Quarantine (2 page)

T
oday had started out freezing and damp, and now a wall of wet snowdrift blew hard against me in a headwind. I headed southeast, under the heavy, gray February sky, with the wind blowing around me and frozen rain falling. I'd learned to feel this weather now. When heavy snow rolls in, darkness comes early, time gets lost. In the streets it was easy to be lulled into a false sense of security, deaf and blind to what might lurk in the silence and shadows. How would this day end? Would it be any different from the others?

 

To catch my breath, I took shelter in an alcove, not that different from one in which I'd sheltered from similar weather, with a girl. We'd kissed. Anna. My first kiss, right here in this city, from a girl I would never see again, sharing an act full of heat and stomach-turning butterflies I might never know again. She'd tasted of strawberries. I smiled at that memory, licked my cracked lips. I could almost taste it.

Like so many, Anna never got to go home. She was one of the first to be taken in this attack. At least it was quick. I had no idea if she was religious or not, but I hoped there was someplace for her to go, someplace warm and sunny . . . The best I could offer was to remember her and others when I got home to Australia. When I got back. It seemed an impossible distance to travel.

The sun peeked out from behind the heavy winter clouds and illuminated the road that stretched out before me. Near the Hudson River I turned south, following streets I'd not walked before near the western edge of Manhattan. I liked the new sights here—desolate, sure, but this was an exploration of the unknown I felt I could handle. It was as if there was someone contriving to send me there, calling me onwards to the south.

After two blocks of weaving through smashed cars and downed buildings the road became impassable. Even so, this morning I felt driven. I trekked these streets with purpose. This wasn't some false hope, some blind excursion: I was looking for a group of
survivors,
even though the only evidence of their existence was what Caleb had told me.

If the group he'd told me about was still at Chelsea Piers, then I was relying on my ability to persuade them to leave. I hoped. I'd seen more of human nature in these past two weeks than I had in all my sixteen years; the best of it, and the worst. Was I crazy to expect anything of anyone, that as survivors we shared a common goal? It was my job to convince them, right? I'd
persuade
them it was safer to leave the city, that we
had
to get out. I'd take them via the zoo to get Rachel and Felicity and we could head north.

Then I saw something new. At the crossroads before me were three bodies, slumped on the packed snow, but not covered by it. They were fresh: there were traces of color in their cheeks and the blood on their flesh was thin and red, not black and congealed. Anyone could have seen they were not Chasers, and I didn't think they were the Chasers' victims—the work was too clean.

I'd known there must have been people who'd survived the attack. I just hadn't seen them. In true New Yorker fashion, perhaps they'd taken the advice given after 9/11 and barricaded themselves inside. Doors sealed up, windows shuttered, cupboards stocked with all kinds of long-life food.
Shelter in place
. That was my theory, anyway. But could anyone live that way for long? Maybe here was the answer. These people had had enough: they'd had to break free, to escape, to look for people like me, a way out. Only they hadn't made it. Had anyone noticed they were missing—and would they be missed now that they were . . . gone?

I tried not to think of this unknown. In fact, I sped up, as if there were people expecting me, waiting anxiously for my safe arrival.

But I didn't get far. Moments later, I stopped cold. A noise, feet crunching against snow; fast, like many pairs involved in a chase. I listened and looked—nothing. Sound carried by the wind? Shifting rubble cascading nearby? This deserted city was trying to spook me—

No. My fears were real.

Chasers
.

 

I hid in an overturned school bus. Both the front windshield and rear window were in place but there was a black jagged hole of torn steel where the door had been. Dark, deep snow banked up against the side windows, which were almost at ground level.

There was a tear across the palm of my glove, and I knew I'd cut my hand badly—hands that had already taken such a battering. I couldn't see the wound but through my clenched fist I felt the warm, sticky blood. I was scared to breathe, my every motion loud and amplified in here. Through the grimy windshield I watched their feet shuffle as they passed.

The wind, blowing hard from the south, might keep the horizon's heavy storm away—maybe it would even skip Manhattan altogether. When it looked safe, I dropped down from the bus to the road and tore up a spare T-shirt to use as a bandage. I should have packed a medical kit. I tightened the straps of my backpack and continued south.

At the next intersection the breeze whipped past the corner building and carried with it smoke, the smell of burning gasoline and plastics. I covered my nose and mouth with the front of my sweatshirt, and ran across the intersection and down the next two blocks, before I cracked and took in heaving lungfuls of air. It tasted cold and sharp and clear, dizzying.
Gotta keep moving. Gotta get there, get off these streets.

The unknown was getting to me. The familiar parts of Midtown in which I felt so safe now seemed so distant. Sure, I was headed towards something that stirred hope in my gut, but
getting
there . . .

At each intersection I stopped to check that the coast was clear before crossing the open terrain. I always stayed a few paces away from the dark facades of the storefronts, in case a Chaser jumped out and surprised me. I made sure my footing was on firm ground.

Gunfire crackled from the east. A few single shots, then a continuous burst of machine-gun fire. I recognized it immediately, even though before I arrived in New York I wouldn't have known the difference between the sound of an assault rifle and a pistol. I had never held a weapon, couldn't imagine depending on one for my basic protection. But now the need to survive had made me an expert. An image of last night flashed in my mind's eye:
the soldiers at their truck, shooting at the Chasers, the aircraft coming in on an attack run
. . .

The gunfire petered out and my awareness of the present returned.
Keep moving
.

I headed west at 56th. I knew I hadn't traveled along here before, but it reminded me of so many other streets: the widespread destruction had rendered mismatched city streets uniformly gray and cold and frozen. Manhattan was one big canvas of repeating patterns. I passed a mail truck: which reminded of when I met Caleb. I checked inside it—nothing, no living thing. Nothing but windswept snowdrift and ash.

At the next intersection, my back to a wall, I watched for movement reflected in a cracked pane of a store window. It seemed clear but then something shifted in the shadows across the street.

People?
More survivors, trying to make sense of what made no sense at all? How would they react on seeing me? What if I didn't have the answers they wanted to hear?

I could see them more clearly now. They were Chasers, but I could tell that they were only very recently turned, and had not yet had to fight, to kill. They were dressed in their warmest, best clothes. These were people who were used to taking care of themselves, who had never had to be content with making do. But that didn't stop them looking wild. Angry. I smiled, tentatively, for a moment, as they emerged from the shadows.
I've outrun you before
. . . As I feared, they were anything but pleased to see me. These were the
chasing
kind; demented, driven crazy by isolation and captivity.

Flat out, I ran down Seventh Avenue, the six of them after me. Seemed the chase was new to them; they strove to use muscles that had been inactive for over two weeks. The effort and pain intensified their rage. Their hunger drove them on, relentless.

My feet skidded out as I turned onto 44th Street, falling as I slid on the ice and tripped over a street sign that was bent across the sidewalk and concealed by snow.
Run!
Got up and ran. Stopped at Ninth Avenue, looked back—they were
gaining
!

South—keep moving south
. I ran as fast as I could, my arms and legs pumping, my feet slipping and sliding over uneven ground and ice. At the end of this block I turned left, looked back—couldn't see them yet . . .

Then they appeared. Maybe it was the distance or my imagination, but they didn't look exhausted: they just kept coming for me.

I backed away, my feet heavy lumps of concrete. I turned and ran.

At the next corner, at Tenth Avenue, there was a tall building about fifty stories high, an ugly seventies thing that stuck out in this neighborhood. I headed for it.

The awning said “West Bank” and something about a theatre. I passed a café, doubled back, ran inside. I stayed low, tried to lock the door but there was only a keyed lock—I backed into the café, stopped dead still.

There was someone behind me. A presence . . .

A cough. Deep, like it belonged to a big man.

I didn't want to turn around—
If this is how I am going to go, let it be quick
.

M
y hand found the Glock pistol in my pocket. I drew it out, turned around—

The big guy was standing maybe five paces away. He was in his twenties, massive in every proportion—comic-book big, like that rock guy from
Fantastic Four
or
Hellboy
or
The Hulk
. (I'd read a lot of comics during my short time with Caleb.) He had shaved dark hair and a tattoo that snaked up through his collar, around his neck. Another guy emerged through swinging doors from the kitchen. He was my height and size, but older, mid-thirties maybe, ghostly pale and not much hair up top.

The three of us got the measure of each other. Both of them saw the pistol and something registered. By that recognition, I knew that they weren't Chasers.

“Hey,” the big guy said, eating a chocolate bar. “Nice piece.”

I looked down at my pistol but kept it out. I checked behind me, out the frosty windows, and saw the movement of the Chasers nearing.

“I'm being followed,” I said. “We need to hide.”

“Hide?” the big guy said, unfazed. “What for?”

“To avoid being killed,” I said, my voice quiet. “We need to move, and quick.”

“Who is it?” he asked.

“Chasers,” I whispered. He looked at me weirdly. I pointed behind me. “The infected—the bad kind, a group of them.”

The older one, a friendly face behind a neat beard, said, “Quick, follow me.”

A moment later the three of us stood silent in the kitchen. A tiny round window in one of the double swinging doors provided a view out to the restaurant.

“How many?” the big guy asked, as if he was considering the odds if it came to a confrontation. I recognized in what he said and how he said it that they were survivors, like me.

“Shh!” the older guy said. He was close to the kitchen doors, peering out the little window.

We heard a chair being bumped in the restaurant.

There seemed to be no other way out of this kitchen; in any case, I was too tense to move. I swallowed hard, the pistol shaking in my good hand, blood dripping from my wounded one. Could the Chasers smell it, the blood? I put my tight fist into the pocket of my bulky FDNY fireman's coat.

The big guy produced what I expected to be a gun but turned out to be a little digital video camera. He started filming. There was something about that act that settled me, as if it took some of the danger out of the situation. “For perpetuity,” he whispered to me. “All this—it's history in the making. I'm recording as much of it as I can.”

The guy by the doors stood still and watched the restaurant. I inched towards him as quietly as I could, but my wet shoes made tiny squeegee sounds against the floor. I cringed with each move-induced sound, then took up a position where I could look through the gap between the swinging doors. We stayed hidden to be sure the coast remained clear, none of us daring to make a sound.

A Chaser stood at the front of the restaurant, half in and half out the front door, his back to us; an ordinary-enough-looking guy, if it weren't for the dried blood around his mouth. His buddies were outside. I could make out five of them, men, maybe a woman too, all as alert and searching as him, waiting. My hand squeezed the pistol's grip.

Just as I thought he was leaving—

There was a noise, behind me—the big guy had bumped against an oven.

The Chaser turned, looking around at the empty tables and chairs between us. My gloved hand sweated around the pistol's grip. The Chaser was still, listening, smelling at the air—or maybe I imagined that.
If it came to it, I could do it.
I'd done it once. My mouth was dry and I felt like bursting out of the kitchen and taking him by surprise.

He glanced around, a final accusatory glare—then he bolted, the door slamming closed in his wake, and I could see him and his cohorts running off down the road the way they'd come.

 

“Okay, they're gone,” the older guy said, still by the doors; he let out a deep breath, then turned to me, offered his hand. “I'm Daniel.”

“Jesse,” I said, shaking his hand.

“Don't shoot us,” he said with a smile.

I looked down at the pistol, the familiar unwelcome weight that could so easily carry with it a list of demands.

“Yeah, that was intense,” I said, reaching back and tucking it into the side pocket of my pack.

“Name's Bob.” The guy with the shaved head, Bob, shook my hand; he filmed the exchange.

“You guys here getting supplies?” I asked, gesturing to some crates of canned and packaged food.

“Yep,” Daniel replied. “You?”

“I'm on my way to—” Then I thought better of it. Play it cool, I decided. “Just passing through.” I knew it sounded weak, and it clearly wasn't enough to satisfy.

“Where have you been based since the attack?”

“Midtown, near Rockefeller Center,” I said. “Is all that food just for the two of you?”

“There's about forty of us,” Daniel said.

“Forty?”

“And counting,” Bob added. “Seems to grow by the day, and I usually get the short straw to be sent out on foraging trips.”

“What about you?” Daniel asked.

“Just me,” I said. His eyes searched mine and I looked to the floor. I didn't want to tell these two guys about Rachel and Felicity, not yet. Bob kept the camera rolling and as I felt myself holding back from these guys its beady eye began to make me feel self-conscious. “I'm out here alone, aren't I?”

“Well,” Bob said, his face softened by a big grin, “you're not alone anymore, little buddy.”

Daniel clarified: “What he means, Jesse, is that you're welcome to come by and see our setup: have something to eat, stay around if you like it.”

Bob added, “It's safe, and got everything you'd want or need.”

“Up to you.”

“Thanks, guys,” I said, stalling. At that moment I was thinking of Caleb—the way he'd encouraged me to spend more time with him, not to race back to Rachel and the animals, and I'd
listened
to him, and . . . well, I made a good friend as a result, sure, but I'd lost time and we'd wasted . . . ah, hell.

“Well, can't hang around here forever,” Daniel said, hefting a crate off a bench. “Bob, let's get this stuff home.” Big plastic bins of food that they'd ransacked from this place were packed and ready to go, a good several hundred pounds' worth.

“How are you getting that back?” I asked.

“Pickup out front,” Daniel replied. “Bob, load the rest of those wine boxes, too.”

“On it,” Bob said. He was a hulk of a man but obedient to Daniel like a smart dog, or a UFC heavyweight on a tight leash. He handled those bins and boxes more easily than I could heft a bucket of water.

“Here, I'll help you,” I said, realizing I was reluctant to let go of these guys completely. I'd let Caleb go, just like Anna, Mini, and Dave, the friends I'd kept alive in my imagination for the first dozen days. I'd known them in life for only a couple of weeks, but when I saw them dead I decided to carry on with the living images in my head. I tried to do that with Caleb, but all I could see was his bloody mouth as he hovered over a dead or dying soldier.

Had I lost Felicity and Rachel by leaving them at the zoo? Was it worth risking more loss by making new friends now? And why these people? Who knew who else would turn up on my way to Chelsea Piers? Maybe there were pockets of
good
survivors somewhere, groups who'd managed to hold it together, who were frightened but dealing with it.

Daniel led the way outside. He took his time looking around and checking that the coast was clear before motioning us out. We loaded the bed of a massive double-cab Ford pickup, more like a truck than the pickups I'd known back home.

Bob let his camera hang from the lanyard around his neck. We grabbed a side of a bin each, and carried it out, while Daniel held open the doors. Then the three of us shuttled out the remaining boxes and bags. It was windy now, the strong northeasterly was back and with it came the weather. By the time we'd secured the transit and were locked inside, the storm hit in force. Heavy rain, cold enough for snow but too torrential to form ice.

Daniel started the engine, put the heater and A/C on to de-mist. It smelled like old wet socks and bad breath in here. The outside temp read thirty degrees Fahrenheit. The biting wind had made it feel at least twenty degrees colder than that. My teeth were chattering. Bob caught it all on camera.

“Can we drop you someplace near?” Daniel asked.

I made myself think of Caleb again. I owed it to him to go to Chelsea Piers, to seek these people out. And then to return to Rachel and Felicity with answers. Besides, what choice did I have while this storm lasted?

“Um—” I checked my watch.

“You gotta be somewhere?” Bob asked. “Someplace else?”

“Just seeing how far off nightfall is,” I said. It was still a few hours away—the sun set around 5
P.M.
, which always seemed far earlier than the winters back home. I doubted very much if I could make it all the way to the piers before nightfall, not in this weather, and I couldn't risk being on the streets—wouldn't hear or see a Chaser until it was too late . . . “Where are you guys staying?”

Daniel said, “Chelsea Piers.”

“Sorry?”

“It's down along the Hudson,” Daniel explained. “South of here.”

I had to be sure I heard right: “You said
Chelsea Piers
?”

“Yes.”

“You all right?” Bob asked me.

“Yeah, cool, it's just—” My head was spinning. I let out a sigh. Was this a happy coincidence, or just more dismal proof that this city was largely deserted—that maybe these guys and their group were the only normal people left?

“Yeah, the Chelsea Piers, in the sports complex—though not for too much longer, I hope,” Daniel said. I smiled at that:
Caleb had been right!

“If you want to come with us, let us know now, or I can drop you away from here far as we can on our way. Like I said, up to you.”

“I'll come, sure,” I said. “Thanks.”

“Cool,” Bob said, putting his hand up for me to high-five, filming that too. “Most of the people there are decent.”

“Most?” I said, barely able to hear him and be heard over the din on the truck's metal roof.

Daniel did a U-turn and headed south. He drove well, like he was familiar with the route, comfortable with the conditions. I studied the back of Bob's massive head as he filmed the streetscape. A few scars were visible, pale lines against dark stubble. I told myself not to judge by outward appearances. I remembered seeing some gang members on the subway and how the other passengers had given them a wide berth. Ultimately, they weren't so different from each other; they'd all died in this attack, died just like so many others.

I smiled as I rode in the car. Here I was with other
survivors
! I'd found them, and it felt as though this was meant to be. And, as they'd offered me so much without me giving anything in return, I decided to tell them about Felicity and Rachel—and about Caleb. It seemed like the least I could do.