EDEN (37 page)

Reece glanced up at the soaring city skyline, the skyscrapers looming dark against the ominous clouds. He had rowed them across the mouth of Fort Point Channel to a mooring on Harbour Walk, right on the edge of the city where the team had gone ashore. Boston Common was barely a mile away across town but he could see already that some of the streets were flooded and the thick odour of raw sewage spilled from the silent depths of the city.

‘Beacon Street’s not that far,’ Reece said, ‘but you’d best stay here.’

Saunders chuckled as he turned a twinkling eye in Reece’s direction. ‘Ain’t no way that’s happening kid.’

‘You’ll slow me down,’ Reece insisted. ‘If we have to leave in a hurry how the hell are you going to run with your leg in that state?’

Saunders bit his lip as he looked down at his jeans. The dressing was holding for now but blood soaked his thigh. Exhausted and hungry, Reece knew damned well that any exertion would be enough to put Saunders out like a light.

‘Stay here,’ he ordered the old man, ‘be ready to cast the lines if we show up.’

Saunders sat on the quay and looked Reece up and down for a brief moment.

‘You’ve sure come on a ways since we picked you up,’ he said.

‘A lot’s happened.’

Saunders reached around to his belt, pulled his pistol from it and handed it to Reece. ‘I get into trouble I can row myself out of range. You’ll need the ammunition.’

Reece hefted the pistol in his hand for a moment and realised that there was no good reason not to take it with him.

‘You know where Long Wharf is?’ Saunders asked. Reece shook his head and the old man gestured over his shoulder. ‘Maybe three hundred yards north, around the headland. If I have to move, that’s where I’ll head.’

Reece nodded and stuffed the pistol into his jeans.

‘Good luck,’ Saunders said.

Reece turned and hurried off the quay. He crossed Atlantic Avenue, the broad asphalt visible beneath a haze of green shoots and mosses. An occasional abandoned vehicle showing the first signs of rust blocked his way, but within a couple of minutes he was walking down what had once been Pearl Street, soaring buildings either side of him as he dodged pools of filthy, stagnant water.

It took him twenty minutes to cross the city’s financial district and reach the edge of Boston Common. The eerie silence and darkened buildings seemed to pursue him as he walked. He looked over his shoulder frequently, as though hordes of zombies might suddenly pour from the abandoned buildings, hungry for his flesh.

The silence and the desolation was at once both intoxicating and frightening. The bizarre elation at being alone and utterly free in the huge city began to fade as Reece realised the true extent of mankind’s suffering and loss. It wasn’t just the bodies he saw rotting in doorways or the abandoned and bloodstained vehicles in the streets, but the pervasive silence. Reece began to realise that the city had become a monument to what mankind had once achieved but would never manage again. The cities would never again be filled with light and life, the hustle and bustle of mankind flowing like blood through its arterial streets.

Reece slowed and for a few moments stood at the corner of Hamilton Place and just listened. There was almost no noise but for the small sounds of birds nested in the trees of the common across the street, calling for the dawn. Reece felt new fear inside of him as the last of his excitement at coming ashore vanished like the last voices from these very streets. Mankind had fallen.

It was truly over.

‘Jesus,’ he uttered.

Visions of family, of friends from school and clubs, the countless faces from his life known both well and briefly flashed through his mind in a rush of realisation and dread as he realised that they were all gone. Long dead. He had spent much of his life shunning human contact, and now there was nobody left. Reece leaned against a street lamp and rubbed his face, as though he were dreaming and would suddenly wake up and see cars and people and trucks and hear the city’s noise all around him.

Instead, he heard only the birds. Above, clouds blustered by above the buildings, bruised dark grey as though pummelled by the blows from winds that had not yet penetrated the dense city streets.

Movement caught his eye and in the pale light he saw somebody walking up near the State House. Reece ducked across the street and into the shelter of trees at the edge of the common. He hurried forward until he could see the State House before him on Beacon Hill.

The stench of decaying bodies hit him quickly, as did the feeble murmuring of men and women chained to the fences outside. A pair of guards patrolled with bored steps just inside the fence, one of them leaving a trail of blue cigarette smoke as he puffed away.

Trees lined either side of the main gardens, which were flanked by secondary entrances. The light was still low, the gloomy dawn still holding shadows as though reluctant to shed light on the sombre scene below. Reece moved west through the shelter of the common’s trees and crossed Beacon Street further down and out of sight of the state house before moving back up the street and clambering over a fence into the state house’s west grounds.

He crept up a long flight of broad steps that led toward the west wing, staying low enough to avoid being spotted by the gate guards to his right, and then moved along past a mounted statue to a smaller set of doors set back into the west wing of the house. He tested the handle as quietly as he could, but the doors were firmly locked. Reece quickly pulled off his jacket and bundled it across the surface of the window. Then, he clicked his pistol’s safety catch off and fired a single shot into the jacket. The muffled crack of the gunshot was mostly swallowed by the jacket, but the noise was amplified by the surrounding walls of the wing.

Reece heard a voice coming from the direction of the main gate, questions followed by a brisk response. He pulled his jacket away from the window and ran in a crouch along the wall of the main gardens to peek through the decorative foliage across the lawns toward the gate.

One of the guards was crossing the lawn toward him, a rifle held ready.

Reece whirled and dashed back to the doors to examine the window. The bullet had passed through the jacket, leaving a small splintered hole in the glass. Reece carefully eased his index finger through the hole and pulled. A chunk of glass broke away and fell at his feet. Reece worked away a few more chunks of glass until he could reach inside the window.

He reached down and grabbed the door handle, turned it.

Still locked.

He pushed his arm further in and the glass sliced painfully into his skin as his fingers rested on the handle of a key inside. He grabbed at it, turned it. The locking mechanism clicked and he quickly reached up and grabbed the handle.

The door swung open and Reece retrieved his arm. He reached down and picked up the shards of glass and tossed them into nearby foliage before he stepped inside and shut the door behind him, then ducked out of sight behind the nearest wall.

The guard’s head appeared at the top of the steps and scanned the wing of the house for several seconds. Reece held his breath as the man waited for what felt like an age, and then turned and strolled back down the steps and out of sight.

Reece breathed a deep sigh of relief and turned, looking down the corridor that led toward the main state house from the wing. The glass windows of the house were still intact, an oddity considering how most ground level windows in the city had been smashed by looters during the riots that had raged in the aftermath of the storm. Reece figured that maybe troops or police had held sway here for longer than elsewhere in the city, and managed to preserve the building until they too had abandoned their posts. Or that somehow the imposing building had represented something stronger than the people and that they had left it alone for fear of reprisals if government ever regained control. By the time they knew that such a feat was impossible, there were no longer enough people left in the city with the means or the will to do much damage.

Reece eased his way down the corridor. The weak light through the windows outside was not sufficient to illuminate the interior of the building beyond. Dark shadows awaited.

He moved silently into the main corridor of the Doric Hall. He could faintly see the large main entrance doors to his right. The smell of wood smoke was thick on the air, the white walls either side of the doors scorched with pillars of black soot. Reece turned left and crept through the Nurse’s Hall and on toward the Great Hall. He slowed as he saw flickering plumes of firelight shimmering off towering walls.

Reece squatted in the shadows and let his eyes adjust properly to the darkness around him. Slowly, he was able to pick out the form of several guards asleep against the wall on one side of the entrance. Reece eased his way past and climbed the grand staircase to the upper floor, making his way toward what had once been the Senate Chamber.

Reece edged his way to the entrance and saw the large amphitheatre, windows to either side through which filtered the dull morning light. Two flaming torches rested in iron clasps against the far wall. As Reece focused on the hall, he realised that he was looking at rows of cages, and that the cages were filled with people.

All at once, he knew he was in the right place and he ducked into a shadowy alcove.

He could see the keys to the cages within a few yards of where he crouched, dangling from then belt of one of a pair of sleeping guards. He was judging his chances of grabbing the keys without being spotted by the two awake guards when a fifth guard strode quietly up and whispered to his two companions.

In silence, the three men slipped away and abandoned their sleeping companions.

*

Sawyer sat in his chair and looked at the two women before him.

Despite the fearsome anarchy that had raged throughout the city of Boston in the wake of the Great Darkness, Sawyer had never thought of violating a woman. During those bleakest of days and weeks as humanity sank into deprivation and despair he had seen so many terrible things that he no longer felt as though he existed in the real world. He had seen entire families beaten and raped by gangs of drunken thugs, seen others imprisoned to serve biker gangs marauding through the city like harbingers of death until there was nobody left to prey upon.

Sawyer was not a particularly religious man, but through the drifting smoke, writhing flames and echoing screams haunting Boston in those dark days he had truly believed that he was witnessing the end of days. The final judgement on mankind’s excesses seemed somehow appropriate in all of its gruesome glory until his own family, huddling in his apartment in the suburbs, had been smoked out by a gang.

By that time, food was scarce and drunken debauchery had metamorphosed into a genuine fight for survival. The stakes were high, millions facing starvation and disease, and although the dark spectre of cannibalism had not yet reared its macabre head, the killing of the weak for their resources to feed the strong was well under way.

His family’s meagre remaining supplies were worth more to the gang than all the gold in the world. As Sawyer had tried to reason with the murderous gang they had tossed Molotov cocktails in through the windows, setting the apartment aflame while manning the fire escape. The only way out was through the windows to a three storey drop, or for Sawyer to fight to protect his children.

Sawyer had fought on the fire escape, his wife alongside him.

They had battered their way out and opened fire on the thugs with a .38 that Sawyer kept for self-defence, just as the Constitution allowed him to. Then they had fought with a crow bar and a baseball bat when the bullets had run out.

His wife died beside him from a blow to the head that had stove her skull in.

Sawyer managed to kill the remaining members of the gang, driven by a force of nature seething through his veins the likes of which he had never known before. Yet despite the sacrifice and the courage, the flames had spread too far. Sawyer had charged back into his apartment, into that hellish inferno, only to find his two young sons long dead from the smoke and the flames.

The memory of them seared his brain just as the fire had once seared his skin.

‘What do you want from us?’

Charlotte, the feisty one, glared at him. Sawyer blinked his memories away.

‘Very little,’ he replied, ‘but your cooperation.’

‘Why the hell should we cooperate with you?’ Charlotte challenged him. ‘You’re nothing but a killer.’

There were no guards in the room this time, both women instead bound with cuffs.

‘Yes I am,’ Sawyer replied. ‘But that doesn’t mean I wish to remain one.’

‘What do you mean?’

It was the quieter one this time, Bethany, who had spoken. Sawyer found himself curiously drawn to her. Despite the horrors infecting the lives of every human being around them she seemed strangely unaffected, her gaze clear as though she were not judging but merely observing.

‘I want to leave this place just as much as you all do,’ he replied finally. ‘The question is: whom do I take with me?’

‘You won’t make it aboard the ship,’ Charlotte snorted. ‘They’ll cut you and your merry band to pieces without Hank.’

Sawyer smiled at her. ‘Possibly. Right now, however, I would like to offer one of you a place. For the right price, of course.’

Sawyer let his gaze wander over their bodies.

Charlotte baulked. ‘I’d rather be eaten alive.’

‘I can arrange that,’ Sawyer pointed out. Bethany remained silent and Sawyer looked at her instead.

‘Don’t you dare,’ Charlotte uttered at Bethany.

Bethany sighed. ‘I’m tired and I want out of here.’

Charlotte did not rebuke her friend, but instead shot Sawyer a dirty look. Sawyer looked Bethany over one more time and then made his decision.

‘You may leave,’ he said to Charlotte and rapped his knuckles on his desk loudly. The office door opened and two guards stalked in. ‘Take her back to her cage,’ he ordered.

The guards lifted Charlotte out of the chair and guided her away from the office. The door closed behind them, leaving Bethany alone with Sawyer. The two looked at each other for a long moment before Sawyer spoke.