The room went silent, the only sound that of the wind whistling outside.
"Y"all want something more concrete to be afraid of?"
We all turned to the entrance.
It was Paul, the intruder from a few days before, and he had a gun to Richard"s head. A group of men appeared through the doorway behind him. Stan, the owner of the garage, was with them, also holding a gun.
"Sorry," said Stan, looking toward Chuck and Rory. "But we got families too. n.o.body needs to get hurt."
They shoved Richard into the room.
Paul smiled, pointing his gun directly at Tony.
"We don"t got any heroes in here, do we?"
"I"m sorry."
The wind howled outside. It was getting dark.
"It"s not your fault, Tony. I told you to come up, remember? And I sure as h.e.l.l didn"t want a gun fight in here with the kids."
He nodded, unconvinced.
They slipped in during the few minutes when he"d come upstairs and the lobby had been empty. Immediately on entering, they"d zeroed in on Tony and removed the .38 from his pocket. They must have been watching us for a long time.
"We could just rush them," whispered Chuck.
"Are you out of your mind?"
Lauren had Luke on her lap and was staring at me, willing me to stay still. The thought of being killed in front of my son was terrifying. We just had to let them take what they wanted. Even if they took everything, we still had what we"d stashed outside.
It was better to wait this out.
"Quiet over there!" shouted Paul.
He was sitting by the entrance with Stan, and they"d corralled all of us at the opposite end of the apartment. We could hear them dragging and pulling things in the hallway.
Our things.
"We can"t let them take everything," muttered Chuck under his breath. With every sc.r.a.pe and b.u.mp we heard in the hallway, he tensed up, cursing and looking at Paul.
"Chuck, do not do anything," I whispered urgently. "Do you hear me?"
Chuck nodded and stared at the floor.
"I said QUIET!" yelled Paul, waving his gun at us.
Outside in the hallway we heard a grunt, and something heavy hit the ground. It sounded like they were dragging the generator. And then things went quiet. Paul fidgeted with his gun and stared at us aggressively, smiling.
The door opened a crack and Paul turned toward it. "You guys done?"
"Nyet."
A long rifle barrel appeared through the crack in the door, nudging it open. Irena materialized from the darkness of the hallway, holding an antique double-barrel shotgun. She was still wearing her cooking ap.r.o.n, stained as usual, with a tea towel thrown over one shoulder. Stooped over the gun, she slowly shuffled through the doorway, the barrel shaking as she tried to keep it centered.
Paul and Stan backed away from the door, separating.
"Drop it, grandma," Paul said slowly, pointing his pistol at her. "I don"t want to have to put you down."
Aleksandr appeared from the darkness behind Irena. The lights were out in the hallway. He was holding the ax from the emergency fire locker, and it was dripping with blood.
Irena brought her gun up higher and aimed straight at Paul"s chest.
"You know how many times I have been shot?" she laughed. "n.a.z.is and Stalin couldn"t kill me. You maybe think a worm like you can?"
"Put that friggin" gun down, lady!" yelled Stan, waving his gun toward us. "I"ll shoot one of them, I swear to G.o.d."
Grunting, Aleksandr winced and stepped in beside his wife.
"You hurt one hair, I eat your liver for dinner while you watch. I killed b.a.s.t.a.r.ds like you before your wh.o.r.e mother was born."
"I"m warning you, grandma, put it down!" screeched Paul, his voice wavering.
He was pointing his gun at Irena"s head but staring at the blood dripping off Aleksandr"s ax.
Irena laughed.
"Tupoy. You want kill, don"t shoot head." Her eyes narrowed. "You aim chest, more painful, less chance." Smiling, she bared a mouthful of gold-capped teeth and began squeezing the trigger of her gun. "Dolboeb durak-"
"Okay, okay, stop," whimpered Paul, holding his gun up.
Irena motioned for him to get rid of it with a flick of her chin, and he dropped it on the floor with a loud thud.
"What the h.e.l.l are you doing?" screeched Stan. He waved his gun away from us and toward Irena. "You never said anything about these freakin" psychos."
"Don"t point that at my wife," growled Aleksandr, taking two surprisingly long and powerful strides toward Stan, raising the ax. Stan immediately dropped his gun and backed away, raising his hands to protect himself.
"Okay, okay!" I yelled, standing up and running toward them. Reaching behind Irena, I shut the door. "Where are the rest of them?"
Irena looked at me. "One at end hallway, dead I think. Others ran away."
"We gotta make sure they"re not in here," said Chuck, collecting the two guns from the floor and reaching into Paul"s jacket to remove the .38 he"d taken from Tony, which he handed to me. "You watch these guys while Tony, Richard, and I go and make sure they"re gone."
Chuck looked at Paul"s legs and then at his face. "One more thing."
"What"s that?"
"I think this grandma made you wet your pants."
Day 8 - December 30.
SOMETHING SMELLED AWFUL.
"Just keep moving."
We were walking our captives over to Penn Station, to deliver them to the NYPD barracks there. The snowstorm had raged through the night, and it was still snowing, but only barely. Tiny snowflakes fell gently from an indistinct sky, the world of New York a wintry tomb in muted grays and whites.
Littered across the pristine snow, trash had begun to appear, in green and black bags, but also in bits and pieces. Paper and plastic wrappers spiraled together with snow in the circling gusts of wind. I was sniffing at some trash bags thrown onto the edge of the street, trying to figure out what the smell was, when I was nearly hit by a splatter of brown sludge.
I quickly realized what the smell was.
People were throwing their waste from windows-p.i.s.s and s.h.i.t and whatever else they needed to get rid of. The dusting of snow was hiding the sight of it, but not the smell. Today was just below freezing, and for the first time I was glad it was cold.
Paul laughed, watching me recoil from the human excrement thrown from above.
Who threw that?
I craned my neck upwards. The building before me disappeared into the white sky after twenty floors. n.o.body was visible out of the immense wall of windows stretching into infinity.
"Keep laughing, a.s.shole," said Chuck. "I have a feeling you"re going to be living in your own filth soon."
I didn"t say anything, still staring up at the wall of windows. It wasn"t often that I looked up when walking the streets, and the immensity of the world above mesmerized me.
So many people, my G.o.d, so many people.
"You okay, Mr. Mitch.e.l.l?" asked Tony.
I took a deep breath and focused. "More or less."
After securing our floor, Chuck had led a group of us, floor by floor and apartment by apartment, making sure the invaders were gone. Paul"s gang had raided almost all of the apartments, taking what they could, and had taken a lot of the food and equipment from our floor. Irena and Aleksandr had managed to stop them from taking everything, and the generator was still there.
The man Aleksandr hit with the ax hadn"t been dead. He was writhing and whimpering in a dark pool of his own blood when we"d gotten to him. Pam had managed to triage the deep wound between his shoulder and neck, but he"d lost a lot of blood.
He was Paul"s brother.
Richard and Chuck had grilled Paul and Stan for names and addresses. Aleksandr and Irena had stayed there with us, not saying anything, just sitting and staring while we questioned them.
Paul was clearly terrified we"d leave them alone with the Borodins. He"d given up everything we asked for almost immediately. The door downstairs hadn"t been broken into. He said he"d stolen keys from the front locker a few days before.
"Do you want to walk up Ninth?" asked Chuck, stopping at the intersection.
I shook my head. "Definitely not. Let"s cross to Seventh and go straight up there. The entrance to the NYPD barracks is on that side, and I don"t want to get stuck in any crowds outside Penn."
"You sure?"
"We are not going up Ninth."
Chuck shoved Paul ahead. Vince was with us, helping the injured brother along.
Chuck and Tony and a few others had ventured off at daybreak to the address, which Paul had named, around the corner. I"d refused to go. It had turned into an armed standoff. Of course, whoever was manning the entrance to their building had refused Chuck entry while he waved his gun around and screamed about stolen food. Standing in the snow, he"d yelled out names and threats as he"d vented his anger.
Tony whispered to me that he"d threatened to march Paul and Stan in front of their building and execute them if they didn"t give us our stuff back. But they just repeated themselves, asking Chuck to go away, that they didn"t know anything, and that they had families and children inside.
The address was on Ninth, and there was no way I was going to walk past it on our way to Penn.
Chuck was in a grim mood.
Slowly, single file, we made our way along the packed-down trail in the middle of Twenty-Fourth and then began the trek up Seventh toward Penn. A lot of people were out on Twenty-Fourth, bundled up, with backpacks and carrying bags, on their way somewhere, anywhere. This stream of human traffic merged into a river of people going up Seventh.
Seeing us coming, guns out and marching our prisoners, everyone gave us a wide berth, but n.o.body stopped to watch us or ask what was going on. All of the ground-floor windows along Eighth were smashed, and junk and trash poked out from the s...o...b..nks.
New York was at war with an unseen enemy-an enemy that was beginning to win.
Finally, we reached the corner of Thirty-First and Penn Station, and the flow of humans spilled into a flood. Thousands of people were ma.s.sed together, shouting and shoving. Someone was yelling into a megaphone, trying to direct the crowd. A banner hung above the north entrance-Emergency Food. The line stretched around the block.
Tony and Chuck had Paul"s and Stan"s hands tied behind their backs, and they held onto the cords. Chuck leaned over to Paul.
"I want you to run, a.s.shole, so I can put a bullet in your head. Just try it."
Paul didn"t say anything and just looked at his feet.
"Follow me," I said, waving them onwards into the crowd. I could see a group of NYPD officers at the main door of the office tower above Penn. Winding our way through, we managed to get to the first barricade.
"I need to speak to Sergeant Williams!" I yelled at the police officer there. Motioning back toward Paul and Stan, I added, "These men, they attacked us, armed robbery."
The officer put a hand on his gun as he watched Vince walk up supporting Paul"s b.l.o.o.d.y brother. "You"re going to have to put those weapons down!"
"Please, can you find Sergeant Williams?" I asked again. "He"s a friend. My name is Michael Mitch.e.l.l."
The officer pulled his weapon out of its holster. "You need to-"
"He"s a friend. Trust me."
Putting his gun back, the officer backed up a pace and began speaking into his walkie-talkie, looking at me and Chuck and Tony from time to time. He began nodding and then waved to us and opened the barricade.
"Follow me!" he yelled above the noise. "You"re lucky he"s here. You"re going to have to give me those weapons, though."
Chuck and Tony offered them up, and I handed him the .38 I had tucked into my coat. He quickly led us up a set of stairs and in through the main lobby of the building and to the cafeteria area I"d been in before. We released Paul"s brother into the care of one of their EMTs. Sergeant Williams was there waiting for us, and the officer with us whispered a few words and then stood back.
Sergeant Williams looked at us with tired eyes.