Monster Island(63)

There had been hundreds of thousands of pigeons in the city before the Epidemic-now they had joined forces, an instinct stronger than death. “If we go out there,” I said, “we’ll be pecked to death in seconds.” It sounded hilarious but nobody laughed. “There are tunnels around here, though. There’s one that leads to the Chrysler Building, I know that. If we came out of the ground somewhere else, somewhere they weren’t expecting.”

Jack nodded. “Sure. And if the wind is just right they won’t smell us. And if we take off our shoes we can walk silently. Sure. We’d make it one or two blocks before something changed and they realized where we were.”

I stared out through the doors, looked between the buildings. I couldn’t see the Secretariat Building of the UN from here, not quite. But I could almost feel it, no more than ten minutes away by foot. We were so close.

Fate made up our minds for us. The Iridium cell phone in my back pocket rang, a strident pulsing chime that annoyed me so much I grabbed at it and answered the call. “Dekalb here,” I said.

I expected to hear Marisol’s voice but it was a man who answered me. “No shit? Dekalb? I just found this phone and hit star sixty-nine. I must have just missed you. This is awesome! Is Ayaan there with you?”

“She is-who is this?” I asked. Osman? Shailesh? It didn’t sound like either of them but I knew I recognized the voice. Then I had it and my back rippled with icy fear.

“Who am I? I’m the guy who just ate the President of Times Square.”

“Hello, Gary,” I said.

I hurriedly hitEND as if he could come through the satellites and get at me. “Jack,” I said, trying to sort it out, “there’s a problem at the station. The dead-”

He didn’t wait for me to finish the sentence. He turned on his heel and bolted back toward the subway entrance as fast as he could go. I called after him and Ayaan ran a few steps but then she turned and looked at me. Her face was a question I didn’t want to answer.

David Wellington - Monster Island





Monster Island





Chapter Twenty


Gary climbed up the side of the Armed Forces Recruiting Center in Times Square and steadied himself on the roof. A wandering breeze snatched at his hair and his clothes. He looked up and saw the darkened signs, just as Dekalb had done but for him the dead neon wasn’t so much a shocking portent as a monument to what the world, and by extension himself, had become. Dead but still standing. A reflection in a distorted mirror.

He let his gaze fall to the street level. To his troops. He had brought hundreds of the undead with him and though they wore no uniform nor carried any weapons they were an army. They awaited his command, still and passionless. He looked across the ranks of their slack faces and their hanging limbs and thought about how to begin.

From behind the steel gate of the subway station living faces peered out at the army. A rifle barrel poked through the bars and a shot snapped out. One of Gary’s soldiers collapsed backwards onto an abandoned car, rocking it on its tires. Gary just laughed. He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted. “You in there-why don’t you come out and play?”

The faces at the gate drew back into the shadows. “You’ll never get through,” one of the living warned. If they were surprised to hear a dead man talking they made no sign. The rifle cracked again and another walking corpse slumped to the pavement.

Gary reached out with his mind and the ground began to shake. The giant from the Central Park Zoo-tamed now, and under Gary’s control-came shambling around a corner and grabbed at the bars of the gate with his massive hands. The rifle barrel disappeared. With a shriek of metal fatigue the gate warped in its hinges, then released with a reverberating clang that sent the giant stumbling backwards.

Hordes of the undead surged forward and into the station. Gary could see through their eyes as they tumbled down the stairs, pushing each other out of the way in their hurry to get to the living meat inside. There were animals down there, living animals. A big dog sank its fangs into the thigh of one of Gary’s soldiers but three more just tore the animal away and devoured it.

The mob poured into the main concourse of the station, flowing over and under the turnstiles. The humans had fled, though they’d left behind some strange emblems of their occupation. Half a dozen translucent garbage bags hung from the ceiling like industrial egg sacs. Visible through the thin plastic were thousands of nails and bits of gravel and random pieces of hardware-screws, nuts, bolts, washers. Mixed in with the scrap metal was a coarse black powder. Gary figured it out but only a moment too late.