I moved the glass bead around in my mouth. Who said that sucking on pebbles made you feel less hungry? I spat it out.
The snow had come again, and this time I was thankful. Chuck and I were walking down to his truck, to see if Damon’s idea would work. It was early morning as we made our way down Ninth Avenue, and a pristine carpet of white covered all the hurt and mess the city had become.
We hardly spoke, both of us lost in the rhythmic crunch and squeak of our footsteps on the new snow.
A tweet on the meshnet the night before had said that Americans threw away half the food they brought home—normally this would have struck me as wasteful, but now it was unimaginable. Trudging through the snow, I was thinking about all the edibles I used to toss after they had sat in our fridge for a few days, daydreaming about what I would do with them.
I felt embarrassed by our meager meals, feeling like I wasn’t providing for my family, but Lauren always kissed me before we ate as if they were amazing feasts. A single Dorito had become a great prize, and at every opportunity I was squirreling away what I could save for her.
I have a few pounds to spare, I reasoned, so why not? But hunger was new to me, and unconsciously I would find myself eating something I was supposed to be saving, my stomach sabotaging my willpower when I wasn’t paying attention.
“Look at that,” said Chuck as we arrived at the corner of Fourteenth. He pointed at what used to be the Gansevoort Hotel.
We hadn’t ventured toward downtown in two weeks, since the day after Christmas, when we’d last come to look at his truck. The city was barely recognizable. At the corner of Ninth and Fourteenth, right outside the Apple Store, was an urban park I’d often visited to enjoy a coffee and watch the hustle and bustle of people coming in and out of Chelsea. Now the tops of the park’s small trees poked forlornly out of the snow at our feet, and snow-covered traffic lights swung at head height above mounds of frozen garbage.
The wedge-shaped building at the corner of Ninth and Hudson hung in space like the prow of a ship, snow and garbage piling up against it like water swelling up from the dark depths of an underground city. Jutting up from what looked like the center of the ship was the burnt-out husk of the Gansevoort. Its windows were smashed and dark smudges rose up the sides of the building, the blackened walls testament to a fire that had raged inside.
Hanging in front of the hotel was a billboard, still perfect and untouched. It was an ad for a premium vodka, featuring a smiling man in a tuxedo and a woman in a sleek black dress. They seemed like alien creatures, laughing as they surveyed the wreckage at their feet and enjoying a drink at our expense.
Something moved at the corner of my eye, and I turned to see someone looking down at us from the second floor of the Apple Store. Trash was piled against the floor-to-ceiling windows. As I watched, another person appeared.
I pulled on Chuck’s arm. “We’d better get moving.”
He nodded, and we continued.
We were traveling light, stripped down, with nothing that looked worth stealing—no backpacks, no packages. We wore ragged-looking clothing. In plain sight were our weapons, my .38 in a leather holster and Chuck’s rifle slung over his back. The weapons spoke to people watching us. They said we didn’t want to be disturbed. I felt like a Wild West gunslinger in a lawless, icy outpost.
The state of affairs in the hallway had taken an abrupt downward turn when the cholera outbreak had been reported at Penn three days ago and all the emergency shelters had been quarantined. Those daily trips for food and water had given the days a schedule, a pattern. They had given most of the people on our floor a reason to get up and get moving. Now they lay inert on the couches and chairs and beds, completely cut off from external contact.
But it wasn’t just the absence of outside support. Up until a few days ago, we’d been coasting. People had been managing on what they could scrounge within the building: scraps of food, clean clothes, and clean bedding and blankets. But we were at the end of that supply—the clothes and bedding and blankets were stale and infested with lice, and every scrap of food in the building was gone.
More crucially, our system of gathering and melting snow for drinking water and cooking, which had worked well for the first week, and had been manageable for the second, was hopeless as we entered the third week. The barrels and water containers were dirty, and the snow outside filthy. We’d tried going over to the Hudson River, but the water at the edges of the piers was encrusted with ice.
We’d initially quarantined the people returning from Penn downstairs, but we’d given up after capturing Paul’s gang. At that point, a half-dozen of us were holding thirty people at gunpoint, and in any case, it had been impossible to guess if they were exhibiting signs of cholera. Almost everyone was ill in one way or another, most with diarrhea from drinking unclean water.
The latrines on the fifth floor were beyond disgusting, and people had migrated from bathroom to bathroom in each abandoned apartment, floor by floor, looking for one that was clean. Each residence had become as filthy as the next.
And we had nine dead people on the second floor. The only dead bodies I’d seen before had been laid out in funeral homes, carefully prepared to look like they were sleeping peacefully. But these people … nothing about them looked peaceful.
We’d opened the windows, turning a second-floor apartment, with them in it, into a cold storage area. I hoped scavengers wouldn’t get in—human or otherwise.
Our plight was reflected in the rest of the city. Hope was evaporating into the cold winter air, even as the government radio stations kept insisting, day after day, that power and water would be restored soon, and to stay indoors, stay warm and safe. The refrain had become a joke: “Power on soon, stay warm, stay safe!” we’d say to each other as a greeting. The joke had worn thin.
“There she is,” said Chuck, pointing up at his truck.
It was the first time I’d heard him excited in days.
An army convoy rumbled by, heading uptown on the West Side Highway. Where before their presence had been reassuring, now it made me angry. What the hell are they doing? Why aren’t they helping us?
The meshnet was reporting rumors of emergency supply airdrops, but it was hard to believe anything anymore.
As the convoy disappeared, I looked up at Chuck’s truck, still perched fifty feet in the air. Its position had turned into something of a blessing. The cars lower down had been scavenged for batteries, parts, anything useful, but his truck still looked intact.
“You think we could attach the winch cable to that?” He pointed to a billboard platform attached to the side of a nearby building.
“Not more than twenty feet, maybe less. Your winch is rated at twenty thousand pounds, right?”
“The half-inch cable has a twenty-five-thousand-pound breaking point, but it’ll take a lot more for an instant. My baby’s stripped down for improved mileage, but,” mused Chuck, calculating in his head, “she must weigh seven thousand pounds with the skid plate.”
“It’s going to be close.”
I was the only engineer among us. The best I could figure it, the energy of the vertical drop would be converted into a forward velocity as it swung, with maximum force at the bottom of the arc. It wouldn’t start swinging until the truck was dragged off the platform, and we’d minimize the swinging by winching the truck up as it fell. By my calculations, even if we were careful, the truck would exert at least five times its weight in downward force at the bottom of its swing. This was much more than what the winch was rated for. And even if the winch didn’t fail, there was another variable we were counting on; we needed the billboard platform not to come loose from the wall as this all happened.
“So Damon offered to ride this rodeo?” asked Chuck, shaking his head as we walked right underneath the billboard.
It was better if someone rode inside the truck to control the winch if we wanted this to work—and our lives depended on it working. Setting the winch in motion and letting it go without anyone inside risked jamming or breaking it. I still wouldn’t have volunteered, but Damon was more certain of my calculations than I was.
“In exchange for us driving him to his parents’ place near Manassas,” I replied, nodding. “I figured that was pretty close to where we were going anyway.”
Still looking up, Chuck began planning. “Tonight you go on another one of your food runs, and I’ll start packing as much gear as we can carry.”
I took out my smartphone. We still had meshnet connectivity, even down here. Damon was up and running on a new laptop, but the thousands of lost images were irreplaceable. I was texting Damon, telling him it looked like his plan would work, when an incoming message appeared from him.
“We’re going to need a lot of water,” continued Chuck, “and—”
“The president is going to be speaking to the nation tomorrow morning,” I announced, reading the message on my phone. “It will be broadcast on all radio stations. They’re going to tell us what’s going on.”
Chuck exhaled long and slow. “About time.”
I put my phone away. “And if getting this truck down doesn’t work, we’re going to hot-wire something from the street, right? We need to get out of here.”
“One way or another. But my baby is still our safest bet for getting to my place near the Shenandoah.”
Overhead, a low droning sound began, and we backed away from the parking structure to get a better view of the sky. The noise grew in volume as a military transport growled into view, skimming the tops of the buildings. Its rear loading dock was down, and as we watched, a large pallet was pushed off the back. A parachute opened above it as it fell.
Chuck jumped through the snow toward Ninth Avenue. “They’re air-dropping supplies!”
I followed on his heels. Rounding the corner, looking straight up the street, I was greeted by the surreal vision of a long line of crates descending on parachutes. The wind dragged the one closest to us into a building, smashing into windows. Dozens of other planes buzzed in the distance, all dropping loads over different parts of the city.
I watched, captivated. “Not sure if I’m happy or worried.”
The crate nearest us crashed into the snow, and dozens of people appeared out of nowhere to converge on it.
“Come on,” said Chuck, with a nod of his head, “let’s see what we can grab.” He pulled the rifle off his back and ran into the crowd, waving the gun in front of him.
Shaking my head, I followed.