Колин Бейтман - Titanic 2020 - Cannibal City

Ronni lost count of the number of times she stood outside her mother's door calling for her to come out, while resisting the temptation to try and break in. As long as she didn't truly know that her mother was dead, she could at least pretend that she was still alive in there and just refusing to talk. Perhaps her mum had been shocked into silence by what had happened or maybe she slipped in and out of her room when Ronni wasn't there, off on her own little shopping trips to the exclusive fashion stores up and down Fifth Avenue. Ronni had grown used to seeing the corpses in the hotel and on the streets outside, but she never wanted to see her mum like that. As long as she stayed on this side of the door she would remember her mother as she was — beautiful, elegant, and very, very bossy.

In what she guessed was her sixth week, Ronni woke hungry in the middle of the night and slipped down to the kitchens. Returning across the foyer with a tin of franks 'n' beans she found herself face to face with a wolf.

A wolf!

She was momentarily frozen to the spot. The creature looked vicious and savage, its teeth were bared and its snout was thick with the rotting innards of the corpse it had been tearing into on the hotel's marble floor.

Ronni and the wolf stared at each other for fully ten seconds, each of them frozen in the narrow band of moonlight streaming through the atrium glass.

Then the wolf snarled and charged.

Ronni hurled the tin at it and spun on her heel. The wolf staggered as the missile struck it on the top of the head. It let out an angry yelp — but it recovered quickly and immediately tore after her. Ronni reached the stairs and began to race up them three at a time, the wolf snapping at her heels. As she reached the fifth floor it finally hurled itself at her, but by luck she had just come to a set of double doors, and as they sprang back behind her they slammed into the creature, hurling it backwards. The respite was momentary. The wolf threw itself through the doors and hurtled down the corridor behind her. As the animal's dripping jaws snapped towards her Ronni finally reached her bedroom and threw herself inside; in the same movement she spun and slammed the door on the creature's jaw. It howled and fell back, leaving three teeth on the floor.

Ronni slid down the inside of the door and rested her head against it. She could hear the heavy panting and painful yelps of the wolf just a few centimetres away. But she was safe . . . for now.

A wolf in the Four Seasons — Mother would have had a fit.

But where had it come from? She knew there was a zoo in Central Park — perhaps from there? If it had been hungry enough and desperate enough to escape, then what if it wasn't alone? Not only might there be a pack of wolves out there, but also animals that were faster and stronger and even more cunning. Tigers and panthers and cheetahs and . . . Ronni shuddered. She spent the rest of the night slumped against the door, sweating through nightmare after nightmare about being torn to shreds by wild beasts.

By the morning, with the wolf gone and the bright sunshine lightening her mood, Ronni had come to a decision. She had spent the past few weeks in the immediate vicinity of the Four Seasons, never travelling further than a few blocks in any direction and never quite letting the hotel out of her sight. But because it was surrounded on all sides by tall buildings she hadn't been able to get a proper view of the rest of the city. What if there were other people out there using lights or flares to attract the attention of a rescue helicopter or a searching aeroplane? What if they were rescued and she got left behind? She had to find out if she really was alone. She thought her best bet might be the Empire State Building — from there she would be able to see every part of the city and far beyond as well. Whether she found other people or not, she knew she would not return to the hotel. It was no longer safe. She packed as many of the clothes she had 'borrowed' over the past few weeks as she could into her rucksack and left her room. She paused outside her mother's door. As she said her final goodbye, tears sprang from her eyes.

King Kong fell to his doom from the top of the Empire State Building. Ronni nearly died just getting there. The big gorilla had the advantage of being able to climb up the outside of the building. Ronni had the disadvantage of having to climb 1,860 steps to the viewing platform on the 102nd floor because the elevators no longer worked. It took her ages and by the time she got there her legs were like jelly and she could hardly breathe. She lay on the platform floor for another half an hour, quite lacking the strength to even drag herself up to look out over the city. At least part of her was thinking: What's the point? In the twenty-five minutes it had taken her to walk from the hotel to the Empire State, she had seen nothing but death and destruction. No hint of human life: plenty of rats, some wild dogs, even an ominous animal roar from somewhere in the far distance, but nothing to give her any hope at all.

Eventually she managed to pull herself up. She pressed her face against the wire fence surrounding the platform and looked out across the city. She knew from reading one of the tourist leaflets lying scattered about that on a clear day she might have been able to see nearly eighty miles in every direction — as far as the states of Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Massachusetts. But today was grey and overcast and she could barely see to the edges of the city. It all appeared so . . . normal. The landmark buildings were all there, and from such a height the cars on the broad avenues below appeared like toys and the people like ants — except it was more like a photograph than a moving picture: there was no motion, no life. By straining her eyes Ronni could just about make out the shape of the 'big statue thingy' her mum had talked about — the Statue of Liberty on its isolated little island. She knew that it had once welcomed immigrants to the Land of the Free. Now there was nobody left to welcome.

She felt suddenly hungry again. There was a restaurant half a dozen floors below which, thankfully, must have closed down before the worst of the Red Death, because it wasn't littered with bodies.

Unfortunately most of the food was off, but she was able to pick up cartons of fruit juice and bags of potato chips. She sat at a table and tried to think about her next move. So long as she wasn't eaten by wild creatures, there was enough tinned food in the city to keep her going for the rest of her life. But what was the point of living if there was nobody else left?

No!

There had to be!

She would search every corner of the city, and if she found no one, she would start looking beyond it. She wasn't alone, she couldn't be alone!

An hour later, with night fallen, Ronni returned to the observation platform. At first it looked as if someone had snatched the entire city away — where it would once have provided a dazzling, neon-lit vista, there was nothing. Then, as her eyes became accustomed to the blackness, she began to pick out the vague outlines of the skyscrapers surrounding the Empire State, but it was as if they had been snatched away, leaving only a shadowy memory behind.

Ronni froze.

There!

Lights!

Mere flickering pinpricks — but against a background of such total blackness that they shone out like beacons.

They had to be at least three or four miles away — but where, exactly? With her pulse racing Ronni hurried along the platfrom until she came to a framed map, displayed for the benefit of tourists so that they would know which parts of the city they were looking at. It was difficult to read in the darkness, and she was half terrified that if she took her eyes off the lights they would be gone by the time she looked back. She finally stabbed her finger down on to the glass. There — Battery Park! That's where they were!