“Don’t feel bad about it. It’s not like you forced us to go,” Parrish said. “We did it because we wanted to help. Now, help us get to Manhattan.”
He took a deep breath and ran a hand over his bald head as he studied the map.
“Well, you aren’t going to get there driving,” he said. “Like I told you, all the bridges are blocked off by military barricades with no one left to let you through. Not that you could get to the bridges in that Hummer anyway.”
“Why not?” Crash asked.
“I-95 is a parking lot of dead cars and pileups,” he said. “We had a few guys try to make it up that way to retrieve some family, but once they got about five miles outside of Philly, they said the roads were impassable. They had to switch to back roads, and even then, most of those were clogged up and useless. There are fires, pileups, traffic jams everywhere. Just too many damn people. Trying to get a Humvee through that mess would be impossible.”
“Did they get to their family okay?” Parrish asked.
For a moment, nausea nearly overwhelmed her, but she managed to hold it at bay. She was just exhausted.
“They did, and they got everyone, including a few young kids, back here safely, but it took them over a week. They had to take most of it on foot,” he said. “If it’s that bad around here, it’s going to be a nightmare up through New York. The toll roads and tunnels? You’ll never make it.”
“Walking all the way from here to New York would take us days,” Crash said. “And that’s only if we could walk ten hours a day without stopping.”
“That’s not an option, either,” Parrish said, her heart racing. “We need to get up there tomorrow. What else can we do? Do you think we could really find a helicopter around here? How hard would it be to learn to fly that?”
Tank laughed.
“I was joking about a helicopter. Even if you could find a helo nearby, it would take one of you weeks to learn how to fly,” he said. “But the real hardship would be figuring out how and where to land that beast. It’s not going to be easy, especially if half the rooftops of the city are filled with rotters, which is a good possibility. You have no idea what you’re going to find when you get up there, and it’s not like it’ll be easy to refuel.”
Parrish groaned. She hadn’t thought about all that. She had no doubt Crash could learn to fly it in seconds, but unless they could land directly on the roof of the Four Seasons, they’d end up having to fight their way through a crowded, dark skyscraper and through the streets, anyway.
Of course, Zoe might not be at the Four Seasons, anymore. How, exactly, were they going to find her if she’d left and gone somewhere else?
A helicopter wasn’t going to work, but there had to be a solution.
“Not our best option, then,” she said. “What else could we do that would be fast and relatively safe?”
She stared at the map, trying to figure out what they could do that wouldn’t take them days on foot. Lily had a head start for sure, and she also had abilities none of them fully understood. There was no doubt in Parrish’s mind that Lily was already in New York.
Somehow, though, Zoe had gotten away just in time. She couldn’t still be at the hotel, then. The fifth would have taken her somewhere safe, and how far could two small children get on their own, anyway?
She racked her mind for any solution, trying to think outside the box. They would keep working on their attempt to recreate the vision they’d had. Maybe, if they could strengthen it enough, they might even be able to talk to Zoe or the fifth. Warn them about what was coming or find out exactly where they were inside the city.
They couldn’t rely on that, though.
For now, they had to assume they’d be able to sense their connection once they were all inside the city together.
They just had to get there, first.
The roads were packed too much for a Humvee to get through, but what about something smaller?
“Motorcycles,” she said, sitting up. She didn’t know if it was the dumbest idea she’d had, or the smartest. “What if we could find some motorcycles and weave around the cars and pileups? Do you think that would get us through the traffic jams?”
Tank raised an eyebrow and considered it. “That could work. You might opt for dirt bikes or something that can go off-road. Something small but powerful,” he said. “That will definitely get you there faster than walking. With a small enough bike, you should be able to maneuver through a lot of the traffic, but what’s going to stop you is those tunnels.”
He pointed to a location on the map.
“Those could be packed all the way through from one side to the other with no idea how many rotters are trapped inside. It’s risky. You’d have to get out and walk from there.”
It was a start. She leaned over the map, wondering where they could get their hands on four dirt bikes when Crash stood up and shouted.
“I’ve got it,” he said. “I feel stupid for not seeing it sooner, but it makes complete sense.”
“What?” she asked, hoping he really did have a brilliant idea in that head of his.
“Water,” he said, sitting back down and pointing to the swath of blue on the map. “We go east to the water, then we can take a boat all the way to Manhattan. It is an island, after all, and there aren’t going to be any zombies or fifty car pileups on the water.”
She wanted to stand up and dance for joy.
Yes!
Why hadn’t that occurred to her sooner? She’d been so wrapped up in thinking about the roads that the idea of taking a boat
