Survivor (9 page)

I
descended the stone stairs to the zoo, dragging one bag at a time down the slippery surface. Caleb had walked me to the corner of the park as he'd promised and then disappeared. He'd said he'd not been to the zoo since his parents took him when he was a kid. He'd trailed off and looked longingly to the northeast, turned, and walked away.

Maybe he didn't want to meet Rachel. That'd have to change fast if I stood any chance of getting the pair of them to try leaving Manhattan with me.

If he wanted space, I understood that: we all still needed our space, however lonely we'd become. In just two nights I'd grown used to that concept. At home it had always been that way for me; I was an only child who had moved around a bit, changing school a few times, and had always somehow adapted, always found my own center. I learned I could survive anywhere, that I'd be accepted as myself wherever we landed. I saw that possibility in New York, as though we all belonged there, wherever we were from, but didn't get the time to live it that way.

Looking up at the Arsenal's front doors my world changed again: the glass in the doors was broken, there was blood on the doorframes, blood down the handrail.

At the top of the stairs I shook the doors—they were still locked shut. That was a good sign. The break-in had cracked every pane of the laminated glass and there was a hole big enough to put my head through, dried blood coating the shards and staining the snow at my feet. I knocked hard on the brass frame, waited and listened, knocked again. All was quiet. I looked through the glass, cupping my hands against my face as I had done before. It was dark in there, I could see no movement.

“Rachel!” I called, as loudly as I dared.

My voice echoed inside the building and rattled around. Still no answer. I looked up to street level. Nothing sinister. The tiny thought at the back of my brain crept forward and developed into: maybe I should leave, go back to Caleb, forget about this place? I didn't want to find Rachel gone or worse . . . I paced the courtyard. The building, the street, the trees around me, everything was bare and barren. I heard the bark or yelp of an animal, a sea lion maybe. I had to see, I had to know.

I climbed a side fence, repeating my entry of the zoo from the other day. Everything seemed the same, although there had been a fresh coat of snow overnight. I scanned it for footprints. Nothing. That was good. I hoped that was good. The back doors were locked. That was definitely good.

I looked around the grounds, did a lap around the central pool, then ran over to the cafeteria.

“Rachel!” I called again. Into the cafeteria. Empty. The Zoo shop—more locked doors. “Ra—”

Rachel emerged from an equipment room. She looked spooked and stayed where she was; I ran over to her.

“I'm sorry I didn't come sooner. I met this guy, Caleb—”

“Are they still out there?”

“The Chasers? No, I didn't see anyone,” I said, talking fast. “I meant to come straight back, but he's a good guy and we're all about the same age, and I was thinking how we'd be so much better off as a group. You know, safer.”

She stood there, silent.

“Rachel?” Maybe it was too soon to mention the plan that was forming in my mind. Maybe I had more to do to earn her trust.

“You're sure they're not still there?”

“There're no Chasers. Rachel, I'm sorry I took so long. Are you okay?”

She replied with a half-nod. “Were you followed?”

“Just now? No.”

“You're sure?”

“Yes,” I replied. She looked like she'd been awake all night; my guilt amplified. “Why, what happened?”

“They came back.”

“Came back?”

“The ones that followed you here the first time.”

“You're sure it was them?”

“I saw them,” she said. Her body and face looked tense, her eyes taking in every detail.

She looked so scared that I promised myself that I'd be there for her from now on, that I'd be more reliable. She might not be as fun as Caleb, but she needed me around. Sure, I'd come back with food before she'd run out, but I could see what mattered to her more was my being there, my keeping my word. If I had to do another food trip, I'd be better at it next time. And right now I'd prepare this place better, for her.

“The front doors are still locked,” I said.

“They smashed at the glass with a steel pipe,” she said. “I watched them beating on it until it started to break through, then I ran out here.”

She looked back into the room. There was a little burner set up with a pot of water. In the dim light from the equipment room behind her there was a stack of blankets where she must have slept, or at least sat, listening.

“Can you make tea?” I asked, wanting to distract her. She nodded, and I could see her slipping into nurturing mode, her comfort zone. “I brought food, I'll go get it.”

“Wait! ”

“They're not there at the moment,” I said, “but I'll have another look around, okay?”

She softened just a little more. “Okay.”

“Can I have the key to the gate?”

Rachel took her keys from the lanyard around her neck and placed it over mine. She went inside while I ran back around to the front of the arsenal building to get the food. As I picked up the canvas bag I looked at the snow.

Footprints.

My heart skipped a beat before I realized that they were mine, only mine. I did a quick scan of the street, searching for any sign—nothing. Wherever they were, they'd gone before this last snowfall.

I dragged the bag down from Fifth, and took it through the gate with the other.

Rachel was busy at her work, as if with my presence and news she'd now hit reset; this was how I'd found her two days ago. I presented her with the food, and she came over and put her gloved hand on my shoulder, then pulled me in for a hug.

“Thank you for coming back,” Rachel said, holding me. “I was worried. I was worried I'd never see you again.”

Rachel was so small in my embrace. So fragile, a bird.

“I can look after myself.”

I felt her warm tears running down my neck. She let go and sniffed into her sleeve, looked about her, blinking.

“I know you can,” she said, watching her animals eat. “It's just . . . I thought maybe you'd not come back . . .”

“What, you thought I could just forget about you?” I said.

Sure, I had hopes and desires to get home and find it as I remembered it, but right now, Rachel and her tribe of animals felt like all I had. Caleb was his own guy. Probably needed me around less than we needed him.

“I could feel useful here,” I continued, “if you'll let me help out more?”

She nodded and I followed her on her errands. I took the heavy work and it felt good. She told me about the animals and their needs and I asked about their habits and personalities and I could see clearly why this meant so much to her.

This was where I felt like my life had a purpose. This here, somehow, was where I felt closest to being home. As long as I was in this city, this was where I wanted to be. Until I could make it home, I would do what I could to help her.

R
achel worked at a pace that had me aching all over by sunset. We'd fed every animal, laughed a few times at the antics of the sea lions, and I'd spent a couple of hours clearing away some snow. All the food from the canvas bags was stashed away, and I had a good bearing now on what it would take to feed all these animals over the coming days. Beyond that . . . well, I didn't really want to think about that, least not today. I could see how easy it was for Rachel to take it a day at a time in this place and have whatever's going on outside these walls seem as distant as another universe.

“Yesterday, you got to Rockefeller Plaza on time?”

“Yeah,” I replied, thinking of sleeping in this morning. “There was no sign she'd been there.”

“You may have just missed her.”

“Yeah, maybe.” We collected some firewood from a stack in a storeroom. “Or she hasn't gone back home since I'd been there.”

“To find your note.”

“Yeah—because she would have showed, right?”

“I suppose. Unless she's come across a refuge or shelter of other survivors?”

“Yeah, I hope so.”

“You're going to check again tomorrow morning?”

“I have to.”

“Do you?”

Rachel could see in my look that, yeah, I had to.

Every time I passed a fence or a gate I looked out, expecting to see those Chasers reappear. It was only a matter of time. Rachel noticed me.

“They know we're here,” she said. “They're out there, watching, waiting.”

I could feel it, but I didn't want to let my fear of them show. I'd faced them before, up close, and come out alive. I'd do it again for her.

“They're probably just waiting for night to fall,” she continued. “Or waiting for you to leave on another food trip.”

“Then I should test that—head out, soon, see if they follow me.” She looked at me like I was crazy. “That way, I'd know how many of them there are, maybe even see where they came from, how long it took them to make a move on me.”

“That's crazy.”

“I can outrun them.”

“Accidents happen—you might slip or fall and then what?”

I thought back to falling through the road yesterday.

“Don't take them on if you don't have to. Don't encourage their behavior,” she said. “Like any predators, they'll wise up fast to ways of getting what they need.”

I just wanted to be better prepared, to understand them more. With that knowledge, when the day came for Rachel to leave with me—for she surely had to leave one day—we'd stand a better chance.

“They're close by,” she said, “even if there's no sign of them right now: Central Park is their smorgasbord, where the bulk of other infected are congregated en masse, around the ponds and lakes. You said so yourself.”

She was right. They were all around us, just out of view, never far away. Rachel hadn't stopped working all day, and had sweat on her face.

“Let's make dinner.”

“I've got another fifteen minutes out here,” she said, judging the light left before night set in.

“I'll make it.”

“Sure,” Rachel said, pausing to drink from her water bottle. “That'd be nice.”

“Any requests?”

She shook her head. “Surprise me.”

I entered the arsenal building with a spring in my step—I really wanted to do this, to thank her by cooking her a meal. This much was achievable for me: caring for one. But how she managed to do all that out there on her own—that was more than impressive.

Sometimes I wondered about my real mom, whether she had started up a new family, if she was caring for kids. Rachel was just a couple years older than me and was the greatest caregiver I'd ever seen. She deserved to not only get out of all this, but to be rewarded. How, I had no idea.

Inside was quiet, cold, eerie. I walked slowly along the carpet runner leading to the front door. I stopped behind a partition, peering around at the front doors. The wind whistled in through the broken glass. I needed to fix that, barricade those doors. I'd do it tomorrow.

Then I stopped.

No. No more tomorrows. I would not put things off anymore. Put them off into days that might not be there. As long as Rachel was here, I'd do my best to keep her safe.

I emptied a tall bookcase, dragged it to position up against the doors, restacked it, then added a desk, a few armchairs, and plenty of books and boxes of files from a front office. All up, there must have been a few hundred pounds stacked on and against that bookcase, itself a barricade against the glass. At the very least, it would slow down intruders long enough for us to hear them and make a break for it. I felt better for the construction, and headed upstairs with my backpack and a more comfortable feeling that I would not have someone creeping up behind me.

 

It took a few minutes of blowing against the embers to get the kindling to light, by which time I was out of breath and had filled the room with smoke, but it felt satisfying to have ignited the flames without splashing lighter fuel over the wood. The fire warmed and crackled, and soon small split logs became coals hot enough for cooking. The smell of the burning wood was different to that back home, but the memories came anyway—sitting around a campfire, my father there telling me stories—and I was happy for them to keep me company. You could get lost in memories like that.

Caleb had told me a recipe that would suit the ingredients I had. He'd given me some white wine, and I'd put half a bottle into the dish, along with chicken, rice, tinned tomatoes, and slices of onions, orange, garlic, some herbs and seasoning. Caleb had sworn by the chicken—it was from one of many tubs he had stashed on the snow-covered terrace. I had the pot slow-cooking on the side of the coals, it'd take about an hour and a half.

I stood at the window and watched Rachel down in the zoo grounds, hurrying to beat the darkness. For a brief moment I glimpsed the absolute truth of her world, and some reality of mine: she felt she belonged here, but we were both visitors. How long could she look after all these animals and not look after herself? I'd been here for just hours and I could see that all the work to be done was more than she and I could sustain. What would happen when food and water in the vicinity ran out? This was a no-win situation: we were living on stolen time.

 

Rachel came upstairs when it was dark out, moving so silently she startled me.

“Sorry.”

“No, that's fine, just lost another year from my life.”

Rachel laughed.

“It's so damn easy to get spooked in this city, I'm probably running out of years to lose.” I stoked the fire with another small split log. It spat and burned and smoked. The lidded pot sat heavy, almost ready. I glanced over at her as she took off her jacket and boots. “You know that feeling when you're alone, but it feels like there's someone around you?”

“I think so,” Rachel said, motioning out of the window before drawing the thick curtains. “I feel like I'm being watched when I'm out there, out in the zoo grounds.”

“I sense that too.” That feeling of being watched—whether by Chasers or other survivors—was constant, but that was not what I had meant, not totally. I stirred the pot and put the lid back on.

“And I don't mean by those infected,” Rachel added, taking her jumper off.

“Yeah, me either,” I said, smiling. “I mean by those I miss.”

She nodded and sat next to me by the fire. “Who do you think about?”

“A few people. My grandmother, she used to talk to my grandfather's ashes,” I said, smiling at the memory buried somewhere in the brilliant hot embers before me. “Even though he was nothing more than ashes in an urn, she'd go about it like it was the most natural thing in the world—like he was right there in the room, listening, as she went about her day, talking to him.”

“Well, he was there, wasn't he?”

“Yeah. He was . . . It was the only time I saw her truly happy, on her own, speaking to her dead husband.” I smiled. “That, and when she'd hug me when I went to spend school holidays with her. Speaking to the dead and hugging me.”

Talking to the dead had kept me alive.

“You had that too, didn't you?” she shifted over to the edge of her bed and rubbed her bare feet.

I nodded.

“With your friends from the subway here in New York?”

“Yeah.”

“Then you know what it's like when you lose a friend or someone in your family and it's like they didn't really go,” Rachel said, kneeling next to me and warming her bare hands by the fire. “Me too. My best friend died in a car accident when we were in seventh grade. I felt she was with me all through school and every day since. Not a day goes by when I don't think of her, when I don't hear her voice.”

“Yeah?”

She nodded.

“You're lucky to have that,” I said. “You're lucky she's always there.”

“I'm just glad it's something I carry around in me,” she said. “It doesn't have to be an urn on the mantelpiece. It doesn't wear out, get lost, depend on the upkeep like my work out there every day.”

I watched her, her features in the warm light.

“The animals, me; we all eat, we all sleep, and we all leave, eventually.”

I had a feeling she wasn't talking about the present.

“I had a boyfriend back home,” she said. “We kept it going for over a year; he'd come here or I'd head west, a few days here and there . . .”

“Too much distance?”

“Something like that. Still friends, just didn't quite work out.”

She seemed happy to talk about it, and it was nice to hear this side of her.

“No one now?”

“New York's outta good guys,” she said.

“If it wasn't before, it sure is now,” I said. “I don't mean to make you more depressed about the reality of this situation, but if there was anything that these events have done, it's thin out the dating pool even further.”

It took a moment for her to laugh, but when she did she was lost in it to the point of tears.

 

By the time Rachel had come back from the bathroom all cleaned up and changed into pajamas, I'd set two spots at the desk, with chairs and cutlery and napkins and some candles. The fire was restoked and the room was warm. I poured wine for her and served up, as Rachel sat opposite, looking down at her plate then up to me. She was the big sister I'd never had, and I loved making her this meal.

“This smells great,” Rachel said.

“Thanks, I hope it tastes good.” I told her the recipe was Caleb's, which gave me the chance to explain a bit about him.

“Tell me about your friends,” she said over her glass of wine.

Why not?
So I told her. I told her everything about Anna, Mini, and Dave. Explained all that I'd done to get me through those first days. This was my story, and I was getting good at telling stories, never embellishing, describing events as I saw them, reporting the truth as I knew it. I enjoyed passing on details, and there was one thing above all that I'd noticed in this new earth: when people listened to you, they listened to your every word, hung onto them, savoring information. We were all hungry for it—I couldn't imagine all the knowledge we were losing without information. It was somewhere, as long as there were people willing to listen, and talk and write. Even when I got home, I'd make sure I took this sense of observation and discourse with me. We needed to talk more, to listen more, all of us.

“We dressed up, pigged out on junk food, danced around to music, it was great,” I said. “If I hadn't laughed so much with them, I'd have gone nuts. We spent a whole afternoon launching rotten food off the top of the building, joking that seventy stories below the apples and cabbages would pick up such speed that they'd blast right through parked car's roofs.”

I laughed at the memory, so much that I had tears in my eyes and Rachel's face was lit up with laughs too.

“We'd laugh at the stupidest things,” I said. Rachel listened and never seemed to think my story strange or judge me, just ate her food and laughed with me. It was great to talk like that, with no barriers, to share.

“I think you were lucky, Jesse. You did good.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Thanks. And thanks for listening—feels good to share it, with you.”

She smiled. It was a smile that I hadn't yet seen; it radiated, like a great sentence or a good piece of music, so recognizably special that it could transcend the moment. Rachel may not be someone I could laugh with at stupid little things, not like Caleb, but I could tell her anything. Anything important, anything big. Like what I wanted to do. What we had to do. I painted a picture of truth that I felt would help persuade Rachel to move out from here.

“Can you imagine going home?”

My question bobbed in the water for a while, a float on a lure.

“Jesse, the day I most look forward to right now is when the tourists flock back to Times Square, the city is healthy again, and this nightmare is over.”

 

Sleep came easily here, easier than back at 30 Rock, Felicity's apartment, or Caleb's. The room was cozy and warm, and this big old building felt like a fortress. We were right in the park—the place I'd come to associate the most with Chasers, with fear—yet I felt unbelievably safe and comfortable.

It was my second night here and I was being pulled into sleep. I needed to find Felicity, find a way to escape, to go home. But darkness was drawing, taking my conscious thoughts away.