Nate Kenyon - Day One

New York was burning.

He was alive, though. He had made it out somehow, and now he was gone, a shadow slipping through the whitecapped waves toward home.

6:42 P.M.

THE SCREAMS WOKE HIM.

He’d been dreaming. In his dream, he’d been trying to run away from someone threatening him, but he couldn’t get his legs to work. It was like trying to push through quicksand.

He gasped awake, staring up into the dark.

Thomas shrieked again, the sound like a gunshot in the silence: “Daaaaddy!”

Hawke got out of bed, heart pounding as Robin sat up, mumbling something, her arm reaching for him as she rolled over and slumped back again, still half-asleep. Hawke knew from experience that she tended not to remember things like this; in the morning, when he explained that he had been up for hours dealing with night terrors, she would look at him like he was crazy. So he had become the de facto nighttime riser, handling the soiled diapers, nightmares and fevers.

He felt his way around the edge of the bed frame and made it into the hall, stumbling through the shadows. Thomas’s night-light glowed from beyond his half-open door.

The boy was sitting up against his headboard, holding his lion. They had just switched him out of his toddler bed to a full-size twin, and he looked swallowed by it, just a small lump at the top, like an extra pillow. Thomas’s eyes were shining, his tiny shoulders moving up and down.

Hawke went to the bed, climbed in and hugged the boy to his chest. Thomas wrapped his arms around him, sobbing, his little fingers clutching at Hawke’s undershirt. At first, Thomas didn’t say anything, and Hawke waited, not pushing him.

Finally, Thomas’s tears began to slow. He looked up at Hawke, his little moon face wet.

“What’s wrong, little man?”

“I had a bad thing in my head. And I was scared.”

Hawke kissed his son’s head. “Shhhh… it’s okay now. What happened? Can you tell me?”

“We were in the park, and you said we should go, but Mommy said we should wait and have a snack first. And then she gave me an apple. But I didn’t finish my snack. And then I didn’t want to stay because you left and I was alone. And I tried to find home.”

“You were lost?”

“Yes.” The little boy nodded soberly. “And there were people, but nobody would help me.”

“Didn’t Mommy or Daddy help you?”

“Daddy, you don’t live at the park.”

“No, but if you were lost, we’d come find you. We wouldn’t leave you like that.”

“Oh. Well, I heard a noise. Sort of like a ghost. Whoooooo… like that. And there was a bridge to cross if you wanted to get away, but I couldn’t get on it.”

“And then what happened?”

“And then I was in my room, and you were in your room. And a bad guy came in and he wouldn’t let me go to your room, and he took me away.”

Hawke had come to cherish these moments, because they were the only times Thomas really spoke freely. Robin didn’t hear it; it was as if Thomas knew she was a heavy sleeper. The boy always called for his father at night.

He smoothed his son’s damp hair, rocked him softly. “Don’t worry, buddy. There are no bad guys here. You’re safe in your room. I wouldn’t let anything happen to you, ever.”

“What if you can’t find me, Daddy? What if I disappear?”

A noise came from the hall outside the apartment. A door slamming, loud enough to make Thomas jump. Hawke hugged his son closer.

“I’d find you,” he said. “If I had to go to the end of the earth, I would find you and bring you home.”

Home. The idea was almost too much to bear, but Hawke kept it in his mind, sitting alone in the little dinghy, his hand shaking on the tiller as he pointed the craft toward the other shore. Getting to this point had taken everything he had in him, but now that he was finally able to breathe again he found himself unable to cope with all that had occurred.

The trip across the river was less than twenty minutes. Hawke sat as close to the motor as possible, keeping the weight in the back to lift the prow and keep the dinghy above the chop. He scanned the water for more boats but saw nothing. Wherever the military ship was that had fired on them, it wasn’t visible.

He felt a brief moment of loneliness, of things settling, this new future becoming permanent as it coalesced before him. The others were all dead; whatever had happened was done, and there was nothing he could do to change it. But his wife and son could still be alive, had to be alive. He would find them, no matter what it took. He would keep them safe. In the back of his mind, another voice kept nagging at him, one that was more cynical: Even if they had survived, what were the chances of them still being at the apartment? Wouldn’t they have tried to run by now, get to safety, find help? Hawke’s excitement mixed with dread as he huddled against the chill wind and sped across the waves, praying for them to be safe. The words became a mantra, repeated over and over as he got closer: “Please, God, let them be okay. I don’t care about anything else but seeing them again. I can handle anything else you throw at me; just please let them be okay.”

The chop increased as he moved farther away from Manhattan and entered the open water of the river. It was a long way to go in a tiny dinghy, but Hawke settled his shoulders and kept his head down against the spray. New Jersey rose up before him, apartment buildings hugging Port Imperial Boulevard, more private homes dotting the swell of land above and beyond them. From this distance, it looked peaceful and empty, just another summer day settling into evening. He could imagine people sitting down on their front porches and docks, having a drink and watching the sun go down. The breeze would gain a bite off the water as the smell of grilled burgers and hot dogs and the sound of laughing children drifted over them. But that had all changed now, maybe forever.

There was a pier directly across the water at Weehawken, more boats anchored there, but he angled the little dinghy left, heading toward Hoboken and Pier C. He looked back once more to see the New York skyline rising up silent and strange like an alien creature, its limbs bleeding and broken, no longer welcoming and familiar.

As he began his approach to the Jersey shoreline, Hawke slipped his hand in his pant pocket for his house keys, just to make sure he still had them. There was something else there, something unfamiliar. He pulled out the flash drive Weller had given him, remembered the agent holding the gun on him ( Where is it? Tell me right now, goddamn it, or I’ll blow your brains out), the way Weller looked at him before he left (A way to prove the truth in all this…. Find a way to tell the story)….

Hawke clutched it in his fist, then withdrew his hand, wondering how he would even find a computer that could read it without alerting Doe. And then what? As soon as he tried to send the documents to someone, she would find him. If he connected to a server, she would know where he was. He couldn’t even print anything without risking detection, assuming there was a machine left on earth that wasn’t corrupted already.

But all that could wait. Right now, he had more important things to do.

6:59 P.M.

AS HAWKE GOT CLOSER to Pier C, he noticed smoke coming from the Jersey light-rail station.