“Okay guys, I have an apartment in Elmhurst. I want to collect some of Linda’s things from it. It’s not that far and I’d appreciate the company…”
I could think of better options, but kept my face neutral as I looked to Jack who was staring off towards the burning terminal…
“How many entrances does the apartment have? Can we be seen through the windows?” I asked.
“Look, it’s a basement apartment in a quiet suburb with a solid front door, when I close the blinds, nobody can see in. We’ll be safe.”
“Do you have any alcohol or smokes in your apartment?” Jack asked.
“Why does that matter?” Bernie frowned.
“Because we’ve all been through a lot, and I am sure we could all use some stress relief,” Jack replied.
“You want to get drunk? This is hardly the situation—”
“Bernie, he means rest and recuperation. If we don’t have some downtime soon, then we're going to start making stupid mistakes. We need a secure place where we can work out what the hell is going on and what to do next,” I explained.
“Okay, I get what you mean. That could be my place. I’ve a couple of bottles of vodka and 18 Marlboro cigarettes that have been in the kitchen drawer for about a year.”
“Sounds good. Let’s find a car and go.”
Jack took a deep breath and gave Bernie a friendly pat on the arm.
It took us ten minutes to find a relatively clean Ford with keys in the ignition and not too much blood plastered inside, our choices were limited. We pulled out the corpses and placed them respectfully a short distance away.
“You’re the local here, you can drive,” I said.
Bernie nodded and we climbed into the car. I took the back seat.
Chapter 4 – Elmhurst, Queens
I was under no illusion that we had escaped, but driving away from the confines of the airport, felt like a huge relief. As we headed north, Bernie told us that we were picking up the Van Wyk expressway, which led pretty close to his suburb.
“What about Andy and Dave?” Jack said.
“I don't want to talk about them,” I replied. “The three of us are the priority now. Once we get ourselves established somewhere safe, we can start looking for others.”
“Well, we’re going to have to find out how far this thing has spread,” Jack said.
From what we had seen at the airport, I thought that very few people had survived this. Even if there were people that hadn’t been affected, they would still struggle to survive in a city full of killers. The chances of Andy or Dave being alive were next to nothing. If they weren’t dead, they’d probably want to kill us anyway, so I half hoped that they’d met a swift end.
Bernie slowly bumped and picked his way along the Van Wyck Expressway. Vehicles had been abandoned and crashed on the road as far as I could see. There seemed to be no way through the chaos, but inch by inch, we continued forward. My gut wrenched as we bumped over another obstacle that I realised must have been a dead body. Bernie nosed the Ford through a group of smashed and charred cars that were spread around a fallen tanker. As we drove clear of the tanker, Bernie slowed to a stop, and we got out scanning the road and surrounding area. On the opposite side of the expressway, a station wagon was at the head of a pile-up that completely blocked the road. The driver was hanging out of his window, with a fist-sized chunk of skull missing from the top of his head. Further behind, bodies lay all around the cars in a scene similar to the airport terminal. Sporadic noises echoed in the distance, but the immediate vicinity was quiet.
There was now no doubt that the massacre was widespread. In the distance, several towers of smoke rose from the city. Bernie looked broken and scared. Jack was clearly exhausted. His hair was flattened down, and his shoulders were hunched. Both were smeared with blood. We looked at each other without speaking.
“Come on, Bernie. Let’s get back to your place,” I eventually managed to say.
We trooped back to the car. Jack tried the radio but couldn’t pick up a station.
I sat back and stared at the light fixture in the roof above me. Twenty-four hours ago, these people were in hell. What was a reasonable human being actually capable of? The man in the cell told us what he needed to do, but it was a general demand rather than specific instructions. People had carried out this need to kill in any way possible to reach their goal of suicide.
Our only goal was to survive. Perhaps we were beginning to change too. Jack had already shot a man in the head at close range, and I had tricked another into killing himself. In a few hours, would we be engaged in a similar battle to the death?
I snapped back into the real world when Bernie suddenly jerked the car to a stop. I put my head between the two front seats. “What is it?”
“The exit’s blocked. We’ll have to go on foot from here.”
“How far is it?” Jack asked, staring out of the front window.
“It’s only a five minute walk at a brisk pace.”
I would have preferred not to be out in the open, but it was easy to imagine driving on any two-lane road would be difficult, even if we could get off the expressway. A five-minute walk didn’t seem too bad, as long as we kept switched on.
We made our weapons ready and got out of the car; I twisted my head in all directions, looking for movement. I could hear dogs barking and alarms sounding in the distance.
We walked close together on the sidewalk, twitching at every sound.
Jack had the rifle tucked into his shoulder, I was holding the Glock by my side and Bernie held the flare gun out in front of him with both hands. He led the way onto a street that took us into suburbia.
“Oh, my God,” Bernie said, pointing the flare gun towards a Golden Retriever that bounded towards us from the other side of the road.
“Put your gun down, Bernie,” Jack said, and stepped forward to offer the dog the back of his hand to smell. The dog disregarded the outstretched hand and excitedly jumped up. “What’s your name, boy? Hey? What the hell have you seen?”
The dog seemed in good spirits as it licked Jack’s face, then bounded around us while loudly barking. Seeing it react to us so normally made me feel safer. I have no idea why.
Jack read the dog’s collar and stroked its back. “He’s called Bouncer.”
Bouncer appeared to hear something in the distance only a dog could recognise and bounded off. We watched it disappear before following Bernie again.
We crept along the road for a further two minutes until we all stopped in horror. By the entrance to a house, were two bodies. The first was a boy who must have had his head repeatedly smashed against the step as his face was barely recognisable, and the concrete was stained with blood. The second was woman, hanging by her neck from the doorframe.
“Guys, get moving,” Bernie encouraged us away, but I noticed something flicker behind a curtain in the house.
“Not yet, Bernie. I think there’s somebody in there.” I pointed to the left of the front entrance.
“So what? Do you want to wait for them to attack us?”
“They could have attacked us already. If the person in the house was armed, then they would have taken a shot by now, wouldn’t they?”
“Harry, we’re only a couple of minutes away from Bernie’s place. Why bother?” Jack replied.
I still had some hope that we would find people who weren’t transformed into killers. There must have been some survivors or other plane passengers around, although the chances were pretty slim.
“We’re not here to hurt anyone,” I called out. “Look, there are three of us and we’re not attacking each other. It’s safe to come out.”
There was no reply, perhaps the curtain had just been twitching in the breeze. We started to walk away.