. Come right back.”
Daniel nodded and ran down the street.
20
Dakota was screaming and still on her feet, which was a good thing. Rey thought for sure she’d be lying in the grass, dead or dying. The hand he’d placed on his burning upper arm came back crimson. He couldn’t see through his tattered shirt exactly where he’d been shot. Luckily, the pain wasn’t so bad.
“Hurry, get up!” Dakota implored, waving her hands frantically. “We don’t have much time.”
Rey got to his feet and turned to face their attacker.
The security guard was still at the top of the hill, but now he was struggling with what looked like a golden retriever. The golden-coated dog had its front paws on the man’s shoulders, snapping viciously at his face. During the struggle, his gun had fallen from his hand.
Rey urged Dakota toward the gate. “Go, go, go!”
He kept an eye on the struggle between man and beast. The retriever’s muzzle was stained red.
“Why was he shooting at us?” Dakota said as she scaled the fence.
“I don’t know. Maybe he thinks we’re the ones who did it.”
The why of it didn’t matter to Rey. He’d been shot, but not fatally, and a dog—a golden retriever, of all breeds—had come to their rescue. Someone wanted them to keep going.
Dakota landed hard on the other side of the fence, flopping to her hands and knees. Normally, the fence wasn’t even an obstacle, but it hurt bad when Rey stretched his arm out, the skin pulling away from where the bullet had hit. Still, he made it over rather quickly and landed on his feet.