by P. J. Kelley
“Chatterbox Al? By this I am being ironic, since Al never talked. I liked him. How is he, anyway?” Marie seemed genuinely interested.
“He’s dead. He got burned alive saving my life,” said David, matter of factly. “What have you been up to?”
“Keeping busy. I got here yesterday, and I spent the first 8 hours cleaning out the place, if you know what I mean. Since then it’s been pretty quiet here.”
“It’s The Cloisters, after all,” observed David, “One of the quietest places in New York City.”
“Oh, have you been here? I never really heard of it before. Did you take one of those tours or something?” Marie asked.
“I used to come here quite a bit. I used to live in this neighborhood. They knew this at the rehab, which is probably why they assigned me the goal they did. The fact that they probably did it for ratings for their stupid show sickens me, but Al once told me I should complete the game, if I could, so here I am.”
“What is your goal, anyway? You can tell me now, I guess,” Marie said, “After all, all the rule makers are dead, and we’re here anyway.”
David looked uncertain, but seemed to relent. “Follow me. I’ll show you. It won’t take long.”
David and Marie walked through the courtyard and down a flight of stone steps to another, smaller open area surrounded by a low stone fence. The interior portion of the courtyard was exposed to the sun, and brightly lit. It was filled with small bushes festooned with berries, and small flowering trees. In keeping with the museum’s theme, all the trees and shrubs were of the sort associated with the Medieval Era of history, giving the space an antique and unchanging quality. Marie and David sat in metal chairs at a table overlooking the courtyard. Neither spoke. Small birds chattered and flew through the bushes. Suddenly, David was overcome with sadness.
He rummaged through his satchel, and produced a plastic bag with a large cookie in it. He took the cookie out and crumbled up a quarter of it onto the stone ledge and waited. Within moments, a small wood finch flew onto the ledge and began to inspect the cookie crumbs briefly before beginning to make dainty little pecks at them. The small bird was soon joined by its friends, who began making a festive meal out of this unexpected cookie party. Chattering and arguing, the tiny birds had soon devoured the entire cookie. Marie watched in fascination as David produced two more cookies from his bag.
“Would you like a piece of this cookie? It’s the last one,” David asked her, after he had fed most of the other two to the birds. Marie shook her head.
“I’d rather watch them eat it,” she said softly.
When the last cookie crumb was eaten, the last of the tiny creatures flew away. Marie looked at David, who said chokingly, “If you feed them regularly, they start to remember you.” He put his hands in front of his face as tears streamed from his eyes. Soundlessly, he wept.
After a very long time, Marie spoke. “Is there anything I can do?”
“No, I’m extremely sorry about this. I didn’t think I would still feel anything, or I would have done this alone.” David smiled brusquely. “When my daughter was alive, we used to come here. She would sleep in the courtyard you were in, in her stroller. Then we’d come here when she woke up, and I would buy cookies and she would watch me feed the birds. She was too little to even eat cookies.”
“What happened?” Marie asked.
“Cancer. It runs on my side of the family, so I guess you could say I killed her. A slow and agonizing death, and she was brave to the very end.”
“You shouldn’t blame yourself. Now, I guess you could say I killed my father, but it was quick and merciful in comparison. He wasn’t brave at the end, but then again, he was a coward his whole life. I mean, I did kill him, but I’m not sorry. In fact, I’m pretty cool with it. I killed his girlfriend, or bodyguard, or whatever she was too. Funny thing? I feel worse about her, and I know that has to sound sick. She might have just temporarily fallen for his line of crap. He was a very plausible person, you know.”
Marie got up. “Listen, I’m sorry you’re such a mess, but my dad never took me for walks in a stroller to feed birds. He was this vile specimen who made tons of money impoverishing the Third World through shady loans and a lot of other heinous stuff I just found out about. He was important, as the world sees importance, but he was only important to me as this monster who hurt me whenever he thought he could get away with it. All he ever taught me was hate, and now he’s gone, and what am I left with? I have nothing left to hate. You lost your daughter. I already knew that. Just about everybody at that rehab did. You’re the one who was there because you kept trying to check out, but kept getting miraculously caught in process. Well, here we are, surrounded by Zombies in New York City. Miracles are a disappearing commodity.” Marie paused, and then continued on with her uncharacteristic tirade.
“Between the two of us though, you are probably worse off. Hatred never made me happy, but you were in love, so your loss leaves you more bereft. You actually lost something, while I lost the absence of something.”
David did not react emotionally to any of this. In fact, Marie’s speech seemed to have galvanized him somehow. He seemed calmer. “How’d you kill your dad?” he asked finally, by way of conversation.
“Technically, I didn’t. I handcuffed him to a fence with his girlfriend and let the Zombies have them.”
“He had it coming though, right?” David asked, as if from far away.
“Yeah. It was sort of self-defense,” Marie answered.
“The best defense is a good offense,” David quipped.
Marie sniggered.
“Nowadays, Zombies might have got him anyway,” David added.
“No doubt,” Marie responded sagely. “That was your personal goal, to feed the birds? Gerard is a world class sonofabitch to have made that one up for you.”
“I don’t know. It’s weird, but I feel better. Not less suicidal, but I feel like I finally said good bye. Amiko might have made most of the goals up anyway. She’s supposedly the pioneer for this program, Dante told me. He talked to one of the counselors a lot.”
“I’m afraid to ask, but how is Dante?”
“I’m not sure. I came here because Al told me to, and I wanted to respect his advice. Dante and Gregor loaded up a Suburban with food, water, and fuel and just took off driving. They’d seen enough. Gregor kept talking about finding an old abandoned warehouse and fortifying it. He kind of sounded like the villains in the old Batman TV show.”
They both sat in silence for some moments. Finally, David spoke.
“Marie…what was your personal goal?”
Marie laughed a little. “I never even checked. I knew our group goal was to come here, so I just came by inertia. Plus, the museum sounded interesting. Let me look.” Marie opened a small envelope she pulled from her satchel and read out loud.
“Your lucky numbers are 6, 17, 12, and 11. You should avoid people born in The Year of the Pig and the Dragon. Although whatever you decide to do is fine, because you are fine, you should probably learn to forgive yourself. Making friends is risky, but Life without risk is impossible anyway. Signed Amiko. I keep forgetting about her.”
“That was odd. She wrote you a fortune cookie,” David laughed despite everything.
“Yeah, and she said she was Japanese. Maybe she thinks we think they are all alike, because Japanese restaurants don’t even have fortune cookies.” Marie was cracking up. “Could she possibly have known that I wasn’t even going to look at this until now, and her goal was just her and Gerard’s idea of a prank?”
They got up and walked up to the herb garden, looking out across the expanse of lawn in front of the museum, beyond the tree line, towards the sun setting over The Palisades and the eerily silent George Washington Bridge. They stared for a long time. As they were about to turn away, a commotion on the lawn attracted their attention.
Through the windows they could see four figures jogging with bold desperation directly towards them and t
he museum. They appeared out of the far tree line with the last rays of the setting sun. Three had shotguns, and the shortest one appeared to have two revolvers. They seemed to have evolved a system where two would shoot while the other two would reload while all jogged. They were a highly effective team, but they were heading for big trouble, as more Zombies were being attracted to the gunshots announcing their presence.
Squinting, Marie said, “I do not believe this. That can’t be the rest of The Steelers. Signal them,” she commanded, “See if you can give them some covering fire too.” Marie pulled out her policeman’s revolver and fired twice in the air. “Plus, there’s something I can do to help.” Marie pulled the small remote control out of her pocket and pointed it towards the far end of the park. Instantly, most of the Zombies peeled off toward the far end, leaving just a few of the nearest in hot pursuit.
David fired a couple of shotgun blasts in the air as well. Hearing the noise, the four figures started running faster. David and Marie started pointing and signaling to a nearby entrance through the stone walls, and Gwen, Joe, George, and a man David and Marie had never seen nodded as they ran, and headed straight for the door.
“It’s The Steelers! Yeah Team!” Marie shouted. “They made it!”
So they had, for the most part. With the soldiers, Marie and David firing from the door to keep the most persistent Zombies off, The Steelers and their new friend were able to handle the closest ones on their own. They made it through the gateway, bolting through the doors as fast as Marie had ever seen anyone move in her life. A few Zombies tried to follow, but the soldiers laid down heavy fire enabling Marie and David to slam the door shut.
“Man, are we glad to see you,” Gwen said, as the Joe, George and the man they were with nodded vigorously. She had changed dramatically in a few brief days, physically and mentally it seemed. Gwen had suddenly gained some confidence. She looked like an Apache with a head band around her forehead to keep her hair out of her eyes so she could shoot. All of them were essentially dressed in rags, and they smelled like sweat and gun smoke.
“Afraid to ask, but how about Charlie?” said Marie hesitatingly. Gwen looked glum.
“Could we talk about that later?” She asked this as if beseeching some great kindness. “If you knew, you really would be afraid to ask. This is Isaiah, one of my oldest and best friends, by the way.”
The group shared a moment of deep understanding that transcended the need for more introductions.
The soldiers broke the silence. They had finished policing the Museum, and had no desire to stay there now that the Zombie anthill had been awakened.
“We’re done. We were going to request extraction. We don’t recommend you all stay here either, especially at night.”
“Where are you going? I could give you a lift, if you don’t mind climbing onto the roof,” Marie volunteered to the soldiers. “I have about half a tank left, which gives me an easy 100 mile range even if we all ride in my chopper. I’d like to get refueled when we drop you off, though, if I could.”
The Steelers were washing their faces in the pool of water in the courtyard while the Zombies gathered around the museum like a cloud. Looking at them in the deepening gloom, David spoke.
“This would have been a nice place to ride this thing out, but it still would have become a trap before too long. Marie, we got to know this guy, Jerry, and he said he has supplies for ten people for six months. He is really cool, and says he’s got this kind of survivalist shelter in his basement, and it’s really big. If you want to, you all could go there with me. We could use a couple more guns, not to mention a helicopter.”
“I really have nothing planned. It sounds good actually, especially if we could pick up some supplies on the way. Maybe we could land on a super market roof or something. If you’d rather, we could take Daddy’s yacht out, The Belinda. It’s supposed to be huge, though I’ve never seen it.”
Scrubbing her face and body almost raw, Gwen looked up. “Oh sorry, Marie, I forgot to ask. How was your dad? Was he surprised to see you?”
Marie smiled broadly. She was a different person than she had been in the minibus on the way. “I’ve seen him worse, actually, although he is really torn up about this whole thing. I think he would have joined me, but he just couldn’t get away from his new girlfriend.”
Despite himself, David guffawed. Gwen and Isaiah looked uncertain, but then smiled and nodded their heads understandingly.
As the helicopter lifted off, heading west into New Jersey and the setting sun, Gwen looked out of the window at the rapidly dwindling isle of Manhattan. She couldn’t help but be amazed at the changes the passage of just a few days had wrought in them all. Isaiah was a brave and loyal friend. She was shocked at how quickly they had bonded, and was amazed when she thought of her former life and how superficial it seemed to her now. The last few days had taught her how foolish she had been to sacrifice her need for meaning for a sense of security which had been proven to be laughably false anyway. She had learned so much, she sighed to herself, and wondered if Isaiah felt the same way.
Looking at Marie and David, she was again overwhelmed by the sea change in them. David conversed freely, joking and laughing in a real, healthy way. Marie had been like a sea of anger contained by a giant dam, but now the anger had just magically disappeared somehow. It probably just took seeing all this havoc to remind her of her true priorities, Gwen thought sagely. Watching them together, they seemed closer than friends, like a father and a daughter who been reunited after a lifetime apart.
The helicopter, driven by Marie’s steady hand, headed for the military base. Whatever fate awaited them, Gwen was glad she had found true friends.
Epilogue
Gerard bounced a basketball in the nearly empty auditorium. These last few weeks had been spiritually dead ones for him. Through monitoring the various teams as they had attempted to carry out their goals, he had learned that the goals of Provision 3313 had been radically different than he had been led to believe. Nobody likes to be used, but Gerard still hadn’t decided what, if anything, he could do about it. The rehab was surrounded by Zombies. The skeleton crew that remained was under siege, and they were all virtual prisoners.
The sound of the basketball ricocheted off the walls, leaving only a sonic memory of an echo. Amiko appeared at the door, and beckoned him to her.
“You need to see this,” she said, in an uncharacteristically morose tone. Behind her was a large wall full of security monitors. The center screened was focused on the front of the heavy steel front gate, which was still intact after much battering.
“It’s Dante and Gregor,” Amiko said softly.
“In the end, we all come home at last,” Gerard said, softly, almost to himself.
The two figures stood sadly, almost wistfully at the gate. Zombies walked towards them, but walked away as if uninterested. With their heads low, they looked like supplicants at the castle of a feudal lord.
“They were good, at the end. I heard about how they stuck by their team. They might have made it, maybe, if the world had not turned so crazy.” Amiko was close to tears.
“They would have made it,” Gerard responded. They watched them on the monitors for maybe a minute more, and then he picked up a CB radio lying on the small black desk, put on some earphones, and pressed a button on transmitter’s leather face.
“Reggie, do you see those two in front of the north gate? Silver Nets jacket, black coat, just standing there? Give them a clean out, would you, they were good people.”
As these words echoed, Dante and Gregor looked up; their faces contorted in horrible snarls, moments before high velocity sniper rounds tore through their brains and rendered them unto sweet oblivion.
“Hey, just another sober day, alright?” Amiko said, slowly, and with great feeling.
End of Part One