It was on their final night that Michael produced the bottle of whiskey. He had found it in an apartment building when he’d gone to scavenge tools and clothes. The cap was sealed, the glass caked with dust so thick it was like a layer of soil. Sitting by the fire, Michael was the first to try it. “Absent friends,” he said, raising the bottle, and took a long swallow. As his throat bobbed, he began to cough while also, somehow, wearing an expression of triumph.
“Oh, you’re going to like this,” he wheezed, and handed it to her.
Amy took a small sip, to get the feel, then, as Michael had done, tipped her head back and let the whiskey fill her mouth. A rich, smoky taste bloomed on her tongue, filling her sinuses with tingling warmth.
Michael looked at her inquisitively, eyebrows raised. “You might want to go easy,” he warned. “That’s a hundred-and-twenty-year-old Scotch you’re drinking.”
She took a second pull, savoring the flavor more deeply.
“It tastes…like the past,” she said.
In the morning they broke camp and headed south, through the park and down Eighth Avenue. At the water’s edge they loaded the last of Michael’s supplies into the Nautilus. He would head first for Florida, where he would restock, then make the long jump to the coast of Brazil, hugging the land until he reached the Strait of Magellan. Once through, a final stop to rest and resupply and he would set sail for the South Pacific.
“Are you sure you can find them?” Amy asked.
He shrugged carelessly, though they both understood the danger of what he was attempting. “After all this, how hard can it be?” He stopped, looked at her, then said with a note of caution, “I know you don’t think you can come with me—”
“I can’t, Michael.”
He hunted for words. “It’s just…how will you get along? All alone.”
Amy did not have an answer, at least not one she believed would make sense to him. “I’ll have to manage.” She looked at his sad face. “I’ll be all right, Michael.”
They had agreed that a clean break would be best. Yet as the moment of separation arrived, this seemed not just foolish but impossible. They embraced, holding each other for a long time.
“She loved you, you know,” Amy said.
He was crying a little; they both were. He shook his head. “I don’t know that she did.”
“Perhaps not the way you wanted. But it was the way she knew how.” Amy drew back a little and placed a hand to his cheek. “Hold on to that, Michael.”
They parted. Michael stepped down into the cockpit; Amy cast off the lines. A snap of the sail and the boat streamed away. Michael waved once over the transom; Amy waved in reply. God bless and keep you, Michael Fisher. She watched the image recede into the vastness.
She put on her pack and hiked north. By the time she reached the bridge, it was early afternoon. A strong summer sun gleamed upon the surface of the water, far below. She made her way across and on the opposite side stopped to drink and rest, then donned her pack once more and continued on her journey.
Utah was four months away.
—
From the observation deck of the Empire State Building—one of the last intact structures between Grand Central and the sea—Alicia watched the Nautilus sail down the Hudson.
It had taken her most of two days to make the climb. Two hundred and four flights of stairs, most in total darkness, an agonizing ascent on her makeshift crutch and, when the pain became too great, her hands and knees. For hours she had lain on various landings, perspiring and breathing hard, wondering if she could go on. Her body was broken; her body was done. In those places where there was no pain, she felt only a creeping numbness. One by one, the lights of life were winking out inside her.
But her mind, her thoughts: these were her own. No Fanning, no Amy. How she’d escaped the subway tunnel she possessed no memory of; somehow she had been ejected onto dry land. The rest was fragments, flashes. She remembered Michael’s face, backlit by sunshine, and his hand reaching down; the water slamming into her, its power immeasurable, large as a planet’s; all volition gone, her body plunging and tumbling; the first involuntary gulp, making her choke, her throat opening instinctively to take a second breath, pulling the water deeper into her lungs; pain, and then a merciful lessening of pain; a feeling of dispersal, her body and her thoughts losing their distinctiveness, like a radio signal fading from range; and then nothing at all.
She’d awakened to find herself in the most perplexing circumstance. She was sitting on a bench; around her, a small park of overgrown trees and a playground deep in tall, feathered grass. Slowly her awareness expanded. Vast crags of debris surrounded the perimeter although the park itself was miraculously untouched. The sun was out; birds twittered in the trees, a peaceful sound. Her clothing was soaked and her mouth tasted of salt. She sensed a gap in time between remembered events and her present situation, the calm of which seemed wholly anachronistic, like nothing she had ever known. She wondered, somewhat dully, if she was dead—if she was, in fact, a ghost. But when she attempted to stand, and the pain volleyed through her body, she knew this wasn’t so; surely death would bring an absence of bodily sensation.