She stooped down and peered outside. The backstreet was littered with rubble and twistedspars of rusted metal that looked like they had tumbled down from the bridge above many, manyyears ago. A tangle of coarse dry weeds emerged through it all and laid claim to the ground,nature clawing its way back.
Maddy slid under the shutter and stood up on the other side.
‘What do you see?’
She glanced up at the bridge above them, the one that had majestically crossed the HudsonRiver only moments ago. It was now little more than a creaking ruined web of rusted metalstretching across the river. In the distance the tall slab-like buildings ofthe Nazi-Manhattan she’d observed a short while ago as she’d let Sal out nowlooked like the crumbling stubs of rotten teeth. Bare skeletons of iron sprang from collapsedruins across the river. The sun hung low and heavy like a bloodshot eye peeking throughscudding brown clouds that looked threatening and toxic.
New York was utterly dead. An apocalyptic wasteland.
Something dreadful had happened here. It had happened decades ago from the look of the sparseand withered plant life that emerged here and there among the crumbling ruins.
‘My God, Foster… it’s… it’s the end of the world,’ shesaid, hearing her own voice catch, falter and die in her throat.
CHAPTER 50
2001, New York
Sal was afraid. Very afraid.
She looked up at the dark, silent, blasted structures around her. Tall ruins that creaked andgroaned while skeins of dust chased like fleeting ghosts through them.
Times Square was no longer Times Square — it was a tomb, the crumbling relic of along-dead civilization. She couldn’t begin to imagine what must have happened. Thebreeze moaned through open windows, a haunting cry like some tormented spirit warning her toleave now and not delay a moment longer.
She decided that was probably good advice and turned to head back to the field office,wondering for a moment if the bridge and the archway beneath it, their littlebackstreet… was actually still there.
As she turned, she saw something move.
The faintest flash of something pale flitting from one dark window to another.
She picked her way quickly across the rubble, kicking stones that clacked and clatterednoisily in the silence. Again she thought she spotted another flash of movement from withinthe darkened bowels of one of the buildings.
A pale oval… with two dark holes that studied her intently for the briefest moment,then disappeared into the gloomy interior.
She picked up her pace, not wanting to run in case it encouraged whatever was inside to comeout after her in pursuit, but too frightened to just walk.
She hummed a tune. A stupid over-cheerful plastic Bollywood song from her mum’schildhood. One of those tunes you can never get out of your head once it gets in.
She clattered her way across Times Square, her humming echoing off dark scorched and blastedwalls. She was passing the rusting skeleton of a vehicle, on to what had once been Broadway,when a creature emerged several dozen yards in front of her.
It stopped and stared at her with deep, dark, soulless eyes set in a pallid ash-grey baldhead.
She stopped humming.
It reminded her of a creature she’d once seen in an old movie from way back, a moviewith elves and dwarves and magical rings. One of the creatures she remembered in particular,though, was called
And it screamed.
The scream echoed off the tall ruins and was soon joined by other shrill voices joiningin.
Sal looked desperately around and saw other pale oval faces, each with dark eyes andtoothless bleeding mouths, emerging from hundreds of windows, like termites stirring from adisturbed nest.
And she screamed along with them.
Foster joined Maddy outside, surveying the broken and blasted city.‘Complete devastation,’ he whispered. ‘Something happened here a long timeago. And if it happened here, I can well imagine it’s happenedeverywhere.’ He looked at Maddy. ‘Perhaps some sort of a nuclear war?’
She nodded. ‘Oh God, what is it with mankind? Never happy unless it’s blowingsomeone up.’
‘I’m afraid that’s us as a species.’
‘Sal’s out there,’ said Foster quietly.
She looked at him. ‘She’ll be terrified. And she may have difficulty finding herway back. That’s a very different-looking landscape out there.’
‘I’ll just grab some things,’ he said, ducking back under the shutter.
A few minutes later he emerged from beneath the shutter door with a couple of flashlights, abottle of water and a shotgun in the crook of his arm.
Her eyes widened at the sight of it. ‘You think we’re going to needit?’
‘Best to be prepared, eh?’
She swallowed nervously then nodded. ‘OK. Let’s go find her.’
CHAPTER 51
2001, New York
Sal was running as fast as she could amid the rubble and blocks of crumblingmasonry, long ago collapsed across forgotten streets. She kept stumbling, losing her footing,barking her shins, scraping and cutting her hands.
Behind her the creatures — there seemed to be dozens now — kept pace with hereasily. There was surprising agility in those frail and pallid bodies. They were small likeundernourished children, but with faces that were lined with age… or grief. Theyfollowed her, keeping a wary distance, not closing, not falling behind… just intenselycurious.
She glanced up at the street ahead, little more than an undulating bed of shattered blocks ofconcrete and protruding spars of rusted metal. The frames of buildings either side were theonly visual clue that this had once been a street.
If this was Broadway… once, then she knew she needed to turn left at some point, lefton to East 14th Street. That would take her east towards the river and the WilliamsburgBridge.
Another glance over her shoulder and she saw one of them had closed the distance between themand was right behind her, a long pale hand reaching out ahead of it, its bald head cocked toone side, eyes curiously regarding her long black hair.
‘Oh God!’ she screamed. ‘Leave me alone!’
She suddenly stopped dead in her tracks and spun round to face it.
The creature drew up short of her, the others coming to a halt behind it. They fanned outeither side, all of
