“Do you know where they are?” Grace asks Eli softly.
“They’re dead,” he says. He presses a finger into a fork tine until I expect to see blood. “I made it there that first Sunday. Food was gone and they were on the kitchen floor.”
It’s obvious he means they were murdered, and we all murmur apologies. Paul clears his throat. “Last I heard, my dad was bringing his sick neighbor to the ER.” Eli grimaces, and Paul nods. “He was in Arizona. I couldn’t get hold of him the whole next day. That was Thursday. I didn’t think anything of it, but it was out west first…”
New York fell on a Friday. The Friday. It’s the day from which all things post-apocalypse are measured. We sit in silence for a minute, until Indy lifts her head with a pretty, practiced actress smile. “Everyone eat. There’s no crying at Sunday Dinner.”
“Unless you’re in trouble,” Eli says. “Then there’s plenty of crying.”
“True,” Indy says, eyes shining at her brother. “I guess I’m glad I have you, at least.”
“You wouldn’t last a day without me. I might take off for a week or two to show you how lost you’d be.”
“You know I’d find you.”
“Not if I didn’t want you to.”
“I have the tentacle, little brother. There’s no escaping it.”
Eli pushes out his lips in dissent, and Sylvie asks, “What the heck is the tentacle?”
“It sounds weird, but I can sense Eli, like I send out a feeler to find him. That’s what he calls it.”
“I believe it,” Grace says.
“Of course you do,” Sylvie says, then turns to Eli. “But I believe it. How can you believe in the beings but not the tentacle?”
Eli’s expression changes to impassive, likely because it’s a solid argument. “Thank you!” Indy says to Sylvie, then motions at the table. “Eat, before it’s cold.”
We do as ordered. Sylvie plops a dollop of something in red sauce on her plate and passes me the bowl. “What is it?” I ask, after I take some.
“We didn’t keep track. But it’s food.”
That’s good enough for me. I add a blob of what might be pot roast on my plate and dig in. Dishes are passed, entrees compared, and Indy was right—the dishes and candlelight bouncing off the chandelier do make it tastier.
Twenty minutes later, we’re full to bursting. There’s nothing left, including the desserts that come with MREs. The plan was to save them for later, but we opened one brownie and from there it was a slippery slope to the fig bars, cookie, pudding, and something called a dessert bar.
“We’re a bunch of pigs,” Indy says. She circles a finger in the thin layer of sauce on her plate and pops it in her mouth.
“I’m licking my plate,” Paul says.
True to his word, he disappears behind the white circle. Sylvie follows suit, then rest of us. After I’ve set mine down, Eli is the only one who sits in front of an un-licked plate, arms crossed. “I am not licking my plate,” he announces.
“Have fun for once, Eli,” Indy says.
“I have plenty of fun. Licking a plate isn’t fun.”
“Have you ever licked a plate?” Grace asks.
“When I was five, maybe.”
“Was it fun then?”
“Probably. I was five.”
“Oh, but now twenty-nine is too old to have fun,” Grace says in a deep, grumpy voice that’s supposed to be Eli and makes him laugh with the rest of us. She narrows her eyes. “I dare you to do it. I double dog dare you.”
Sylvie oohs. Eli stares unblinkingly at Grace, then slowly lifts his plate and licks it as Indy cackles. He sets it on the table and wipes his mouth with a napkin.
“I’m proud of you,” Grace says. “We’ll find your inner five-year-old yet.”
“We’ll see,” Eli says. He slings an arm over the back of his chair and inspects the wreckage of our meal. “Thank you. That was a nice Sunday Dinner.”
“Is it Sunday?” Paul asks.
I can remember the word of the day, but not the actual day itself. The others glance around the room, similarly clueless. Indy shrugs. “Sunday Dinner’s a feeling. And this was Sunday Dinner.”
It’s about the day and the food, sure, but it’s more about the people and togetherness. I’ve missed it since my parents died. Sylvie takes my hand, and though I hate that Friday and all it did to the world, I’m thankful for this one change it brought into my life. We lean back in our chairs, enjoying the ambiance of the gaudiest house in Brooklyn, our full bellies, and good Sunday Dinner conversation.
Chapter 37
We’re outside at dawn, since Paul began pacing the house an hour before light. The dishes that held our feast remain on the table, and only the candles are deemed worth bringing home. It’s a much easier trot through the golf course than my first visit, and the streets home aren’t bad until we reach ours, where my heart stops at the sight of our Lexer-packed block. The splintered doors of the end brownstone weren’t damaged when we left, and the gate to its front yard now hangs open. Paul’s face bleaches of color.
“We’ll come in,” Eli says, voice low.
I turn back to Paul, but he’s already pedaling for the next block, where he hoists his Halligan, drops his bike, and disappears around the corner. By the time we catch up, he’s well into the pack of twenty Lexers at the top of the street, steel bar swinging. I run for the one circling around his back and knife it in the head. I stab the silvery eye of a woman, then the rotted remains of a white coat-wearing doctor. A knife thumps behind me. Sylvie’s chisel to the left. Eli’s machete to my right. The Halligan’s spike slams into the final Lexer barring the gate of Hipster Zombie House, and Paul scrambles for the hidden key in the front yard. It slips from his gory hand to the ground, but Sylvie has it in the lock before he can retrieve it.
We enter the garden apartment. I pull my pistol as we walk the dark hall. Sylvie and Grace, who’ve never held their guns without first being encouraged, do the same. The view from the kitchen window is overturned chairs and trampled plants in a few garden plots. A body lies four yards down, and, after a breathless moment, I’m sure it’s not Maria, Jorge, or Leo.
“Stay here?” I ask Sylvie and Grace. Unsurprisingly, they refuse.
Paul must want to run, but he inches outside past the raised beds, and I follow his lead. Eli and Indy take the other side of the yard, keeping their backs to the houses as we make our way down. Another body twenty feet ahead. A man, but not Jorge. We shouldn’t have left them here. Three people—one my godson—against who knows what. Paul wanted to come home last night, and he’ll never forgive himself if the worst has happened.
“Paul!” Maria calls from the second floor of our brownstone. She waves out the window. “We’re all okay. I’ll come down and unlock the door.”
My lungs remember their purpose, and I put a hand on Paul’s rigid shoulder. A few moments later, Maria throws open the back door, and Paul races for the stairs while she hugs us in the kitchen. “We’re fine. Come upstairs.”
On the parlor floor, Paul grips Leo in his arms. Paul’s waxen skin and haunted eyes are of a man who just lived his worst nightmare. Jorge smiles broadly but shoots me a somber glance Leo doesn’t see.
“They came when it was getting light,” Jorge says. “Six of them. I thought I heard something, so I went to the window. They were coming right for our house, like they knew we were here.” He pauses to be sure that sinks in. “I shot the one farther down the yard and thought the others would run, you know? But they kept coming. They thought they had us.”
He turns to Paul. “I ran downstairs, but Maria was already up. She put Leo in the closet in her room and shot that other one out the living room window. First shot. I hit another, but he and the others took off.”
Maria shrugs at our shocked expressions. I haven’t killed a live person, and I don’t know how I’d feel if I did, though I hope to be as unruffled as she.
“We decided to wait until you guys got home,” Jo
rge says. “I didn’t want to leave Mimi and Leo in case— Thought we’d have breakfast and see what happened.”
Paul hands Leo to Sylvie and strides to the front windows, where he gestures to the Lexers on the street. “We’ll hear anyone coming with them out there.”
Sylvie presses her forehead to Leo’s. “You okay, squirt?”
“Yeah,” he whispers. His lower lip quivers and a fat tear drips to his cheek. “No.”
“You were so brave, sweetie,” Maria says. “And you listened. He went right in the closet when I said to, and he didn’t come out until I said it was safe.”
“That’s really important,” Grace says, reaching to stroke Leo’s hair. “You did great.”
He nods, though another tear follows the first. Sylvie hugs him tighter, and he rests his chin on her shoulder, wrapping his legs more firmly around her waist. “Want to help me find Bird?” she asks brightly. It doesn’t hide the way her voice catches.
“I think he’s upstairs.”
She climbs the staircase with Leo in her arms—neither of them looks ready to let go of the other.
Paul rests a fist on the window frame, and his wide shoulders expand with a breath before he turns from the window, face stony and eyes glacier-like. “If we find out who they were, I will kill them. That’s my fucking kid. No one fucks with my kid.”
Jorge tugs at his ponytail. “Listen, I’m sorry we let them get away. I wanted to catch them, but I wasn’t okay leaving Leo and Maria here in case they came back.”
Paul’s heavy boots thud across the room, and he grabs Jorge in a hug. “Thank you. You did the right thing staying with them. I would’ve done the same.” He clinches Maria so tight her feet leave the ground. “You’ve got some cojones on you, Maria.”
Maria’s laugh is weary. “I didn’t know what else to do.” She rubs at her eyes and drops on the couch between Eli and Indy. They sit on opposite sides like bookends, both bent forward, chins resting on their hands.
Eli tilts his head to the yard. “I’ll help with that.” His gaze settles on Grace for a moment, and then he surveys the rest of us. “You all know you can’t stay here. You do know that?”
There’s strength in numbers. Sunset Park Safe Zone is secure, and aside from a few initial skirmishes, no one has tried anything. Walls and guns have a way of discouraging that.
“I guess we’re moving,” Jorge says, and winks at Indy. “If you’ll have us.”
“You know it, old man,” Indy says. “The house next to ours is empty, and it has plenty of room for all of you.”
It’s decided we’ll start packing. Jorge and Indy depart for SPSZ to inform Guillermo and get help to lead the zombies away, while Eli, Paul and I drag the bodies through Avocado House and dump them out the window. I don’t want them in my yard, whether I live here or not. I scrutinize their faces, but I don’t recognize them.
“You think it could’ve been Sacred Heart?” Paul asks after we’ve dropped the corpses to the concrete. His cheeks are mottled pink, and he’s coiled to spring on anything and anyone. I don’t blame him, but Paul isn’t known for his restraint in matters like these.
“Doesn’t seem like a very well-executed plan, and I don’t think they’re stupid,” Eli says. “But maybe we should go over there. Warn them.”
It’s clear he doesn’t mean warn them about possible killers; more like warn them to stay the fuck away. I think it’s a fine idea. I want to see what’s going on over there anyway.
Chapter 38
Sylvie
Things could have gone very differently this morning, and, when I imagine all the possible permutations, I’m filled with a terror-tinged relief. No matter my aversion to large groups of people, I’m on board with moving to SPSZ. It’s just that I thought I’d have more than a couple of hours to wrap my brain around the idea. However, Guillermo wasted no time sending box trucks and minions to clear the streets of Lexers and bring us to our new home.
Now he stands in our yard and watches the minions uproot our gardens. “Carlos, you trying to kill those plants or what?” he calls, then winks at me. “You’ve got to keep Carlos busy or he starts drooling over Marissa.”
She’s here, too. Guillermo’s sister is quiet, with long brown hair, light brown eyes, and pouty lips. I can’t tell if they’re pouty because they’re full or because she’s pouting in an angst-ridden teenage manner. I don’t like vegetables, but the sight of all our hard work being ripped from the ground is painful, especially since they may not survive the transplant.
Guillermo rests his arm on my shoulders. “Is living with us that bad? I thought you loved me, Sylvie.”
“I like to love you from afar, Willie.”
“You have a house across the park. You can love me from there.” He leans in and whispers, “I have a special moving day dessert for you. With all that food we found, we can have dessert. So you’d better be nice to me.”
It’s one good bit of news—yesterday, Guillermo’s team found food at a defunct armory that was an unused Safe Zone. MREs, still in boxes, along with a large food pantry.
I wrap an arm around his waist. It won’t be so bad. It can’t possibly be worse than being killed by house raiders. I hope. “Thanks.” I motion to the minions. “For this, I mean. And dessert.”
“This is what we do. We’re like family, right?”
“Are we cousins, or brother and sister? I don’t want you bossing me around the way you do Marissa.”
“Nah, you get to boss me. You’re older.”
“Perfect.” I squeeze his muscled side and break away. “I’ll pack the rest of my stuff.”
In the bedroom, Grace throws clothes into bags and boxes. She reaches into the closet and pulls out a pack of cigarettes. “I guess Cassie was a smoker?”
Eric stops in the doorway holding a box of canned food. “Those were her emergency cigarettes. She quit, but she kept a pack hidden away.”
“Ooh, gimme,” I say. I smoked for years, but I haven’t touched one in years, mainly because if I start again I’ll want to chain smoke the rest of my life.
“No way.” Grace sets the pack on Eric’s box. “This is her one vice—well, besides sugar—and if you let her near a cigarette, she’ll never stop.”
“Duly noted.” Eric wags his finger. “Smoking’s bad for you.”
I make a face. “Really? I’ve never heard that before. Fine. We can use them to trade for things over there.”
“Where do you think we’re going, Syls?” Grace asks. “Riker’s?”
“I melted down my toothbrush handle to make a shiv just before,” Eric says. “How about you?”
Grace giggles. “I’m using a sharpened spoon.”
“Ha, ha. You guys are hilarious.” I take my bag of candy and the calendar pages from the underwear drawer and tuck them in my messenger bag. The word-of-the-day calendar goes in there, too. The picture of Eric’s family goes in a box. And that’s all I truly care about, though I help Grace pack the rest of Cassie’s clothes.
We’re done in fifteen minutes and drag it into the hall, where it’s carted away to a truck. The basement is empty and the living room looks lonely, already abandoned. All the moving I did as a child should have prepared me for this moment, but everywhere I lived with Mom felt temporary. This is the first time I’ve left what feels like home.
Jorge walks past with a duffel bag slung over his shoulder, a bag in either hand, and his characteristic smile on his face. “Hey, mami, you ready?”
It’s only a room and furniture, and I get to take all the things that made it special, like Jorge. I relieve him of some of his load. “Let’s go home.”
***
It’s a five-minute ride, but Bird meows as though he’s being tortured the entire time. The outer gate on Sixth Avenue rolls open and the trucks pull into the empty block. Once the outer gate closes, the inner gate is pushed open behind the walled sidewalk, and we enter the rectangle of streets that surrounds the park. We turn right up 44th Street, lef
t on Seventh Avenue across the top of the park, and then down the opposite side on 41st Street.
Midway down the block, Indy prances impatiently on the high stoop of a three-story house made of light brick. Half the façade is rounded, and the windows on each floor are bordered by decorative stone. The glass double doors at parlor floor level and stoop entry to the garden apartment are similar to our brownstone.
“Nice,” Grace says.
It is nice. This building and the one next to it—where Indy, Eli, and their boys live—are twins. A boxy brick house with a porch and a second-floor balcony sits on our other side, and all three houses stand separate from the apartment buildings that flank them.
Indy lands on the sidewalk as we exit our truck. “You like?” she asks.
“So far,” I say, and turn at murmurs from inside the park across the street.
The houses face the park, which here rises in a short slope behind the outer stone wall. A chain-link fence sits atop the slope, and behind it stand over a dozen people. They wave. Maria, Leo, and Grace wave back. We’re a spectacle. Most people come straggling in half-dead, but we’ve arrived with an armed escort.
The box truck pulls up, and Eric, Paul, and Jorge join our group. They agree it’s a lovely home while Indy drags Maria up the stoop. I follow, lugging Bird in his box.
“I cleaned,” Indy says. “It’s move-in condition and the original features are gorgeous!”
“You’re not selling it to us,” I say.
“Shut up,” she says cheerfully, and throws open the front doors.
The foyer gleams. The moldings, coat rack, and staircase to the third floor are made of carved dark wood that’s been cared for the past hundred years. The parlor floor living room is huge, with a mantel of the same wood and window seats in the floor-to-ceiling windows. Because they face the walled-off interior of SPSZ, we won’t have to cover them at night. Built-in bookcases are half-full and waiting for the survival books I packed to join them. The furniture is simple but comfortable-looking, and the parquet floors are partly covered with a soft brown area rug.