Tara

There was that anger again: righteous, cold. The kind of anger she wasn’t able to control, no matter how she tried. When it came upon her, she was cognizant of nothing else, and by the time she returned to herself, it was usually too late. The chilling stillness of her rage had a certain, ironic peace about it, right before it turned nuclear.

  Before Tara quite realized it, she had dropped her back pack and torn past Aaron, headed straight for his attackers. She just registered his puzzled frown at her approach, right before his eyes widened and Stephen grabbed his arm to pull him away.

  She spotted the broken pipe, laying on the ground. She scooped it up, and bowled herself headlong into the pack of thugs, swinging. Yet, she had time to reflect on the strangeness of it all, to consider that while she knew she moved with all her strength and speed, she still had plenty of room to plan and execute each and every move she made, her anger settled within her like a tiger stalking the long grass.

  The pipe in her hand moved almost of its own accord, her grip changing from one-handed to two and back again as needed. She pivoted on a back step, slamming her elbow into an unwary solar plexus, finished her turn to crash the pipe over the unwary, bent head. Then she turned again, the other way this time, and jammed the end of the pipe into another gut, before swinging upward. She ducked and dodged as necessary, and turned each instinctual, evasive maneuver into a counter attack.

  And then, when her anger was spent and her remaining opponents had fled, light and sound returned, the world sped up, and Stephen’s hands were on her shoulders. “Tara? Are you all right?” His brilliant, long-lashed green eyes stared at her.

  Tara swallowed, and nodded. “I think so.” She dropped the pipe. Its fall echoed up and down the street.

  “I hate to say it,” he said, “but someone probably noticed that.”

  She shook her head, still a little dazed. But she took her pack from him, and shouldered it. “Let’s go.”

  After that, their luck was on the constant verge of running out. The predators got bigger, and more dangerous as Tara’s group worked their way east, fighting for nearly every block. Her idea about the churches had been a good one: the parks were crowded and beginning to turn as dangerous as the streets. Sleeping out of doors with everyone else wasn’t an option after the first night. The churches, while equally crowded, were safer and managed, somehow, to scare up better resources.

  Progress was slow going, and they were ambushed more than once. The first time, it nearly worked. The longer they traveled, the less Tara slept, and it was this to which she attributed her initial, slow response to the danger at hand. After that, however, she began to grow not only paranoid about their surroundings, but keenly sensitive to impending danger. Her instincts would vibrate like a bell, before her awareness of their environment sharpened to a harsh clarity that usually resulted in a headache, as if she’d stared into the sun too long. Aaron began referring to her episodes as “Hulking out”, which only became more apt as she grew increasingly irritable with exhaustion and worry.

  Eventually, she and the bigger kids acquired aluminum bats from a street vendor on the steps of one of the churches they’d found shelter in. By the third ambush, it was dented, but still serviceable. The light weapon played in her hand like a magician’s wand, and she’d given up wondering how she was able to handle it so deftly with no training.

  “How do you do that?” Stephen had asked her one night, in the fading beam of his dying flashlight. Every night he poured over his map, and every day they tried to push through the constant influx and outpouring of refugees, and make another few miles.

  “I don’t know,” she admitted, drifting in and out of not-quite sleep as she leaned against his shoulder. “Frankly, I’m too tired to care.”

  “We should stay here tomorrow, and maybe the day after,” he said, sliding his arm around her shoulders. “Let you rest.”

  One of their gang made “Oo” sounds, followed by exaggerated kissing noises. Tara lashed her foot out, striking hard. The Oo-er said “Ow!” and wisely subsided. “Not necessary,” she said to Stephen. “I won’t be able to rest until we get to Central Park. How much further?”

  She asked the same question every night, and every night the answer was slightly demoralizing.

  “Too far,” he said with a sigh, folding his map. “Try to get some sleep.”

  The last stretch to the park was the hardest, but at least they weren’t alone. They followed a crowd of people, all shuffling forward with their burdens, physical and emotional, and their smell. The constant, near grid-locked traffic of the city had come to a complete standstill, and New York’s denizens were no longer bothering with taxi cabs or buses, unless they were actually headed out of the city. Her lot, however, were enduring a grid lock of their own, of a kind. Tara sighed, adjusted her backpack, and wondered if this was what Moses’ party had felt like, in the years his people crossed the desert in an slow-motion parade bordering on the interminable. And, of course, it wouldn’t be New York if at least half the crowd weren’t trying to sell things to the other half.

  Or steal from it. Tara had already had to threaten would-be thieves off with her bat four times, and they’d gone hardly a mile. People were growing more desperate, more hungry. More dangerous.

  Fortunately, they tended to go for Tara first. The other small kids were in the middle of the group, under Stephen’s eye, while the bigger kids kept to the outside. Tara led at the front, and despite her bat she made for an easy target. At least, until she started swinging.

  Still, the sooner they got to the park, the better. Tara could sense they were being watched.

  ”Look,” Stephen said, pointing.

  Tara followed his arm, blinking bleary eyes. There, just a few blocks ahead, lay Central Park.

  Relief washed through her, and she could feet her spine and shoulders settle with it. Her neck and back began to ache as tension released from her muscles. They’d made it.

  That is, they’d made it within a few hundred yards of their destination. Everyone was piling up, and trickling through like sand in an hourglass, only slower. Tara was not in the mood to wait, and neither was her group.

  “Come on,” she told them, pushing her way out of line.

  “Where are we going?” Stephen wanted to know.

  “Around. We’re not sitting around for three days playing cards waiting for that mess to move along.”

  It seemed others had the same idea. Most continued on to the next gate, or the one after that. The younger, spryer ones with less—or less than nothing—to carry hauled themselves over the wrought iron fence. This was the route Tara’s group chose, choosing an opportune spot backed by a bronze sculpture. One at a time, they threw their packs over and then climbed the fence, using the sculpture to aid the subsequent descent. Aaron was surprisingly agile, though Jason had to give him a hand over before he impaled himself at the top. Potentially hilarious, but not quite the result they were going for.

  Tara was the last over. She hit the ground with both feet, and felt in her limbs the finality of their journey. Her first order of business was to sleep for a week, to make up for the one she’d lost.

  Somehow, they made it across the Park to the recreation center at the other end. The tennis courts, divested of nets, were filled with neat rows of tents. Outside the center, however, were several large tents with the Red Cross logo on them, and a group of aid workers moving among the latest arrivals.

  “What do we do now?” one of the others asked. “They’re going to ask questions.”

  Tara bit her lip. “We just need a place for the night,” she murmured, gaze skimming this wholly unpromising situation. As she did, a caravan of trucks rolled up on 97th Avenue. Within moments, a throng of people gathered around the vehicles, and Tara got an idea. “Stay here,” she told her group, jogging off in the direction of the trucks.

  There was no getting close to the trucks, not with the crowds clamoring on the verge of turning into a mob. And there was no mo
b quite like a New York mob.

  Tara skirted the perimeter, studying the area from every angle. Everyone, including the suppliers, were much too occupied to notice one little teenager with a considering sort of look about her. She approached the middle truck from the opposite side, where there were less people, and pressed her back against the quarter panel. She inched along to the back tire, and craned her head around the side to see what was happening.

  As she suspected, the relief workers’ backs were turned as they handed packages out to the crowd, and shouted instructions. She gaged her moment, grabbed the edge of the open hold, and hauled herself into the back. Once she was sure she’d gone unnoticed, she sneaked between aisles the stacked pallets to see what might be found.

  Bingo. Camping equipment, and scads of it. In the very back were towers of donated tents, of all different sizes. Tara staggered under the weight of an eight-person affair when she pulled it from the top. Then she returned the way she came, throwing herself and her loot from the truck, her timing just right.

  She grinned. She was better at this than she thought she would be.