Survivor (8 page)

W
e sat at a table, a feast before us. We'd grilled some beef patties, made well-stacked cheese burgers, and I added sliced beetroot and a fried egg. I picked up the hot, dripping burger. I took a bite, savoring it, then thought of Rachel.

What was she eating? Was she okay? Here we were, eating in the café while she was back there alone. The hum of the generator was comforting and accusing.

There was no silence with Caleb, no weary night filled with quiet company. We talked about things I'd talk about with friends back home—sport, movies, games, girls. All of it so normal, transportational even: like I was back home and staying the night at a mate's place. I realized he was a Peter Pan–like character, residing in fun, using it as a coping mechanism; deep denial, hidden by fun and games. It was easy company to reside in.

“So, why a bookshop?” I asked. “Why hole up here?”

“I work here,” he replied. “Took a year out before starting school at Columbia—an expensive education, and so here I am in Midtown, selling books to people in suits and heels. Means I'm free of my folks, can afford to live with friends, all that.”

“Seems a sweet gig to me.”

“Yeah, it is,” he said with a little laugh. “Least I like it. It's easy, you know? My mom's a bit bummed out by it, and Dad hates that I still do it—he works in publishing.”

“Editor?”

“Was. Sales now.”

“So he sells books too?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Caleb said, laughing. “But he's like a global director for a company that owns the publishing company and other stuff—defense and aerospace industries, paint and carpet factories, the usual evil conglomerate. He spends most of his time synergizing ‘backwards overflow' or something.”

“Sounds un-American.”

“I know, right?” he said. “Sad thing is, that's where we've got to. There and beyond.”

Did he mean now, after this attack, or before?

“Why doesn't he like you doing this?”

“My dad? Thinks I could do better or that I'll get sucked into working here forever instead of going to college,” he said. “Mom, too, but she won't say it. He always says things like that, while Mom's busy trying to set me up with so and so's fugly daughter, so I hardly ever go home for dinner even though they're not twenty minutes' walk from where I live . . . You know, this past year I spoke more often to my mom on Facebook than in person. Weird, huh?”

“Seems okay,” I said. I liked that he spoke about them in the present tense. “So you were stuck at home until you finished school or whatever, and since then you've just needed some space, yeah?”

He shook his head. “I boarded high school. Same as my dad, his dad, his dad . . .”

“Right.”

Up close, across the table and in this light, I could see he had baggy dark rings under his eyes as though he hadn't slept well in ages. He seemed like he would have been quiet in his normal life, before all this, probably a pretty isolated guy. He had that kind of look about him. Maybe, in some selfish way, this was some kind of blessing for him, a chance to break the cycle, if only his character would let him.

But what did I know? Maybe he wasn't like that at all. Maybe he had been an out-there party guy, a family guy, anything
but
a loner, and that was just what he'd been forced to become.

“So, Aussie Jesse, you like New York?”

“Sure. I mean, I liked it a lot more before all this happened though.”

He laughed. “Ha. But the
people
; they're so self-centered a lot of the time. Keep to themselves. Don't get involved.”

“I hadn't really got that,” I said. I tried to remember seeing any of that kind of behavior, but everyone I'd met before the attack had been so kind, so helpful, so happy to meet me.

“You haven't seen it because you weren't here long enough,” he said. “And because Americans love Aussies.”

“We have followed you into every war you started.”

“Yeah, thanks,” he said. “But seriously, I mean, don't get me wrong, New York's the bomb. I'd rather live here than any other city; we got it all and then some. It's just—take where I live, for instance, just a stop out of Manhattan, on the other side of the East River. It's like we're another country away. Doesn't have that neighborhood feel anymore; before this, I mean.”

Division. Friction. A vision seared into my consciousness. “Funny how the world turns, hey?”

“Yeah, it is.” He looked at his plate, a million-mile stare that suggested maybe the now was indeed affecting him too. He reached for an orange plastic prescription bottle, found the one he was looking for among the few on the table, then shook a couple little white pills loose and swallowed them.

“For my knee,” Caleb explained. He looked around the room with what may have been either pride or nostalgia. “I like working here. It's easy, I get to hang with people I like, and I don't take work home except for advance reading copies of books. I just didn't want to go straight into more study, especially since I've got no idea what I want to do. I mean . . . I was thinking of traveling, but now?”

I looked around, the shadows of the book stacks disappearing into darkness. “This job here sounds good—I like reading. Quite a few comics. And I just got a copy of
Siddhartha
.”

Anna's book. I remembered her talking about it. I could picture the note she'd inserted for me—something about its being her dad's favorite. I could see her careful handwriting. But where was the book now? Had she actually given it to me?
Pride and Prejudice
was another one of hers. When I got home, I'd find a copy. Think of her as I read it.

“That's a pretty neat novel,” Caleb said. “Reading, I could do it all day, but I also like writing, when I've got the inspiration.”

“What kind of writing?”

“Been working on a comic series; might end up being a graphic novel.”

“About?”

“It's a work in progress, but my characters all have heightened natural abilities—kinda tapping into using more of their brains, a higher-evolved type scenario. Most of the stuff on the shelves in here is all soap opera and melodrama in place of a good story that's well-told. Anyway, my thing's a long way off, and meantime I have to pay the bills.”

“Not anymore, hey,” I said, regretting it immediately. What was outside, what was beneath the surface of every line of our conversation, hidden in every minute I'd been here, was what he was shutting off from the outside world. There he was, trying to sound upbeat about it, to have a career in this world. Didn't he see those desolate streets like I did? Did he think everything would go back to how it was?

“Thought I might just start my own company for my writing, release it all electronically, for iPads and stuff. What about you?”

“What do I want to do?” I bounced my balled napkin off the wall and Caleb caught it. I was going to say,
Does it matter anymore?
but I knew it did—around Caleb, it actually
felt
like it did, like there'd be a tomorrow that would bring us back to how things were. With him, there was a sense of possibility, more than bleak denial. “Two years ago, I thought about joining the Air Force, becoming a fighter pilot, maybe even going from there into politics.”

“But now?”

“I don't know. I guess now I've seen this . . .” I swept my hand around, gesturing outside. “I don't know. I want to contribute, I know that. I just don't know what
now
is . . .”

Caleb nodded, silent while we watched the candle burn between us.

“I just want to make something,” Caleb said quietly. “Make something that lasts, you know? Some kind of art that makes people think, raises more questions than it answers.”

Conversation with Caleb was so normal that it was surreal. I mean, I liked art and stories as much as the next person, but didn't we need more than that right now? It was clear to me we'd sat here for long enough. We'd talked to that point where it could get into uncomfortable territory, like I'd felt often enough in those first twelve days. If Caleb had a black dog of depression and despair lingering in the shadows of his otherwise Peter Pan–like psyche, I didn't want to know about it. Couldn't I have one friend who didn't need me to give anything? Couldn't there be one who I could take
from,
an escape from reality?

“N
o!” I screamed, sitting up with a start. Caleb was looking down at me. He had shaken me awake.

“You okay?” he said.

I nodded and he walked away.

I was wet with sweat, hot, could see it was light outside.

“What time is it?” I called out.

“Just after ten,” he hollered back.

“What?!” I found my watch on the floor. Almost eleven. I was too late for Felicity. Again.

Shit.

Even if she were alive, even if she'd found my note and bothered turning up when I said I was going to, after two no-shows, she'd not bother turning up again, would she?

I lay back, holding my head in my hands. I drifted from my disappointment in myself for oversleeping to thinking about the nightmare. I tried to shut out the visions but they remained fresh and vivid. Caleb was in it, the girls too—both Rachel and Felicity. We were running, but not from Chasers. We were up the top of Manhattan somewhere, up north, trying to get out, and soldiers were following us, hunting us; four of them, on horseback.

I sat up, caught my breath and calmed my heart rate. I got dressed fast.

I found Caleb upstairs on the terrace. He stood on the roof of the bookstore, glassing the city with powerful binoculars. The day was clear and the sun was nearing its lonely peak.

“You seen
Dawn of the Dead
?” he asked me.

I watched him, thinking about the way he made jokes whenever he could, because the alternative was—what—to be scared out of his wits? “The zombie movie?”

“Yeah,” Caleb said, looking down at a group of docile Chasers drinking from a large flooded crater on Park Avenue. “Remember that scene when they're on the roof in the mall? There's that gun-shop owner across the parking lot?”

“Yeah,” I said and laughed. “They picked out lookalikes in the crowd.”

“And the gun store dude sniped them off—pop!” Caleb laughed. “Check out down there.”

He pointed, passed the binoculars, and I tried my best to zoom in on the spot.

“Bill Clinton.”

“No way!” I said. It may well have been him. “Looks a bit skinny, though.”

“Couple of weeks of this liquids-only diet will do that.”

“Next to him; blue jacket.” I passed the binoculars over.

“Yeah?” he replied, scanning left. “Ha, no way!”

“Way,” I said. “That's Lady Gaga.”

“Good eye.” He put down the glasses, took a big breath, looked around at what was left of his town. There were a couple of fires burning to the north, Harlem maybe, tall plumes of black smoke twisting into the air. “You look at this too much, gets you angry.”

“Who do you think did this?” I asked.

“If I had to guess . . .” Caleb said, scratching his chin, “I'd say it probably had something to do with the DHARMA Initiative.”

“Okay . . .” I laughed, remembering it from one of my favorite American TV shows. “So, what, we're gonna realize we're all dead in the finale?”

As soon as I said the words I felt sick. But Caleb only saw it as a joke.

“Yeah, something lame like that,” he replied. “What I do know is that if this infection were a zombie plague, it would be classified as a Class Four outbreak.”

“A what?”

“Doomsday event—the worst kind of outbreak.”

“And you know that because . . .”

“Look around.”

“I mean, you know the classification number?”

“Read it in a book about surviving zombie attacks.”

“I don't want to know,” I said as we went indoors. “Seriously, I've done all right so far, all alone, so to start reading fictional survival guides . . .”

“It's actually been pretty useful,” Caleb said as he led the way downstairs. “You know, stories of zombies came from Voodoo. A bunch of stuff happened in Haiti way back in the day—”

“But these aren't zombies.”

“Zombie-vampire hybrids, whatever. This is some kind of killer virus, though,” he said as we descended the stairs into the bookstore. He scanned around with his beanbag shotgun, listened until he was satisfied the coast was clear. “And they might as well be un-dead. But anyway, there's even this book written by a Harvard professor—yeah, one of those smug crimson guys—who went to Haiti and studied the toxins they used to transform people—”

“I really don't want to know,” I said. “Listen, Caleb, that food down there—I've got to get it to Rach.”

“In the park?”

I nodded.

“With the thousands of infected hanging around the ponds and whatnot.”

“It's where Rachel is.”

“And you've got to deliver that food.”

“Yep.”

“Come on, then,” Caleb said, getting his snow gear on. “I'll walk you to the corner of the park. Don't want you getting attacked outside my place so I gotta see your sorry ass all frozen there until some rat king carries you off.”