The Ghosts in Their Boroughs

Chapter 9

I laughed a little at that in the warm, bitter darkness, wondering if she’d ever found them.

“I bet you did,” I said, my faculties beginning to fade, the wine beginning to kick my a*s, before reaching out and laying the picture face-down on the table.

And then I slept, and eventually dreamed; of the island as seen from the heavens and of floating through a kind of limbo, a kind of purgatory. Of passing over Alice Town and Bailey Town and on to the open sea, which was infinite. Of being joined by another so close that our wings brushed, and flying—not like Icarus, not like Daedalus—but purposefully, fearlessly, without regret, into the ancient, seething, fire-pit cauldron of the sun.

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Of what went through my mind when I saw the turkey-sized predators congregating at the end of the jetty (or rather the start, for we were heading back toward shore from the ferry terminal), I have no memory; other than to say I’d felt suddenly good, suddenly content, while striding along beside Amanda over the lapping surf (and laughing at some joke), and that, when I saw the predators, all of that just went away, just drained from the world, like the sun going behind a cloud.

Because it had been a good day; the first since Búi had disappeared. Nor could I put my finger on why, exactly: maybe it was simply because the weather had been so agreeable; or because the company had been so good. Maybe it was because we’d cleared an entire block of houses as well as the ferry by late afternoon and I’d been reminded of just how many places—safe places—she could still be. Or maybe it was because I’d forgotten, however briefly, that the world was a necropolis: a windswept graveyard, and that we—Amanda and I—were likely the last living souls.

Until we were coming back along the jetty from the ferry, that is. Until the slim, lithe predators with their long, dark tails and blue-gray coastal-patterns; their white, unblinking eyes, their little, undulating mohawks comprised of blood-red feathers, saw us.

“Are those—what did you call them? Comp—compsognathuses?” asked Amanda. “They don’t look the same, for some reason.”

I peered at the animals—just animals—through the shimmering heat: the three of them having become four, the four of them about to become five (as yet another emerged from behind an abandoned SUV) ... no, six.

“No,” I said, absently. “I don’t think so. They’re too big.”

I watched as the things seemed to focus on us, one of them shaking off while another used a foreclaw to scratch itself behind the ear. “Plus, they’ve got longer arms. And those toe claws; they’re extendable—you can see it from here. More like a deinonychus (I had a dinosaur encyclopedia back at the duplex), or a—”

“Or a what?” She stared at the animals as though she were seeing a ghost. “Or a velociraptor, like in Jurassic Park?” She started to back up. “Because if that’s what you were going to say, don’t. Besides, they’re too small.”

“Movies exaggerate,” I said—also backing up. “Just easy does it. They’re as scared of us as we are of them.”

But now there were more, about twelve at least (with still more streaming in), one of which darted forward abruptly ... and then hesitated, craning its neck to look at the others and shrieking—angrily, it seemed—just like a bird.

“Yeah,” said Amanda. “That’s bullshit. Look at them. There’s strength in numbers.”

Alas, I was looking at them, at their eerily intense focus (like cats starring at a pair of robins) and their coiled shanks; at their tails which were moving back and forth like knives.

I felt my vest for the other flares and touched the heel of my knife. “They’re going to try and rush us; we’re going to have to run for it. Are you up to it? I’m thinking all the way to the ferry ... how about it?”

“It’ll bring them on, I guarantee it ...” She unslung her rifle and looked over her shoulder. “I don’t think we can make it. I mean—wait ... what about that island shuttle?”

I watched as the others filed after the first and they regrouped—just a gaggle of heads and tails—then glanced at it myself. “Forget it. It’s got a canvas roof— remember?”

“With steel ribs, though.”

“Yeah, but—we’d be stuck. There’s no key.”

And then they were coming, not in a gaggle but in a staggered formation, bounding forward but in turns, running and pausing, as we turned and flat-out bolted—sprinting for the ferry as the sun shone hot and merciless and without compassion; veering for the island shuttle once we realized we’d never make it, piling through its driver’s door and slamming it behind us as the raptors fell upon the vehicle like a threshing machine and began climbing and tearing at its canopy.

“Wait, don’t—”

My ears rung as she started firing, blindly, into the animals, at least two of the slugs hitting the beams and ricocheting—one of them close enough to nick my ear.

“There’s too many of them,” I shouted, even as a dark snout stabbed between the beams and banged to a halt, gnashing its teeth. “Just stay low, they can’t get through.”

After which I eased the rifle from her hands and we hunkered near the floor; the raptors screaming and tearing the roof apart even as ragged pieces of it fell and they began reaching between its beams with their human-like forelimbs—swiping at us with their curved talons, blindly; reaching and groping and searching—like zombies.