by Hunter Shea
Has it come to this already? Any interaction with another living person must be done at gunpoint?
“Buck, no,” Alexiana said. She felt his hand on her shoulder.
The girl brought the bowl of fire closer, bringing her features into sharper clarity. Her young bronze skin was marred by streaks of dirt. The crescents of her fingernails were caked black.
The man and woman behind her were empty-handed. They had no weapons. All three wore shorts, and in the flickering firelight, Alexiana saw red welts and rashes on their knees and legs. They had not had it easy.
Alexiana put her gun in her back pocket to show them she meant no harm. She hoped Buck was doing the same.
The girl spoke, motioning for her to follow them.
When the trio turned to go back down the hall, Alexiana walked right behind them. If it was a trap, the blame would be on her.
118
Elizabeth shook with relief when Daniel emerged from the alley. She and Gabby had gone as far as the front window of the repair shop. Two of the horses were still alive, though unable to get back on their legs. Gabby refused to walk past them, worrying that they would bite her.
Elizabeth saw the fresh blood on Daniel’s clothes. He gave her a look that begged her not to ask. Whatever had happened back there with the crazed man was between Daniel, the man, and God. She wondered if there would ever be a time when he could talk about it—or one when she would be ready to hear it.
“Why aren’t you inside? It’s not safe out here,” he said, keeping his voice low. It seemed even the act of breathing was loud enough to wake the dead. Of course, after the cacophony in the shop, anyone with working ears would know something major had just gone down and exactly where it had happened.
“Gabby’s afraid of the horses.”
Their only daughter didn’t cry, but Elizabeth watched her body stiffen every time she looked through the smashed window.
Daniel lifted her to his chest. “Don’t be afraid. They can’t hurt anyone anymore. Just close your eyes. I’ll walk you through.”
Gabby wasn’t the only one afraid. One of the horses, blood frothing from its mouth, twitched its powerful head up and down, back and forth, anxious to get its teeth into anything that came near. A tall metal shelf had fallen across its back, a barrier between them and the nipping, dying horse. They skirted behind it, stepping over the still body of another. Its front legs had been splintered, one side of its head caved in.
“The boys are back here. There’s a storage room we can stay in until the morning. I’ll go to the deli across the street and get something for us to drink in a bit.” He let Gabby back down on her feet. “I forgot something.”
He ran to the tipped-over shopping cart and came back with the first aid kit.
Elizabeth’s heartbeat stopped. “Are the boys hurt?”
“One of the horses locked its teeth into Max’s shoulder. It bled a lot but I think it looks worse than it is.”
She grabbed the plastic box from his hands, jogging to the closed door of the back room. She knocked just as Daniel had told her. The door opened on a squeaky hinge. When she saw Max’s bloody face, she rushed inside to sweep him into her arms.
“Oh my God, Max, are you okay? Your father said you were bit. Show me where.”
It was hard to tell with all of the blood—most of it, presumably, belonging to the slaughtered horses.
“It just got me in the shoulder,” he said, tugging his shirt down from his neck. “It wasn’t enough to stop me, though. Me, Pop, and Rey held off four crazy horses. I’ll bet no one’s ever done that before.”
There are a lot of things happening that have never been done before, Elizabeth thought with a corpulent weight of sadness she could feel in her body as much as her soul.
The bite was at the front and back of his shoulder. It wasn’t deep, but it looked painful. Once the adrenaline wore off, Max would feel it—not that he’d ever admit it. No, her middle son was too proud for that.
“I’m going to pour some alcohol, then peroxide on it. You want to hold my hand? It’s going to sting.”
He gave her a weak half smile. “You can do it. I’ll be fine. It’s not like this is the first time this week.”
The antiseptic washed the blood away. Daniel shined the Maglite at the wound so she could clean it properly.
“Good thing we have a nurse on call,” Daniel said, chuckling.
“With four boys in the family, someone had to have medical training,” she said. Max didn’t even wince as she packed the wound with gauze, wrapping tape over it and under his armpit.
“There, it’ll do. We have to keep that clean. Take that shirt off. We’ll find a new one tomorrow.”
Max chucked the shirt into the far corner of the room.
Elizabeth pushed her hair behind her ears. “Now, Rey is due for antibiotics.”
When she looked to Rey, who had been on the floor, his back propped against the wall, she found Gabby draped over his chest, crying.
“Gabby, stay off his chest. He’s had a hard enough time with breathing and coughing.”
Her daughter looked up, a stream of tears rushing from her red, swollen eyes.
“Mommy, I don’t think Rey is breathing!”
119
Buck kept his hand on the gun in his pocket, just in case. These three looked as harmful as ladybugs, but he wasn’t going to take any chances. The man looked to be about the same age as him, but he walked with a severe limp and his back was hunched slightly. The woman held on to his arm, guiding him down the hall.
They stopped in what was once a break room—refrigerator, microwave, two coffeemakers, two toaster ovens, and a couple of tables with hard plastic chairs. The windows looked out on the new riverview apartment buildings and the Hudson. Another set behind him gave a bird’s-eye view of the north and west of the city, all the way to the Saw Mill Parkway.
One table was filled from end to end with open cans, empty water bottles, and sports drinks. They must have been staying here awhile.
The woman helped the man into a chair. The girl opened a cabinet and added more scraps of paper to the fire to better illuminate the room.
“Amazing,” the man said. He had kind ginger eyes beneath unruly, graying brows. “You’re the first people to even attempt coming in the building since we got here. I guess people aren’t bothering with complaints or marriage licenses anymore.” His body shook as he snickered. “I’m sorry, I’ve already forgotten how to be polite. My name is Vishal Patel. This is my daughter, Rita, and my granddaughter, Sailaja.”
Alexiana smiled and nodded. Buck said, “I’m Buck Clarke and this is my girlfriend, Alexiana DeCarlo. We had an incident earlier. She hasn’t gotten her hearing back yet.”
“We saw the cars explode,” Rita said. “We watched the whole thing. After the smoke cleared, I wanted to come down to help you, but—”
Buck waved his hand. “No, you did the right thing, staying here where it’s safe. Did you see the family who was with us?”
“Yes.”
“Did you see what happened to them? We’ve been separated ever since, and I’m not sure if they’re okay or not.”
“They went to the church when the smoke got bad,” Sailaja said, offering them each a glass bottle of iced tea. Buck popped the cap and drank half of it in one swallow. He hadn’t realized how thirsty he’d been. “We couldn’t see you anymore at that point, but we watched them run to the church. We went there a few days ago. It was bad.”
Buck pulled out a seat for Alexiana and sat next to her. He looked at the family across the table, folding his hands together. “What was so bad about the church?” He thought of the Nine Judges using it as a hideout. His stomach dropped.
Vishal said, “It’s a cemetery. There’s an old Polish priest there. He takes in the sick so they can die in absolution before the cross. The pews are filled with the dead.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“I don’t think he’s with us anymore,” Vis
hal said.
For the first time since it had happened, Buck was grateful Alexiana couldn’t hear.
“Your friends didn’t stay long, though. When the streets cleared of the smoke, they set out. They went back to look for you, but there was a tremendous dog guarding the area. I think it was saving you for a meal for later,” Rita said, loudly crunching an empty plastic bottle. “They must not have seen you, because they headed this way. We lost track of them, but we heard shots and a lot of shouting.”
Buck had heard the shots, as well, and hoped the Padillas were in no way a part of it. Like everything else, it was a hope that might as well have been spit into a hurricane.
“I don’t mean to be too personal,” Buck said, “but how is your health? Were you in a secure shelter when the . . . the . . .”
“World came to an end?” Vishal finished for him. “Close, but not close enough, I’m afraid. We’ve been able to keep ahead of the fate that’s befallen everyone else, but I don’t think we can ultimately outrun it.”
120
Daniel pulled as hard as he could at his hair, walking in a tight circle while Elizabeth wailed, rocking Rey in her arms. This couldn’t be happening! Had they been spared a quick death only to be taken one by one? Were they being punished for surviving, for staying together even when their world was torn apart?
Silent tears stained his shirt.
Max kept repeating, “He said he felt good. He was breathing better. He felt good.”
Gabby latched on to Elizabeth’s back, both of them on the floor with Rey. His eyes were mercifully closed. Daniel didn’t think he could take seeing death’s gray veil over his first child’s eyes.
“Why? Why?” Elizabeth chanted, her tears falling into Rey’s hair.
Like Daniel, Gabby was beyond words. All they could do was cry.
Images of Rey as a baby played like old home movies in his mind—Rey gnawing on the third Pack ’n Play they’d had to buy in a year, Daniel nicknaming him the shark because of his sharp teeth. Rey on his first day of kindergarten, so stoic until he and his mother left the classroom. Oh, how he cried. Elizabeth melted into Daniel as they walked outside past his classroom, their son’s howls echoing down the residential street. His thirteenth birthday, when they gave him the mountain bike he’d been asking for and how his face lit up. Graduating from grammar school, how proud they all were. Getting ready to graduate from high school, one step closer to becoming a man.
All of it leading to this place, in a dusty storeroom, a broken family left behind as Rey went to a place that had to be better than here.
I have to get air, Daniel said to himself, believing he might have said it out loud, as well, but everyone was so wrapped up in their own grief, they wouldn’t have heard it if the horses came back to life and resumed their attack. Jerking the door open, he walked unsteadily down the hall.
Through the haze of his tears, he saw the first tawny rays of the sun chasing the shadows back into dark corners and their daytime hiding places.
What would they do with Rey?
And where was Miguel?
Daniel felt his resolve waver, whatever stores of strength he had left bleeding from every pore. He staggered over the lip of the broken window, collapsing on his rump on the sidewalk.
He wept, great, heaving sobs that caromed off the surrounding buildings, his grief whispering into thin air.
Cry for Rey. Can’t let Max and Gabriela see you like this. Cry until you feel you can stop it. Because you have to. Your baby is close. We can all mourn for Rey—later. Miguel is still here. Dear God, you can’t take him from us. No. He’s alive, and alone and scared. We’ll find him.
We’ll find him.
121
Once Buck realized there was nothing to fear from Vishal and his family, he’d let his guard down and somehow fallen asleep in the supremely uncomfortable chair with Alexiana leaning against him. Rita’s crunching on dry cereal woke him up. The sun sat alone in a cloudless sky.
“Good morning,” she said softly so as not to wake anyone else up.
Buck covered his mouth as he yawned. “Would you look at that sky! From here, you’d almost think nothing was wrong with the world.”
He managed to angle himself out of the chair and gently lay Alexiana’s head on the table.
“Poor thing is wiped out,” he said.
“You went through a lot yesterday,” Rita said. “It’s a wonder you’re even alive.”
He motioned for her to join him just outside the break room, where they could talk freely. She carried the box of cereal, offering him some, which he gladly accepted. He’d never been a cereal guy. At this moment, it tasted like a five-star breakfast at the Ritz on an expense account.
“Alexiana and I have to find our friends. But before we do that, I’m going across the street to the police station to see what firearms they left behind. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, you can’t be outside unless you’re armed. I’ll bring back something for you, too.”
Rita shook her head. “We don’t believe in guns.”
“It’s not a question of belief. The truth is, without them, you don’t stand a chance. Between the animals and people like the Nine Judges, you wouldn’t last half a day out there without protection.”
She smiled, and it seemed so out of place, he didn’t know how to take it.
“We’re not leaving. My father started a fever the other day, and my daughter began to cough yesterday. When the explosions happened, we were in the basement of our store, getting things ready to bring upstairs. We owned an Indian grocery store on Lawrence Street. We went upstairs to see what had happened, and when panic broke out, we locked and shuttered the doors and went back to the basement. But we’d been exposed. At the time we thought nothing of it, but we were outside when the smoke filled the streets. We’ve lasted this long only because we got away from it quickly.”
Buck sighed, both hands on her arms. “It might just be that that little bit of exposure won’t be enough to . . . you know.”
“It was enough. We saw what happened to the others. There’s no escaping it. You and your girlfriend are a miracle, a gift to us. If you hadn’t come here, we would have assumed there was no hope.” She gave him the box of cereal. “Before we came up here to get away, we heard that the military had extraction boats in Hastings. My father would never make the journey, not in his condition, and we won’t leave him. If you find your friends, you may want to go there. I haven’t seen any activity on the Hudson, so it may have been wishful thinking. But I think if anyone will find help, it will be you.”
Buck grimaced. “What makes you say that?”
Sailaja had woken up and went for a can of Hawaiian Punch. She gave Rita and Buck a little finger wave.
“Because you’re survivors, and you’re healthy. And now you have my faith. Don’t break it.”
He’d never been an emotional man, but he had to fight like hell to swallow back the lump in his throat and hold back his tears. These were good people, content to spend their last days in a break room atop City Hall. Nothing seemed fair or right anymore.
Rita shooed him away. “Now go and hurry back. I’ll keep an eye out for your friends.”
122
Max went with his father to the YMCA across the street in search of blankets. Neither spoke, and they avoided eye contact as much as possible. His mother and Gabby were in the storage room with Rey, beside themselves with grief.
He died leaning on me and I didn’t even know it. Did he say anything or ask for help? I know I was zoning out. I’m so dizzy. You can’t leave me like this, Rey. You can’t—
The redolence of death smacked them in the face the moment they entered the building. The dead were everywhere—in their rooms, lying on beds, fallen on floors, facedown in the hallway, as if they’d made a last, hopeless dash for help that would never come.
A high-pitched buzz gave him hope that electricity had been restored. Max flipped a light switch but nothing happened.
<
br /> “It’s flies,” his father said.
Max looked down the hall. Flies were everywhere, feasting from one body to the next. He swatted them away, sickened by the thought of being bitten by one that had just sucked the juice of an infected corpse.
His father darted into a room, emerging with a couple of clean shirts in dry cleaner’s plastic. “Put one on and use the other to cover your mouth,” he said.
The blue button-down dress shirt was a little long in the arms, but it fit close enough. He ripped the white dress shirt in two, handing half to his father. They had left the sports equipment behind. A hockey helmet only offered a false sense of security.
“No blankets in there?” Max asked.
“There was a man on it,” was all he said before moving down the hall.
Max had never been in a Y before and had a preconceived notion that all Ys were glorified flophouses. This one, despite the bodies, looked to have been pretty clean and ordered. It was actually kind of like a mini-hotel. Most of the doors were locked.
“Hand me your bat,” his father said. “I don’t want to have to explore the upper floors. We have to get back to your mother and sister.”
He tried a door handle. When it didn’t turn, he heaved the bat at the knob with a ferocity Max had never seen in his father. It clattered to the floor and he kicked the door open.
A black man with a frazzled Mohawk was curled up in a ball on the floor, underneath the window that looked out onto the neighboring wall of the Subway sandwich shop. His oxygen-deprived, decomposing flesh had turned a color that seemed utterly unnatural for a human being. A puddle of dried blood trailed from the corner of his mouth.
The man’s bed was made. He must have collapsed, never even making it to the bed.
“These will do,” his father said, stripping off the sheets and tan blanket. He handed the bundle to Max and they headed to the exit. The sooner they were out of here, the better.
They paused on the top steps of the Y to make sure no Nine Judges were about. It wouldn’t do to be seen, not yet anyway. “We’re good.”