We followed Jack’s flashlight up a never-ending series of stairs and stalled escalators. It got easier to see as we went along. I thought my eyes were adjusting to the darkness but in fact we had merely arrived at Grand Central and light-real sunlight-was streaming through the terminal’s high windows. When we emerged into the marble-lined corridors leading to the main concourse I could suddenly see everything again and I blinked rapidly, my eyes watering.
Ayaan dropped into a crouch and scanned the empty terminal from behind her rifle. Jack kept close to the walls but I was just so glad to be out of the tunnels that I couldn’t maintain that level of healthy paranoia. I lead them past empty newsstands, empty shops selling men’s shirts or CDs or flowers, past a deserted shoeshine stand until we entered the big main concourse and I could look up at the green-blue ceiling and the gold diagrams of the Zodiac, at the enormous windows through which streamed visible rays of yellow light. There was no sign of any life or movement anywhere.
The emptiness of Times Square had shocked me and this should have, too. Grand Central had never been anything but crowded in my experience. Yet something about the place-its cathedral scale or its gleaming marble, perhaps-lent itself to a kind of somber peace. I didn’t have time to sight-see, really, but it was hard to tear myself away from the massive quietude of the terminal. This was a place built for sleeping giants and I longed to rest a while in its megalithic grace.
I lead them down the Graybar Passage to a row of glass doors. They were locked at the top and bottom but Jack had a police pick gun. It looked like a pistol grip with a thick needle sticking out where the barrel should have been. It could open any lock in the city. It used to be that only civil authorities could have such things but the internet had made them publicly available-Jack had got his from the same outfit that sold him the SPAS-12. “Check the street,” he said, as he crouched down to get at the bottom lock on the door. It was a tricky operation-you had to fire the gun to retract the cylinder pins at the same time you used a tension wrench to turn the plug.
I peered out through the glass at Lexington Avenue and saw abandoned cars and dead buildings but nothing animate anywhere, just a flock of pigeons wheeling between the glass walls of a pair of deserted office towers. It looked like our luck was going to hold. From here it was just a few short blocks to the UN building. If we were quiet and didn’t draw any attention to ourselves we just might make it. It was almost as if something had cleared out this whole section of the city. Perhaps the National Guard had put up barricades to keep the dead out. Maybe they were even still there, living soldiers protecting this last bastion of New York.
“Anything?” Jack asked. The lock released with a loud clang that startled the birds outside. They leapt into the air, their wings snapping out as they rode up into the sky, one after the other. Jack stood up and started working on the top lock.
“Negative,” Ayaan said. She watched the birds, entranced as I was, perhaps observing how they relied totally on each other, each animal mirroring the movements of its neighbor so that each time the flock changed its position a wave of motion seemed to go through them, as if they were a single entity with many bodies.
The second lock shot open and Jack put his tools away. He pushed on the door’s latch bar and it swung open, letting in a cool puff of air from outside.
Air that stank of decay and rot.