Quarantine Page 6

  “Right?” I asked, wondering about the importance of what seemed so evident and relevant to them. “About what?”

  Bob, his video camera hanging loose on a lanyard around his neck, suddenly began speaking from his own authority: “Manhattan’s storm-water drainage system and the sewer system were linked many years ago, so when there are torrential rains and the pipes back up—and I’m talking millions of gallons of rainwater mixed with raw sewage—the flow is routed away from the city’s fourteen sewage plants and towards a web of underground pipes that empty directly into the East River, the Hudson, and New York Harbor.”

  “I don’t get the significance?”

  “Multiply the flow by ten,” Bob said, smiling, looking again at the fast-flowing torrent. “Jesse, this water line here shows more than just an increased flow—and judgin’ by the smell, this ain’t coming from the sewer system.”

  “What then?”

  “It’s a water-supply tunnel.”

  I shrugged, not sure what to make of this revelation, something that seemed to be cheering him so.

  “I saw that one of the older city water tunnels had collapsed, the day of the attack,” he explained. “In the Lower East Side. Hell, in one section a couple of blocks had collapsed down into it.”

  “So what does that mean for us?” I asked. “That there’s heaps of water flushing under the city, so—what, we can steer the Chasers underground, clear out the city?”

  I recalled a vision of masses of them congregated in a damp subway station. Dark spaces underground were not where I’d want to be with Chasers around.

  Bob shook his head. “Billions of gallons flush through every day, gravity-fed,” he said, squatting down on the dusty stone floor. He shone his flashlight as he traced a finger diagram. “This here is Manhattan. There are three major water tunnels that feed the whole city—One, Two and Three. Massive tunnels.”

  I looked at the snaking lines he’d drawn.

  “This is Tunnel One, which I’d seen breached.” He pointed to another. “Number Two. May or may not be undamaged, but that’s by the bye because there’s too much risk. But this one—” He tapped a third line. “Water Tunnel Three. It’s not fully operational yet. There’s hardened access points at the relief valves here, here, and—here.”

  I could see where his finger was pointing, right in the center of the city. “In Central Park?”

  “Shaft 13B,” he said, tapping the diagram. “Yep, Central Park, right near the reservoir.”

  “And what?” I asked again. “What does this mean for us?”

  “It means we get there, and we’ve got a safe way out.”

  “What?” He wanted us to go to the park and out through a tunnel—a water tunnel?

  “It’s a way out, Jesse,” Daniel said. “It’s a safe way out of the city.”

  “And—and what, we go down into the tunnel and float out with the water, like corks bobbing along?” I asked.

  Bob almost laughed and shook his head.

  “No. Number Three’s not operational in a lot of sections as it’s still being built—besides, it’s traversable, by foot, along girders, even when it’s flooded.” He smiled, victorious. “It’s like our own highway outta here!”

  The possibility sent heat up my spine.

  “But—but getting there,” I said, “and then making our way through all those Chasers around the massive reservoir—”

  Bob and Daniel nodded as if they’d well considered that point. “It won’t be easy,” Daniel said. “But no way out is easy.”

  “And, what if, what if it’s collapsed, like the tunnel you’ve seen?”

  Bob shook his head. “Maybe, but I seriously doubt it,” he said. “Those other tunnels are near on a hundred years old apiece. Number Three has been under construction for half a century and it’s a hell of a lot stronger than the others were when they were new. It’ll be sound.”

  “How big are these tunnels?” I asked.

  “Twenty-four feet across.”

  Big enough for a couple of buses and then some. Safely tucked under the city but . . .

  “And how far down?”

  He shuffled his feet on the floor, as if hesitating to answer. “About seven hundred feet.”

  “Look, Bob, the concept of getting outta Manhattan this way is great, but if you’re talking about taking the whole group through here, well, you’ve got maybe ten people out of about forty who’d struggle to trek seven blocks in a day, let alone as far as Central Park and then down seven hundred feet.”

  “That’s about the same distance as a few blocks—”

  “That’s not what I mean,” I said, and he nodded that he knew. “Getting to Central Park is a decent trek in itself, and that’s just to the edge of the park. You’re talking about going right into it.” I looked to Daniel. “You know I want to leave, but since I learned what happened to those guys who left—do you really think you can convince the others to join you?”

  “It will be hard, Jesse,” Daniel said. “But from all reports, even what you’ve told us, we know that there’s no way out of the city that’s going to be easy. The group will come around.”

  “This is our safest bet,” Bob added. “We’ll be underground, a long way underground, in a tunnel that’s sturdy. Means we can get a long way away from the city, in a safe environment. We get to the tunnel, I can lock us in and we can rest before trekking out.”

  “Are you sure it’s safe once you’re inside?”

  “Only a handful of city workers know where the entrances are—hell, I may be the only living person who remembers the combination of the access hatches.”

  I looked at him, our faces up-lit as the flashlights bounced their glow from the floor.

  “And there’s no other access points?” I asked. “Nothing closer?”

  “There’re shafts, yeah, at 10th and 30th—but I checked each of them three days ago, they’re impassable. They’re in basements of buildings and subway stations that are now piles of rubble. The relief valve hatches, like the one in Central Park, are designed to be bombproof, and it’s locked up as good as a bank vault to keep terrorists from getting at the city water supply. It’ll be good.”

  “Chasers will be all around there,” I said, absently looking at the little diagram. “There’s no place else?”

  “Maybe we’d find another way,” Bob said, “if we had time to spend searching. I mean, we could try other tunnels—there’s some recent Con Edison transmission lines heading under the Harlem River, a substation up in Inwood, but I don’t know exact details. I mean, we could try looking up city records—”

  “The less we have to move our group through this city, the better,” Daniel said, with finality. “And the sooner we leave, the better.”

  “That’s what I think,” Bob said. “I’ll go scout up there at this point in the park, and if there’s access and it’s held, I’ll come back and we set out with the group.”

  They looked at each other and Bob nodded, as if the two of them had had this discussion already, worked through the pros and cons, and made their decision.

  “Where’s it go?” I asked them. “Where’s this tunnel lead?”

  “We got options,” Bob said. “The Van Cortlandt valve chamber complex in the Bronx—”

  “That’s north?”

  “Yeah,” he replied. “Could even follow it all the way up to Hillview Reservoir in Yonkers. Or we could even go across to Brooklyn, but I don’t like that idea.”

  “We should decide before we get going,” Daniel said.

  “I’ll need to go look,” Bob said, standing.

  “Wait—you’re going now?” I asked.

  “No time like the present.”

  “This weather’s insane!”

  “Sure—no one else will be out in the streets.”

  “And you’ll go all the way to the Central Park Reservoir?”

  “Yep.”

  “There’s thousands of infected there.”

  “I’l
l be careful,” he said, clapped my back and ran up the stairs. I turned to Daniel.

  “He’ll be back by morning,” Daniel said. “He’ll make it up there, scout it out and spend the night, then come back.”

  “And then you leave?”

  “If he gives it the all clear, yes.”

  “The whole group?”

  Daniel adjusted the bandage around his eyes. “I’d prefer it that way, or it might be just whoever wants to come with us.”

  I swallowed hard. I knew I’d have to play a part in convincing the others, which meant I was stuck with this group for the rest of the day. Felicity and Rachel would worry, but what choice did I have—this was as good as it got right now. Maybe in our absence Paige would have a word in her dad’s ear; maybe Tom would come around to see the sense in leaving. He’d figure out that leaving en masse was the better choice here.

  “If all’s good with this, I’ll need to leave earlier and get my friends from the zoo, meet up with you guys there.”

  “Sure,” Daniel said and we walked upstairs. He walked over to the feet of Jesus on a cross, larger than life, and dipped his head and closed his eyes and prayed.

  “I remember the mayor saying that the aging pipelines were vulnerable and that this city could be brought to its knees if one of the aqueducts collapsed,” Daniel said, his low voice reverberating around the empty nave. “A potential apocalypse. Well, we’re living more than that now, so I ask you, Lord, help us out of it.”

  11

  “We’ll have to pull over,” Daniel said.

  I slowed the truck and put it into park, keeping the engine running. The visibility was near gone, although it was only 10 A.M. The day’s sky was black and the headlights of the truck only served to bounce back in our faces off the thick curtain of snowfall. At least it was warm in here.

  “Do you think Bob’s okay out in this?”

  “He’ll be fine,” Daniel replied. “He can hardly see his feet in front of him, so who’s going to see him?”

  I almost laughed. Yeah, he’d be fine—I’d been out on my own enough, and he was at least twice my size.

  “How’d Bob know all that?”

  “He was working for the Department of Environmental Protection,” Daniel said. “He told me he once spent three months deep under the city, with a dive team, living and working down there to repair the old tunnels. Imagine that. Living in a little house so far below this city, in a subterranean world as deep as the Chrysler Building is high. You believe that?”

  “I believe anything these days,” I said, “nothing seems too strange anymore.”

  “True. He said it’s hot down there,” Daniel said. “Unlike the freezing air up here at the surface, it’s like seventy degrees down there, a humid mist of dust and fumes.”

  “Seventy degrees—compared to this, that’ll be like going to the tropics for a holiday.”

  “Hey, look there,” he said, pointing across the street. Through the snowfall I could just make out a hotel and a few shops. “Since we’re stuck for a bit, how about we go check it out, see if there’s anything useful?”

  “Sure.” I killed the engine, pocketed the keys, and we darted across the road. The wind cut at me, ice knives at my face and neck; inhaling the cold air made me feel frozen from the inside out.

  “Tight fit,” I said, just managing to squeeze through the lobby doors, which were jammed partly open. Daniel followed; he seemed to fit more easily.

  “No way Bob would have fit through that,” I said and Daniel laughed.

  Illuminated by our flashlights, the place looked pristine, unlike so many of the ransacked shops and other buildings. Through a side door we looked around the type of hotel store that sold a bit of everything. I took a new watch, as the face of mine had cracked. Daniel pulled on an extra coat, and I found a couple of wheeled bags that we could fill with whatever we might find of use in the hotel.

  “Let’s find the kitchen,” Daniel said. We went through the lobby and looked around in offices and bathrooms, emerging into a large banquet hall that had been burned out, leaving a vast black-on-black landscape. Our flashlight beams couldn’t reach the far walls.

  “This isn’t creepy at all . . .” Our feet scrunched the charred carpet and ash-strewn floor, sounding as though we were walking through a thick blanket of autumn leaves.

  “There’s a door down there,” Daniel said, and we headed towards a couple of shiny brass handles at the corner of the room. Our movement kicked up a cloud of dust that hung in the air like smoke.

  The double swinging doors squeaked open to reveal a huge stainless-steel kitchen, untouched by the fire.

  “Just grab a few things that are easy to carry,” he said.

  “Hallelujah!” The pantry was as well stocked as any I’d ever seen, and reminded me of an apartment back at 30 Rock. “There’s enough canned and packaged food here for the whole group, at least for a couple of months.”

  “At least,” Daniel said, his voice echoing from another storeroom.

  Then the meaning of my words hit me. We had to think in terms of escape—of hours left at Chelsea Piers, not days and weeks. “But let’s hope we won’t need it.”

  I began loading the bags with blocks of chocolate and packets of crackers and jars of jams and preserves. I only filled each halfway, thinking we’d need to squeeze them through the small gap in the lobby doors. I dragged them out to find Daniel washing down a couple of painkillers with a bottle of mineral water.

  “Feeling all right?”

  He nodded, then we both froze. A noise. Movement.

  Outside the kitchen. In the banquet hall.

  I made my way across the tiled floor, pausing by the doors, in my attempt to be quiet almost knocking a fire extinguisher off its rack. I put my hand over the lens of my flashlight, dimming it.

  I put my ear to the gap between the doors. There, the noise again. I reached into my coat pocket for my pistol. Shit. It was in my pack, in the car!

  Silence. Had it been just shifting debris? I looked back at Daniel, who stood still with apprehension.

  I turned my attention back to the doors. Deranged eyes stared back between them.

  “Aaarghh!”

  I fell backwards onto the floor as the double doors burst open—and three Chasers emerged from the dark. I kicked out, so that one of the doors swung with a thud against the first Chaser.

  Daniel rushed and slammed against the doors, sending them back again. I scrambled to my feet. He was holding firm but they pushed against us with overpowering force and we both lost our balance, skidding across the tiles.

  Another glimpse of the Chasers lit by our fallen flashlight beams—

  Daniel was on his hands and knees, trying to keep the doors shut as the Chasers banged hard against them—

  “Hang on!” I yelled. I hauled myself up and took the extinguisher from the rack, pulled the pin, and got back beside Daniel with my shoulder against a door. “On three, let the doors go, I spray them, then we run past them and out to the truck!”

  “Okay!”

  “One.”

  “Two—”

  The doors flung open towards us with incredible force. Daniel was trapped between the wall and the door, while I faltered backwards and dropped the extinguisher.

  The three Chasers burst back into the room, their lean bodies tense and ready to spring, as though they were powerful predators and we hopeless prey. They stood and took me in, their eyes darting about—

  SMASH!

  Daniel shoved the door into them, surprising them for just long enough—

  I grabbed the fire extinguisher, aimed the nozzle and squeezed the handle. White foam erupted into their faces.

  “Daniel, go! Move!”

  We crashed past, out into the dark banquet hall. Without our flashlights it was pitch black except for the distant glow at the far end of the hall. We ran side by side through ankle-deep ash, the sound of the Chasers behind us. The fire extinguisher was heavy but I could not leav
e it behind.

  Daniel yelled, “Look out!”

  A Chaser emerged through the shaft of light ahead and stood there just inside the room, standing his ground, and I reached him before Daniel . . .

  CLONG!

  The extinguisher met the side of the Chaser’s head and he fell hard.

  “Come on!” Daniel shouted. I was a few steps behind him. I slipped and rolled through the ashy dust. I got to my feet to see him run through the entrance hall and then the lobby and out the tight opening of the front door. I passed the extinguisher through the gap in the doors, turned on my side to squeeze through—

  “I’m stuck!” I said, panicking. My chest wouldn’t get through as I was heaving deep breaths.

  “They’re coming!”

  I looked behind me and two of the foam-covered Chasers appeared at the end of the lobby.

  I was wedged halfway in and out of the doorway. I pushed and wriggled, slowly squeezing myself through.

  “Pull me through!” I felt Daniel tug at my arm as I looked back and kicked out at the first Chaser, hitting him in the guts, then the second careened hard into me . . . and forced me out the door.

  Daniel emptied the extinguisher at them, then he helped me to my feet. We raced across the road. I couldn’t see the truck for the density of the snowfall so we ran blind, me following what I thought was Daniel’s footfall ahead—

  I slipped, fell hard, my head hitting something solid, and everything went red-blue-black.

  12

  I was woken by a pat on the arm. I could see only darkness, and I realized that the hood of my sweatshirt was over my head and eyes. It was peeled back, causing me to blink at the daylight and the face before me. It took a moment to focus and recognize Tom.

  So Daniel had managed to drive back, while I’d sat in the passenger seat, my head flopping about, as if my neck could no longer support it.

  “Come on,” Tom said. “Grab his legs, get him upstairs.”

  I felt myself being manhandled out of the truck and taken inside the building. I’m not sure if I said anything in those first minutes.

  Propped onto a camp stretcher, the room spinning, I saw the sun in all its brilliant overwhelming glory. For a moment I had to wonder if my journey was over, and I’d made it back to summer in Australia. Back home . . .