The zpocalypto book bund.., p.68
The ZPOCALYPTO Book Bundle (#1 of 4), page 68
Micah nods. “Okay, I see why you’re so excited. That must also explain why they decided not take the Midtown tunnel.”
“What do you mean? How else would they come back?”
“A different way. All I know is that when I last checked this morning, they were heading northeast. Away from there.”
“Were they being chased?”
“They were hauling ass,” he muses. “In fact, they’d covered nearly four miles in under two hours.”
A scary thought crosses my mind. “What if they’ve been infected?”
“They’re sticking together. In fact, they’ve stuck together the whole time. As far as I know, the undead don’t buddy up.”
“But they do swarm together.”
“They’re not infected, Jess. They’re heading for another tunnel. Which means they won’t get caught.”
“Okay, but there’s no way Kelly would know not to take the Midtown tunnel. He would’ve left yesterday morning before they locked Manhattan down. They didn’t discover the IUs until after around noon.”
“I don’t know. Maybe he saw them. He would’ve passed a bunch in the tunnel. Maybe he decided Jake would freeze if they came back that way. Or maybe he got there using a different tunnel altogether. I don’t know. All I know is they’re not coming back through the Midtown.”
I close my eyes and picture the map Ash had gotten for us before our trip. We’d taken the Queens-Midtown on Saturday. But the Brooklyn-Battery was further south and west, not northeast.
When I point this out, Micah shakes his head. “Not the Battery. There’s a third tunnel— and a fourth, actually. They’re a bit farther north, exactly in the direction they were headed.”
“I didn’t know there were other tunnels.”
“Jake told us about them when Ash and Reggie and I met with him that first day, when we discussed borrowing dive equipment from his uncle’s shop. His uncle used to work at the old LaGuardia Airport and there was a service tunnel the staff would use. We never brought the other tunnels up with you guys because we knew they weren’t very good options. But Jake must’ve mentioned them to Kelly at some point. Or maybe Reggie or Ash did.”
“Are they far?”
“Five or six miles from the Midtown tunnel. The next closest one passes under what used to be Randall’s Island and comes out into the old East Harlem neighborhood.”
“Which is all swampland now, Micah. Nobody lives down that way anymore. And nobody goes there except to fish, like old men about to be conscripted and poor families with no other choice.” I shudder at the thought of the mutant creatures that must live in those polluted waters these days.
“I think that’s why they decided to take it— not that it’s polluted, but that it’s remote. The Brooklyn-Battery’s tricky. It comes out right next to the old UN building. That area’s still heavily trafficked. This other tunnel comes out in the middle of nowhere. It’s underwater. No one will see them come out. Only us, when we meet them.”
“Okay, fine, but how’re we going to get to the opening? Swim?
“No. I still need to figure that out. A raft or something. I don’t know how far from the road it’s going to be.”
I frown. “You said there were two tunnels. Where’s the other one?”
“Further north and east, about another mile and half or so. According to Jake, very few people know about it, and it’s not on any of the maps we dug up. But they won’t take that one. Even if they knew where it is, it’s a long five miles through the dark. The Harlem tunnel’s only half that.”
“Assuming it’s open.”
“yeah.”
I whistle. Two and a half miles underwater is still long, more than twice as far as the Midtown. Even freshly rested and with the current behind them, it would take almost three hours to swim, the maximum range of the rebreather cartridges. I’m sure Kelly took a lot of extras from Jake’s van just to avoid what we went through. But still, the longer the tunnel, the greater the chances of something going wrong.
Micah checks the time on his Link. “At the rate they’re moving, they’ll have reached the opening by now. I was just about to check on them again when you showed up at the door.”
A map of Long Island appears on his Link screen. He reverse pinches it to expand one section.
I expect to see a pair of tiny red blips, the signals from their implants, but there’s nothing, just a schematic of the island and roads that haven’t been used in thirteen years. He points. “The Long Island opening’s right about here, right next to the wall.”
“I don’t see anything. Where are their signals?”
“Gone. That’s good news. It means they’re already inside the tunnel. They’re probably directly underneath the wall by now.”
He hands me the Link. While I stare at it, he goes over to the fridge. “This means we’ve got less than two hours to get there, find some way to float out to where the opening is, and retrieve them when they surface.”
He hands me a couple water pouches.
For the first time since arriving, I notice the circles under his eyes, and I realize he’s probably been working night and day on this, both the ArcWare hack and a plan to rescue them. That’s why he’s so wired. All this time I’d thought he only cared about The Game, but he’s been just as worried about the boys as I have. I feel guilty for doubting him. And for doing nothing about it.
“Once they’re back...” he says, exhaling heavily, as if the weight of it all is finally too much for him to bear. He sits, then raises his hands to clasp mine. He gives me a weak smile. “After we’ve got them back, everything will be okay.”
I smile, too, and pray he’s not being overly optimistic. I know things won’t all be okay. After that cop this morning, I sense that even when Kelly and Jake show up again, we’ll still have to answer their questions. Old Fat Bastard isn’t the kind to back off. He’s like an old bulldog with a bone. He knows we’re connected somehow with the IU invasion in lower Manhattan. Unfortunately, he won’t have to dig very far to prove it.
But first things first: Kelly and Jake.
“Come on,” Micah says suddenly. He jumps up again, as if he’s found another reserve of energy to burn. He pulls me off the couch. “We can’t sit and wait for Ash and Reg to ping. We need to move.”
“Just the two of us?”
“If we have to. But we’ll drive around for a bit to see if we can find them.”
I bend down to retrieve my sparring bag.
“Leave it.”
He grabs my arm and pulls me toward the door. “It’ll be fine here. We’ll be back before dinnertime.”
The heat outside hits me like a baseball bat. Even Micah winces a bit at the glare. His forehead begins to glisten.
I head for the passenger seat before turning around again. “I forgot my inhaler. It’s in my bag.”
He gives me an impatient look, but taps his Link to unlock the front door to the house. “Grab a few more waters on your way out.” Then he gets in the car and starts it up to run the air conditioner. “I think we’re going to need them.”
I get the waters, then grab my inhaler out of my sparring bag and slip it into my pocket. As I turn to leave, my hip knocks against the side table. It tips and crashes to the floor, dumping the contents of a drawer.
I reach down to gather everything up. There’s a tacky paperweight from the Alamo, one of the few things I’ve ever seen in Micah’s house with any direct connection to his former life as a citizen of the Southern States Confederacy. His family defected from the Republic of Texas a couple years back. He still has the old twang in his voice. We always used to pick on him about it.
There are a few other trinkets, the usual odds and ends that people accumulate over time, before losing them again in the forgotten nooks and crannies of their lives: an antique yellow and black smiley faced pin, an old digital music player with a silver apple icon, the electronic guts of some other unknown device.
The last thing I pick up is a card of some sort. I turn it over and see that it’s an old fashioned college ID badge, printed on paper and laminated in plastic. Curious, I check out the image of the man on the front. His face is vaguely familiar, but he doesn’t resemble anyone I’ve seen in any of the family photos scattered about Micah’s place. I freeze when I see the name underneath: Eugene Halliwell.
For a brief moment I can’t tell if I’m actually reading it correctly. But when I blink and check again, it’s still there.
Eugene Halliwell, Professor of Immunology, Royce State College.
Micah honks.
I get up shakily and slip the badge into my back pocket.
I need to know how Micah knows the man who supposedly murdered my father.
Chapter 11
We spot Ashley and Reg standing at the corner of Amherst and Fourth, which tells me they’re coming from my house. Micah honks and they see us and hurry across the intersection, relieved looks on their faces.
“Your grandfather said you weren’t home yet from karate,” Reggie says, getting in behind me. “You know that guy scares the crap out of me, right? Sorry, but it’s true. He said we could hang out at your place, but...”
“Yeah, I know. And no need to apologize. He can be a bit...” I want to say hypocritical, especially after what he said about them last night.
“Overbearing?”
“Yeah, that too.”
I let Reggie’s karate reference go without correction. I’ve told him a million times that it’s hapkido. They’re very different martial arts. Karate emphasizes strength, meeting force with force; hapkido teaches using an opponent’s force against him. The misunderstanding probably bugs me more than it should, like when Kelly calls the dojang a dojo. I guess if they haven’t figured it out by now, then it’s unlikely they ever will. I know they don’t really mean anything by it.
“So, Micah filled you in on the deets?” Ash asks.
I turn to her and nod. For a moment I’m tempted to ask her about Rupert’s contact info on her Link, but like the coincidence of my father’s alleged assassin’s college ID being in Micah’s house, it’s not the most important thing right now. “I can’t believe you actually finished the hack on the codex,” I say. “Especially with everything going on.”
“That’s why we finished it.”
“Well, you can all believe it, suckers,” Reggie croons. Now that he’s off the street, he’s in a better mood, and it shows. “I can’t wait to score me a Player!”
“You can have your pick of the lot,” Micah says.
“Not so fast,” Ashley interjects. “This is just the first step. You both know that. All we’ve managed to do is get past the firewall. We still need to translate and assemble all the different game commands into a control device, which Micah will have to build from scratch. And speaking of Micah, he helped a lot. He’s the one who suggested we go back and run a cladistic analysis of the programming structure that ArcWare’s been using for their various versions of their games over the years. This allowed me to extrapolate to the most recent iteration.”
She shakes her head and laughs at herself. “I can’t believe that’s what finally opened it up for us. Once we had that, and using the backdoor to the codex Micah wrote while we were on LI, it was just a matter of configuring the translator until the primary and mature syntaxes fully aligned.”
“You lost me at cladistic analysis,” Reggie says.
“I’m lost, too, and I’m the one who suggested it.”
Ash leans forward and scratches Micah’s head. “All this time I thought I was the guru of hidden Markov modeling. Turns out Micah’s pretty good at solving optimal nonlinear filtering problems himself.”
“Stop!” I yell. “You’re making my ears bleed.”
“My brain’s bleeding.”
“Ash did all the heavy programming,” Micah says, ignoring us. “I just made a few suggestions. She took them and ran.”
“Yeah, and we all know who’s the expert on gaming architecture, Micah. It’s only natural you’d want to look at the programming structure.”
“Jeez, enough with the circle jerk already,” Reggie complains. “Let’s talk how we’re going to get Kelly and Jake.”
“Poor Reg. He hates it when we use multi-syllabic words,” Ashley teases.
“Boring has two syllables.”
“I think it’s because he’s not the center of attention,” I chime in.
“It’s that overinflated ego of his.”
“I got your overinflated right here.” Reggie says, and farts.
“Not in my car!” Micah cries. “Damn.”
Everyone laughs. We’re all giddy with relief knowing that Kelly and Jake are going to be okay, and that they’re on their way back. All the stress we’ve been holding inside finally has an outlet. As we head off the side streets of Greenwich and onto the main roads, the mood grows even more celebratory. We joke and tease each other like it’s old times again.
“Too bad we can’t use Reggie’s inflated ego as a raft to float us out over the Harlem swamps,” Ashley teases.
“I have a plan,” Micah replies, soberly.
“Care to share?”
“I’m working on it.”
“You always say that: ‘I’m working on it.’ ”
“Have I ever disappointed?”
“Well... yes. All the time, in fact.”
“That’s cold, Ash.”
“But it’s true.”
And she’s right. Micah hasn’t always been the most reliable one in the bunch. That would be Kelly. Micah’s made commitments before, then abandoned them. He’s overpromised and under delivered as often as not. Take, for example, the tracking script on LI. He couldn’t get it to work properly despite promising it would. We could’ve used it then. And there have been other times. We’ve just sort of gotten used to it.
“Ouch, harsh,” Reggie whispers.
It ends up killing the mood. We all grow quiet after that. Along with the silence comes some much needed reflection of the sober reality of what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.
There’s also the realization that so much can still go wrong.
It’s the first time I’ve been on the Old New England Thruway in many years. Apparently, very few people ever use it anymore. Micah says most folks nowadays take the Bronx River Parkway, since it rests on higher ground and is less prone to washouts.
The inland scenery quickly gives way to the rainforest-like view now lining the coast. It’s technically not considered a rainforest, since we get too little actual precipitation, and it’s concentrated on too few days to deserve that designation. But with the constant high humidity and all the moss hanging from the trees, it might as well be. My brother Eric says that back when he was a kid, the temperature rarely reached a hundred in Connecticut during the summers. Now it hovers above ninety for five straight months out of the year and the number of hundred-plus degree days has grown steadily from one year to the next. We get nearly a month of them now.
Both sides of the highway are lined with these curtains of moss, which hide the Atlantic on our left and the inland swamps on the right. We can still feel them both pressing up tight against us, though. It’s like driving through a tunnel on the edge of the world.
We cross into New York at the Port Chester outpost, where the guard seems both surprised and pleased to see us. He’s very chatty. So much so, in fact, that I begin to think he might never let us through. “Going fishing?” he asks. “There’s a great rental shack off Locust Point. I take my sister’s kids there all the time. They love drifting among the ruins. Just don’t eat the fish. Catch and release only, I always tell people. Unless you wanna get your stomach pumped, that is. And if you happen to hook any two-headers, take a picture and post them on the Stream.”
“Can you rent rowboats there?”
“Sure. Rowboats, canoes. Nothing with a motor, of course. You know about the mines right? They’re sound and vibration sensitive. And mind the buoys. Stay this side of them.”
We nod.
“Do all that and you’ll be fine.”
He finally lifts the gate arm and waves us through. “Use the bloodworms,” he shouts, smiling cheerily as we drive past. “A hundred for a buck. Catfish go nuts for them!”
“We should’ve come this way before,” Reggie grumbles. “He didn’t even bother to check our Links or scan our implants.”
“I feel sorry for him,” Ash says. “He looks so lonely all the way out here.”
“We still would’ve had to go through the other checkpoints,” Micah points out. “The ones further south. And it would’ve taken us twice as long.”
“No, I meant we should’ve gone through the Harlem tunnel instead of the Midtown.”
I shudder. We shouldn’t have gone in the first place.
“It’s more than twice as long, Reg,” Ashley reminds him.
Reggie shrugs and rotates his shoulders, as if a five-mile dive — there and back — is all in a day’s work. Now that there’s no chance of it happening, he’s all Mister I-Can-Do-Anything again. He’s obviously forgotten how hard it was just a couple days before, when the distance was just a mile and we very nearly drowned.
Remembering this makes me start worrying about Kelly and Jake again. I hope they carry a lot of extra cartridges on their belts. And knives. And I hope there aren’t any tunnel blockages or undead.
We continue south. The land grows even swampier. The road is badly in need of repair. Micah doesn’t dare go any faster than thirty. “Don’t want to blow an axle or throw a tie rod,” he says. I think he talks just so we don’t have to think about anything else.
The road rises and dips like a kiddy rollercoaster, and more times than not, a shallow stream of gray water flows over the low parts. Some parts of the road are covered in mud or silt. We leave fresh tire tracks on it. I worry irrationally that someone might follow them and find out what we’re doing.
The empty buildings this close to the river are even more desolate and decrepit than the abandoned ones we saw on Long Island, perhaps because of the repeated flooding and subsequent retreat of waters they’ve been exposed to. Dried moss and seaweed dangles from the eaves and street signs. The water-worn husks of ancient tree trunks, stripped of bark and sun-bleached to silver, stand like silent sentinels. The place makes me think of dead things— not the undead, but of ancient civilizations and long lost cities and ghosts and haunted places. It’s just a different type of extinction process than the one we’re used to. This one gets inside your soul and eats at you from the inside. The one we know consumes you from without.
