Ten Miles Southeast of the House on the Island
Jim Hart could smell pungent, Sicilian-style pizza baking and he knew that he was near home because Nino's was just a few doors down from where he lived. He saw the tip of the Empire State Building far in the distance, the gaudy, brightly lit Con Ed Building off to the right.
And so, through Jim's eyes and brain, did Seth.
And Elena too, through Seth.
Jim murmured, "You can take the city dweller out of the city"—he chuckled quickly—"but you can't take the city out of the city dweller." Dimly, it made good sense.
Because, dimly, he knew he was not in Manhattan at all. Dimly he knew he was on a narrow path in the Adirondacks, that he was several miles from Fred's car, that all around him, hidden by the darkness, there were things watching him, sizing him up, and waiting.
He knew all this.
But just dimly. As if it were some long-suppressed memory from childhood trying to creep back. He knew, much more concretely—with confidence—that he was actually in Manhattan. And that he was near home.
Seth's big, powder-blue eyes followed the long, slowly merging vertical lines and the contours of the great buildings around him. The lines undulated, as if he were seeing merely some reflection on swiftly moving water. He recognized the buildings. He recognized the city. It was a black splotch on his memory. It smelled bad, and the air moved leadenly about in his lungs, as if it might solidify. It was a place of death.
Not the kind of death that serves and nourishes the Earth. But the kind that is sudden and needless; the kind that leaves behind it a heavy, and sweltering grief—an emotion which Seth had felt in others more than once, and had found confusing.
There were a thousand similar places on the earth, like the place which this man—Jim Hart—called home.
The island.
Manhattan Island.
The place which, before the buildings had been put up to cut the sky apart, and before the subways sliced through the earth, and before the dark blanket of streets and parking lots smothered the soil, had been the place of their birth. The place where they had first sprung up. The place which had nourished them, and given them pleasure. And watched them die. And then spring up again. And die.
The place which, at last, men had found and driven them from and claimed for their own. The place which men had changed into something foul, something that hurt underfoot, and assaulted the ears, and had a strange, harsh unliving pulse all its own.
"It burned down. It didn't burn up, it burned down."
And suddenly Seth was listening to the voice of his memory; listening to his "Grandpa" talking to him. Fifteen years ago.
"Huh?" Seth had responded.
And "Grandpa" repeated himself.
"Oh," said the boy Seth. "Anybody get killed, ya think?"
"You're a morbid sort, aren'tcha?" "Grandpa" asked.
That had been only minutes before Seth had found out what, and who, he was. It had leaped out of him like a scream, and then had come back on him like a hungry animal.
He hadn't understood it then.
It had taken him five years to understand it.
But he understood it fully now. And he understood that there were others like him. Fully grown.
The survivors.
The children of the island.
The first to whom the Earth had given life, a half a thousand years ago.
Ten thousand of them, or more, in that first season. And all but a handful dead with the first winter.
And in that second season, another ten thousand, twenty thousand. Stronger. And swifter.
In that second winter, all but a handful dead.
And in that third season, thirty thousand. All but a handful dead with that winter's passing.
But some had survived.
Some had survived to this moment. And they were waiting—as confused and as terrified as he had been fifteen years ago—to be told what they were, and what their purpose was.
Waiting, Seth was certain, to take back the island that had given them life.
Jim Hart saw faces in the windows to his right and left, faces that were as blank as water. They came and went quickly; they watched for a moment, the span of a heartbeat, then they dropped, as if the dark body beneath were dropping to the ground again. And again. Dropping to the floor of some lousy, cluttered, and expensive apartment—little more than a cell, really, a place to peer out of and watch the taxis go by, and the hookers, and the dealers and users.
A place to watch Johnny Carson reruns.
A place to make love. To fuck.
A place to eat.
And a place to wait.
A place on the island. A couple hundred square feet on the island.
Home.
Jim Hart began to laugh. Low at first, down deep in his belly, as if his stomach were turning over and complaining about a bad meal. And then louder, so his throat got involved, and his mouth. And quickly it became manic, shrill, and the faces in the windows heard it. The faces in the windows repeated it.
And a quarter of a mile away, a hiker bedding down in his lean-to for the night heard it. A chill moved down his back. His testicles tightened up in fear. A sudden sweat started in him, despite the cold air.
He listened for ten minutes, until the laughter slowly faded, and the other sounds of an Adirondack night returned.