Instead, things seemed calm.
Besides, worrying about a two-hour delay during an apocalypse where everything was unpredictable wasn’t going to help anyone.
What would help, however, was continuing to work on a plan.
He’d meant to do some of this work last night, but he’d spent the greater part of the evening wrapped in Karmen’s arms again.
She’d been practicing ways of shielding his dreams from Lily or the Dark One or whoever might be watching in, and for the past several nights, she’d managed to make it so that he didn’t have any dreams at all.
Of course, that could have had more to do with being so close to her all night, but he had no regrets there, either way.
In fact, he would have preferred to spend the rest of his life in her arms.
The way things were going, last night could have very well been the rest of his life, but he didn’t want to think of it that way. He wanted to think of it as a potential beginning for something even better than late-night gaming by himself.
If he had to face real zombies and the threat of actual death to get to that new beginning, he was going in guns blazing.
“Why don’t you all come over here for a second and get your mind off David,” he said. “I want to run these maps by you and show you where we’re going tomorrow.”
Everyone joined him at the kitchen island where he’d spread out his maps of the city that he’d gotten back at Tank’s, as well as his satellite feeds on the laptop.
“Alright, so here’s the plan.” He pointed to where they were right now on the Jersey shore. “From here, it’s a straight shot to New York. We’re going to come in through this section under the bridge and into the Upper Bay here. Then, we’ll curve around into the East River. I’m thinking we can find a place to dock here near the Queensboro Bridge.”
“I thought David said the East River was trashed,” Noah said.
“He did, and it is,” Crash said, pulling up the most recent images he’d been able to pull from satellite. “But the Hudson is even worse. Look at this.”
He shook his head as he scanned the Hudson River side of the island. By the time you got to the Bronx, it wasn’t too bad, but they had to get around Manhattan first.
That wasn’t happening. There was a massive container ship blocking the entire entrance there. Crash had no idea how that had come to pass, but it seemed to have crashed into the island and dumped half its cargo in the river. Lots of smaller boats and ships seemed to piled around it, as if they’d been trying to go around and had crashed into each other.
It was an epic disaster area.
“Where’s Concourse Village on this map?” Parrish asked.
He pointed to an area all the way on the other side of Manhattan. It was just about the worst place for David and Zoe to be. If they’d been in Brooklyn, this would have been a cake walk.
“And where’s the Queensboro Bridge you were talking about?” she asked.
He showed her where the bridge was, and she groaned.
“That’s so close to the Four Seasons,” she said. “We would have been right there.”
“Yeah, but Zoe would have been long gone by now if she’d stayed there,” Noah said. “We have to keep it in perspective.”
“You really think we’re going to be able to get around that mess on the Brooklyn Bridge?” Karmen asked, zooming in on some satellite images he’d shown her earlier. “I still think it’s iffy at best. It doesn’t look passable to me.”
“I think I can get us through that with the speedboat,” he said. He sounded more confident than he felt. “Anything bigger would be a challenge, but David’s supposed to be scouting it out for me this morning before we commit.”
Parrish sighed, and her anxiety was making everyone nervous.
Crash chose to stay focused on his explanation, though. David would be in touch soon. He was sure of it.
“From the looks of it, the Brooklyn Bridge must have been blasted by something big. A bomb, maybe? There were rumors on the underground forums that the military was planning to enforce a quarantine on the city by taking out the bridges. At first, I thought that was crazy, paranoid talk, but looking at the bridge now? I can’t imagine anything short of a military-grade bomb taking that much of the bridge out.”
There had been a full load of cars trying to cross it, too, but he didn’t mention that part.
The bridge closest to Manhattan still stood, and even though he couldn’t find any camera that could get a good look underneath it, he was pretty sure there was a small space where a boat could pass through.
“If not, we’ll have to get out there, but that’s going to add a lot of time and trouble to our trip.”
“And you don’t think we can get any closer to the Bronx than this Queensboro Bridge?” Parrish asked.
“Not a chance,” he said, shaking his head. “Look at this.”
He switched over to another satellite image and stepped back so they could see.
Parrish did a double-take and then brought a hand to her mouth.
“Is that a plane?” Noah asked.
“That is a plane,” Crash confirmed. “A C-130 transport, to be exact. And so is this.”
He pointed to a second one just a hundred yards away. The entire river was closed from that point on.
“Wait, what about coming all the way around the other side?” Parrish asked. “Here. Long Island Sound. That looks like a straight shot.”
He shook his head. “It won’t work,” he said. “Believe me, David and I have looked into every possible way to get to them. Long Island Sound is worse than the East River. There was such a huge breakout in New
