The Year of the Locust, page 66
The six of us crouched in silence for a long moment, staring down at the smoking debris, each lost in our own thoughts. It was a reverie finally broken by Jon: “You know, when Rebecca first told us how you got here, I thought of something,” he said, and paused. “Why don’t you go back?”
I turned to look at him—what?
“Use the submarine, try to jump the track again—go back,” he said.
Rebecca was nodding. “I had the same thought. Go to Baikonur. Complete the mission.”
“I thought you never approved of my work,” I said.
“I do now,” she replied. “Return and zero him.”
I stared at them all—were they out of their minds?
CHAPTER 37
“Don’t you realize?” I said, trying to contain myself. “Nobody could survive the journey.” We had returned to the living quarters and I was leaning on the back of a sofa, confronting the five of them. Surely they understood what the Leviathan had endured on the voyage out? One hundred and sixty-seven dead and a boat almost ripped from bow to stern was a pretty good indication, I thought.
Moments after hearing their suggestion on the roof, I had given Rebecca and Jon a curt “No,” got to my feet, and led the way to the wrecked fire stairs.
Now Rebecca was meeting my gaze across the couch. “You say nobody could survive the journey back,” Rebecca said. “But nobody can survive this.” She pointed at the Bradley Fighting Vehicle but meant the wider world. “There’s little food, no gas, and we’re almost out of heating fuel. People are dying all the time—we’re sinking fast. You heard Jon—six months at the most.”
“It’s six months longer than I’d get on the boat. The whole crew died on the way here.”
“You didn’t,” she said.
“I was lucky. I might not be, going back.”
“We don’t know that.”
“I say we do, and I’m the only one who can judge, the one person here qualified in submarines. No, I won’t risk it—I can’t,” I said. I saw the conflict on Rebecca’s face; no sooner had we been reunited than she was making the case I should leave. Whatever her feelings, it didn’t stop her.
“You’re wrong,” she said. “You don’t get it, do you? You’re our only chance.”
“I’m not,” I retorted. “More than anything, war is dynamic. The Resistance isn’t finished—fortunes change, the whole situation can pivot overnight.”
“Not this war, not this time,” Ridley muttered.
“Are you gonna listen?” I said to all of them, snapping. “Hope is not a strategy. I’m not leaving. This is where I belong. With my family.”
“We’re not your family,” Chloe replied calmly.
I looked at her, shocked, and learned something most parents discover sooner or later: nobody can hurt you quite as ferociously as your children.
“Of course, you’re hurt,” Rebecca said. “But Chloe’s right.”
“Mom might be your family,” Chloe continued. “To us you were a sperm donor. Ridley and I don’t know you. We never have.”
“Think about it,” Rebecca said. “Please. Apart from anything, you can be a father. To raise them, for us to be a family. Go back, kill him, and give the world a chance—”
“And what—change the future?” I said skeptically. “Is that what you’re telling me? You honestly think that’s possible?”
“You think you can jump a track in time?” Jon said. I looked at him but I had no answer.
“Of course you can change it,” Rebecca replied, coming around the sofa and taking my hands in hers. “There isn’t one future—there are infinite futures. It’s like the universe, forever unfolding—that’s the wonder, the majesty, of it. The future we get is decided by what we do now—moment by moment, step by step, life by life. Kill Kazinsky, prevent the spore from being released, and give us a new future—a different one. It can’t be any worse than this.”
I said nothing. In my mind, I was traveling through time again. I was in Paris watching Saloth Sar about to cross the road. Had he taken a longer stride for two steps he would have covered an extra inch, the car would have hit him at high speed, and the future of two million Cambodians would have been far different. Maybe, Rebecca… just maybe…
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
“About a man from years ago,” I replied. “It’s nothing.”
She spoke softly, forcing the others to lean closer. “I don’t know where your role in it started, and perhaps you don’t even know yourself.”
I thought back to a Friday in my office, about to go to lunch on a winter’s day, when I opened a file and a strange silence fell across the world.
“But you told me once about heading into a canyon and hearing gunfire from the future.”
The others looked at me in confusion. Again, I was standing in the line of trees, the brutal summer sun of Iran dipping toward the horizon, Sakab at my side, the canyon ahead turning from pink to orange, and listening to a sound I could identify but not explain…
“I know about the Persian Gulf,” Rebecca continued. “And how the waves and the night and the shamal should have killed you.”
I glanced at Laleh, the young girl who had saved my life, and my gaze was returned by the woman and the wife she had become.
“You went on a mission on the world’s most advanced warship, a secret submarine, and only you know how bad it really was—yet you were the sole survivor. Why? What is that about?” Rebecca asked.
I said nothing; I couldn’t. There was no rhyme or reason to what had happened onboard; better men and women than me had died terrible deaths. But for a handful of pills, Baxter would have lived. I didn’t know why I’d survived.
“Do you still hear the wolves?” she asked. “Are they still calling to you?”
For some reason, I felt an overwhelming emotion rising up in me, felt the wheels of fate grinding…
“There are people who say that omens are the language of God,” Rebecca said. “What do you think?”
“The wolves?” Chloe asked. “What wolves?” Rebecca and I didn’t explain. How could we?
“I still hear them,” I said softly.
“I think you were kept alive for a purpose,” Rebecca continued. “You’ve always been a lonely man, a solo voyager, someone willing go where—as they say—the angels fear to tread. Why do you think you speak Russian?” She didn’t wait for a reply. “Because you were born for this.” She pressed my hands tighter. “Someday people might say the story of the spore was written a long time ago. But so was yours, Ridley. This is your mission. It always was. Go back.”
I sat for a long time, nobody saying a word. I understood everything that Rebecca had said but I also knew that even if fate was knocking, it didn’t mean you had to answer. My mind roamed across a landscape of memory and I thought of Baxter lying in the pod with the photo of his wife. I recalled my mother in the cancer ward and the last words of my dad as he lay on the burning asphalt, but—more than any of it—I thought of being trapped in a submarine that I believed was doomed and thinking only of Rebecca and our unborn children. I suppose I was thinking about love—how difficult it was to find, how hard to live without.
I don’t know how long I would have sat for had it not been for Jon. “The sub’s computers will have been programmed and logged the outward journey,” he said quietly. “You can retrace the voyage.” He sighed. “It might not be much but it will give you a chance. There are people here who know about this stuff.”
“I’d thought of that,” I said. “But it’s not the computers, it’s the boat. What good will I be to anybody if I’m dead?” I looked at Rebecca. “You’re everything in my life, you have been for years. I may not be family to the kids, but they certainly are to me. It’s like you told me once—there’s a reason why DNA is built like a chain. This is where I belong, with the people I love; this is where I stay.”
I must have said it with a tone of finality, because nobody argued. Rebecca turned to Laleh and Jon. “I think it’s done,” she said quietly, indicating the door and the emergency room beyond it. “We need to get back to work.”
Ridley and Chloe didn’t bother trying to hide their anger. “Sis and I will take the midnight patrols,” Ridley said to his mom. “We’ll see you in the morning.”
CHAPTER 38
The others had left, so, alone, I got to my feet, slung a battle rifle and half a dozen spears over my shoulder, returned to the fire stairs, and climbed four stories up to the deserted ground floor.
I scrambled over shattered display cases and dust-covered computer terminals and saw what I was looking for: what had once been one of the most valuable shop windows in the world. I squeezed past heavy steel plates, anti-assault “hedgehogs,” and coils of razor wire that were defending it and stepped through broken glass straight onto Fifth Avenue.
The Orcs may have been a threat but I needed to think; I needed to be certain of the decision. Alert for danger, I scanned the street. The sight made me pause: the grand avenue was a vision with the moon shining down, the snow hiding piles of debris, and a pair of owls perched on a streetlight. It looked like some alien Christmas card. Silent night, holy night.
After a long moment, I turned and—recalling everything that had been said in the apartment—hunched my shoulders against the bitter wind and started to make my way uptown. Keeping tight to the shadows, I walked quickly through the crumbling foyers of once-magnificent buildings, hoping that any surveillance drone would mistake a single moving body for one of the numerous foxes and dogs roaming the streets.
As I traversed the shattered glass cube of the Apple store and crossed the grand lobby of the Sherry-Netherland Hotel, I told myself that I was a Denied Access Area spy and I knew more about assessing the likely success or failure of a mission—no matter how extraordinary it might be—than probably anybody still alive.
I stepped back onto the avenue, and started to think about my past and the one thread that ran through the tapestry of my professional life: I had experienced a lot of fear. First on a freighter crossing the Andaman Sea, then in Syria and Turkey. Russia three times. Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran, Egypt, and Pakistan—the list went on and on. On at least five occasions I had been almost paralyzed when the fear threatened to overtake me, but my courage had never failed. Yes, I had decided against trying to go home, but nobody could say it was because I was afraid. I wasn’t a coward.
Walking a little easier, starting to find some peace of mind, I looked across the rubble-strewn road to what was now the jungle of Central Park and I couldn’t help wondering if the leopards, grizzly bears, apes, and other animals in its zoo had escaped and turned the eight hundred acres into an unorthodox hunting ground. I didn’t want to find out, so instead of taking one of the thoroughfares through the park, I unslung my rifle and stuck to my side of the road. What a world, I thought—worried about being attacked by wild animals in the middle of New York City. Then again, maybe things hadn’t changed that much.
I picked up the pace and—as difficult as it was—had to admit that Chloe was right; I had no relationship with my children. I had not been in their lives and they had grown to adulthood without me. Now, for whatever time we had left, I somehow had to find a way to bridge the gulf between us. What was the alternative? To fight, and probably die together, as strangers?
The towering façade of the Metropolitan Museum of Art looming ahead in the moonlight was half obscured by trees, its two “tabletop” fountains at the entrance filled to overflowing with debris and fetid water. Perhaps more than any other building in the world, thanks to both its architecture and its contents—ranging from ancient Egyptian artifacts to three thousand European Old Masters—it had stood as a testament to the civilization humankind had built. Now in ruins, the building was a statement—both symbolic and literal—to what had become of us. It was worth a last look, I thought.
Crossing the road and out of the shelter of the buildings, the wind hit me. I glanced down the avenue, back the way I had come, and stopped dead in my tracks.
CHAPTER 39
There was something about the way the light was falling… the arrangement of several ruined skyscrapers… the wind stirring the snow in the street: I had seen it all before.
Heart starting to race, I recalled the early hours of a morning in Maryland when a wedge of wild geese came in to land and I described to Rebecca the ruins I had foreseen, the vision of her imminent death, and a large sign on a wrecked building with half its letters missing. “Be… Good…” it said.
Standing on Fifth Avenue, looking downtown, I saw the half-destroyed Bergdorf Goodman building and the wrecked name on its side. All that remained of it was the letters…
I forgot about wild animals and attack drones and started to run. Death was in the house.
CHAPTER 40
Sprinting down the avenue, I expected ranks of Orcs to have overwhelmed the Resistance’s boats and patrols and to now be swarming on the surrounding streets, approaching Bergdorf’s. There was nobody, though, and only then did I realize: they had to be underground.
A coincidence of circumstance confirmed my assumption: the wind had dropped, the moon reappeared from behind a shattered skyscraper, and I was scrambling over a mound of rubble. The increase in height, the flood of light, and the unexpected stillness of the wind allowed me to see a thin column of dust rising vertically from a ventilation shaft next door to Bergdorf’s. They were tunneling deep inside the Van Cleef & Arpels building.
Scrambling through the hedgehogs and razor wire protecting the window onto Fifth Avenue, I reached the fire stairs and immediately started yelling down to the emergency room. “Out! Get out!” By the time I burst into the area nobody had moved; Rebecca, Jon, Laleh, and the kids, about to set out on the midnight patrols, were staring at me along with everybody else, confused.
“They’re coming,” I said, just managing to speak between breaths. “They’re tunneling… in the adjoining basement… they’re gonna come through the fucking wall.” I gasped.
Everyone looked around in fear. “What wall—where?” Chloe called. “How?”
I had no time to explain or argue. I made my way through them, pushing aside medical trolleys, scrambling past gurneys with the injured still onboard. “Which way is the jewelry store—Van Cleef and whatever?” I yelled.
For a beat nobody answered. “The wall in front of you,” Rebecca said, pointing at the longest wall—a hundred feet of masonry decorated with the old posters. At least she wasn’t dismissing the idea…
I ran to one end of the wall, trying to work methodically, and threw aside a tall cabinet and stuck my ear against the concrete, hoping I could hear the sound of movement or tunneling.
I had barely taken a step when a thought occurred to me: they might not be digging at all. If they had managed to tunnel into the adjoining basement, why not rig a common wall with explosives and blast their way in?
Trying to concentrate, I moved along the masonry and put my cheek against a sign that said “Men’s Underwear, Fourth Floor.” I moved past a model’s immaculate thighs, straining to hear.
I saw Chloe—along with everyone else—staring. “Move them out,” I ordered. “Everybody. They’ll slaughter us in here. Save them!”
Rebecca paused for a second, considering it, then turned to Laleh and the rest of her staff. “You heard him—out now! Take everyone through the dispensary, the badly wounded up to the second floor. Jon—call in the patrols, tell them we’re under attack. Go!”
Her reputation and authority were such that the huge space exploded into activity: nurses and orderlies dropped what they were doing and wheeled gurneys with patients toward a narrow doorway, the walking wounded limped as fast as they could on their crutches, staff piled medicine and equipment onto trolleys, and the men and women capable of fighting threw open cabinets, grabbing rifles and spears.
I barely noticed it; I was moving along the wall, still listening for anything that might indicate a point of attack. I saw Ridley moving toward the other end of the long wall. “I’ll start from this end,” he called. “We’ll meet in the middle.”
It was a form of reconciliation at least. “Thanks, but no,” I yelled. “The Bradley—get the Bradley. If they come through—”
“Yeah—I’ve got it,” he said, and turned, sprinting for the apartment, swerving past MartinLuther; he was hobbling, his chest strapped with bandages, a bag of IV solution over his shoulder feeding a tube in his arm. He was lifting Ella—her hind end heavily dressed and with only three legs now—off a post-surgery bed and putting her in a wheelchair; there was no way he was leaving her behind.
Seeing Ridley leave, he yelled to me across the room, “I’ll take the other end.” I nodded my thanks and watched as he wheeled Ella toward the wall, moved tight against it to listen, and started working toward me.
I passed another four of the large glossy posters, heard nothing, and was starting to question whether I was wrong about the Orcs when MartinLuther whistled loudly to attract my attention above the din of the evacuation. “What do you make of this?” he called.
I ran to his side, put my ear close, and listened. I heard nothing. “Quiet,” MartinLuther yelled to the room at large.
Silence fell; I concentrated hard and thought I picked up something. “You hear drilling?” I asked tentatively.
“Maybe,” he replied. “It’s what I thought.” We moved along the wall, trying to see if we could hear it more clearly. Martin was still using the wheelchair for support, pushing it along with us, when Ella—lying completely still and panting after the operation—suddenly tried to stand. Martin and I stared at her. Unable to get up, she looked at the wall and started to snarl. “There’s no way she can smell through the concrete,” I said.
