Scott Westerfeld - The Last Days

“Please.” Lace snorted. “Those guys can’t even handle natural disasters.”

Our convoy slid into the tunnel. We were in two big military-looking vehicles, a bunch of angels riding on the outside. I wondered what the cops thought of them. But I guessed everyone had seen much weirder stuff than black ninja suits and swords lately.

The tunnel was completely dark. Lace flicked on the headlights and drove straight down the middle, ignoring the lane dividers. As I watched the entrance disappear behind us through the back window, blackness swallowed everything except the red tinge of our taillights. It felt like sinking to the core of the earth.

“Aren’t there worms down here?” I asked.

“They’d never attack us here,” Lace said. “The whole Hudson River’s balanced over our heads. They breach this tunnel, and a million tons of water gush down on us and them.”

“Oh. Fawesome,” I said, reminding myself to shut up forever, as of now.

“Are they that smart?” Alana Ray asked.

Lace shrugged. “It’s all instinct. They evolved underground.”

I swallowed, thinking about how much earth there was below us. Room for all kinds of weird stuff to be brewing, and I’d never even thought about it.

“Okay, let’s get a few things straight about Dr. Prolix,” Cal said. “There’s a red line painted on the floor of her office. Whatever you do, don’t step across it.”

“A line on the floor?” Pearl said. “Doesn’t she like musicians?”

“She’s a carrier, like me,” he explained. “A really old one, so she’s got a few diseases that aren’t around much anymore. Typhus and stuff. Bubonic plague. If you get too close to her, we sort of have to… burn your clothes.”

I looked at the others, wondering if I’d really heard him say that. These angels or Night Watch guys or whatever were always saying stuff that was just messed up. Talking to Cal was like watching some psycho version of the History Channel that only showed the nasty parts—epidemics, massacres, and inquisitions, twenty-four/seven.

“Burn our clothes?” Minerva said. “But this is my last nice dress! Shouldn’t you put her in a glass bubble or something?”

Cal shook his head. “The whole house is set up for negative air-pressure prophylaxis, so the germs around Dr. Prolix can’t get to where you’ll be standing. Just don’t cross the line.”

“Bubonic plague?” Alana Ray repeated. A shudder traveled through her body, and she pressed her hands together. “Exactly how old is this woman?”

“Old,” he said.

In Manhattan, the streets were still alive.

Rats moved among leaking piles of garbage, stray cats sliding under smashed and motionless cars. You could see long ripples in the asphalt where the worms had passed, leaving gleaming stains of black water in the high sun. A few gaping holes showed where they’d burst through the surface. I wondered if anyone had been standing right there when they had…

According to Cal, it was all natural: they were hunters and we were their prey.

Nature can blow me.

“There are no bodies,” Alana Ray said.

“The peeps are cannibals,” Lace said. “And the worms are human-eaters.”

“Much neater than your usual epidemic,” Cal said.

A flash of disbelief went through me; this wasn’t really the Manhattan I’d grown up in. For a moment, it was all a big movie set—a giant, evil version of Disney World. There weren’t really any monsters under our feet, or crazy people hiding in the darkened buildings, and all our parents were actually back in the real Manhattan, wondering where we were.

But then we passed an empty school yard, the concrete ripped and torn from one end to the other. An ice-cream truck waited beside it—split almost in half, ripped open from underneath. It was bleeding white goo into the street, and the breeze carried a smell like spoiled milk and burnt sugar through the open windows.

A basketball sat abandoned in the middle of the playground. It stirred in the wind, and the realness of everything settled over me again.

Our convoy weaved slowly downtown, avoiding the worst streets and any people we spotted. Small groups were scurrying from place to place, carrying water and food and other stuff they must have looted from the stores. Smashed and gaping windows were everywhere.

“Are all these people infected?” Pearl asked.

“If they are, they’re not symptomatic yet,” Cal said. “Peeps can’t stand direct sunlight.”

I looked out the back window, twisting my neck to see up. It was almost noon, the sun reaching down into the narrow canyons of downtown. The angels all wore dark glasses, except for Cal.

The problem was, this close to winter the sun went down early in New York. An hour from now the shadows of the empty skyscrapers would begin to lengthen.

I hoped this wasn’t going to be a long conversation.

We made our way down to the Stock Exchange. It was the worst part of the city we’d seen, the streets empty and broken. Papers and trash blew in little cyclones around us, and Lace honked her horn to scatter a big posse of rats. I guessed the stock market wasn’t going to open back up anytime soon.

Lace turned the vehicle’s engine off, rolling the last dozen yards to a silent halt. The angels climbed carefully down, drawing their swords and forming a circle around us. The asphalt was pitted and gouged, as if worms popped through all the time around here.

“Everybody out,” Lace said. “Step lightly, though. The worms can hear our footsteps.” I opened my door and stared down at the street. It was stained with black water, with old gum, and with something viscous and red.

Crap , I thought. All my life I’d been at the top of the food chain and had never really appreciated it. Peeps were bad enough, even worse than junkies, I figured. But the worms—something about the ground opening up and swallowing people was just wrong .

I lowered one foot softly to the street, then the other, a shiver of nerves traveling through my body. The asphalt felt fragile, like the ice on the Central Park Reservoir does when you sneak onto it in early spring. As I took my first step, my foot resisted, and I almost screamed, imagining a hungry mouth bursting through to grab my leg.

But it was just the old wad of gum, softened to stickiness by the sun. It tugged at my sole with every step, making a sucking sound.

The angels led us into a long, crooked alley. The old-fashioned cobblestones were broken and bulging, with a few gaping holes that seethed with rats. I shivered at the sight of all those furry bodies. Cal and Lace talked about rats like they were on our side, something about them storing the parasite and bubbling up to spread it when the worms began to rise. But how that was a good thing, I had no idea…

We crept slowly down the alley, keeping clear of the wormholes. At the end was an old town house, its stoop covered with silent, watchful cats.

Their red eyes followed us as we went in.

There really was a red line on the floor.

A breeze pushed me toward it, like a gentle hand pressing against my back. Cal had explained that all the air in the house moved toward Dr. Prolix, sucking her ancient germs away from us and down into a big, germ-killing furnace. She was immune to all her own diseases, being infected like the rest of the angels, but we’d be dead meat if we got too close. Even Cal and Lace kept away from the line. Didn’t want their fexcellent ninja suits burned, I guess.

I stayed against the back wall, as far away as I could get. Not just to stay away from the Plague Lady but to be farther from the weird old dolls that lined the shelves of her office. Real-looking hair sprouted from their crumbling heads, and all their faces were painted with smiles.