"The things from the hole," Jack said, waving her forward to distract her from the corpse on the lamp post. "That's why I want you and your Mom to leave."
"Mom still doesn't want to go."
"I know that, Vicks." Jeez, do I know.
Gia didn't want to leave the city, thought she and Vicky could weather the wolf just fine in their brick house here on Sutton Square. Jack wasn't having any of that. He was willing to let her have her way in most anything unless he thought she'd be in danger. He'd been relentless last night, wearing her down until she'd finally agreed to leave the city with Abe first thing this morning.
"Is that why you and Mom were yelling last night?"
"We weren't yelling. We just had a…difference of opinion."
"Oh. I thought it was a fight."
"Your mother and I? Disagree? Never! Now come on, Vicks. Let's get you settled in Ralph."
As Vicky stepped down onto the sidewalk, Gia emerged behind her. She was dressed in jeans and a navy-blue V-neck sweater over a white turtleneck. Her eyes, the same shade of blue as Vicky's, went as wide as her daughter's when she saw the street. She ran her fingers through her short blonde hair.
"Oh my!"
"This is nothing," Jack said. "Wait'll you see the rest of the city."
He put his right index finger to his lips and pointed to the body on the lamp post. Gia started and staggered back a step when she spotted it.
"My God!"
"Still think you'll be safe here?" Jack said.
"We did okay last night."
Stubborn to the end.
"But it's going to get worse."
"So you've said—a thousand times."
"Two-thousand times. I get paid to know these things."
"And you're sure Abe's place is better?"
"Like a fortress."
She shrugged resignedly. "All right. I'm packed. Like I promised. But I still think this trip is overkill."
Jack ducked past her into the house to grab the suitcases before she changed her mind. He stowed some of the luggage in the front trunk and put the rest in the back seat with Vicky. Grumbling all the way, Gia reluctantly settled herself in the passenger seat. With the wind flapping through the shredded top, he zig-zagged down to 57th Street and started up the long incline toward Fifth Avenue.
It was bad, but not as bad as yesterday. Early Sunday morning is about the only time midtown Manhattan can be called silent, but there were even fewer cars on the streets than usual. And most of those were either police cars or emergency vehicles of one sort or another. All the streets were littered with sparkling glass fragments. Here and there along the way he spotted an occasional shrunken husk that had once been a human body. One or two dangled from high places, as if they'd been dropped or thrown there after being sucked dry. Jack kept glancing back at Vicky but she was slumped down in the back seat, engrossed in one of her Nancy Drew books, oblivious to her surroundings.
Good. He kept an eye on Gia, as well, watching her expression grow tighter, her face grow paler with each passing block. By Madison Avenue she was ashen. As he pulled to a stop at a red light, Gia looked at him with eyes even wider than before. Her voice was barely audible.
"Jack…I'm…what…?"
She closed her mouth and stared ahead in silence.
Jack said nothing, but he was sure he wouldn't have any more resistance to the idea of getting out of town.
From the right came a sudden explosion of glass as a display case crashed through a corner jewelry store's only unbroken window.
A guy with glazed eyes and lank, oily brown hair, sporting a stained tee-shirt and torn jeans, followed it through the hole, laughing as he landed and rolled on the pavement. He was white but he had on enough gold chains and necklaces to qualify as a Mr. T runner-up. His fingers were stacked with so many rings he couldn't bend them. Another guy, heavier but dressed identically and sporting an equal amount of gold, made a more traditional exit through the door. They gave each other a metallic high five. Then they spotted the Corvair.
"Hey, man!" the first once said, smiling as he approached the car. "It's a ride!"
The heavier one followed him. "Yeah! Want some gold? We'll give you some gold for a ride downtown. We got plenty!"
Jack couldn't help laughing.
"Yeah, right. And like maybe I'll let you hold my wallet while I drive you around."
As the looters' disarming grins twisted into rage, he gunned the Corvair and pulled away through the red light. The thin one began running after them, screaming. For an uneasy moment Jack thought the guy might catch them. The Corvair was loaded down, its old engine was small, and it did not exactly leap up the slight incline toward Fifth Avenue. But it turned out to be just fast enough to leave a stoned looter behind.
Trouble was, Vicky was now sitting up and alert to her surroundings. After watching the looter through the scarred plastic of the rear window, she leaned forward between the bucket seats.
"Why didn't you give that man a ride, Jack?"
"Because he's one of the bad guys, Vicks. What's called a looter."
"But he just wanted a ride."
"I don't think so, Vicks. You know those silverfish we find crawling in the bathroom every so often?"
Vicky made a face. "Yuck."
"Yeah, well, looters are lower than silverfish. When the good folks are occupied fighting fires or helping earthquake victims or storm victims, looters sneak in and carry off anything that's not nailed down. Those guys didn't want a ride; they wanted Ralph."
"That's not fair!"
"Fair's not a word they care about, Vicks."
"Look!" she said, pointing to her left as they crossed Fifth Avenue. "More looters!"
She was right. Knots of people were jumping in and out of the broken windows all along Fifth, scampering off through the dim dawn light with jewelry, leather, anything they could carry. Someone had pulled a panel truck up on the sidewalk in front of Bergdorf's and was loading it with dresses. As Jack was pulling away, he saw a bearded, professorial type step through the open space that had once been the big front window of the Doubleday shop balancing a two-foot stack of books against the front of his tweed jacket.
"Everybody's getting into the act," he said. "Where the hell are the police?"
"It's anarchy, Jack," Gia said and he could hear the fear vibrating in her voice.
"Not yet. We've still got a police force—somewhere, I think—and we've still got electricity for lights, and we've still got gas to run the police cars. When the sun's all the way up these cockroaches will crawl back under the floorboards."
"But what happens when the gas and electricity go?" she said, reaching over and clutching Vicky's hand.
"Then they'll own the streets. That's when we'll see real anarchy."
"It's only been two days. I never dreamed…" Her voice trailed off.
"What? That things could fall apart this fast? This city's a sewer, Gia. All the garbage wandering around this half of the country seems to end up here. I've been watching it fall apart for years. Its veneer of civilization is about as thick as the layer of gold on the electroplated jewelry they hawk on the streets. A couple of good rubs against your jeans and the base metal underneath shows through."
"What about neighborliness and hanging together in times of trouble?"
"Maybe they'll have some of that out in Iowa where you grew up, and maybe there'll even be a pocket or two of it around here, but not enough to matter. The good folks will be driven into hiding and the slime will be free to do whatever they damn well please."