S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND, Season One Omnibus (32 page)

Both sides of the highway are lined with moss-covered trees, thick curtains of growth that mask the Atlantic from our view on the left and the inland swamps on the right. Both press against us until we feel like we're drowning.

We cross into New York at the Port Chester outpost, where the guard seems both surprised and happy to see us. He's actually very chatty. So chatty, in fact, that I begin to think he might never let us through. “Going fishing?” he asks. “There's a great rental shack off Locust Point. I take my sister's kids there sometimes. It's so peaceful. Just don't eat the fish. Catch and release, I always tell them.”

“
Can you rent rowboats there?”

“
Rowboats, canoes. Nothing with a motor, of course. You know about the mines right? They're sound and vibration sensitive.”

We nod.

“
And stay this side of the buoys, you'll be fine.”

Finally he lifts the gate arm and waves us on. He smiles cheerily as we drive through. “Use the blood worms,” he shouts. “A hundred for a buck. They work the best!”

“
We should've come this way before,” Reggie grumbles. “He didn't even bother to check our Links or scan our implants.”

“
I feel sorry for him,” Ash says. “He looks so lonely.”

“
We still would've had to go through the other checkpoints,” Micah points out. “The ones further south.”

“
No, I meant we should've gone through the Harlem tunnel instead of the Midtown.”

I shudder. We shouldn't have gone in the first place.

“
It's more than twice as long,” Ashley says.

Reggie shrugs and rotates his shoulders, as if a five-mile dive—there and back—is a challenge he'd be up for. Now there's no chance of it happening, so he's all Mister Macho again. He obviously forgot how hard it was just a couple days before when the distance was less than half.

Remembering this myself makes me start worrying again about Kelly and Jake. I hope they remember to carry extra cartridges on their belts. And knives. And I hope there aren't any blockages.

We continue south. The land grows even swampier. The road is badly in need of repair. Micah doesn't dare go any faster than thirty. “Don't want to blow an axle or a tie rod,” he says. The road dips several times; every so often a shallow stream of gray water flows over it. Some parts of the road are covered in undisturbed mud or silt. We leave fresh tire tracks on it, making me worry that someone might follow them.

The empty buildings this close to the river are even more desolate and decrepit than the abandoned ones we saw on Long Island, perhaps because of the repeated flooding and subsequent retreat of waters these have been exposed to. Dried moss and seaweed dangles from eaves and signs. The husks of ancient tree trunks stand stripped and bare, sun-bleached and water-worn. The place makes me think of dead things—not the Undead, but of ancient civilizations and long lost cities and ghosts and haunted places. It gets inside your soul and eats at you from the inside instead of the outside.

We come to a place where a beaten, faded sign points south. It says Locust Point. A hand-carved sign is tacked to it announcing cheap rentals. But there's nothing there to see. The road ends abruptly and the trees clear. The Atlantic opens out in front of us. In the distance, a small rocky island juts out of the water. The stark gray walls of Long Island rise up behind it, looking like a long, low battleship a hundred miles long.

“
Now what?” Reggie asks. “It's high tide. We can't get out there to rent a boat.”

Micah doesn't answer. He steers the car to the right and follows the road as it heads west through these wastelands.

“
There used to be a bridge back there,” he says. “The Throng Neck. Two bridges, actually. I remember them from the map.”

The three of us strain our necks back to look, but of course we don't see anything. All the bridges were bombed out after the outbreak, after the military went in and evacuated and closed the island off. Nobody thinks to ask why he remembers their names. They would've been gone long before he came from Texas, so there wouldn't be a personal connection.

But that's Micah, I remind myself. His brain works in ways that are mysterious to the rest of us.

We hit the remnants of the Cross-Bronx Highway. If we were heading for lower Manhattan, we would go inland from here, crossing the Hudson into New Jersey before turning south again. Today, however, we stay along the coast. We pass signs for the old towns of Trinity and Castle Hill, Hunts Point-Longwood—where the LaGuardia tunnel is supposed to come out—Foxhurst and Melrose. All neighborhoods that were wiped out by the floods. They're now reefs for the strange fish that have learned to survive with the poisons bleeding out of the ground here.

Finally a sign tells us we are about to cross the Harlem River—though it's impossible to tell where the swamp ends and the river begins. The highway veers right and disappears into the distance, the opposite direction from where we need to go.

The bridge over the Harlem River is gone. A shallow ribbon of gray leads out to where it used to stand, an old road that's barely even there anymore. Our way is blocked by concrete barriers. The surface is too unstable, too broken down to permit automobile traffic. Now only weekend fisherman and checkpoint guards and their nieces and nephews use it.

“
I guess we walk from here,” Micah says as he turns the car off. “Or swim.”

 

“My new shoes are ruined,”
Ashley complains as she high-steps over the muddy parts.

I look down at her feet and notice for the first time that she's wearing a new pair of Nike sneakers. I want to ask her how her family can afford them—not to mention the two-hundred dollar Ronnie Marx bikini she wore on Friday for the practice dive—but Micah interrupts the thought.

“
There's another rental shack.” He points off to the right. “Looks like they've got two-man kayaks.”

“
Or two-
woman
kayaks,” Ashley says.

We head over to it. I've only got a few dollars in my pocket, so I wonder how we're going to pay. Maybe Ash can sell her shoes.

“
I'll talk to the owner,” Micah says. He looks at Reg when he says this. Everyone knows Reggie doesn't do tact. He's not the subtlest guy in the world. “I'll see what I can negotiate. Just wait here.”

We watch as he walks over. He has to take a winding course, since there are puddles everywhere and sinkholes that could swallow him up in an instant. The shack stands on the edge of an expanse of water that stretches out beyond it. Several hundred feet away, a line of crumbling buildings rise, the tops of second-floor windows peeking up a few feet above the water, one foot below the high-water mark. Micah disappears around the corner of the shack.

I turn my gaze to Reg and Ash. I have so many questions I want to ask, but I need to get each of them alone and that's not going to happen here.

“
Freaking hot out here,” Reggie mumbles. He turns and wipes away a bead of sweat on his face and adds that he wishes he'd worn a hat. He rests a hand on Ashley's shoulder for a moment before dropping it. His thumb catches on where her knotted-up tee shirt bunches up at the middle of her back. Her skin's bronze, making the few wisps of hair I can see back there look blond like mine, rather than red. Her hand twitches reflexively at the touch. She curls her pinky around his for just a moment. Then the moment passes.

Careless gestures, completely natural and completely unnoticed by either of them. I can't help but feel a twinge of jealousy. They've grown so comfortable around each other, even as Kelly and I seem to be drifting apart.

It never used to be like this with them. The first few years I knew Reggie and Ash, they were constantly clashing with each other. Two insecure kids thrust into adolescence, both overwhelmed by new feelings, both helplessly attracted to the other, neither wanting to be the first to admit it. A sign of weakness. They were like magnets on strings, bumping into one another, repelling and spinning and finally aligning. Finally attracting each other.

Then, at some point—probably within the past few weeks—they started aligning. I guess it was inevitable, two people as passionate as they are. They were bound to end up together.

Ashley grabs Reggie's elbow and points past the line of buildings. “What's that?”

He shields his eyes against the glare of the sun off the water. I squint to see what they're looking at. There's a tiny spot in the air, way off in the distance, a glint of something shiny hovering over the edge of the wall surrounding Long Island.

“
Is that an airplane?”

“
Looks like it, but I thought that was supposed to be a no-fly zone.”

We watch as the dot slowly moves. It appears to be circling. At some point we realize it's not actually out over Long Island, but over southern Manhattan.

Micah returns with a pair of old wooden oars. The paint has long since worn off of them and the wood appears brittle with age and dry rot. “I got us a rowboat,” he announces. “It's not the greatest, but it'll get us out to where we need to go. Told you I'd think of something. Although, we might have to bail.”

Nobody answers. He turns and follows the direction of our gazes. “What are you looking at?”

“
Plane,” Reggie says.

Micah finally spots it. “Strange.”

“
It looks like it's circling over lower Manhattan,” Ashley says. She turns toward me. Micah and Reggie follow suit, all of them waiting as if I've got the answer.

“
A surveillance plane?” I guess.

“
It might have something to do with the zombies,” Ashley says.

“
Hey!” Micah hisses, pushing his palms down. “Keep it quiet. Our voices carry out here. Now let's get that rowboat and head over to where we're supposed to be.”

Reggie drops his hand, immediately losing interest in the airplane. “Just paddles? No fishing gear, brah? I was so looking forward to trying those bloodworms.”

Ashley laughs and slaps his arm. “That's my Reggie, always thinking about his stomach.”

He smiles and nods, then frowns. “Hey.”

We all laugh as we pass the shack. I notice it's built on plastic pontoons, presumably so it'll rise during high tides. It's attached to the cement by a long thick chain, which is crusted with dried moss. I glance back, but there's not much to see. The door's closed and the dark glass in the window is shuttered against the heat and glare. But I feel like whoever's inside is watching us.

We reach the bridge abutment and find a boat tied up to it with a frayed piece of twine. It leans against a cement block. Reggie tries to untie it, but the rope is hard, stiff. It refuses to come undone. Finally he just grabs the ends and snaps it apart. He tilts the boat over into the water with a splash, where it settles onto its bottom, rocking. We watch it for a few minutes to make sure it doesn't sink.

“
Well, if there's a leak, it's not a bad one,” Micah finally says. He hands the oars to Reggie. It's understood who's going to row.

While he climbs in and seats himself at the front, I notice a bronze placard embedded in the cement next to us. It reads, “Willis Avenue Bridge, Opened 2010.” Of course the bridge is no longer there. Presumably not a victim of the bombing campaign, since it doesn't lead to Long Island. More likely a victim of the floods.

The rowboat is barely large enough to hold the four of us, and it makes me wonder how on earth it'll ever fit six. Micah assures us that it will, so Ash and I clamber aboard while Reggie holds it steady with his hand. He's the last one in and he seats himself in the middle. Ash pushes us off.

“
This must be for bailing,” she says, pulling a squared-off scoop from its cubby under the seat. I look down and see a thin line of water bleed across the bottom of the boat. The leak looks like it's coming from the front.

Micah doesn't look concerned though. He pulls the old computer tablet out of his pack and turns it on so he can more accurately locate our end of the Harlem tunnel. “Just head in that direction,” he says after a minute passes. He points without looking up. Reggie angles us in that direction.

Then Micah's arm swings south like a compass, past the stumps of several buildings, past a line of red buoys to where a point of land rises in the distance. “That's Randall Island. Keep us away from there. It's probably mined.”

Reggie has to strain to keep us on course. He guesses we're passing over the old Harlem channel connecting the East and Hudson Rivers. He points the boat toward the shell of the tallest building a few hundred feet away. The corners look like someone took a giant sledgehammer and chipped away at them. The façade is pocked by holes.

“
Welcome to East Harlem,” he says. “Keep your eyes open for street signs.”

“
Can you see the guys on your Link?” I ask. Ash looks up from where she's playing with the ribbon of water below her feet. Micah's got his face down near the screen of the tablet, trying to block out the glare. He reaches absently into his pocket and extracts his Link and hands it over. Reggie grabs it and passes it back to me. I start scrolling through to find the tracking app while Ash glances over my shoulder.

“
Okay,” Micah says, turning around. “According to this, we're a couple thousand feet from the tunnel opening. Take that passageway between those buildings there, Reg.”

Reggie puffs from the exertion and the heat. I reach into my pack and grab one of the waters Micah gave me and hand it over to Ash so she can help him drink. Then I turn my attention back to the Link. He's got it all set up weird and I can't seem to find the tracking app.