Susan Pfeffer - The Dead And The Gone

"We can manage," Bri said. "I won't hold you back, I promise."

"No," Alex said. "Maybe next Sunday if the snow disappears. But not today."

Bri began to cry.

"What?" Alex said, trying to keep the irritation out of his voice. "It's just one Sunday. God will understand."

Bri shook her head. "It's not that," she said. "I know Christ will forgive us for not going to church today." She took a deep breath. "I'm sorry," she said. "I know everyone is suffering. It's just I feel so trapped. Sunday is the only day I'm outside. I guess God could tell my motives were impure. I'll pray for His forgiveness."

"Tell you what," Alex said. "Go back to bed and sleep a while longer. We'll all pray this afternoon for God's forgiveness."

Bri giggled. "Julie'll love that," she said. "But thanks, Alex, for understanding."

"I try," Alex said. "Now go. You may not be cold, but I'm freezing."

Bri gave her brother a quick kiss. "See you later," she said, going back to her room.

Alex continued to stare outside. A foot of snow, he estimated, with an inch or more of ice sandwiched in there. Bri was right to feel trapped.

He dressed quickly, wrote a note for his sisters saying he was going out to see how conditions were, then walked down the twelve flights of stairs. Down was easier than up, but he was still short of breath by the time he reached the building's lobby.

The front door opened inward, so it was no problem getting it open. But the snow was even deeper than he'd guessed.

He cursed himself as he walked down to Papi's office in search of a shovel and rock salt. He should have eaten something. It was going to be hard enough to shovel the snow just so they could get out of the building. It would be that much harder with his not having eaten in twenty hours.

But the thought of climbing the twelve flights just to ram cold rice and beans into his mouth was even worse. He'd manage. He had no choice.

The shovel and bag of rock salt were right where he remembered. Of all Papi's janitorial obligations, this was the one he liked the least, so Carlos and Alex had done the brunt of the shoveling. It had snowed a lot the previous winter; Alex could remember a half dozen mornings when Papi woke him before dawn so he could get the shoveling done before the people in the building got up. Papi gave him hell if he left any snow on the sidewalk, even though scores of people would walk over it and it would melt before noon.

He tried carrying both the shovel and the twenty-pound bag of rock salt, but couldn't manage it. So he left the bag of rock salt in the stairwell, and took the shovel upstairs. He could hear Papi laughing at him for his weakness, and he used his anger and resentment to give him the energy he needed* to clear the snow from in front of the door.

The work was brutal. It was a heavy snow, and with the ice intermixed, every shovelful took all his strength to lift and carry. It didn't help that twice as he flung the snow onto a pile of decomposing bodies, he found he was also tossing rats that had frozen in the snowfall. After a few minutes he realized he needed to stop just to catch his breath every single time he shoveled. He really was blanducho, the way Papi always said.

After half an hour he'd cleared enough space in front of the door that he could stand outside and survey what remained to be done. Not that much really, he decided. Just shovel from the building to the street, then shovel West Eighty-eighth down to West End, then West End to Columbus Circle, and over to Eighth Avenue, and then down Eighth to Forty-second Street and Port Authority. Probably not even that much. If the powerful people had had the good sense to leave some other people around to do the cleaning for them, from Columbus Circle down was probably clear of snow. He'd only have to shovel for a mile and a half. Piece of cake for a level twelve.

He still had no idea how he could get Bri from Eighty-eighth Street downtown. He doubted she'd have the strength to walk as far as Broadway.

Alex began shoveling from the building to the street, not knowing what else to do. He was accustomed to the silence now, butexcept for the wind whipping around, things seemed even quieter than they had been just two days before. The whole block was deserted, he realized. He, Bri, and Julie seemed to be the only people still alive on West Eighty-eighth. When they left, there'd be nobody.

He stood for a moment, resting against the shovel. He never should have let Bri go to the convent. That was the first mistake. If he hadn't sent her away, she would have gone with Uncle Jimmy and Aunt Lorraine, and for all he knew, she never would have become asthmatic. If he'd known Bri was someplace safe, he could have looked for a place for Julie to go. It might not have been with la familia, but things hadn't been that desperate in June, and there would have been somebody trustworthy who'd have agreed to take her and protect her.

And if he hadn't had his sisters tying him down, he could have left New York and tried his luck elsewhere. Maybe he could have tracked down Carlos and joined the Marines. Carlos was probably someplace warm, eating three meals a day and sleeping in a real bed. That was the life.

He felt like screaming. Every single thing he'd done had been wrong, and his sisters' lives were at risk because of him.

He got on his knees, not caring that the icy wetness seeped through his pants legs, and begged for God's mercy for his sisters.

"Alex?"

He looked up and saw Julie standing in the doorway.

"What?" he said.

"Bri told me to get you," she said. "She was worried."

He stood up, feeling like a fool. "Tell her I'm fine," he said. "I'll be upstairs in a few minutes. I have to finish shoveling the sidewalk."

"You don't have to," Julie asked. "There's no one here except us."

"I know," Alex said. "But Papi would expect me to."

Monday, December 5

Alex decided he'd give Kevin fifteen minutes to show before going back inside. If the apartment had any kind of heat, he would have stood by the front door of his building for five, but since it was just marginally warmer indoors, he opted for fifteen.

He would have needed only the five-minute deadline. Kevin showed up at 7:03.

"You're crazy, you know that," Alex said. "How'd you even manage to get here?"

"It wasn't that bad," Kevin replied. "They've done some shoveling and plowing in my neighborhood." He looked at the sidewalk in front of Alex's building. "Nice job," he said. "You pay a kid to do it?"

"I wish," Alex said. "You really think we're going to find anything?"

"I wouldn't be here if I didn't," Kevin said. "The pickings should be really good. Lots of new bodies by the park. Some suicides; the storm was just too much for them, I guess. And people are dropping like flies. One of the doctors in our DRU says there's a mean flu bug going around."

"Great," Alex said. "Just what we need."

Kevin laughed. "We're lucky it's not plague," he said. "Harvey says there's an uptick in the market for jewelry. So we need to start taking wedding rings and engagement rings and earrings and anything else we can find. I guess they realized nobody's going to be mining for a while."

Alex hated taking wedding rings off bodies, but they needed food for one more week. He'd leave a note for Kevin when they left so he wouldn't worry. He'd be gone soon enough himself, maybe even to the same town as Alex.

Alex followed the footsteps Kevin had made going to his apartment. They were the only footprints in the snow. If there were still people living on the Upper West Side, they hadn't left their apartments since Saturday.

It was hard walking and the boys kept mostly to themselves as the walked east. The city would have been beautiful if the snow were white. But everything was corpse gray. No matter where Alex ended up, he wasn't going to miss New York. He'd be sorry to leave Kevin and Vincent de Paul and St. Margaret's and even Father Mulrooney, but that was it. Anyplace would be better than this.