Monster Planet(41)

Osman pointed out the United Nations Secretariat building to her as they drifted past. The lower General Assembly building was almost complete screened from view by vibrant green foliage. Her father had worked there once, Sarah knew, but she couldn't imagine it, not really. No more than she could imagine the state funerals of the pharaohs interred in the Pyramids.

The tallest spires stood in lower Manhattan, structures Sarah's brain could only interpret as distant mountains. She could barely stand to look at the empty buildings, at their uppermost broken windows. Some of them she actually recognized from her children's books'the Empire State building, its crowning needle broken off near the base. The Chrysler building, with long streamers of plant life draping from its triangular portholes, its famous gargoyles leering out of leafy bowers. She had an easier time watching the piers and warehouses of Brooklyn slide by on her left. They passed under the Brooklyn Bridge without serious incident, its Gothic pylons standing proud and unscathed, its endless stretches of cabling tangled but unbroken, but its roadway having fallen away completely to form dozens of new, ephemeral islands in the water below, concrete crags that proved a hazard to navigation. The river opened up, turned into a broad and quiet bay. Osman kept them close to Manhattan, to the long piers of the Lower East Side, then brought them around, out of the Buttermilk Channel and over toward the ferry dock of Governors Island.

Two broad slips, much larger than the tug required, formed the dock and were topped by elevated equipment shacks that Sarah's militarily-trained mind identified immediately as perfect guard towers. Beyond lay a paved walkway that lead between two low buildings on the island's shore. To the east stood a squat octagonal tower pierced with ventilation ducts and giant fans, its base surrounded by yellow and rusting construction equipment. On the other side of the dock, nearly around the corner of the island she could see a round structure that might have been a fort or a prison. These imposing structures, however, could not hide what lay in the island's interior'pleasant Victorian houses in a park full of well-tended trees and what looked like a sprawling, immaculately-maintained garden.

A noise like a tree being hit by lightning made Sarah jump. A gun shot'it sounded like a sniper round, maybe, or just a high-powered rifle bullet. The sound bounced off the water, magnified, resonated for what felt like minutes. She slid down from the wheelhouse and dropped below the gunwale. At the throttle Osman just laughed.

'Just a shot across the bows.' He pulled on the cord that sounded the tug's fog horn and Sarah stuffed her fingertips in her ears. 'It's an old tradition, baby girl, nothing to be afraid of.' He picked up the microphone of the tug's radio set and hailed the island in English.

Slowly, carefully, Sarah uncurled herself and rose to peer over the side. The windows of the elevated equipment shacks were open to the breeze. She saw the barrels of rifles and even one machine gun poking out. Surely that was more than what was needed to repel the occasional ghoul, drawn by the scent of human flesh to dog-paddle across the bay. Maybe Governors Island had had living visitors before. Borderline personality types. Pirates.

Osman couldn't get anyone on the radio. He took a megaphone from one of the tug's lockers and handed over the wheel. With shaking hands she kept them on course, the diesels powered down until they were barely ticking over.

'Ahoy over there, friends,' Osman shouted through the megaphone. 'Don't you remember me? I'd think a face this handsome would stick with you. Where's my Marisol? Last time I saw her she was out to here with a baby. Where's Kreutzer, that old *? There must be some of you that remember my old boat, the Arawelo. You all sailed on her, after all.'

He set down the megaphone and shrugged. 'If that doesn't convince them we're friends, they were destined to shoot us anyways,' he told Sarah. He took the wheel back from her and steered them into one of the ferry slips. The tug sat lower in the water than the ferries had by a considerable margin. Inside the slip they were penned in by high walls lined in shock-absorbing plastic. They couldn't see up onto the island at all. If anyone wanted to kill them it would be like shooting fish in a plastic tub.

When they bounced to a halt against the slip walls he ran forward and threw a line up onto the dock. Unseen hands took it, tied it off, made it secure. A ladder appeared over the edge and dipped down to smack the tug's deck. Osman went up first, unarmed. Sarah came after with her Makarov in her pocket, loaded and ready. When Osman left Governors Island the last time he had been a hero and the island's inhabitants had waved at him as he steamed out to sea. Now he was coming back almost anonymously and he might be attacked the second he was over the side. Anything could have happened in the interval. Anyone could have come along, slain the original survivors, and taken the island for themselves. It was that kind of world. It had been for twelve years.