by Hugh Howey
Page 14
“A black man made these,” his father had said.
The picture showed the two sculptures looking out over the river toward Jersey, a big clock on the other side that his father said all the men in suits could see clear across the Hudson so they could manage their time, clock in and clock out, cinch up or loosen their ties.
“This is where we been,” his old man had said, tapping one of the towers. It was a blocky structure, the corners sharp and built of heavy stone. It had sections, like the body of an insect, six or seven of them. They got more squat toward the bottom, all of them pointing down into the earth. It was the saddest thing Jeffery had ever seen, this coming before he’d seen war. Something about the heavy weight of those sections, crushing each other, made it the most heartbreaking of sights.
It looked like the sculpture was being driven into the earth, the sections on top weighing the others down, the ones on the bottom squashed and flattened. And maybe those towers could represent anything a person wanted to see, but Jeffery saw what his old man saw. This was their race captured by a brother sculptor; this was the generations piling up on those that came before. Once you saw it like that, it was impossible to see anything else.
“And this is us dreamin’,” his father said, running his finger across the neighboring tower. “This is hope. ”
If the stone sculpture made Jeffery frown without knowing why, if it made his gut sink, this one made him suck in his breath. It was a sculpture crafted of air. A wire frame, twisting and weaving, pointing up like smoke rising toward the sky. It was a sister’s braids. It was a dozen long-fingered hands interlocked with glory, the blue sky caught between their palms. It was the flutter above a choir as those voices and arms and those gaping sleeves raised up and lost themselves in their own song.
A black man had made these, his father had told him. This was where he worked.
That chapter was about a man named Martin. Here were these two towers, sadness and joy, hope and resignation, side by side. It was a father on a stoop, back bent, the years driving him toward his grave. It was a son with a thrust chest and lifted chin, full of dreams and news of enlistment. It was a boy signing up for a thing he didn’t know, vigor in his limbs, hopes and wishes of becoming a man in other men’s eyes. It was a sculpture of the before and after, of that man returning home, cast out of a war he understood even less having looked it in its eyes, his belly a knot of scars from where they’d pulled out bits of Hummer, shoved him back together, sewn him up.
Jeffery felt the pull of those towers, that place, that zero ground, that wharf where his old man wrapped lines around bollards and greeted passengers while the captain stood on the deck smoking cigarettes. He felt the pull of those towers, a Pylon full of life pointing toward the heavens, one full of despair driving deep into the earth.
He had spent hours looking at that picture, but he had never seen them with his own eyes.
A block away, as he leaned south, guiding his limbs like water around a pier, he heard the sounds of a fight, the familiar pops of gunfire that used to mean grabbing your helmet and running off to kill someone. Sounds that now meant there were still people alive and able to put up a fight. Jeffery could smell living meat and fresh fear in the direction of the gunfire. Most of the tottering undead around him angled that way, picking up the pace, pushing deeper into the heart of the financial district.
But not Jeffery. He leaned on the walls of the hollow thing he’d become, this walking fist of hunger, this shell grown exhausted from not sleeping. He steered toward the unfinished skyscraper standing in the empty space where two other towers once stood, an incomplete boy trying to stand proud now that its parents were gone. He saw Winter Garden, a glass dome his father had described in whispers, these landmarks a simple walk from his home, but he had never taken the time to visit. All within reach, a long walk, that place where those towers stood, those Pylons near where his father worked, but he had never taken the time to visit. Not even back when he could.
29 • Jeffery Biggers
Jeffery knew from watching unfortunate others that he didn’t have long. Fifteen minutes? Twenty? He’d seen it go fast for neck bites. Seen it take almost an hour for that big brother who’d lost a finger and had asked to be locked down with bike chains. Decisions. Damn. He had run this shit through his mind every possible way a thousand times, but it was different now with the clock tickin’, with the sickness spreading in his veins. Damn. Fifteen minutes to off himself or to crawl away somewhere safe where he wouldn’t be eaten, where he could slip off into that gazing stupor people went into until they came back as something else.
Fifteen minutes. He gazed at the smashed window he’d come through. The frustrated gurgles and hungry groans could be heard from the alley. The dumpster was still being knocked around out there. One dive back through, he thought. Give them what they want, make sure there was nothing left. Go be bones.
The kid kicked his legs on the sofa beside him, riding an imaginary bike. Jeffery looked over and watched the boy yawn, eyes puckered shut, tiny hands waving at the air. No one would ever teach him how to ride a bike. That shit was through. This kid had no idea what he’d been born into. In fact, he looked bored, like: let’s get this over with, motherfucker.
Jeffery looked around the apartment. No lurkers. Safe, not like that mattered. It was the typical wreck he’d seen the last weeks: cabinets standing open, drawers a-kilter, nothing put back in its place. The coffee table had been used as an ashtray. It smelled like the sink had been used as a toilet. The fucking world he lived in. Used to live in. How much longer?
The goddamn kid. Jeffery felt like his own father must’ve felt. A man, terrified, stuck with this kid. Shit. Shit. How do you blame a guy? A ticket out of there, and now what? Your life was over.
He felt old. Old and tired. Was this the sickness? Was this the first thing you felt when you got bit: old? All the damn stages of life, and now this one. The baby. His old man. Him—
The kid across the alley.
Jeffery sat up. Goddamit. Ten minutes left? Fuck.
He grabbed the baby and the stupid yuppie pack. The kid squealed as Jeffery pushed away from that busted sofa with its white foam guts hanging out. The ashes on the table stirred in his wake.
The door swung open, lock busted. He didn’t pause to listen for the dragging of feet, didn’t stop to sniff for that putrified smell that sometimes preceded an attack. He’d been through the building once before, and now it didn’t matter. Fuck. How long? His foot hurt like a sonofabitch, worse than anything that’d earned him those two Purple Stars. He dripped blood and limped his way up crooked stairs that could somehow still command any damn rent they wanted. Third floor. He needed the third floor.
On the landing of the second, someone banged a door shut. Another survivor. They were like rats scurrying from the sounds of each other. People living on top of people and pretending they weren’t there. Just like it’d always been. A hotel of strangers. The only sign of a neighbor the voices from their TVs seeping through ceiling and walls. Now, not even that.
Jeffery didn’t call out, didn’t ask for help. He didn’t know this person, this rat. The kid across the alley. That’s who. No one else.
He spotted the boy again from the old apartment. The bag of chips was still there, the window still open, ugly curtains fluttering like the building was still alive, still doing its thing. Across the way, the teenager was watching the scene in the alley, the boxed-in chompers agitated and confused, stuck like fish that’d swum into a net and couldn’t figure how to get loose.
There was no clothesline from that apartment, just a jury-rigged wire for sharing cable TV, a pair of shoes hanging from its laces, a long-ago prank from laughing days.
Jeffery spotted a clothesline next door. He went down the hall to a place he’d cleared hours earlier. Putrified remains of a likely renter swung from an electrical wire in the bedroom, neck bulging.
He’d taken the lazy way out. Jeffery ignored this, wondered vaguely if he’d be eating that mess in half an hour. Or maybe he’d be going after the survivor one floor down, that rat. He forgot about this and made sure the squirming kid was in the backpack, did the restraints up tight, swung him over his shoulders. Goddamn, his foot hurt. He could feel it working up past his knee. Five minutes? Goddamn.
The window wouldn’t budge. Painted tight a long time ago. Jeffery didn’t have time for this bullshit. He could see the clothesline right out by the fire escape, but he didn’t want to go through the bedroom with the dangler, so he shoved his boot through the glass. He kicked the remaining shards out and beat the top pane with his fist to knock the hangers loose. He’d gotten good at this, he saw, busting in and out of places. Damn. A lot of talents wasted. Gone. Stupid.
He stooped real low to get outside, mindful of the kid on his back. The young man from across the way was watching him. Shit, this was a lot to saddle a young man with. A lot. Then again, giving life to someone weren’t always a gift. You’d really done something when you knocked a girl up. Done something with lasting consequences. All the good and bad in a life, all set into motion with a mindless romp.
The kid watched him, chewing something. He had food. That was good. Must be a good kid to still be around. By now they were either the best of them or the worst of them. This kid didn’t look like one of the worst of them.
The straps of the yuppie pack cinched tight to the line. There was a pair of red boxers flapping out there like some kind of flag, one of those messages the Navy cats used. Fuck, that was a different lifetime, all the fighting. This was something else.
The line squeaked around the white plastic pulley as Jeffery hauled the cord. The boxers jerked through the air like a fish, contracting as it dove forward, fins popping out when it paused. The baby with no name, a name lost with its momma, slid out after it. Squealing with delight, a cluster of foul motherfuckers down in the alley sniffing the air, the baby chased the red fish across the alley.
Jeffery looked up and saw that the kid from the window was gone. Damn, his shoulders were stiff. Fuck. Hard to move. He gritted his teeth and kept pulling in cord. Fingers would lock on the wire, but it was getting difficult to open them back up. Damn. Happening fast. Needed to sit down. Took work to breathe. Instead, he leaned against the creaky metal railing of the high fire escape and tried to grab more wire. A clothespin popped off out there in the alley and tumbled down into the orgy of undead. An infant bobbed, precarious, squealing faintly, hanging from a thread.
Jeffery couldn’t move his arms. He sagged down on stiff and tired legs, collapsed back on his ass, his pulse in his foot, but not so much blood leaking out anymore.
Hungry. He thought about those potato chips, still crisp, but they didn’t seem appetizing. He thought about that poor man swinging from a length of electrical wire in the other room, the one who’d given up, the dangler who took the lazy way. Meanwhile, an infant swung on a different wire, squealing, legs walking on empty air.
Goddamn.
The end comes slow so you can think about it. Jeffery thought of the soldier from another unit whose hand he’d held while he’d panted those thin gasps that you reckon for a man’s last. He’d watched the life spiral out of that soldier while gunfire popped all around, helicopters saying it was too hot to land. Wasn’t much later he’d been on the other end, fighting for his own lungful of air, squeezing the hand of an Iraqi militia man they were there to advise, there to hand off the deep shit to someone else, like generations coming one after another. An old man was hanging in the next room, a baby dangling from a wire, Jeffery sitting powerless in between. Nothing moving for a long moment. Nothing moving maybe ever again.
There was a squeak.
Jeffery figured it came from his own lungs, from the baby, from the dumpster far below. He’d seen that big brother with the missing finger start making noises after a period of quiet.
Another squeak.
Again.
It was the big wheel bolted to the brick, the wire sliding around. Jeffery couldn’t move, but he could gaze through the rusted bars of that fire escape and watch the red fish dart through the air, contracting and spreading its fins. He watched the child swing after, tiny hands clutching the empty air, a good boy in a different window chewing something while he accepted the impossible. Chewing something. Pulling wire. While a hunger of a different sort took hold of the man formerly known as Jeffery Biggers.
Part IV • The Leftovers
Rhoda Shay • Carmen Ruiz • Margie Sikes
30 • Rhoda Shay
The streets of New York glittered like those rare moments after a sudden hailstorm. That slice of startled time when clouds part, the sun returns, and its light catches in a field of summer ice before hot pavement vanishes it into puddles. Rhoda had seen it happen a few times in the city, frozen balls the size of her thumb falling from the sky on a hot and humid day, a thing to puzzle over before it was gone and she was left wondering what had happened, something to call a friend to verify, to turn to Google for answers.
But this wasn’t one of those long-ago days. It wasn’t hail, this glittering field. It wasn’t warm enough in the city for ice to fall from the sky. This was the weather of the apocalypse, the sign that the end times had arrived. It was streets of broken glass. Broken glass everywhere, and no one left to sweep it up.
Rhoda trudged through the glitter, unable to divert her course, and the shards crunched beneath her bare feet. The pain was intolerable, but that’s precisely what she had to do: tolerate it. There was no choice, no motor function, not really. She couldn’t even roll her feet to the outside to lessen the impact. The glass simply drove deep into her sensitive soles with every new shimmering puddle of it she crept through. Just a plodding shuffle, pure pain lancing up through her bones and into her knees, a constant flame held to the tenderness of her poor feet, all for not being adequately prepared.