And his strength.
She forced herself to take both a lunch break away from her screens and a dinner break. She needed to just sit in her kitchen and focus on eating and not thinking about what was happening on the planet below.
Both meals had been nothing special, just a sandwich and a drink and a piece of fruit, but it was enough.
After her dinner break, she headed to the gym again for a short workout, then, after a quick shower, she took a cup of tea back with her to the office and to watch as many survivors worked to get ready for another night.
And many, many more survivors just sat, doing nothing.
She honestly wasn’t sure what she would be doing if this had happened to her home world and she had survived.
She hoped she would be one working to survive.
But she wasn’t sure.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
BENNY TOOK SOME lumber from the maintenance area and went back up to the floor where he had broken out the window in the office. There he spent an hour building a ramp for the shipping cart that slanted slowly up to the broken window.
Then he went back to the floor under the top observation platform and worked his way down, room-by-room, office-by-office, floor-by-floor, using the cart to take the bodies he found to the ramp and dumping them out the window. Luckily for him, some of those floors were empty, thanks to the high rents for the place.
Or a slow day at the office.
In one office, it made him sad when he found twenty very attractive women, slumped to the floor or over their desks. He would have dated any of them. And that thought made him miss Maggie and her white panties.
He even missed Madge.
He just hoped that some women survived besides that panicked college girl. With luck, he and other survivors would build a nice little community right here in the Empire State building.
With luck.
He found a nice hide-a-bed couch in one executive’s office on the eighty-ninth floor and decided that was where he would bunk for the night later. It had a really nice bathroom and shower and he was really needing a shower after all those bodies and work.
He had had no idea how much work it was going to be to move around dead human weight. People who had done that for a living before were amazing.
Exhausted, he went downstairs to the south entrance at three hours, making sure to take the .45 tucked in his pocket.
No sign of the professor and his class, so he went across the street to a deli and got some great roast beef from the fridge and made himself a sandwich. He was really going to miss fresh meat.
He got enough food for three solid meals tomorrow and went back across the street and put the food in the fridge in the security room.
The deli had three bodies in it and another near the door, but he just didn’t have the energy to do anything with the bodies at the moment. But he would have to, since that deli had a full back room of supplies and some nice freezers full of meat. He figured he could get a couple of those freezers across the street and hooked up to a generator and maybe have meat for the winter.
He was back inside the lobby of the Empire State Building and was about to lock the door when he saw the professor and his three charges winding their way along the sidewalk.
They all looked tired and clearly depressed, and the girl had lost her backpack along the way.
He propped the door open and waited for them, chewing on the roast beef sandwich with horseradish, which he had to admit, tasted wonderful.
“Thanks, Benny,” the professor said, extending his hand. “My name is Professor C.M. Green.” He laughed, sadly. “Not sure what I’m a professor of anymore.”
He had managed to pull back his long hair and tie it, and Benny could tell the professor had been a gym rat. He was strong, of that Benny had no doubt. The professor had a firm grip, but Benny could tell that the last day had really worn on him.
Benny was fairly certain he looked just as bad.
The professor quickly introduced the two college boys. The redhead with bright freckles who stood about six foot was called David. The other kid, shorter with a lot of pimples was Freddy. Both looked like they could use some muscle and about fifty pounds. The girl was named Candice. She had long blonde hair, long fingernails, and the remains of some makeup on her blue eyes. She looked like she was about to pass out.
“You had any real food?” Benny asked them.
The professor shook his head. “Just snacks is all.”
“So that’s job one,” Benny said.
He had them leave their stuff just inside the building entrance, tossed the professor a group of keys from a guard, locked up the building, then headed across the street to the deli.
“Boys,” Benny said, “can you clear out those bodies, move them a little ways down the sidewalk, maybe about thirty steps, while the professor and I fix you something to eat.”
Both boys looked horrified that they would have to touch a dead body and the professor didn’t look too pleased himself.
“Do it this way,” Benny said, grabbing the man’s body near the door by both feet right at the ankle. Then Benny just dragged the body away from the door and down the sidewalk. The body’s clothes bunched up some as Benny went, but not enough to slow him down.
“Don’t try to pick them up,” Benny said, still tugging on the body down the walk, “and if you don’t want to use your bare hands, there’s a store two doors down that has leather gloves. Bring me and the professor back two pair of larges each as well.”
Benny stopped dragging the body, then led the professor and the girl into the deli as the two boys went for gloves.
“There’s a lot of work to get that building ready,” Benny said as they went in behind the counter.
“I can’t even imagine,” he said.
“You won’t have to imagine,” Benny said. “You’re going to get to see it for yourself as soon as we’re done eating.”
The boys cleared out the bodies, each grabbing one leg and moving quickly. Then they all sat and ate sandwiches with cold pop.
The professor described how far they had walked before turning back. They had stayed the night in a furniture store, but most of them hadn’t slept much.
All of them had families they were convinced were dead, and the professor had a wife. “We’re all going to need to find our families and check on them,” he said. “It’s why we came back.”
Benny nodded. His only family had been Madge and Maggie. Both his parents had died in a boating accident while he was in Iraq. He knew Maggie and Madge were dead. He would have looked for them as well if he hadn’t known. Especially Maggie.
“I can understand that,” Benny said.
The professor nodded thanks.
“Any idea at all what caused this?” Benny asked as the conversation lagged.
“Quasar pulse,” Freddy said.
“Aliens,” David said.
The professor shook his head. “All kinds of theories, no facts.”
Benny nodded. “Well back to the task of survival then. We need to get as much of the building cleared and set up before things turn really sour.”
“You mean everything smells?” Candice asked.
“Worse than you can imagine,” Benny said. “We’ll work some more tonight, and then we all need some rest.”
He turned to the professor. “How about tomorrow you take a student and go out one at a time to find that person’s family? And maybe look for more sane people to join us. The rest of us will keep working.”
“That’s a really good plan,” the professor said, trying and failing to sound upbeat. “Everyone up for that?”
They all just nodded and kept eating.
If nothing else, this was the most well-behaved and smallest class Benny had ever seen.
CHAPTER TWELVE
GINA WATCHED AFTER dinner as the four that had come back into the city joined the man working alone in the big building. Somehow they had known he was there. Maybe related or so
mething and able to get in touch.
So far, all the systems in the city seemed to be staying up. But as the night fell over the city for the second time since all the death, Gina knew that it wouldn’t be long before those lights would never come on again.
But pulling back, the view from above of the island city was stunning at night, the city looking alive and vibrant, at least from orbit.
As the sun started to fall, she had green lights wink and go dark on her board.
She checked each one because she had to. It was her job.
Six total. Three had gone to a roof of a building and just walked off the edge.
She knew this was happening all over the planet right now. She just wished they could get the survivors off faster, give them some hope, if not just for a moment.
But right now there were less than twenty ships in orbit over all the death. She knew there would need to be almost a thousand ships to get all the survivors, and many of those rescue ships wouldn’t arrive until the last minute. Many were coming from another sector of this galaxy at full speed.
After another two hours, all the survivors in her area seemed to have settled down, including the five now together in the big building. So she went and took another shower to try to clear away the day, then went to her couch again and started up the same comedy movie she had on the night before.
She didn’t need to be entertained. She just needed noise and some life.
She fell asleep in twenty minutes.
And the only dream she had that she could remember was of watching a person’s face with a green light on the person’s forehead. Then the light winked out and the person slumped to the ground.
And she had to turn away and do nothing, because there was nothing she could do.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
AFTER FINISHING THE sandwiches and closing up the deli, Benny took the professor and his charges up to the security room and made sure they all knew the same things he did about the emergency generators and how to escape if stuck in an elevator when the power went out.
Then pulling the professor aside, Benny suggested that the two boys start working on clearing out the main lobbies downstairs, dragging the bodies away from the main doors and down the sidewalk a distance, that sort of thing. And that the professor and Candice start on the floor Benny had left off hauling bodies out, check every bathroom and lunchroom in every office to make sure the water was turned off. Even the public bathrooms in the lobbies and if there were any sinks or bathrooms in any basement areas.
“What are you going to do?” the professor asked after he sent the two boys off with their assignments and instructions to call him on his cell if they needed him.
“I am going to keep working my way down clearing bodies.”
The professor just nodded.
Benny decided that first the three of them needed to go all the way back to the top, then start down from there, double-checking to make sure he hadn’t missed any body in a maintenance area, or in a back office or rest room, and that all the water was turned off on those upper floors.
Benny showed the professor and Candice his cart set-up and ramp in the office with the broken window when they reached that floor.
Neither said a word.
Then the two of them went off checking the water and Benny kept working his way down, one body, one floor at a time. By the time two hours had gone by and the lights of the city were on full, Benny had the top thirty floors completely cleared of bodies.
And he was exhausted. He knew they all were.
He had scouted the neighborhood a little, mostly with the exterior security cameras, and he knew there was another restaurant nearby, so all five of them headed there to scrounge for food.
A couple stores down from the restaurant, they found bedding, and in a neighboring store they all found a change of clothes.
They cleared the bodies out of both places in only minutes, since Benny figured they were going to need to use both places in the future.
Benny was starting to feel better by the minute.
It had only been a little over a day since the world ended and he had a hunch this new way of living just might work. They all might actually have a way to survive, with enough help.
And a little more time with the weather staying cool and the power staying on.
Benny doubted that would happen, but he figured a guy could hope.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
OVER THE NEXT few days, Gina fell into a routine. She would crawl off the couch and check on the survivors in her city, finding any that had died in the night, and seeing if she had anyone new, or if others had left the city.
After the third day, all the others who were doing her job for other areas under the Star Conscious had a meeting. There were forty of them and they all looked as tired and worn out as she was feeling.
The upshot of the meeting was that after three days, every survivor on the planet had been identified by all the ships in orbit and tagged. As soon as the other ships got here, the survivors would be taken off the planet and out of danger for the time of the second electromagnetic pulse.
They were told to start getting to know the survivors who looked like they would make it, the ones they could help, to figure out the best way to help the survivors after the rescue.
She wasn’t willing to do that just yet. Too many were still dying.
By the fourth day, she had under three hundred survivors alive on the island. And she knew that a few more of them didn’t have much longer to live, since they hadn’t been eating or moving in days.
The five survivors in the big building she still watched from a distance, and four others in another tall building were working on it to clear bodies and make it livable. More than likely that would be the two groups she would work to help.
All the other survivors huddled inside apartments or underground in the subway system, some setting up camps in the stalled trains.
Except for checking on those that died, she kept her focus above the city, thinking of each person at the moment as a green light. That helped her nightmares some.
And she didn’t have to see the bodies that littered everything slowly starting to decompose.
She was going to embed in that city to help the survivors, and right now, she refused to think about what that smell was going to be like.
Since all Seeders could teleport, she would be able to return to her apartment here at any point, but she had no doubt that would not be enough by any stretch.
She knew those survivors below would need her help after the rescue. She knew that deep down. But she had no idea why she had applied to do this.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
BENNY WAS STUNNED that Mother Nature and the electric company conspired to help them some. It remained fairly cool, the nights almost chilly, and the power stayed on.
For five days, he and the Professor and his charges prepared the big building as much as they could.
After a few hundred bodies dumped through windows, Benny was just numb to what he was doing.
And after the first few days, they were all wearing masks and tossing their clothes out after working. Every night Benny took a long, hot shower to try to clear the smell from his nose.
They finally got every body they could find out of the big building by day four. Benny was stunned it had been done. It was a very large building.
The city was starting to smell in general, so after clearing the bodies from the entire building, Benny turned their focus to stocking up on bedding, food, clothing, and just about anything else they thought they might need and could get on carts or carry.
Pretty soon they would just lock the doors and move up into the top floors. And after the power went out, they would run the generators for those floors, keeping them at a comfortable temperature through the summer.
Benny took the top office floor as his apartment, and the professor and his three kids stocked up the floor five down from his, since there were six bathrooms and lot
s of offices that could be made into bedrooms there.
From what Benny understood, they had spread out and each had a large area and a private bathroom.
Benny wanted them to be prepared for fifty or more people living in the building instead of just five, even though they hadn’t seen anyone else in days. And the professor agreed.
So even after they had more than enough, they stocked food and blankets and propane heaters and lighting and everything else on a dozen different floors.
One day, David asked Benny why they were doing that.
“The moment the lights go out,” Benny said, “and we keep some lights on in this building up high, people from all over will see us. We need to be ready for people to join us.”
David had only nodded to that.
All the kids and the professor had found their families, all dead.
And every-so-often Benny would run across one of the kids crying. Nothing he could say to cheer them up. They were either going to make it or they weren’t.
He had become very cold through all this, much more than he had ever been before.
His counselor had taught him that. He had decided after that session with the counselor that Benny would be one of the soldiers that made it.
And he would make it this time as well.
The young girl, Candice, just slowly withdrew, working and eating less and less, no matter what any of them said or tried to do to cheer her up.
Benny had seen that before in soldiers on the battlefield. He had no idea what to do about it.
On the fifth morning she vanished, going out the south door before any of them got up.
Benny had no doubt she wouldn’t be back, but the professor wanted to go in search of her.
Benny stopped him at first with one simple statement speech. “It’s safe out there. She knows where we are. If she wants to come back, she will. Give her until tomorrow before we go looking for her.”
High Edge: A Seeders Universe Novel Page 4