Breakers (13 page)

He kicked and stroked and swam. He swam until his arms and legs seemed like the property of another body. He swam until he couldn't think of anything besides keeping his head above the waves, of riding the inward ebb of the current, of inhaling when the water dropped away and exhaling when its icy hold clambered up his neck to his mouth.

He swam.

And with the pilings rising and falling from the water some three hundred yards away, he decided he'd come too far to die. Maybe the hypothermia would get him shivering on the docks. Maybe he'd be eaten by rats or starving survivors. But he wouldn't drown. Not with Brooklyn so close. Drowning now would only prove what he already knew: jumping from the ferry had been the stupidest idea of his life.

He kicked and paddled, nose blowing bubbles in the waves. In the moonlight, a dark, tilted slab stood on narrow wooden pilings a few feet above the water; beside it, a tall steel dock rose twenty feet above the soft waves, skeletal and pitted. He pushed for the slab. His muscles felt like ten thousand ants withering in a fire. His breath gushed out of him in ragged huffs. The pilings swung close enough to bash his brains out. He reached out, plunging beneath the water as he lifted his arms, and grabbed the slippery wood. Splinters and barnacles shredded his palms, a dull burn beside the total pain of his body. He hugged himself to the piling and rested there in the motionless cold until he found the strength to lift his arms above his head. The plank above him groaned under his weight. Arms shaking like they were ready to fall apart, he hauled himself up to the platform's lip, wormed his weight over its edge, and flopped onto a pile of loose, fish-stinking boards. He shivered there for a while.

A breeze swept goosebumps across his skin. The night wasn't that cold—if he hadn't been carrying 900 gallons of seawater in and on his skin, he could have survived in a light jacket—but he felt like he would die if he stayed there and slept. A narrow gangway led to an ocean-rotted wooden ladder up the side of the metal dock. He yanked on the rung above his head. It held. He climbed hand over hand, resting both feet on each rung before moving on. Rust clogged his nostrils. Corroded metal rods projected from the dock's rectangular frame. At the top, Walt crawled across the gappy planks to a crumbling factory. Glassless windows stared dumbly out to sea.

He walked inside to a grimy concrete platform. His shirt was wet. He needed to be not-wet. He peeled his shirt off, shivering hard enough to snap his neck. On his bare stomach, his closed knife wound was hot and pink and ticked by stitches. Walt grabbed the shirt at its hem and strained, trying to tear it in half, but his biceps quivered like a scared dog. He took the hem in his teeth and yanked. It gave way with a wet rip.

He stuck a foot inside each sleeve and knotted the sopping fabric around his ankles. They weren't good shoes. In fact, they were shit. Cold, wet shit that threatened to fall off his feet just a few steps into the dark factory. He reknotted them and shuffled on. On a dusty shelf, he found a pile of burlap sacks. The corners shredded easily. He stuck his arms through the holes and crouched down in a ball until he stopped shaking.

The front doors were held by a heavy iron chain. He swung his legs out a window and dropped down to the street.

Graffitied, rust-colored factories flanked a wide, weedy street. Walt ducked through a hole clipped through the chain link fence, scratching his ribs on a sharp wire. He straightened, gritting his teeth. A dog trotted down the street, nails clicking, tags jingling. It had been days since the world stopped working. Had the pet tasted blood yet?

Down the block, Walt opened a newspaper dispenser and stuffed his burlap shirt with wadded pages of the
Village Voice
. Metal shuttered sealed the corner bodega. He swore, dropped to the gutter, and scooped his palm into the stagnant, cool water there. It tasted like dirt and like sweet and like life. He allowed himself three palms full, then gargled out the last of the salt.

He walked on. Smelled decay and bad meat. A lumpy, blanketed body sprawled from the stoop of an apartment. Brown blood crusted the top step. The paint around the door handle had been scraped down to the wood. Walt lifted the burlap over his nose and untied the dead man's running shoes. He smelled death, sour and rotting and hot as a sleeping baby. When Walt pulled the second shoe free, a glistening tube of foot-skin gave way with a wet slurp.

He scrabbled back and vomited into the street.

The right shoe fit. The left, he couldn't squeeze over his heel. He tied his shirt back over his unshod foot and limped on.

He hadn't had much of a plan till then—"Don't drown or freeze to death," yes, but given that was high on everyone's daily goals, he didn't think that counted. He was somewhere on the western shore of Brooklyn. The bridge into Manhattan would be a few miles north; his apartment a couple miles further up from that. He knew there was an R-train around here somewhere. With luck, it would still be operational, and he could ride into the Village, grab his stuff out of the apartment, take another train up into the Bronx, and start the long march west. With no luck, or rather the standard of luck to which he'd become accustomed in the last few weeks, he'd have to hoof it the whole way.

He didn't know if he could handle that just now. He'd made it the few blocks from the docks on a cocktail of I-almost-died adrenaline and the need to get moving and warm. He could feel the weakness, though, the worn-out tremor of his calves and thighs. He'd need to rest soon. Somewhere warm. Somewhere with clean water.

Thin clouds skeined the sky above the silent streets. Drapes flapped from open windows. Black gum spots stained the sidewalks. The cars clung to their parking spots, motionless, forgotten. If Walt had come from another time, he might have mistaken them for cramped metal huts.

Beneath a raised highway, Walt could actually hear the traffic light click from red to green. His shirt-shoe squished across the asphalt with wet, irregular tracks. He walked past a VFW, a sporting goods store, a Greek cafe, one- and two-story storefronts with hand-lettered signs and exhaust-grayed paint. He didn't know where he was. Without the towers of Manhattan to guide him or the Citibank skyscraper rising in blue glass loneliness from the middle of Queens, he could have wandered away into Long Island.

There was a logic to New York, though, one that ran deeper than its numbered grid. Live there for a few years and every neighborhood starts to feel familiar. Walt may not have known precisely where he was going; the wrong turn, and he could easily stumble into a block of weedy lots, blank brick walls kudzued by old graffiti, and suspicious-eyed locals who looked teleported straight out of Soviet Russia. But soon enough, Walt would get where he was going. At times, the city felt like a dreaming giant. Walk through its mind for long enough, and it starts to tell you where to go.

He spotted the subway station two blocks later. The marine green rails, the black board with the bright yellow alphabet of the routes, the hole in the sidewalk to the platforms that, under normal circumstances, smelled pleasantly of laundry and unpleasantly of urine.

Now it smelled like death.

Walt waited at the top of the steps for the better part of a minute. Faint, buzzing light illuminated the grimy steps. He didn't know what he was waiting for: the rumble of a train, the crank of a turnstile, or maybe just a wise vagrant to pass by, roll his prophet-bright eyes, and warn him to move on. Finally, it came to him. A weapon. You don't descend into dark underground places without a weapon. He glanced down the street. A few spindly trees bordered by tight black iron fences. Wire trash can chained to the traffic light. Hamburger wrapper. More gum stains. Parking signs. A shuttered fried chicken joint. Out front, a green sandwich board resting on its side, white chalk lunch specials half-erased. He shuffled over, grabbed one of its legs, and yanked. He gave his three-foot club a swing, lashing the air, enjoying the hiss. Would probably break the first time it hit anything of person-level density. Still. Better than nothing.

The handrail along the stairs was greasy with humidity and the ongoing touch of thousands of passengers. Crunchy, rusty stains tracked a thick line down the center of the stairs. The stench had been gaggable at street level, but halfway down, he had to draw his burlap shirt over his nose again. It didn't help. He breathed shallowly through his mouth, burlap scratching his lips. The glass of the token booth was spiderwebbed with cracks. A fluorescent bulb buzzed, casting flickering pale light over the concrete and turnstiles. If he'd had the energy, he would have jumped them just for kicks; instead, he scuffed along through the wide-open metal-banded door to the platform.

The air was still and close and hot, so thick with stink it felt like it would coat his skin and stick inside his throat. Flies whined. He swallowed down warm bile. Something rustled in the mud and puddles along the dimly gleaming tracks. Walt raised his stick and edged out onto the platform. To his left, fat black bags mounded the platform to shoulder height.

A viscous brown puddle collected around the pile's base. The bags on the lower strata looked like proper thick body bags, but those on top were black plastic garbage sacks. Arms and bloated yellow faces protruded from the rips and holes. Brown blood smeared split lips and blackened noses. Dozens of bodies had spilled from the pile onto the tracks, a rotting landslide of the dead. A second mound rested on the opposite platform, stretching away into the darkness.

Walt backed away, gagging. He banged his hip into the metal door and collapsed on his ass. He scrabbled backwards until his palm skidded through a crusted smear of brown slime. Hastily, he wiped his hand on the tiled wall and ran up the steps to the damp, cool air of the street. He ran around a corner and slumped against an apartment block until he no longer smelled the sludge of former people.

Eight million people had populated New York City proper. Most—90%? 99?—were now dead. They'd had to store the bodies somewhere.

He didn't know when the last semblance of law had left the city, but he guessed it had been right around the same time they started stuffing the subway tunnels full of corpses. Yet as desolate as the streets looked, he knew he wasn't alone.
He'd
survived the virus. So had the dozens of survivors the military had cooped up and ferried off to Staten Island. There had to be others out there. He had no intention of spending the night anywhere but his home.

The corner bodega was locked but unshuttered. Walt bashed in the glass door with his stick. Spilled couscous gritted the floor. Jars of pickles lay smashed across an aisle, the briny juice smelling like a withered sea. The shelves had been stripped of everything but a few candy bars, some freeze-dried lunch noodles, scattered cans of off-brand soda. Walt ate a Snickers in big chewy bites and walked to the back where "I HEART NEW YORK" shirts and hoodies hung from the wall. He stripped naked and toweled down his damp crotch and thighs, then pulled a t-shirt and a hoodie over his chest. He found the extra larges and stepped into a shirt, pulling the sleeves over his legs, then did the same with a navy blue sweatshirt, his balls dangling in the hood. From a third sweatshirt he reeled out the drawstring and belted it around the loose fabric at his waist. Dressed, if rather unfashionably, he cracked a fizzing can of soda and chugged until the last drops slid from the can's mouth. He crumpled it and dropped it on the tile. A series of belches foamed up his throat.

The dried salt still scummed his skin and hair, but he felt refreshed, capable of at least attempting the trip back. Briefly, he considered trying to steal a car, but nobody in this city would have left their keys in the ignition, and besides, on the empty streets, it would be an awful lot of attention. He'd take a bike if he found one.

He wasn't banking on that, though. He found a canvas bag behind the register and filled it with sodas and 3 Musketeers and jars of peanuts. He found a baseball bat there, too, but no guns. Just as well. All he knew about guns was they had a trigger and they went bang.

He still wasn't too jazzed about his shoes. He had something like 3000 miles of walking between himself and Los Angeles. He didn't much feel like ruining his feet before he'd left Manhattan.

The door to the four-story walkup beside the bodega was locked. Walt circled around to the side where a chain link fence walled off a small garden. He scaled the fence and dropped into the yard. A rake leaned against the back porch. He used it to unhook the fire escape and snag its lower rung. The stairs swung down with a metal creak. On the second-story landing, he smashed in the window and crouched out of sight. After a minute of silence, he cleared the jagged glass with the baseball bat and clambered inside.

After the stink of the subway, the rot inside the apartment was a nasal Sunday drive. A fat body moldered in the bed, yellow underwear clinging to its crotch. Walt opened the closet. The dead man's loafers were three sizes too big. Walt slipped on three pairs of gold-toed socks. The loafer fit.

In the kitchen, he took a paring knife and a box of matches and climbed back down to the street. He saw his first person five minutes later, a short, thin figure that scooted across the asphalt a block ahead. With the Brooklyn Bridge bobbing above the walkups, something growled from a stoop. Walt jumped back, bat in hand. A German Shepherd's eyes glinted in the gloom. Walt backed away and walked on.

He was used to a New Yorkerly rush, but he forced himself to stick to a light pace that barely upped his breathing.A door slammed and Walt hid in the shadow of a tree. Far off, a car engine purred, followed by a single gunshot. He passed a body every few blocks. Some sat upright in alcoves; two lay in the middle of the sidewalk; others rested behind car wheels or slumped against apartment windows. For the most part he didn't see them at all. He supposed most had died in their homes, or been gathered up and burned or stored in the subways. As fast as the Panhandler had burned through the world, it hadn't struck people dead on their feet. It had given them just enough time to hide away.