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  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.

  3

  My 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.

  4

  It was a twenty-minute drive, zigzagging and squeezing through the gridlock of wrecked vehicles, winding around downed buildings and avoiding craters big enough to swallow the vehicle whole.

  They remembered Caleb. How he’d passed through one day, a nonchalant air about him. He’d stayed for a meal and exchanged information, then he’d left.

  “I felt sorry for him,” Bob said. “Caleb, he seemed like a good guy.”

  “Why’s that?” I asked.

  “Just the way Tom treated him—you’ll meet Tom soon enough.”

  “Treated him? Like how?”

  “Just a difference of opinion, I guess,” Bob said. “He’s not one to be challenged like that, and with Caleb getting people all excited by hopes of some way out of the city . . .”

  This Tom guy sounded like a jerk. “Well, you can tell that guy that Caleb didn’t get to see his way out of this city.”

  Bob looked to Daniel, as if unsure who would ask the delicate question—if they needed to know at all. Maybe it was safer not to get too familiar?

  “You talk like he’s gone,” Bob said.

  “Did I?” I asked, a little worried. “Really?”

  “Seems that way,” Daniel said, his voice soothing away doubt and reluctance. “What happened?”

  I explained about the explosion that had turned Caleb into a Chaser. First, I told them about the unexploded missiles. I’d seen one on my first day, and Caleb had reported one in an abandoned property. Then Starkey—whoever he was; would I ever truly know?—the only adult in his group who’d bothered to talk to me seriously, had warned me of the missile in the back of the military truck. “When it explodes,” he’d said, “it will release the biological agent, you understand?” The agent that turned people into Chasers. I’d run as he’d instructed me, but Caleb was still dragging bodies to safety when the explosion happened. KLAPBOOM! For a moment, Caleb was lost to me in the smoke and fireball and when I saw him again, it had happened. There was Caleb: at the body of a dead soldier. Drinking him.

  They hadn’t interrupted, but Bob couldn’t hold back his questions. “This guy—Starkey—he was part of the US military?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “Their trucks had USAMRIID stenciled on them. That’s a scientist outfit, I think.” I remembered the words Felicity had used, drawing on knowledge gained from her brother. “They specialize in virology and combating biological warfare.”

  Daniel nodded. “Stands for US Army Medica
l Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.”

  “So what were they doing with the missile in the back of the truck?” asked Bob.

  “I’d thought that they could have been taking it for tests,” I said.

  “Could have been covering up evidence,” Bob added. “Biological warfare, you know.” Then he said, “Why—?” his question hung in the air, rhetorical. “Why all that, then have an aircraft of our own come in and hit them?”

  I shrugged. “What I do know is that that’s how you become one of the chasing kind of infected, like those we encountered back there: proximity to the explosion.”

  These guys were hungry for information, and hung on my every word. Sharing news can bring you closer to the person doing the listening. I could see their empathy grow and, with it, mine did too. I wished I had more to tell, more to share, but this was enough for now. Besides, I felt tired being in this hot cab of the truck, and then . . .

  Chelsea Piers.

  Chelsea Piers was a long, bleak, industrial facade of corrugated iron running along the Hudson River side of Eleventh Avenue. We pulled up to the southernmost end, at some kind of sports center at the corner of West 18th—golf, mainly, by the look of the advertising outside. I could see that the pier had a massive ten-story-high net along the three sides to stop golf balls from flying into the Hudson—the scale of this place made it feel safe. I liked that it looked deserted: there was nothing from the outside that signaled there was a group of over forty survivors living inside.

  “Bob,” Daniel said, and it was all he needed to say: Bob jumped out of the cab. Cold, hard wind stabbed into the cabin in those couple of seconds the passenger door was open. I watched him run over to a big roller door and bang on it three times. I felt Daniel’s eyes in the rearview mirror, and I looked out my window. On the other side of the street was a big building of curved, white frosted glass, almost invisible in this weather; it looked safe and solid, the kind of place one could easily retreat to.