Archipelago N.Y.: Flynn
Page 7
All of the Archipelago’s cable cars operated on human power. A couple of sturdy bicycle-like frames were welded inside every cabin, with pulley cables running from their gears through a hatch in the roof. The pulley lines were attached to the cable car’s double-wheel cradle, which allowed the cabin to roll along the main suspension line. As it got closer, Flynn could see the sweaty and pained faces of the two drivers who were pushing on the pedals of the bicycle contraption. He pitied the guys… Yes, they worked short shifts, had longer breaks than most, but theirs was one hell of a tough job! Flynn waved his hand and the cable car came screeching to a stop at the platform’s edge. He hopped in and the car lurched forward, starting to move again.
The cabin was half empty, with no more than a dozen passengers inside, but it reeked of their unwashed bodies and hair. Flynn chose to sit closer to the open door where he hoped the air would be fresher. There was an elderly man dozing quietly in the seat next to him. Flynn stole a glance and recognized his face. It was Mr. Chow! The man who made the best fish-skin shoes in the whole Lower Side… Everyone wanted to get a pair from his stall at the market, only he couldn’t make them fast enough to satisfy the demand. Flynn stared at his own feet. Today, he was wearing a pair of Mr. Chow’s sturdy moccasins, a present from his father for Flynn’s sixteenth birthday. Unlike the superb quality of his shoes, Mr. Chow's own clothes were in a horrific state… even by Lower Side standards… His colorless seal-skin coat had so many holes that it looked like he was draped in nothing but a fraying fish net. Mr. Chow's bald head wobbled on his thin neck as the cable car went swinging on its way to the next stop. His grubby, knotty hands held on to a big fish-skin bag in his lap. Mr. Chow looked old and tired. It occurred to Flynn that Mr. Chow could be on the List, too… and that there was no one who would be taking over his trade… Both his sons had died when their rubber dingy was sideswiped by one of the Van Zandt’s powerboats.
Suddenly, there were loud gasps from the passengers behind Flynn. They were looking to the right of the cable car. Flynn craned his neck for a better view and saw immediately what had caused all the commotion. In the near distance, a mid-sized roof tower had partially collapsed. It had fallen against an adjacent tower. Luckily, this had stopped the first from falling all the way down into the water… But there was already quite a lot of damage to both structures… Little shack-like units had detached themselves from the main truss frames of the towers and were hanging upside-down, dangling precariously over the waterway below. The bridges and walkways surrounding the towers had also taken a hit. With most now vertical, they were beginning to disintegrate before everybody’s eyes. Rescue Crews and residents were moving like ants around all the carnage, doing their best to help the survivors get out of harm’s way. Nothing new here, Flynn thought… Nothing out of the ordinary for life on the Lower Side…After the Trials, he would be living on the Upper Side where the buildings were solid and safe. People didn’t live in such makeshift extensions. They all had apartments with proper rooms and decent furniture. He had heard that the Upper Side even had running water coming out of taps…
By the time Flynn had finished daydreaming of the life that awaited him, the cable car had moved on. Now, he could see the silhouettes of the Pigeon Towers, shimmering ahead in the morning sun. “Getting off at the next stop!” he shouted to the drivers as he stood up.
The two men slowed down on the pedals, applied the brakes, and the cable car came to a screeching halt alongside another rooftop platform. Flynn hopped off, but he had made no more than a few steps when a loud bang made him jump. He turned, just in time to see the pulley cradle snap in half. It crashed onto the cable car’s roof and tumbled into the canal down below. The cabin hung in mid air for a moment, then lurched forward as its nose lost support and began to tilt. The shift in gravity flung all the passengers toward the front.
Flynn watched in horror as Mr. Chow rolled off his seat and slid out the open door. Somehow, the old man managed to grab hold of the door step with one hand and stop his fall.
But Flynn knew that Mr. Chow was still in grave danger, because his whole body was now outside the cable car, dangling in mid air.
Having run back to the edge of the platform, Flynn threw himself flat on his stomach. He could see Mr. Chow better and couldn’t believe that the man was still clutching his bag with the other hand. “Drop the bag!” Flynn shouted, reaching out over the ledge. “Give me your hand!”
Mr. Chow looked up and their eyes met. He said nothing. The man just kept hanging there, staring at Flynn.
"C'mon! Drop your bag and grab my hand!" Flynn stretched his arm, his fingers now only inches from Mr. Chow. He glanced at the old man's hand holding the doorstep. Flynn could tell that his grip was weakening… he was losing his hold. Seconds later, Flynn watched helplessly as Mr. Chow, still holding his bag, let go of the step and plummeted toward his death. Flynn heard the faint splash when the man’s body hit the water. “Damn it!” he cried and banged his fist on the platform. “Damn it!”
By now, the cable car was hanging only by a thread. The overhead wire couldn’t hold the weight of the car for much longer… It gave a terrible screeching sound, louder than the screams coming from inside. Flynn stood up and looked around in frustration. There was nothing he could do! Groups of people had gathered on the surrounding rooftops, waiting for the inevitable... There was one final snap, the suspension cable broke, and the car went tumbling down toward the water… Flynn fell to his knees and covered his ears with his hands, blocking out the sound of the cable car as it plunged into the canal…
He had seen plenty of lives being lost over the years, but today’s events had been too close to home… It could have been him. Trying to slow down his breathing and calm his pounding heart, Flynn counted his blessings… He was alive and nothing else mattered! It was the Archipelago’s way of thinking… a philosophy that kept you getting up in the morning and making it through the day. Feeling exceptionally lucky, Flynn headed in the direction of the nearest bridge, his mind already preoccupied with what he had to do next.
EIGHT
Madison Ray sat at the very top of her Pigeon Tower. There were five towers to the farm built on the rooftop of the Rays’ Lower East Side building. Hers was the tallest among them, a good sixty feet tall. It was a conical structure, made from old water tanks and pieces of junk, but it was exceptionally sturdy, able to withstand the strongest gusts of the Archipelago’s easterly winds. Small, round pigeon holes covered the tower from top to bottom. Slowly, Madison wrapped her head in a long scarf, making sure she had covered her face well… especially her nose and mouth… One of the many hazards of her job was breathing in the dangerous dust from all the bird droppings. Right now, Madison had to concentrate on her task for the day, which was to scrub clean all the pigeon poles sticking out of the tower walls.
As usual, she would start from the top and gradually make her way down. When finished, she had to scoop all the dried droppings into buckets and send them off across to the Brooklyn floating warehouses. There, the pigeon droppings were stored and later used to soften seal skins for shoes and clothing. The stench of the pigeon towers had stopped bothering Madison years ago. For as long as she could remember, she had been helping her mom and dad with their pigeon farm. Like the other farms scattered around the Lower Side rooftops, theirs was used to raise pigeons for squab, the only decent bird meat available on the Archipelago. The meat that came from seagulls was hard to chew and didn’t taste that good. The farm also produced pigeon eggs, a delicacy that went straight to the Upper Side… but Madison always managed to hide some of the eggs for her family or to trade them on the Black Market.
Madison’s own tower was different from the rest on the farm. Her pigeons were not bred for food. Her pigeons were special! They were homing pigeons, trained by Madison to be couriers. After the Flood, people had gone back to using birds to deliver their messages, and it was the quickest way of communicating around the Archipelago. Most of her carrier pigeon
s went on to service the Government, but she had kept two pairs for her own personal use, and she often did favors for people on the Lower Side. When someone needed to send an urgent word to Dr. Omar at the Infirmary, Madison was the person they would seek out. She liked that part of the job, but wished she could avoid the bird slaughtering and the plucking of feathers…Unfortunately, she had no choice… Madison was almost sixteen now, and ready to take on a bigger role in the family’s trade. It was her duty.
But deep in her heart Madison knew she didn’t belong here. Not on a pigeon farm and so high up in the sky… Madison took in the vastness of the ocean all around her. Her eyes followed the tiny dots of vessels sailing between the Brooklyn Bridge towers. Of course, only the tower tops were visible, several feet above the waterline, giving them the appearance of two perfectly symmetrical islands. How long was it since she had last swum in those waters? When was the last time she had gone diving with Tony and Flynn, helping them scavenge and dream of winning the Trials? It had been more than a year… Furious at herself for thinking of the past, Madison rolled up her sleeves and began scrubbing.
Madison had just finished cleaning the first pole and was swinging her leg over the next one when she heard a voice say, “Hello there!” Startled, Madison spun around, almost losing her balance. A boy sat perched on a pole a few feet away, grinning at her. It took Madison a few seconds before she realized who he was… “Flynn Perry, you idiot!” she cried, the scarf over her mouth, muffling her angry voice. “Don’t creep up on me like that! I almost fell!”
“Boy, it stinks up here!” Flynn scrunched up his nose in disgust. “I should’ve worn a gas mask.”
“Why did you bother coming, then?” Madison’s eyes flashed between the folds of her scarf. She started scrubbing again, trying to ignore her unexpected visitor… trying to recover from the shock of seeing Flynn there... only an arm’s reach away.
Flynn rummaged in his satchel and took out a soda can. “Here, I brought you something,” he said.
Madison's hand shot out and snatched the can. “I’ll drink it later… when I take my gear off,” she mumbled and put the can in one of her egg baskets. “Thanks...”
“You’re welcome,” Flynn replied.
“So… what brings you up here? What do you want?” Madison asked, trying to keep her voice steady.
“Nothing… Well … Tony’s sick!”
“I know.”
“He says you might be, you know ... interested in ...”
"Scavv’ying?/Scavenging?"
“Yeah... Be my Crew Mate at the Trials.”
“I’ll have to think about it…Maybe I will, maybe I won’t,” Madison replied and went back to scrubbing.
“Great! Then it’s a deal,” Flynn grinned and started to climb down the tower.
“I didn't say yes, did I?” Madison shouted after him. “I said, I'll think about it!”
“See you tomorrow at ten,” Flynn yelled when he had reached the bottom. “You know where to find me, right?”
Of course, Madison knew… and her heart skipped a beat. Good thing her face was so well covered, she thought, or Flynn would have seen her cheeks blush a bright shade of red.
Was Madison going to join him on the Seeker? Up on the tower, Flynn had acted as if he was taking it for granted that she would… But the truth was that he wasn’t at all sure. He could only hope that she would… hope she would be able to step into Tony’s shoes without losing precious time. True, she hadn’t trained with him and Tony for a while, but Flynn knew she was fit and strong. Climbing up and down those stinky pigeon towers was no small feat… And she loved being in the water. That’s why he and Tony had noticed her in the first place. A little girl swimming like a fish... Most girls on the Archipelago couldn’t even float… they weren’t encouraged to go in the water, and Madison had surprised everybody with what she could do... She had outraced all the boys with her powerful freestyle, and she could hold her breath just as long as Tony could… Yes, Madison was a great swimmer and an excellent backup scavvy diver, thought Flynn, as he began to make his way home.
Flynn had now walked out of the shadows of the Pigeon Towers, but there was no way he was going to take the cable car… Not after what had happened earlier. He began to jog along the bridge-way, which connected Madison's building to the one across Water Street Canal. Might as well go through some training exercises, he thought as he picked up speed… It was the perfect distance for his Breath Hold Practice, a drill he had been doing almost daily for the past few years. First, he would run slowly for an hour, while performing a sequence of breathing exercises… Those always started with running two steps, holding his breath, followed by ten steps of running and breathing normally… Then he would increase to four, six, eight steps ... and keep increasing, until finally, he was holding his breath for twenty and breathing normally for ten.
The Breath Hold Practice was a great way to accustom a diver’s body to high levels of carbon dioxide and low levels of oxygen… Just one of the many things Flynn had learned from Ann Baxter on how to be a great scavenger… Suddenly, the woman’s name brought a rush of memories into Flynn’s head...The famous Ann Baxter… the only woman diver to ever make it among the top Free Scavengers! The woman who had been Duncan Roth's team mate and his equal… That had been before the Rottweiler had shot up the ranks to become Marcus Van Zandt’s right-hand man. Rumor had it that Baxter and Roth had been more than just members of the same crew. They had been lovers, but something had made them part ways…
It was Ann Baxter who had become Flynn's mentor from the moment he had stepped on her raft and demanded to be her apprentice. What had made Ann accept Flynn on the spot remained a mystery to him … It could have been the sheer boldness of the act itself… No one had ever dared to approach a Free Scavenger with such a request. There was always a long line of hopefuls, waiting to be noticed, but never daring to ask… Whatever the reason, Ann had taken Flynn under her wing, teaching him all there was to know about free diving. And more than that… She had filled a big void in his life. For a brief moment in time, Ann had become the mother he never had… But Ann had disappeared on the day Flynn had turned fifteen! She had gone on one of her regular dives and not come back… And like most free divers, her body was never found. Ann Baxter had died doing her job…and that was it… another casualty of life on the Archipelago. As much as Flynn didn’t want to admit it, he missed her terribly… especially now… He wished his old teacher was still around to see him compete in the Trials… and to see him win!
The thought of winning the Trials helped focus Flynn back on the present… Without missing a beat, he hopped from the bridge-way on to the ledge of the next rooftop and headed toward the crossing over Pearl Street Canal. He kept running at an even pace, loving every minute of every step he took. It felt like running on top of the world, the city sprawled beneath his feet. The view was breathtaking… But this wasn’t the best time of the day for Flynn to be going through such a routine… There were so many pedestrians rushing back and forth on the walkways that it was now more of an obstacle course… Luckily for Flynn, most people stepped out of his way, letting him pass. They knew what he was doing. No one else ran like that on the Archipelago, except for the young blood training for the Scavenger Trials.
Flynn had reached his tower and was only a few feet from his apartment when he felt a rush of wind as something swooped over his head. He heard the flapping of wings and saw a carrier pigeon land on the walkway’s railing. Glancing around, Flynn came to an abrupt stop. Apart from a few neighbors walking in the distance, it was just him and the bird. But was the pigeon here for Flynn or somebody else, then? There was a red ribbon tied round one of its feet, which meant a message was waiting to be delivered… The pigeon inched its way closer and cocked its head to one side. A small beady eye was now staring at him. Flynn reached for the pouch hanging round the bird’s neck, took out a tiny piece of paper and read it.
The note said: I’ll be there, M.
NINE
Flynn leaned over the side of the Seeker and peered at the water. He could just about make out the outline of a moving shadow under its surface. It was growing bigger, coming closer. Finally, Madison's head burst through with a big splash. She spat some water and took a big, noisy gulp of air.
“Good job!” Flynn said, extremely pleased with the girl’s progress. “That's enough diving for today.”
Madison removed her goggles; grabbed Flynn’s outstretched hand, and let him hoist her up on deck. She rolled on her back, eyes closed, trying to catch her breath, her chest heaving from all the strain of rigging up the diving bell. Water dripped from her glistening skin, forming a small pool on the raft’s platform.
Flynn caught himself staring at Madison…again… and shaking his head in total disbelief…Yesterday, Madison had been wearing a pair of scruffy overalls… her face covered with a grimy scarf… Today, she had arrived at the docks in cut-off cargo pants, a tank top, and her face no longer hidden by a scarf … And she had given Flynn the surprise of his life… Back at the dock, he had stared at the girl before him, at first not realizing it was Madison Ray. True, he had not seen her in over a year, but the person before him bore only the faintest resemblance to the old Madison… In his head, she had been this quirky kid… one of the boys… and nothing special… But looking at her now, he couldn’t help noticing the incredible transformation that had taken place… Gone was the awkward looking child with spindly legs, matted hair and a mouth too big for its face… With her long and slender limbs, her cascading waves of sun-streaked hair and full lips, Madison Ray had turned into a real beauty. She was, by far, the most stunning girl Flynn had seen on the Archipelago… It was hard not to stare!