“It’s okay,” Kyle tells her, his tone soothing. “It’s okay, Abigail.”
Doyle eases down on the accelerator and they pick up speed again. There’s less garbage in the street here, but the surface is bad, and immediately the jeep starts to bounce. The woman stares at the oncoming vehicle with neither fear nor interest. With maybe ten feet still separating them, she scurries aside, into a doorway. It belongs to a small convenience store, and as they roar past, Doyle spots more figures crowded in the gloom. He can’t see their eyes, but he can feel their gaze.
“Which way?” he asks.
The question draws Kyle back to reality. “Take the next…no, the second left,” he mutters. “Stay on there. I need time to work this out.”
Doyle does as instructed – and slams the brake, flinging them both to the limits of their seat belts and drawing an indignant yelp from the girl. The street, a residential district of four-story brownstones, is blocked not far ahead by two police cars, sunk down on flattened tires. The gaps between them and to either side have been cemented with furniture, everything from armchairs to a wood-framed double bed. There’s no possible route through.
“Can we turn around?” Kyle says.
Doyle’s eyes flicker over the mirrors. “Yes.”
“Then go back. Take that last left.”
Rather than turn, Doyle reverses at a furious pace, slams on the brakes just past the junction, and noses in. This way is clear, and a turnoff farther up returns them to the original road, a few feet past the barricade. There are signs that this entrance had been blocked as well, but only the parked cars remain, with a sufficient breach for the jeep.
By then, Kyle seems to have his course figured out. His next directions are delivered with more confidence. Within a minute, they’re onto a major road, which leads into an affluent district of apartments and offices in multistory towers. Here, there’s room to maneuver. The Sickers they see keep their distance and appear to be travelling alone, as though these citadels of glass and steel intimidate them. Those who stayed in the city were the ones unable to evacuate, which meant those too poor to find a means of escape. Doyle suspects they’re keeping to the areas they knew before.
A turn later, things go wrong again. The road Kyle proposes is cut off diagonally by an armored personnel carrier, and the signs of destruction beyond imply that it wasn’t abandoned without a fight. One building in particular has been torn like wet paper and now droops into the street, held together by who-knows-what.
“We can go right,” Kyle suggests. “Get around that way.”
But the detour is nearly as bad, a return to the narrow thoroughfares Doyle had been hoping to avoid. The hum of the jeep’s engine is already drawing out Sickers; they tumble from doorways, visibly arrested between fight and flight. Doyle starts to speed up.
“Left,” Kyle says. “Next left, then the right straight after.”
They get through the left okay, but the right is impassable. Fire has devastated both blocks, leaving them as a landslide of gray sludge.
“Left,” Kyle yells. “Now, left!”
Doyle’s last-moment swerve carries them onto the sidewalk and inches from a wall. The tires squeal in protest. Behind, Abigail takes up the note, keening in alarm. More houses here, windows at street level gaping, stairs ascending to torn-open doors. The jeep begins to roar, their speed inappropriate to the cramped space. Are there Sickers everywhere or only a few, multiplied in his mind by adrenalin? In that instant, Doyle feels that the city is purposefully dragging them from where they need to be.
“That alley.” Kyle points. “Do you see it?”
“Hell!” Doyle protests.
Still, he goes for it – a second too late. The jeep comes up hard this time, throwing them left, metal melding into brick. The alley is barely wide enough to hold them and thick with ancient trash, the stink foul even through closed windows. Doyle knows instinctively that the sick have been feeding here. It’s in their expressions, their slack-jawed perturbation – and, now that he looks, one is clutching a rag of bloodied fur in both hands, another licking smeared crimson from its lips.
Trying to wrestle the jeep free brings a screech of scraping metal. Their front-right corner has compacted against the wall, and his efforts appear to be worsening the damage. Doyle can feel the wheels spinning helplessly beneath them. The Sickers shift, uncertain.
Doyle gives up on accelerating, slams them into reverse. Only the pitch of the metal-tearing sound changes. The nearest Sicker is a dozen feet away. Its mouth is open, displaying gobbets of half-chewed rat.
“Johnson,” Kyle chokes, “please…you’ve got to—”
“Calm down,” Doyle says.
The Sicker advances, his mouth turning up in a dripping smirk. From the rear seat, Abigail keens a steady, piercing note. Doyle switches back to accelerating. But the jeep still isn’t moving. The metal-on-brick shriek merely changes its tempo again. The Sicker is regarding them with fascination. He wipes one filth-dark hand across his lips, seemingly oblivious to the stripe of red he leaves.
Doyle reverses. The jeep screams, an awful dying-animal noise. They move fractionally and stick. He drags the wheel down, and with a lurch the jeep finally comes loose, to shudder backward.
Just briefly, for Doyle is accelerating, into the alley and toward the Sickers. They have an instant to measure this new development, and then they’re running. Doyle has no desire to plow through them. All else aside, the jeep can’t take many more hits. He revs the engine, staying close upon their heels, until they tumble together into the open. One, however, he inadvertently clips as they break the mouth of the alley: the man who was nearest, the rat-eater. He spins like a dancer, once, twice, before he tumbles to the asphalt.
Doyle swings left, onto the new road, leaving their entourage rapidly behind. “Where are we going?” he asks. His own voice sounds leaden with forced composure.
Kyle’s answer is a wordless croak.
“Kyle, where are we going?”
“Ah….”
Doyle manages to catch his eye. “Get it together.”
Somehow, that’s enough to draw Kyle back. “Keep straight,” he says, only a little shakily. He takes a moment to consider. “We’ll hit a junction at the end. Turn right, and two thirds of the way down there’s another right. That’s where we want to be.”
This time, thankfully, the route is clear. They encounter nothing worse than wreckage that Doyle can maneuver easily around. Nor, as they turn onto the final street, is there any difficulty in identifying the building they seek. It’s large and distinctive, three floors done out in mock-renaissance style, with an elaborate first level of white stone distinguished by a grand portico yielding to stories of red brick and plainly framed sash windows. A sign over the door reads ‘Alexis Hotel’, but it’s chipped and faded, a relic of an age long passed. There’s no means to guess at the building’s function in the years since, if it’s had any at all.
Its role in recent months, though, is unmistakable. Its obvious purpose in the face of the sickness is the reason they couldn’t have missed it, for what was once the Alexis Hotel has become a fortress.
Chapter Forty-Four
She descends in darkness, nor daring to use the flashlight. Is it possible they would have set guards? Aaronovich can think of no reason for them to do so, but then she can think of no reason for the destruction in the cellblock, or the overturning of the stores, or for assaulting Contreras. She has already decided that she will no longer expect rational behavior from anyone besides herself.
With that in mind, it doesn’t surprise her when she hears soft footsteps upon the stairs behind her.
Aaronovich pauses to let Carlita catch up. At the bottom of the stairwell, she realizes she can go no farther without a light. The blackness is absolute. She takes the flashlight from her pocket, uses it to find the door, and flicks it off onc
e more. However, the passage is every bit as dark. It’s one thing to imagine the convicts might have left someone on watch, but that anybody would be waiting in this obscurity is sheer paranoia. Aaronovich cups her palm around the flashlight and turns it on again.
Like that, she makes her way toward where she believes the stores to be. She can hardly remember the route, and doubts Carlita will be any help. Aaronovich has to fight the impulse to vacillate, the fear that she’ll get lost in these passages and have the two of them wandering all through the remainder of the night. It’s simply a matter of keeping her head. Everything from here onward will come down to that. She has to be the person who stays calm, because there’s no one else.
And she isn’t lost. There before them is the back door into the stores. It doesn’t surprise her to see it left wide open. Aaronovich places a hand on Carlita’s arm – Go slowly – clicks off the flashlight, and creeps forward.
At first, she can discern no light beyond the doorway. It takes a moment’s adjustment to register the slender windows high in two walls, filtering moonlight that smudges black to deepest gray. Only then does she make out the dim form curled upon the concrete floor, apparently too small to be a person.
“Contreras?” she whispers.
The figure shudders.
“Contreras, it’s Doctor Aaronovich.”
“Doctor?” His voice is fragile.
“Can you walk?”
“What?”
“Can you walk?”
“Walk? Where to?”
Contreras seems bewildered. Her initial thought is that maybe he has a head injury, that he doesn’t understand. Her second is that, in fact, it’s a reasonable question, and not one she has a sensible answer to.
She kneels beside him. “Upstairs,” she says, deciding as the words form on her lips. “Somewhere safe.”
Contreras sits slowly. Even in the darkness, his movements speak eloquently of pain. When he’s halfway to his feet, Aaronovich offers him her shoulder, wrapping an arm about his waist. He’s light as a bird, lighter than any grown man should be.
“It’s going to be all right,” she tells him.
Carlita takes Contreras’s other arm and together they support him. Once they’re well clear of the stores, Aaronovich clicks the flashlight back on, no longer able to shield its beam with her hand. She’s confident that there’s no one to see. The convicts won’t return tonight. Soon, tomorrow perhaps, they’ll begin to search the Big House methodically. Plan John’s former rooms will prove irresistible. But it’s plain from the way they’ve left Contreras that, in the meantime, they have little concern for security. Surely they know by now that Johnson is gone, and without him, who is there to secure against?
The stairs prove most difficult. Contreras is regaining some of his strength, but she suspects that he’s concussed. He finds the narrow steps inordinately complicated. Exhausted, feeling no triumph, Aaronovich stops at the summit and, with Carlita’s help, lays Contreras down. Supine, he takes up much of the space within the tiny rooftop shelter. Aaronovich doesn’t like the idea of staying inside the Big House, but it’s cold and getting colder, and adding exposure to Contreras’s maladies will help nothing. Having made him as comfortable as is possible, Aaronovich inspects his injuries by the glare of the flashlight.
They’ve beaten him extensively and randomly, with no evidence of mercy: not trying to kill him, perhaps not in any meaningful sense trying to hurt him, only inflicting violence for its own sake. Strangely, that reassures her. It makes everything she’s done in the last forty-eight hours seem more rational. She’s glad that the ones who did this will never have the resources of her infirmary. She’s glad that their final use should be here and now, in attempting to repair the damage those men inflicted.
“Can you help him?” Carlita asks.
“I think so.”
“And then what?”
“Then,” Aaronovich tells her, “we see what happens.”
Yet as she says the words, she knows they’re untrue. There’s one course remaining and it’s perfectly clear, like a silver thread unraveling through the night.
The only one way left to them is the way that leads out of Funland.
Chapter Forty-Five
Johnson makes a U-turn past the entrance, chooses his spot with care, and cuts the engine. There are no Sickers visible as yet, but it seems to Kyle a safe bet that the noise of the jeep’s arrival will draw attention.
The doors of the hotel have been reinforced with metal plating and ringed with a gunner’s nest of sandbags and broken furniture, while the majority of the first- and second-floor windows boast thick wooden boards. “What now?” Kyle asks.
Johnson is scanning the mirrors and Kyle’s gaze follows his. This time, he does spy Sickers, though a good distance behind them.
“You’re sure you want to chance this?” Johnson says.
“Of course I’m sure.”
“Okay. Then we’re getting out and onto the roof. We’re directly under an open window. I think I can hoist you up. Once you’re in, you need to find a way back down here. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“Then go.”
Kyle pushes through the door of the jeep, pulse beginning to race. He can distinguish the Sickers clearly; they’re keeping their distance, just watching. Kyle clambers onto the hood and from there to the roof. As Johnson indicated, two of the second-floor windows, including the one above, have been knocked out and left unboarded.
Moments later, Johnson is alongside him. He’s carrying the rucksack that contains all of their remaining food and water, and Kyle notes the grip of the pistol poking from his jacket pocket. Lacing his fingers, Johnson leans closer to the wall. Kyle takes one deep breath and places his right foot in Johnson’s hands, flattening his palms against the boarded first-floor window.
“On three,” Johnson says. “One…two….”
Kyle is unprepared for how strong Johnson is. On three he’s practically flung upward, and he barely manages to clutch at the ledge before his head and shoulders are through the gaping window. He pins a forearm over the frame, and then Johnson’s hands are grasping both of his feet and shoving, and Kyle has no choice but to scrabble until weight and momentum give him the leverage he needs.
Kyle tumbles onto bare floorboards, unsettling billows of dust. Taking a moment to catch his breath, he looks back out the window and downward, at Johnson perched upon the roof of the jeep. Johnson is holding up in one hand the rucksack containing their food supplies, and in the other the pistol.
Leaning, Kyle takes the rucksack, hesitates over the gun. “What about you and Abigail?”
“We’ll be safe in the jeep.”
Kyle is doubtful. Then again, the gun has done them no good so far. Reaching, he takes that as well.
“Be quick,” Johnson tells him. “Get those doors open.”
Kyle ducks back inside, peers around to get his bearings. He’s in a long corridor, with behind him the windows, most of them boarded and two knocked clean of glass, presumably for exactly the purpose that Kyle has just taken advantage of. Ahead of him are a series of doors, marked with faded brass numbers that increase in sequence. A hotel, then, like the sign says, but the general air of decay makes him think that the place was vacant long before even the sickness.
Farther along the passage is a sign to stairs. Kyle follows it and, sure enough, beyond the next door is a stairwell. The first floor is much like the second, except that the carpet remains, striped in blue and gray and badly scuffed, and of course the numbering on the doors is different. Also, the corridor he’s come out in is considerably shorter, ending in a diagonal wall and another door.
That deposits Kyle in what must have been a lobby, a fact betrayed by its general shape and a darker stain where the front desk once sat. The room has been thoroughly gutted, more so than the hallways, as
if redevelopment work was begun here and hurriedly abandoned.
It only occurs to Kyle as he looks toward the double doors that they might be locked. His heart lurches at the prospect of having to explore alone. But the doors are secured in far simpler fashion: brackets have been fixed to either side and a thick bar of timber laid between. The beam is extraordinarily heavy, surely never intended to be moved by one person. Kyle merely needs to shove it aside, however, and that at least is possible. The beam strikes the floor with a tremendous crash, loud enough that he has no doubt Johnson will have heard from outside.
Kyle drags the leftmost door open, carving an arc in the thick grime. As he’d supposed, Johnson is there ready. Behind him, Kyle can see the Sickers he noticed earlier, still grouped far down the street, though perhaps nearer than they’d been before.
“No problems?” Johnson asks.
Kyle shakes his head. “Place seems empty.”
“No reason not to be careful.” Johnson’s eyes stray to the pistol Kyle is clutching.
Kyle hands back the gun, grateful to be free of its weight. In return, Johnson presses something into his palm, and it takes Kyle a moment to understand that it’s the key to the jeep.
“Johnson….”
“This is the deal,” Johnson says, no room for argument in his voice. He pushes past, into the foyer, and it dawns on Kyle that Johnson has no intention of going back for Abigail.
“Wait.” Kyle looks in the direction of the jeep, where Abigail is squatting on her haunches, observing through the gap in the seats. “We can’t just leave her.”
“She’s safer there,” Johnson tells him.
“No, she isn’t. And she’s going to draw attention. You know I’m right.” Belatedly, Kyle remembers that Johnson has given him the key. He dashes toward the jeep, squeezing around the edge of the barricade. He expects at any second to feel Johnson’s hand hauling him back. But it doesn’t come, and when Kyle glances over his shoulder, Johnson hasn’t moved from the doorway. Ahead, in the near distance, the Sickers are watching him. He counts six, all men, none of them older than about thirty.
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