Survivor (18 page)

I shook myself awake. I crossed the street, and approached my friend in disbelief.

Empty eyes stared back at me, through me. Nobody there. No recognition. Nothing. Just blood around his mouth and an unnerving fixation on me, maybe even on the blood spatters on my face. I knew for sure then that no matter what, even if it came to my own life or his, I could not kill him. Not how he was before, not how he was now. He was my friend.

Caleb.

I knew that in the aftermath, more Chasers would arrive en masse, drawn towards the scent of the newly dead. They would be on them, on whoever was left, drinking them, like sharks attracted to blood in the water.

I ran.

I wished I had not known. Anything, anything would have been better than what was burned into my mind's eye at that moment.

 

I arrived at the bookstore. The door was as I had left it. I pushed it open, fished around in the dark, tripping over several times on the mess of gear he had piled in there. I had to collect supplies if we were ever to escape this nightmare.

I slid down to the ground, sitting so I could peer out the crack of the open door to the street outside. Quiet in here, just the sound of me catching my breath in a big empty room. I looked around me, the flashlight beam searching.

I took a new backpack from its plastic cover and filled it: a few flashlights, packets of batteries, a couple of pistols and a box of live ammo, some bottled drinks and some chocolate bars. I stuffed in a few clean clothes, all too big for me; they had been stockpiled by Caleb, my friend.

I pushed those thoughts from my mind and flicked off the flashlight, looking out of the door, up and down the street. No movement, no sign of anyone, not even Chasers.

I couldn't take the bike, not in the dark, not right now. I'd come back for it, maybe tomorrow.

I flung the backpack by the door, ready to take with me, and shone the flashlight up to the top of the stairs. I pocketed Caleb's notebooks. I moved to leave, then turned back. I wrote another hope note, this time in big block letters on the whiteboard. I only hoped he'd be able to read it.

 

Five minutes later I was out on the road, the weight of the backpack and a can of gasoline in each hand slowing me down. I made it a block before I had to take a break, but soon I reached the corner of Fifth and 57th, the view north clear, the faint popping of rifle rounds going off in the heat of the explosion just audible.

Or maybe someone was still there, fighting.

I took a deep breath. The zoo was about seven blocks away. I pressed on, thinking of nothing but how the straps of my laden bag were cutting into my shoulders, how Rachel would need this extra gas for the generator, how loud my breathing and heartbeat sounded. How much my head ached. How good it would be to see Rachel and Felicity. How it would feel to see the smiles of my friends.

I
stopped, just for a moment. Heavy cloud cover swept in, the moon packed away for the night. I waited for a silence that would not come for my breathing and heartbeat and the sounds carried on the breeze that came from the east. An occasional gunshot. A single, dull explosion. A stifled scream.

My legs were shaking, but I had made it. The stone pillars that marked the stairs down to the arsenal building at the zoo. I collapsed to the ground, on my hands and knees, then sat there in the snow, looking up and down Fifth Avenue, at the whiteness around me. It was hours old and untouched: no one had passed through here in a while, perhaps not since I had left.

I had no energy in me. It was tempting just to rest for a bit, but my friends and their warm company were just a few more steps away. I looked down the stone stairs, slippery with ice. I stood, and slowly made my descent; legs wobbly, head throbbing, hands aching.

I banged again on the front door, the broken glass rattling. I could see myself in the reflection, but I couldn't see beyond the barricade I'd built—yesterday? This morning? Was it still today?

I could hardly stand and it took everything I had to climb those few steps up to the entrance. If the girls did not hear me, I'd have to sleep out here for the night. I did not have the strength to haul myself up and over one of the tall steel fences. Here would have to do. I rested my head and closed my eyes. A moment later I jolted awake.

“Hello?” I tried to yell their names, but the sound that came out was weak and barely made its way into the building.

I sat there by the doors. I shone the flashlight around, but then switched it off, the nothingness that surrounded me melding with the night. I felt a lump under my hand, on the ground. Curious, I flicked the flashlight back on.

A little black pebble lay there next to me in the snow. It was worn smooth, almost translucent, like that volcanic glass Apache Tear I'd dreamed about. I switched off the flashlight, removed my right glove and put it in my hand. It felt warm.

Just then, I was bathed in light. Felicity appeared, shining a flashlight down to where I sat on the doorstep.

“Jesse,” Felicity smiled, “hang on, I'll help you.”

 

They helped me get warm by stoking the fire ablaze with sparking split logs wrapping my shivering body in blankets, and rubbing my back. Hot sweet cocoa coursed through me and woke me up.

I told them about the entire evening; about hiding in the plane wreck, and finding Caleb at his parents' place. And then I told them about the explosion of the recovered missile—and what it had done to my friend.

“Caleb was in the wrong place . . . he was just trying to save a wounded man,” I explained. “He just wanted to do something good, you know? He just wanted to save
something
.”

Felicity had been staring at me, her eyes wide, but at that she burst into tears. Huge sobs shook her small body and I moved to comfort her.

“He's—He's one of them,” she said, over and over.

Rachel just sat there, silent, staring into the flames. “It's not safe here anymore,” I said, facing the fire. I turned to Rachel. “I've tried to be patient, but we have to move now, Rach. It's time we left. We need to find the other survivors at Chelsea Piers and head north. It's the only way.”

Felicity was quietly nodding, backing me up, but Rachel didn't respond.

“Rachel? Don't you see? We can't stay here anymore,” I said again. “The Chasers are getting smarter every day. They know how to get in here now. It's only a matter of time before they do it again. And maybe next time they'll find us—it'll be one of us dead, not just an animal.”

Rachel finally met my gaze. Her eyes blazing with anger.

“Not
just
an animal?”

“You know what I mean.”

“It's the Chasers and the—the whoever-the-hell are piloting those aircraft, they're the danger, they're the problem.”

“We can't defend against them, Rach, you know that,” I said. “Not the three of us here.”

“And what about the animals, Jesse? What about
them
? You think I can just leave them here? Just walk away and leave them? You know I can't go, and I won't. This is
my
life, this is
my
choice.”

“Rachel, please . . .” Felicity reached out to her, still sobbing, but Rachel stood up and pushed her away.

“No!” Rachel yelled. “Ever since you arrived,
both
of you, you've done nothing but talk about leaving. So leave already! I'm not stopping you!”

I stood. “And you'll just stay here, alone.”

“I survived this long.”

“You're not listening!” I said. “This isn't yesterday, or last week—it's getting worse.”

“I've made my choice and I'm staying.”

“Well, have you stopped to think that this is not just
your
life, Rachel?” I asked. “It's not just
your
choice. You think
I
can leave you here alone? Think we can do that? You think that's an easy thing to do? You're being selfish.”

“Jesse, if Rachel—” Felicity started but Rachel cut her off.

“No, let me make this easy for you, Jesse: I don't want you here anymore. Don't need you. Everything was fine before you showed up, and now look! I was fine on my own before, and I'll be fine on my own again. Go and look for your group, go and be with your Chaser friend! I've got enough here to care about.”

She stormed from the room, the door banging shut behind her.

 

I'd finished packing, there was nothing left to do. Felicity sat in the corner, watching. Rachel was nowhere to be seen.

“You're not coming, are you?” I said.

Felicity sighed. “You don't need me, Jesse. Rachel does.”

I nodded. “Is she okay?”

“She's keeping busy, which is good,” she said. “She's trying to take it in, but I think it's good, for her own sake, that she really knows what the stakes are now.”

“That death's around every corner?”

“That and worse.”

“Yeah,” I replied. “Do you think she'll come and say good-bye?”

Felicity shook her head.

“Tell her not to worry about me.”

“She will, no matter what I say.”

Felicity came in close and kissed me on the cheek, pausing beside me a little longer than she had to. She was warm, her lips so soft. Outside, it was a black predawn, full of snow and wind. But when she smiled again, the day brightened.

“You know,” I said, “you've got the best smile.”

She beamed. “Thanks. Yours is awesome too.”

This isn't home. There's a voice in my head. It's me, a part of me, but I cannot control it. It questions and reasons and rationalizes, and it remains—eternal as that southern hemisphere sunshine I imagine will be waiting for me back home. Madness? Who's to say? Maybe someone will call it that some day, some psych-something head-shrinker, some school counselor, maybe even my dad. Cool. Let them all analyze me and let me be there with them, wherever it is that they are, listening, talking, basking in that glow.

Felicity and Rachel need to stay on at the zoo for now, caring for the animals. I get that. I know Rachel doubts Caleb's revelation; the prospect of a whole group of survivors seems unlikely, given that the three of us remaining have only had contact with each other all these days. But I believe him, trust him; I have no reason not to. I want to meet the group at Chelsea Piers. I want to get home and the safest way for that to come about is to be with as many survivors as possible. I have to find out what happened at home, just as Caleb had to—to hell with the consequences or what it might take.

I've waited too long for help that has not come. It's eighteen days since this city was attacked, and there has been no relief, no help on the horizon, no armada or airlift to offer salvation to those of us who need it. Bombs or missiles or whatever have rained down and in the hour it took me to emerge from a subway tunnel the entire city was devastated, but that wasn't the worst of it. Eighteen days since has shown me the worst. And I know now that at least one of those who survived, uninfected by this virus, has been infected since. I cannot become like that; having survived days and weeks battling whatever's thrown at me only to become one of them.

Who knows what I might find on this trip. I'll be looking for a group of survivors and the only evidence of their existence is that my friend Caleb told me about them. Not in great detail, but he told me there was a group and that they had been talking about leaving this place. If they're there, as he said, they'll want to leave, just as he said. If they're not there, then they'll have already left. The possibility is enough for me.

I will be alone again but, hell, we do it all, everything, on our own. We enter this world alone and we leave it alone.

Meanwhile, I walk these streets full of hope. I may be the killer and the victim, but there's more to me than that. I'm a survivor.