by Brad Manuel
“What is it?” Todd asked. He saw the torment on her face. He was holding his three paintings and did not look through the broken glass.
“Go back, we have to go out the front. We cannot go out this way.” She was crying, and scooted around Todd as he held the door open.
Todd put his paintings on the floor and walked to the glass. The door shut behind him. Rancid air blew through the broken window’s opening. He saw what affected Solange. There were tens of thousands of bodies, maybe hundreds of thousands. They filled a hole the size of a football field, and were piled as high as a three or four story building. Birds feasted on the remains.
“Good lord.” Todd muttered. He saw more evidence of the gunfight. Men in fatigues lay dead outside the back door. Bodies in street clothes poked from behind trees and a nearby dumpster.
Todd shut his eyes, took stock of the scene, and turned to leave. The door was locked from the inside. He knocked for Solange. He saw the door handle turn. A composed Solange held the door for him.
“May we go now?” She asked solemnly.
“I cannot go fast or far enough.” Todd picked up the paintings and they made their way out of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
They pulled the scarves from their faces when they were close to 71st street.
“That was the worst thing I have ever seen.” Todd said to her.
“I will never see anything as horrible again. Those birds eating the rotting flesh? How can a place that held all the beauty of humanity become such a nightmare? What happened? Why was the army there? I did not hear anything about a gunfight in New York City. I listened to the news every day.” Solange maintained a quick pace towards their camp despite the poor conditions in the ice and snow.
“I don’t think we’ll ever know.” Todd paused, stopping to look at her. “And you know what? I don’t think I want to know.”
29
The U.S. government’s initial takeover of the media was not nefarious. Television networks were devastated by the pandemic. Broadcast journalists fell to the rapture immediately, exposed to it sooner than the general population by foreign correspondents returning from assignments.
The President needed information distributed. He appointed an Office of Information, and used the military to control television and radio networks.
There was no cure for the rapture. The population was dying at in increasing rate, and the major cities were crumbling.
As the pandemic worsened, the Office of Information became a tool for control. The country was in critical shape. The new edict from the Secretary of Information was to broadcast positive stories and non-specific information. The Secretary assumed control of the internet and social media outlets in an attempt to positively spin all rapture messaging.
The Battle at the Met, as it was called by the few survivors of the fight, occurred after the government media takeover. The event did not qualify as ‘positive,’ and was kept out of the news, and off the internet.
The CDC theorized it could derive and synthesize a cure from healthy, immune citizens, and it used the military to locate and detain those citizens. The military lured people to community meetings with the promise of food, water, and information. Body temperature scanners identified healthy people. Healthy citizens, typically pulled aside from the main meeting, could volunteer to assist in testing or be forcibly ‘volunteered.’
The program yielded no results. Those captured either contracted the rapture within days, or died from the disease without developing a high fever.
As the military continued to take custody of individuals, the population became suspicious.
‘Information’ events were held at libraries or other public spaces. New York City suffered a food and water shortage almost immediately, and the promise of supplies brought large crowds. The military events held at the Metropolitan were popular. The attendees, many of whom went regularly, began to notice people with low temperatures were disappearing.
The military, pressured to find as many healthy people as possible, became sloppy in their kidnappings. The government believed the end, a cure, would justify any means. When an eight year old girl was taken from her family, New Yorkers organized to end the kidnappings at the Metropolitan.
The initial attempt at halting the government was an old world response. People arrived at the Metropolitan with protest signs, blocking entry to the museum and scanners. The military arrested all of the protesters, locking them in a containment facility.
“We have rights, you can’t do this to us.” A detained lawyer argued.
“Do you want to die here, or do you want to die in your home with friends and family? That is your choice. I am releasing you in one hour, but we have your names and photos. If you try to stop our programs again, you won’t be released. No one will ever see you again.” The cold certainty in the sergeant’s voice told the captives it was not an idle threat.
The people in the containment area exchanged names and set up a meeting. They organized a different kind of protest, one which would end the public roundups immediately.
The military doubled their presence at the Metropolitan, but they were not prepared for the assault. Twenty military personnel fought hundreds of armed citizens. Despite their superior weaponry, the sheer number of attackers doomed the soldiers. The Battle at the Met was bloody and shocking. Bodies of citizens and soldiers lined the steps and corridors of the museum.
Riots erupted on the upper east side of Manhattan. Buildings were set on fire, military vehicles were attacked. The army had no response and no ability to stop the uprising.
The neighborhood around the museum burned for days.
30
Solange and Todd saw the black smoke of the signal fires as they approached the camp. The kids were watching a movie in one of the RV’s, while Melanie and Emily supervised.
“Looks like you made out.” John said to his brother, walking towards them with a smile on his face. “You’re back sooner than I thought. Did you see everything you wanted to see?”
“Did Emily tell you about the smell that chased her from the science musem?” Todd’s face was serious.
“You let a little smell scare you away? Come on br…”
“It was a mass grave. There were tens of thousands of bodies.” Todd turned to Solange. “Maybe more?” He asked her.
“I did not look at it for more than a second, but yes, there were hundreds of thousands of bodies, and birds.” She shook her head. “The birds were horrifying.”
Todd continued. “We shouldn’t go north of here again, maybe three or four blocks, but nothing more. I say we check out the statue of liberty tomorrow, the Empire State building, and leave. There’s no one here.”
John was confused. “I get why no one would live up there, but there might be people in lower Manhattan. We need to give this a shot.”
“Let me put this art away, and we will tell you what else we saw.” Todd went into the RV to say hello to Emily. He asked her and Melanie to step outside. The kids cheered when they saw Todd, but quickly returned to their movie. Todd could not compete with Jim Carey.
Todd and Solange recounted their experience at the Metropolitan to the circle of adults.
Peter was the first to respond.
“I read about that whole thing towards the end of the rapture. I guess I forgot about it, or maybe thought it was a hoax. We didn’t have anything like that in D.C. I assumed it was fiction. I’m sorry guys, sorry I sent you up there without even thinking about it.”
The group stared at Peter.
“Wait, what? You knew about the gunfight and you didn’t say anything?” Todd was not upset, he was stunned.
“Well, kind of, but not really. I was very into the computer in my last few years. I read everything I could, had some deep blog contacts. There was an email that circulated, the government shut down the actual internet. Hell, you couldn’t even use the text part of an email, you had to write what you wanted in an attachment, cover it with innoc
uous things in the body. Anyway, I was getting a newsletter, happenings around the country. Some of it was crap, I mean, I lived in Washington, and the newsletter would say ‘the White House is in flames.’ When I read there was a firefight at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, well, it made no sense. I put it in the fiction category.”
“Did the letter say why it happened? Did it talk about the mass grave in the park?” Todd was interested in these newsletters, as was the rest of the group. The letters might hold a key to survivor’s locations.
“The newsletters always talked about healthy people being snatched up, about how no one should attend the government information sessions or food giveaways, that everything was a ruse to identify and take healthy people.” Peter could tell he was losing the group. “I told you some of the information was hard to believe.”
“Your newsletters claimed the government was rounding up healthy people? Why?” John believed the newsletters, and he could sense Peter was uncomfortable talking about the conspiracies.
“There was one post from a woman who lived in Dallas. She attended a government wellness meeting because she needed water and food. She had a normal temp. They asked her to come into the next room, and she met with a younger man in fatigues who asked her to ‘volunteer’ to come with him. He was asking anyone who was healthy to volunteer to be tested in the hopes of finding a cure. He told her that his orders were to take people by force, but he didn’t want to follow orders. She told him that she had two children at home that were sick, and still needed her and the food and water she was bringing back. The man told her to never attend another wellness clinic, to take the food and water from her neighbors or anywhere else but never trust the government. The army man pulled a digital thermometer out of his pocket, stuck it in his mouth, waited for the beep and handed it to her. He said to show the people at the desk the new reading, and tell them she failed his follow up exam. The temperature read 102. She thanked him, told him ‘god bless,’ and she finished the seminar to get her food and water.” Peter stopped.
After a long pause he continued. “Well, the army people in New York City were not as moral as the young man in Dallas. They were taking people, and were not smooth about it. After a group of protesters were arrested, the city went crazy. There was a post about the upper east side being engulfed in flames, and riots occurring around all of the military armories and stations. It was an unbelievable story, like the ones about D.C. I assumed they were false. There were several posts about a gunfight at the Metropolitan Museum of Art between the army and a group of attackers rushing the guards, shooting people, taking the museum, trashing art, burning buildings, stealing the food. None of it made sense.”
Everyone was quiet. Matt asked the obvious question. “Do you still have these emails? Did you bring your laptop or tablet? I’d like to read them.”
Peter nodded. “They are all on my computer. We just need to charge it.”
Melanie looked at Peter. “You are full of surprises. Why didn’t you ever share with me? Four months together and you never mentioned any of this.”
“Some of the past needed to stay in the past. What did it matter? I didn’t want you to think I was some conspiracy loon, which I probably am. I saw too much in the military to not be suspicious.” He turned to Todd and Solange. “I’m sorry I didn’t warn you. It honestly slipped my mind. I hope it wasn’t too horrible.”
Solange put her hand on his shoulder. “It was horrific, but I am okay. You are right, the past is the past. I wanted the Matisse, and I feel like I earned the painting.”
“Did the writings say anything about the mass grave?” Todd wanted a peak at those emails too.
“Every city had mass graves.” Peter said solemnly. “I saw the one in D.C. The sheer volume of corpses was staggering. I would think New York would pick a better spot than Central Park, but I guess not. No, I didn’t know it was there, but I knew there would be one somewhere.”
John moved to more practical questions. “Do you think any of the people on your email string stayed alive? Do you know where anyone is?”
“I don’t know if anyone is alive, but probably not. No one mentioned a specific location. We assumed the email was being monitored. If you are looking for a post that says ‘we are leaving Manhattan for Montauk’, you’re not going to find it. No one would give up that kind of specific information for fear it was being tracked.”
John nodded. “Do we have a new plan? Do we think we are wasting our time in New York City? We can drive down to the statue, take a look, and drive up to Boston. Not a problem for me.”
Peter was the first to speak. “I would like to give it at least one full day. I want to walk down to St. Patrick’s and light a candle for my wife and children, and one for the world. I will come back and man the fire and blow the horns tomorrow. I vote to give New York City two days.”
“We can go to Ellis Island tomorrow.” Emily said excitedly. “I bet we can find a boat or something to get us over there.”
“Are you crazy?” John responded. “It’s freezing. It’s windy. How the hell are we going to find a boat to take us to Ellis Island?”
“Don’t try and talk her out of it. She is crazy.” Todd said to John. Todd received a punch on the shoulder along with a laugh from his wife.
Five minutes after the adult meeting, the kids emerged from the RV. A full tribe soccer match began in the park. Todd bowed out to make chili and corn bread, while the rest of the group chose sides. The temperature was brisk. Laughter and screaming echoed off the buildings around the park. New York City, silent for too long, welcomed the raucous match.
The air filled with the aroma of dinner as Todd opened the door of the RV to place the chili on a picnic table. He set the pot down and watched the soccer.
“Excuse me.” Todd heard a meek female voice. “My name is Kelly. I’m so hungry. May I have some of your soup?”
Todd spun around to face a woman in her mid twenties. Her face was dirty, and she was thin. Her legs and arms were sticks in her jeans and top. Her cheeks were sunken and sallow. Tears ran down her face and made tracks in the grime. Todd could not help but notice she wore beautiful designer clothes.
“Of course, my god, please sit down. My name is Todd, Todd Dixon.” He ladled a large portion of chili into a paper bowl and offered her a seat with the food. “Sit down, eat, you’re with friends now. Anything we have, just ask.” He handed her a paper cup of hot chocolate. “Would you like to eat inside, out of the cold?”
The woman said nothing. She ate ravenously. When she was done, she looked at Todd with thankful eyes.
“Would you like more? There is plenty.” He could tell she was still hungry but was afraid to ask.
“Please.” Her eyes streamed tears of joy and relief.
The rest of the group stopped their soccer game and stared at Todd and the stranger. John kept the crowd away to give the starving woman space.
Jay broke from the group and ran over to the woman.
“Hello,” he said extending his hand. “My name is Jay Dixon. I’m six. What is your name.”
“Hello Jay Dixon.” She said, taking his hand. “My name is Kelly Maddox. I am 28.”
“This is my dad, Todd.” Jay said, flipping his thumb over his shoulder in Todd’s direction.
“Your father makes excellent chili, and is a very generous man.” Kelly said. She stood and offered her hand to Todd. “Thank you for your kindness.”
The rest of the group walked over to meet her. “Before I introduce myself, I am on a scavenging mission for a group of survivors living in a seminary near Chelsea. There are eleven of us, and we need food desperately.”
“Okay.” Todd started. “What is the age range of the group?”
“We have three children, three teens, five adults. One of the adults is in her late sixties.” Kelly drank a cup of hot chocolate as she answered the questions. Todd made her a double mug as she ate the chili.
“Should we move down there or send a party
to pick them up while I make food?”
Kelly paused, “I think you should have us come up here. I can go down with a few of you to pick up the group. We have a van. We don’t use it because of the snow.”
John cut in on their conversation. “Is there anyone we should be worried about bringing to our camp?”
The question hung in the air.
“Look, I will help anyone. None of us asked for this situation, but you didn’t hand pick the 10 people you survived the rapture with. I have two sons and two nephews, and three other children I have grown fond of in the last week. We have young women. I would like to know if you think there is anyone in your group I should be keeping an eye on.”
Emily was annoyed John asked the question in front of the children, but she was glad he asked the question. She could sense Kelly was intimidated by John’s forward manner. She added to his question. “We are going to give you food, don’t even think not getting food as an option. I am a mother. You met my son, Jay. Please let us know if you think there is someone we should be worried about.”
Kelly dropped her head. “I don’t trust Sal. He’s stoned most of the time. He’s a big guy, worked construction, his hands are scarred from years of hard labor. He’s a pill popper. I’d keep an eye on him. I think he wants to steal things and run away, which would be fine with me. He’s not around much, but you’ll be able to tell right away if he is at the seminary. He must have been a scam artist or grifter before all of this. I swear he’s still looking for an angle. The rest of us have figured out, there are no angles anymore.” She looked back up at the group. “The rest of us, me and the other 9, we’re good people. Well, one of the teens is a punk, but he has a good heart.” She pleaded with Emily. “Please help us. We need water as much as we need food. We drink dirty snow and rain puddles.” Kelly dropped her face.
The eight days together honed the new tribe into a well oiled machine. The Dixon family and the Washington D.C. family sprung into action. Melanie, Todd, Matt, and Emily elected to stay with the children. John, Solange, Peter, and Craig would take Kelly to Chelsea, meet her clan, and invite them back to the park for dinner. The decisions were made quickly, and the greeting party prepared for a drive down Fifth Avenue.