Back in the vehicles, we ride along First Avenue. Micah calls out, “Stop for a second?”
“Micah said stop!” Rissa yells.
Guillermo slows the van. “Calm down, Rissa. I heard him.” He shakes his head and mutters to himself.
Micah jumps out the rear doors and walks up the side street followed by Carlos. He stops in front of a brick building covered in peeling white paint and pokes inside the small dumpster out front, then yanks on the rolling metal door. There’s no sign on the building to give any clue as to what, if anything, is in there.
“You done garbage picking?” Guillermo calls out the window.
Micah jogs back to the van and grabs the bolt cutters. “Just another second,” he says, and is gone before he can hear Guillermo’s sigh.
Rissa hangs out the back door to watch. “You put everyone down,” she says to her brother. “Like, if you didn’t think of it, it’s not a good idea.”
That’s not true, but, having seen siblings in action, I’m not getting in the middle of this spat. Guillermo is less spirited than he was prior to Felipe, so though I’m sure he was only joking, his comedic timing is off.
“You know what, Rissa?” he says. “This is why you don’t get to leave the Zone. Because you’re still a baby. When you come out here, you have to be smart—”
“You’re the baby!” she yells, hair swinging as she spins to face inside the van. “Ma basically had to put you to bed every night for a month. Oh, I’m so sad! I killed Felipe!”
A heavy silence falls. Jordan and Junior, whom I assume have experience in this arena, look aghast at her words. I inspect old stains on my glove and wish I was in the truck with Maria, Jorge, Indy, and Grace. They’re just behind us, talking happily in their heated cab. Gary twists in the van’s passenger seat, every crease on his face set in disapproval, and Rissa licks her lips nervously.
“That’s not cool,” Micah says. He stands outside the rear door, holding the bolt cutters by his side and wearing a frown. “Your brother saved my life, and yours, when this all started. He had to make a hard decision with Felipe, and he made the right one even though it was worse for him.” He cuts his eyes away from Rissa. “Guillermo, that’s a warehouse. It’s full of pop and chips and stuff.”
Guillermo clears his throat. “Nice find, Micah.”
“Thanks,” Micah says. “I’ll meet you up there.”
Rissa has turned shades paler, and now her cheeks bloom pink. She closes the door and sinks down, arms around her knees and holding back tears. I’ve been in that remorseful big-mouthed spot many times, and I offer her a sympathetic smile. But better to learn not to burn her bridges now, at eighteen, than wait until twenty-seven.
We shine the headlights through the open loading door and move past a frozen zombie on the concrete floor. It’s smaller than the chip distribution warehouse but has a greater diversity of products. They must have supplied bodegas and vending machines and offices because almost everything is in display boxes and small packages, from Pringles to fruity candies to chocolate bars and cookies. Beverages range from soda to water to Frappuccinos and energy drinks, though some bottles burst when they froze. The packets of ground and instant coffee make Maria so joyous she dances me around. Toilet paper, paper towels, and sugar round out the selections.
Micah is the man of the hour, and he absorbs the praise in a reserved manner instead of shrugging it off the way he once might have. He’s gained a self-assurance he lacked, and, though lean, he’s filled out from all the physical labor.
“This is great,” I say to him. “How’d you know?”
“I saw a plastic pallet and then there were a few invoices in the trash, dated this past March.”
“You’re like Sherlock Holmes. You could demand a game of charades right now and everyone would do it.”
“I was thinking Pictionary,” he jokes, then glances toward the entrance where Rissa stands, managing to look glum and defiant simultaneously. “I probably shouldn’t have said that to Rissa.”
“It needed to be said. She’ll get over it.” He nods uncertainly, and I add, “Micah, you’re too nice. But don’t ever change.”
He hugs me. Micah’s a hugger, and though I usually extricate myself as soon as possible, it occurs to me that I have lots of people to hug and he doesn’t. I’ll add him to my list—he’s got the right amount of pressure and doesn’t breathe all over my neck.
“You’re hugging me back,” he says. “Did the world end or something?”
I step away with a laugh. “Micah, are you turning into a smart-ass on me?”
He grins before we get to work. Once we’ve taken stock, we come to the conclusion that we can’t actually take the stock today. Our other trucks are elsewhere and won’t be back until late afternoon. “Let’s get what we can in the truck,” Gary says. “I’ll drive everyone home, then come back in the van and stay overnight to guard the rest.”
“I’ll stay with you,” Micah offers, and Carlos and April say they’ll join him.
Rissa juts out her lower lip. April doesn’t have a parent to forbid it, and that must be a thorn in Rissa’s side. “I’m staying, too.”
“No, you’re not,” Guillermo snaps. “You’re driving me crazy today, you know that?”
“I’m eighteen. You can’t tell me what to do.” Rissa’s eyes burn with anger and maybe a little fear that she’s decided to stand her ground right here, right now. “I’m staying. You can tell Ma whatever you want. If you drag me out of here, I’ll just leave SPSZ and come back.”
Guillermo’s stare is as frosty as the air. “Fine. I’m tired of this bullshit. You want to be a grownup? Have fun. But don’t come crying to me when you find out it sucks.”
They glare at each other until the silence is broken by Jorge saying, “All right. Let’s get what we can in the truck.”
The room springs into action. It’s impossible to ignore the family drama, but we do a good job of pretending we are. I put several cases of Snickers bars by the door—if we end up losing any of this, I don’t want it to be Snickers.
“Do you mind if we run to the hospital while you load up?” Maria asks. “We could use some medicine.”
For a second it’s evident Jorge is not big on that idea, then he smiles. “Don’t forget flashlights.”
“C’mon,” Maria says to me, Grace, and Indy. “Let the boys load.”
“Happily,” Indy says, and points at Lucky, Tommy, and Harold. “Do what Guillermo tells you.” They nod and return to sorting boxes.
It’s only a few blocks’ drive in the van, and then we’re at the block-long gray building I walked into months ago to say goodbye to my mother. I thought I’d emerge a new person after her death, and I guess I did, though this is quite a bit different than how I’d envisioned it.
The block is carpeted with bodies. We kill frozen Lexers so they can’t reanimate when thawed, but this would take us until night. Still, I poke a few with my chisel on our way to the shattered glass doors of the lobby. The blood on the walls and floor has dried a rusty brown. It smells, but not as bad as it would without the broken windows to air it out.
Maria opens a door to a corridor. “Emergency room is this way.”
We follow her down a long hall and shove the emergency room doors open against bodies who were eaten during an attempted escape. There’s not much left of them, between Lexers and putrefaction, but there are a couple of kids, one of whom is shriveled in a woman’s arms as though she died shielding him.
“We tried to save the people in the waiting room,” Maria says, shaking her head. “But we couldn’t.”
The rows of chairs are coated with crackled blood and dried chunks of viscera. Bodies are everywhere, and behind the intake desks is a scene of bloody office-supplies mayhem. It’s difficult not to imagine the pandemonium that transpired, the ear-splitting screams and glottal sounds of eating. Maria picks her way over bodies, leading us to the examination rooms in back. It’s almost as bad, though much of t
he horror is tucked away in curtained patient areas. Grace and Indy gather first aid supplies while Maria and I enter a small room off the main corridor.
“We moved all the medication in here.” Maria sets her backpack on a counter and uses her flashlight on the shelves, then places a few plastic-wrapped trays of small vials inside. She picks up three clear vials in her hand and shines her light on their labels so I can see. “These three. Equal parts, injected just under the base of the skull. If you do it when they’re sick or dead but not turned, they’ll go peacefully.”
I nod. It was better that Guillermo killed Felipe rather than haul him to relative safety, a protracted death, and someone having to finish him off as a zombie. Garnering the strength to crunch through bone into brain is that much harder when you know the person; I still get vaguely ill when I think of Jayden. It’s bound to happen again, and this way—these vials—are as serene as you can get when you’re euthanizing a human.
Maria grabs handfuls of syringes, then moves on to medicines that aren’t as depressing. I recognize Valium and hold it up. She says, “Yes. But don’t go getting any ideas.”
“Fine. I don’t need it anyway. I sleep like a baby now.”
“And wake up cranky as one, too,” she says.
“You set the bar, woman.”
She pushes me with her hip. “Little shit.”
My mother called me the same thing sometimes, but not in the joking way Maria does. Mom’s body is somewhere above me, decomposing in a bed. It feels like a million years ago that I sat in her hospital room and watched TV with Grace, and a remnant of that old anger flames in my middle before it fizzles out. This was the best place I could’ve been, and if the beginning of my life was designed to land me with Maria and the others, and to meet Eric, it was worth every suckass moment.
Maria zips up her backpack. “You okay, sweetie?”
I gesture at the ceiling. “I was thinking about my mom.”
“Do you want to go up—”
“God, no,” I say. “I’m fine.”
And I really am.
Chapter 76
Eric
The temperature jumped to thirty-six degrees ten minutes ago. A thaw is imminent, and some zombies thaw as if they have antifreeze in their systems. Who knows, maybe they do. I find Sylvie on a roof, watching the sidewalk with Grace in the early morning sun. They’re bundled in puffy coats with furred hoods, scarves and hats beneath.
“We’re leaving for that warehouse,” I say. “It’s starting to thaw, and we have to empty it out before we can’t.”
“They must be freezing their asses off down there,” Sylvie says. “We’ve been up here for two hours and we’re dying.”
I kiss the tip of her pink nose. “Be back soon.”
“Careful. Love you.”
“Love you, too,” I say. She says it every time we part, as if it’s the last thing she wants me to hear, and every time it warms me from the inside out.
I meet up with Eli on the street, and we make our way to Gate 5A. “Are they thawed at all?” I ask.
“Don’t know. But the warehouse is right by the hospital,” he replies. “And Guillermo’s sister is there.”
“He let her stay?”
“Not so much let her as she demanded to stay and he threw up his hands, according to Grace.”
As long as they’re quiet, they should be fine, but I walk faster. Guillermo paces by the gate in a cloud of exhaust, and Micah leans on the side of the truck.
“Hey,” I say. “Rissa’s down there?”
Guillermo breathes on his hands to warm them and then pulls on his gloves. “Nah, Micah talked some sense into her and April and walked them home last night, when he thought the temperature was rising. For whatever reason, she listens to him.” He pounds Micah’s shoulder. “What’d you say to her?”
Micah shrugs. “I told her she was acting immature, and if she wanted to prove she was a grownup she should act like one.”
“And she didn’t smack him.”
“Well,” Micah says with a half-smile, “she also found out how much it sucks to be cold and on watch all night.”
Guillermo laughs and shakes his head. “My sister, man.”
We squeeze into the cab with Guillermo and Micah and roll through the gate, trailed by the second truck carrying Dennis, Jorge, and Rob. The nearby zombies have been brained, and it’s only at the lower avenues that a figure is on its feet and stumbling along the sidewalk in front of a fire-gutted store. It’s jerky and not completely thawed, but the truck jumps forward with Guillermo’s stomp on the gas pedal. There are more on First Avenue, but they’re stiff and slow. Their weapons—teeth and hands—are close to useless.
“Look at that,” Eli says.
I follow his finger three blocks ahead, where a Lexer stumbles off the corner at normal speed.
“Shit,” Guillermo says. The truck roars forward, which answers the question of on what block the warehouse sits. “Where are Carlos and Gary?”
“Inside,” Micah says, “unless they were in the van.” He already has his knife out, and his wide, dark eyes remind me of Sylvie.
“How many doors in?” I ask him.
“A regular door to an office, and two rolling doors to the warehouse.”
Guillermo turns the corner and brakes at the sight of forty Lexers wandering in the street, all fully defrosted. “What the hell?” he says.
One rolling door is raised a few inches from the ground, and the van parked just beyond on the sidewalk looks empty, though they could be hiding down low. The Lexers are already coming this way, but we can’t take off and leave Gary and Carlos here.
“I’ll get on the hood,” Eli says, throwing open the door. “Two of you take the windows.”
I join him on the cold metal. Between the four of us and the three in the truck behind, we’ll finish them off in no time. Eli waits in a patient crouch while they close in. I had an appreciation for him before, but yesterday on the way to Queens, I saw again how skilled he is. Paul is brutal—medieval mace brutal—but Eli is just as brutal in an intensely quiet way. We went through Sunnyside, which was the part of our plan we didn’t mention to Sylvie or Grace. All traces of the people Walt mentioned, the ones who might’ve shot at me, were gone, but for a warehouse loaded with human shit and empty food packaging.
The truck doesn’t budge when the Lexers hit. Men, women, clothed, half-clothed, short, tall. Aside from noticing that a few have odd-shaped black patches on their skin, I pay no attention as I grab, stab, and toss, until my knife has finished its arc into Gary’s eye. I release his jacket in surprise and he crashes to the ground below the truck, right side of his face gray and chewed from his temple to his chin. Cold sweat floods my back. I turn to see if Eli noticed, but he’s busy with a woman.
“Everything all right?” he grunts, tossing the body to the side.
I nod. My hand quakes on the next strike, and I try to wipe Gary from my mind. I wouldn’t have done anything differently, but it’s unnerving to have killed him with such indifference, with no acknowledgement of his previous humanity.
Four minutes later, we’re done. “Gary was here,” I say, and motion at his body.
Eli gazes down, legs hanging over the grill. “Shit. You all right?”
“Yeah.” I slide off the hood, making sure to plant my feet on solid ground and not Gary. “Did you see Carlos?”
Eli curses softly and drops beside me. A sob comes from inside the truck’s cab before Micah’s door swings open. He kneels at a body bundled in a winter coat. It’s Carlos. Was Carlos. His faded brown eyes stare up at the sky, his mouth is set in a snarl, and he has a hole by his ear from Micah’s knife.
“Oh, God,” Micah whispers, rocking back and forth. “I’m sorry.”
I swallow, almost glad Gary didn’t speak enough to get to know him well. But I knew Carlos. He was a good kid who didn’t deserve to go out this way: chewed to death, cold and alone and afraid.
Guillermo is around t
he truck in a flash, and he sinks to his knees beside Carlos, his hand to his forehead. “No, no, no.” After only a minute, he rises to standing, hunched and beaten-looking, and waves us toward the warehouse. “They’re thawing. We don’t have time.”
We push up the rolling doors, anticipating Lexers, and find nothing but stacks of beverages and food on pallets. Micah and Guillermo put in their share of work, though Micah’s eyes are red-rimmed, especially after Guillermo thanks him effusively for bringing Rissa home. If he hadn’t, she’d likely be dead. Micah would be, too, though he doesn’t seem to care much about that.
Nothing appears to be missing. Most other zombies are frozen, but this group could’ve thawed behind window glass, a product of the greenhouse effect. They could’ve been loners drawn by the van engine or an accidental noise. Whatever the case, it’s clear Carlos and Gary were taken by surprise or made a mistake, and one misstep is all it takes.
Chapter 77
The first week of February brings a swirl of arctic wind and enough snow that we head down to the Department of Sanitation garage by the water and help ourselves to two plow-spreaders. The bright orange trucks run on diesel, and they push anything and everything from their path. A fact Paul discovered on the return trip to SPSZ, where he not only plowed snow but also bodies, assorted trash, and even a small sedan, and which I white-knuckled the entire ride.
After we’ve pulled through the gates—a miracle in and of itself—Paul says, “Fucking Sanitation, bro. They were the true heroes. I love this thing.”
I hop out. “Good. Because you’ll be riding in it alone.”
His demented cackle comes through the closed door. The engine bellows and he starts up the street, plowing a path for walking and any vehicles we may need to get through. Tomorrow we’ll take them to the few places Eli and I found in our travels to Queens: An Asian foods warehouse, a food distributor with fifty-pound bags of flour and other dry goods, and a cash and carry restaurant supply, which was partly looted before it was overrun with Lexers. Food is great, but we also searched for weapons, and there is not a single NYPD station that hasn’t been cleared out.