“I don’t know,” Maria says.
We stay down. I wish we were invisible. Zombies stumble your way while trying to eat you, which isn’t something I relish, but they don’t concoct plans and stratagems. God, I sincerely hope they don’t concoct plans and stratagems. People can be astoundingly wily. I didn’t think Kearney was a standup guy, but I also didn’t think he’d feed his partner to the zombies.
It takes ten minutes for the people to leave, and then we crawl back the way we came. Grace and I drop to the houses’ roofs. Maria curses from above. “There’re more people. They saw me.”
We scramble up. Figures stand in what I now know is north-ish. They’re indistinct but near enough to see their arms wave as though thrilled to have spotted us. Jorge waves back.
“Why are we smiling?” I ask Grace out of the corner of my mouth.
“Because we’ve been up here for fifteen minutes and we’ve already seen two groups of people.” She purses her lips. “That means people are alive, Sylvie. It’s a good thing.”
That’s partly true. It means her parents and Logan might be alive. I’m worried about everyone else. I want to believe people are mostly good, most of the time, but I’ve met too many who aren’t to have it be a given.
They wave a minute longer, but without any other means of communication that’s all we can do. The figures point and mime things in a game of Rooftop Charades. We can’t discern their meaning.
“Are there any binoculars in the basement?” Maria asks.
“Didn’t see any,” Jorge replies. “It looks like they have a pair. If we find some, we can write notes to each other.”
We wave one last time and head for our hatch.
Chapter 32
In the afternoon, light floods through the open hatch at the back of the basement and illuminates the shelves. I’m sure it seemed outlandish to all who knew about it, but the stored food was a stroke of genius as far as I’m concerned. The freeze-dried food is the best part—instant meals, almost like takeout. Maria says they stored most of the items that require thorough cooking at their cabin.
“Where exactly did they go?” I ask Maria. “Cassie and your daughters, Ana and…”
“Penny,” Maria finishes, looking up from her clipboard. “Upstate New York. It’s a log cabin with, I don’t know, a year’s worth of food. There’s a picture of it in the hall.”
“I saw it. It looks nice.”
“It is. When we can get out of the city, you girls could come there with me.”
I concentrate on a can of black beans, wondering if she means it and if I’d go. “That makes thirty cans of black beans.”
I imagine skipping around in the woods, although there might not be much skipping going on with zombies. I like the woods just fine, but I’m a city person. Grace’s family took me camping a couple of times and I had fun building a fire and sleeping in a tent, but it’s been a long time since then. I’m not some underprivileged kid who’s never left the city—I saved all that work money in college and used it to backpack in Europe with Grace one summer, but those were all cities, too.
“Twenty-seven cans of pintos,” I say, and kneel to start on the pasta bin.
“I can’t figure you out, Sylvie,” Maria says.
I raise my shoulders. “I can’t figure me out, either.”
“One minute you’re starting fights and the next you want to get a dialysis machine for a kid you just met.”
I can’t talk about Manny or his mother without crying. I elect to give her an honest, if brief, answer. “I don’t like for things to be unfair.”
Maria nods as if it’s enough, which makes me like her more than I already do. She’s tough, but not at the expense of being gentle and compassionate. I want to be like her when I grow up.
I tally up more food and almost hit the ceiling at a car alarm from the street. Most likely a zombie has bumped into a car, but something is moving out there, and that something could be alive. “Maybe we should bring some of the food upstairs,” I say. “Make it look like we have it all up there and hide the rest in case we’re robbed.”
“You always think the worst,” Grace says as she counts jam jars. “You’re so cynical.”
“I’m a cynical optimist,” I argue. “I think that maybe people aren’t bad, but I’m fully prepared they will be. That way I’m not disappointed.”
Maria raises her eyebrows at Grace, who responds with a don’t look at me shake of her head.
“I have to use the bucket,” Maria says. She sets down the clipboard and stops at the top of the hatch stairs. “Being prepared to be disappointed is fine, but not if it means you don’t trust anyone.”
She nods at her own wisdom and makes her exit. Grace eyes me. “What?” I groan.
“What she said.”
“Okay, I’ll embrace the zombie-ridden world.”
Grace pulls on two clumps of hair to tighten her ponytail and then straightens her shirt. Her therapist face materializes—lips in an almost-smile, eyes squinted but concerned. “I’m serious. You have ACE and probably PTSD.”
I write down the number of pasta boxes. “That does sound serious. Do I also have XYZ?”
“You’re such an ass. I’m trying to talk to you and you’re doing your usual avoidance tactics.”
I sit down with a sigh. She must miss her patients. “Okay, what’s ACE?”
“Adverse Childhood Experiences. It can lead to social and emotional impairment, social problems and high-risk activities. And early death.”
I stroke my chin in a professorial manner. “I won’t argue with most of those, but I think the playing field for early death has been leveled.”
“Sometimes I really hate you.”
“All right, fine. Psychoanalyze me for the nine-billionth time. Mother issues, father issues, everything issues.”
“You never learned to trust anyone.”
I cross my arms. “That is not true. I trust you.”
“It’s been almost fifteen years. I would hope so. Who else do you trust?” I shrug. She’s pretty much it. “People have to prove themselves to you over and over, and still you don’t trust them. Take Matt, for example.”
I let my head fall back; Grace is bringing out the big guns. “Could we not bring up Matt?”
“Why? He was a good guy. But no matter what he did, you didn’t trust him. You lived with him, for God’s sake, and when he moved out he said he felt like he barely knew you.”
“When did he say that?”
“When he called me. Crying.”
I stare at the shelves, hoping the light isn’t bright enough for her to see the color that rushes from my toes to my face. I might’ve been a little harsh when I told him to deal or get out, but he chose the latter, thereby losing any trust I had in him. And once he was gone and I didn’t miss him, I knew we’d both made the right decision. Still, it wasn’t my finest moment in a life brimming with moments that could stand a do-over.
“You test people,” Grace continues. “You push them away to see if they’ll come back, and, even if they do, you push until they don’t. You pretend not to have feelings. Getting you to say anything but a joke or angry words is impossible.”
Even when I want to let them out, words cling in my throat like barnacles. And, after I’m invariably disappointed, I’m glad I haven’t given my true feelings away. But maybe it’s because I haven’t said them that I’m invariably disappointed. I’m sure I’ve caused my share of disappointment to the people who’ve waited for words instead of my signature wordless stare.
I attempt to swallow. That I create my own problems isn’t a bombshell—Grace has said it for years—but I always thought there’d be time to get my act together. That one day I’d meet someone for whom it was worth scraping out those barnacles. And now I sit in a basement, measuring my life in boxes and cans on a clipboard. I’ve missed my chance to even reminisce about a once-normal life.
“I didn’t mean to make you cry,” Grace says gently.
“I’m not crying,” I say, even though it’s a ridiculous thing to say while obviously crying—and the crux of my problem, in a nutshell. I swipe at my cheek. “It’s just hard to swallow and my eyes sting.”
“That’s called crying, dumbass.” I laugh as she picks her way between bins to sit beside me. “There are so many good things about you. You’re honest to a fault—”
“The word fault kind of negates that as being a good quality,” I say.
“Shut up. In a good way. You’re loyal and funny and caring and smart. But you need to let other people see it. Let them in.”
“Grace, there are hardly any people left in the world.”
“So let in the ones who are.”
I exhale through my mouth since my nose is stuffy and swollen. Another reason not to cry. “I’ll do my best to scupper my defenses.”
“What your defenses?”
“Scupper: to defeat or put an end to.”
“This is that stupid calendar, isn’t it?”
“I get an extra point if I use it aloud.”
Grace sighs. “Just tell me you hear what I’m saying to you. Really hear it.”
“I hear it,” I say grudgingly, and smack her hand when she pats my head.
Chapter 33
I’m the first awake once again. I find a book called Tom Brown’s Field Guide to City and Suburban Survival and open to the section on water. I’m obsessed with water. It’s something I haven’t thought about much in my life. It comes out of a faucet, it falls from the sky on occasions when you’d rather it not, and it’s fun to swim in. That’s about it. But I’ve gone water-crazy. I want all the water in the world and I can’t have it. I’ve divided the water we have between us and, based on what another book has given as a minimum gallon a day benchmark, we have less than a month’s worth. And that doesn’t include washing up after major zombie altercations, which we have planned for later in the day—our neighboring houses need to be cleared of their occupants.
My new book tells me how much water I need and how important it is. Thanks a lot, Tom, wasn’t aware of that one. It discusses home water systems, which is interesting in a plumberly sort of way, but we’ve gotten nothing from any taps, whether upstairs or down. The next paragraph makes me jump up with a squawk, sleeping people be damned. I pace the kitchen. I can’t wait. They have to wake up now.
I decide to brew coffee to soften the blow. It uses water, but we have water—we just didn’t know it. I light the camping stove on the teak backyard table and hide under the umbrella while I switch between watching the lidded pot and rereading the paragraph to be sure I didn’t imagine it, then pour the boiled water into the French press and set it on the counter.
I poke Grace first. She leaps out of bed to her feet, arms flying every which way, before she freezes with her legs spread and hands in what I presume is a fighting stance. I laugh while she blinks and lowers her arms.
“What the fuck?” she asks. “That’s not funny!”
“It was like a combination of jazz dance and martial arts.” I jiggle my hands in the air. “Jazz hands!” Her pillow hits me in the face. “Sorry, I didn’t know you were going to go all Cabaret Kung Fu on me. Go pee while I wake up Maria and Jorge. I have good news.” She goes still. I shake my head—she probably thinks I’m going to say the zombies are dead. “It’s about water.”
“Oh. It’d better be good.”
“It is.”
I rouse Maria and Jorge. They come to the kitchen disheveled and half-asleep. Maria stops grumbling when a hot cup of coffee is shoved into her hand.
“What’s all this about?” she asks.
“Hot water heaters still have water in them. It doesn’t flow out when the power goes off,” I say, and fight the impulse to do jazz hands. “There’s a valve on the bottom to drain the water. Like, from twenty to eighty gallons worth.”
“The houses have water in their basements,” Jorge says. He slaps a hand on the counter and shakes his head. “Of course they do.”
“We would’ve died of dehydration surrounded by water,” Maria says. “Good God.”
“We have a tankless water heater in our building,” Grace says. “Don’t forget, some might have those, too. They don’t hold any water.”
I remember Logan talking my ear off about the energy savings on their co-op maintenance and try not to contemplate what that might mean in terms of his survival. “But if only twenty of the houses in this square block have a hot water heater, and even if they’re the smallest capacity, which I doubt, that’s still four hundred gallons of water. That’s three months of water at a gallon a day for each of us. We’ll get rain before that runs out.”
Jorge’s deep laugh fills the room. “Damn, I can’t believe I didn’t think of that. Never once occurred to me.”
“You might’ve just saved our lives, Sylvie,” Maria says. I know she’s said it to make me feel good, but I’m a sucker—it works.
“And wherever we go, we can find water,” Grace says, beaming. “It’ll be less to carry when we leave.”
I nod, although I can’t reach the same level of enthusiasm. Days ago, I feared we’d die no matter what, but now a few months of life dangle before me like a carrot on a stick. And we’re going leave the carrot for miles of zombies.
“You’re not going anytime soon, are you?” Maria asks.
Grace looks to me, but I say, “That’s up to you.”
“I don’t know,” Grace says. “My arm feels okay. I guess once we know what’s happening, we’ll figure out when it’s safe to go. I know we should wait, but I don’t want to wait too long. They could be out looking for me.”
Maria’s face tightens, but she doesn’t say a word.
While we eat breakfast, Jorge pulls out the battery-powered radio we found. Every station was static yesterday, but Jorge optimistically moves the tiny bar up and down the radio dial and then switches bands. Static, more static, and then a man’s recorded voice:
“...lower Manhattan below Canal Street. Do not attempt to walk the tunnels. Stuyvesant Town Safe Zone entrances are located on First Avenue and 16th Street and Avenue A and 14th Street. The Grand Central Station Safe Zone is closed due to flooding. St. Patrick’s Cathedral, located on Fifth Avenue and 51st Street, is accepting refugees, as is the New York Public library located on 42nd Street. Madison Square Garden is no longer accepting refugees due to infection. I repeat, Madison Square Garden is closed due to infection. All other designated Safe Zones in all boroughs are no longer in operation. Please be advised that there is limited food at all locations, and that all persons wishing to enter a Safe Zone will be searched and quarantined. All of New York City should be considered extremely dangerous for travel.”
I barely breathe so I don’t miss anything the muffled voice says. It sounds almost bored as it tells us that most of the city is crawling with dead people.
“FEMA food drops are unavailable. We estimate survivors to be one-half to one percent of the population of New York City. We have not been able to determine a date by which the virus will end. Reports of the infection’s length range from months to years. Please stand by while this message is repeated.”
A long beep sounds before it starts again. The part we missed warns there are no safe bridges and the water is unsafe due to zombies, pollution and crushing debris. It advises us to avoid flooded subway tunnels.
We listen to the whole loop again before Jorge turns it off. “A half to one percent. Almost nine million people.” He leans against the counter, calculating. “Anywhere from 45,000 to 90,000 left.”
It doesn’t look as though that many people are alive from our admittedly small corner of the universe, considering that Brooklyn was home to around 2.5 million. “That means Brooklyn might have around 25,000 people or half that,” I say.
If the broadcast is correct, there are a lot of hungry people out there vying for limited resources on islands surrounded by zombie-filled water. Of course, the broadcast could be days old. Mor
e people might have died, but they’re hungry in a different way. It’s a lose-lose situation.
“I can’t believe those are the only Safe Zones,” Maria says. “There were over fifty treatment centers on the list, and Bart said they were switching them to Safe Zones. They chose the safest places in the city.”
“So they brought healthy people to where they were quarantining the infected?” I ask. I’m not the director of the CDC, but even I see the gaping hole in that plan.
“They were supposed to kill them first, but…” Maria shrugs. We all saw the hospital, so we know how easily it can get out of hand.
“They’re full of infected,” Grace whispers.
She’s taken the radio news well, considering, but now her lips tremble. Once food ran out and water stopped flowing, her parents might’ve risked a Safe Zone, if only to check for Grace. Even if they didn’t go there, they could’ve left to find water. Getting to a river is no walk in the park. A walk in the park is no longer a walk in the park.
Grace stands, head down and hands pressed to the table. Maria and Jorge look to me for guidance. I touch her shoulder. “Gracie?”
“I just need some time, okay?” she says faintly, and leaves for the living room.
We listen until her plodding footsteps reach the hall and fade away. Sunlight pours into the kitchen. The windows of the other houses are empty again, since the zombies have forgotten about yesterday’s entertainment with the hammer. I take advantage of their stupidity and go into the yard.
Everything is dead, possibly even the hope Grace harbored. It’s four of us against a gazillion zombies. I think about the kids in the street, the people on the roof. Maybe we should try to befriend them. It’s not my usual instinct—wanting people around is a disturbing new trend.
Maria steps into the garden area. The dandelions and grass are thick, but when she pulls a few, the soil is a soft, crumbly dark brown. “We should get seeds so we can have a garden. There’s a garden store in Bay Ridge.” She says it matter-of-factly, as if she hasn’t had the impossibility of reaching her daughters confirmed.
She walks into the shed. I hear something drag across the floor and the rattle of gardening tools. A curse is followed by three solid thuds. I rush to the door, thinking she’s hurt herself, but Maria leans on the shelf built onto one wall, breathing hard. A garden trowel is jammed half an inch into the wood next to two V-shaped gouges. She’s fine, or as fine as you can be when you’re upset enough to attack a shed with a trowel.