The Ghosts in Their Boroughs

Chapter 4

I shouldered the rifle and climbed the barrier, fighting with the branches as I reached the top, then pushed and shoved through the thickets until I came at last to the carousel and indeed Sylvia herself, who ignored me as she peered through the viewfinder—even though I could have been virtually anyone—a behaviour I found so maddening that I had to silently count to ten.

“You finished?” I said at length.

But she only turned the camera sideways and pressed the shutter. “There, see? The one with the blue collar? That’s Prancer—because his front legs are off the platform.” She flipped the camera horizontal. “And that one? The one with the purple livery?” The camera went click, click. “He’s Stander—because all four hooves touch the base.” Click, click, click. “And over there? That’s Jumper. Because none of his hooves touch at all.” She laughed. “I’m going to call it, ‘The Three Wooden Horses of the Apocalypse.’”

I didn’t know whether to be furious or charmed. “Let’s hope they’ll be someone around to read it.” I adjusted the strap of the rifle against my shoulder. “So ... are you done? I mean, I get it. I really do. It’s how you deal. But your paranoid friend’s about to have a category five prepper-quake. And it’s his charter.”

She faced me and smiled, albeit with little discernible humor, then returned her attention to the carousel. “You need to stop antagonizing him, seriously. You and Pratt both! I mean, for God’s sake, don’t you realize how lucky it is that we met him when—”

“I don’t trust him.”

“You don’t trust anyone, Lou.”

“Yeah? Well, why should I? I mean, what do we even know about—”

“What do we know about him?” She appeared to think about it. “Not much, I suppose ... you’re absolutely right.” She seemed to size me up, coolly, dispassionately. “What do I really know about you?”

I think I must have tittered. “Oh, no. No-no-no. That’s not even—”

“Look,” she sighed. “He’s the paranoid but brilliant engineer who built an armored truck and a barge to ford the Hudson. You’re the Greenwich Village guitar bard who tells stories about New York.” She smiled. “You both made for good interviews. And you both asked me out to dinner afterward—one of which I accepted.” Laughter. “And you both called to check on me when this shitstorm happened. And for that I will always be grateful.”

I blushed and put my hands in my pockets—‘cooling out,’ as they say. “So Madsen called, too ...” I had to laugh. “You must have thought, oh, boy, just what I need: two lonely New Yorkers with no real family or life.”

“Something like that.” She stepped forward and touched my hair. “Look, he’s eccentric, I get it. That’s what made him such a great subject. But he’s not dangerous. Of that I am certain. And he did offer to get us out of Manhattan.”

I looked at her, chagrined. “To the Seventy-ninth Street Boat Basin—because the George Washington will be a parking lot. Across the Hudson. Upstate to his perpetually in-progress, off-grid bunker-farm—which will have a big Tucker campaign sign out front and a yellow flag that says, ‘Don’t Tread On Me.’”

She gazed at me warmly but resolutely. “You got a better idea?”

I’m sure I just looked at her; she was easy to look at. And then she handed me her camera—slapped it against my chest, more like it—and leapt onto the carousel. “Take my picture! It’s not every day you get a carousel to yourself!”

I stood there like an i***t.

“Help a girl live a little ...!”

I raised it and peered through the viewfinder. “I don’t know ... will I get a photo-credit?”

She climbed atop Prancer even as she circled back around. “Guaranteed cover of End Times Magazine!”

She loosed her hair and shook her head, allowing the locks to spill down her shoulder—and I zoomed in on them to get a focus.

“Do I look any different?” she hollered.

“Yeah ... you shine.”

Which she did, like a candelabra, as the lights reflected off her hair, her skin, her beaded jacket. As the music played and she reached for the brass ring—and got it. As she circled and laughed and gripped the pole and the camera went click, click, click.

That’s when I saw them; or thought I did. The shapes. Gathered beyond the farthest poles (I’d zoomed up on the opposite side whilst waiting for her to come back around); gathered like outsized crows. That’s when I focused through and saw their eyes; their awful, red, vertically slit eyes, before dropping the camera and unslinging my rifle—pointing it directly at them ... and finding them gone. That’s when I realized that I was starting to lose it—to slip, as the writer Hugo Eagleton once said. That the terror and uncertainty of what had happened—the sky, the missing people, the remaining people who seemed intent on burning the city down—had affected me more than I realized. Sylvia, for her part, only looked at me like I was insane.

And I would have agreed with her; had I not looked behind her and saw them again. Had I not seen with my own eyes their black bodies and crimson snouts as they weaved between horses and slowly closed the gap; as they stalked her like panthers and the carousel went around, the music like a carnival, the horses rising and falling. As they closed to within about twelve feet of her and I fired—causing them to stop and to crouch and to look around—only to inch forward again as I resumed shooting (missing, it seemed, every time). Until there was an ear-piercing pulse which I recognized as coming from Madsen’s sound cannon (he’d demonstrated it for us before we set out) and the animals scattered—even as Sylvia crouched and covered (from the excruciating noise) and I did the same; paralyzed, debilitated.