The Pulse (18 page)

If even Jenna wasn’t willing to risk being cold and hungry and in danger from bandits and who knows what else out there on the road, why should she expect anyone else to want to take on that risk?

But they should at least know.

Or should they?

Jenna grit her teeth. She wished she didn’t have this information, so she could go on without worrying about all this stuff. But she did have it. So now what?

It would be nice to hear the radio. What had Mason called it? American Victory Radio. It used to be she’d come home from work and veg out on the couch, watching whatever dumb reality show was on at the time. Now she hadn’t even seen a computer screen or a television in ages. And since the soldiers wouldn’t let her bring anything with her to the camp, she didn’t even have any books to read.

If only she could listen to that radio, she could find some paper and write down what the broadcast said, and post it for everyone to see. But there was no way that could happen.

Or could it?

She stood up from the hard plastic subway car bench and stretched her legs. Peering her head out of the car, she saw a lone soldier walking down the Tracks. Excitement rushed through her at the thought of the winning combination of food and sex—both of which would soon be hers if she played her cards right.

“Well, hello there, Private,” she said brightly, stepping out of the subway car. The guy, a younger kid, probably barely twenty-one, smiled at her shyly. “Yeah, you, honey,” she said to him, smiling, putting on her friendliest face.

“Hi.” He coughed uncomfortably, looking at his shoes.

“I’m Jenna.” She stuck her hand out to him, and when he took it she gently pulled him toward her so he could properly feel her body against his. That one trick almost always clinched the deal for her.

“Will,” he said, still not looking at her.

“Will,” she said, “you look like you want to get laid by a woman who knows what she’s doing, am I right?”

His blush, which rose all the way up to his hairline, answered for him.

“Do you have food, Will?”

He nodded, patting his pockets. He took out a half of a sandwich wrapped in paper. The bread, she knew, was half sawdust, to help fill their bellies. The meat was almost definitely chopped rat. But it looked good.

“That’s great, Will,” she said encouragingly. “Let me eat this first and then you can lie back and let me do all the work.” She figured he was new enough not to know she usually didn’t get to eat until after, but she wasn’t going to back out, so she didn’t see the problem in changing things up a bit.

Will nodded and handed her the sandwich.

It tasted pretty good. She liked to pretend it was something else—maybe a chopped steak sandwich on bakery bread. When she finished, she stripped her top off, letting it fall onto the floor of the subway car.

Will, she could see, didn’t need any prepping—his erection strained against his pants. Running her fingers to his waistband, she unzipped his fly, setting his cock free. He may have been young but his cock was all man. She smiled and pushed him down onto the mattress in the corner of the car.

He lay on his back, unbuttoning his shirt, his dog tags lying on his hairless chest.

Jenna straddled his head, holding herself up so she didn’t completely crush him. “First you gotta get me off, soldier,” she purred. Once again, that was hardly the rule, but Will was a newbie so she may as well have some fun.

He licked her pussy tentatively, then harder, getting into it. She moaned as he twirled his tongue around her slick folds, reaching up and holding her ass in his hands.

It wasn’t long before a wave of pleasure crashed over her and she climaxed, moaning as the young man sucking her clit kept going, either because he didn’t know she had come or because he was enjoying himself so much. An aftershock hit her, making her gasp and buck her hips against his mouth.

She pulled herself off his face, still straddling him, and leaned forward to kiss him, liking the taste of her come on his lips.

“Did I do that right?” he asked.

“That was incredible,” she said truthfully. “You’ve got skills, sweetheart.”

He grinned. “I did the alphabet with my tongue. That’s what the other guys said to do when I asked. Although,” he said, a wry smile on his face, “they also said I didn’t have to eat pussy if I didn’t want to out here on the Tracks.”

Damn.
“Well, you’re a true man, and a true man likes to eat pussy,” she said, winking. He puffed his chest in apparent pride.

“Now tell me, Will,” she said, positioning her wet pussy over his cock and sliding down slowly, making him gasp. “A man like you probably knows all sorts of things.”

“Like what?” he asked, reaching up and touching her breasts, seemingly mesmerized by how they moved as she gyrated her hips.

“Like, what sorts of things does the radio say?” She rocked forward so his cock hit her G-spot perfectly.

“Oh yeah, I know about that,” he said, still watching her breasts bounce. He gave an experimental pinch to her nipple and she squealed, making him grin in delight. “They’ve rigged whole camps to run on solar power generators and windmills. They’ve got lights that go on at sundown and stay on until bedtime at ten o’clock at night.” He pinched her nipple again, harder this time, but she barely noticed. The news about there being other camps with electricity hit her like a shock wave.

“Where? Where are those camps?”

He shrugged, then groaned as she started riding him faster. “Not just military camps. Communities, too, I think. Nowhere in the city, though,” he said, frowning.

Jenna couldn’t believe it. Yeah, Mason had told her some of it from Emily’s message, but whole communities with access to electricity? She imagined sitting around a comfortable room, fresh from a shower, wearing clean clothes, gathered around a table lit with a lamp instead of a smoky garbage fire, maybe even listening to a radio, talking with friends. The thought was too good to be true. It sounded like paradise.

A sharp slap to her ass brought her back to reality. She looked down at the young soldier in surprise. Where had he learned that? She rode him faster and he grabbed her hips, grunting as he came inside her.

“Hey,” he said, his cock wilting as she climbed off of him. “I don’t think I’m allowed to talk about that stuff.”

“It will be our secret, Will,” she promised. Leaning over, she kissed his lips. They still tasted faintly like her. “I won’t tell if you don’t.”

“If you tell,” he said, suddenly looking much older than his years, “you’ll be in danger, I think. So don’t go telling anyone, seriously.” He paused, then looked at her warily. “How’d you even know about the radio in the first place?”

“Everyone knows about it,” she lied instinctually. Because if everyone knew about it, they’d be less likely to consider her an expendable threat to their secrets.

“Everyone?”

“Ye-yes.”

The young soldier’s eyes darkened as he pulled his clothes back on. “I heard the only one who knows about it is the whore who murdered Private Andrews. Do you know anything about that?”

Murdered? Emily murdered someone?

That was impossible. She knew Emily, loved Emily. There was no way. The surprise and shock on Jenna’s face must have convinced Will of her sincerity, because he stopped looking at her so suspiciously.

“This was fun, Jenna,” he said, his tone lighter. “I’d like to visit with you again, if that’s okay.”

Jenna laughed. Such the gentleman. He could see her whenever the hell he wanted, and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it. So it was sweet for him to ask, almost like he’d asked her out on a date.

“I’d like that,” she said.

When he left, she sat down, trying to absorb everything new she had just learned. Maybe she really
should
talk to the other girls on the Tracks.

And maybe they really should get the hell out of Grand Central.

OH
MY
God
, Emily thought, feeling the walls of the New York State Psychiatric Institute closing in on her. Chaz and his psych patient girlfriend Amy were cannibals.

The sight of the human carcass on the hospital bed with chunks of meat filleted off of it was too much to bear. Emily turned and threw up bile onto the floor, her stomach cramping painfully.

Maggots were crawling through the corpse’s rotting flesh. Chaz had apparently been cutting meat from the thighs to cook for him and Amy that evening.

“You’re welcome to eat,” Chaz said. “Eat! It’s good.”

Emily felt like she might cry. Did Chaz and Amy even understand what they were doing? She didn’t think so. Off their medications, they were so far gone they believed that their friends and doctors and nurses were still with them, albeit quieter.

Mason took Emily firmly by the hand and led her out of the room. “Chaz,” he said, “is there anyone left who still moves and talks?”

“No.” Chaz grinned again, and Emily felt another wave of nausea come over her.

Mason looked at her, concern creasing his forehead, and took her hand again. “Thank you, Chaz, for your hospitality. Say good-bye to Amy for us.”

They ran, rushing down the hall, trying not to see the corpses or smell the urine and feces and rotting flesh. Mason pushed the door open and they flew out of the building, gasping for fresh air.

“Keep going,” Mason said, urging her forward. She ran with him until they were back on the Hudson River Parkway, where they slowed to a steady pace.

It was starting to get dark, and colder.

“I can’t believe that,” she whispered, when she felt able to speak again.

“I knew something wasn’t right, for him to be looking so well fed.”

“Are others doing that, you think? Eating the dead?”

He nodded. “Yes, I imagine they are. But there’s something that feels so wrong about it, you know? I remember hearing that story about the people who survived a plane crash in the middle of nowhere, and there was no food, just frozen dead people, and they ate the dead people to live. I don’t know if I could do that.”

“I don’t think I would be able to keep it down. I’d vomit at the thought, much less actually having it in my mouth.” Bile rose in her throat again, as if to prove her point.

“If I thought you were going to die, though, from starvation, I’d want you to eat a person,” Mason said, looking at her even as he kept walking.

“I wouldn’t do it.”

“I wouldn’t be giving you a choice, I imagine,” he said softly.

“There’s no point in talking about it,” she said, although she feared if they kept walking without food for much longer, they would get to a desperate situation. “I know you want to get out of the city, but we need to find someplace to spend the night. It’s going to get cold and dark and I can’t imagine continuing like this.”

He sighed. “All right. And we need to find some food, too.”

She nearly laughed with exhilaration. “Great.”

“Where do you think we should take shelter?” Mason looked around at the numerous stalled cars.

“I have an idea,” she said. “We’re not far from Fort Tryon Park, and The Cloisters. We can stay there.”

“That sounds perfect.”

“I haven’t been there since I was a kid,” she said. “We went on a field trip there. It’s incredible—it’s all devoted to the art and architecture of medieval Europe. They have a medieval garden, even, with stuff growing in it that would have grown back then. It was pretty cool.”

“I hope punks haven’t vandalized it the way they’ve vandalized everything else,” Mason said. They walked faster now that they had a place to rest in mind.

“Maybe you’ll find some squirrels or pigeons or something—anything—in the park.”

“It’ll depend on how many people have already hunted the area,” he said, as they found their destination. A huge sign said
FORT TRYON PARK
. Underneath, in smaller letters, it said
THE CLOISTERS, HEATHER GARDEN, CAFÉ
. And underneath that, it said
A DIVISION OF THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART
.

“Huh,” Mason said as they walked past into the park. “I didn’t know it was a branch of the Met. I wonder if there’s anything left in that café?”

“Doubtful, but worth a look.” Something moved in the corner of her vision, and she froze. “I think I saw something. A rabbit, maybe.” She pointed to a patch of trees about ten yards away.

Mason picked up his rifle, looking through the scope. “I don’t see anything. But I can set a few traps in the woods around here, and we can check them in a few hours.”

Mason wished Emily
would walk faster. She couldn’t help the fact that her legs were much shorter than his, he knew. But it was still frustrating as all hell. Night approached quickly this time of year, and they needed to get inside. Already the spring air felt uncomfortably cold as the sun set.

The Cloisters loomed in front of them. The building lay relatively low compared to the skyscrapers in Manhattan, but a tower jutted up from the bricks menacingly. From what Mason could see, the building was made of stone and bricks and had a distinctly old feel to it.