Against the far wall stand a few more tables loaded down with food. My stomach growls loudly enough to turn Nelly’s head in the chair next to me.
The soldier who brought us here motions at the tables. “There’s plenty of food. Someone will fill you in soon.”
CHAPTER 21
“Do you have another cigarette?” I ask James. “I’m sorry I’m grubbing. It’s not like you can just run to the store or something.”
We stand outside the building, having just feasted on bagels and cold cut platters. There were fruit baskets, which was pretty surreal, like we were at some corporate symposium on our lunch break.
“I grabbed what was left of my carton at the office,” he replies, and hands me one with his lighter. “I’ve got plenty.”
I light it and sigh. I could get used to this again.
“I’ll take one, too,” Nelly says. He looks like the Marlboro Man with the butt hanging out of the corner of his mouth.
“How long has it been?” James asks.
“Five years,” Nelly says. He sinks back against the building as he exhales and closes his eyes. “How can they still be this good after so long?”
“Isn’t it evil?” I ask, as the smoke hits my lungs.
“And awesome,” James responds, clearly having none of the guilt Nelly and I have.
My laugh is cut short by Peter, who comes out of the front door of the building and makes a beeline for us. “Can I talk to you for a minute?” he asks me, with a look of distaste at the cigarette.
I’m thankful I have it. If it doesn’t keep me calm while talking to Peter, I can always put it out in his eye.
We walk away a bit, and when he stops I stop and wait for him to speak.
He shakes his head. “I can’t believe you’re smoking.”
“Is that what you wanted to say? Because, yes, I think I can have a cigarette right now without feeling too guilty about it.”
“Whatever, Cassie. That’s not what I wanted to say.” His dark eyes flash and his lips thin. “I think I’ll go my own way now. Thanks for helping me leave the city, but I’ll figure it out from here.”
I know it has to be hard being here with my friends, but it’s just like him to pick on me about smoking because he’s annoyed. Maybe he wants me to beg him to stay. Not happening.
“Fine,” I say. “Good luck.”
He looks at me coldly and shrugs. “You, too.”
He turns on his heel. Now I feel guilty. Someone has to be the mature one here; we’re both acting like babies.
“Peter.” He turns around, but his face gives nothing away. I take a deep drag and crush out what’s left of my cigarette on the side of the building. “Come on, this is silly. You can’t go off by yourself. Just because we…well, we can still be friends, no?”
He shrugs. I am not going to beg him.
“So, we’ll all stick together for now?” I ask.
“We’ll see how it goes, but I don’t think so. I’m sure I’ll be safe here until I can get back to the city.”
He holds his head high and waves his hand back at the building. He might just as easily be telling me he’ll be staying at the Plaza until the decorator’s finished with his apartment. I watch him walk away, amazed at how easily he believes this new reality conforms to any of the old rules. Nelly and James look at me curiously as I make my way back to them and carefully relight my crushed-out cigarette.
“What was that about?” asks Nelly.
“I broke up with Peter at the house, before we left.”
“Really?” Nelly asks. They’re both trying not to smile. “Great timing, as usual.”
“Oh, be quiet. I just couldn’t take him anymore. He’s saying he’s going to go his own way from here. And now I feel guilty about that, so I asked him to stay with us, and he said that he’d have to check his calendar.”
A soldier with a friendly snub-nosed face strolls up. “Everything okay over here?” We nod. “I’m Sergeant Grafton.”
We introduce ourselves.
“When do you think we’ll be able to head upstate?” Nelly asks.
Grafton contemplates the question. His round face and pink cheeks remind me of a grownup version of the little boy on his mama’s lap inside.
“Probably in the morning. We’re not hearing anything but bad news, so I can’t make any promises. In fact, there’s an armory over in Teaneck where the two majors went for a briefing. We’ve lost contact. We sent out a team to find them.” He looks like he thinks he’s said too much and puts his hands out in a calming gesture. “Now, we can hold the building if we have to. Until help comes.”
If help comes is left unsaid. But I know we all thought it.
He gazes into the distance. “We don’t know if they were overrun by Lexers, but lack of radio communication is troubling.”
“Lexers?” asks James.
“Yeah, you know, like the LX in Bornavirus LX? The Army is unofficially calling them Lexers.”
“Can you tell us how many they think are infected?” I ask. “They aren’t releasing new numbers.”
The Sergeant snorts and anger passes over his features. “That’s been a bone of contention around here. They were trying to keep us from contacting family, so we couldn’t spread the word. That lasted ten minutes.” He blows air from his nose. “They think that ten to fifteen percent of New York City will be infected by dawn. The major cities in the Midwest are at sixty percent. The rest are hiding out in their homes.
“I shouldn’t be telling you this, but right now they’re focusing on the smaller places, the ones that don’t have a lot of infected. Hoping they can build up Safe Zones and leave the cities until they can clear them of Lexers. I don’t see any point in keeping the information from civilians.”
He shrugs, but the look on his face says he knows more than he’s telling us. He’s warning us that this isn’t under control, without saying as much. He has no idea we already know.
“It’s the best plan they’ve got so far. Now, look around here.” He points to the building. “Not much in terms of defense, but we do have the Palisades right at our back, so there are no worries about defending in four directions. Fences are going up as we speak.”
“Palisades. You mean the Parkway is right behind us?” I ask. It’s useful information.
Grafton hooks a thumb at the trees behind the tent. “Yeah, head back, maybe a thousand feet, eight foot fence, you’ll be at the Parkway.”
James nods quickly and tries to look disinterested.
Grafton’s radio squawks. “I gotta go.”
CHAPTER 22
We’re back in the waiting room. Peter sits in a separate grouping of chairs, but Ana’s followed him and they talk quietly. I’m too tired and tense to do anything but sit here. Nelly sifts through the supplies in his pack. He finds a deck of cards in a side pocket and holds them up to me. Dad believed that boredom could kill you, too.
“Eh?” he asks.
I could use something to take my mind off of things.
“Sure,” I say. “Spit?” Nelly and I have an ongoing battle in that game.
He pulls the cards out of the box just as Grafton enters the room and raises his voice. “We have word that there may be infected heading this way. Please stay where you are and keep your belongings nearby in case we have to evacuate.”
The woman with the kids chooses the cot farthest from the windows and door. She covers them with a blanket and cradles them to her.
We grab our packs and sling them onto our shoulders. In the frenzy no one notices when we leave the room and head to the lobby. Humvees and jeeps are parked around the perimeter of the parking area out front, just inside the newly-erected fence. They’re circling the wagons.
Bright lights, the kind you see on nighttime construction sites, are set facing out. About thirty soldiers take up positions outside. A soldier in the lobby tries to herd us back down the hall. I’m not too keen on heading to where I can’t see what’s going on. Neither is Nelly, an
d we follow as he ducks into the first door in the hallway.
The soldier leans in. “We need you to head to the back,” he orders.
Nelly turns around after nodding approvingly that the windows face the parking lot. “Grafton said it was okay. Go ask.” He’s betting he won’t do it.
The soldier backs down. “Okay.”
Five soldiers file in and take position at the windows. We’re in the waiting room of a mortgage company. There are stuffed chairs upholstered in that ugly pattern favored for its ability to mask any stain. One of the soldiers switches off the lamps on the scattered tables.
The lights outside provide more than enough to see by. We huddle at the back of the room. I sit on the floor, backpack in front of me, hands under my thighs.
Nelly sits next to me. “Take your gun out, just in case.”
I pull it out. It gives my hand something to do. The others sit behind us on chairs. Penny murmurs to James.
James leans forward. “Penny doesn’t think she can use her gun. Should I give it to Peter?”
Nelly twists his head back. “Pete,” he calls softly. I’m surprised he followed us down here, but I’m glad too.
Peter tears his gaze away from the windows. “Yeah?”
“Can you shoot a gun?” Nelly mimes shooting a pistol.
“Um, I never have. How hard can it be?”
“Well, shooting is easy. Aiming’s the hard part,” Nelly says with a grim smile.
Peter’s eyes narrow, but Nelly wasn’t making fun of him and he knows it. “I wouldn’t mind having it. Any pointers?”
Nelly kneels and gives him an informal two-minute introduction to handguns. Once Peter can sight and hold the gun properly, the lesson is over. The only other thing that would help would be target practice, and we hope for none of that.
Grafton pokes his head in the door. “Ready?” he asks the soldiers. “We have word they’re about a half klick away, headed this way, most likely. Lights are going off, just in case that draws them.”
“Ready, Sarge,” replies a young Latino soldier. The others nod.
“Remember, head shots,” Grafton says.
The soldier who spoke looks at his compatriots. “If I get bitten, man, take me out. No waiting, even if I’m still alive.”
A dark-skinned soldier gives him a playful palm to the back of the head. “Rodriguez, I’ve been waiting for the chance to shoot you. I volunteer.”
All the guys laugh, and Rodriguez cuffs his buddy with a smile. “I’ll be sure to get you too, Park.”
They all grin. It’s the last thing I see before the lights outside shut off and plunge the room into darkness. A small light comes on by the window. Grafton’s features are dark as he nears us. His jaw is tight, but he smiles and glances into the shadows, where we’ve lowered our guns. Nelly’s shotgun is parked under the chair behind him.
“You have weapons?” he asks. Nelly nods reluctantly. “Well, we’re supposed to confiscate them, but I’m not doing that.”
I relax. I have my doubts we’re getting the van back, but this gun isn’t going anywhere.
“You might need them. We’ve seen the footage, and Lexers aren’t easily fought. They just don’t stop,” he says with something like wonder then looks out the window.
“There’s a good chance we can hold them off. If it looks like we can’t beat them the best thing to do is run, if you can find a clear exit. Or head upstairs to the men on the roof. I’ve been told they’re able to crawl up staircases eventually, but they can’t open doors unless they can break them down. The door frames here are metal. It would take a lot to get through them. That one group in Chicago held them off for a week. We could do that, no problem.”
His voice is a mumble; I think he might be talking to himself now.
“Maybe the Middle East would’ve been better. At least that enemy is human.”
And I guess he knows the truth about the infection, or has figured it out.
“Okay, I’ve got to get back out with my men.” He nods once before leaving.
CHAPTER 23
My mouth is stuck closed, and the water I sip does nothing. I strain my eyes and imagine things moving in the dark: a mass of infected like the ones who attacked the looters. Except I’m not safe on my roof right now, with months of food to eat and access to stored water below me. All we’ve got is what’s on our backs. We have two places to go: the Palisades and the upper floor of this building. The Lexers may not be able to make it up, but if there’s no water, all those people will be dead in a week, if not days, trapped up there.
After what seems like forever, one of the radios carries a warning. “We have approximately one hundred Lexers heading our way. ETA of two minutes. Be ready, boys.”
The soldiers stand at attention. A figure advances out of the gloom and nears the fence. It’s followed by another and another. The outside lights blaze to life, and I gasp at the sight.
The main road is full of infected, of Lexers. They stumble their way over the grass and into the lot. The guns and soldiers make no impression on them, except to draw them closer.
Shots ring out. A man with no lower jaw falls after the top of his head is blown off. A woman wearing a bright purple wrap dress drops to the ground with a well-placed shot. A little boy, who can’t be more than nine, limps to the fence. His mouth hangs open and his baseball cap has slid down over one eye, giving him a rakish look. His parents must be so worried about him. His parents might have been the ones who did this to him, I realize, and my mouth goes even drier.
My legs grow weak. These people are dead. They’re dead, and they’re not. If I think about it too much I might go crazy, so I push the thought to the back of my mind. I watch the little boy stagger from a head shot, and it’s only when he drops to the ground, face-first, that I see his shirt wasn’t always brown. Before all the blood, it had been white.
There’s an older woman who looks like an office worker, a doctor still wearing his white coat, a couple of men wearing orange road worker vests. They all fall, but the tide continues as they veer off the road.
There are so many of them. They make it to the fence, where they push and pull and yank. I can hear them through the window, even over the gunshots. It’s a cacophony of low, rasping cries and drawn-out moans. It sounds like hunger, and we’re the food. I fight the urge to cover my ears with my hands and use them to clench my pistol. The gate swings alarmingly, but it holds.
A flash of light out by the main road illuminates the room. The explosion makes us jump. For a few minutes they’re killed as fast as they come. But then Rodriguez points out the window and shouts. I visibly follow his finger, and the sight forces the air out of my lungs. I tighten my sweaty hold on my gun.
A gigantic throng of infected follows the first. They trip and swarm over the road barricades they’ve knocked to the ground. All the noise must have attracted them. Rodriguez, Park and the others have a loud conversation over the gunfire.
Rodriguez turns to us as they run out. “We’ve got to get out there,” he yells. “We’re gonna kill those motherLexers!”
The Lexers at the fence push. Their fingers stretch through the wire, beckoning us. The fence buckles at the joints where the panels meet; the sheer force of hundreds of bodies is not something it’s made to withstand. I back up, right into a wide-eyed Penny.
It sounds like the finale at the Fourth of July fireworks. My heart booms and my stomach pounds like a bass drum. Please, please, I chant along with it. Please. But, when the second group meets the first at the fence, it bends from the top and the bottom scrapes along the pavement. The seam between two panels of fence cracks. A Lexer on the ground slithers through. He’s missing an arm, and his shirt hangs open to reveal shredded skin and coagulated blood.
“No!” Penny whispers.
When she grabs my arm it stops my trembling. I can’t freak out now. She isn’t armed. And if the Army can’t protect us then we’re going to have to protect ourselves.
The
Lexer under the fence grasps a soldier’s foot and drags himself toward his ankle with his one good arm. His teeth sink into boot. The soldier cracks his head with the butt of his rifle and fires on the infected who follow.
The bright lights turn their skin a garish white, which contrasts with the dark blood most wear. Some look like they’re hissing, but it isn’t with any real venom. It’s instinct alone. Their eyes are blank, soulless.
The soldiers retreat into the building. Boots clatter and bang as some head to the roof and the shots resume in earnest. The gate bends lower and gives way with the sound of shearing metal. The Lexers pour through and squeeze between the vehicles. Now that the worst has happened, I’m calmer than I thought I could be. There’s only one thing to do.
“We have to go,” Nelly says. “Grab your bags.”
I throw my straps over my shoulders. The others hurl their heavy packs on and look to Nelly.
“Out the back, to the Palisades?” he asks James and me. We nod.
The soldiers in the lobby pile desks and chairs in front of the glass, while others herd the civilians up the stairs. The mother has the boy in her arms, and a soldier carries the screaming little girl.
Grafton intercepts us. “Where are you going?” he yells.
“The Palisades,” James answers.
Grafton nods. “I can’t say when we’re going to get any backup, but I can’t leave them.”
He gestures at the shell-shocked people. The glass of the front door shatters. A pale arm covered in dark brown hair pushes through the furniture. The jagged edges slice the skin, but it doesn’t stop.
“Go now!” Grafton shouts. “We’ll keep them back as long as we can. Take the exit doors at the end of the hall. It’s clear behind us.”
My pack’s waist strap is unbuckled, and it slams into me and throws me forward with every step. A piercing siren wails as the door flies open. Everyone is through except Peter. He hesitates.
“Peter, come on!” I yell.