The Young World Read online

  We roll past the hulled and festering halal kebab stand. Window boxes, strangely raucous with flowers, as if in celebration.

  Dog crap everywhere. Flies rioting and rocketing through the middle air.

  At the crosswalk of Washington Place and Mercer, someone has spray-painted REVELATION 2:4 on the ground.

  The writing continues, I HAVE SOMEWHAT AGAINST THEE, BECAUSE but then trails off, the writer having run out of paint, or time, or interest.

  Peter finishes the thought. “I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love.”

  I puzzle over this. Is the “I” God? What “first love”?

  At the corner, I stop short and lean out to scope Broadway.

  “Did I ever tell you that you drive like my grandma?” says Donna. I ignore her. The way I see it, we’re on a little boat approaching some nasty rapids.

  The low ridgelines of the old shirtwaist factories and walk-ups of Broadway are empty. No movement in the broken windows. Out here, up until the territory of the Drummers, it’s mostly animals and randoms. Small groups that don’t last long and aren’t likely to tangle with us.

  A pack of dogs keeps its distance to the south.

  “Must Have Clothing,” says Donna, reading a store awning. “Ha-ha, too true. LOL.”

  I hate when kids speak in textese. If you want to Laugh Out Loud, just laugh. If you’re really gonna Roll on the Floor Laughing, well, there’s the floor.

  I also find gallows humor kind of tired. Every storefront, every bit of advertising, every artifact of What Was seems ridiculous now. Le Basket. The Vitamin Shoppe. The Body Shop. You just want to shout, “Don’t you know what’s coming?”

  And yet, as I drive on the sidewalk up Broadway, we can’t help but recite the names.

  “American Apparel,” says Donna.

  “Superdry,” says Peter.

  “McDonald’s,” says Donna.

  “Foot Locker,” says Brainbox.

  It’s hard to believe that all this crap actually mattered and that these words moved something in us. Now we repeat them like we’re conjuring ancestors. Like stores were a thousand shrines to little deities, and they’re still demanding tribute. Like they’re the thousand names of our dead god.

  “I want a number four meal with a Coke,” I say. It just pops out.

  “I’ll buy,” says Peter. Then, “I was a vegetarian until the apocalypse. Very hard to maintain these days. Now I’m an omnivore. I eat omni.”

  “And omni eats us,” says Donna.

  We keep worming our way northward.

  “You know SeeThrough is following us, right?” Peter says.

  I’ve been noticing a little form flitting to and from cover behind us.

  “Those dogs are gonna get her,” says Peter. The pack is following, sniffing the air and calculating the odds.

  I put Chiquita into park and hop out, scanning for shooters in the buildings around us.

  Somebody small ducks behind a taxi.

  Peter says, “I thought she was, like, a ninja or something.”

  “Ninjas are Japanese,” I say. “She’s Chinese. She thinks she’s Shaolin.”

  SeeThrough got her name because she wanted everybody to call her Sifu. That’s Mandarin for “teacher.” Her dad taught kung fu and tai chi at my school. Did I mention that the Learning Center was kind of hippie-dippy? Anyway, she figured she got to inherit the title.

  Except she’s barely five feet tall and thin as a greyhound. Hence, SeeThrough.

  “Come out,” says Peter. “I did,” he adds to himself.

  She pokes her head up as if she’s just amazed that we saw her.

  I motion her over.

  “Look,” I say. “Thank you for wanting to help. But you’re too… what’s the word… small.”

  “You don’t know me.” Her face is set.

  “I would love to get to know you better. When we get back. In the meanwhile, we’re gonna take you home.”

  “No,” says SeeThrough. “I can help.”

  Seeing that the reasonable approach has failed, I put my hand on her shoulder to turn her around. I’m annoyed that we’ll have to double back with her.

  Suddenly SeeThrough has my wrist in her hand, and she bends my fingers back, and the pain is a shrill, unbearable piping in my brain. I stumble, and she kicks my leg out from under me. Then she hits me in the windpipe with her little fingers puckered into a sort of claw.

  I spend a while learning how to breathe again.

  “Damn, sister,” says Peter.

  “I can help,” says SeeThrough.

  Donna pulls me up. She’s trying not to laugh.

  I bend over and hold my finger up for attention.

  “Welcome aboard,” I say.

  So we’ve got our hobbit.

  CHAPTER 8

  AT ASTOR we pass Peter’s old school, Stonewall. It was a high school for gay and lesbian and transgender kids, the ones who got nothing but shit at “normal” schools.

  Peter: “Dear old Alma Mother.”

  Me: “What was it like?”

  Peter: “Oh, it was just gay gay gay all the time. AP Interior Decorating, then Musical Theater, then Disco for third period. Then the dykes would go to shop class.” He pauses. “Nah, it was just like regular school. Except nobody gave you shit. Well, not for being gay, anyway. Sometimes you got shit for not being gay enough.”

  Me: “But… it’s better now, right? I mean, nobody has, like, the leisure to be homophobic.”

  Peter: “Yeah. Hooray. I always said the world would end before people let us be.”

  I decide to change the subject, so I say, “Hey, did they ever make you read that story ‘By the Waters of Babylon’?”

  Jefferson: “Is that the one about this kid in the future who finds this mysterious place, and it’s New York after the Third World War?”

  SeeThrough: “Yeah. We just read that. I mean, Before, you know. It was fun.”

  Me: “Best apocalypse? The Road Warrior.”

  Jefferson: “You’re just a raggedy man.”

  Peter: “I always liked zombies. But I only like the slow ones. When they start running, it gets too stressful.”

  Me: “How about Logan’s Run? This is kind of like Logan’s Run. I saw it on Netflix. Everything’s great, except people get killed when they turn thirty.”

  Peter: “Thirty? That’s old.”

  SeeThrough: “I like it when kids get special powers. Like telekinesis.”

  Me: “I know. This apocalypse sucks. It smells terrible, and we don’t have magical powers or anything cool, like hoverboards and stuff.” I shout into the cab, “How come you can’t make hoverboards, Brainbox?”

  Brainbox: “The laws of physics.”

  Me: “Aw, you suck.”

  Brainbox: “I don’t suck.” He’s offended.

  Me: “Take it easy, Brainbox. I’m just kidding. It’s a joke. Sarcasm. Like, reverse talking. I was saying what I didn’t mean.”

  Brainbox wipes his face the way he does. Like he’s not really wiping it, he’s hiding it. Like the exercise of squeezing meaning out of what people say is tiring for him.

  The streets are quiet all the way up to Grace Church, where the road jogs left. Peter bangs on the hood of the cab, and Jeff stops the truck.

  Peter: “I’m gonna put in a good word for us with the Big Guy.”

  Jefferson: “We can’t afford the time.”

  Peter: “Aw. C’mon. We’re doing great. No zombie attacks or anything.”

  Me: “Who says God is even paying attention? Or, like, exists?”

  Peter: “Can’t hurt. Pascal’s gambit. If you believe in God and you’re wrong, you’re dead anyway so you won’t know. If you believe in God and you’re right, jackpot!”

  Jefferson: “All right.”

  Peter: “Thank you, boss. Won’t be but a moment.” He hands me his rebar club and hops down from the truck bed.

  The church doors are big, wooden, and closed. Somebody has pa
inted some Latin words on the front:

  QUEM QUAERITIS IN SEPULCHRO,

  O CHRISTICOLAE?

  Peter walks over to the doors of the church and opens them.

  As he does, everyone realizes that something horrible has happened. A stench breathes out of the church—less like a smell than a feeling, like a slap.

  Through the crack of the open doors, I can see piles of people. The pews full, the aisles full, corpses collapsed against one another so tightly they’re still standing up. Like they all bum-rushed the consulate of heaven and never got their papers.

  Peter bends over and starts to throw up. The rest of us are just frozen.

  I jump down from the truck and, with Jefferson’s help, heave the door shut.

  Nobody knows what to say. I mean, sure, we’ve seen stuff like this before. In this world, if you keep your eyes open, you are going to see some terrible things. Whole families dead at the dinner table, like that Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving thing gone wrong. Adults curled up in their elderly parents’ laps. Once I found a yoga center where they just, like, unrolled their mats and yoga’ed their way to the end of the world.

  Talk about corpse pose.

  But this has really gotten to Peter. And I don’t know how to deal with his existential crisis. Like, all I can think of is to point to the store across the street and say, “Look, Peter—that store’s called Lucky Wang!”

  He sits there on the curb, staring at nothing.

  Then Jefferson reaches out awkwardly and puts his hand on Peter’s shoulder. He sits down next to him.

  Peter: “I used to think maybe he forgot about us. Lost us in his pocket. But now I feel like he threw us away. As far as he could.”

  I think that from the way he’s saying it, he means He, with a capital H.

  Jefferson smiles. “Pascal’s gambit, man. Let’s see how it ends up.”

  Peter nods slowly, takes a deep breath, and gets up.

  Back in the boat.

  Terrific omen, I think, and I wish I were back in my crib reading old Peoples. But then—there was the letter.

  Wash left this envelope for me. Might as well have said, Not to be opened until I die. Jesus, it was all messed up, like he wrote it with the wrong hand? But the gist of it was, stay with Jefferson. Take care of him. Love him. Well, what’s that supposed to mean? That’s not something you can just do. I mean, I do love him. I have since we were about five. But, you know, there’s love and there’s Love.

  Isn’t there?

  Anyway, I’ve got his back. That’s what matters.

  CHAPTER 9

  I’D LIKE TO AVOID UNION SQUARE, but the side streets from Tenth to Thirteenth are blocked with cars and decomposing bodies and fallen buildings from the West Side fire. The downside of taking Chiquita is that you need a clear path. Maybe we could sweep west and avoid the Union, but I wouldn’t want us to get out of the car in tight streets that could be hard to fight our way out of.

  Union is usually cool.

  When it all came down and the lights went out, lots of people gathered in the square. Hopeful kumbaya stuff. Candles and joints and vegetarian casseroles. A bunch of drummers showed up and started playing. There were conga players from Spanish Harlem, rock guys from the East Village, buskers hammering on upturned plastic paint buckets. The circle got bigger and bigger as the Sickness got worse, like the city was trying to show it had a pulse.

  People came from all around to join in. I mean, even people with no rhythm at all. They drummed and drummed, like they were trying to scare away evil spirits. They kept going, and when things broke down and they got sick, they just slumped over their drums and died.

  The drumming has never stopped in the Union. Now that the cars and trucks are gone, the nights are so quiet, except for the barking and the occasional scream—you can hear it down in Washington Square when the wind is the right way. Some people think it’s creepy. The-natives-are-getting-restless creepy.

  Me, I kind of like it. I even entertain this funny superstition that when the drumming stops, it’ll mean that the end of the world is really here.

  Still, I wouldn’t drive through Union Square unless I had to. There are people we don’t know there. And people mean risk.

  The drumming gets louder as we approach. We roll past New York Costumes (a popular scavenging spot for swag), Zen Grill, DVD SALE! (mostly porn), Lifestyle Salon.

  “Remember lifestyles?” I say to Brainbox. “I have to remember to get a lifestyle when things settle down.”

  Brainbox doesn’t have that thing that makes him feel he needs to reply to stuff you say. Instead, he says, “Good chess section.”

  He’s talking about the Strand, which rolls past us on the right—18 MILES OF BOOKS, according to a banner flapping loose of its pinions.

  The Empire State Building hoves into view over the broccoli-like profusion of trees in the park as the drumming gets louder. I wonder if the Old Man can see me.

  It’s hard not to get swept up in it, the syncopation of a hundred different percussion pieces. Brainbox taps a beat on his door; I can hear Donna slapping her hands on the cab roof. Maybe they drummed like this in the streets of Rome when their whole empire thing went to shit.

  CHAPTER 10

  BACK IN THE DAYS before the poopoo hit the fan, we had this thing—the social contract? The basic idea was, let’s be cool to each other, because things get too messy otherwise. It wasn’t heaven on earth. It was just the easiest way to get through the day. It worked even if you would never see somebody again. Even if they weren’t going to blast you. So it was all “please,” and “thank you,” and “excuse me.” First person to raise her hand gets the cab. That sort of crap.

  Well, the social contract kind of got put on hold.

  End result? You really never know what you’re getting into with strangers. Hence—some butterflies as we rock up to Union Square.

  I see a crowd of Drummers on the steps by the round metal kiosk that looks like a safari hat. They see us, too. One of them, a white dude with long, ratty dreads, pauses and then starts up a new beat on the biggest drum of all—some kind of big-ass Japanese one hanging from a scaffold, the kind those guys in diapers used to play. Jefferson would know the name. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. The other drums fall silent for a second as everybody checks us out.

  Now, me, I’m all for Being Yourself and whatnot, but the Drummers kind of schiz me out. Like, they drum more than they talk. Like, they’re saying something to each other I can’t understand.

  Also they look like the Hacky Sack Players From Hell. All hippie hipster chic that they let rot off their bodies. Smoking up all the time so their eyes are yellow and red like pool balls. I can see a dozen little huddles around bowls and bongs.

  So I lean on the cab and smile, but at the same time, my finger’s on the trigger of the M2, like, “Hey, guys! Groovy! Check out my .50-caliber!”

  When we take a right and start to round the square, I see more and more feral, wild-eyed types leaning against the masonry walls of the park.

  They’re scoping us out as the beat thickens again, a complicated pitter-patter that sounds as if it’s saying something different from before.

  Me: “Keep your eyes open, Peter.”

  Peter smiles and nods while waving at the crowd and tapping his metal bar against the side.

  SeeThrough shows nothing but her eyes above the level of the cargo bed.

  About halfway up the east side of the square, they start backing away. Which seems like a good thing, except… it isn’t.

  The way is blocked by a burned-out van that wasn’t there a moment ago.

  I see gun barrels peeking over the low park walls.

  The drumming changes again.

  Me: “You see this, Jeff?”

  Jeff: “Got it.”

  He throttles up and swerves Chiquita over a median that divides the blocked roadway from a clear one over to the right.

  Just as he does that, the drumming stops.

  And the gunfire s
tarts.

  Pop-pop-pop, small-arms fire from the park that slams into the reinforced side of the truck like falling apples on a tin roof. Peter and I hit the deck. Rocks clang off the wheels. Arrows whistle through the air.

  I open up with the M2, which CHUG-CHUG-CHUG s rounds into the park. The rounds are so powerful that the gun almost jumps out of my hands. I see the top of a tree fall off and a mailbox spin up into the air, disgorging letters that were stranded in the Sickness.

  The cab jolts upward and then down again—we’re momentarily airborne as it bounces down from the median. SeeThrough is thrown over the back door and out of the truck.

  Peter grabs her wrist before she hits the road. She’s so light that he pulls her in with one hand. He holds his rebar in the other hand, flailing away at the Drummer who surges up to the tailgate, out of my arc of fire.

  We’re on the eastern roadway now, blocked from the square by a line of bushes, but faces and guns peer out from Babies “R” Us, and soon we’re taking fire from the ruins of a mural of anthropomorphic ants carrying slices of watermelon away from a picnic.

  I hose down Babies “R” Us with the .50-cal, tearing chunks out of the stone pilasters and bringing what’s left of the plate glass falling onto the Drummer gunners. Brass casings are raining around us, hitting the bed with a Ping! Ping! Ping! When one of them lands on my skin, it burns.

  Then Peter gets hit.

  He groans and crumples to the cargo bed, holding the side of his head, which runs with blood.

  Meanwhile, we’re attacked from above.

  People on the rooftops are throwing bricks, glass, toys, anything.

  A baby bottle hits the hood, and fire spills out.

  Make that a baby-bottle Molotov cocktail.

  Jefferson hits the brakes and the truck starts to fishtail. Brainbox leans out of his window and calmly, methodically spritzes the fire with an extinguisher.

  “Get us out of here!” I shout to Jefferson, and he manages to straighten the fishtailing truck and gun it. Chiquita leaps forward, parting a surging mass of Drummers.