by Hunter Shea
“No. They still looked to be all right, but they had the beginning of the sickness. They told me they’d heard that people had been going to Hastings, that there might be help there.”
“Hastings isn’t far at all,” his father said, drinking the juice from his can of pears.
“No, it isn’t. I’m game to give it a try if you all are. As nice as it’s been sleeping my days and nights away, I’m starting to get antsy,” Buck said.
His mother smiled. “That also means you’re healing up.” She placed a reassuring hand on top of Alexiana’s, who simply smiled while everyone spoke. Gabby would write what they said on a pad for her.
“If we just follow Warburton, it’ll take us there in a few hours if we take it slow and careful,” Buck said. “There’s nothing left here. There has to be someone else alive out there. If Hastings is a dead end, I say we keep going north. The farther we get from Manhattan, the better our chances. At least that’s what my gut is telling me.”
When Alexiana read what Gabby had written, she patted Buck’s shrinking round stomach and said in her new, faltering voice, “That’s a lot of gut. We should listen to it.”
It was the first time they’d all laughed in weeks.
145
This time around, everyone, including Gabby and Miguel, carried a gun. Elizabeth hated the idea, but the pros outweighed the cons. No one was safe, and it had been painfully proven that the adults couldn’t always protect the children. She fretted constantly about what Gabby had felt she had to do, knowing her little girl would be little no more. She’d been quieter since that night, aloof, more serious. It broke her heart as much as knowing her child had saved them made her glow with pride.
They had all changed.
She just wasn’t sure if it was for the better.
They left the restaurant in the early afternoon, when it was hottest. The heat seemed to keep the animals away from the streets.
Their first stop was City Hall to check on the Patel family. Buck and Daniel made the trek to the top floor while everyone else waited in the gloomy lobby. When they trudged back down the stairs, Buck looked to Alexiana and shook his head gravely.
“All of them?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
They left City Hall, their spirits lower than when they’d entered. Elizabeth had been hoping the Patels would have agreed to go with them. They even had a new shopping cart they’d taken from outside the nearby ShopRite for the old man. Adding new people, good people, to their group would have been a positive sign as they searched for help.
Passing the DMV and the historic Philipse Manor House, they turned left on Warburton.
“I’d trade my life to have Rey here with us,” Elizabeth whispered to Daniel. The sun was especially brutal today. Perspiration dripped from every pore.
Daniel pulled her close as they walked, the heat from his body making her feel somehow safe. “I would, too. That’s why we’re all going to live for him. I dream about him every night. Just last night, I talked to him on that bench on the boardwalk by the park. It was night and the air was cool, like early fall.”
“What did you talk about?”
“I don’t know. I can never remember. But I can always recall that he was in my dreams. It’s strange, I know.”
She kissed his sweaty cheek. “It’s not strange at all. In fact, now I’m jealous.”
Miguel bumped into her thigh. She hadn’t let him leave her sight since they’d gotten him back.
“Look, there’s the park where you took us to hear that old people music,” he said, grinning.
Untermyer Park was famous for its gardens, and it hosted free concerts in the summer. Wanting to expose the kids to all kinds of music, they took them there all the time.
“I’m surprised you heard anything,” she said. “You spent most of your time there running around catching fireflies with your sister.”
What they’d never told the kids was that the park was also infamous as the meeting place for the satanic cult that the serial killer the Son of Sam belonged to in the 1970s. When Rey found out about it online one day, he’d said he couldn’t wait to go back there. Its sordid history suddenly made it not boring.
“We’ll be in Hastings soon,” Buck announced, his eyes on the sky. A few hawks had flown overheard, but they’d ignored them so far. One thing they’d noticed from their vantage point in the restaurant was that there had been fewer animals each day. Daniel theorized that when they ran out of people to attack, they were going after each other.
“Once we get to the Riverview, I’ll know we’ve left Yonkers behind,” Buck said.
“What’s the Riverview?” Elizabeth asked.
“That’s a catering place where Alex and I met at a mutual friend’s wedding,” he replied with a smile. He kept her hand intertwined with his the entire walk. After everything, no one wanted to be separated from one another.
The scattered wreckage of a single-engine plane littered a rolling hill, bits of the wings and fuselage covering the train tracks below. How many lives had been lost from planes simply dropping out of the sky when the EMP bomb detonated?
They passed some very nice condos overlooking the water, and then there was the Riverview, along with a sign welcoming them to Hastings. The sun was starting to wane.
Daniel said, “We should find a place to crash for the night.”
Buck nodded. “I hear you, Dan.”
They went four more blocks before coming across a little pink house, just like the John Mellencamp song. Elizabeth was pretty sure she still owned the 45, crammed in a box with all of her other records in the attic. Buck broke the lock on the front door. There were no corpses waiting for them inside. There were five beds, as well as an oversized couch and love seat.
“What do we do tomorrow?” Max asked after they secured the door and picked their sleeping spots.
“Head to the town square and see what’s up,” Buck said. “If no one’s around, we’ll know we should keep moving on.”
Elizabeth wondered if that was what their life had become—long treks and empty towns.
146
The heavy pounding at the door brought Buck to a heart-hammering state of panic.
“Open up,” a voice shouted through the door.
The Padillas had taken the second-floor bedrooms. Buck and Alexiana had discovered the couch was a convertible and opted to stay downstairs. She slept with her back to him, blissfully unaware. He shook her awake. As she rubbed her eyes, questioning him with a look as to why he’d awakened her, he pointed at the door, pantomiming someone knocking.
Footsteps thundered above them.
It was still dark outside.
“Shit,” Buck hissed, stubbing his toe on one of the convertible’s metal legs. He fumbled for his gun, deciding it was probably best to have two. Whoever was outside didn’t sound all that friendly.
Daniel and Elizabeth hustled down the stairs.
“Stay back,” Buck whispered. “Whoever it is, I don’t want them to know how many we are.” He tossed a pistol to each of them, as well as Alexiana, urging her to join Daniel and Elizabeth, out of the sight line of the front door.
We’re in for a long, bad haul when we can’t trust the living any more than the crazed animals, he thought, smoothing the hairs against his skull. He peeked out the front window.
There were five men, strong alpha types with square shoulders and hard jaws. Each held a lantern in one hand and a bat in the other. He also spotted the butts of a few guns sticking out of their pockets.
“Dan, go upstairs and cover me from one of the windows. Make sure no one sees you.”
“Got it.” Daniel hurried up the stairs, treading as lightly as he could. Buck heard him urge the kids to stay in their room. Max started to protest, but his father got him to quiet down.
The knocking resumed, four meaty-fisted pounds.
Buck swung the door open quickly, taking the man off guard. His black hair was in a buzz cut and he wore a
tracksuit filled to bursting with muscle. The four men behind him looked and were dressed pretty much the same.
What is this, a night watch uniform?
“Sorry to wake you,” the man said in a tone that said he wasn’t the least bit apologetic. “One of our people saw you come in earlier. I thought it was best we check things out now rather than wait until morning.”
Why was that?
Buck put on as much charm as he could muster. He didn’t like the look of these guys at all. Hastings was a place for the upper middle class and soap opera stars, not posses of white bodybuilders. “You guys are a sight for sore eyes. I haven’t seen another human being who wasn’t on death’s door for weeks now. Please tell me I’ve gotten past the infected zone.”
The man’s face softened a bit. “I wish I could. Some of us were lucky. We’d prepared. Looks like you did, too.”
“Had a bomb shelter under my house and yard. It did its job until we were overrun by rats. Been walking ever since.”
The man at the door grimaced, as did a couple of his cronies. “Those damn things are everywhere. Vicious as hell. I found a nest the other night. We dumped a bunch of gas on them and burned them up.”
They looked at each other in an uncomfortable silence. Buck broke it by saying, “I’m Buck Clarke. And you guys are . . .”
“Vin Haslett. That’s Nicky, Joe, Emmet, and Rob.”
The hard men with the bats and guns gave him perfunctory nods.
“Did I do something wrong stopping in this house?” Buck asked. “It was late in the day, and I was beat. If it belongs to someone still aboveground, I’ll leave right now. It’s just that I didn’t think anyone was left, you know?”
Vin shook his head. “No, you can stay. I have no idea who owned this place. You alone?”
“My wife is here, too. She’s hard of hearing. She didn’t hear you knock.”
“We just needed to check. Some strange people have come through in the past couple of weeks. We had to make sure you were on the level.”
Buck noticed that the tension in Vic’s shoulders had eased. He leaned the bat against his thigh.
“Tell me, do you know what happened? Who did it? Have you seen or heard anything?” Buck asked.
Vin scratched the stubble on his chin. “Not a thing. I do know that the same thing happened on the Jersey side, too. We had some stragglers who made it over the Tappan Zee Bridge here last week. All communication is out. Some people think it was God, you know, the whole apocalypse thing. I can tell you know better than that.”
“I sure would hope God has nothing to do with this. Do you have a lot of survivors? I can tell you, in Yonkers, there are none that I’ve seen who are left upright.” He left out the part about the Nine Judges.
“A few. We have to be cautious now. It’s a different world. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
Buck waved at the air. “No, I understand.”
“You should get some sleep. We have a kind of makeshift HQ at the A&P down the road a ways. If you want, you can meet up with us in the morning.”
“That would be nice,” Buck said, smiling. “I was getting tired of feeling like Charlton Heston.”
Vin cocked his head.
“The last man on earth,” Buck said. “Never mind. Sure, we’ll definitely see you at the A&P.”
Vin nodded, a tight smile on his lips. “Sounds good. See you then. Good night.”
“Good night,” Buck said, closing the door and feeling as if he’d exhaled for the first time since he’d opened it.
147
Daniel couldn’t go back to sleep. He, Buck, and Elizabeth had discussed everything in the kitchen. It was too difficult to write and read notes in the dark, so Alexiana went back to the couch. Buck would fill her in later.
“I admit they looked like a lynch mob at first, but like us, I think they’re just wary of anyone who comes around. Shit, I had a gun in each pocket myself, with you ready to take them out if they made any sudden moves,” Buck said, his elbow on the table, head resting in his palm.
“He didn’t say how many survivors?” Elizabeth asked.
“No. Said he had a few. Hastings has money. People with money have the ability to protect their asses. There’s probably quite a few people who were able to ride out the storm,” Buck said.
“So, do we go to the A&P, or just head to the next town? They know as much as we do. Maybe people farther up the line have had a better time of it,” Daniel said, picking at a nail.
Elizabeth said, “I vote for the A&P. If anything, we need to give the kids hope that there is life out there. The things they’ve had to see and do. I just want to show them something positive.”
Daniel slid his arm across her shoulders and kissed her cheek.
“And that’s another reason why I love you. I agree. Maybe there’ll be some kids their own age. I’m not saying we make this our home, but if the community is doing well, it can’t hurt to stay awhile.”
Buck rapped on the table. “That settles it. We walk on over after breakfast. Now, if you don’t mind, I have a dream about a certain bar on the beach in Key West I need to get back to.”
Max was still awake when Daniel and Elizabeth went upstairs. He explained everything to his son, who had grown twenty years in just one week. He worried how Max would react, but was pleasantly surprised when he said he thought it was a good idea.
“It’d be nice to see someone else who isn’t infected or out to kill us,” he said, half-joking. Daniel ruffled his hair like he used to when Max was much smaller.
“Get some sleep,” he said.
Elizabeth had no trouble snuggling up to him and falling back to sleep.
Daniel just couldn’t shut his brain down. They’d finally met people, and they still had no answers. The empty space of not knowing was growing bigger and more urgent. There had to be a logical reason why his oldest son had died, why an entire city and its neighboring towns were no more. It was like being told someone you loved was missing and never finding a body, never getting a lead. A question without an answer was like a festering tumor. Each day, it grew and grew, until it consumed every thought, every cell.
They were no closer to an answer, and no closer to an end. They still had to watch for animals and live a step above cavemen.
The more he thought, the less sleepy he became, until the sun bled through the gaps in the blinds and splashed on the foot of the bed.
148
“You want dry Wheaties or dry Cheerios?” Max asked Miguel when he came down for breakfast. Buck and Alexiana were already awake, sipping on glass bottles of warm Starbucks Frappuccinos.
“Cheerios,” Miguel said, his hair every which way. Buck told Max to keep the blinds and shades drawn, but he could see it was going to be a sunny day. He even heard a few birds chirping by the kitchen window.
I wonder if they’d attack us, too, if they saw us. He poured a bowl of cereal for his brother.
His father and mother surprised him by coming up from the basement.
“They have a ton of jarred preserves,” his mother said. “Now I wish we had some bread to put it on.”
Gabby came clomping down the stairs at the same time.
“We’re going to meet a group of people today,” his mother said to Gabby and Miguel. For a flash, they looked terrified. “They’re like us. They’re not sick.”
“I think we should still carry our guns,” Max said. “Even if the people are nice, we still have the animals to worry about.”
His father looked as if he was going to correct him, then he looked to Buck and his face changed. “You need to keep them out of sight. I don’t want these people to get the wrong idea about us.”
“What, that we’re not stupid?” Max said, biting into a Pop-Tart.
“Watch it,” his mother warned.
“I’m just saying.”
“Well, don’t.”
Oddly, his mother’s brief moment of anger made him feel like things could get back to normal
again. His not being in trouble all the time was beginning to feel . . . troubling.
“I don’t want to go,” Gabby said. She wasn’t whining, wasn’t sullen. She said it as a simple matter of opinion.
“I know it’s scary, honey,” their mother said.
“I’m not scared.”
She opened a wrapper of Pop-Tarts and began nibbling at a corner.
“I’m bringing my bat,” Max said.
“It’s permanently stained red,” his father said. “Leave it here. You can take it with us when we decide to leave Hastings.”
Max bit the inside of his cheek to keep himself from saying something stupid. He understood his parents’ point. Alexiana walked by, gently touching his shoulder. Was she letting him know she was on his side?
Buck tucked a gun in each pocket. He’d found an old Mets cap and pulled it onto his head. As goofy as he’d looked with the cowboy hat, it had fit his large personality. The Mets cap felt downright alien sitting on top of his head.
“I think I’ll go outside and shed a tear for the old country,” he said. Over the last few weeks, Max had learned that Buck had a limitless number of ways to say he needed to pee. Miguel giggled.
“And save me one of those Pop-Tarts. I need the sugar.”
Max placed one on a plate as Buck was opening the door. When he heard Buck say, “What the hell’s going on?” his stomach sank.
149
The moment Buck saw the crowd of people gathered outside the little pink house, he knew this was no welcoming committee. He half-turned to fake going back inside so they couldn’t see him slip his hand into his pocket.
“You lied to us,” Vin said, a metal pipe resting on his shoulder. Behind him this time were the four goons from the night before, as well as a couple dozen men and women, all holding blunt instruments, none looking like they held the light of Christian kindness.
“Hey, Vin, I’m surprised to see you here,” Buck said, buying some time. “I don’t understand what you think I lied about.”
Vin broke out in a wolfish smile.