Monster Island(29)

It was all she needed. She threw three quick hand signals at the girls and we broke into a run, not so much a sprint (we were each carrying twenty pounds of gear at the least) as a loping jog but there was urgency there, believe me. At first we had to leap over piles of bodies (or just step on them in a couple of places) but beyond the periphery of the Square the sidewalks were clear.Sixth avenue passed. Seventh. I slowed momentarily outside of Western Beef, wondering if this was where our luck ended but the dead had deserted the place. Every walking corpse in the Village must have been there at the megastore because we saw only a handful on our way back to theHudson and those were easily dodged. Once we were pastSixth Avenue the spell wore off-they came at us as determined as ever, but just as slowly, too.

As we ran past their rotten clutching hands I felt a certain real relief that we were back on familiar ground again. Maybe we were running for our lives and being chased by the dead but that was better than what we were leaving behind. Whatever had slain the dead inUnion Square had to be big and powerful and I didn’t relish finding out what it wanted fromme.

The thought that it might be benevolent, this unseen force that claimed the dead for its own, never even occurred to me. Ever since the Epidemic started there was nothing truly good or clean left in this world. Anything that seemed that way had to come with strings attached.

At the river we stopped on the dock and waved our arms. TheArawelo stood out in the water about a hundred yards with no one visible on deck but we were too out of breath to think the worst. After a minute or two Mariam came up on deck, her blazer off and Osman’s fishing hat perched low over her eyes. She made some frantic gesture toward the hatches and the two sailors emerged from below decks, looking as if they’d been caught at something salacious.

I didn’t give a damn what they’d been up to. They brought the boat in to the dock and threw us lines so we could tie it up. In a minute we were on board and we cast off again.

I guess leaving the megastore in such a hurry really had been the right decision.

When I finally sat down I found I was ravenous. I called forcanjeero, a flat Somali bread that was our staple food on the boat. Osman rubbed his head and squinted at me for a while before he decided what he was going to say.

“You in charge now, Dekalb? You’re theweyn nin?” He glanced around at the girls. “Ifiyah didn’t come back, I see.”

I made no comment. Osman and I had possessed a sort of easy camaraderie on the voyage toNew York. Two grown men on a ship full of children-it would have been hard not to bond. Now I was changed, though, in some subtle but very real way. I had fired a rocket-propelled grenade into a crowd of my enemies. I had ordered soldiers to shoot to kill. I had lead the girls to safety-and I had also let one of the dead eat their commanding officer. It made it hard to fall in with his breezy laissez-faire attitude. I wanted to order him to shut up, to leave me alone. I didn't, though. I guess I hadn't changedthat much.

“At least tell me you got the drugs and we can go home!” He raised both hands in the air, surrendering to his disbelief. My silence left him high and dry and slowly he lowered his arms. We both knew we couldn’t return toSomalia without the medical supplies. We had failed to find them and in the process we lost four of our number. I had nothing to add to that so I kept quiet.

“Well that is just f*cked up, sir, yes, sir!” Osman said and flipped me a one-finger salute.

I didn't bother to respond. Why argue with the obvious?

David Wellington - Monster Island





Monster Island





Chapter Two


fingers digging, twisting, pressing open wound smell of frying bacon laughing dark dark dark cold hungry fingers digging, grabbing, tearing Garywas losing. Dying. His spark, his animating force was draining out of him, out of the hole in his head. do better

A voice… a voice out of the silence, mocking him. Shut up,Gary thought. Just shut up and let me die in peace.

Garywas falling.

Falling, free and weightless for just a moment in the darkness, even the yellow cones of the flashlights lost to him now in this comfortable quiet blindness he tumbled as he fell, tossed from the railing, ejected from paradise into the depths of the megastore. Colliding, his back striking the soft rubber handrail of an escalator but at this speed everything was hard, so hard and brittle and he could feel his vertebrae snapping one after the other, T6, then T7, T8 all gone, pulverized as his body folded like a spring-loaded pocketknife across the handrail, never walk again ha ha ha.