Quarantine (6 page)

I
woke up and it was still dark outside. On the bed next to me Paige was asleep on her back, her quilt down around her waist. Her California-tanned arm contrasted with the white sheets. She looked like an angel, an angel in vivid colors. I covered her, relieved that the need to talk about last night was postponed. There had to be more to say, didn't there? There had to be so much to work through . . .

I dressed quietly, and headed out. In the dining room, a few of the people were up, eating cereal. The gas burners and bottles seemed to be rationed to a hot lunch and dinner every day, and they heated water for bathing only at night. A gas heater took the edge off the room's chill but my breath still fogged in front of me. The few people awake seemed quiet and solemn, the events of last night fresh. Perhaps they'd not slept. None looked me in the eye as I took a bottle of water and a banana. The fruit was turning brown but would still be good.

There was the faintest glow of sunrise on the outside terrace and a rolling mist close to the ground at street level, but it seemed as if the Hudson's flow was the more powerful force. The pier was nearly completely covered by a blanket of fresh snow, a long slab of brilliant white jutting out into the Hudson, a lonely island of green plastic turf up against the building.

Daniel was sitting in a chair, rugged up against the cold, his eyes dark and swollen in a bandaged face, as if he were an Egyptian mummy. Bob was beside him. Two guys sitting as if they were watching the river flow by and not much to care about, if you didn't know better.

As I neared I could tell they were talking about something serious. Bob's face was tight, like he was holding back. Anger, no doubt.

“Sorry,” I said, as both faced me. I shouldn't be here. “Just getting some air.”

“It's cool,” Bob said.

“I'll come back.”

“Sit with us.” Daniel motioned to a plastic chair near theirs. His voice was slightly slurred, because of his swollen lips.

“Thanks,” I said, dragging the chair around to face the river. In that moment I didn't know whether to call him Father, or Daniel, or what. “I think the worst of the storm's passed.”

“Maybe,” Bob replied. He poured me a steaming coffee from a thermos. It had milk and a little sugar. “You rest well?”

“Yeah, very well,” I said.

Daniel's eyes remained friendly. Bob's features were scary-looking in this cold dim light, like someone who'd seen it all and then some. I got the sense that this was maybe a second chance for him, some kind of fate bringing him and Daniel together. Maybe there was a guard above . . .

“I think I'll head back to the zoo today,” I said, looking out at the river. The men were silent.

“You're welcome to stay with us as long as you want,” Daniel said, his smiling face turning from me back to the river. “Not that it's my right to offer—I just want you to know that you'd be welcomed into the group. It's your choice.”

“Thanks,” I replied. I watched my cup of coffee steam and swirl. “Are you okay, Daniel?”

“I'm fine,” he replied. “Don't worry about me.”

We sat in silence.

“What is it?” Bob asked me. Looking more closely, I could see he looked pained, maybe close to tears, like he felt it all so raw. There was something about his eyes, not their color or their size or shape, just something about them that made me feel like they were reading deep into me. Had
he
killed someone? Did he recognize himself in me? Did he see me more honestly than I saw myself?

“Talk to us,” Daniel said. “We'll listen.”

I nodded. But I didn't know how to say it, how to admit it, a confession. “Just, I've—last night, it reminded me of things I've done—”

Bob said: “We've all done things.”

“That's not what I mean.”

“We know what you mean,” Bob said. And the way he said it, he knew exactly.

I couldn't articulate it yet. Instead, I cried. Big, heaving, silent sobs. Bob took the cup from me. I leaned against him and he put a hand on my head and left it there, so gentle, so caring. I cried for a few minutes. Then I breathed deep, found composure. Tears and snot ran onto the ground between my feet. Daniel passed me some tissues.

“Thanks,” I said. We sat in silence, for five, maybe ten minutes. Just the three of us out here in the elements.

It felt as if hours had passed—in a good way. As if last night's events hadn't happened. They each topped up their coffees, waited, patient. They gave me the space to sort out what I needed to share.

“I killed one of them,” I said. It was an admission, a confession, as much to myself as to them. “One of the Chasers. He was coming at me. He was right at me. I had to—I didn't think I had any other . . .”

I looked at the floor through my interlinked trembling fingers, those hands that had killed. Bob nodded.

“I don't think I had a choice,” I said. “But there's always a choice, isn't there? It was him or me. I chose, and I killed him dead, like that.”

“God is ready and waiting to forgive anyone who asks—”

“I don't want forgiveness,” I said, looking Daniel in the eye, then felt guilty at my tone. There was no judgment there, no pity nor compassion. Simple understanding. I had to live with this, to feel it, forever, that was my burden alone. Some things no amount of belief should shroud. “I just want you to know . . . that I'm sorry. That I think about it every day. I see his face, I hear the shots. I lie awake at night and it's the final thing I see. This follows me because it was me, it is me.”

“Your future actions may cleanse you of this guilt,” Daniel said, his voice so soft and quiet that he could have said anything and it would have given some comfort for us to reside in. “You can be pure again, for you have admitted a shameful deed so that it need no longer haunt you day and night.”

“Thanks.”

“If we confess our sins to Him,” Bob added, perhaps repeating words he'd heard from Daniel, and whether he was speaking of himself or for me I would never know and it didn't matter, “He can be depended on to forgive us and to cleanse us from every wrong.”

I nodded, but I felt like a phony coming to their God now, my hands outstretched, waiting for an offering, asking for so much in return for—what? What have I ever given? Besides, to join their flock now was to admit defeat, right? Was it that more than simply
being
alone, I
wanted
to be alone?

“I'm going to leave today,” I said. “I have to get back to my friends, make plans to get out of the city somehow.”

Bob nodded. He looked at the sky. “Weather's moving in,” he said. “You won't make it far out there today.”

I stood and looked around: he was right—the wind was blowing a gale and the morning sky was becoming dark as night.

“Why don't you come with us?” he said. “Drop you a few blocks out.”

“You guys are going out for supplies?”

Daniel gave Bob a look of approval, then the younger man said, “We're going to check something out, if you want to come.”

“How long will it take?”

“Not long,” Bob replied. “And I promise you this—it ain't no waste of time.”

“J
esse, keep a sharp eye out,” Bob said as he drove. I liked riding high, in this sturdy cocoon. Bob had brought a shotgun, and I felt safe. Outside the vehicle the wind was now so strong that pieces of debris were flying through the air and occasionally smashing against the side of the truck.

After fifteen minutes we pulled up outside a small church. Bob killed the engine, but we all stayed put for a bit, watching.

“Nothing but an empty white street,” Bob said. “No one will be prowling around here in this weather.”

To accentuate the point a large plastic bin blew across the street in front of us like tumbleweed.

I asked Daniel, “Was this your church?”

“No,” he said, looking at me in the rearview mirror. “My friend was the priest here.”

“Do you know where he is?” I asked.

“No longer with us,” Daniel said, his voice matter-of-fact.

We got out of the vehicle; walking was near-impossible as we leaned into the wind and pushed ahead, Bob leading the way. Inside the church the darkness retreated in the beams of our powerful flashlights.

“I take it we're not on another food trip?” I said as we made our way towards the altar.

“Something even more important,” Daniel said.

“Especially to you,” Bob added with a chuckle.

I followed them closely. Daniel knew where he was going and a minute later, we'd gone down two flights of stone stairs to a damp basement with the sound of...

Running water?

There was a stream running right through the stone floor. It was old, clearly pre-dating the building, as the floor was two feet or so above the water level and ended with rough-hewn stone walls.

“There are stories of priests here . . .” Daniel looked wistful as he spoke. “They'd come down and fish in this stream.”

“No way!” I said.

“I'd believe it,” Bob said, “and there are heaps of watercourses like this throughout the city, some of them real big. They feed out of the rivers, through what was once wetlands, and back into the river system. There'd be fish swimming through here, for sure.”

“The water here's usually much lower than this,” Daniel said, crouching down and shining his light into the water, and we could see the dark stain a good three feet below the present waterline. “See?”

“Yeah, I can see that,” Bob said, down on his hands and knees and peering into the openings at each side of the wall where the little underground stream flashed through—quite quickly. “Yep—I'd say I was right.”

“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'll 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.”