Monster Island(33)

When he had recovered himself he commanded the faceless woman to help him to his feet, and she did. Come, he told them, summoning them just as his mysterious benefactor had summoned him. Together the small band of them, Gary and the mindless dead, headed north toward Midtown. It felt so very good,Gary decided, not to be alone anymore.

Garyhad life once more, and now he also had a purpose. He would find this strange tattooed man and learn what he knew.Gary had so many questions and for some reason he was convinced the benefactor would have some answers. He kept his little band heading resolutely northward, up into Midtown. They would enter the park soon enough. Was that their destination? In a way it didn't matter. In some zen fashion the journey was enough.

When he saw the vision again the benefactor's face was furrowed with concern. “You're getting closer but be careful. I think you are about to be attacked.”

“Huh?”Gary asked but the blue tattooed man was gone.Gary turned to look at the noseless man on his right, wondering if the other dead had seen the apparition or if it was just some glitch inGary 's personal nervous system.

The man with no eyelids stared hard at something in the middle distance. BeforeGary could speak he slumped lifelessly to the ground.Gary looked down and saw the bullet wound in the back of the dead man's head long before he heard the gunshot.

The next round hit the sidewalk and sent chips of concrete rolling acrossGary 's feet. He was being shot at. “Not f*cking again,” he whined.

David Wellington - Monster Island





Monster Island





Chapter Four


I shaved with an electric razor plugged into a junction box in the wheelhouse. Every time I turned the razor on or off I got a little shock but it was safer than trying to use a straight razor on a rocking boat and when I was done I felt infinitely better about myself and the mission’s chances.

Which is not to say, I thought as I rinsed out the razor with water from theHudson, that I thought anything would be easy. Just that we might not all die.

When I’d finished I called for my maps ofNew York. I studied them for a long time, thinking there had to be a better way. There were hospitals all over the city. Most of them were on the East Side, which meant they were impossible to get to due to the raft of human corpses clogging theEast River. All of them, I knew, would have been looted during the evacuation.

I still knew one place where we could find the drugs we needed. The UN building-my first choice. It was also impossible to access from the east.

“Osman,” I shouted, standing up, “come look at this.” I showed him my map and indicated our next stop-Forty-Second Streetin Midtown. He studied theWest Side, reading the names of the buildings.

“‘The Theater District,’” he read aloud. “Dekalb, you want to take in a show?”

I ran a finger along Forty-Second, from west all the way to east. To the southern end of the UN complex. “It’s a big street-wide sidewalks, less chance of getting stuck. It was one of the busiest streets in the world, before the Epidemic, so it might even be clear of stalled cars. The authorities would have tried to keep it moving when they evacuated the survivors.”

The captain just stared at me. He didn’t understand, or he didn’t believe I was willing to do this. But until I had those drugs in my possession I couldn’t go back. I couldn’t see my little Sarah again, couldn’t see she was okay with my own eyes. I would do anything for that.

“We can walk from here to the UN in a couple of hours. Get the drugs and walk back. It’ll take less than a day.”

“You are forgetting,” Osman said, “that the dead are risen. In their millions. This was a busy street, once? I tell you it still will be.”

I gritted my teeth. “I have an idea of what we can do about that.” Now thatGary was dead. Now that we could once more count on the undead all being stupid. Stupid enough. I looked back at the city but not at the buildings or the haunted streets. There. I pointed. “Our first stop is the Department of Sanitation pier. They’ll have what we need.”

Osman might have been confused by this but he bent over his controls and got the trawler moving. We pulled in alongside a half-full garbage barge, the girls in position at the rail, their rifles sticking out like oars from the side of the ship. On top of the wheelhouse Mariam called down that she saw no sign of movement anywhere on the pier.

“This is where they used to collect the city’s refuse,” I told Ayaan as we secured the trawler to the side of the barge. “Easy enough to get to by water but from the land side it’s a fortress. They didn’t want anyone getting in here and getting sick-talk about potential lawsuits-so it should still be secure.”