Not Flesh Nor Feathers

And I was going towards the river, not away from it. But just to the Read House. I’d make it in a few minutes, and it wouldn’t be so bad. Nick would be waiting for me, and I would be happy to see him, in a complicated sort of way that I didn’t want to think about too hard.

I kept my head so low that I almost didn’t see Pat. But he stepped in front of me and I could either walk through him or stop, so I stopped. I looked over and out, and there he was—wet and angry looking, like something bad had happened but there was nothing to be done about it now.

He looked just like he had the last time I saw him, big pants and big shirt on a frame that was skinny like a coatrack.

He’s right, you know. About the church.

“What?” I said, and I said it softly. People could see me, there on the sidewalk, through the wet and across the train tracks.

The church. It all started there.

I hesitated, unsure of what to ask. “Then, um. Where’s the church? Should I go there, if that’s where all this started?”

Naw. It’s been gone for years, Nick told you. Burned to the ground. Starting at the beginning won’t get you shit. It ended at the river. You’ll have better luck starting there.

“Why? I don’t get it—I don’t know what I’m supposed to be looking for, or what I’m supposed to do when I find it!”

They’re coming back. Don’t worry. You’re headed the right way.

“Hey lady, you coming from the Choo-Choo?”

I whirled around and nearly hit the guy who was standing there, even though he wasn’t being threatening at all. He was older and a little stooped; he looked tired and wet like everybody else.

“Yeah,” I told him.

“It’s a shelter, right? They’re letting people sleep there?” “Yeah. The Red Cross is there.”

“Okay. There’s food?”

“Sure,” I said.

He wandered off, back the way I’d come. When I looked back towards the river, Pat was gone.

A street or two away I heard glass breaking, and people throwing instructions back and forth. I clung to the edge of a building and walked in the shadows. They didn’t see me; but I watched them while I passed. They were letting themselves into a super-nice restaurant on the corner across from the train tracks.

Tired of Little Debbies, I guess.

I didn’t get the impression they were a violent lot, just a nervously looting gang in search of some silverware or maybe a bit of pate. I made sure not to step on anything loud and kept my head down, because that’s what you do. It’s what we all were doing. We were all walking with shoulders pointed and heads aimed at the streets in front of us. So unsure. So confused. Just don’t touch us. Just don’t stop us. We’re desperate and hardened, even those of us wearing open-toed sandals.

I could see tiers beginning to form, and it was strange, and clannish. Some people hid and hunkered with children or in dry places where food could be stashed. Some people went walkabout because we had business to attend to, or maybe because we couldn’t just sit still and wait to drown or starve.

All around, in patches of gold, small fires lit up the night between the wet spots.

I went past all of them. I did not stop to warm my hands except by holding my own ribs harder. I stuck to the sidewalks and as close to the buildings as I could; I hid against the walls and scraped my shoulder against the bricks, ducking into doorways and sliding into recessed entryways, always trying to keep myself out of the flickering light.

After all, you never knew who was out there.

Nick knew. And Nick thought Caroline knew, too.

Above an intersection clogged with empty cars, the streetlights repeatedly flashed red above me. The dim, crimson light cast an intermittent sheen across the cars and the roads, and the wet patches blinked it back.

All around me, from everywhere and nowhere in particular, voices and crashes cut the quiet into pieces. I learned fast that it was best not to look too hard. It was best not to hang around and wonder. Best to keep moving, to keep hopscotching the blocks to the Read House, where I might find civilization.

The Read House is down the street from the big convention center, so it’s surrounded by less deluxe lodgings and a few restaurants, coffeeshops, and banks. Now necessity had forced it to give shelter to a greater capacity than it was ever meant to serve. The halls were strewn with blankets and bodies, arms and legs beneath every step.

I pushed open the big glass doors and past a man in a uniform. “Nick? Nick?” I said it loud but not in a yell. Not while people were trying to settle into something more peaceful than flight, even if it was only for a little while.

I went for my phone again and called him, because I didn’t know how else to track him down.

“I see you.”

“What?”

“Look up at the mezzanine.” I did, and there he was, waving.

I flipped the phone shut and stuffed it into my pocket, which was marginally drier than my purse. “There you are,” I said, even though he probably couldn’t hear me from where he was.

“This way,” he said, with a finger pointing at the stairwell door.

I nodded. “Hang on.”

More careful stepping took me to the stairwell, which was propped open—possibly as a result of some fire code. A couple of people came and went, clomping up and down the cement stairs with unadorned iron rails.

When I emerged on the next floor, he was waiting for me. “I think the most telling thing about any of this is that no one will take Caroline’s room.”

“What?”

“Look around. People are fighting for a square foot or two of space, any place to set a baby or a broken leg. But you can’t put anyone in Caroline’s room. They opened it at first, because, you know, they basically had to. But within an hour she’d chased them out. She chases everybody out. She’ll probably try to chase us out too.”

He was fidgeting and frightened-sounding, and I wasn’t used to it. Not from him. I liked him better brazen, but what can you do? He’d learned something new and it changed him.

I never do get used to it, the way it changes people. I’ve known for so long that it isn’t fair for me to be impatient.

“But that’s where we’re going, isn’t it?”

“Where else?” he said and sounded downright happy about it. “She’s got answers, Eden. She’s got them, and I want them, so we’re going to go in there, and we’re going to get them.”

Ah, that was more like it—more like him.

“You keep talking about answers, and you mentioned something new and weird down by the water. Are you going to fill me in or leave me guessing? Because I’ve got to tell you, it’s a madhouse out there—a mad city, anyway. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Overhead and past the windows we heard the hearty flapping of a helicopter’s blades cutting low near the buildings. It flew in the company of several others too, or so it sounded. Nick lifted his chin and gestured at the big noise, pointing towards it with his face. “They’d better hurry up.”

“Who? What?”

“Evacuating. They’re starting with the hospitals. They’ll hit the shelters next. They’ll get the people who’ve done what they’re told out first. But have you noticed? The National Guard is gathering at the ridges and moving people over them, too. We’ve got to empty the city. We’ve got to move everyone before the things get any faster, and higher, and farther into downtown. And, you know, I don’t think it will be long now. I think it’s just a matter of time.”

I followed him while he fumed his little tirade. He reached back behind and grabbed my hand; I wasn’t following fast enough, climbing my way over the sniffling kids and wide-eyed old people on blankets.

“What’s—” I started, but he cut me off.

“The police are figuring it out now, too. We’re all coming around. We’re all starting to see. The lock failure? You think that was an accident? I don’t. It was an event. It was a deliberate event?

I yanked on his hand because at least it gave me an ounce of leverage to pry his attention towards me. “You’re about to lose me here, hero.” I let go of his hand. “Start talking sense already, would you? I don’t know what’s going on, so you’re going to have to tell me. And you’re going to have to do it like a civilized, sane human being if you want me to pay attention.”

I released him and let my hands drop to my sides. I was so tired. “I’m sorry,” I amended it. “It’s been a rough day. Just, please. Just spell it out for me. I’m beat, over here.”

He stopped and looked me up and down, almost like he was seeing me for the first time—but not really. More like he’d just noticed something that had been there all along, but he didn’t have a reason to see it before. “Okay,” he said it in a half-whisper, the kind that comes out when you exhale while your mouth holds the shape of a word.

“Okay,” I echoed.

“Let’s do it like this, then. The elevators are working but crowded. I’ve scored a pass for the service elevator. Let’s take that, and I’ll tell you what I saw on the way up.”

“Okay,” I said again, and I let him guide me down a hall and around a corner. He pressed the button on an elevator that didn’t look half so shiny as the ones in the lobby, but would be serviceable enough if the doors ever opened.

They did. We stepped inside. He picked a key from his pocket and plugged it into the hole beneath the list of floor buttons. The doors closed and we were lifted up with that stomach-dropping whoosh that comes from an elevator built for speed, not comfort.

“Down by the river, where the green grass grows,” he said in a sing-song. “Down by the river, something is coming up, and coming out. I don’t know how many of them there are, and I don’t know what they want. But they’re dead. They’re very, very dead. And they are pissed.”