At the edge of the roof, I stop at the sight of a few hardier plants on the metal shelves set in the store’s yard of pea gravel. It hadn’t yet been warm enough for vegetable starts to survive the night when the virus hit, and any inside will be dead from lack of water and light. I lower myself to hang from the roof and drop. Rocks crunch under my boots on my way to the back door.
It’s unlocked. Someone is in there. Definitely dead, by the smell, although that’s no sure indicator of whether or not I’m in danger. The light coming in the store’s front window allows me to see a shadow move. I use a terracotta planter as a doorstop and step back with my knife. The woman, older than me with long, dark hair and chin so torn apart it hangs four inches lower than it should, trips over the doorjamb and falls to the gravel. I get her in the back of the head, thankful I won’t have to see her mangled face again, then wipe my knife on her shirt, pull out my light and walk inside.
It’s the motherlode, apart from the dead plants and one dead body. Seeds, so many seeds. Fertilizer and hydroponic systems. We have no electricity, but a passive hydro system works well with greens and would allow us to save the soil we do have for tomatoes and fruiting plants. I run a hand over the jugs and containers as I walk through the jam-packed aisles.
“Holy shit,” I whisper.
I can’t get it all home. Not the large containers of nutrients nor the vermiculite or stones or anything else I may need. I don’t know all the ins and outs of hydroponics, but the books on the shelves must. I shove the three that appear most intensive in my pack. If we return, I’ll know exactly what we need.
I grab many packets of seeds but stand undecided about whether or not to take every last one. I now have enough in my pack for a few years—most are non-hybrid, which means the seeds from their fruits can be saved and replanted—but I still want them all. Not only would they be good for barter, but these paper envelopes mean life. Food. Survival.
Other people may show up at some point, desperate to grow food, only to find an empty rack. I could’ve shown up to an empty rack and left disappointed. In the end, I leave a few of each type, which gives me more than enough to share with Guillermo, as well as for bartering, and then drag myself away from the rack. This is what happens when the future is uncertain—you want to take it all. It never feels like enough. But this is enough.
I grab small boxes of fertilizer for the undernourished soil of the yards and the smallest bag of soil for starting seeds. Some good, well-fitting leather gloves which can be used for gardening and zombie killing, unlike the loose canvas we have at the apartment, and a few other incidentals go in before my bags are full. I linger over the large bags of soil amendments. They’re for another day. Another day with a truck.
The couple in here had a supply of food and, although most of it is empty packaging, I find candy at the bottom of one bag. Starburst, Skittles, gummy candy and a Blow-Pop. The dark hair of the woman, and the candy, make me think of Sylvie. This is probably what her survival food would look like.
I find my way back to Paul’s, where they’ve cracked open the other MRE. I wave away Paul’s offer to share and crunch on peanuts, which I manage to get down without gagging. I won’t ask about Hannah in front of Leo, and, since he’s glued to my side, I haven’t. She must be dead or missing—she would never leave Leo. Hannah’s tough, but I also see her in Leo’s mildness and gentle spirit. His obsessions with ninjas and spies and superheroes is just as endearing, although somewhat obsessive and definitely not Hannah’s influence. I put an arm around him and he beams up at me, chewing like a cow.
“Were you raised in a barn?” I ask. He shows me his chewed food and then laughs until he chokes.
The sun has dipped low. We’ll stay the night and take Paul’s truck as far as we can in the morning. The seed store took longer than I thought, and I’m tired enough that I don’t trust myself to get Leo through the worst of it if I don’t have to. Paul looks better already, but he could use a night to fully digest the food that sits unsettled in his stomach.
After dinner, I dump the candy I found on the couch. Leo’s eyes grow round. “I thought you might be able to help me,” I say to him. “I have a friend who loves candy. And she really, really loves orange candy.”
“I love red candy,” Leo says. “Orange is okay, but it’s not my favorite.”
“You have good taste. What we need to do is to open all these packages and pick out the orange ones. Maybe some other flavors, but no blue.”
“Why?”
“She hates blue.”
“I love blue!”
“That’s what I said, but she doesn’t like it. Can you help?” Leo nods, gaze locked on the bright-colored packages. He’s taken to stroking a bag of Skittles with his index finger, too well-mannered to ask what I’m doing with the remainder of the candy. “Oh, I almost forgot—you can have what’s left.”
He squeals with happiness.
***
Leo sits on the couch with his toys and candy while Paul and I pack their things. Clothes, mostly, along with a few pictures and weapons. Paul produces a black baseball bat from the side of the bar and swings it through the air, then passes it to me. “Check this out.”
It’s just under three feet and made of heavy plastic, with a weighted striking end. It could definitely do some damage. White lettering on the side says BROOKLYN SMASHER.
“Polypropylene,” Paul says. “Guaranteed unbreakable. I kept it by the bed for self-defense. Works great. One good swing and—” he makes a squishing sound while he swings an imaginary bat at a head. “Got a Halligan, too.”
He produces a steel tool about two-and-a-half feet long. I’ve seen it at the firehouse and know it’s for prying doors, but I didn’t know its name. On one end of the central bar is a slightly curved two-prong fork. The other is an adze, with a spike jutting out at a 90 degree angle. He trades me the bat for the Halligan. After the lightweight bat, my hand dips with the Halligan’s bulk.
“Heavy,” I say.
“About ten pounds, but that ten pounds works to your advantage on skull.”
“I’ll bet.” I hand it back and point to the Glock 19 on the bar. “Where’d you get that?”
“Off a dead cop. I have a SIG, too. You know how many guns there are out there? NYPD had about forty thousand officers, and even if they weren’t on duty, they sure as shit had their pieces on them.”
That could make for a brutal war, at least until the ammo is gone. I’m surprised I haven’t heard more gunshots. But, then again, I haven’t seen many people.
We manage to fit everything into Leo’s school backpack, a backpack of Paul’s, and a duffel bag. The duffel bag holds things that can be left behind if necessary, and I notice Paul carefully tucks a couple of pictures of Hannah in his pack. By the time we’re done, Leo is asleep on the couch. Paul says he wakes easily these days, so we’ll have to share the mattress on the floor unless I want a kid bouncing off the walls into the wee hours. We sit on the mattress, where he shines the flashlight on Leo to be sure he sleeps, then says, “Thanks, bro. I think I’m finally full.”
“Why didn’t you go to the apartment? You know there’s food.”
“I wasn’t sure it was still there. Wasn’t sure I’d make it with Leo. After Hannah—” He chokes on her name and rests his forehead on his fist.
I want to ask where she is, but part of me doesn’t want to know. I lay a hand on his shoulder. He drags in a few breaths and pats my arm with his, then raises his head and continues, “I got home Saturday morning, after the bridges were down. Once that happened, we all left the firehouse. No one was going to leave their family unprotected. Fuck that. We’d just made a Costco run, so we split the food. I got home, filled the tub with water and went out for some supplies. The streets were nuts. Cars everywhere. People looting and cops shooting and shit. I got some more food and figured I’d go out again once it quieted down.”
He gazes at the door, where faint remnants of orange are visible in the sky abov
e the garage. “Next day was pretty quiet. We still had radio, but the power was out in some neighborhoods. They said there was flooding all over Brooklyn and they were shutting off water but that even if they didn’t, we were losing pressure, so to fill your tub and every container you could find. You know they said there’d be food drops?”
“I know it didn’t happen.”
He gives a short laugh. “Nope, and they promised us water trucks. Didn’t happen either. I told the neighbors about their water heaters,” he shrugs, “but we heard them a couple days later. Fighting each other. I went outside. Some of them were out of food, so I said I’d help out. Mrs. Connelly and Mr. Henry were too old to go for themselves, and I was thinking I’d get some more for us while I was at it. Stupidest fucking idea I ever had.”
His fist connects with his thigh. His teeth crunch.
“Paul, you did what—”
He shakes his head, almost snarling, though it isn’t directed at me. “I was talking to this one neighbor, Ricky, about how much food we had left. No big deal, everyone was, and I lowballed it. And then half of us got stuck behind some zombies. By the time I got back, Hannah was gone. The front door was open and there were zombies in the driveway. Leo said Ricky knocked on the door and said I’d sent him, that I was hurt. She put Leo in the basement and told him not to move while she checked. He was our neighbor—of course she believed him.”
His voice has sped up, trying to get this over with. “Leo won’t tell me what happened, says he doesn’t know, but when I got back she was gone and all the food was gone and the fucking blood…”
His big shoulders quiver. I pull him close, glad I only ate those peanuts with the way my stomach tightens. Hannah, possibly torn apart, most likely a zombie, over food she would’ve shared with the guy if he had only asked. The same way Leo offered to share his cupcake. And now Leo doesn’t have a mother. Paul’s mom died of cancer before I met him, and I know he has to be feeling this on many levels. It’s just him and Leo the way it was just him and his dad. My mom always gave Paul extra attention—a big hug, advice, a kind word, and a kick in the ass when he needed one. He even called her Ma. Leo doesn’t remember her, but she spent plenty of time doting on him when he was a baby.
“God, Paul, I’m so sorry.” I have to force the words through my tight throat.
He wipes his face on his sleeve. “I should’ve let them all die.”
“Paul—”
“Don’t fucking say it, bro.”
I shake my head, although I want to shake him and scream that it’s not his fault. I know Paul, he’ll only get pissed. He’ll figure it out at some point, but he won’t do anything if forced.
“I fed him to the zombies.” His top lip curls. “I found Ricky the next day and tied him to a fence. Blew a whistle until they came, and then I watched and took that bat to his head when they were done.”
Instead of a sick feeling at the image of that body on the fence down the block, satisfaction courses through me. Ricky had only himself to blame. “Good.”
He nods once. “Everyone left for one of the Safe Zones after that and never came back. We were waiting in case Hann…” He shakes his head. “And that’s the story. I’m not going to talk about it again, all right?”
“All right. I’m so sorry, Paul. You know how I loved—”
“I do.” He gulps from a water bottle, sets it down, and his eyes clear for the first time since I arrived. “Thanks for coming, bro. I wasn’t kidding. You coming here was a miracle.”
I half laugh.
“No, really, it was. I was going to drop Leo off at the monastery. Maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day. I don’t know. I kept putting it off.”
“What? What monastery?”
“You know, the one with the nuns and the wall.”
Close by is a monastery where a group of nuns live and teach. It takes up an entire city block, with the church building and school in front and I have no idea what in the back. A wall, maybe twenty feet high, starts at the buildings and circles the block at the sidewalk—a little piece of the Middle Ages that time traveled to present day. When we were young, we’d wonder what the nuns did in there while we played handball against the wall.
“They have food, but they only take in kids. There’s a whole group who’ve been separated from their parents. It was only temporary, ‘til I could figure something else out. I just…I couldn’t watch him go hungry, you know? And I couldn’t go out on long searches without him. I can’t leave him alone.”
He sneaks a glance at me, waiting to hear he’s a terrible father. It would’ve killed him to do it, and I’m not convinced he would have. If he was seriously considering it, things were worse than he lets on.
“You’d do what you had to, Paul, and then get him back. How’d you find them?”
He squeezes my shoulder hard enough that I wince. “Leo and I were checking the place out. I thought it was empty. This old nun comes out and tells me about it, says they’ll give Leo a meal if he needs one. Says she can’t offer me any, but I didn’t care. So I went in with him, watched him and all these other kids eating real, warm food. They were fucked up, yeah, ‘cause they have no parents, but they were smiling and laughing, too. I asked how they had so much. She said that when their food got low, they’d prayed for a miracle. Next day, some guys showed up and now they bring food sometimes. So I prayed for one for us.” He punches my arm. “You showed up a week late, man. Nuns got their miracle in a day.”
I punch him back. “My apologies. Did you try to get in with those guys?”
“Haven’t seen them, but I think I’ve heard them. Loud, like they’re not scared. I hear gunshots sometimes. I figured if I dropped Leo there, maybe I’d meet them, then I’d head down to Cassie’s and go back for Leo.” He closes his eyes and, when he opens them, he plasters on a smirk that only just covers his grief. “All right, now tell me what’s up with you. I’m gabbing like a teenage girl at a sleepover. Next I’ll want to try out some new hairstyles.”
Good old undemonstrative Paul has returned. I can tell he’s exhausted, so I give him a brief rundown. Although there was no love lost between Paul and Rachel at times, he’s sincerely distressed when I tell him her fate. It was less that he didn’t like her and more that he didn’t like her for me.
“That took some balls,” he says when I’ve run through it all. “I can just imagine you on the goddamned Verrazano. Can’t believe it’s down now. That must’ve been what I heard the other day.”
“Yeah, well, I’m going to have to do it again to get upstate. That’s not going to be easy.”
“Impossible, bro, not just not easy. Every bridge is down. Nine million people tried to escape on, what, a few thousand boats? You do the math. Our Marine Division was no more the morning they bombed the bridges. Either they went under or someone took them. I thought about building a raft, like Huckleberry Finn or some shit, but you’d be crushed by the garbage or sunk by the zombies. I thought maybe it’d be easier to find food in Jersey.”
“The Chief at Wadsworth said there’s a supermarket commissary in Fort Hamilton,” I say. “Probably still stocked because the VA hospital was overrun. Have you been over there?”
“Yeah, I was over there. Might be easier to get out of the city than get into Fort Hamilton. Place is mobbed. Thousands of them, no joke.” He shakes his head. “When are you leaving?”
I cross the supermarket off my mental list for now. “I don’t know. Maria keeps saying to take my time, but she wants to know where Ana and Penny are.”
Paul nods. “How about those girls? Sandy and…”
“Sylvie and Grace.”
“They’re cool?”
“Yeah. They’re really cool. You’ll like them.”
I think about adding more. About how they fought their way to the house, how Sylvie’s managed to learn more about survival in weeks than most people ever learn, and how she helped save my life. I might’ve died without the fluids, but I’m pretty sure Sylvie kept me
alive until I got them.
“That candy for one of them?”
“Yeah. For Sylvie,” I say casually, and lean off the mattress to busy myself zipping my pack. Nothing has happened, but it feels wrong to bring up anything even remotely romance-related after Hannah.
Paul is silent. Finally, he says, “All right, bro, I’m going to sleep. Try not to hump me during the night.”
“That’s not what you said last time, but I’ll do my best to resist.”
Paul laughs and flops on his side. Within minutes, he’s asleep. I lie awake and hope Sylvie and Grace make it back. If they don’t, I’ll never forgive myself for letting them go alone—and Dad will never let me forget.
Chapter 61
Sylvie
Micah and Carlos look about as dandy as I feel when Grace and I finally emerge from our overnight accommodations. I didn’t have to hold back her hair, but she’d probably look better if I’d had to—yesterday’s events and the liquor have left her with swollen eyes and a grim set to her mouth. We sit at a picnic table and eat our breakfast of stale Entenmann’s coffee cake. It’s still delicious and makes me insanely jealous of having the contents of an entire Key Food under one’s control.
“How’re you ladies feeling?” Guillermo asks. He’s a bit pale, but all in all he’s metabolizing the alcohol well.
“Like the vodka dried my brain to the size of a walnut and it’s rattling around in my skull,” I point across the table at Micah and Carlos, “but better than them.”
I still haven’t seen Micah’s face due to the fact it’s firmly planted in his hands, and Carlos is a shade of green-tinged brown that’s reminiscent of an acorn toward the end of autumn. He moans. “I drank too much.”