Barbara stands on spindly, weak legs and unlatches the container’s door. She steps outside. The gorillas look up at her. Barbara rears back, stumbling. The hollow metal clangs and drums under her staggering feet, and she grasps the edge of the doorway, catching herself from falling.
Should she head back to the safety of the container? Are they going to attack again?
Then she stops and watches as the gorillas slowly lumber back into the jungle, vanishing into the trees and ground fog.
In Delhi, the sun trickles over a sea of flat rooftops, over a dark and quiet city. Strict government enforcement helps ensure compliance with the global energy ban. The two new power plants east of the city have been shut down, along with all the communications towers, the filling stations.
In Yamuna Pushta, the sprawling slum east of the city, the usually traffic-clogged streets are empty of everything but pushcarts and rickshaws. The migrant people who inhabit the slum tentatively peek out from the cracks in their hovels. They have been easy pickings for the roving packs of pariah dogs and jungle cats that have overtaken the city.
As they peer out from their hiding places, they see movement in the streets. Animals—leopards, tigers—are moving northward. A soot-faced child ducks fearfully beneath a window, then his head rises again to look at a passing leopard: patient, lazy, its shoulder blades undulating, its tail a pendulum—it is walking away. The big cats are moving out of the city, returning to the jungles, where they belong.
All around the world, it is happening. In London, in Paris, in Rome, in Beirut, in Iowa City. Animals are leaving the cities. Massive packs of animals are dissipating, going home like a crowd after a ball game.
Chapter 91
CHLOE HAS BEEN up for two hours when the sun rises in New York on the second day of the global power freeze. With the electricity off, she lights a candle, and spends the flat, empty stretch of time going through family photographs. She is glad she included them when she packed her bags for the government evacuation headquarters.
She smiles to herself as she slowly turns the pages of her photo album. She can’t decide which is her favorite: the wedding photos or the shot of Oz at the hospital, holding Eli for the first time. Or the one of a two- year-old Eli chasing a seagull at a picnic on Jones Beach.
She settles on the wedding picture of Oz waiting for her at the altar, a neon-blue Hawaiian shirt under his tuxedo jacket. It is the expression on his face, she thinks. His smile, the glimmer in his brown eyes—they are a freeze-frame of joy and life. God, she misses him. God, does it hurt to be apart.
But she cannot go back to the panic and depression. She has to be hopeful. They will be together soon, she knows.
Because it’s working.
The plan is working.
The night before, she and some of the other scientists had gone onto the roof of the building. She had held Eli’s warm tiny hand in hers, and they looked up into the sky. They could see the stars.
To Chloe, the starscape above was like the night sky in her girlhood home on her grandfather’s farm in the French countryside. Eli was a city kid—he had never seen so many stars. She pointed out the constellations to him, and the planets. Mercury, Venus. Jupiter, Saturn—those winking faraway giants. The galaxy unfurled in a fluttering ribbon of star smoke.
They could see the stars, of course, because every light in the city was off. Even the streetlights. There was not a drop of electricity running in the city’s veins. Chloe had listened for any remnant of the great vibration that had once been New York City. It was gone. There was only darkness and silence. The city was a coral shell of darkness and silence.
And holding Eli’s hand on the roof, Chloe had felt warm tears sliding out of the corners of her eyes and down her cheeks. Her tears had come partly from sadness, and partly from the cold joy of seeing all this terrifying, useless, lonely beauty.
Progress is being made, she thinks now, tracing a picture of her husband’s face with a finger. She can feel it in her bones. They are going to make it through this.
After breakfast, Chloe decides to take Eli onto their terrace for some fresh air. Just entering the room where the animals had almost gotten in makes her palms tingle with sweat, but she wills herself through it. Using a broom, she sweeps away the broken glass from the French doors, and then she opens them, and they are outside.
It is a gorgeous September day. Clear blue sky, sunny, slightly breezy.
“Listen, Mommy,” Eli says.
She listens. The only sound is the swish of the wind pushing the leaves of the swaying Central Park trees.
“I don’t hear anything, Eli.”
“Yeah!” he says. “Someone turned New York off!”
Chloe smiles. It’s true. The streets are still, silent. Down Fifth Avenue, morning light trickles through the side streets to lie warm on the wide avenue in golden stripes.
There is something sad about it, and yet wonderful. Beyond the trees in the distance, the roof of the Plaza Hotel could almost be a Mayan temple. It is as if they have traveled back in time.
Chloe puts her arms around her son. Her small, bright, warm son. For a moment, for the first time in a long while, she feels halfway safe, halfway happy.
She thinks about Oz again. The feel of his back under her fingers, his goofy American laugh.
He is okay. She will see him again soon. She kisses her son, wiping the trembling jewel of a tear from the side of her nose.
The world will not end.
Chapter 92
SPLAYED ON HIS back on a rock outcropping overlooking a softball field near the Central Park carousel, Attila watches a high white cloud sail across the ocean of blue sky above him.
He makes a soft mewling whimper, an almost sigh. His shoulders droop, his muscles slacken. He is serene now.
The massive pack of animals he led into Central Park several nights before has dwindled considerably. First the rats left, and then the cats. There are a few dogs left, but even they are starting to circle in ever-widening loops, wandering aimlessly, like electrons in an unstable atom.
The scent in the air that so strongly compelled Attila to act is weak now, just a tiny trace of what it had been. Wracked, spent, limp with physical exhaustion, he dozes on the sunny rock. The aftertaste of blood in his mouth is strong, metallic, slightly nauseating. All he wants to do now is sleep, sleep, sleep.
He dozes throughout the day, waking occasionally, watching the still and silent city, dozing some more. The soft light on the white buildings. His sweet glassy brown eyes blink languidly. He listens to the quiet. The silence is beautiful. The cool, clean air.
Though he is getting hungry, it is normal hunger. It is not a crazed death hunger. He doesn’t want to kill now. The bloodlust has burned away like a fever. He is healing now.
Soon he sits up as another chimp clambers up onto the rock and sits down beside him. She is a large female who escaped from the Central Park Zoo. She has something in her hand. It is an orange. It is like a ball of flame in her hand, a sun. She peels it with her long fingers and offers it to Attila. Attila breaks it in half and hands the other half back.
Together they eat the orange. The cool, sweet, sticky juice feels good in his mouth. The female cuddles next to him and begins grooming his fur. Soon they are lying there together on the warm stone. Feeling her warmth, and
