Breathless City Page 5

  Stella grasped the sign tight, holding it away from her as blood slipped off the dented aluminum. She might need it again.

  Each new step brought the buildings closer. They passed the second tower of the bridge, almost to the point where the crosswalk curved around to the exit ramp. She stopped, pulling two filthy shirts, torn and stained by things she didn’t want to think about. The grime of it left behind an oily residue on her hands and a nasty, crawling feeling.

  “Here, put this on.” She handed Gavin one shirt and put hers on, trying not to think about what she was doing. When Gavin took the fabric in his hand and grimaced, Stella explained, “It’ll hide our scent.”

  After Gavin pulled the shirt on, Stella looked him in the eye. “Anything could happen in there. If we’re separated,” she said, not mentioning the specific scenarios already churning through her thoughts, “get out. Get back here. I’ll try to meet you here. If I don’t, run. Put as much distance between you and the city as you can.”

  A crease formed in between his eyebrows as he considered the possibility of leaving her behind. Stella doubted that he would, no matter what she told him.

  As the Southwalk curved, descending into New York’s 178th Street, Stella thought over their route one last time, going over her mental map of the city. Adrenaline thudded through her system, wiring her for action. Yet she forced herself to step with care down the remainder of the walkway and forced herself to look for signs of the infected. The building to her right had fresh blood on the walls. Windows were trashed, broken into with fragments of glass hanging onto wooden frames. On the street corner was a pile of droppings that looked like it had pieces of bones in it. By the time they reached the bottom of the walkway, where the bridge met the city, Stella knew exactly where she wanted to go.

  “You ready?” she asked Gavin softly, smiling as he nodded curtly in reply.

  Stella broke into a sprint that could cause her oxygen pill to erupt in her lungs within minutes. Her feet pounded against the concrete, dashing forward. If any of the infected heard, Stella and Gavin would be gone before they could pinpoint where the noise was coming from.

  They had blown past two long blocks of sidewalks before they could even see the infected in the street up ahead. Stella turned to the side and flung the Suicide Prevention Lifeline sign like a Frisbee, hearing a satisfying clang of metal hitting metal, directing the attention of infected up ahead to a spot in the opposite direction. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the pink and orange of a Dunkin’ Donuts surrounded by windows that were intact. She veered sideways into it, pulled open the door, and held it for Gavin to slide in before she followed after him.

  Stella dropped to the ground, finding the lock on the bottom of the door and twisting it, shutting out the danger from the outside. She glanced around the room, checking that it was clear, before she leaned heavily against the wall. Her back slid down to the floor as she exhaled heavily.

  Her heartbeat thudded loud enough for her to hear it. She forced herself to relax, slowing the racing beat of it.

  Gavin sat next to her as her oxygen pill stabilized.

  “Are we safe here?” he asked her quietly.

  “If they haven’t gotten in here after fifteen years, they aren’t getting in tonight. Thank God they never got the hang of door handles.” Stella pulled off the shirt she had taken from a long-dead infected and threw it into the corner of the room.

  Gavin took that as a signal to do the same.

  The ache in her muscles intensified—a reminder that they had walked all through the safe hours without stopping. Ignoring the protest in her legs, Stella pushed herself up to her feet. She examined the store, which still hummed with electricity. Thanks to the big push a few years before the outbreak to “go green,” most of the stores and shops, in the city especially, ran on sustainable energy sources. Not that going green could help stop the spread of the infection; by then, too much damage had already been done.

  Stella walked to the counter, lifted up the divider that separated customers from workers, and stepped through. She checked out the industrial-strength coffee makers, pressing buttons and watching a brown stream of liquid drip out. “Do you like coffee, Gavin?”

  “I don’t know. Never had it,” Gavin replied with a shrug.

  “It’s expired anyway, like everything else.”

  “Is it safe to eat?”

  “It’s generally not recommended, and the quality suffers. Most of it has freezer burn. But people are more likely to die from starving out here than from eating frozen food.”

  Stella walked away from the coffee machines to the back of the stop, stopping before a metal door about seven feet high. As she opened the door, a blast of cold air billowed past her. The freezer was a walk-in-closet, lined with metal shelves and filled with premade baked goods: ready-to-bake bagels, biscuits, muffins, croissants, eggs, sausage, and flatbread.

  “We can take this back,” Gavin said.

  “No, this is just for us.” Stella sighed, wishing that it was that simple. As if all they really had to do for the initiation was find some food and bring it with them to the gang.

  “Isn’t this why we’re here?” Gavin gestured at the frozen stacks of baked goods.

  “How would we bring it back?” Stella watched his expression as he realized that they didn’t have anything to cart the food away in before she continued. “And how would we bring it back without getting killed once it thaws and the infected smell it on us?” Stella walked into the freezer and grabbed two blueberry muffins and a pumpernickel bagel while Gavin took three everything bagels and a croissant.

  “We have three problems right now,” Stella said once they had laid the baked goods out to defrost. “We have to find a month’s supply of nonperishable food they won’t be able to smell. We have to find a way to transport it. And we have to do all that without dying.”

  “That’s more than what Xander said. I didn’t know he was expecting all this.” Gavin ran a nervous hand through his hair.

  Stella sighed, deciding to tell him the truth. “Actually, all that he was expecting was for you to die.”

  6

  “What?” Gavin blurted out before he could stop himself.

  Die?

  It didn’t make any sense. Why feed him and take him in? Why let Stella train him? Or come with him? If it was all for nothing, why do any of it?

  It couldn’t be. Could it?

  But the look on Stella’s face spelled out the truth. She looked… drained. Like she had seen this play out too many times before.

  “You should be flattered.” Stella crossed her arms over her stomach. “He sent you all the way to New York to get rid of you.”

  “Has he done this before?” Gavin watched Stella slowly nod. “How many people before me?”

  “Gavin, we see people die out here all the time.” Stella sighed. Her words were weighted with years of loss.

  She was here because of him. In a place that she already admitted was a death trap. It was his fault.

  “What about you?” Gavin lowered his gaze. Worry bloomed in his core, his stomach tightening. “What if you get hurt?”

  Stella smiled tentatively. “Don’t worry about me. I’ve made it out here for years before I met you. If you want to help me, just focus on keeping yourself alive.”

  Gavin still didn’t like it.

  The light of the sun died down, bathing the streets in a golden glow that reflected across glass and metal. A patch of light streamed across the small table where they sat eating their bagels.

  What would he have to do to survive? Would he have to kill one of the infected? Gavin had studied their biology. They were barely human anymore. If the essence of humanity was the capacity for love and compassion, once the limbic system and anterior insular cortex rotted away, could one be considered human anymore? If the infected threatened the life of someone he cared about, did that even matter?

  Anything could go wrong. What was worse, now he had someone lo
oking out for him. No one had ever risked their life for him; he wouldn’t allow it. He had always done things on his own.

  And afterwards? If they did manage to get out of this in one piece, would Xander still want him dead?

  Gavin picked at his bagel, ripping off little pieces of bread and seeds one at a time to give him something to do. Also, he couldn’t stand to eat more than a little at a time. The bread he was used to was fresh and manmade, while this food had the hollow texture of something mass-produced and processed by a machine. He was still eating long after Stella had finished and begun lining up her weapons on a table, inspecting each and loading ammunition.

  Stella looked up from her firearms to check up on Gavin. “You’d better finish that soon. They’re starting to wake, and we don’t want them smelling food in here.”

  Gavin tossed the rest of the bagel into his mouth, trying not to grimace at the over-refined consistency, or at the way the food was strangely compacted. Pieces of it clung to his teeth and coated the inside of his mouth with residue even after he had swallowed it down.

  Outside the glass windows, the New York streets steadily filled with the infected. As the natural light of the sun dimmed, lights flickered on automatically. The air became charged with the mechanical hum of electricity as neon shop signs lit up, announcing that these long-abandoned stores were open. Billboards flashed blinking advertisements for Coca Cola, Yahoo, iPads, Comedy Central, Jersey Boys, Hyundai, Sephora, and others that covered the surrounding buildings and illuminated the growing numbers in the street. They came from everywhere, stepping out of broken stores, climbing down stairwells and out of alleyways to stand together, motionless, in the streets.

  Gavin watched through the widow. Stella joined his side, peering at their increasing ranks in silence. He felt the need to do something gnawing away at the inside of him and itching down his limbs. They were all just standing there. There had to be something the two of them could do. Stella had come equipped with explosives and had to have enough to take them out. He wanted to whisper the idea to Stella, but he didn’t dare make a sound with so many of them right outside their door.

  An infected emerged from a tourist shop next to them, joining the others in the street. This one was male, and scars ran all the way down its distended belly, splitting through patches of hair like cracks in a sidewalk. It was naked, save for some bloodstained strands of khakis that clung listlessly to its body. As its yellow eyes stared blindly down the street, Gavin couldn’t look away, filled with the suspicion that this infected had to be about his own age. It was too easy to picture himself there instead, visionless yellow eyes on his own face, and his own features lined with scars and the black of his veins.

  At the sound of the strangled bleating of a deer, hundreds of heads snapped to attention. Gavin felt vibrations right through the soles of his feet, an audible rumbling around them as the herd of deer charged past. They weren’t like any he had seen before—some with four legs, but most with five or more. Many were striped with scars in a five-slash pattern that suggested they were made by human fingernails—wounds that festered, causing the surrounding skin to rot.

  In packs, the infected charged, leaping onto their prey like hyenas determined to kill. Working together, jagged fingernails lashed out, scratching out flesh and hair and, when they made solid contact, holding on. Right in front of their store window, one deer struggled against nine of them. It bellowed and thrashed its antlers about, spearing one in the stomach and adding to the spider web of scars. The infected disentangled itself from the six-tine antlers, spilling more blood onto its tattered khakis, and sank its teeth into the muscles of its prey’s neck. The deer let out a scream that rang out until it collapsed.

  At the thud of impact, Gavin grabbed Stella, circling his arms around her, protecting her as best as he could. His body was tense and ready to run away and fight if it came to that. There were too many of them. They were just outside the door, and strong enough to break through if they wanted to. The rhythm of her heartbeat drummed so loud Gavin could feel it against his chest, mirroring his own fast beating.

  The body scraped against the concrete as the infected fought over it, snarling as they tore into the deer, which still bleated feebly as the infected ate it alive. Gavin held Stella even after the feeding frenzy ended and the crowd of infected ran off, chasing down other prey. They had finished off more than just flesh, cracking through the skeleton to eat bone and marrow. Gavin couldn’t look away from the windows, stunned.

  Stella twisted around in his arms so that she faced him, just inches away. She peered into his eyes, carefully reading his expression.

  Gavin’s arm muscles drew taut and immobile, wondering if he had made a mistake.

  Tentatively, she brought her hands up and around his neck so that she was holding him back.

  Gavin relaxed into her warm touch, feeling the adrenaline that had spiked in his blood slowing back down again.

  She leaned in so that her cheek brushed against his ear as she whispered, “Are you okay?”

  At the kind words, Gavin squeezed his eyes shut, relishing the moment. “Yes, I’m fine.” He felt like nothing could go wrong when she was here in his arms. Yet, he opened his eyes, looking out the open window into the space where the infected had completed their hunt just minutes before. Out there, it was different. “But there are so many of them.”

  “It doesn’t matter how many of them there are,” Stella said, reassuring him. She was whispering, Gavin realized, so as to not attract the attention of the creatures hunting outside. “We can make it; we can do this. So long as we follow the rules.” Stella still hadn’t moved, and she was closer than she had ever been, her body pressed right against him as she whispered into his ears.

  Gavin’s heart raced, and all along his arms and the nape of his neck, his hair lifted. The memory of the hunt overshadowed everything. Gavin tightened his arms around her as he listened.

  “The first rule of the city is to know where to go. Never go into a store with broken glass. Nothing with automatic sliding doors. You want to look for a place with door handles; that’s the kind of store they won’t have gotten to already.”

  Gavin considered all the buildings they had passed on their dash into the Dunkin’ Donuts. He just remembered a string of smashed and blood-smeared windows. He was amazed that Stella could even find this place at the pace they were going.

  “The second rule of the city is silent kills. You’re going to run out of bullets before you run out of the infected. Shooting attracts the attention of every infected in hearing range. So do whatever you can to kill them quietly. Knock them out with a shovel, poison them, spear them. Just get creative,” Stella whispered.

  Gavin thought back to the bridge, how Stella found a metal sign and turned it into a weapon. There were plenty of dangerous things he could use. In fact, almost anything used the wrong way had the potential to be lethal.

  For the last rule, Stella pulled away to look Gavin in the eye. She spoke softly, but Gavin was so tuned into her voice that each word hung in the air as if it carried its own weight. “The third rule of the city,” Stella continued, “is to move quickly and get out as fast as you can. The best way to survive is to not be in the city in the first place. But if you are here, get what you need fast and get out.”

  Stella’s violet eyes studied him. After a moment, she sighed. “I meant what I said on the bridge. If we get separated, get out. I don’t want anyone to die for me. Especially not you.”

  He had to look away from her sharp glare as he said in a faint voice, “I don’t know if I can promise you that.” Gavin could feel Stella’s eyes on him, but he couldn’t bring himself to raise his eyes to her, afraid that she would be angry.

  Finally, Stella said, “Now that they’ve eaten, they probably won’t bother us in the morning.” At the change of subject, Gavin peered back up at her nervously to find an amused look on her face. “You should try to get some sleep.”

  Stella disent
angled herself from Gavin’s hold and walked back without another word to the table where she had arranged her weapons and ammunition.

  How could anyone sleep after seeing the horde? Eventually, he eased himself into a comfortable position and followed Stella’s advice.

  “Hey, wake up,” Stella whispered.

  Gavin jolted awake. The dream had seemed so real. He tried to remember—it had seemed important. He was home, back in the largest dome of the oxygen factory. The images were getting jumbled up now, but he could recall the rows of luminescent kelp. As he bent over one strand to take a sample, he remembered seeing a reflection, a familiar face.

  “Come on.” Stella’s voice cut through his reverie. “They’ve started to fall asleep now. If we move quietly, it should be safe out there.”

  Reality descended on his mind like night settling in at the turn of day. It was to be their first day scavenging. Gavin was going to be among deadly monsters and guided by the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

  Gavin dipped his head to hide the flush of red in his cheeks and neck.

  “Eat this quick.” Stella handed him an everything bagel while she packed a handful of extra food into her bag.

  To distract himself from the taste of the bagel, Gavin thought back to the other women he had come across. There were a handful of girls back at the factory, some that were even his age. Not that he really noticed them; he was usually focused on work. Then there were the women in pictures and movies from the old age that the original scientists thought to bring with them in their mad scramble to escape infection. There were all the women that he had seen in his twenty years of life. Then there was Stella.

  As an albino, she was unique. Every one of her features was delicate. Her pale skin contrasted all the colors all around them—the pink and orange of the Dunkin’ Donuts, the brown of the wood, the black of the countertop. Stella simply seemed unearthly, like she couldn’t possibly belong here. The first time he saw her, he had thought he was dead and Stella was an angel. Except that angels couldn’t be as warm as Stella when she placed her fingers lightly on his chin, staring intently at him.