Part 23 (1/2)
How does a kid from Louisiana, who goes to school in Boston, end up a surfer?
I sighed. When I put my jeans on this morning, I had to do up my belt one notch tighter than usual. On the bright side, it looked like I was going to lose some of that weight Lauren had been bugging me about. On the other hand, I was hungry, starving in fact.
Starving.
With a sinking feeling I realized I may get firsthand experience of what starving really felt like.
Tony, Vince, and I got dressed, while some of the EMTs dragged the sleds over to the two badly burned people we were taking up to Penn. Despite the m.u.f.fled cries and whimpers from the injured, they began bundling them up against the cold and doing their best to secure them in the sleds.
Opening the back door, we scampered our way up to the top of the snow piled outside. The sky was a flat gray, and it felt warm. It was amazing how quickly the body adjusted to the cold. Just two weeks ago I would have been complaining about this temperature, s.h.i.+vering, but now, with it hovering a few degrees above freezing, it felt almost tropical.
Standing on the snow pile, our feet were even with the heads of the people standing inside the lobby. One person propped the door open, while the rest carefully pushed the sleds carrying the patients up the steep incline of the snow.
It was awkward work, and each jolt of the sleds earned a cry of pain from their occupants.
Soon we had our skis on and were heading down the middle of Twenty-Fourth in single file with Vince bringing up the rear. The two-lane ski and foot trails down the streets had become well worn, with openings cut into the s...o...b..nks lining the streets.
Our pace was quick.
Rounding the corner of Ninth, we stopped to look down the street. The building on the corner of Ninth and Twenty-Third that had originally caught fire was now a burnt-out husk, but the fire still raged in buildings further down the avenue and around the corner onto Twenty-Second. Thick, black smoke smudged the gray sky.
Continuing onwards along Twenty-Fourth, the foot traffic became steadily heavier, with people going in all directions, dragging and carrying what they could.
The trash that I'd first noticed appearing two days ago had now become heaped along the edges of the street, and with the warmer weather each breath of wind brought the reek of human excrement that was seeping up through the melting snow. At the larger heaps of trash near the intersections, rats competed with gangs of human scavengers, combing through the garbage, searching for food.
As if in a trance, I slid through this landscape of urban decay, watching people, their faces, inspecting their bags, fascinated with the things they'd decided to carry: a chair here, a bag of books there. Someone was carrying a golden birdcage in the distance.
Peering in through the smashed windowpanes of shops, I saw people huddled inside around oil barrels with fires, smoke pouring out of the windows, blackening the sides of buildings. Despite it all, it was mostly quiet, just the soft shuffle of feet on snow and the hushed muttering of the displaced.
”Hold on a second!”
Looking back over my left shoulder, as we rounded the corner of Seventh Avenue to start the trek up to Penn, I saw Vince crouched at the side of the intersection next to a pile of garbage bags, using his phone to take a picture of someone sitting there.
What is he doing?
This wasn't the time to start fooling around. I slackened my pace slightly, not wanting to leave him behind. In a few seconds he was back on the trail with us, jogging to catch up and then running ahead of us and darting off into the snow at the side of the street again. Poking through some bags, and not finding what he was looking for, he ran back to walk beside me.
”That guy back there was dead,” he explained, out of breath.
He began fiddling with his phone, typing something, while he walked in step with me.
There are going to be a lot of dead people, and if they're dead, there's nothing we can do for them anymore.
Unimpressed, I didn't say anything.
”We should be making a record of what happened. That could be somebody's loved one,” continued Vince, finis.h.i.+ng typing and putting his phone away. ”I created a mesh address, connected to my laptop back at our place, for people to send pictures and add text and explanations of where and when and what. When all this is over, maybe we can help piece things together, bring some resolution.”
Taking a deep breath, I realized I had it wrong. Maybe there was something we could still do for them if they were dead. We could give their loved ones some closure.
”That's a great idea. Could you send me the address?”
”Already did.”
Something else caught his eye, and he ran off.
”Smart kid,” said Tony from behind me.
Up ahead, the crowd around Penn Station was much larger than two days before.
The snow was black and tramped down, covered in litter and waste, and thousands of people thronged the entranceways. Soldiers in fatigues had replaced the NYPD officers manning the barricades, their weapons plainly visible, with a sandbagged command post hiding heavier weaponry just behind.
As we approached, a low murmur grew into a roar of voices, sirens, and shouted instructions over megaphones.
Slowing up, we stopped and stared at the crowd.
”No way we're getting in there,” said Tony. ”Maybe we should try Port Authority or head up to Grand Central or Javits?”
”They'll be just as bad.”
Pulling out my phone, I had an idea.
”I'll text Sergeant Williams. Maybe he can send someone out.”
While I sent my message, Vince and Tony detached our harnesses, checking on our pa.s.sengers and explaining what we were doing. Within a few seconds of hitting the send b.u.t.ton, before I'd even put the phone away in my pocket, it pinged an incoming message.
”He's sending someone out to us,” I said.
This mesh network is a lifesaver.
Tony looked up at me and nodded, adjusting the blankets on one of the sleds, whispering that someone was coming.
Vince stood beside me.
”Did you get any incoming messages about-” I began to ask, but was cut off by a shriek in the crowd just ahead of us.
”Give me the bag, b.i.t.c.h!” yelled a large man, pulling a backpack away from a small Asian woman.
The man's blond hair was braided up in dirty dreadlocks, swinging around his head as he pulled and tugged. The woman clung desperately to one strap of a bag, and he dragged her through the dirty snow while pulling a handgun out of one pocket.
The crowd dispersed around them.
”I'm warning you,” he growled, pulling the bag with one hand and pointing the gun at her with the other.
The woman looked up at him, screaming something in Korean or Chinese, but she let go, falling into the snow.
”That's my bag,” she wept in English, her head bowed. ”It's all I have.”
”G.o.dd.a.m.n c.h.i.n.k b.i.t.c.h, I should shoot you right now.”
Beside me, Tony stood up and pulled out his .38, holding it hidden between us. Glancing at him, I shook my head and put a hand out, holding him back. With my other hand I brought my phone up, thumbing the camera on, and took a picture.