The Takeover, page 19
“I certainly will. Um, can you pay me in cash?”
“Of course I can pay you in cash,” he chortled. “Who would take credit these days? You’d really have to be wet behind the ears to settle for that.” He counted off a roll of bills and handed them to Will, who stuffed them into his pocket. “Now, what else you got?”
Will handed him the next ring, with roughly the same delightful results. Another roll of bills came rolling his way—and suddenly he had enough to pay the first month’s rent and the security deposit.
“My gosh, thanks,” Will gushed, all pretenses of playing it cool gone. “You’ve really saved my bacon.” But he knew in truth it was really Mrs. Parker who had saved his bacon. Mrs. Parker who, it turned out, was rich not only in canned goods and chocolates but also gold and jewels. Who had left her entire home intact for some unexplained reason, just waiting for him. Thank you, Mrs. Parker, he said for the hundredth time. He sold one more of her rings, this one a diamond, and suddenly had enough spending money to pay for groceries too.
He raced back and peeled off a roll of bills to the apartment manager, who seemed surprised to see him back so soon. “I hope that ain’t drug money,” the manager said doubtfully.
“No, sir. Do I look like a drug dealer to you? I’m actually an accountant.” A part of him wanted to add, “These are just the ill-gotten gains from the jewelry I stole from my neighbor’s house,” but he wisely remained silent.
“An accountant, huh?” said the apartment manager. “That’s interesting. You lookin’ for work?”
“You hiring?” asked Will, taken by surprise for the second time in ten minutes.
“Not me,” said the manager. “But I know a guy who is. You want me to give him a call? He’s a U-Haul dealer here in town. Says he’s never been busier. Seems like everyone’s movin’ somewhere these days. He can barely keep track of it all. He’s been lookin’ for someone like you to help him with his books, and maybe help out at the front desk. If you’re interested, that is.”
“You bet I am,” said Will enthusiastically. It was quite a step down from his corporate accounting days, but who cared? It was work, and it would help pay the bills.
When he got back to the motel room, he told his family the good news. “We can move in today.”
“And they take pets?” Josh asked.
“Of course they do. We wouldn’t stay anywhere Woof wasn’t welcome. Woof is family, after all.”
“I’m so relieved, Will,” Cynthia said.
“And look at this—“ Will waved a handful of bills in the air. “We have money to pay for groceries too.”
“Where’d you get all that?” Cynthia asked, amazed.
“I have my ways,” Will said mysteriously. Josh was eyeing him sideways but he ignored it.
“And I saved the best for last: it looks like I might have found a job.” Exclamations of joy followed that announcement. He filled them in on what the apartment manager had told him. “I have an interview tomorrow. So I guess things are looking up, aren’t they?”
“They sure are,” Cynthia replied. She looked around for something to knock on. “But let’s not jinx it.”
Chapter 19
December 18 – Brooklyn, New York
Aubrey peeked out the window of her darkened third-floor apartment. The power was out again, but it hardly mattered—they were keeping the lights off anyway to avoid unwanted attention. “Brooklyn crazies are the worst kind of crazy,” she muttered.
“Aren’t they ever,” said Royce.
The eleventh jump was expected to come some time after midnight. It was projected to swallow up a big chunk of Brooklyn, and Brooklynites, it appeared, were none too happy about it. A sort of continuous roar came from down below as the mob protested the end of life as they knew it. They howled their anger, drank themselves into a stupor, broke bottles against brick walls, smashed sledgehammers into doors, shot off guns (hopefully into the air, but who knew), hurled rocks and bricks into glass windows, trashed the park, and generally created such mayhem that Royce and Aubrey feared for their lives. They didn’t want to say it out loud—they were each being brave for the other—but they were scared.
Aubrey took another peek out the window. “I feel like a cat trapped in a tree by a pack of coyotes.”
Royce nodded uneasily as the cacophony down below was punctuated with shrill screams and bursts of gunfire. It was so dark outside they could barely see. All they could make out was a seething mass of shadowy shapes in the street down below.
“What if they try to burn down the building?” Aubrey asked.
Royce winced at the thought. “Does brownstone burn?”
“I don’t think so—not from the outside. But if they got into one of the ground-floor units, then all of that wood and furniture…”
“It won’t come to that. And even if it did, you’ve got a fire escape, right?”
Aubrey nodded. “Out back. It leads to an alley behind the building.”
“Well, then, we’ll use that if we have to. We should pack a bag just in case. Just the stuff we can’t live without.”
“Like my shoes?”
“Exactly. Only the necessities.”
“I’ve already packed. Didn’t you see my bag in the bedroom?”
“That’s it? I’m amazed.”
“Well, I can’t very well ask you to be my pack mule and my champion.”
“I haven’t saved you yet,” Royce pointed out.
“But you’re here,” Aubrey said, as if that settled the matter.
They were both quiet for a minute, which only made the incoherent shouts and gunfire more noticeable. “We’re sitting here in the dark imagining worst-case scenarios,” said Royce, “but maybe this mob will just loot the neighborhood and move on. I don’t think they’ll go so far as to, you know, burn people alive.”
“God, I hope not. I really don’t want to go that way.”
“You’re not going any way, Aubrey. We’re going to get out of this, I promise.”
“But how? I mean, just look out the window. They’ve gone berserk.”
“We’ll just—.” An explosion shook the building hard enough to make the plates rattle inside the kitchen cabinets. Royce jumped up from the couch. “What the hell was that? It sounded like a gas explosion.” Peering out the window, he saw flames licking out of a building halfway up the block. “Jesus.”
Aubrey started pacing around her apartment like a caged animal. Stutters of gunfire reached their ears from down below, as if a pitched battle were going on between opposing forces. The screams rose in intensity as people dove for cover. They could see shadowy shapes fleeing en masse into the park. A space emptied out in the middle of the tree-lined avenue below them, where flashes of solitary gunfire mingled with the staccato of automatic weaponry.
“Holy hell, it’s like a full-blown war down there,” Royce muttered. “And the dome hasn’t even jumped yet.”
“They’re saying the two domes—the Wall Street Dome and the Central Park Dome—won’t quite merge this time around.”
Royce nodded. “The Wall Street Dome is the one we have to worry about here in Brooklyn.”
They were both silent for a time as Aubrey continued pacing around the couch. “You were right,” she said at last. “We should have left sooner.”
“Do you think your family would finally go now?”
Aubrey laughed hollowly, gesturing towards the window. “Yeah, I think this might just convince them! They’re stubborn but not that stubborn. Besides, what choice do they have? We’re going to be inside a dome after tonight, assuming it jumps.”
“That’d be good news in my—“ They both flinched as something hit the window hard but didn’t break it.
“Yikes. Anyway, I was saying the dome jumping tonight would be good news in my opinion.”
“Why?”
“Because it will force change. People will act differently after the jump. All those people down there won’t have any choice in three days’ time: they’ll have to get out if they want to keep breathing.”
“Yeah, but that’s true for us, too. We can’t just hold our breath.”
“But we can wait until the worst of the crowds clear out. We have a warm bed to sleep in at night: they don’t. And we have at least some food and water: they don’t, unless they can steal it. Once they’ve done whatever looting they’re going to do, they’ll probably move on. Then we can gather your family and move out as a group. At least that’s the best I can come up with at the moment.”
Aubrey was nodding. She had stopped pacing and looked a little calmer. Even the gunfire had subsided for the moment. “That’s a good plan, or at least the start of one. So what should we be doing right now?”
Royce thought for a moment. “I’d say call your parents while we still have cell phone reception and tell them what we’re thinking. Tell them we should meet up once it’s safe.”
“After the dome jumps,” clarified Aubrey. “After the crowds have thinned out.”
“Right. In a day or two. Right now it would be crazy to go out there. Make sure they understand that.”
Aubrey nodded. “Okay, I’ll call. Hopefully I can get through.” She paused for a moment, hand hovering over the phone. “You know there are like fifteen of them, right?”
“The more the merrier,” Royce said gamely.
“Hello, Dad?” he heard Aubrey say, then her voice disappeared into the bedroom.
Royce tried to think things through, but his mind felt sluggish from lack of sleep. How in the world were they going to get all fifteen of her family members, along with themselves, to safety? He’d met some of Aubrey’s relatives and they weren’t exactly fitness fanatics. Would they be able to hike all the way out to the boonies of northern New Jersey where the RV was parked? That was a long way to walk. And how could they walk, with both the Brooklyn Bridge and Manhattan Bridge being blocked by a dome?
Were the ferries still running? They were on an island, after all—a big island, Long Island—but an island nonetheless. A quick search online yielded nothing useful. The ferry website said they were running, but that post was from three days ago when things were still semi-normal in Brooklyn. How accurate would it be now? And with such a mass of humanity all trying to take the ferries at once, how dangerous would it be to even approach a ferry terminal? He pictured crazed hordes all trying to get off the island at once, ferry boats overloaded to the tipping point.
“Dad, put Mom on,” he heard Aubrey say with exasperation. Could her dad still be resisting leaving? It didn’t seem possible.
Back to the question at hand: How were they going to get off Long Island and reach the mainland safely? They couldn’t exactly swim across the Hudson, not with freezing-cold water and fifteen family members in tow. He pictured her grandma and grandpa trying to dog-paddle their way across the Hudson and dismissed the idea immediately. Maybe they could hire a boat. It would cost a small fortune, but it could work if the family pooled their resources—and managed not to get robbed along the way.
Once they reached the mainland…But he didn’t want to think that far ahead. One thing at a time, he told himself. The first thing was to survive the riots, let the dome jump, then wait for the crowds to thin out and find a way across the water. He could figure the rest out as they went along. They’d have to do a lot of improvising if they were all going to make it out alive. His gun might well spell the difference between survival and death in the coming days. He tried to steel himself to the thought of actually using it.
Aubrey came out of the bedroom holding her hand over the phone. “Mom says we should meet them at their place. Most of the family is already there. She says we have a better chance of making it their way than they do ours.”
“Good point. Remind me, which floor is their apartment on?”
“The third, like mine.”
“That should be safe enough. Okay, tell her we’ll meet them there once the crowds disperse.”
Aubrey headed back into the bedroom saying, “Okay, Mom, that should work,” before her voice faded away again.
In the meantime they were in for a long night. The gunfire had started back up again, mixed with occasional wails and hoarse shouts of anger. He heard hard thudding on the doors down below and braced for the worst—a sudden invasion of crazies into their isolated world—but then it passed.
Aubrey came back in; apparently she hadn’t heard the thudding, which was a good thing. “Okay, we’re all set. Mom said they’ll wait for us as long as they can, until the morning of the third day if they have to. She liked your idea of waiting until the crowds thin out, but she’s worried if we wait too long we won’t have enough oxygen to get out of the dome in time. It’s gonna be six miles in diameter after the jump tonight—assuming it jumps tonight—so they want to give themselves plenty of time to, you know, find an exit. So what’s next?”
“Nothing’s next,” said Royce. “We lay low for the next night or two, that’s it. And we try to stay out of trouble.”
“Out of trouble. I’m not very good at that.” She approached him slowly.
Royce sensed a change in mood. “No?”
In one swift motion she pulled off her top. “Help me forget all this, Royce.”
“I think I can help with that.”
Aubrey straddled him on the couch. “Two whole nights with nothing to do. How will we pass the time?”
“Backgammon?”
“Mmm, maybe…or maybe a little strip poker. See, I’ve already lost the first hand. You’re on a roll—you can’t lose.” She kissed him passionately.
“No, I can’t,” he mumbled around her kisses while unhooking her lacy black bra from the back. “Look at that, you just lost again.”
A crash reverberated from below, followed by a bang that sounded like a cannon, but other than a startled jump they hardly lost a beat. “I thought tonight was gonna suck,” Royce said as his shirt came off, “but suddenly I’m feeling a lot better about it.”
Interlude: Jump 11
December 19
Here’s a little geometry refresher for those of us who have been out of school for awhile and may have forgotten:
As the diameter of a circle doubles,
its area increases four times
Thus, when the domes jumped for the eleventh time, each dome’s diameter doubled from 3 to 6 miles while its area quadrupled from 7½ to 30 square miles. As a result, the collective domes worldwide now encompassed some 9 million square miles of land—roughly the size of North America.
By now the domes were well beyond the nuisance stage. They were fast becoming an existential threat.
Chapter 20
December 19 – Brooklyn, New York
When the dome jumped, Royce and Aubrey were both fast asleep, but a huge caterwauling that sounded like ten thousand cats all yowling at once warned them something dramatic had just happened. They startled awake.
Their clothes were strewn across the floor, and they themselves were strewn across the bed in a delicious heap. Their lovemaking last night had been wild, as if they were trying to out-frenzy the frenzied masses below. Maybe it was the fear or the adrenaline kicking in, but whatever it was, it was on a whole new level. Royce found himself thinking he was glad he’d come back, however things turned out. This was where he belonged: with Aubrey by his side.
They crept to the window and peered out, but they couldn’t make out much in the darkness. It was December 19th, just shy of the longest night of the year. It certainly felt like the longest night of the year, as if the darkness itself were uncoiling like a snake and stretching out to its fullest length.
Bonfires were visible in Fort Greene Park. Shadowy shapes were cavorting around them. Other shapes appeared to be fleeing, but fleeing what they couldn’t say. People were out there gesticulating, shouting, screaming, shooting. Even through the closed window on the third floor, the noises they were hearing sounded brutish. Mass hysteria seemed to have set in.
Aubrey checked her phone. “No signal.”
“So we’re cut off from the world. Now it’s just us and a couple million crazies all stuck together on an island.”
“How romantic.”
“I doubt I’ll be able to get back to sleep tonight,” Royce said with a yawn and a stretch.
“Who said anything about sleep?” Aubrey pounced him again, and the noises faded away for awhile.
*****
When he awoke the next morning, it was full daylight and the sun was shining—through a dome, mind you—but shining nonetheless. He looked over at Aubrey: she even slept pretty. He resisted the urge to wake her and climbed out of bed, padding over to the window in his bare feet.
The multitudes sounded less feverish out there. Were there still multitudes? Royce peered out the window and saw…
Dozens of dead bodies strewn along the street in both directions. Some of the bodies were contorted at unnatural angles, angles that made him want to look away instantly. The street was still clogged with people, but they were quieter now. Hundreds were shuffling past the bodies in what appeared to be a death march as they hugged themselves against the cold. They picked their way around the bodies the way one might edge around a prickly shrub.
Each body was like an island in a sea of people. Royce winced when he saw just how many of them wore police or National Guard uniforms; they must have been among the first to go down. No doubt some of the pitched battles they’d heard last night had been between the police and National Guard on one side and gangs on the other. One glance was enough to tell him which side had won.
To his dismay, he realized several of the bodies were still twitching. That was even worse in a way. He couldn’t hear their moans through the third-floor window, but he could imagine them in his head. In the distance he could see a small band of good samaritans moving from body to body, checking for signs of life, then going on to the next. He could see their puffs of breath as they worked, a sign of just how cold it was this morning. The living were being carried on improvised stretchers towards the park for medical attention—or whatever passed for medical attention inside a war zone inside a dome. Royce saw others carrying dead bodies to a different part of the park. The bodies were being laid out in neat rows, like cars in a parking lot.
