She closes her eyes and purses her lips and the wheezing begins to soften. Nora gives me a nod, approving and perhaps a little impressed. Finally, Julie lets out a shuddering sigh and shakes her head. “A zombie telling me how to breathe,” she mumbles. “What next?”
She drops her head onto my shoulder.
? ? ?
An hour later, the storm is spent. The rain stops and the wind calms. We emerge from the shop and walk to the edge of the promenade. We stand at the railing; all the benches are occupied. Withered skeletons in clothes that no longer fit, some sitting alone, some with a partner, all with guns in their hands, holes in their heads. A good place to say good-bye.
From this distance, the damage looks minimal, but I can still see the change. The new stillness. The glimmer of water where there should be crowds. Manhattan has become Venice. Lovers will cuddle in gondolas while cabbies row them down Broadway. If anyone ever lives here again.
“They were on the bus,” Julie says, staring into the city. “Sprout, Joan, and Alex. The kids were on the bus.” I follow her gaze; she’s looking toward the hospital. Toward the mountain of watery rubble where it used to be.
“I’m sure they have Audrey too,” Nora says softly. “She’s a Mostly. She’s a valuable specimen.”
Julie watches the mountain erode as currents carry it away.
“They do have her,” Tomsen says.
“Jesus,” Julie gasps, clutching her chest. “Where the hell did you . . .”
Wherever she came from, Tomsen is standing against the railing a few feet away from us with her face pressed to a view scope. “I saw her earlier, behind the hospital. They were loading the Dead into trucks. Valuable specimens.”
She grips the scope with one hand and a portable ham radio in the other. Either she found it wherever she just came from, or she had it in one of her many pockets and the guards never bothered to confiscate it. What threat is a radio when you control the only channel?
She clicks it on and Fed FM shatters the stillness.
“Now is the time to gather our strength,” says a gravelly voice over a pounding action-movie score. “A branch has broken in the east, but our roots reach all across this great nation. Living and Dead will eat the same fruit as the sun rises in the west.”
“They’re going to Post,” Julie murmurs, staring into the flooded streets of Manhattan. “They’re going to bring all this to Post.”
“So . . . we go after them, right?” Nora glances from face to face, looking for confirmation. “Catch up with the convoy, grab our people, and get the hell off this continent. Right, Jules?”
There’s a desperate decisiveness in her voice, like she’s refusing to acknowledge how unlikely it all is. And to my surprise, Julie doesn’t leap to support her. Julie just stares at the city like she didn’t hear the question.
“The plane’s probably safe in the hangar at JFK,” Nora continues, slightly fazed but undeterred. “Abram, if we could round up a few more mechanics, could you repair it?”
Abram stands apart from everyone else, his face blank, his hair dripping into his eyes. “Are you forgetting something?” His voice is cold and calm. He taps the bandages on his arm and shoulder, soggy and brown with city grime. “I was your hostage.” He looks hard at Julie. “And you lost your guns.”
Nora sighs. “Well shit, I guess I figured we were past that by now. After everything we’ve seen, I thought you’d realized—”
“No.” He shakes his head. “I can use your help dealing with the convoy, but the minute I have my daughter, I’m done.”
“And then what?” Nora demands, her posture turning aggressive. “Another cabin in the woods? Maybe try your luck at the Mexico wall?”
“We’ll find somewhere.”
“Seriously, Kelvin?” She throws up her hands. “After Helena, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and New York, you still think you can hide?”
“What do you call flying to Iceland?”
“I call it escaping. Big difference.”
M watches the argument like it’s a boxing match, smiling whenever Nora gets in a good jab, but the person I’d expect to be most involved remains absent. Julie faces the city, her jaw tight, her eyes squinted, like there’s a louder argument happening in her head.
And Tomsen . . . I have no idea what Tomsen is doing. She peers intently through the view scope, but she doesn’t sweep it to survey the destruction. She watches one spot in lower Manhattan, and as I try to find what’s caught her interest, I notice something peculiar. The whole city is blacked out, solar panels blown away, infrastructure flooded, and in the evening gloom, every building is dark—except one. A short office tower glows like a lighthouse amongst all the dark high-rises, its bright windows reflecting off the newly formed sea that surrounds it.
“What is that?” I ask Tomsen.
“That,” she says, “is the tower of BABL.”
Abram and Nora stop arguing. Julie snaps out of her reverie. “What did you say?”