Monster Island(48)

Finally just when I thought I couldn’t take anymore the hallway ended in a wide aperture. Beyond was open space and some light. As we came around the corner I could hardly believe my eyes. The concourse of the subway station looked almost the same as I remembered it-almost. The white pillars made of girders were there, still holding up the low ceiling. The walls were still lined with advertising posters behind thin plastic scratched with endless graffiti.

There were still too many people in the low space but they weren’t moving. Normally this station would have been crowded with great surging tides of humanity moving from one platform to another. Now the people sat on the floor in groups of five or six on a blanket or lounged against the walls, refusing to meet our gaze. Their clothes were brilliantly colored or expertly cut or lined with thousands of dollars worth of fur but their faces were sunken and pale. Their eyes showed nothing but the exhausted boredom that comes from living in fear. I’d seen that look everywhere in Africa.

I looked up at the ceiling and saw something surprising. “You have electricity,” I said. A few scattered fluorescent tubes sputtered up there. Most were dark or the fixtures were bare but enough light was generated to see our surroundings. “I thought the power was out.”

“There’s a hydrogen fuel cell system. It got put in after the blackout in 2003, when people got stuck down here in the dark. It was only meant for emergency use but we’ve nursed it along.”

“How long have you been down here?” I asked. It had not occurred to me before. “Since the evacuation?”

Jack squinted at me. “There was no evacuation.”

I shook my head. “We saw piles of luggage outside of Port Authority. Signs telling people to keep together.”

He nodded. “Sure. Because people went there and tried to get out and maybe some of them did. But there was no large-scale evacuation. Think about it. Where would people go to? There’s no place safer than this. Except maybe where you came from. The Guard closed the city down block by block, protecting what they could but it was a losing battle. Times Square was the last place there was any kind of real authority. It lasted until maybe a month ago. Those of us smart enough to know that civilization was over came down here. The rest of them got eaten.”

We were interrupted before I could ask any more questions. A woman came up to us, a living woman (I still felt the need to qualify her as such) wearing a full length Louis Vuitton logo pattern coat over a baby tee that read DON’T LOOK NOW. Even in the gloom of the station she wore peach-tinted sunglasses. She had to be at least six months pregnant, judging by the way her belly swelled out from under the shirt. Her nametag read HELLO MY NAME IS f*ck you.

“These are our rescuers?” she asked Jack. He shrugged. “They didn’t get very far.” Apparently word of our exploits had already reached the survivors. “Still, it’ll give us something to talk about. Stories of abysmal failure always make for great gossip.”

Jack’s mouth had been a tight line before. His lips disappeared entirely now. He was bristling with disgust or hatred or rage or something but he wouldn’t let himself show it. “They had a good plan, Marisol. It showed real ingenuity.”

“So did plastic belts, darling, but they’re gone now.” She reached out and touched Ayaan’s headscarf. “Britney Spears meets Mullah Omar. How fetching. I suppose I should welcome you to the Grand Republic but it wouldn’t be sincere. There is food for you if you need it. We can probably scare up a blanket without too many fleas in it if you want to take a nap.” She sighed and brushed stray hairs out of her face. “I’ll be right back.”

Jack lead us into one of the concourse’s less crowded corners and squatted down on his haunches. I sat down on the floor, glad for the chance to rest. Ayaan stayed on her feet, occasionally fingering her rifle. I don’t know what she made of any of it. Jack clearly did not intend to talk to us so I broke the ice myself. “That’s a nice shotgun,” I said, indicating his weapon. He pulled it toward himself as if he thought I was going to try to take it away. Probably just a reflex left over from his training. “It’s a SPAS-12, right? I didn’t recognize it with that coating.”

He looked down at the dull black enamel paint on the weapon. “I put a police coating on it because the standard finish glinted too much.”

I nodded agreeably. Just two gun nuts talking here. The SPAS-12, or Sporting Purposes Automatic Shotgun 12 Gauge (the name was meant to fool Congress into thinking it was a hunting weapon-a complete lie, the thing was a military shotgun, a “streetsweeper” in the most violent sense) had been pretty high on my list of weapons systems I’d have liked to outlaw before the Epidemic but I could see its utility in protecting the station against undead attack. “You fire standard shells or do you cut them down to tactical strength?”