bothered to hang around, and from the empty horizon to the north – Central Park, I guessed, beneath the level of the rooftops – to the haze-choked shadow of the Empire State that rose above us over our left shoulders, the whole uncomfortable place more than deserved its epithet:
Hell's Kitchen.
After the communal degradation of London, and the noise of the Wheels Mart, it felt a lot like the surface of the moon. Silent as a graveyard, with its own vacant atmosphere and a sort of giddying gravity; like nothing was real and would all spin-away into the universal haze at any moment. I let the quad trundle to a stop at an intersection, and morosely scanned the skyline.
'There.' Nate said. 'Manhattan.'
I'd expected something busier. Some sectarian commune, perhaps, filling the entirety of the midtown district, swarming with children abducted from across the ravaged world. I imagined a glowing paradise. An industrious enclave of forward-thinking radicals, blocks wide, staffed with the young and the enthused, building and rebuilding, working hard on the civilisation of tomorrow.
What a load of old bollocks.
There were cars, frozen in time, bumper-to-bumper. Dead tyres and shattered windows. Skeletons slumped in front seats, or curled in skinless patterns on the sidewalk. Here and there fire-damage had blackened a rusty hulk, or scoured a section of street of its rough surface. Flamewagons, I guessed; burning the bodies of Blight victims, trundling by five long years ago.
Newspapers flapped. Colourful litter sat like bright decorations speckling the rusting, filthy morass.
The sun was sinking to the west. It even made the whole thing sort of beautiful.
I asked Nate where everyone was, and caught myself whispering. He glanced around at the rooftops, sniffed noisily, then shrugged.
'Two answers to that.'
'Oh yeah?'
'Yeah. First one is: all holed-up. Central office. See, your Clergyman, he's not a regular Klanner. No scavs and Klansmen, like that, no no no. This crew, they got the clerics, the soldiers, the pilgrims, the trustees.' He tapped the tattoo on his face, eyes grim. 'Whole different hierarchy. Besides, these fucks got more on the mind than the usual. Territory. Drugs. Guns. Whatever. These assholes got faith. Whole worlda complications.'
I glanced around again, unnerved by the quiet. I slipped off the quadbike and rummaged in my increasingly empty pack, producing the battered city map and unfolding it carefully. 'So… they don't mind strangers strolling about up here?'
'Ah, well… There's that 'mind' again. Do they mind? Yeah, yeah, I figure they do. But they ain't gonna do anything about it until someone raises a hand. Then you better believe they'll go Krakatoa on your hairy white ass.'
I looked up from the map, trying to get my bearings.
'My arse isn't ha…'
'Not the point. Point is, depending on whatever the fuck it is you're doing here, as long as it ain't to do with pissing off the Clergy, we'll be fine.'
There was something strange in his eye. I pretended not to notice and rotated the map, staring off into the east.
Nate cleared his throat.
'So?' he said.
'So what?'
'So are you?'
'Planning on going up against his nibs there?' I nodded at the smirking mural on the wall. 'Nope. None of my business. Couldn't give a rat's tit, mate. I'm just here for some information.'
Nate looked relieved. I glanced down at the heavy red ring marked on the map's surface, then back at the eastern horizon, feeling an unexpected shiver of anticipation. Then I folded the booklet away and clambered back onto the quad, suddenly remembering something.
'You said there were two answers.'
'Yeah. Yeah, I did. Answer number two is: they're all around us.'
And he was right. I could feel it. Eyes peering out of the shadows, regarding me from half-boarded windows on either side, squinting from rooftops. I couldn't see anyone.
That just made it worse.
I gunned the quad towards 42^nd street and turned a sharp right, winding my way north-east in a series of step-like diagonals, working hard to create the impression I knew what I was doing. Nate had gone quiet. On the horizon a shape swarmed slowly out of the haze. A blank slab of stone – vast and wide but skinny along its third dimension – like a cereal packet built to colossal proportions.
Nate seemed to be fidgeting, suddenly, throwing looks in all directions. I still hadn't told him where I was headed, and certainly not why I was headed there, but as the brooding shadow of the building loomed ever nearer, I guessed it was pretty obvious.
I should say something to him, I guessed. Ask him if it was safe. Ask him his opinion.
But:
Something not right…
Something not right about him…
Something to do with his story, with his name, with London…
It was the same old confusion. The same old contradiction between the information supplied by my senses – that Nate was easy to trust, a fun guy, a diamond in the rough – and my instincts; which grated against some tiny snippet of subconscious knowledge and made me wary.
But then, I'd been wrong before.
Eventually he leaned forwards on the saddle and called out over the noise of the quad's angry little engine, voice thick with trepidation despite the volume.
'You remember I told you how come none of the robe-wearin' fucks're on the street?' He called. 'All in the… the Central office, right?'
'Yeah?'
He pointed at the black building.
The quad roared. The buildings blurred-past, the black monolith got bigger.
'Oh,' I said. 'Fuck.'
'And now, his holiness Abbot John-Paul shall demonstrate yet again the miracle of his bein', that those who do not believe may be enlightened, and those sons and daughters who cleave already to the bosom of our great community may be strengthened further by his diviniteh!'
Deep-south accent. Nothing better for delivering a bit of sermonising showmanship.
The tragic thing is, when the robe-wearing bastard said the word 'bosom' I glanced round the fringes of the crowd to make eye-contact with some likely-looking kid, to titter conspiratorially at the naughty word.
But there weren't any kids. Obviously.
That was the point.
This was back in London. This was maybe two, maybe three years ago. This was one of the few times I let curiosity get the better of me, and went to see The Tomorrow Show.
Standing in a knackered old warehouse somewhere in Docklands, with a crowd gathered round a snazzy plasma screen TV, I couldn't help remembering midnight mass at Christmas, as a kid. Standing there with the family, heads bowed, singing carols…
Even then, I was old enough to know what I believed and what I didn't. Even then, that same sense of awkwardness, of hypocrisy, of toeing the line of something you don't believe in. That same half-formed urge to leap up and slap the vicar, and start shouting at everyone to think, to open their fucking eyes, to stop being so stupid!
I was young. What can I say?
But yeah, the same sensation. Huddled with the TV crowd on a Sunday, zombie-like expressions fixated on that square of flickering light, drinking every word the announcer said. That same sense of not belonging, as everyone around me listened with an alien devotion to the words of John 'look-at-the-size-of-my-bloody-hat' Paul
