“You sure you want to do this?”
Damon nodded.
From the top of the parking garage frame, it looked a lot farther down than it had from the ground. Chuck would have been better up top than me, but he still couldn’t use one hand. It took me and Damon 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—the eighty-foot cable weighed more than a hundred pounds.
We attached the cable close to the wall to minimize the cantilever force that would try to rip the billboard from the building. The wall was at ninety degrees to the parking platform, with the billboard sticking out from it, so we would be swinging into open space. Back on level ground, Tony gave me the thumbs-up, and I returned the gesture and nodded to Damon.
Putting the truck into neutral, Damon flipped the switch on the winch. The truck pitched forward.
“Slowly!” I yelled just as he put the brakes on, flipping the winch off. “Why don’t you keep the parking brake on and let the winch do the work?”
“Good idea,” replied Damon. He was wearing a motorcycle helmet we’d found in the garage. Together with a long scarf wrapped dashingly around his neck and thrown over his back, he looked comical. “I’ll just inch it forward.”
On paper, this had seemed risky but workable, but in practice—winching a three-and-a-half-ton truck off a metal gantry fifty feet in the air—it was ludicrous. After climbing up and getting a sense of the enormity of the task, I told Chuck it was insane and insisted that we go back.
But there was nothing to go back to, not anymore.
Damon flicked the winch switch on and then back off, looking 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, in case they decided to search us.
Tony went out at night to retrieve all the food supplies he could. He’d dropped them off here near the truck, burying them in snow. Carrying food through the streets would have increased our chances of getting attacked on the walk over. Carrying the last 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. Damon looked back at me and smiled.
“You okay?” I asked, shaking my head. My heart was thumping.
Damon was amazingly calm. “Perfect,” he replied.
He was smiling, but his hand on 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 farther 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, looming above shattered windows and the wreckage of air-dropped supply containers. The weather had warmed above freezing, and dead bodies appeared out of the melting snow, piled together with 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, the front end of the truck suspended and swinging in the air. The Land Rover extended a few feet beyond the back tires, so even when they slid off, the back end of the truck should remain on the gantry, right until the last inch of the bumper slid off.
At least, that was the plan.
Growing packs of stray dogs and cats had joined the rats in the 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, the animals scattered when they saw people coming—maybe sensing they were in danger of being eaten themselves.
We were a ragtag gang. I was back to wearing the frilly woman’s overcoat I’d picked up at the hospital. Up to that point, we’d gone out two at a time at most, but now we all needed coats, so we couldn’t be fussy. We’d shuffled along, keeping our eyes down, weapons out.
It had been a long walk, and I still hadn’t recovered. Climbing up onto the parking gantry had taken nearly everything I had, but adrenaline was coursing through my veins now.
Damon 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 and came to a stop.
The truck was angled nose down at about thirty degrees, with Damon suspended in space at least eight feet from the edge of the parking structure in the driver’s seat. The front of the truck was less than ten feet from the billboard platform.
“This is it!” I yelled to Damon. “Any last words?”
“Give me a second.”
“Those are your last words?”
Damon 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 onlookers had gathered, and I could see more coming. Tony and Chuck were yelling, pointing their guns, telling them to keep back, that we didn’t have any food.
“Time,” said Damon, “is just an illusion.” And with that, he flicked the switch on the winch.
What a strange kid.
One side of the bumper 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 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 the zenith of its swing.
Damon had been winching the truck up toward the platform to minimize the swing force, but as it swung around back toward me, the nose of the truck nearly at the platform, he reversed course and began lowering the truck. It wasn’t a moment too soon. The platform started to sag and come loose from the wall. The billboard slowly peeled off the wall as the truck, spinning like a top, descended toward the ground.
With a thud the truck landed on its rear bumper, spiraling into the snow. Luckily, as Damon lowered it the last few feet, it came down on its wheels, not its roof. 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 loosely attached to the building.
And then silence.
“That was awesome!” yelled Damon, his head appearing out 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 taken a breath during Damon’s stunt. Regaining my senses, I walked along the metal platform to the ladder at the back of the gantry. By the time I’d climbed down, Susie and Lauren were already strapped into the backseat with the kids, and Tony was throwing the last bags of food and containers of diesel into the trunk. Damon was on the roof of the truck, unhooking the winch cable.
I ran across the snow, slipping and sliding, arriving just as Damon was getting back in the truck. Chuck held the door open for me, and I jumped in. The winch whirred away, rolling its length of cable back onto the front of the truck.
Tony had driven Humvees in Iraq. Revving the truck, he looked around at all of us. “Good to go?”
“Good to go,” replied Chuck.
I held my breath.
The onlookers were crowding around the truck, and Tony jolted it forward, dispersing the ones in front. Some people banged against the windows, begging us to stop, to take them with us, for any food.
As we drove out onto Gansevoort Street, the only obstacle to our freedom was the giant snowbank lining the edge of Tenth Avenue and blocking access to the West Side Highway. It was taller than a standing man but had been worn down in the middle by foot traffic. Tony pushed his foot down, accelerating.
“She’ll make it,” said Chuck, urging Tony onwards. “Everybody hang on!”
With a crunch, the truck hit the snowbank and began bouncing up, making it feel a bit like we were falling backwards. Then we were on the other side. Sliding down the embankment, we skidded to a stop in the northbound lane of the West Side Highway—on cleanly plowed pavement.
Tony put the truck into gear, turned it around and drove north toward the George Washington Bridge. We were meeting Sergeant Williams at the southeast corner of the Javits Center. He was going to take us from there up to the military barricade.
“Let’s get the hazmat suits on,” I heard myself telling everyone.
Luke was beside me, strapped in between Lauren and me in the third row of seats. His little face looked scared. Looking down into his beautiful blue eyes, I undid his seat belt and sat him on my lap. “You want to play hide-and-seek?”
Relief workers weren’t supposed to have children with them. Luke smiled up at me. How can I stuff him into a bag? My mind rebelled, but Lauren took him from me, kissing me, kissing him.
“You get your hazmat on. I’ll take care of Luke.”
I frowned at her.
“I made a crib for them, silly. Now get your suit on.”
Unstrapping my seat belt, I wriggled into the yellow suit.
The George Washington Bridge loomed in the distance.