But his life seemed lackluster and he still wasn’t making a living at what he wanted to do. He had amassed a considerable body of work after living five years in the city but had found very few galleries interested in displaying any of it. In fact, he had only sold one piece of art in all the time he’d been there-a black and white portrait of one of his coworkers from the museum.
The job at the museum became less and less challenging and more of a grind than anything else as time passed by. But at least one good thing came out of his employment there: he had made up his mind to become an art teacher – perhaps to specialize in art history. He decided to move back to Smithtown and eventually enrolled at Ohio State University to pursue his MFA. OSU had an excellent art program and was located only a couple of hours away in Ohio’s capital and largest city A deer suddenly darted out into the road and Tom swerved hard to the right to avoid plowing into it. The sudden move caused the Jeep to spin a full 360 degrees. He watched the white tail bound into the woods and felt his heart race wildly as he finally managed to bring the car under control.
This abrupt reality check made Tom snap out of his reverie. He had driven over three hours and still hadn’t seen a single vehicle or a single soul. It had started snowing again and was becoming more and more difficult to see the road. He decided he would stop off in Youngstown long enough to eat and wait to see if the snow was going to let up any.
Tom pulled off onto the first exit for downtown Youngstown. Five minutes later, he was driving down one of the main streets in search of a place with something substantial to eat. He finally opted for a gas station with a mini mart. He pulled up beside the entrance, got out and went inside.
It was at that moment that Tom nearly lost it completely. He took one look at the deserted store and realized that it looked just like the one he had been at in Columbus. In a single sickening moment, he considered the notion of being the last man on earth. The proverbial Omega Man. Feeling weak in the knees and beaten down, he leaned over and rested his head on the counter, feeling tears come to his eyes.
His family had vanished into thin air along with the rest of mankind and now here he was in this goddamn deserted mini mart in Youngstown searching for a decent meal.
It was as daunting as it was absurd.
Why had this happened? he thought. And when was it going to end? Would he ever see Peg and the kids again? As he thought back to the whole unreal scenario he had left behind in Columbus, he now found it difficult to believe it had ever happened.
But the ten thousand dollar question came down to this: had he made the right decision traveling to NYC while his family could at this moment be in harm’s way somewhere back in Columbus?
Tom shivered and dashed the impending urge to break down totally. What sobered him up was the innate desire to live and a compulsion to find out what was happening. He was only human-what other options did he have? He could either continue standing there bawling like a baby until he froze to death or be grateful that he was still alive and go where his heart told him to go.
Smiling faintly, looked around and snagged a candy bar off the shelf. He unwrapped it, took a bite of the frozen rock hard Milky Way and nearly chipped a tooth in the process. Perhaps something a bit more palatable? he thought.
He browsed the aisles and picked out a large bag of potato chips, some Planters whole cashews and a semi-hard giant Slim Jim. Tom wondered why the latter wasn’t frozen solid then considered the salt and preservatives that prevented the leathery junk from crystallizing totally. And to think of what it would be doing to his body…
Tom returned to the warm Jeep and settled down to eat his lunch. He reached over for one of the three bottled waters he’d packed and began munching on his junk food as the snow continued falling hard against the windshield. It didn’t look like the storm was going to let up anytime soon so he took his time eating. When he was finished, he had the overpowering urge for a cup of hot coffee. He recalled seeing canned fuel in the mini mart and made the easiest decision he’d made all day: to brew a cup of hot coffee.
Then he would gas up and continue his journey after the storm broke.
CHAPTER 8
Tom’s anxiety grew more the closer he got to Manhattan. Night had fallen about halfway through Pennsylvania and that was intimidating enough. But as he approached the Lincoln Tunnel and got his first glimpse of the Manhattan skyline in over twenty years, he nearly came undone The famous skyline he had known so well was all but invisible in the misty darkness. Missing were the countless rectangles of light in the towering skyscrapers, the lights tracing the spans of the Hudson and East River bridges, the familiar gleaming stainless steel apex of the Chrysler Building, the illuminated tiers of the Empire State building and most apparent of all-the World Trade Center altogether. He hadn’t been back since the 9/11 tragedy.
In fact, had the skies not just cleared up enough to reveal an amber quarter moon hanging low in the southwest sky, Tom would be unable to make out anything distinguishable from his present perspective. But the weak light afforded by the moon revealed the eerie silhouetted forms of the towering buildings on Manhattan Island.
“Christ,” he breathed aloud into the silent interior of the Jeep. “It’s even worse than I imagined.”
The skyline disappeared abruptly as Tom made a wide turn and drove past the deserted tollbooths. He entered the Lincoln Tunnel and slowed down to a near crawl, still overwhelmed by the scene he’d just seen a moment ago.
This was simply too much for him to grasp right now.
Tom continued letting up on the accelerator until he had almost coasted to a dead stop, trying to ascertain what he might find on the other side of this tunnel. He had just driven ten hours alone on an abandoned highway in search of the only two living souls he’d seen since arriving home from the supermarket the day before. And now that he had finally arrived at his questionable destination he found himself clueless as to what he should do next.
He was absolutely terrified.
He stared out at the headlights as they sliced through the blackness of the tunnel and took a deep breath. What difference did it make? He was here, what had happened had happened and now he had to do what he had to do to survive. It was as simple as that.
This simple rationale rekindled his spirits a bit as he inched his speed up to forty-five and focused on the road ahead. Maybe, he thought, he would see the usual throngs of people on the streets. After all, with a population of over eight million, the odds were certainly greater than anywhere else he’d been thus far. Surely there would at least be some signs of life-the odds had it if nothing else.
Surely.
He spotted the exit looming in the near distance. Impulsively, he let off the gas and slowed down to a glorified crawl. By the time he actually emerged from the tunnel, he felt as though he were driving in wet cement.
His first observation when he suddenly thrust into the manmade canyons of midtown Manhattan was the near total darkness and mind-boggling silence. He had never known the city to be dead silent. This, along with the absence of any working lights whatsoever, made it all the more foreboding. Columbus, Ohio was one thing. The desolate mountain highways of Pennsylvania were another thing.
But to be in the city that never sleeps and experiencing this was absolutely paralyzing.
Tom puttered east along Thirty-fourth Street with no destination in mind, numbed by the silent darkness. He spotted the occasional abandoned taxi or truck parked along the curb but didn’t see nearly as many vehicles as he had expected to see. This made the enormous cityscape seem all the more desolate.