The Last Tribe (32 page)

Above 75
^th
street New
York City looked like a post-apocalyptic war zone, and the stench was almost
unbearable.  Todd and Solange were too curious to turn back.  They wrapped
scarves around their noses and mouths for relief from the horrible smell.

When they arrived at the museum
they had little hope of recovering art.  There were four large green army
trucks parked in a semi-circle on the front steps.  Dead bodies littered both
sides of the vehicles. Rotted corpses of men in fatigues lay between the museum
entrance and the trucks.  Bodies of men and women in normal clothes were
scattered on the opposite side of the street.  There were guns on the ground
around the dead.  The bodies rotted, froze under the snow, and beginning to
thaw and rot again.

Solange pointed to a large white
sign with black block letters that read ‘Food, Water, Provisions.’   “I think
the people wanted the provisions, but did not want to wait.”

“This is unbelievable.”  Both of
their voices were muffled behind their scarves.  Todd was impressed that
Solange could look at the violence without shock and horror, or at least not
express her shock and horror.  He was rattled, and used her strength to keep
moving.

The doors to the museum were open. 
There was a body hanging half in and half outside.  The man’s top have was
busting through a pane of glass in the swinging doors.  All of the museum’s glass
doors were shattered, riddled with bullet holes and shotgun blasts.

“What happened?  How did this
devolve into a gun fight?”  Todd said, half to Solange and half aloud.  He
watched as birds flew around the bodies on the other side of the street.

“Do you want to go inside?” 
Solange asked through her scarf.  “Do you think it will be worse inside?”

“I do not want to go inside, and
yes, I think it will smell worse and be worse inside.”  Todd looked at her. 
“We have to go inside though, don’t we?” 

“I think we have to go inside.” 
Solange acknowledged.  “If it makes you feel any better, I do not want to go
inside either.”  He could see the edges of her eyes crinkle with a smile.

“I can smell some of the bodies,
but that isn’t the big smell.  There is something else, not in the museum, but
somewhere around here.  It’s bad.  It must be where all those birds are.”  He
pointed over the museum where hundreds, if not thousands, of birds circled in
and out of the area.

“If this is what happened in New
York, I do not think we will meet many people.  I would not have stayed if
there was this much violence and destruction.  I would have left for a suburb
or small town.”  Solange spoke as she and Todd walked around the trucks and
fallen soldiers.  They climbed the steps to the entrance of the building.  The
ice and snow made it treacherous, and Todd instinctively grabbed Solange’s arm
to help her.

The large arched windows on the
second story were shot out, and the building was marred with bullet damage.  “I
visited East Berlin when I was a child.  I remember this is what the buildings
looked like.  They hadn’t made repairs since World War II, and all the
buildings had bullet holes and chunks taken out of them.”  Todd’s head was
moving in circles as he surveyed the damage.  Even the stone steps they walked
up had pieces missing.

“It is sad that such a beautiful
building is ruined.  I fear all of the art is destroyed or gone.”  Solange
pointed to the damage as she walked.

At the top of the steps two glass
doors flanked a revolving door entrance to the lobby.  A dead soldier’s body
hung out of the door on their left.  His face was down, touching the stone
entrance.  A helmet was still strapped to his head.  He held a large rifle. 
Todd did not know guns.  He assumed it was an M-16.  That was the only ‘army
type’ assault rifle he knew. 

“He was shot from behind.”  Todd
said, pointing to the tears in the back of the man’s shirt.  “There was a fight
inside too.”  They walked through the broken glass door on the right side of
the revolving door.  It was dark and cool inside, cooler than it was outside. 
The stone walls and floor of the museum held the winter cold like ice blocks in
an old refrigerator. 

Todd put his shotgun down and
unslung his backpack.  He took out two headlamps, handing one to Solange while
slipping the other on his head.  He pulled out two flashlights, giving one to
Solange.  He slung the backpack, stood up and asked “where to?”

Solange looked around the room. 
“It looks like there are temperature stations there.”  She pointed to a bank of
tables near the entrance.  “The people were moved into two areas for
provisions.”  Her flashlight highlighted signs posted over two doorways.  One
sign read ‘healthy’ and the other ‘sick.’

“I suggest we ignore this and head
to the European Exhibits.”  Todd was more interested in locating art than
solving the mystery of the gun fight.

“I do not need to see more death. 
I would like to see a Picasso.”  Solange focused her flashlight beam on the
stairs to the second floor.

“Let’s grab a museum map and try to
steal some art.  I hope we can salvage something out of this mayhem.  What a
waste. They all would have died anyway, but they would have died at peace. 
What could they have been thinking?”  Todd shook his head as bent down to pick up
one of the hundreds of museum maps scattered around the lobby.  His headlamp
provided reading light.  “Looks like we need to go up the stairs and to the
left.  European art, here we come.” 

The cold museum interior acted like
a morgue freezer, and protected the bodies from decomposition.  Todd and
Solange stepped over a solider whose body blocked the top of the stairs.  There
were bullet holes and marks all along the staircase.  The dead soldier was
shooting down at the front doors.  He had bloody spots on his back where he was
shot from behind.  His body fell to the top of the landing.

“Poor bastard.”  Todd said as he
stepped over him.  “He thought he was holding the line, and whoever was
attacking came in another door and hit him from behind.”  They continued to the
top of the stairs, his flashlight leading the way.  They entered the first
gallery and their hearts sank.

“It is destroyed.”  Solange said
sadly.  Bullet holes filled the walls and pictures.  Frames lay on the ground,
smashed and ruined.  “The fight took everything with it.” 

“Europe is pretty far from the
center of the museum, maybe the wings did not see as much fighting.”  Todd said
hopefully. 

The destruction to the art and
building decreased as they moved away from the stairs and main hallways. 
Bodies, however, were scattered throughout the museum.  Blood, long since
dried, left black circles on the floors and smears against the walls. 

Solange and Todd entered the first
room of European art.

There were knife cuts through most
of the paintings.  “My god, these are Monets.  Who would do this?  Why?  Why
would you do this?”  Todd lost his composure.  “It seems like they were
fighting for food and water.  Fighting for their lives, but then to come in and
cut up the art?  This shows contempt for humanity.”

They walked around the first two
rooms.  Todd stopped in front of a Monet haystack.  His eyes dropped and he
shook his head.  There were crude rips through the painting made with the nose
of a rifle or gun.  Several spots on the wall were vacant.  Art thieves had
beaten Solange and Todd.  Todd wondered if the paintings were taken before,
during, or after the attack.

“Let’s keep going and think
positively.”  Todd encouraged.  He moved towards the room on his right.  He and
Solange relied entirely on their flashlights and headlamps to make their way
through the pitch black and windowless gallery.  Todd pointed his flashlight
beam on a picture as soon as he walked through the doorway.  A Monet, Water
Lilies, hung without damage.  Pristine as it was before the rapture.

“This is going to sound
pretentious, but I’m not a Monet person.  I get why people love his work, but I
am not a fan, and if I have limited ability to carry, I’ll stick to other
works.”  Todd felt funny passing on a Monet.

“If one of the others would like
it, they can come back through and pick it up.”  Solange said.  “Still…”  She
walked to the painting, studying the work.  “I like it.  I will start with it. 
I will see if something else is in good condition.  Maybe this Monet is all we
will be able to save.”

“Good point, we can always leave it
if we find something else.”  They continued through a door to the next room,
not hesitating to enjoy the gallery.   They came for Picasso’s and Van Gogh’s. 
The violent deaths robbed them of any desire to gallery stroll, as did the
smell of rotting death.  The odor was weaker in the building, but still present
in the air. 

Todd’s light beam pointed at the
first painting in the room.  It was the Van Gogh Todd wanted.  The one he
dreamed about since seeing it 10 years earlier during his first visit to the
Metropolitan.  Todd rushed ahead, almost tripping over the large wooden benches
bolted to the floor.  The art label read: Wheat Field with Cypresses, Vincent
Van Gogh, 1889. 

Todd never enjoyed or paid
attention to art.  10 years earlier he visited New York with Emily while she
was on a business trip.  Stuck by himself while she was in meetings for the
day, he went into the Metropolitan to kill time.  He strolled through the
galleries, nodding at some pieces, walking briskly passed most.  When he saw
the Van Gogh he was floored.  The colors and textures, always muted by
photographs in books, were incredible.  They were alive and unlike anything
Todd had seen before.  He sat on the bench in front of the picture, Wheat Field
with Cypresses, for fifteen or twenty minutes.  He could not get enough of the
painting.  He yearned for other Van Gogh’s, visiting exhibits in any major city
he knew had works by the artist. 

Todd reached out and touched the
frame.  It was flush against the wall, not hanging from a wire or nail in the
wall.  Todd put the flashlight and shotgun on the bench facing the picture.  He
grabbed the frame on each side and pushed up.  The picture began to move, kept
on the wall by a tongue and groove system. 

“That is the one we came for?” 
Solange asked.

“Yes.”  Todd said, looking at the
large picture with the light of his headlamp. 

“I am going into the next room.  If
we do not find a Picasso, I would like to leave.  The stench is too much for
me.  It is getting stronger in these rooms.”  Before she turned to go through
the archway to the left she held up the Monet she was carrying.  “May I leave
this here?”  She asked.

Todd was lost in his new treasure,
but snapped out of it to answer her.  “Oh, yeah, of course, sorry.  I’ll bring
it.”  She set the painting down next to him, leaning it against the bench as
she left for the new room. 

Todd prepared for the walk back to
the RV.  Solange was correct, the smell was unbearable.  They found and
collected some art, it was time to call it a day.  He was eager to report to
the group about the fire fight and destruction.

Todd set his painting down, leaning
it against the Monet.  He turned off his flashlight, deciding to use his
headlamp the rest of the way, freeing his hands to carry paintings.  He put the
flashlight into this day pack, and put the pack on his back.  He used the
shoulder strap on the shotgun, and slung it behind him.  He tightened the scarf
around his mouth in an attempt to block out the smell before joining Solange
into the next room.

Her flashlight beam was focused on
a painting, a man at a table feeling for a pitcher.  The imagery was powerful. 

“It is beautiful.  It is more than
I expected.  I would like to take this one and the Matisse I already pulled off
the wall.”  She moved her flashlight beam to a picture of flowers.  “My father
loved Matisse.  It will remind me of him.”  She turned the beam back to the
Picasso.  “This will remind me of what the world was like, when we were able to
enjoy art.  Maybe it will inspire a survivor to become an artist, if we reach a
time when we can be idle again, and the world can create artists.” 

“You are one serious young woman,
Solange.  We’ll have idle time again.  It might not be in the next few years,
but when we’ve found a place to live, when we’ve found other people, when the
engineers of our new world, people like you, help to rebuild some of the
mechanics of society, people will paint again.”  They admired the Picasso. 
“Until there are painters, these pictures will get us through.”

“I agree.”  She nodded and her
headlamp beam bounced up and down on the wall.  “Let us follow my bouncing ball
and get away from this horrible place.  I cannot stand the smell any longer.” 

Todd laughed at the bouncing ball
joke.  Maybe Solange was not as serious as she let on.  She carried the Matisse,
and Todd managed with the other three frames. 

According to the map, they were
near a back emergency exit of the museum.  They walked through several archways
until they saw daylight peaking through the bottom of a door.  A sign above the
door read ‘Exit.’

Todd turned the handle and walked
into the stairwell.  The powerful smell almost knocked him back.  “Oh my god.” 
He said, as he held the door open for Solange. 

“We might have to go back through
the front.”  Her eyes squinted from the smell, as she came through the door
sideways with the large painting.

The window at the top of the stairs
was shot out.  Glass lay on the ground.  The smell came through the hole. 
Solange walked to the gap and looked towards the park behind the museum. 
Leafless trees should have displayed softball fields and open spaces.  Instead,
Solange saw a large hole in the ground.  Flocks of carrion swirled around and
on top of the pile.

Solange turned her face away from
the image.  Tears formed in her eyes.