by P. J. Kelley
“What now?” Charlie said. He didn’t sound like a receptive audience.
“Here it is-we jump off 10 and get on 202 heading north east, then get on 59 heading east until we get to The Hudson River. Then we get a boat from somewhere and just drift down to the intersection of The Harlem River and The Hudson on the northern tip of Manhattan. That part of Manhattan might be our best bet. There is a really old park there, and right past that is a canoe club and then pretty much a deserted wasteland along railroad tracks. We might be able to get off around there and just work our way up through the woods to The Cloisters, which is right there on top of this big hill.”
“You seem pretty familiar with this place,” George observed.
“Well, I used to buy a lot of crack in Washington Heights, and I would wander around a lot around there smoking rock. Before 9/11 and before they built that big bike path up to The George Washington Bridge, that area was like the undiscovered country in Manhattan. Nobody knew about it. Fort Tryon Park is huge, and has all these little rock formations to sleep in, and nobody ever bothered me.”
“Are you feeling tempted, Joe? Do you want to talk about it Joe? I’m here for you brother, though I know we’ve had our differen….” Charlie was gearing up to provide his wisdom when Joe interrupted him brusquely.
“My point is, I don’t see how we’ll get across the GW. It’s probably blocked by cars, and I for one do not want to have to walk across that thing. I’m saying we siphon a full tank of gas, start driving, overshoot Manhattan, and come back by boat right next to The Cloisters.”
“I’m in,” said George. “You are a genius dude, seriously.”
Charles was less encouraging. He approved the plan, mainly because he knew Joe would demand a better one from him if he didn’t, and Charlie couldn’t think of one.
Gwen agreed because the world had turned upside down, and more than anything else, she didn’t want to be alone.
“Okay then, its set,” Joe summarized. “First we steal some gas, and then we have to start working on Point B-thinking up a way to get some guns.”
“Are you sure we’ll need them?” asked Gwen. “You just said that part of Manhattan is pretty deserted.”
“It’s still Manhattan, Gwen. I’d rather not be running through those woods which are bound to be full of Psychos with nothing but my good looks for protection,” replied Joe. “Not to mention it’s a long way just to get there on this route. I’m just thinking that upstate is bound to be less populated with Psychos than Central Jersey, plus this way we beat the bridge and tunnel problem.”
Gwen looked at Joe’s anguished features, contorted by the emotions of the night but also from long battle with a particularly bad crack addiction, and she thought that he might just have a point. As if to prove him right, as they got on 59 East and started making their tortuous way towards the Hudson River, the wash of Psychos began to thin out. The dangers of their massing in numbers became less, and then almost non-existent.
“It’s like they form large masses and then all migrate at once,” observed Charlie, commenting on the obvious. It was a sign of lessening tension that he had made a fairly lucid statement though, and Gwen was glad he had roused himself from his fearful catatonia. Charlie had made a career of jumping rehabs when treatment became too demanding, so one can only speculate what the concept of nowhere else to run was doing to his head.
George shifted in his seat uncomfortably. This wouldn’t have been as bad if Gwen hadn’t been here, but she was, and George found himself in a highly embarrassing situation.
“Guys, I hate to say this, but I really need to go to the bathroom,” he finally just admitted. “Could we pull over someplace when we get the chance?”
Joe, Charlie, and Gwen all tittered, Gwen in spite of herself. It was just too ludicrous.
“Here,” Joe said, “Here is an empty water bottle. Go in the back and pee in it.”
“I can’t,” George said adamantly. “I need to go number two,” he said, looking shamefaced.
This brought the house down as the other three burst into uncontrollable laughter.
“Dude, you have to hold it in. It’s not like any of these rest stops are safe, and do you really want to go into the woods by the side of the road right now? Go in the back, we’ll open a window,” Charlie said through his hilarity. The situation might have been mildly amusing in normal times, but something about this intrusion of one of Life’s mundane necessities at a time like this made the problem almost manically funny. Maybe finding something to laugh about was like grasping at sanity for their frayed nerves.
“No. Please. We have to stop someplace,” George said, becoming upset. His mind did not function well in the abstract, and he was unable to distance himself from this moment enough to understand the amusement of the others as a reaction to their quandary, only seeing himself as the brunt of what seemed to be cruel humor. “Anywhere is good. We haven’t seen a Psycho in fifteen minutes.”
Guiltily, Gwen joined George’s cause. “George, I’m sorry I laughed at you. Guys, we probably could find a safe spot for him to jump out for a couple of minutes. He’s right, I haven’t seen any Psychos either for a little while. Maybe they do only travel in packs?”
After some debate, it was decided to find a relatively safe spot, much to the increasingly discomfited George’s relief. At first, Charlie suggested finding a big parking lot, and then they could watch for Psychos while George went, but George didn’t want people to see him.
Joe then suggested finding an abandoned car and pulling over to let George lock himself in and go right there in the back seat or something. The group agreed this was disgusting, but put it in the maybe file.
Gwen racked her brain for an idea as well, and then something about the morning light triggered some memory stored in some forgotten trunk of her mind, covered with dust, and steeped with antiquity.
“I’ve been here before,” she said, staring out the window fixedly. “Not for a long time though, when I was a little girl.” She thought of a day she had been a passenger in her family’s station wagon driving along this very road. The sun had filtered through the slowly changing leaves almost exactly as it did now. Her parents hadn’t been fighting that day, nor had they been driving in sullen silence. They had driven up here on one of their infrequent visits to her Uncle Jimbo, who was a patient in this huge mental hospital and treatment center at that time. Later, the government had substituted cheaper medications for more expensive institutional care, and released all the heavily sedated patients back into the community. Many had made a fairly successful readjustment, but some had not, including her uncle who had ended up a homeless street person in Newark.
Her Uncle never spoke to her parents, but had always seemed kind to Gwen, in an abstracted kind of way. Her parents didn’t really care, since the real reason they came up here was on sightseeing junkets. They would read about an old monastery/winery, or about an unusual geological formation, or an old Revolutionary War fort in the area, and say “Time to visit Uncle Jimbo!” Looking back, Gwen wasn’t even sure if that was his real name, or if it was just what they called him. They hadn’t gone to his funeral.
“Guys, there might be a place up here in a mile or so, if you take a right,” Gwen spoke up almost tremulously.
“Why, what’s up there?” Joe asked.
“Years ago, my family was driving around up here sightseeing, and my Dad drove into a ditch. My parents had been drinking. Anyway, the ditch was right in front of this old apple orchard, and this ancient stone building they used to store this cider press in. It took like eight hours to get a tow truck, plus we had to get our broken axle fixed, so all day long, I ran around this apple orchard with this kid who lived there. His name was Isaiah, I think. He had a beautiful little sheep dog named Gypsy. The apple farmers didn’t seem to like my parents too much, but they let them sit outside on their patio all day and gave us lunch. When we had to use the bathroom, they took us to the one in the cider press buil
ding. It was like a fortress. I think they were afraid my parents would steal something if they let them in their farmhouse. They liked me though. The apple farmer’s wife asked me if I wanted to stay and live with them, and I said yes. In a way, I think she was serious, though my parents would never have allowed it. I was their excuse for being together.”
“Cool story,” smirked Charlie. “Did you ever go back?”
“You know, I might have, but until this very minute, I had forgotten where it was. I had kind of forgotten about the whole day, except for playing with Gypsy and Isaiah. It was on this old dirt road, and nobody else lived near them,” Gwen remembered.
“It sounds worth a shot, if you’re sure about this,” Joe said, sounding interested.
Joe turned right and went through an underpass. At each turn, Gwen gave directions, as association jogged long lost memories. After one unexpected hard right into a forest, Joe looked at Gwen quizzically in the mirror, but seemed satisfied when she evinced no doubt.
After several miles of hard jouncing down the dirt road, they did indeed emerge in front of a large apple orchard, with a large old white building next to a farmhouse.
“This looks different,” Gwen said. “The cider press building was made of old fieldstones.”
“It looks like they covered it with chicken wire and covered that with masonry cement, spackled it and then painted it. It protects the building and looks nice. Whoever did it did a pretty nice job,” Joe said approvingly. Seeing the new white masonry next to the green fields and apple trees seemed to cheer him up for some reason.
They pulled up next to the place, slowly.
A little too late, Gwen realized how strange it was to rely on a fifteen year old memory of a day to use as a pretext for unexpectedly stopping by in the middle of this Psycho crisis. Uncertainly, she hesitated.
“The coast looks clear. I’m going to go knock on that door to see if anyone is still home. Maybe they all left.” By some instinct she went to the cider press building, not the farmhouse itself, and began knocking. She had brought her satchel, and as she waited she suddenly noticed that her hand had grasped the revolver Marie had given her, as if of its own volition.
Just as she turned away to go back into the van, the door opened. A kind of rawboned looking young man in his early twenties was standing there, staring at her. He was holding an old 10 gauge shotgun.
“Can I help you?” he said, with admirable civility.
“Hmmm. Ummm. We were just wondering if our friend could use your bathroom? We’re afraid to stop anywhere because of all those Psycho things,” Gwen said.
“Would you show me what you are holding in your bag first?” he asked. Gwen showed him.
“Are you planning on robbing me or something? I don’t mean to sound suspicious, but people are acting funny these days.”
“Are you Isaiah?” Gwen asked. It was the logical guess, of course, but it was still a surprise to see him after all these years all grown up.
“Yes.” Isaiah sounded taken aback. “How did you know?”
“I was here once. My parents broke down. I spent the day playing with you and your dog Gypsy.”
A cloud passed over his face. “That was a long time ago Gwendolyn. It’s crazy how you can remember certain people.” He looked at her and he looked at her friends in the minibus. After a long moment of indecision, he sighed and said, “Hurry up and get in here, It’s not safe outside.”
The others piled out of the bus and locked it. Once secure inside, the first thing Isaiah did was show George where the bathroom was, who ran in wordlessly. The last few miles of bouncy dirt road had not been pleasant for him. He then led the others past the old cider press, and back into an office with several lit up computer monitors, motioning to some chairs for them to sit in.
“I thought the electricity would be off,” observed Charlie.
“It is. I have a couple of windmills going and a backup generator in the basement so there’s not so much noise. I’m able to surf the Net for several hours a day. Terrible things are happening out there, just terrible. Things I never dreamed were possible. Could I offer you some tea and sandwiches or something? If you like apples, you came to the right place.” Isaiah was in a sort of shock that had not been engendered by the unexpected arrival of The Steelers.
“Are you alone here? Are your parents still alive?” Gwen wanted to know.
“No, they passed about ten years ago. They were killed in a car accident. A drunk driver plowed into them on a rainy night.” Isaiah looked pensive. “Gypsy too, he’s gone as well. He died just six months ago. That dog lived sixteen years. He was just a pup when you met him.” As if for something to do, Isaiah started typing on the keyboard of the nearest computer.
“Now, somebody is using a satellite feed and reported sightings of the Zombies to generate this time release graphic of their spread. As you can see, the vector of the outbreak is omnidirectional. The ocean is stopping it on the east, but in all other directions it is spreading fast, plus there are some isolated outbreaks throughout the country as well. So far it appears to have been contained mainly on the East Coast of the United States though,” Isaiah stated.
The three Steelers looked at him. “Why did you call them Zombies?” Gwen asked, without a trace of humor.
“Because calling them Pill G Psychos perpetuates a government myth, a falsehood that I refuse to endorse even for acquiescent convenience,” Isaiah said didactically. “The government is either wrong or lying, and this graphic proves it.”
“How so?” asked Charlie.
“Look at the spread of the disease. There is a definitive outbreak cluster right here,” Isaiah said, drawing an invisible circle in the map on the screen with his finger, encompassing New York, Newark, Trenton and several other large East Coast cities.
“Makes sense,” Charlie said. “A lot of people were on Pill G in that area.”
“True, but everybody has been taking Pill G everywhere, all over the world, for approximately the same amount of time. Why is the initial outbreak so contained? Whether by accident or on purpose, somebody has tainted the Pill G supply right in this area. It can’t be The Pill itself or it would have been a generalized outbreak, everywhere, all at once. This graphic proves this was either a mistake or intentionally done.”
“Why, though? Why would anyone do such a thing?” Gwen wondered in disbelief. “Not just who would it benefit, but who could even pull this off?”
“The Shadow Government, for one. The unelected rulers of the USA, of the whole world, for that matter. A catastrophe like this changes the whole underlying structural dynamic of our society. America is fairly stable because its people are fairly complacent. They know they are getting screwed, but figure probably not much can be done about it, and if there was something, it would only make things worse. I mean, yeah, the Country has enemies who are chipping away at The Constitution little by little, but when something like this happens, our enemies can just take a sledgehammer to the whole thing at once,” Isaiah was getting worked up.
Gwen asked out of curiosity, “Isaiah, what have you been up to the last fifteen years? I mean, you seemed smart when I met you but you seem like you know a lot.”
“Well, I was always into books and computers. After my parents were killed, I got this massive payout from the insurance and civil lawsuit, so I haven’t had to work a regular job, so I mainly just read all day. I went to school a bit, and I’ve taken some courses online. That’s pretty much it, except for keeping this place up. Mom and Dad had it down to such a science that there is not as much work as you’d think, and it’s all at certain times of the year. Plus, I don’t have to earn a living with it.”
George finally rejoined the group, looking much more at ease. Charlie got up saying “Now I have to go too.” George quickly assured him that this would not be such a good idea. Charlie went anyway, disregarding George’s warning, and loud exclamations were heard from the direction of the bathroom as Charlie realized, too
late, that he should have heeded George’s advice.
“Ahem, yes,” Isaiah said. “Anyway, Gwen, what have you been doing with yourself?”
“Well, I went to school for a while, and then I got married.”
“Oh congratulations. Any children?” Isaiah asked conversationally.
“No, no children. It might be for the best anyway. I don’t know if my marriage is really working out,” Gwen admitted. “I’ve had some drinking problems,” she said, ashamed to admit it to someone whose parents had been killed by a drunk driver. She felt a twinge, as we sometimes do when we meet someone we knew from childhood, when the world was vastly simpler, and sense they can tell how far we’ve drifted from the idealized visions of our youth.
“Hmmm. That’s too bad, Gwen. Your parents kind of liked to drink too, if I remember correctly. Your Dad drove into that ditch at around 10 a.m., if memory serves.”
“That should have made me less likely to start, in my opinion,” Gwen responded.
“Anyway, how about those sandwiches? You must be hungry. I haven’t seen too many of those Psychos around. I saw one and I just stayed inside and watched him for a day, and he finally just wandered off. He seemed to just forget about me when I didn’t make any noise. You should be alright here for a while. Stick around, I like the company.”
“We need to get moving pretty soon, if we’re going to make it to New York City,” Joe reminded them. “I have to admit though, resting awhile would be nice.” It hit Gwen that Joe had been driving for about eleven hours straight.
“Joe, if you’re tired, go into that sitting room right there and take a nap on the easy chair or the sofa. I’ll save you some sandwiches. All of you should, you look beat.” Isaiah sounded like he was being more than just polite. He was being genuinely hospitable. Joe and George thanked him and went to take him up on the offer, as did Charlie when he returned.
This left Gwen and Isaiah. Gwen wasn’t hungry, but said she would like some tea. They talked about a variety of topics. Isaiah seemed to welcome the chance to talk about his parents and Gypsy, because even though Gwen had met them only briefly, they had made such a distinctly favorable impression upon her that Isaiah felt she had really understood them.