Gary knelt down in the denuded mud of Riverside Park and looked across the river at the 79th street Boat Basin. A few sailboats still rode at anchor there, their masts splintered and their hulls sagging lifelessly in the water. A speedboat smoldered away in their midst, acrid smoke leaking from its engine compartment to drift across the nigh air to Gary's twitching nose. One vessel, a big racing sailboat with its boom tied down looked like it was still seaworthy. A pair of huge wheels stood at its stern, lashed to the deck. A single electric light blared from its bow every few seconds. Someone had raised an upside-down American flag to the top of its mast.
Mael had been certain there were survivors in the Basin. It looked like they wouldn't be hard to find.
Gary kicked off his shoes and leapt into the Hudson, Noseless and Faceless following close behind. They sank to the bottom like rocks while Gary bobbed up and down like a cork in the water. He realized he was holding his breath. He let it go - he didn't need it - and drifted down to the bottom. The water was cold, very cold if he could feel it through his thick skin but it didn't bother him. It was dark, too, murky and dismal so that he could barely see a few feet in front of his face. It would be easy to get lost down there. What little moonlight penetrated the surface shifted and shimmered so much it was more or less useless. He could make out currents of silt flowing past him and he could see the soft outlines of centuries worth of dumped junk - old cars, fifty-gallon drums that had rusted open, piles on piles of black plastic trash bags sealed off with metal crimps. A mat of slimy algae covered everything, fronds of it drifting in the river's flow. Every step that Gary took required real effort but he didn't tire. His feet sank into the mud of the riverbed but he pressed on, looking for the sailboat's anchor.
Noseless appeared through the gloom just to Gary's right. The dead man looked more at home under the water than he had on land, a white pulpy thing with floating hair and billowed-out clothes. Silver bubbles leaked from his shirt. Gary watched with approval as his companion grabbed a fish out of the dark water and sank his teeth deep into its flank. Clouds of blood blossomed around him, temporarily hiding Noseless from view.
The dead man was coming along nicely. After the day's bounty the walking corpse who had once been unable to feed himself was now acting of his own volition again. Faceless was making slower progress but at least she had managed to clean herself of the insect fauna that had been nesting in her collarbones.
They had all fed well under Mael's scheme. Gary had found he had a real talent for killing. He exulted in it.
Their first mission had been an elderly woman cowering in a brownstone up in Harlem. She had sequestered herself on the second floor, filling up the stairs with broken furniture and bundles of old magazines tied up in twine. The hard part had been climbing over all that refuse. When they reached the top they found her in her bathroom, crouching behind a wicker hamper. Gary had expected moral qualms to rear themselves as she pleaded for her life but in fact she had trembled so badly that she couldn't speak. There had been no difficulty at all as Gary moved in for the kill, no hesitation on his part, just cold mechanics until the hunger had taken over and he could not have resisted if he tried.
They had moved on when it was done, stopping at the 125th street train station. The terminal and its elevated platforms had been deserted but next door sat a building that had been deserted since as long as Gary could remember, the burnt-out shell of a red brick office building ornamented with elaborate coats of arms and a banner offering used laptop computers for sale. From the platforms he could see sunlight leaking through the buildings gaping windows and trees growing from the spars of the broken roof. He could also see a twisting curl of white smoke coming from the top of the building - smoke that disappeared almost as soon as Gary spotted it. Someone up there had a fire going and must have quickly extinguished it.
The building's street level entrances had been barricaded for decades but the three of them made short work of the plywood covering a low window, their shoulders smashing into the obstruction in concerted force. Inside triangular patches of light showed through from the sky three stories above. The interior of the building had imploded leaving a three-dimensional maze of collapsed lathing and dangling floor beams. They climbed upward, ever upward, moving from plank to plank with their hands. Whoever had taken refuge on the roof could have thrown down debris or shot them from above at any time but as they reached the top floor they met with no resistance whatsoever.
Someone had thoughtfully left a stepladder under the hole in the roof. They climbed up through torn tarpaper and emerged into the bright light of day. Gary saw a makeshift lean-to mounted on the last stable corner of the roof. The embers of a campfire burned nearby, complete with a spitted rat waiting to be roasted. He heard something crumble and the patter of stone chips hitting the street below and turned to see a living man perched on the edge of the room, one step away from oblivion. He looked like one of the homeless, his face smudged with dirt, his clothes colorless and torn.
Gary took a step in the man's direction and he leapt. Better that, he must have thought, than what Gary intended for him. From his perspective that was probably accurate thinking. Noseless and Faceless had scampered back down to the street to get to him before he could rise again. Gary took his time. It wasn't meat he wanted anymore, it was the life force, the golden energy of the living that could make him strong.
Four hours later he stood on the bottom of the Hudson with his hands on the anchor chain of the sailboat. He wouldn't let these survivors get away, he promised himself. He began to climb, hand over hand, his minions following. When his head burst through the surface once more he reached up and dragged himself onto the wooden deck of the boat, water streaming from him in gouts. He rose to his feet and felt himself swaying as the current rocked the vessel. A cabin sat in the middle of the deck, its hatch recessed into the wood. That was their destination. Before Gary could cross half the distance to the door, however, it opened and a living human leaned out. He held what looked like a toy pistol in his hand, bright orange with a barrel wide enough to shoot golf balls.
The gun made a loud fizzling noise and smoke leapt across the deck. Faceless looked down at her stomach where a dull metal cylinder hissed and spat. With a burst of red light like a firework it exploded, knocking her backward into the water.
"A flare gun?" Gary asked aloud. "A goddamn flare gun? What's next? A starter's pistol?"
"Jesus," the living man said. He wore a blue fleece with the collar up around his neck. "You can... you can talk." He put the flare gun down on the deck and raised his hands in supplication. "I am so sorry! I thought you were one of those dead things!"
I am, Gary thought, and prepared to pounce on the idiot but before he could get into position the sailor ran up onto the deck and leaned on the railing, staring down at the turbulent water. "Jesus Christ, what have I done! I'm so sorry - I have a life preserver here somewhere. Can she swim?"
Gary looked down into the water. He could see Faceless, illuminated by the sparkling flare, struggle to pull the incendiary out of her midriff. "She'll be fine," Gary said, as much menace as he could get dripping from his voice. "You, on the other hand..."
"You are dead." The sailor's face went blank. "But you can talk. Listen. Come belowdecks. We'll, we'll discuss this like rational people. Please."
Gary felt like laughing but he just nodded. He went down into the belly of the ship, leaving Noseless to help Faceless get back onboard when she could. Gary ducked his head to get through a low galley and followed his guide into a cramped cabin at the fore of the boat. "You want some coffee?" the sailor asked, pouring himself a mug from a tiny electric coffee maker. "No, I guess you wouldn't. I'm Phil, by the way, Phil Chambers from, from Albany originally. Things were bad there. We came down the river hoping to find a safe place... Saugerties was on fire and now, New York City, this is it, I mean there's no place else to go but out into the Atlantic. This is the end of the line."
"Yes," Gary said. It would only take a moment to kill this man. One quick bite on the throat. A deep laceration on the carotid artery.
Chambers pulled some charts out of a pigeonhole and spread them across a table. He stared hard into his mug as if he had discovered an insect inside. He didn't seem able to drink. "Please don't do this," he said. "My kids are in the stern. They've got nobody else. Oh, Jesus, no. No, you won't take my kids too. Please."
Gary stepped closer until he could feel the man's body heat. Chambers was shaking and he stank of bad sweat. Gary grabbed him by the hair on the back of his head.
"I'm begging you, guy, I'm begging. I'm begging."
Real tears rolled down the man's cheek. Gary could taste them on his neck when he bit in to the yielding flesh.
He'd thought it would be difficult when they pleaded for their lives. He had dreaded the moment when the old woman started blubbering.
It turned out to make no difference at all.