Breakers (14 page)

A rhythmic whapping echoed down a side street. Walt got out his knife and snuck forward. A man leaned over the hood of a car, pants around his ankles, hem of his shirt halfway down his pale, tensing buttocks. Beneath him, legs and arms lolled across the car's hood. Slapping flesh echoed from the brownstone fronts. Walt moved on.

Lacking his cell phone, he wasn't sure how long it took him to reach the base of the spidery Brooklyn Bridge. A couple hours, he guessed. Long enough for his feet to hurt. Blister on his left pinky toe, he thought. His shoe was too tight. He stopped for another candy bar, a couple handfuls of peanuts, a soda. His teeth felt fuzzy. He must remember to take a toothbrush with him.

Dead cars scattered the lanes below the footbridge. He leaned up the curving ramp. Cables webbed him in on either side. The twin gates of the bridge loomed ahead, silhouettes of skyscrapers rising behind them. He had a bad feeling. Manhattan was an island. If you controlled the bridges, you controlled Manhattan—for whatever that was worth when there was nothing left to control.

The white line dividing nonexistent bike traffic from nonexistent foot traffic carried him to the tall brick gates. Walt paused where the boardwalk split, meaning to pop off his shoes and give his feet a rub. The waves of the East River capped and rolled. Walt heard a metal click.

A thin man in a leather jacket moved sideways from the huge stone pillar. He held a black pistol. The pistol pointed at Walt's head.

"Your money."

"Does it look like I've got any money?" Walt laughed, surprising himself. "My balls are in a fucking hoodie."

The man stepped forward. A thin brown beard fuzzed his cheeks. "Nobody crosses the bridge without paying the troll."

"Trolls are supposed to live
under
bridges."

"Trolls with guns live wherever the fuck they want. Drop the bat and put up your hands."

Walt let the bat go. It clattered, wood on wood, and rolled toward the steel cables at the side of the bridge. "I'm just trying to get home here."

The man flicked his gun in a come-on motion. "Give me the bag."

"Fine. Hope you like candy bars."

Walt lobbed it at the man's feet. The man knelt down, keeping his gun trained on Walt's chest, and pawed open the plastic sacks. Silver wrappers winked in the moonlight.

"This is all you got?"

"I had to take a swim across the bay earlier tonight. That meant leaving my gold bricks at home."

The man switched his gun to his left hand, biting his lip. "Take down your pants."

"Are you fucking kidding me?"

"I said take down your pants or this bullet will take
you
down."

"Just because the world's over doesn't mean we have to turn into a pack of rapists!"

"One more chance. Then I shoot out your knees and make you get down on them."

"No." Walt took a step. The man jerked his gun to aim between Walt's eyes. "You will take nothing from me. I'll die first." His hands shook. His heart felt divorced from his body, a crated dog hurling itself against the bars.

The thin man edged back. "I can make that happen."

"Promise me you will."

"I solemnly swear."

The tip of his trigger finger twitched. Walt ducked and bowled forward, plowing into his ribs. The gun crashed. They staggered back together, reeling over the boards. Walt jammed him into the steel cables with a hard jolt. The pistol fired again, stinging the side of his face and dazzling his ears. He wriggled his elbow against the man's neck, grabbed his belt, and toppled him over the side.

The man screamed. The gun fired a third time, the bullet whirring crazily as it ricocheted from the bridge. The man hit the road below with a thick squelch, gun flying one way, guts another. His arm raised, wavery as a puppy, then collapsed against his smashed chest.

Walt spit over the edge. To his surprise, he felt no guilt. Just a vague sense of disappointment he pinned down at once: he was still alive.

That and a tug on his side from his old stab wound. He lifted his shirts. Saw no blood. Just a warm pink line. Once his heart and breathing slowed, he walked on.

The bridge dropped him into a downtown as deserted as Brooklyn. The steeple-like crown of city hall rose above the darkness. Red X's crossed the doors of apartment buildings and hotels. On the corner, a scorched Humvee rested on its side, dead soldiers slumped behind its cracked windshield. A block further, the stench of corpses roiled from a subway entrance. He tucked his mouth below his sweatshirt hem and crossed the street. Ten minutes ago, he'd killed a man. His own life—no different than before. The event may as well have never happened. What did that mean? That if a tree chopped down another tree in the forest and no one was around to see it, the first tree didn't have to feel sorry? If emotions were created for social creatures, did they cease to exist as soon as society disappeared?

He got home without incident. Past the front door's red X, the lobby's smell of dust was a welcome change from the putrefying meat of the street. Walt stripped naked and lowered himself to the couch. From nowhere, he began to cry. Vanessa was dead, and he wanted to be.

He woke with late afternoon sunlight slashing the dust motes in front of the window. He showered and soaked his feet in saltwater and bandaged his blisters. His apartment had gone untouched; his bags of food and gear were still ready to go. He moved with a cold momentum, in no particular hurry, stiff and sore, intending to keep out of the streets until after sunset. To his bags he added two paring knives, a long meat knife, tennis shoes and sandals, three pairs of shoelaces looted from Vanessa's old shoes, a second box of Band-Aids, a printed Google map of the United States, and a metal bowl. He guessed anything metal would have great utility from here on out.

A couple shots of whiskey passed the time. He added a few more to his stomach's collection and opened the window to listen to the silent city. When the sun faded to nothing, he put on his coat and slung a backpack from each shoulder.

He descended to the building foyer, opened the front door, and stepped outside.

The humidity had him sweating three blocks later. He didn't see another living person until he reached Washington Square, where a man on a bench stirred beneath his blanket. Walt drew his knife and came up close.

"What are you doing?"

The man blinked and sat up straight, tugging his blanket around his neck. "I don't want trouble. I'm not bothering anybody."

Walt gestured at the red brick walkups lining the north of the park. "You think anyone lives there anymore? What are you doing sleeping in the park?"

The man scratched his black beard, wrinkling his forehead. "Being stupid, I suppose."

"Good luck." Walt walked on. The man waved and stood up.

Every few blocks, silhouettes stirred behind windows; a couple times an hour, shoes scraped the pavement, dark figures ducking into doorways or behind parked cars. In total, he saw evidence of a couple dozen survivors between the Village and the hotels of Midtown. No doubt more were hiding or had fled. Still, how few did that leave throughout the city—five thousand? Ten? On 53rd Street, the white walls of a tower were scorched black. Beyond, the charred rubble of a skyscraper mounded the street, wafting the faint smells of smoke and cooked meat. Walt made a quick detour, then cut north at a light jog. On the south front of Central Park, a horse lay in a stiff-legged heap, still reined to its hansom.

He leaned against a glass-faced storefront and scanned the park. Water. Arable land. Would it become a co-op farm? Or a tribal battleground, its waist-high stone walls converted into perimeters, the plaza above the lake raised into a keep? He wouldn't see it, would he? After nearly a decade, the full run of his adult life, he was leaving New York. Even if his foolish quest succeeded and later that year he found the cool Pacific washing over his ankles, he doubted he'd ever see his city again.

In one sense, that was already true. If he stayed, he'd never again stand on a subway platform and feel the warm, moist breeze of an incoming train. He'd never taste the flag-like pizza slices with their sweet marinara; the absurd, delicious fusions of curried lamb BLTs with cumin mayonnaise; the endless pots of tea, perfect for a hangover, before and after his kung pao at Suzy's. He'd never again see the sidewalks that glittered like the open sea on 3rd Avenue. Never sneak down from the nosebleed seats during a Mets game. Never get woken up by those fucking trucks banging over those fucking metal plates.

And rather than the devouring sadness of the loss of Vanessa, the sadness of this loss felt sweet. He'd had good times. He'd known a place. Now, that place was gone. For all he hadn't done—the Statue of Liberty, closed since 9/11; a Jets game, too far in Jersey—he couldn't have asked for more.

He rested on the corner of the park, listening to the wind shuffle the leaves and eating a bagel that had grown hard in the days since the army had extracted him from his home. He wished it had lox. He'd probably never taste lox again, too.

He walked through the white baroque facades of the Upper East Side, the brownstone walkups of Harlem. The bridge to the Bronx was clogged with empty cars. Walt slunk along the gnarled, bolted metal girders. His feet were sore again and so was pretty much the rest of him. The train tracks lifted from underground to elevated rails; beneath their shadows, he smelled urine and decay. No trolls this time.

Alongside the flags at the front of Yankee Stadium, a woman's body dangled from a light pole. Walt was glad he'd never had kids.

The air took on the warm, moist smell of approaching morning. Walt hurried for the George Washington Bridge, resolving to steal a watch at his next opportunity. Dawn broke across his back in the suburbs of New Jersey. Between townships, he tromped a few hundred yards into the woods, plunked down beneath a tree, and discovered he'd done something very stupid: forgotten to pack a blanket.

A blanket. A watch. And something to eat besides these damn bagels. He had a lot to learn.

He rose the next afternoon, thighs and hips and feet sore, toes and soles blistered. He shadowed the road to the outskirts of a town, then waited for darkness to sweep over the quiet green streets. The lights stayed out. On the far edge of town, the blank white walls of a Wal-Mart stood like a modern castle in the black moat of its lot. Walt clicked on his flashlight and stepped over the broken glass carpeting the entrance. He wandered past baskets of blue-fuzzed tomatoes and bins of spinach and cilantro collapsed in their own deep green juices.

In sporting goods, he found a large duffel bag and filled it with the contents of one backpack. The battery racks were bare of AAs and Cs, but he found some by the registers. He bypassed the digital watches in favor of an analog—digital didn't feel right anymore. He wandered back to the sports aisles and stuffed the duffel with a lightweight sleeping bag and a crinkly emergency blanket. He grabbed a few sleeves of Pringles, a plastic bottle of orange juice, the last bag of beef jerky in the store, and as many tins of almonds and cashews as he could fit in his backpack. On his way out of the dark store, he turned around and replaced a couple jars of peanuts with a couple rolls of toilet paper.

Walking gave him something to think about besides Vanessa. When he had to stop to rest or pop a blister, he remembered her smile, the way her nose wrinkled when she laughed, her easy elegance whether sheathed in a black dress or lounging in a pair of cutoff jean shorts. He'd always have those memories. Then why bother with this journey at all? Even if he made it to Los Angeles, what would he do then—shoot himself? Why not cut to the chase?

Every day he woke up, thought the same thoughts, packed up his camp, and walked on.

The endless townships of Jersey gave way to open, empty forests of short pines and broad-leafed oaks. Somewhere in eastern Pennsylvania, following the highway along the rolling hills, with the daytime humidity lending soft edges to the ridges and skies, he ran out of food.

He wandered off the highway into the woods, roughly paralleling the road as he searched for—well, he didn't know. Something that looked like it could sit in his belly without being violently ejected a few minutes later. That ruled out mushrooms. But walnuts, strawberries, wild carrots? Would he know a wild carrot if he saw it? He didn't think he would.

A gunshot cracked the sky, echoing among the hills. Walt shrank down, hand scraping the rough bark of a tree. He counted down a minute before rising.

"Got to be around here somewhere," called a high, rasping voice downhill. "What do you want to do with 'em when we find 'em?"

"Leave him on the border," replied a clear baritone. "Let everybody else know to stay the hell out."

11

Smoke whispered along the ceiling. The alarm screamed from the hallway. Raymond pulled on his clothes, leaving his shoes unlaced. He threw their emergency bags in the back of the car by the time Mia dressed. Flames whipped along the roof, fed by the night breeze and by weeks without rain, pouring gray smoke into the black sky. The neighbor's house burned, too; across the street, half the block crackled and roared, spitting sparks, turning the street as bright as dusk. Raymond heard no sirens.

"What now?" Mia asked from the sidewalk.

"There's a hose around back." He dashed down the side yard, fumbling with the latch on the back gate. Hot smoke tickled his lungs. He opened the spigot far as it would go and stuck his thumb over the hose nozzle to jet water at the flames. Fired from two floors below, the spray mostly spattered the wall and the open bathroom window. What little reached the roof disappeared into the shifting wall of yellow and red.

"The whole block's on fire," Mia said from the gate. "We have to get out of here."

Raymond bared his teeth, face heated by the flames. "I can't just leave it."

"The rest of the street's being redecorated as ash. Even if you can save it with one hose, do you know how to patch a roof?"

"It can't be that hard."

"Raymond!"