Marc Zicree - Magic Time

The unknown, indeed. For while Goldie and Colleen had been off on their errand, Cal and Doc had pored over every map in the place, had borrowed dog-eared Auto Club guides from Eleanor Sparks and the Jamgotchians, and had found no town of Wish Heart or any like name to the south. Or the east, west or north, for that matter. Whatever siren call might lie southward, be it in Mississippi, Orlando or Tierra del Fuego, they would be seeking it in the dark.

All they could plan with any certainty, for now, was their route out of the city.

“I can get you through the old test bore of the Brooklyn subway line, no problem,” Goldie murmured, the morning heat starting to come on as they muscled the last of their supplies downstairs. “I know the guys who live there; they’ll let us through.”

Cal thought about the smears of blood he’d seen on the subway platforms, the snuffling of the crouched figures in the dark and the predictable unpredictability of Goldie’s bag of tricks. “Uh, I think Tina would probably be better off aboveground.”

“If we take the Queensboro bridge, we can work our way down through Brooklyn and across the Narrows on the Verranzano,” said Colleen, adjusting her crossbow over her back. “We can be in Staten Island tonight. Cross to Jersey tomorrow. And then. .”

Then what? Hope that Tina’s line to Nijinsky’s Voice of God or whatever it was didn’t disconnect until they had time and fortune to find it.

Into the mouth of hell. .

They told Mrs. Sparks and Sylvia Feldman and the other neighbors who crowded around them on the street that Tina-unseen, enfolded within the protective canopy-was resting now, had been utterly exhausted by the previous days’ events. The tenants nodded solicitously, pressed sandwiches on Cal to give his sister when she awoke, brooked no objection as they bestowed extra cans of tuna, bottles of Gatorade.

Colleen stood watching this, part of her scoffing at their generosity. They’d regret it soon enough, when their shelves were bare and their bellies rumbling.

Yet surprisingly, she found herself heartened, as well. It was foolish of them, perhaps suicidal. But what she was doing was suicidal, too. And for what?

For him.

When her dad was a non-com at Offutt Air Force Base, she had come running in tears at some casual cruelty of her mother’s. Holding her, rocking her, he had tried to explain that Jean lived in a world of coldness, that they two lived in a warmer clime. Colleen hadn’t comprehended it then, nor even years later.

But now, looking at Griffin and the well-wishers who surrounded him, pointedly not speaking of their fear and uncertainty, offering what little they could, she had a glimmer of understanding.

There would be terrors ahead, Colleen was sure of it, homicidal, raging nightmares to make Stern look like a cartoon in the Sunday funnies. The world had turned into a grim, hard place, and it was still turning. That was real; that was so .

But how many of her neighbors would have turned out to bid her farewell? How many even knew she existed?

We make our world , she thought, at least some of it.

Maybe in days gone by Griffin had bartered his soul in increments to Stern. But through all of it, she felt certain, he had been a decent, caring man, and people had responded, been warmed by it.

Colleen anticipated a hard road ahead, full of nothing but impediments and adversaries and, almost certainly, a very messy death.

But, thanks to Griffin, there might be allies ahead, too, even new friends.

As she had become.

A world of surprises, and not all of them bad.

Bullshit , she thought, pushing it away. But the feeling stayed with her a good long time.

They set off, west across Manhattan, for the Queensboro Bridge. As they were leaving Eighty-first Street, passing the fallen, charred timbers of what had been Sam Lungo’s house, Cal-pedaling hard against the weight of his sister and their baggage-heard a murmured litany from the canopy behind him. Reaching back, he parted the fabric and saw his sister within the halo of her phosphorescence. “For Mr. Lungo,” she said. But whether she was entreating mercy for him of their mother’s God, or of the thing that called to her, he did not ask.

Tina had told Cal of Lungo’s last moments, of his valiant, futile act. We’re changing, all of us , Doc had said, and it was true. A week ago, Cal wouldn’t have dreamed Lungo capable of such a thing.

You won’t be the last of us to die , Cal thought and, though his own faith had been shaken and splintered long ago, he sent a silent prayer alongside his sister’s.

They made their way across midtown in the hard, merciless light, the concrete-amplified heat. The air, rank with sewage, thrummed with flies. The people they encountered moved quickly past, many openly carrying weapons or objects that could serve as weapons.

It took them two hours to get across the Queensboro Bridge. The metal span wasn’t choked with people, not yet; that would come in the days and weeks to follow, if what Cal dreaded came to pass. Only three days in, most had not seized the initiative. But without water, without lights, with its food supplies hemorrhaging down the hungry throats of six million people each day, New York would soon be little more than just predator and prey. As it was already starting to be.

Dying things, and those that fed off them.

Already, the refugees heading outward numbered in the hundreds, perhaps thousands. Many no doubt lived elsewhere, had gotten stranded in the city and had finally jettisoned waiting for the fix that would reanimate the cab, the plane, the train. Scared people, angry people, desperate people, pushing shopping carts full of bottled water or liquor, confused people with satchels and suitcases and shoulderbags. A heavy-muscled fat woman with a mouth like a trap herded eight small children, each loaded with luggage, like little pack beasts on a rope. Three college kids pushed a dumpster full of bags of flour, books, blankets. An elderly man walked a bicycle so loaded down with bulging plastic bags that he could barely be seen. And everywhere, nuclear families and extended families and the haphazard, improvised surrogate families that outcasts from all corners had created in New York. White, brown, black, yellow people and every permutation between, helping one another, shoring each other up, trying just to get to the end of the bridge.

Then what? Did they know, any more than Cal himself?

As they came off the long exit ramps and pushed out of the crowd into the streets of Queens, Cal drew to a halt and glanced back. Manhattan gleamed in the sunlight, the Empire State and the Chrysler Building so regal and fine at this distance.

He remembered the day he and Tina had arrived here from Hurley, with such hopes, such dreams. The golden city.

“A zloty for your thoughts.” Doc rolled up alongside. “I’d say a ruble, but everyone knows they’re worthless.”

“I guess,” Cal struggled to find words. “It’s hard to let go.”

“Of the past.”

“More. . the things you hoped for.” He thought of Tina’s promise of greatness, the fire of her certainty in it. Perhaps all gone now, melted like snow.

Colleen was looking back now, too, and the image of Rory came to her. She felt a stab of regret, an unreasoning guilt at having failed and abandoned him, and wondered what subterranean passage he might be gliding through. Hell of a way to end a relationship. .

Goldie, still oddly muted, peered back at the city.

“Anything you’d like to add?” Cal asked.

Goldie addressed the island, its silent spires. “We’ll write when we get work.”

Cal thought of Stern, of those he had led and destroyed. Of Rory and his monstrous brethren in the tunnels. Of the lost and broken ones in the hospital corridors and on the streets. Of the rivers of blood that had burst upon them all and whose currents were now carrying them to who knew what dark source.