Her voice was soft. “What is it?”
“I’m thinking about…” He trailed off, and turned back to face them. Thousands, maybe tens of thousands, moving and chanting in unison. “They’re happy. They love what they’re doing. They’ve found something they love, and they’re ready to give their lives for it.”
“Do you want to join them?”
He turned again to look at her, shaking his head. “No, I don’t. That’s the weird thing. They’re all me, and they’re all happy, but I … I don’t want to be a part of it. I wish I did—I wish I had anything in my life that I loved that much. But I don’t. And if they’re me, then…” He gave up talking, and simply watched them.
“Come on.” She turned and walked away, pulling him gently with her hand, and he followed her into the darkness.
59
Tuesday, December 11
12:21 A.M.
The Hudson River
3 DAYS TO THE END OF THE WORLD
The Mummer’s Hoard bobbed gently in the water, far from either shore, while the refugees wrapped themselves in blankets and stared at the fallen city, trying to decide where to go next. Pitch-black buildings surrounded them, illuminated here and there by headlights and private generators and dull orange fires. The sky was gray with stars.
“We can’t go to Virginia,” said Mexico. “Or I suppose we could, but we’re not going to find anything there.”
“Just because they didn’t come for us doesn’t mean they’re gone,” said Russia. “Maybe they couldn’t send the helicopters—or maybe they sent them, but they arrived too late. We don’t know.”
“We should go to Washington,” said Lilly. “We can get there by boat, right? The big … Potomac River and everything.”
“It’s too long and too dangerous,” said Blauwitz. “There’s a thousand wrong turns once we start up the Chesapeake Bay, and if they’re as dark as this we’d never find the right one—and the wrong one could just take us to another mob. Better to try for Norfolk: it’s a straight shot down the coast, and if there’s any significant base of military power it will be there.”
“Then why didn’t they come for us?” demanded China. “Military power that abandons its politicians is not the kind of power we want to run to.”
“If it’s a choice between military and mob I choose the military,” said Samoa.
“And if you had a third choice?” asked Lilly.
“I’d leave everything,” said Samoa. “Down the coast to Florida, and then out to the Bahamas, the Caicos, the West Indies. Find a place untouched by the troubles and wait there for as long as it takes.”
“Those islands will have their own mobs,” said China, “just like everywhere else.”
Mexico looked at China sternly. “If you don’t like the islands and you don’t like Virginia, where do you want to go?”
China shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. Home. It won’t be any better there, I know, but … it’s home.”
“The power we need to be running to isn’t military or political,” said Lyle, “it’s scientific. What we need right now is clean water and uncontaminated food, and ideally an ongoing source of both.” He shivered in the night air. “And shelter.”
“That’s easy enough to say,” said Blauwitz, “but where are we going to find it? The best place to be right now is some wing nut survivalist’s bomb shelter in the Arizona desert, but we can’t exactly get there in a yacht.”
Lyle smiled, suddenly and eagerly, and pointed an excited finger at Blauwitz. “A bomb shelter! That’s exactly where we need to go, and I know just the one.”
“You have a lot of wing nut survivalist friends on the Jersey Shore?” asked Cynthia.
“The Plum Island Animal Disease Center,” said Lyle. “It’s like a mini-CDC off the eastern tip of Long Island. Government run, fiercely paranoid, and completely sealed and self-sustaining. They even have a recirculated water system.”
Mexico shook his head. “You told us the retrovirus couldn’t be filtered out by purifiers.”
“It can’t,” said Lyle, “but this is better than a purifier—it’s a closed system. Water on the island gets used, cleaned, and used again. Outside water never even enters the cycle, so unless we do something stupid to contaminate it, it will never be touched.”
“That’s ideal,” said Samoa.
“It’s closed to outsiders, obviously,” said Lyle, “but I’m sure the general could get us in.”
“That takes us farther from Virginia,” said Cynthia.
“Not by much, though,” said Mexico, “relatively speaking.”
“They’ll have gas so we can refuel,” said Lyle, “and if there’s any way of getting a message to whatever world leaders are left, they’ll have the facilities to do it.”
“I like it,” said Samoa, and smiled slyly. “Not a tropical island, but I’ll take what I can get.”
“I suppose it’s as good as anywhere else,” said China.
“Our best bet is to go south around Manhattan and then up the East River to Long Island Sound,” said Blauwitz. “That’s close, but still a few hours, and it’s already after midnight. I can steer us well enough through the little channels while the rest of you sleep, but when we hit open water we’ll need Cynthia to take over.”
Cynthia smirked. “People who own yachts own people to sail them. I don’t know how to do it.”
“I don’t think ‘own’ is the word you were looking for,” said Lyle.
