The Secret Runners, page 24
—
—and when I opened them, we were on the other side, back in the present day, in the exit cave beneath the American Museum of Natural History.
I led Jenny up the ladders to the surface, and a few minutes later we emerged from the gardener’s hatch in the conservancy garden and I heard the glorious sounds of car horns and police sirens in the night.
We were back.
Just in time to witness the end of the world.
THE END OF CIVILIZATION
What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.
—Richard Bach
MAYHEM
New York City was in meltdown.
It was indeed March 14—the night of March 14, to be precise—and the city had descended into chaos, chaos that would only get worse over the next three days.
Police cars and ambulances sped every which way, lights flashing, sirens wailing. Looters laid siege to buildings; hooligans threw Molotov cocktails into shop windows. Fires blazed everywhere.
Jenny and I split up to find our respective fathers, arranging to meet later.
I passed the San Remo building: a giant crowd of rioters was massed in front of it, held back by police. They chanted, “We want Manny! We want Manny!”
I couldn’t have gotten in if I’d tried.
Red would—thankfully—have already left for the Retreat. But somewhere in there, huddled and afraid, were my mom and Todd, as well as the radio host, Manny Wannemaker, who had inflamed this very crowd. And that wasn’t even mentioning the shocking murders that would happen—or may have already happened—in Hattie’s apartment.
I didn’t linger.
I raced downtown to Penn Station, where, amid the heaving throng of people trying to escape the city on trains, I finally found my father sitting quietly and patiently on a suitcase at our usual meeting place by the escalators.
He had waited eight hours for me. We embraced and hustled out of there.
* * *
—
The next three days went by in a blur.
There was no point in returning to my apartment. I couldn’t get in anyway. Mom and Todd would die by their own hand, and Red, as I knew, was already gone.
I desperately wanted to tell my dad about the portals and my travels through time. Open-minded as he was, I felt there was really only one way to do it, and that was to take him to the entry cave and show him.
That cave turned out to be one of the safest places in the city and a good spot to lie low during the uproar.
I showed my dad how the portal operated: placing the gem in the pyramid, initiating the curtain of purple light, and stepping through it.
Because of the age restriction on traveling through the time tunnel, I had him dash overland through the park to the exit portal on the west side and, sure enough, I popped out of that portal soon after to meet him. Then I showed him the well behind the Swedish Cottage.
He was, of course, amazed.
But once the initial shock wore off and I told him about the theory of time I had found, his analytical mind took over, and he started talking animatedly about time spirals, Einstein–Rosen Bridges, and folds in time.
I told him everything. About Misty and the runners and the missing girls, about Misty’s feelings for Bo, about Bo and me, about being tied up on the roof of the Met with Jenny, and about Bo’s horrific death there. And I told him about Red’s future: how I’d found Red twenty-two years from now as the sheriff of a fledgling community in Rhode Island.
“Red’s always been a big kid,” Dad said, “but I’ve long believed that he’d mature well. I’m pleased to hear that.”
When I showed my dad the photos Bo had taken of the cave paintings in the tunnel of priest-like figures holding colored gems, my dad said something odd: “What are those other gems they’re holding? The red and green ones?”
I hadn’t noticed them before, but there they were: the priests held not only two yellow gems, but also two red gems and two green ones. I said I’d never seen any red or green gems, just the yellow ones.
My dad shrugged. “If the yellow ones create a twenty-two-year fold in time, what do the red and green ones do? Maybe they also initiate these portals, but in different ways. They might create different kinds of folds. Longer or shorter ones, or ones that go back in time.”
“That’s enough, you!” I said, smiling. “I’ve already done more time-travel thinking this past month than I ever thought I’d do. I’m just glad I could share it with you.”
* * *
—
As March 17 drew near, my dad and I met up with Jenny, who by then had found her father, Ken.
We decided we would all find a nice, quiet place to face the gamma cloud together, somewhere away from the disintegrating city.
Ken, it turned out, owned a small waterfront cottage on a remote inlet on Long Island called Bullhead Bay, out near the famous golf courses, Shinnecock Hills and the National Golf Links of America. Typical of Ken, it was not ostentatious or obviously opulent. From the outside, he said, it looked like a shack.
And it was accessible only by boat or seaplane. Sounded good to me.
Since we couldn’t hope to reach Ken’s seaplane, parked at its marina in Jersey, we found a car—there were plenty of abandoned ones—packed it with supplies, and drove eastward, out of the city, past JFK Airport and along the Long Island Expressway until we came to the turnoff for Bullhead Bay.
A rowboat took us the rest of the way. I loved the cottage: you could hardly have found a more remote—or beautiful—place, except perhaps Race Rock Lighthouse.
* * *
—
On March 17, as Dr. Harold Finkelstein had predicted, the world swept through the gamma cloud.
When the hour drew near, the four of us gathered in the living room of the cottage and sat on the floor in a circle, holding hands.
The first thing to go off was the radio, then the refrigerator, then the lights. The gamma cloud was knocking out the electricity.
And then, as he held his daughter’s hands in his, Ken Johnson’s eyes rolled up into his head and he slumped to the ground, dead. The last thing he saw was Jenny’s kind, loving face.
As for Jenny, thanks to the regimen of antidepressant drugs she’d been taking over the last few years, she survived the passage through the cloud.
I did, too. The peculiar diet of vitamins and sardines my father had suggested got me through, as it had with Red.
My dad also survived, in all likelihood because of the various medications he had been on while he was institutionalized in Memphis.
We buried Ken in the garden down by the shore. I held Jenny as she sobbed into my shoulder.
* * *
—
Over the next few days, the world went still. Still and quiet.
We saw no planes in the sky overhead. No cars or trucks on the roads. We heard none of the familiar sounds of suburbia, no lawn mowers or leaf blowers.
On the third afternoon, my dad took me aside.
“Blue, thanks for finding me at Penn Station. It’s been so wonderful to spend this time with you. But listen to me. Over the next few years, this world is going to be a hard place, a dangerous place. It won’t be safe for a sixteen-year-old girl, and it certainly won’t help if you have to watch out for your silly old dad during that time.”
My brow furrowed. “What are you saying?”
He bit his lip for a moment.
“I think you should go through your portal,” he said. “You and Jenny.”
“What?” I said. “And leave you here?”
“Blue.” His voice was calm. “That portal offers you and your friend a golden opportunity to avoid the worst of humanity. No father who had a chance like this would pass it up. If you go through that portal and come out in twenty-two years’ time, the world will have had a chance to settle down and rebuild, like you said Red will do in Rhode Island.”
“I can’t leave you!” I said, tears welling in my eyes.
“Yes, you can, and yes, you should,” he said kindly. “I probably should have made you go through the portal before the gamma cloud arrived, but I—I don’t know—maybe I was selfish. I think I wanted to be with you during it.”
“But what will you do?” I said.
“I’ll be okay,” he said. “Might find myself a yacht somewhere round here and sail around for a while. I’ll give it a few years, and then head on up to Rhode Island and find Red, maybe join his community as a doctor.
“I won’t tell Red everything I know about your travels—it’s probably best he meets you in the future without any foreknowledge—but if you don’t mind, I might hide somewhere when you turn up at the Newport pier twenty-two years from now. I wouldn’t want to freak you out when you get there. From everything you’ve told me, I imagine you’ll already be in quite a state.”
“Thanks,” I said, and in my mind’s eye I recalled Red’s odd looks at Newport, when I’d caught him glancing at the warehouse beside the dock. My spirits lifted. Had this been what was going on? Did it mean my dad made it there?
My dad looked me square in the eye.
“This isn’t negotiable, Skye,” he said. It was so odd to hear him use my actual name, but it had the effect he desired. It added serious weight to his argument.
“Today is March 20,” he said. “Since nothing’s going to be working and survivors are going to be edgy, let’s give ourselves two days to get back to the city from here. Then at, say, six p.m. on March 22, you and Jenny will step through your portal and emerge from the well in Central Park twenty-two years from now. I’ll keep a close eye on the calendar, and unless something happens to me between now and then, I’ll make sure I’m waiting at that well at six p.m. on March 22, 2042, when you come out.”
I didn’t know what to say. It was a huge sacrifice for him to make, to spare us twenty-two years of hell.
“Please, Blue, it’s for the best,” my dad said. “As your father, it’ll make me feel a whole lot better. Please do this.”
I buried my face in his chest and cried while he just held me tightly in his arms.
* * *
—
My dad was right about getting back to Manhattan. It took a while, almost two full days.
The roads and expressways were empty; all the traffic lights were off; trigger-happy survivors were already guarding their homes with shotguns; any car moving on the roads was instantly noticeable.
But we made it back, and two days later, on March 22, just before six p.m.—carrying backpacks stocked with food, and wearing sturdy hiking boots and stout clothing—Jenny and I arrived at the conservancy garden behind the Met, accompanied by my dad.
I said my final teary goodbyes to him there in the garden before I tore myself away and Jenny and I dropped down through the hatch and closed it behind us.
Even though I knew that in the not-too-distant future Griff would park a yellow cab right on top of that hatch, both sealing it and hiding it from the world, I locked the hatch from the inside with Misty’s key anyway.
Minutes later, standing in front of the ancient stone doorway in the entry cave, I placed the amber gem in the pyramid, and the curtain of rippling purple light appeared.
I looked at Jenny. “Ready?”
“As I’ll ever be,” she said, taking my hand.
And together we stepped through the portal, out of our broken world and into the future.
* * *
—
Ten minutes later, I poked my head up out of the well and saw my father standing there in the bare clearing around it. Even though only minutes had passed for me, he was twenty-two years older—now in his late sixties—leaner, wirier, more tanned, and he bore some pale scars on his face that hadn’t been there before.
And by his side stood my brother, Red, in his sheriff’s uniform.
And they were smiling.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in Sydney in 1974, Matthew Reilly was not always a big fan of reading. It was only after he read To Kill a Mockingbird and Lord of the Flies in tenth grade that he realized reading could transport you to another world. Following this revelation, Matthew soon began creating stories of his own and set about writing his first novel, Contest, at the age of nineteen while studying law in college.
Following rejections from all the major publishers, Matthew self-published Contest in 1996, printing 1,000 copies. Those original self-published editions of Contest have become sought-after collectors’ items.
Matthew is now the internationally bestselling author of the Scarecrow series, the Jack West series, and numerous standalone novels. His books are published in more than twenty languages, with worldwide sales of over 7 million copies. He has optioned the film rights to many of his novels to various major movie studios, including Disney, Paramount, Sony, and Fox.
He owns and drives a DeLorean DMC-12, the car made famous in the Back to the Future movies, and he has a life-sized Han Solo in carbonite hanging on the wall of his office.
Matthew currently resides in Los Angeles.
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Matthew Reilly, The Secret Runners
