Survivor (3 page)

“W
here does that leave me?”

WHe kicked at an empty drink can in the snow, looking pained. “Just go,” he said. “Soon as you can, whether you find your friend or not. Get out and don't stop until you find someplace safe.”

When the explosion happened, I was full of homesickness for Australia. Would it be wrong to turn my back on New York now, when it needed me most? For all I knew Felicity was alone out here somewhere . . . could I just leave?

Was there anything left of New York to see before I went back? Dave said his parents lived somewhere out near Williamsburg. Maybe there was still time to go and see his folks, check on life beyond this island. To tell them what a mate he'd turned out to be in the end. Or was that part of my past, never to be revisited? I knew that to survive, I had to think of the future.

“Keep heading north,” the man was saying. “Far as you can.”

“Are you sure?”

“I sent my family to Canada. That's as sure as I can tell you I am.”

“Canada's okay?”

“That's what I last heard.”

“What about Australia?”

He slung his rifle over his shoulder, adjusted the strap, then put his hood on.

“Please,” I said, “if you know something—”

He shrugged. “I've heard nothing beyond what's here and now in my backyard. That's a big enough problem for me. Just head for somewhere upstate at least. Hole up, find others, a town or somethin', safety in numbers. Keep off the major roads in your travels—there'll be more like us and worse.”

He looked down at his feet, then across at his buddies in their big-wheeled trucks, now passing through the next intersection.

“Why north?” I asked. My breath fogged in front of me, fast jets of steam.

“This illness,” he said, looking down at me, “it does better in the heat. Lives in the air, on the ground, stays active
longer,
stays
alive,
you understand?”

“No, not really.” I didn't want to sound dumb, but I felt I had to know, whether or not he took me seriously enough to explain.

“The biological agent is still a threat, see? The cold kills it, it can't live without a host for long.”

“How long?”

“I'm not sure. Days, less than a week.”

I hoped a week would be long enough to find Felicity and the others, to persuade them to come with me. Safety in numbers, right?

“But we're leaving now,” Starkey said, as if reading my thoughts.

Was that an offer?

“I can go and check on Felicity, if you wait here. I'll be quick.”

He shook his head. “Can't take no baggage, sorry, kid. I gotta go.”

I thought fast. Could I give up on my hope of finding Felicity—so fast, so easily? “If it's a problem to wait . . .”

I mean, could I even be sure that she actually existed, anyway? She could just be another illusion like Mini, Anna, and Dave. How could I trust myself after being alone all this time? Starkey hadn't looked as if he believed me, that's for sure. It'd be stupid to let this opportunity of rescue, of safety, to slip through my fingers because I'd run off to find someone who wasn't there.

Then again, if I found Felicity and came back, Starkey might not be here because he didn't exist either. But this had to be real, didn't it? I couldn't have made up what he was saying about the chemical agent. About all that noise and shooting just now . . .

I shook my head clear. No, Starkey was
real
. Felicity was
real
. The choice was
real
.

“Please, can't I come with you now?”

I was about to argue the point when he grabbed the front of my coat, held me, almost in the air. I waited for him to toss me to the ground or yell in my face.

“You find some other survivors like you 'round here like I said. You stick with them and head north, far as you can. You follow us and you're dead. Ain't nothin' more I can do for you, same as there ain't nothin' I can do to stop my guys from protecting themselves if they see you as a threat.”

“That's why you can't take me?”

“That and more.” Starkey put me down. I no longer thought any of them were really military guys—they didn't fit the part. American soldiers wouldn't leave me like this. They wouldn't look like this—uniforms, sure, but not with the different haircuts and weapons and stuff. His backpack was like the one I had for school. They looked about my dad's age or older.

But none of that mattered. None of them turned around. No one seemed to notice me, not even my guy Starkey. They left me standing there, alone.

S
o I followed them, carefully keeping out of their way. A block. Two. On the third, they stopped and sent one of the men ahead on foot. The next intersection was impassable, even for their heavy trucks. They could push vehicles aside, one by one, but here was what remained of a tall building, now a three-story mountain of jagged rubble, covering the street. There was a lot of arguing and pointing, as they looked at what must have been maps or aerial photographs to find another route to wherever they were headed.

I kept checking over my shoulder, but there was nothing, no Chasers. Wherever they were, they weren't out in the open today. But I still felt their presence, always there, lurking, watching, hunting.

The wind died down and it started to snow more heavily. Silent curtains of falling white powder. The clouds were dark. My neck and face were numb, my feet frozen. I sheltered in an alcove across the street and watched the convoy. They were shiny new monsters of things, jacked up on high suspension with chunky tractor tires eating into the snow. But the tops of the trucks—the hoods and canvas cargo covers—had been spray-painted white, for camouflage, I guess.

The men continued to argue among themselves. The driver of the second truck was guided by the driver of the first, who now stood on the roof of a crashed taxi, pointing to an easy path to clear.

The drivers got back into their cabs, and the first truck inched steadily forward, creating a path through the rubble mountain that seemed impassable from this vantage. Not even a couple of dozen cars and vans in the tangle could stop it from pushing on, its chunky tires never losing traction. They'd be through in maybe ten minutes. I'd forgotten the kind of power and freedom that a decent vehicle can provide. My twelve days of trekking and exploring had been limited to what I could achieve on my own two legs with the occasional help of a standard police car that I'd called my own.

While the first truck ploughed on, a couple of soldiers went into the lobby of a nearby office building, set up a propane burner, and put some water on the boil. Starkey crossed the street, headed my way, stopping a few paces before me. He was silent, as if he couldn't bring himself to tell me to beat it again. He pushed some snow off a bench and sat down.

The more time I spent with him, the less like a soldier he seemed. His eyes may even have been kind—they were not hard, not mean or evil.

“Thanks for before,” I said, and sat next to him. “My name's Jesse.”

He undid his coat's collar. “I don't want to know that.”

He looked back at his buddies. One walked over, passing him a tin cup of steaming coffee. This soldier, short and stocky with big bloodshot eyes, was all anger, all simmering rage, keen to take the fight to someone. I knew that feeling.

I said to them, “Try heading west two blocks, then down—”

“If I wanted your opinion I'd have asked for it,” the hostile guy snapped.

“I only—”

“You've got a big mouth, kid.” He shot Starkey a look before walking back to his friends.

Starkey passed me his coffee. I turned it down and he said, “Not from around here, are you?”

I shook my head.

“You were here on holiday?”

“Something like that,” I replied.

“Well, aren't you right out of luck.”

“Where's the help?”

“You're lookin' at it.”

“Serious?”

“Yep.” He took off his gloves and placed them on the ground.

“Then I sure am out of luck.”

He nodded, sipping the steaming brew through his thick gray moustache. The snow caught in his stubble and softened his appearance.

“There're some roadblocks farther up on the major arterials leading outta here; that's about as much a response to this as I've seen.”

“Where's the government?”

“That's a million dollar question, kid,” he said.

“So what about the roadblocks?” I said. Something shifted in my stomach: butterflies, excitement, possibility. “Does that . . . What does that mean?”

“Means roads in and out are blocked.”

“But, it means other places are okay outside of New York?”

“No, kid, it's not just here. Like I said before.” He looked up at the sky, squinted against the glare of the dull sun hiding behind a dull gray sky. “They're up there, too. Watching. Counting. Got drones and whatnot buzzing around. They're just trying to contain the worst of this wherever they can, see?”

No, I didn't. I had a million questions. “
You
got through. How'd you get here, onto Manhattan? The bridges are down, the tunnels are . . .”

He nodded.

“Because you guys are soldiers?”

He smiled. “I look like a soldier?”

“You're dressed like one.”

“We found a way around,” he said. “Wasn't easy, though. Trucks helped, guns too.”

I tried asking again. “What are you doing here?”

“Doesn't matter.”

“I don't think you'd risk being here if it didn't matter,” I probed.

“I mean it doesn't matter to you.”

Okay. It wasn't so much what he said as the way he said it. Everything mattered to me: any sign of life, any ray of hope. He wasn't going to understand that, though, not in the few minutes we had to talk. I imagined what it would be like to be in the back of their truck, protected. They'd do whatever they had to do here and then we'd all leave, go someplace where it was warm and the people were friendly and there would be news and answers.

“Is this war?”

“We've been at war for a while now,” he said. He squinted at the demolished high-rise on the block and there was real anger there. “This is the next step. Difference is, the frontline is now here; right here on
our
doorstep.”

Which war? On terror? In the Middle East?

His friends hollered to him. The break was over, they were moving out.

“Look, I gotta go,” he said, slapping me on the shoulder, looking in my eyes like my dad had when he'd said good-bye to me at the airport. “Keep safe, kid. Keep your head down.”

“No! Wait! So, this roadblock, it means there's heaps of uninfected out there?”

“Because of a roadblock? No.” One glove, two. “Like I said, they're doing that to keep the worst of everything here in this place. You got a massive congregation here, millions of people packed dense, no telling what'd happen to small towns out there that might so far be uninfected if they—all these contaminants—get out of here.”

I didn't like that he called them “contaminants.” They were people. Sick, sure, but they didn't want to be that way. Their trucks started up again. So loud.

“But you can't catch this infection.”

“What are you? A doctor?” he gave a sideways grin, tipping out the rest of his coffee onto the snow where it melted down to the pavement.

I was silent. He was right. How the hell was I sure you couldn't catch this? Because
I
hadn't? What if it was transferred from the infected through blood or saliva?

Plenty of diseases and viruses were passed like that. And maybe I was only safe because I hadn't been bitten yet. I'd thought the risk was over, that because I'd avoided catching the virus initially, I'd avoided it altogether.

“Think about it this way,” he said. “No one's come in to fix this up yet, have they? So as big and serious as the situation is here, must be a lot worse elsewhere, yeah?”

It felt awful to hear him say what I'd been thinking. I sat there. Watching him leave, again. He wavered this time.

“You got a gun?” he asked me.

“Not with me.”

“Want one?” he asked, showing me a small pistol holstered to his belt.

I shook my head. “I've survived until now, haven't I?”

“That you have,” he said. He gave me a half-smile, and I couldn't help but feel somewhat better seeing it, the first real smile in twelve days.

I stared at the ground, trying to think of ways to stay talking to him, of somehow convincing him to let me tag along. I wouldn't be in their way. I could help them.

“For what it's worth,” he said, “I knew as soon as I saw you.”

“Knew what?”

“You're a survivor.”

T
he weather eased and snow feathered down. I walked warily, always checking behind me, keeping in the middle of the street, clear from dark storefronts and what might hide within them, following the footsteps of the soldiers. For almost half an hour I ambled. The city was silent but for the diminishing hum of the trucks. The clouds grew dark. I passed countless billboards, advertising goods that were no longer for sale. I walked on, falling farther behind them, a lone rear guard.

The foreign, man-made rumble of engines had been music to my ears; now it was a fading sound and I didn't want it to end. It was the noise that kept me there in the soldiers' wake, and stopped me from returning to Central Park to find Felicity. It reminded me of how noisy I thought this city was when I first encountered it, how busy. Now, look: the American dream replaced by a nightmare for anyone left to witness it.

Starkey was walking out front of his group, scanning the way. Once, he turned around and saw me. He didn't wave, didn't threaten, just clocked me and continued on.

There was gunfire from afar and it made them pause, made them look around all ways and—

A noise, near, to my right.

I looked at the row of storefronts—dark open mouths of broken glass and shadows. There was a disturbance coming from the one next to me: the sound of a falling can, the scrape and shuffling of deliberate movement.

I'd only taken a step backwards, just one, before a face appeared. Dark eyes peered at me from around the doorway, filled with the vacant gaze of the infected. It was a man who'd been reduced to a thirsty shell, with sunken cheeks and cracked lips, dried red blood around his mouth and down his neck.

A Chaser. The hunter kind.

He was tall, hunched over, imposing and inquisitive, and as he watched me he became more alert.

I didn't move.

He did.

He came out of the shop and stood on the sidewalk, watching me. Eyes only for me. I'd almost forgotten what these ones looked like up close. Nothing redeeming. His bare hands were black, hanging by his side, dead weights. His gaze took me in, read me, my fear. Then his expression shifted, as he realized what I had to offer and that he had a chance at it. He zeroed in on me, his intent clear, his decision made.

He came at me, a few steps and then a sprint. I backed away and slipped, crashing to the ground as the Chaser pounced, literally launching off his feet at me as I lay cowering.

CRACK! A gunshot rang out loud, echoing about the canyonlike streets.

The Chaser was blown back a few yards. He hit a wall, dead. His chest displayed a single hole; black-red-brown, so little blood, hollow, empty, dehydrated. He was still, motionless. Graveyard dead.

I remembered when I'd shot the Chaser out in front of 30 Rock. The noise of the gun going off had seemed too loud as it echoed around the empty streets of Midtown Manhattan. I'd looked at the Chaser and at the gun in my hand. Then I'd run to the gutter and thrown up.

A block up the street, my soldier friend coolly brought his rifle down, its barrel smoking. With neither a wave nor a word he turned and walked away.

Half an hour later when my heart had stopped pounding and the soldiers were long gone, I picked up my backpack from where I'd ditched it the day before: around the corner of West 73rd Street, off Broadway. I retrieved my jacket, too—a big FDNY fireman's coat—crumpled and stiff with cold. From the backpack I took out a bag of dried fruit and a bottle of juice, then I put the big jacket on over the puffy one I already wore, looped the bag's straps over my shoulders, clipped the fastener around my stomach, picked up my breakfast and started off, eastward.

 

My only clue as to Felicity's whereabouts was the spot in the park where we'd each seen Chasers around a fire. They may still be there, she may be with them. I imagined finding her and telling her everything I'd just learned from Starkey—it wasn't much, but it was a hundred percent more information than I'd had since this attack began.

Across the street, I stopped and turned around. I took it all in. A convenience store, its window cracked. I looked at myself in the reflection of the glass and moved closer, pushing my nose against the cold surface, seeing nothing but myself. I rested my weary head against the window and closed my eyes.

This was where I'd last seen Anna, Mini, and Dave; that final glance of broken friends through broken glass. It was here I'd said good-bye, taken off my backpack and ran. I hadn't even bothered to take the gun from my bag—there had been too many Chasers after us and it would only have been good for one thing and I wasn't interested in that. The gun was still there, I felt it, in a side pocket, next to a little wind-up flashlight. I could reach them both now within a second, if I wanted to. Yesterday I'd stood right here on Broadway and ripped the bandages off my bloodied hands and attracted them, let them chase after
me
. Now this place was empty of life, not a Chaser to be seen.

Not even a full day had passed since saying good-bye and yet I struggled to think of what my friends looked like. If this was what just a few hours could do, what would I forget tomorrow? What would I have left by next week? I kept my friends alive in my heart but could no longer conjure their faces.

I opened my eyes and took a deep breath. The street around me was empty. What did I have now—a life with no one in it? A life with the possibility of finding Felicity, who I knew only from a tiny little video screen? What I wanted was company, what I needed was to get home. My life was about getting off this island—through that roadblock—and the possibility of finding Felicity gave me purpose. Since seeing Felicity's recording, I knew I'd made the right choice. I knew she would lead me home.

Inside, the store was dark and most of the shelves were bare. I took some canned food—soups, fruit, creamed rice—a couple of bottles of soft drink, some blocks of chocolate, a small box of cereal and some long-life milk. I zipped up my backpack, slipped it back on, and felt its weight.

I took the little wind-up flashlight from my backpack's side pocket, flicked it on and wound it up bright to look around on the floor in the back aisle. There was rotting food on the tiles, melting and stewing, and bags of frozen food ripped apart and plundered where they lay—dogs, maybe rats, had been here. I remembered hearing somewhere that Manhattan had like seventeen million rats for every person. Maybe it was a joke, but if that were true, it'd now be more like seventeen billion to one. Maybe they were swarming under the city, somewhere warm probably, smarter than me, thriving in this new world . . . I headed for Central Park.