CyberStorm Part 37

"Yeah, are you guys okay?"

On more careful inspection, I saw that his face wasn't smeared in black, but in something reddish- "Go away."

He put his hand up over my headlamp, pushing me back.

His shirt was stained as well, and not just reddish, but blood red. I stood up, pulling the covers back more. Rory was spooning Pam, and both of them were spattered in blood, their faces covered in it.

"Rory, are you hurt? What happened?"

"Go away," he repeated, pulling back the covers. "Please."

I stepped on something that squelched underfoot. Looking down, I saw it was a bag, a thick plastic bag that looked very familiar, and it was partly filled with a black liquid.

Not black-red.

There were dozens of bags littering the floor around the bed. Where had I seen those bags before?

The Red Cross blood bank, where Pam worked.

They were drinking human blood.

Gagging, I backed away. The couch was littered with the bags, and against the far wall I could see dozens of them carefully stacked, but those ones were full and fat like b.l.o.o.d.y maggots.

Despite my disgust, a part of me couldn't help being drawn toward them. Maybe not to drink, but we could cook it, make blood sausages. Blood has a lot of iron and protein, doesn't it? Luke wouldn't know what it was, and Lauren needed iron. Human blood sausages.

My stomach growled hungrily, but then I shivered. I gave blood the day this whole mess started. I imagined Pam drinking my blood, her face white, fangs out, her feline eyes watching me- "We gotta leave," hissed someone behind me. "We gotta leave now."

I spun around, half expecting some creature of the night, but my headlamp instead found Chuck's face.

"They're drinking blood," I whispered breathlessly.

"I know."

"You know?"

"Not an entirely bad idea, but I've been trying to keep it quiet and not freak people out. Blood keeps good for nearly forty days in the cold, and it's been cold out there."

Why does he know things like that? The sense of unreality grew stronger, and I felt like I was receding, pulling away.

"Mike," said Chuck sharply. "Snap out of it and listen to me. You've been out of action for a while, and things have gotten a lot worse."

A lot worse. The way that he said it- "What aren't you telling me?"

"You need to convince Lauren that we have to leave. Now."

I continued staring at him.

"What else?"

Chuck took a deep breath.

"Those nine dead people on the second floor?"

"What about them?"

"There are only five now."

I would have asked what happened to them, but I didn't have to.

Cannibalism.

Human bodies were the last source of calories left in New York. I leaned against the doorframe, the blood draining out of my face, my fingers tingling. Irena had mentioned it briefly when we'd talked of the siege of Leningrad, of roving gangs that attacked and ate people.

How am I supposed to react? What to feel? What to do?

"And Richard's missing," Chuck whispered even more quietly, "or at least, parts of him are."

Parts of him. I shivered in horror. "Do you know who?"

He shook his head. "Who looks healthiest? Maybe people here, maybe people from outside, that'd be my guess." Exhaling, he added quietly, "Or my hope."

"Don't tell Lauren."

She probably already knows.

"Then get her to agree to leave."

The blood was returning to my face, my cheeks burning. I still wasn't feeling well.

Chuck looked me straight in the eyes.

"We leave first thing tomorrow morning."

Day 28 January 19.

"YOU SURE YOU want to do this?"

Vince looked at me nervously and nodded.

It looked a lot further down, perched up in the top of the parking garage frame, than it appeared when standing firmly on the ground. Chuck would have been better up top than me, but with his bad hand, he couldn't climb, and neither could he drive. It took me and Vince half an hour just to clean the snow and ice off the truck.

Tony was just getting back to ground level after climbing up to the billboard platform, dragging the winch cable along. He was the only one strong enough to pull it off-all eighty feet of the cable must have weighed more than a hundred pounds.

Attaching it as close as he could to the wall of the billboard platform, about twenty feet in front of us, minimized the cantilever force that would try and rip the billboard from the wall of the building. The wall of the building was at ninety degrees to the parking platform, with the billboard sticking out from it, so we would be swinging into open s.p.a.ce. Back on level ground, Tony gave me the thumbs-up, and I returned the gesture and nodded to Vince.

Putting the truck into neutral, Vince flipped the switch on the winch. Immediately the truck pitched forward.

"Slowly!" I yelled just as he put the brakes on and flipped the winch off.

"Why don't you keep the parking brake on and let the winch do the work?"

"Good idea," replied Vince.

He was wearing a motorcycle helmet we found in the garage. It looked slightly comical, together with the long scarf wrapped dashingly around his neck and thrown over his back.

"I'll just inch it forward."

On paper, this seemed risky but workable, but in practice-slowly winching a three-and-a-half-ton truck off a metal gantry fifty feet in the air to swing it from a billboard platform-it was ludicrous. After climbing up top and really getting a sense of it, I told Chuck it was insane, insisting that we should go back.

But there was nothing to go back to. We didn't have any choice, not anymore.

Vince flicked the winch switch on for a second and then back off, looking back at me to make sure we were good.

"Front tires have about another foot till they slide off!" I yelled.

He nodded, reaching to flick the switch again.

The past day had been busy. We'd hauled up enough water for us to wash and shave. Lauren had given everyone haircuts while Susie and Chuck had scavenged the apartments, looking for clean clothes. We had to look like well-groomed relief workers, not trapped natives, when we arrived at the military barricade.

Tony went out at night to retrieve all of the food supplies he could. He'd dropped them off here, burying them under the snow, instead of bringing it all back. Carrying a lot of food would have increased our chances of getting attacked on the trek over. Like animals, somehow people knew what you were carrying. Carrying the last supplies of the diesel was dangerous enough.

With a thud, the front tires of the truck fell off the front of the gantry. The truck skidded a few inches forward and then stopped. Vince looked back at me and smiled.

"You okay?" I asked, shaking my head. My heart was thumping through my chest.

Vince was amazingly calm, facing down death like this.

"Perfect," he replied.

He was smiling, but his hand near the winch switch was shaking. He flicked it on and off again, moving the truck forward a few more inches.

The walk over had been surreal.

The last time any of us had ventured any further than Twenty-Fourth Street, just outside our back door, had been when Chuck and I had come down to check on the truck, nearly a week and a half ago. Back then New York had been a frozen wasteland, strewn with garbage and human waste, but it had since transformed into a war zone.

The snow was trampled and blackened, covered in human filth. Burnt-out buildings framed the canyon of Ninth Avenue on our walk down, looming above the destruction of shattered windows and the wreckage of air-dropped containers. The weather had warmed above freezing, and dead bodies appeared out of the melting snow, piled together with the other garbage.

"Another foot and you'll be at the back tires!"

The truck slid forward a little more, coming to a stop with the back tires resting just inches from the edge of the metal platform and the front of the truck suspended and swinging in the air. The Land Rover had a few feet of carriage that extended beyond the back tires, so even when they slid off, it should hold, right up until the last inch of the b.u.mper slid off.

At least, that was the plan.

Growing packs of stray dogs and cats had joined the rats infesting garbage piles in the streets. Chuck took a few potshots at the first ones we'd seen gnawing on human corpses, but we needed to save the ammo, and the shooting attracted attention. Anyway, all the animals scattered when they saw people coming-they sensed they were in just as much danger of being eaten themselves.

We were a ragtag gang, and I was back to wearing the frilly female overcoat that I'd picked up at the hospital. Up till that point, we'd only gone out two at a time at most, but now we all needed coats, and I'd given the parka Chuck had loaned me to the nurse at Presbyterian weeks ago. We'd shuffled along, keeping our eyes down, two men each in front and back, with weapons out, guarding the women and children in the center.

It had been a long walk, and I still hadn't really recovered. Climbing up into the parking gantry had taken nearly everything I had, but adrenaline was coursing through my veins.

Vince flipped the winch switch again.

The back tires slid off the platform, and all three and a half tons of the truck landed on its back frame with a mighty crash that shook the entire parking structure. It slid forward a foot but came to a rest.

The truck was angled nose down at about thirty degrees, with Vince suspended in s.p.a.ce at least eight feet from the edge of the parking structure in the driver's seat. The front of the truck, with the winch, was less than ten feet from the billboard platform.

"This is it!" I yelled to Vince. "Any last words?"

"Give me a second."

"Those are your last words?"

Vince grinned at me, and I grinned back.

Down on the ground, Lauren and Susie looked up. They looked so small. Luke looked even smaller. A crowd of about a dozen ragged onlookers had already gathered, and I could see more coming. Tony and Chuck were yelling at them, pointing their guns, telling them to keep back, that we didn't have any food.

"Time," said Vince, "is just an illusion," and with that, he flicked the switch on the winch.

What a strange kid.

One side of the b.u.mper came free of the platform before the other, sending the truck spinning upside-down. With a lurch the other side came free, pitching the truck into a looping arc downwards, but also sideways toward the wall of the building holding the billboard platform.

I hadn't considered that motion in my back-of-the-napkin calculations, and it probably saved the day, transferring a lot of the initial force back into the building. The sound of groaning metal filled the air, and the billboard platform bent under the strain as the truck swung in a great helical arc underneath it.

Bang! First one metal strut popped out of the wall supporting the platform, spraying bricks into the air, and then-bang!-a second one popped as the truck reached its zenith away from me.

Vince had been winching the truck up toward the platform to minimize the swing force, but as it swung around back toward me, with the nose of the truck nearly at the platform, he quickly reversed course and began lowering the truck.

It wasn't a moment too soon, as the platform began to sag and come loose from the wall. In a mad race, the billboard began peeling off the wall as the truck, spinning like a top, descended toward the snow.

With a thud the truck landed on its rear b.u.mper, spiraling into the snow. Luckily, as Vince lowered it the last few feet, it came down on its wheels, not its top. The billboard platform came crashing down at the same time, the end attached to the winch cable smashing into the snow just a few feet from the truck but the other end remaining attached loosely to the building.

And then silence.

"That was awesome!" yelled Vince, his head appearing out of the truck window, looking back up at me and shaking his fist.

The platform shuddered and groaned.

"Mike, get down here!" yelled Chuck. The ragged crowd of onlookers was growing. "We gotta get out of here!"

Exhaling, I realized I hadn't breathed during Vince's stunt. Regaining my senses, I walked along the metal platform to the back of the gantry, grabbing onto the ladder there. By the time I'd climbed down, Susie and Lauren were already strapped into the backseats with the kids, and Tony was throwing the last bags of food and containers of diesel into the trunk.

Vince was climbing up on the roof of the truck and onto the angled platform stuck into the snow to unhook the winch cable.