Part 31 (1/2)
The city was barely recognizable.
At the corner of Ninth and Fourteenth, right outside the Apple Store, was an urban park I'd often visited to enjoy a coffee, to watch the hustle and bustle of people coming in and out of Chelsea. The tops of the park's small trees poked forlornly out of the snow at our feet, with snow-covered traffic lights swinging at head height above mounds of frozen garbage.
The wedge-shaped building forming the corner of Ninth and Hudson hung in s.p.a.ce like the prow of a s.h.i.+p, the snow and garbage piling up against it like water swelling up from the dark depths of the underground city. Jutting up from what looked like the center of the s.h.i.+p was the burnt-out husk of the Gansevoort hotel. Out of each smashed window, dark smudges rose up the side of the building, its blackened walls a testament to a fire that had raged within.
Hanging in front of the hotel was a billboard, still perfect and untouched. It was an ad for a premium vodka, and the smiling images in the advertis.e.m.e.nt, a man in a tuxedo and woman in sleek black dress, seemed like alien creatures, laughing as they surveyed the wreckage at their feet while they enjoyed a drink at our expense.
Something moved in the corner of my eye, and I looked sideways to see someone looking down at us from the second floor of the Apple Store. Trash was piled against the floor-to-ceiling windows. As I watched, another person appeared, looking down on us.
I pulled on Chuck's arm. ”We'd better get moving.”
He nodded, and we continued on.
We were traveling light, stripped down, with nothing to offer, or more importantly, with nothing that looked worth stealing. No backpacks, no packages, and we wore as ragged-looking clothing as we could manage. The only things plainly obvious were our weapons, my .38 in a leather holster and Chuck's rifle slung over his back.
The weapons spoke to people watching us. They said that we didn't want to be disturbed. I felt like a Wild West gunslinger in a lawless, icy outpost.
The pace of decline in the hallway had taken an abrupt downward turn when the cholera outbreak had been reported at Penn three days ago, and all the emergency shelters had been quarantined.
Those daily trips for food and water had given the days a schedule, a pattern, a reason to get up and get moving for most of the people on our floor. Now they lay inert on the couches and chairs and beds, completely cut off from external contact.
But it wasn't just the removal of outside support.
Up until a few days before, we'd been coasting. People had been managing on what they could scrounge within the building for sc.r.a.ps of food, clean clothes, and clean bedding and blankets. But we'd reached the end of that supply-the clothes and bedding and blankets were stale and infested with lice, and every sc.r.a.p of food from the apartments was gone.
More importantly, the system of bringing up and melting snow for drinking and cooking had worked well for the first week, and been manageable for the second, but as we entered the third week, it was hopeless. The barrels and containers of water were dirty, and the snow outside, filthy. We'd tried going over to the Hudson River, but the water at the edges of the piers was encrusted with ice.
We'd initially quarantined the people returning from Penn downstairs, but we'd given up after capturing Paul's gang. At that point, a half dozen of us were holding nearly thirty people at gunpoint, and anyway, it had been impossible to guess if they were exhibiting signs of cholera. Almost everyone was ill in one way or another, most with diarrhea from drinking infected water.
The latrines on the fifth floor were beyond disgusting, and people had migrated from bathroom to bathroom in each abandoned apartment, floor by floor, looking for anything clean. Very quickly, each had become as filthy as the next.
And we had nine dead people on the second floor. I felt responsible, and it haunted me.
I'd never even seen a dead person before. We'd opened the windows, turning the second floor apartment, with them in it, into a cold meat locker. I hoped the scavengers wouldn't get in-human or otherwise.
Surveying the outside world, it seemed our situation was the same as the rest of the city.
Hope was rapidly evaporating into the cold winter air, even as the government radio stations kept insisting, day after day, that power and water would be restored soon, and to stay indoors, stay warm and safe. The refrain had become a joke: ”Power on soon, stay warm, stay safe!” we'd say to each other as a greeting.
The joke had worn thin.
We'd reached the parking structure.
”There she is,” said Chuck brightly, pointing up in the air at his truck.
It was the first time I'd heard him excited in days.
At that moment, an army convoy rumbled by on its way uptown on the West Side Highway. Where before their presence had been rea.s.suring, now it made me angry.
What the h.e.l.l are they doing? Why aren't they helping us?
The meshnet was reporting rumors of emergency supply airdrops, but it was hard to believe anything anymore.
Looking up and away from the highway as the convoy disappeared, I followed Chuck's hand to see his truck, still perched fifty feet up in the air. Being so high up had turned into something of a blessing. The cars lower down had been scavenged for batteries, parts, anything useful, but his truck still looked intact.
”So you think we could attach the winch cable to that?”
His hand pointed slightly in front of the truck to a billboard platform attached to the side of a building.
”Not more than twenty feet, maybe less. Your winch is rated at twenty thousand pounds, right?”
”The half-inch cable has a twenty-five-thousand-pound breaking point, but it'll probably take a lot more for an instant. My baby's stripped down for improved mileage, but,” mused Chuck, mentally calculating in his head, ”she must weigh seven thousand pounds with the skid plate.”
”It's going to be close.”
I was the only engineer in the bunch of us.
The best I could figure it, the energy of the vertical drop would be converted into a forward velocity as it swung, with maximum force at the bottom of the arc. It wouldn't start swinging until the end of the truck was dragged off the platform, and we'd minimize the swing length by winching the truck up as it fell.
By my calculations, by being as careful as possible, the swinging truck would exert at least five times its weight in downward force at the bottom of its swing. This was about double what the winch was rated for, and even if that didn't fail, we needed the billboard platform not to rip out of the wall of the building during the performance.
”So Vince volunteered to ride this rodeo?” asked Chuck, shaking his head as we walked right underneath the billboard.
It was better if someone rode inside the truck to control the winch if we really wanted this to work, and our lives depended on it. We could set the winch in motion and let it go without anyone inside, but this risked jamming or breaking it. I wouldn't have done it, but Vince was more certain of my calculations than I was.
”In exchange for us driving him near his parents place near Mana.s.sas,” I replied, nodding. ”I figured it was close enough to where we wanted to go anyway.”
Still looking up, Chuck began planning.
”Tonight you go on another one of your food runs, and I'll start packing as much gear as we can carry.”
I took out my smartphone and checked. We still had meshnet connectivity, even down here. Vince was up and running on a new laptop, but the thousands of lost images were irreplaceable.
I was texting Vince, telling him it looked like his plan would work, when an incoming message appeared from him.
”We're going to need a lot of water,” continued Chuck, ”and-”
”The president is going to be speaking to the nation tomorrow morning,” I announced, reading off the message on my phone. ”It will be broadcast on all radio stations. They're going to tell us what's going on.”
Chuck exhaled long and slow.
”About time.”
I put my phone away.
”And if getting this truck down doesn't work, we're going to hot-wire something from the street, right? We need to get out of here.”