He caught glimpses of gray hordes shuffling aimlessly on occasion but remained unnoticed by undead eyes. Every road he saw was jammed solid and when he looked through the binoculars there were still things seat belted in a few of the cars. A semi-truck dangled from the upper deck of the George Washington Bridge but the only sound was the splash of water on his hull and the gulls that called and soared above. He trimmed the sails and cut in at the 69th street transfer bridge, a derelict rusting hulk slowly decaying in the river.
He tied up then climbed across the wreckage to get to shore. He wondered again if he was on a fool’s errand. No one knew where he was or what he was trying to do. He’d only told Natty about it and that had been a mistake, he hadn’t meant to. She’d been prattling on nonstop, making up for a year of not speaking he supposed, and jumping from one song to the next on the phones.
“Oh, my mother loved this one.” She said and started singing along with Nat King Cole as he crooned about Mona Lisa’s strange smile.
“It’s in New York. I’m going after it.” Jessie had said without thinking.
She was worse than a Pitbull gnawing on a bone, she wouldn’t let it go. She wanted to know how and why and didn’t believe his reason.
“Because I want to.” He’d said. “I want to hang it above my fireplace.”
It took her weeks but she finally got the whole story, or enough to satisfy her so she’d quit bugging him. The painting reminded him of a girl he loved and he thought it might give him peace. He didn’t have any pictures of her, none that captured who she really was. All the photos taken at the Tower were of her in fine clothing with perfect hair and expertly applied makeup. She grinned for the camera, flashing teeth and having fun. Some snapped from Tombstone, Anselmo, the Island and other places were a hot commodity for a while. Retrievers were putting up notices and paying good coin for the few pictures that had been taken. Most had been of him; she had been in the background or cut off or partially in focus. They had wanted a picture of the Road Angel and they had been taken secretly. Everyone knew he didn’t like the attention.
Her viral popularity had sprung up from the bored citizens of the Tower. They had made her a star, turned her into an overnight sensation and it only grew when she died young. Bastille never let a good story go to waste and gave a moving eulogy. The calls started coming in and it was the same as the stories about him. Many were exaggerations or complete fabrications with an occasional eyewitness telling a true story. Those that had met her in the wastelands remembered a kind young woman who was thoughtful and considerate. They claimed she was as wicked fast as the Road Angel, killed the undead just as easily and had helped him rescue hundreds. Her grace and beauty offset his surliness and scars perfectly, they were a match made in Heaven.
Nearly a hundred different people claimed to be at Fubars and had seen them move faster than greased lightning, ready to kill everyone and everything, when the Road Angel had been startled by a friendly hand grabbing his shoulder. Bastille started calling her the Angel of the Highway, portrayed the pair as tragic and doomed lovers and her legend became larger than life. The Friends of Scarlet, young women who wanted to learn to be bold, had chapters in every walled city.
His memories were jumbled and he confused things that happened with things that happened but didn’t. He remembered a small quiet smile, one that set him at ease. One that let him know everything was going to be okay. That’s the smile he wanted to see, not her hamming it up for the cameras. The one that let him find peace and soothed his soul.
That’s why he was going after the painting.
According to a dozen different collectors in the Tower who were willing to pay a huge retrieval fee, the Mona Lisa was displayed in the main gallery of the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Art on 5th avenue. It wasn’t scheduled to be sent back to the Louvre until after the anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci’s birthday in April. It would be hanging there, encased in bullet proof glass, just waiting for anyone bold enough to go take it.
Jessie double checked his gear after the precarious scramble to dry land, let the low-slung guns find their place and tightened the straps on his pack. He’d never been to this part of New York and he’d hoped the elevated trains that had rattled by his shipping container home in the Cans ran near the museum but he hadn’t spotted any. That would have made it easy, deaders had a hard time walking on the train tracks.
Everything in Manhattan was probably underground and he wasn’t about to go down there. It had been nearly two years without electricity and they were likely full of water and rats. Fighting dried out zombies was bad enough; he didn’t want to think about tangling with a bunch of squishy deaders that had been wading around in a chest deep cesspool for a year. Besides, didn’t New York have an alligator problem in the sewers? He was going to stay above ground, thank you very much.
The museum was a sprawling series of buildings on the other side of Central park, only a mile and a half away but in one of the most densely populated cities in America. He’d seen the state of the bridges connecting the island when he came down river.
