SINK - Melt Book 2: (A Thrilling Post-Apocalyptic Survival Series) Read online

  “Walk slowly and confidently. Don’t turn. Don’t answer anyone, and don’t let them check under my blanket.” Jo sat in the wheelchair she had commandeered, bundled their stolen meds into her laps like two giant Santa sacks, and let Aggie take the handles. “Remember, slow and steady wins the race.”

  Aggie cast a glance over her shoulder as they exited the ward. No sign of Petra or Midge and Sean was being wheeled to the elevator. So far, so good. Now all they had to do was get an almost-fatally injured boy out to the car without waking him, transport him home, and pray he didn’t develop sepsis and die.

  And, as Midge would say, repel all boarders.

  Chapter 13

  “The elevators are all on lock down,” said Jan. “We have to use the stairs.”

  “Don’t hospitals have evacuation chutes or something?” said Paul.

  No one answered. They were huddled around Fishgirl’s bed, talking about how to get her down the stairs without touching her. Paul went to the other side of her bed, slid his hands under her sheets, and lifted her into his arms.

  All three of them—Christine, Fran, and Jan—protested, but not one of them offered to take her from him. He’d calculated the odds while they’d debated whether to take Angelina or leave her. They kept saying she was contagious, but maybe he was too. The cut on the back of his head had appeared without explanation and then he’d passed out. He wanted to believe it was an electrolyte imbalance that had made him keel over, but that was wishful thinking rather than logic or deduction. The timeline fit. He’d been at the blast site, inhaled all that poison, and marched through clouds of toxins. For all he knew, he was a dead man walking. Might as well do some good while he still had the chance.

  “Tuck the sheet around her face,” he said. He couldn’t see who did it, but someone futzed at his shoulder, so he knew when it was done. “I will need someone to walk in front of me, so I can stabilize myself.”

  Jan stepped up. Paul laid his hand on Jan’s right shoulder and the two of them made their way to the stairwell.

  They had to move slowly. Paul only had slick hospital booties on. One wrong move and they’d be skittering down the slippery stairs and landing in a crumpled heap of diseased flesh and fish skin. Jan was good, though. Steady. He took one step at a time. Left foot down. Right foot meets it. Left foot down. Right foot meets it.

  Fishgirl, also known as Angelina, groaned.

  “How many flights is it?”

  “Best not to think about it,” said Jan.

  The further they went the heavier she got. He needed something to distract him. “Who was the last person to see my mother?”

  “I think we were together,” said Christine. “Standing at the back of the fire truck. It was before K&P collapsed. You know, I’ve lost all track of time. I have no clue how long ago that was.”

  Jan nodded. “That's the last time I saw her.”

  “She was agitated,” said Fran. “She couldn't accept that the situation was out of our hands. She went to find the Fire Chief.”

  “Where do I find this Fire Chief?” said Paul.

  “Oh, he is long gone by now,” said Christine. “Once our building went down, I'm sure they had to move Command Control.”

  “But this Chief was the last person to see her, right?”

  “We don't know that she ever got there,” said Christine. “She's Alice. She goes where the evidence takes her.”

  “I need to find her. I need to take her home.” Home. It might as well be another planet, with its comfort and order and harmony. They’d be worried, of course. Unless Dad had made it back there without him. Or, the thought lifted his spirits, Mom. What if she’d done what Michael Rayton did and survived the blast and taken off running? She could be home, snuggling with Midge, telling them all stories of how she’d made it out. No. She wouldn’t do that. It wasn’t her. She never ran from danger, only towards it. If she was alive, she’d be in the thick of it, helping others to safety. It was her personal mandate. Her code. He couldn’t imagine her doing anything else. He would never be that brave. Or that good. If he could be half the human she was, he’d be satisfied. Half of Mom’s gumption and spirit was like ten thousand ordinary people’s get-up-and-go. “Promise me you will always remember,” she would say, “you’re braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.” Paul smiled. If it was good enough for Winnie the Pooh, it was good enough for him.

  The building shook, but the quality of the movement had changed. Last time he’d felt the earth move under his feet, it had been a side-to-side motion. This was a jerk, a jolt, a sharp jab.

  “Faster,” said Jan. “We don’t have much time.”

  It began as a thin stream of dust. They all saw it. None of them commented. It was what it was, talking about it wouldn’t make it any safer.

  Paul stole a look at the wall. They were still on the fourth floor. They weren’t going to make it.

  The building jolted again. No question.

  “Pick it up,” said Fran. She’d overtaken Paul and Jan and was turning down the next flight of stairs.

  The sound was unreal. Paul had never heard anything like it. If the screech of a howler monkey had been met with the roar of a metallic lion and the sickening thunk of a seventeen-car-pile-up on an icy road, it still wouldn’t have come close to the sound that filled his ears. Somewhere close by, a building was collapsing. There could be no other explanation. Perhaps a hospital wing had sheared off and slid down the other side of the wall. It was that close. They’d be next. Still, they kept going. One foot in front of the other.

  “I make it, I make it, I make it,” he thought. There were bargains to be had with the universe, surely? I’ll give up…what…what would he trade for his life? Not Mom or Petra or Aggie or Midge. Never. He’d never trade the people he loved.

  The sounds grew louder, stronger; the rumbling nearer. The wall beside them started to peel at the corners.

  Dang, he’d forgotten to add Dad’s name to the list. He’d never trade him, either, even though deep in his heart, he loved his mom the best. He was a textbook momma’s boy and he didn’t care who knew it. That left him with no one to offer up to the Universe by way of trade. He couldn’t let Angelina, Fishgirl Extraordinaire, take his place. She was crucial to K&P’s research. Or Professor Baxter. She was the one who had to do said research. And he liked Fran, she was always a good egg. Which left Jan van Karpel. Could he offer Karpel up in his place? He blanched. He’d lost his mind. There were no bargains to be had. All he could do was walk as fast as possible and not look back.

  Second floor. Come on, come on. We can do this. Keep going. His foot slipped out from under him and he was skidding, falling, letting go of Jan, grabbing onto the hand rail, trying to balance Angelina on his shoulder. They were going to go down, but at least she would land on top of him. He could keep her safe.

  What was he thinking? The building was collapsing around his ears and his worry was that Fishgirl would have a soft place to land.

  Jan was right there, strong arms at the ready, righting him before he slid all the way to the floor. “You’re good,” he said, wiping his hand on his trousers. The wipe left a red smear behind.

  Paul caught Jan’s eye. Jan shrugged. “Can’t be helped,” he said. “On we go.”

  Paul sent up a prayer. “Let Jan be okay. Let him be okay. Let this not infect him. Please.” Guilt and hope and desperation swirled in the pit of his stomach. He couldn’t give in to it. He had to concentrate.

  The door to the lobby was in sight. Couldn’t run. Couldn’t slip again. Had to keep going as fast as he could. She shifted on his shoulder and he felt something warm on his neck. Jan was right, though, it couldn’t be helped. Could have been from her. Could have been from him. Didn’t matter. What mattered was that they get clear of the building.

  Jan was first. He held the door. There were hundreds of people in the lobby, all of them pressing toward the exits to get out. Paul shuffled, as fast as his bo
oted feet would let him, with the crowd.

  Outside the door, the pavement was cracking, opening, showing the dark earth below. He needed to get out and go left. He felt the building shudder, like a swimmer taking that first, huge gasping breath after being underwater for too long.

  “All or nothing,” he said and started running. He couldn’t wait to see who else made it out. He cared, of course, but not so much that he would stop. His eyes were laser-focused on the nearest cross street. If he could make it there, he’d have some cover if the building did collapse. Run, Paul. Run as fast as you can. Run and don’t look back. “There will be time for agonizing later, but only if you make it. The dead have no regrets, because they can’t. Regret is a luxury reserved for the living. Now, run.”

  His feet did better on the asphalt. Not slipping like they had on the slick hospital stairs. He was going to make it. He was at the corner when St. Patrick’s went down, still running. The roar of falling concrete came barreling down the street. There was nowhere to go, no place to hide. All he could do was drop to the ground the other side of the ornamental garden wall, Angelina in his lap, and hope for the best. He felt it, a shock-blast to his back and ankles, but he didn’t see it.

  The landslide lasted for an eternity as floor after floor collapsed on top of one another and then, just when he thought it might be safe to stand, to move, to get further from the destruction, another round of crashing and crumbling would start up. There were building particles and bits of concrete flying all around him, but it was the dust he was most worried about. Last time he’d hunkered down in the dust, it had proven deadly. The firefighter had died. Briefcase Man had died. He couldn’t let this girl die, too.

  He stood, Angelina now lying in his arms rather than over his shoulder. At least one of the fish skins had started to peel on her forearm, revealing an angry, pink welt that oozed and cracked. He did his best to cover her with his own body—so none of the pulverized plaster that was raining down on them would touch her—and pulled the sheet off her face and down over her arm. She’d breathe in the air, but her wounds would be covered. One route and the poison went to her lungs, the other went directly into her bloodstream. Who was he to say which was the lesser evil? All he knew was he had to run again.

  He wasn’t the only one. As the crumbling slowed, more and more people were doing their best to get away from the building collapse. He looked for a street sign, but one was flat on the ground and the other was obscured by the avalanche of debris that had fallen from the sky.

  He couldn’t see the sun, he couldn’t see any shadows, nothing that his dad had taught him about tracking was any use. All he could do was go away from the current disaster and hope he wasn’t running towards a new one. Manhattan was collapsing in on itself and there was a long way to fall. Below the street were the sewers. Below the sewers, the subway. And below the subway…well, it was a skinny strip of land that barely made it onto a map. He did not want to get gobbled up by the ground.

  Angelina was making thin, mewling sounds. He held her up to his ear, hoping for a word, but she was in another place, drugged and out of it. Thank goodness. Because if she had been able to feel the jolts and jars of being carried through the Garment District by a teenager in hospital scrubs it would have been slow going. He needed to come up with a plan. “No one succeeds, who first does not plan.” His mom had bugged him to read “The Art of War,” but he’d never gotten around to it. Fingers crossed the Cliff Notes as channeled by Mom covered the basics.

  Get out of the danger zone. Get Angelina to safety. Find the last person to see Mom. Find Mom. And Dad. Go home.

  It all sounded so easy when it was laid out like that. The trick was to break each goal into steps. Maybe he shouldn’t do what everyone else was doing. Maybe he should go downtown, rather than across town. There was no saying the cracks that had swallowed four skyscrapers would move south, rather than east. No one knew anything. They were all in equal measures of ignorance and darkness. Go south, get away from the people, find another hospital—that was it, he needed to find another hospital—and hand Angelina over to someone who’d know what to do with her.

  He had no phone so he couldn’t Google “hospitals.” He was going to have to hike by memory. Manhattan was chock full of ERs. There was one practically every ten blocks. Not literally, but per square foot, he was pretty sure he’d read somewhere that Manhattan had you covered.

  The ground underneath him rumbled. His stomach dropped to his feet. It couldn’t be the subway. They’d been stopped a day earlier. He couldn’t place the noise, though. It was deep and loud and relentless. He kept trotting down the street, doing his best to keep Angelina covered and make good time. The noise didn’t stop.

  His feet were wet. He looked up. Not rain. He searched the sidewalk. It was coming from the gutters. Water was bubbling up from below. He’d seen his fair share of mains breaks in his time; water gushing up and splashing kids in the neighborhood. It had made it into a thousand New York films. On a hot summers’ day, someone takes the cap off a fire hydrant, all the kids are out and dashing through the water. That was never how it happened, though. It was a leak, someone was annoyed, they called the Fire Department, who came when they could, but while they waited, New Yorkers watched their basements flood.

  The water lapped at his ankles, drenching his booties. It was annoying, but nothing to what came next. The roaches scurried up from their underground lairs. He should have anticipated that, but he hadn’t. They were scampering ahead of the water, big as silver dollars, and ugly as all get go. They might be the ones to survive the apocalypse, but the ones directly in front of his feet weren’t going to make it to the afternoon. If he stepped on them, well tough. He wasn’t going to let anything slow him down.

  The water flowed with him, as if it was chasing him downtown. The race was on. But what was the point, if the roads were all flooded? He needed to be away from the deluge, not heading into it. He wished with all his heart that Petra was there. She’d be able to tell him about the contours of Manhattan; where the high ground was, where the low-lying points were. She had the visual memory of a high-speed mega-computer and a photographic memory. She’d know exactly where to go in order to avoid surges or unusually deep pockets.

  Another roach popped out of the storm drain, just inches from his foot. The New York Roach, king of all survivors, was a huge and loathsome beast. At least a couple of inches long, its copper back and whisker-thin feelers would gross out even the strongest stomach. He felt that lizard-brain shiver run through him: the one reserved for spiders and snakes and things that slithered out of the gutter. The reaction was pure nature, no nurture. Everyone was repulsed by bugs.

  Then there was a second roach, bigger than the first. Paul had done his best to keep his cool, but now that there were two giant, waxy, hard-backed monsters it was clearly an invasion. He did not need them touching him. A few feet away, coming from a different sewer, another roach. Then another. And another.

  He hoisted Angelina over his shoulder, closed his eyes, and marched. The fabric that had been between his sole and the street was tattered, leaving his feet exposed to the crack and crunch of squished roaches. “If I make it out of this,” he said, “I am going to kill every last roach on the planet.”

  The water slowed and became more shallow as he made his way down the avenue. Up ahead, a young man waved his arms over his head. Paul couldn’t tell what he had in his hand. Was it a phone or a gun? Either way, he had to press forward. The water wasn’t letting up. Going back wasn’t an option.

  Chapter 14

  Aggie couldn’t stop laughing. She didn’t believe they’d pulled it off. It had seemed so improbable: being able to evacuate an ICU unit with a stash of drugs and a very sick young man.

  Sean was only semi-conscious in the back seat, which was probably just as well.

  “You were amazing.” Aggie squeezed Midge tight.

  Petra leaned forward. Not all the way. Sean was still in her lap and she c
ouldn’t move him too much for fear of undoing his stiches. “The Oscar goes to…”

  Midge laughed and buried her face in Aggie’s shirt.

  “Margaret Sofia Everlee, Best Actress in a Feature Length Motion Picture.” Petra did a half-baked impersonation of some English actress Midge loved. The one who played Professor Minerva McGonagall.

  Aggie dialed up her best English accent. “Mizz Everlee, known for doing her own daredevil stunts, took this role in spite of the low budget.”

  “Read, ‘no budget,’” said Petra.

  Aggie squeezed her sister so hard that Midge squirmed. “How great does it feel to be the hero of the hour?”

  “I just did the plan,” said Midge.

  “Yes,” Jo didn’t take her eyes off the road, “but the tears were a master stroke. That kept them nice and busy.”

  “Because of you,” said Aggie, “we are all going home together.” She didn’t voice her fears about taking a post-operative 19 year old back to a “rustic” cabin.