City Under the Moon (23 page)

They reached the end of the hall, where Elizabeth locked the wheelchair into the automatic stair lift. It was gracious of the owner to install it (well, gracious and required by law), but the damn thing was aggravating and slow. A Chinese couple carrying small, puffy-jacketed kids passed them on the single flight of stairs. But where was everyone else?

She got her answer when they stepped outside.

Everyone had broken the curfew. The streets were packed. Guards with whistles and bullhorns urged the crowd to keep moving.

So demoralizing.

A cop helped her get Mom down the ramp and over the curb. Then he pointed west and repeated his mantra: “Straight to Roosevelt Park, then left to Hester.” And just like that, he lost interest in them.

The five blocks to the park wasn’t that bad. In fact, it was kind of comforting to be surrounded by so many people moving in the same direction. It was freezing and she’d worn too many layers, so she was both sweating and shivering. Mom finally stopped asking questions, and eventually she fell asleep beneath her badass old-lady sunglasses.

Trouble began when they reached Forsyth Street Park, a half-block of playground on five feet of raised brick. It was time to turn left and head south for two blocks, past the intersection at Grand to reach the YMCA on Hester. But the crowd on Forsyth was jam-packed and still thickening with budgers from Grand.

Guards scanned the crowd from cherry-picker platforms in the park. Things were surprisingly calm.

Sometimes her ridiculous height was a blessing. From six-two, she could see all the way to the YMCA. They had arranged the checkpoint on an outdoor track behind the building. Only more stagnation down there.

Once they crossed the bridge, Elizabeth figured she could use the Magic Penis to get them onto a train to Florida. “Magic Penis” was her nickname for her credit card because it went in, made magic happen, and then came back out and never had to account for anything. They’d head down to visit her father’s shrewish sister, Aunt “anything-but-a” Joy.

Unless she heard from Lon. This would be a great excuse to visit him in Ohio. But cell service was out, which meant no texts. He couldn’t get in touch with her even if he tried.

And she hoped he was trying.

***

An hour later, they hadn’t moved a dozen feet. In fact, the endless merging of traffic from either side of Grand made it feel as if they were moving backward. The crowd’s dueling radios were in a constant argument over volume.

Plus? These assholes were starting to smell.
Bad
.

Elizanthrope wasn’t going to talk to anyone if she could avoid it, but she heard others passing the word: Scientists inside the YMCA were going to test people under lamps that re-created moonlight, but they hadn’t started yet. Nobody knew why.

They hadn’t started yet.

***

Another hour. It was almost two. The last twenty minutes were spent fumbling to replace Mom’s oxygen tank. Pushing had gotten bad. Courtesy was failing.

***

A half-hour later, a commotion brewed at the front of the crowd. Waves of screaming and pushing spread backward from the YMCA. Even skyscraper Elizabeth couldn’t see what happened.

The radios said every exit was overflowing. People toward the back of the lines should consider returning home and locking down.

No way. They were already here. So close. The authorities
had
to figure this out. How could they not?

***

Three o’clock. The temperature had dropped, and ominous clouds arrived. Mom hadn’t said a word in hours. Elizabeth didn’t know when the moon was set to rise, but curfew started at five.

She tried to hold onto hope, but they hadn’t moved at all for almost a half-hour after that disturbance, and even now it was excruciatingly slow. They hadn’t even reached Grand yet.

And the crowd was packed so tight that they had no choice but to relieve themselves in their clothes. That tug in her chest was her hope being drowned.

If they were going to turn back, they couldn’t wait long.

***

By three-thirty, authorities began ordering people to return to their homes. The crowd revolted, but police and military unapologetically quashed them. Soon the paddy wagons lining the street were stuffed with troublemakers. Unfortunately, those folks were probably the safest and most comfortable around.

A policeman told her they could stay because of Mom’s condition. But moving forward still wasn’t happening.

***

At four, police closed off Grand and stemmed the flow coming west on Hester. There were still hundreds of people in front of them, if not thousands, but at least that number wouldn’t increase.

The cold had woken Mom up. She asked Elizabeth to take her home, again and again and again.

***

Five o’clock.

Five-twenty.

Less than an hour left in Mom’s last oxygen tank.

She was drenched beneath her pink hoodie and leather jacket. A repugnant odor wafted from her armpits.

And it had started snowing. Wonderful.

They were only forty yards north of Hester now, still on Forsyth. She could see onto the YMCA track.

They’d set up a fucking
firing squad.

Six civilians stepped in front of the guns. A lamp threw purple light on them, and they stood in the rifles’ sights for long, nerve-wracking moments. And then the guards escorted them beyond the track as the next group rotated in.

Culling groups of six from this crowd would be like emptying a sandbox six grains at a time. She looked back toward Broome. She wanted so badly to stay. The cops told her to stay. But she was losing faith. And maybe she was crazy, but it seemed like there were fewer cops around. Were they smarter than—

There was a commotion on the track. The group scrambled as a woman contorted under the purple light. The cops had tackled one man, probably her husband. His screams gave way to her howls until the whole miserable thing was silenced by the firing squad.

“We’re going home, Mom.”

Elizabeth whipped the wheelchair around and hauled ass, pushing her legs to
wake the fuck up
. The crowd was more courteous to make way for them in this direction—less competition, after all. She didn’t want to use her mother as a battering ram, but she could at least make threats.

They quickly reached a police barricade blocking late arrivals. There weren’t any cops around, so she moved it herself. After so long in the dense crowd, it was refreshing (and a little eerie) to stare down a virtually abandoned Forsyth Street.

She pushed as hard as she could, retracing their path north along the park, all the while cursing herself for never following through on her resolutions to take up jogging. But seriously, who the fuck runs when nobody’s chasing them? Her shins caught fire and her lungs went supernova, and she couldn’t hear anything but her own—

What was that?

She stopped and held her breath, and then ripped off her hat and shook out her hair to clear her ears.

Howls.

Erupting through the sky, coming from every direction, each one answering the last until they became a chorus.

Howls
. Fuck her luck.

Her instinct was to turn back, just so she wouldn’t be alone. But they wouldn’t offer any protection. The crowd would probably attract the werewolves. Shit, some of them might even transform.

Nowhere to go but home.

She kept up a steady pace, trying to regulate her breathing. That’s what joggers did, right? The police posts and cherry-pickers were abandoned; the police had moved forward as the crowd diminished.

Those paddy wagons were still parked on the grass. Five of them, lined up side by side, each filled with handcuffed troublemakers. The last one was quaking. Screams emanated from inside.

Elizabeth watched it curiously, not slowing down but—

The back door blasted open to reveal a man convulsing on the floor, like he was having a seizure. His hands were cuffed behind him. The other prisoners were pulling against their own restraints and trying to kick him to death.

When they saw her, they pleaded for help.
Get the cops! Get us out!

But there were no cops around. The man on the floor threw back his head and howled. Elizabeth ran as fast as she could, forget the fucking breathing.

“What’s happening in there?” Mom asked.

Elizabeth didn’t waste her breath on an answer. She forged ahead and closed her eyes when those pleas became gurgles.

Everything seemed to be moving. Trash cans, cars, street signs. She couldn’t watch it all at once. The trees in the shadowy park were playing tricks with her imagination, so she turned right at the next block.

Grand Avenue’s squashed buildings were of little comfort, with their Byzantine fire escapes and confusing signs in Vietnamese or Chinese or Mandarin or whatever the hell it was. As she ran past, a Chinese family was locking the steel security gate of their market with themselves on the inside. They looked at her with detached curiosity, probably the same expression she showed those guys in the paddy wagon.

Make no mistake,
their eyes said.
Everyone for themselves.
Desperate as she was, Elizanthrope had spent her life talking that talk, now she had to speedwalk that walk.

A bright orange awning beckoned her toward the intersection at Eldridge. An NYPD cruiser shot past and she ran into the street, waving at their rearview mirrors. They honked at her—whatever that meant—and never turned back.

She continued on, fighting the exhaustion, the urge to just collapse and wait. The street signs had given way to English; now they were advertising furniture stores and electronic repair shops. Lights were off. Gates were down.

The apocalypse is here, Elizabeth. Didn’t you know?

In the sky above, something flew from rooftop to rooftop. Was it a bird? Fucksicles, please let it be a bird.

They finally reached the intersection at Allen. Dead trees lined the street’s center island. A woman ran past on the far side, squawking lunatic noises. She looked at Elizabeth with wide—

And then it emerged from behind parked cars, a blur of dark hair in pursuit, loping like some kind of canine horse, gaining on the poor woman—

“Eaaaaaaaaaa!
” she screamed!
“Heeeeeeeeeaaaa!”

Elizabeth ran harder than ever, praying that thing wouldn’t turn back. The woman’s screams faded until Elizabeth couldn’t tell if they were real or in her imagination.

They’re real. They’re real. They’re real.

“Lizzy, what’s happening?” Mom asked. “Have we had dinner yet?”

She forged ahead on Grand, across white street paint declaring “SCHOOL X-ING.” An ambulance had crashed into a light pole on the northeast corner of Orchard. The driver was still in the front seat, bleeding from his forehead. He looked at her with the same detached curiosity as the Chinese family. He knew she wasn’t going to help him, no point in asking. In one of the high-rise condos farther down the street, a mid-level floor was puffing smoke, nearly obscuring the people gathered on the roof and waving for help.

She turned left onto Orchard, just a block from home. So close now. The wheelchair shimmied on the uneven road, rattling her bones. Her body was burning and aching and screaming, but she was so close now.

They’d reached their intersection,
oh thank God.
Guss’ Pickles! The café on the bottom floor of their building waved like a long-lost lover. She could almost feel her quilt’s embrace.

A truck had plowed into parked cars across the street and come to a stop over the curb. It was still running and the driver’s door was open.

Plank plank,
metallic footfalls from its roof.

Elizabeth slowed to a creep, trying to go silent.

But it was too late.

A werewolf sidled to the edge of the roof, holding a half-eaten body like a dance partner. It looked at Elizabeth with—
yep
—detached curiosity.

No point in subtlety now.

Racing around the corner onto Broome, she caught a reflection of herself in the glass windows of the café. There she was, lanky and diagonal, pushing her mother’s wheelchair while her black and violet hair swirled like a rocket’s exhaust. And there was the werewolf diving off the truck, landing mid-stride on all fours and loping—

THE FUCK ARE THE KEYS?

—wait, the fucking lock is broken, how could you forget—

She chanced a look back at the werewolf. It was in the air, descending toward her, claws reaching beneath its hateful yellow eyes.

Everything went dark and peaceful.

And then a tremendous, shattering crash was followed by a whooping alarm. She opened her eyes to find two werewolves locked in combat inside the café, thrashing about in pools of fractured glass.

She yanked the wheelchair through the door. No time to deal with the stair lift, no time to try for the elevator on the other side. She lifted her mother out of her chair and—

The oxygen tank was still attached!

“Is everything okay, Lizzy?”

No time to disconnect! She put Mom back down, locked the chair into the lift and pushed to speed its maddeningly slow ascent. The chair lazily swung around to the second flight.

A single decisive howl came from the werewolf wrecking crew. Somebody had won.

Slam!
The front door splintered from the impact, bending the frame inward. The decorative glass plopped to the floor in one piece and the werewolf peered through. Maybe it was looking over the menu?

Then it backed off to reload.

Slam!
The door buckled. The wood had already surrendered; now it was just trying to get out of the way.

The lift clicked to a stop. She pulled the release once, twice, three times until it fucking worked. Whipped the chair around. Pounded down the hall. Her gasps ricocheted between the walls.

Smash!
The door went down—

Thump thump thump up
the stairs—