Chapter 1.16
Hana
Nowhere is Safe
By the time Tanis and Hana reach North Harlem, he’s getting tired of walking. Hana, too. They need shelter, so she runs around looking for a safe place. Most people locked their doors when the shit started going down. She finally returns and leads him down a side street to a half-open roll-up door. They duck underneath and into a metal workshop where they make gates, balcony railings, and security bars for windows. The building is quiet, and there are no dead bodies around. She tries to close the roll-up door, but it’s jammed. “This is out of the way. So I think we’ll be safe here.”
They pass a large open floor space with worktables and racks of gates and metal bars. She goes to a door that leads to a lobby. “I need to make sure the front door is secure.”
Windows run the length of the shop front wall, and there is a glass door as well. The windows are all covered with decorative security bars. Looks pretty secure to Tanis.
He stops next to a gumball machine and stares out the window into the gloomy day. Normally, there’d be people walking by or the sound of horns or garbage trucks. Nothing. There are a dozen cars on the street, bumper to bumper but as still as ruins. Some of the cars have dead people inside. Bodies litter the sidewalk as close to each other as stepping-stones.
“I miss the sound of cars,” Tanis says. “The sound of a normal day.”
Hana stands next to him. “I kind of like the quiet. Besides, the sounds that I like are long gone.”
“What sounds are those?”
“Old trains and the hiss of their steam engines. I also miss the sounds at a café or the clinks of china at a fancy meal where everyone is so engrossed in what they’re eating they’ve forgotten how to speak. I haven’t heard those sounds in a while.”
“You’re not eighty years old. Since when did you hear old trains?”
She breathes deep and closes her eyes. Tanis can tell she’s going far away, back into the younger parts of her brain.
“My new parents used to take me on upstate train tours. The trains were classic steam engines. They’d take us into Canada and back, through some of the most beautiful forests. I’ve never been so happy.”
Tanis turns from the window, not wanting to see outside anymore. Constantly seeing dead bodies keeps his chest tight and stomach sour.
The roll-up door they entered rattles loudly as someone enters our hideout. Tanis falls to his knees and crawls to the cover of the front counter. Hana pulls her gun and heads for the lobby door. She’s too late. The door crashes inward and people funnel inside. Hana’s caught out in the open!
“Fuck, man. We gots us a little lady hidden in here!”
Tanis hopes they can’t see him.
“Drop your weapons, guys. Tell me what you want. I don’t have anything here, but what I found is yours. Let me show you where my stuff is.” Hana tips up her gun’s muzzle and opens her fingers. She moves toward the men and is out of Tanis’s field of view. His chest tightens further, and every breath feels like breathing through a straw.
Hana yelps, and the lobby door slams shut. Tanis listens, but their voices are muffled. There’s no way he’s standing by while they attack her! Staying crouched, he moves around the counter and to the factory door. It’s metal but has a small window in the center. He risks taking a peek.
Three men stand in front of her, holding National Guard–issued rifles, but they’re not Guard. Hana is on her knees with her fingers laced around her head. One guy dumps Tanis’s backpack out on the floor and kicks the shit around.
“You said you got something for us.”
“She’s got somethin’ for each of us, that’s for sure.” The guy touches his long goatee like he was stroking a cat’s tail.
“No way, man. Look at her pants, her belt, her shoes. She’s a cop! We gotta get gone,” says a man with a baseball hat.
The short one moves to the roll-up door that leads outside. “Yeah, let’s go.”
“Look around! There ain’t a cop for a hundred miles. No soldiers either. They blew the bridges and the subway tunnels. They left us here to die. They left her, too.”
The man in the hat joins the short one at the exit. “This is fucked up. I ain’t staying.” The two duck out and are gone. The remaining guy steps closer to Hana. He’s got her gun trained on her. “So you’re the po-po? I guess this is my lucky day,” he says, and his hand goes for his belt. “Get on your back.”
Hana lies down.
Tanis can’t watch this. He has to do something. His asthma kicks in, and he chokes. His inhaler is in his bag! He falls to his hands and knees. How can I help? I’m just a kid, a nerd! His vision gets dark at the edges like he’s looking into a spyglass.
And in that small circle of light, he sees a metal rod sample for gates and balconies. Without a moment’s hesitation he grabs the black, metal bar and returns to the door. He opens it carefully. His lungs are tight and he can’t breathe very well, but enough air gets in to keep him from blacking out.
The guy straddles Hana and tries to get her pants undone while cramming his gun into her cheek. “I’ve got a bullet with your name on it, cop, unless you stay nice and still.”
Tanis runs at him and plunges the metal bar into the back of his head. “Ahhhh!” The bar pushes into the brain surprisingly easy. Tanis backs off. The guy twitches and drops the gun. Hana bucks her hips, and the guy falls to the side. She takes one look at him, then runs to Tanis.
“Can’t, breathe.” Tanis falls to the floor and curls into a ball.
Hana rifles through his stuff until she finds his inhaler. He takes a few puffs and feels the air fill his lungs. She pulls him onto her lap and hugs him hard. “It’s okay. You did good. You did what you had to. You saved me, twice. You can stop now. How about I save you next time?”
Tanis chuckles weakly. “I couldn’t let him do that to you.”
“We’re all predators, however some are cannibals, too. Those are the ones we have to watch out for.” From the inside of her boot she pulls out a four-inch fixed blade, sharp on both sides. “Don’t think for a second I was going down without a fight. I was just waiting for my moment.” She winks.
“I. . . never killed anyone before.” Tanis wipes blood splatters from his face and feels dizzy.
“I’m glad. But don’t worry, defending the innocent doesn’t make you a monster. It only makes you stronger.” She helps him clean his face and hands with the water from his bag.
The two sit in silence for a while. Hana keeps looking toward the door. “We have to move. This is not safe. Those guys might come looking for their friend.”
Tanis nods in agreement.
“We need to get across the river,” Hana says. “That means if we don’t want to swim it, we need to find a boat.”
“I think I’d rather find a boat,” he says.
Hana nods. She snaps her fingers, looking excited. “I know where there’s a boat.”
“Hudson River has docks,” Tanis interrupts.
She shakes her head. “Too big. Those boats are electronic. Dead in the water. Plus, there was so much panic we’d probably have a hard time finding a boat left on our side of the Hudson. No, there’s a nice boathouse just north of here in a place called Swindler’s Cove. It’s gotta have a rowboat.”
“We’re gonna have to row?” Tanis complains.
“Either that or swim,” Hana repeats. “It’s only four hundred feet or so.” She stands and shuffles over to the small window on the garage door and looks out. “I think we can find a boat. I’ve seen Columbia University students rowing on the river hundreds of times, and I think they dock those boats at Swindler’s Cove. It’s worth a shot anyway.”
So they head out. It shouldn’t take more than a few hours to get to the cove.
It’s hot again, like yesterday. The sun burns Tanis’s neck, and is bright. More and more he wants out of this city. The bodies they pass swell with stink, and they look weird. Some even look like
roots are covering them. He feels wound up and on the verge of freaking out the whole morning. He’s hungry and sick to his stomach at the same time. He just wants to go home.
The highway is empty. Up ahead a huge passenger plane blocks the lanes, half buried in the asphalt. Concrete Jersey barriers ripped off one wing. Stillness surrounds the plane, forgotten, along with everything else. As they get closer Tanis expects to see the emergency hatches open and slides inflated on either side, but there are no open doors. No slides. No one got out alive. Maybe they didn’t let themselves out. If they knew they were all sick maybe they tried to contain the bug inside the plane as an attempt to save everyone else. Maybe. It must have been hard to do. Tanis would have wanted to throw the doors open and hit pavement.
Blood splatters the cockpit windows. Tanis can’t think about it anymore, he just can’t so he watches his feet as he walks.
The two cut across the parking lot to an apartment complex. They pass clusters of dead bodies, looking like those holocaust videos he was forced to watch in history class. He sees the blank faces of the dead and wants to freak out, to run somewhere dark and quiet; to climb into a CAT5 Ethernet cable and find the nearest server. Then he’d cozy up to some funny YouTube vids.
His head tumbles on itself and feels heavy. It’s like he’s firmly stuck in that Blue Screen of Death error mode where PCs go to die. He grabs Hana’s hand and holds it tight.
That’s when he notices something strange. There are bodies on the rooftops of the buildings, and they’re hanging out of windows. Why go to the roof if you’re sick? Or hang out your window? It doesn’t make sense. They’re clustered in dog piles, frozen, but not quite still. Tears roll down his cheeks. This is a lot of dead people. When will the death stop? He wonders if his Ma is even alive. Are people dying outside of Manhattan Island, too? He’s glad sweat pours from his forehead so that Hana can’t see his tears.
They follow Harlem River Drive because it parallels the River and passes the Kennedy Bridge. It’s blown to pieces. Eventually they see that all the bridges are toast: 3rd, 138th, 145th, Alexander Hamilton, and the George Washington. His feet hurt badly. Hana says they’ve walked over ten miles. Tanis can’t remember when he’s walked so far. The river is narrow here, but he can’t swim it. It freaks him out just thinking about jumping in.
Finally, they reach Swindler’s Cove and follow the road that leads to a security gate. Beyond the gate is a shiny new aluminum bridge that leads to a floating pier and a much larger boathouse. The boathouse is two stories, freshly painted blue with yellow trim, and has bright red doors. Hana checks the security gate. It swings open.
After they pass through the gate, Hana closes it and ties it shut with a wire. “If there are looters, this might slow them down,” she says.
The two continue down the aluminum walkway and move onto the dock.
“What happened to all the boats?” Tanis wonders.
Hana points to the other side of the river. “Looks like people took them in the panic before everyone started dying.”
There are ten or so boats clustered on the opposite shore. Hana moves to the boathouse at the end of the pier. She breaks the window to the main office and enters the building. The house is floating on the water and moves ever so slightly. The bottom of the building is a storehouse for boats, and the top floor is an apartment or something. There’s only one boat inside. It’s a wooden boat sitting upside down on construction A-frames.
Hana eyes the boat for a while. “Damn.” She moves around the suspended vessel. “If we take this boat out it’ll sink. There’s a hole the size of my fist.”
“Can we patch it?”
“Epoxy should seal it. But we’d have to stay an extra day or so until the glue dries.”
“Fine by me.” It feels good to get out from under the sun. Tanis finds a towel in a locker and dries the sweat off his forehead. They spend the rest of the afternoon patching the hole with stinky putty Hana found in a locker. After a couple hours they paint the patch with a blue epoxy sealant.
Hana inspects the work while eating M&Ms and then gets the idea to make a smiley face with the candy in the thick sealant. She pushes the last M&M into the smile. “That should do it. Give us a little good luck.”
Tanis laughs and adds crazy eyebrows to the smiley face. She elbows him, lightly. Hana is a cool chick and funny, too. Which is weird for a woman and even weirder for a cop.
They walk upstairs to check out the building. There’s a meeting room, a bathroom, and two other rooms that are locked. Tanis guesses they’re storerooms or something. Hana bashes the handle off one door and peeks inside. There’s a couch and a TV. The other room is locked with a deadbolt. She gives up trying to force it open. Probably has something of value, life-vests or keys or a motor or something. No big deal. They’re gonna be out tomorrow anyway.
“I got the couch,” Tanis declares, as though he’s staking out a room in a new house.
Hana gives him a crooked look. “You’re gonna let the lady sleep on the floor? Some gentleman you are.”
He chuckles, feeling hot in his face. “Sorry, I guess you can have the couch.”
She walks by and pushes him. “I’m kidding. You take the couch. You’re a kid and that beats the woman trump card.” She looks Tanis up and down for a second. “What are you, like ten?” She laughs.
“I’m fifteen.” His face burns. “I’m short. That’s all. I haven’t hit my growth spurt yet.” She laughs, playfully. He’ll forgive her for that one.
The sun sets behind dark smoke clouds. It’s going to get really dark soon. He’s glad they’re inside.
Hana snoops around while he sits on the couch, wishing he had a working laptop or a tablet. Later, he hears cheering in the back room and runs to Hana.
She’s head first in a crawl space in the back of the closet. “They got an old generator in here! If this thing is properly grounded it should have survived the EMP blast. It’s just a simple diesel engine.” She removes a case cover on the front of the generator and hands it to Tanis. “See these wires?”
He gets on all fours and tucks himself as close to her as possible.
“They run down the inner walls to the frame of the boathouse.”
“A ground wire?”
“Yes. Good,” she says. “Plus, this cage is lined with insulation that keeps the sound down. Perfect insulation from the EMP.” She flicks a fuel-line switch and then the starter switch. The motor fires up. She cheers again like a little girl.
They have electricity! She’s still paranoid about looters, so they shut the blinds tight and only keep one light on and even dims the lamp by hanging a towel over it.
Hana and Tanis get hungry, so they try the stove. It doesn’t work. Hana lifts the lid. The stove regulates heat with a simple circuit on the control panel—a fried control panel. Tanis takes the lead on this one. He’d built some cool electronic kits when he was younger. He pulls out the wires from the circuit and touches them together lightly. Sparks fly, fed by the generator power. Hana disconnects the plug, and he connects the wires directly to the burner.
“The electric stove uses the current and the coil to generate heat,” he says, showing off. Hana plugs the stove back in. One burner turns bright red. They high-five.
Hana cooks little canned hotdogs and soup that they’d found in the cabinet. So awesome. For dessert he has a pack of donuts and some more M&Ms. He feels less jittery and weird. When his head hits the couch pillow, he passes out hard.
When he wakes, it’s morning. Storm clouds are mixing with the smoke in the sky. They look like they’re standing still, waiting for permission to come crashing to land. Tanis can see lightning strikes in the clouds, a lot of them. It will be a bad storm.
Hana cooks hash browns she found in the freezer. They weren’t frozen anymore but not rotten yet. She finds a box of fake eggs in the cabinet, too. The only thing they are missing is orange juice and bacon.
“Can we stay here until a rescue team comes?”
Tanis asks her. It’s such a nice hideout. And with the storm coming, he doesn’t want to be anywhere else.
Hana drinks some tea she’d found in the cupboard and stares out the window. “Yeah, we can.” She’s deep in thought. “You know, I haven’t seen anything in the air.” She sips her tea. “That’s kinda weird.”
“What, like, you mean planes?”
“Yes. If I was in charge, I’d have eyes in the sky. Even if they were scared of the virus, a sealed jet at twenty thousand feet wouldn’t catch it, but they could still take survey pics. Don’t they want to know what’s happening on the ground?” The two sit in silence for a long time.
“I think we might want to stay here.” She sips her tea. “Maybe for a while.”
“What about getting to our families?” Tanis asks.
Hana shrugs. “I have a strong feeling they’ve evacuated the entire area, maybe for hundreds of miles. They’d want a good cushion between the infected and the general population. And what if they didn’t stop the virus at all?”
“What do you mean if they didn’t stop the virus?” Tanis asks, feeling a tingle up his spine. He wants his cell to work badly, or the TV or something to distract him.
“Yeah, let’s stay for a while.” Hana decides. “It will be safer with this storm coming. Maybe we can find a radio that works.”
Tanis smiles at her. “I can make a radio. I made one with my dad a few years back. It was so cool. I made the radio as part of a merit badge. I don’t know if there is everything here to make one like we did, but I think I can rig the one downstairs to work. We’ll just have to rip out the circuit board that’s fried.”
“Boy Scout, huh?” Hana says. “You get to Eagle?”
Tanis shakes his head. “Not yet. I’m Life. But I still know things.” He smiles and struts like a chicken.
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