Monster Island(53)

Well, maybe I was. TheArawelo was still out there somewhere in the night. If we could reach it there was a chance. And I thought I might have an idea how to reach it.

I went looking for Jack and found myself in a deserted corridor. Up ahead it ended in a short flight of stairs. I could hear people down there so I went to investigate and found Jack. Marisol, too. He had one hand inside the drawstring of her pants and his mouth was nuzzling her neck.

She saw me and for a second the look in her eyes was one of simple defiance. Why not? She seemed to ask and in truth I could hardly fault her. Death was always near us. More to the point it was none of my business. She seemed to recall herself after a second, though, and she pushed Jack angrily away. “You f*cking *, get off of me!” she screamed. “You know I’m married!”

She dashed past us. I watched Jack carefully, wondering if he would be angry at me for discovering them. Instead he merely turned around, very slowly, and opened his eyes. “What can I do for you, Dekalb?” he asked. Before I could answer we heard a squeal, maybe a scream-the white tiles of the station played hell with acoustics-and we raced back to the concourse.

The cat had returned. The mangy tabby that Shailesh had released as bait so that Ayaan and I could come inside. It must have found its way through the dead on its own and then returned via some hidden entrance too small to need to be guarded. It looked confused and very bedraggled as it walked across the open floor of the concourse, its tail cautiously flicking back and forth.

A girl with braces and thick glasses bent down and patted her knees. “Come here, baby,” she cooed, and the cat turned to face her. In an instant it was on her, its vicious teeth sinking deep in her arms as she tried to protect herself. We could all see now the hole in the cat’s side, a ragged wound through which its ribs were clearly visible.

Jack rushed for the girl as the rest of the crowd fell back in terror, nearly trampling each other as they tried to get away. Jack flicked a combat knife out of his boot and impaled the cat through the head. Then he turned to the girl. He grabbed one of her arms roughly and yanked it upward. It was covered in small bites, pinpricks of blood and cat saliva. “Come on,” Jack said. His voice was neither cruel nor kind-just empty. He had nothing left in the way of emotions to give her. He lead her away via one of the concourse’s many passages.

After that the air in the concourse felt like something solid and foul-tasting. Like the place had been poured full of rubber cement. Any of the feeling of festivity was gone-which was apparently Marisol’s cue to take the stage once more.

“Famous movie scenes!” she shouted. The words had a brittle quality but they got the attention of the crowd. “Famous movie scenes! Who’s got one?”

Perhaps numbed by horror the survivors just looked at one another, trying to think of something. Anything. Finally it was Ayaan who stood up. She looked like she might die of embarrassment and her command of English declined sharply but she managed to pipe out: “May we have the famous scene of Ms. Sandra Bullock and Mr. Keanu Reeves in the ‘Speed’?”

Marisol nodded eagerly and called Ayaan up to act it out with her. “There’s a bomb on the bus!” Ayaan shouted, smiling a little. “I need to know, Ma’am, if you can drive this bus!”

So that’s what they needed Marisol for. I left them to it and turned to follow Jack out of the concourse.

David Wellington - Monster Island





Monster Island





Chapter Fifteen


Gary knelt down in the denuded mud of Riverside Park and looked across the river at the 79th street Boat Basin. A few sailboats still rode at anchor there, their masts splintered and their hulls sagging lifelessly in the water. A speedboat smoldered away in their midst, acrid smoke leaking from its engine compartment to drift across the nigh air to Gary’s twitching nose. One vessel, a big racing sailboat with its boom tied down looked like it was still seaworthy. A pair of huge wheels stood at its stern, lashed to the deck. A single electric light blared from its bow every few seconds. Someone had raised an upside-down American flag to the top of its mast.

Mael had been certain there were survivors in the Basin. It looked like they wouldn’t be hard to find.

Gary kicked off his shoes and leapt into the Hudson, Noseless and Faceless following close behind. They sank to the bottom like rocks while Gary bobbed up and down like a cork in the water. He realized he was holding his breath. He let it go-he didn’t need it-and drifted down to the bottom. The water was cold, very cold if he could feel it through his thick skin but it didn’t bother him. It was dark, too, murky and dismal so that he could barely see a few feet in front of his face. It would be easy to get lost down there. What little moonlight penetrated the surface shifted and shimmered so much it was more or less useless. He could make out currents of silt flowing past him and he could see the soft outlines of centuries worth of dumped junk-old cars, fifty-gallon drums that had rusted open, piles on piles of black plastic trash bags sealed off with metal crimps. A mat of slimy algae covered everything, fronds of it drifting in the river’s flow. Every step that Gary took required real effort but he didn’t tire. His feet sank into the mud of the riverbed but he pressed on, looking for the sailboat’s anchor.