Chapter 18 Miguel
Chapter eighteen
Miguel
Ileft Emery with Nico at the fire truck and cut through the alleys, coming out several blocks away.
I only ran into a couple of zombies along the way, which was good.
That meant my little distraction wouldn’t cause a bigger problem for us later by bringing more zombies to the area than were already here.
I scoped out the street, looking for a good place to set up my firecrackers, when I spotted something that made me grin like a kid on Christmas morning.
I don’t know why it was here to begin with.
The Army may have brought it in to fuel their generators and abandoned it when they evacuated.
Whatever the reason, the small fuel truck was mine now—and I was going to blow it up.
I took out the two zombies near the tank and circled it.
How hard could it be? Gasoline wanted to burn, right?
I opened the valve, standing to the side so that I didn’t get it all over me, and let the fuel spill to the ground.
Once it had spread far enough away that I could make an easy escape, I took out my firecrackers and duct tape.
I taped a bunch of them together, stealing the fuses from some extras, to twist them together and give me a little more wiggle room.
When I finished, I placed my makeshift firecracker bomb down on the street where some of the gas had spread.
Now came the tricky part. I knew the gas fumes were quite flammable, so I needed to get the fuse lit without setting the air around me on fire.
I was eighty percent certain that I wasn’t about to blow myself up.
I ignited the lighter and held my breath as I put the flame to the fuse.
As soon as I saw a spark, I took off down the street.
I was halfway down the block when I stopped and looked back.
Nothing had happened. I didn’t know how long these things were supposed to take, but I hadn’t even heard the firecrackers go off yet.
I turned and took a step back toward the truck when a loud whoosh sounded.
Seconds later, the truck exploded, shaking the ground around us and sending me to my knees.
I laughed in glee as I climbed back to my feet.
There was no way the zombies didn’t notice that!
I took off running for two more blocks before I cut back toward the park.
I encountered more zombies on my way, but they were easy to dodge since their primary focus was the big cloud of black smoke rising over the city.
It wasn’t until I entered the park that I realized the error in my plan.
I hadn’t considered the park might be full of zombies.
And that I’d have to run through them to get back to Emery and Nico.
I pulled out my knife and made a wider arc around the moving horde, praying that Nico and Emery noticed them coming before the zombies noticed them.
While I had fewer zombies to deal with, I still had a fight on my hands, opting to run past as many as I could and only pausing to take down the ones who drew too close.
Needing to catch my breath, I paused in a thicket of shrubbery.
Zombies continued to pass me, none the wiser of my presence.
At least until one tripped and nearly fell on top of me.
I plunged my knife into its brain, but the damage had already been done.
I was exposed, and another zombie stumbled onto us, trying to bite my face off.
Zombies all around began to take notice of the scuffle and, on instinct, came over to get in on the perceived feast. I stabbed the second zombie through the eye and crawled from beneath the bodies.
By sheer will alone, I managed to evade the other zombies and kept running.
No more breaks for me until I got back to Emery.
I made her a promise, and I didn’t intend to break it.
Eventually, the zombies thinned out, and I finally spotted the pedicab stand.
My heart pounded in my chest as I approached.
I didn’t see Emery or Nico anywhere. Refusing even to consider the worst, I scanned the area to see where they might have gone.
They would have stayed within view of the stand, knowing that was where I would meet them.
As I circled the bikes, I heard a zipper. I turned in time to see the flap of one of the carriages open, revealing Emery and Nico hiding within. “Oh, thank fuck,” I whispered.
“When we saw all the zombies coming from the park, we started to worry you might not make it through,” Emery said. She climbed out of the carriage and jumped into my waiting arms.
“I told you I’d always come back to you, Sweetheart,” I assured her.
“So you didn’t run into any trouble?”
“None at all.” I looked at Nico, and he rolled his eyes at me, clearly seeing through my lie.
“Glad you’re back, brother. Now, how about we get back to the others and get the fuck off of this island?” Emery directed me toward a bike, and we started pedaling back to Luis and her parents. “What the hell did you blow up?” Nico asked with a lopsided grin.
“Wasn’t that amazing?” I asked. “I found a gas truck and couldn’t resist.”
“I’m a little jealous I didn’t go instead,” Nico replied with a laugh.
“You could have been hurt,” Emery lectured.
“Yeah, but, Babe, did you see the size of the explosion! That was some epic shit.”
“Oh, I saw,” she replied, shaking her head. “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.”
“It worked, didn’t it?” I asked. I loved that she was worried about me. “Plus, it looks like it was pretty effective at cleaning up the streets. We haven’t seen a single zombie yet.”
“Let’s hope it stays that way,” she replied.
As luck would have it, it did. And thanks to the bikes, we made it back in less than half the time it took us to get there on foot. As soon as we reached the bathroom, Emery jumped off her bike and hurried to check on her parents.
“Mami? Papi? Luis? We’re back, open the door.” Emery looked at us nervously when the door didn’t immediately open. She raised her fist to knock again when the door swung open.
“Sorry,” Luis said sheepishly. “We fell asleep.”
“Well, time to wake up, sunshine,” I replied. I held the door open to let what little light there was into the dark room.
“Everything went ok?” Luis asked.
“I’m surprised you didn’t hear the explosion all the way over here,” Emery replied as she helped her parents up and began refolding the blankets and stuffing them into bags. “Genius here blew up a gas truck.”
“I would be the genius,” I clarified, “and it was awesome.”
“I’m sorry I missed that.”
“But at least you got some sleep,” Nico commented.
By his expression, he wasn’t thrilled that Luis had fallen asleep, but wasn’t willing to outright say it and cause more problems, especially after our chat on the way to the park.
Once I had explained myself, he’d calmed down quickly.
Said he understood where I was coming from and realized we couldn’t approach our relationship with Emery the same way we had with everything else before the apocalypse.
I hoped he meant that because I wouldn’t blindly take orders from him anymore, especially if I felt there was a better way. Emery was too important.
Luis noticed his displeasure as well, but he was far more levelheaded than I was and ignored it. “Right?” he chirped. “Now I’m refreshed and ready to pedal us to safety.”
We packed all of the bags into Emery’s cart, ignoring her protests that she could take a heavier load. Luis would pull Emery’s parents, and I would hop on the back with Nico. We would take point and eliminate any zombies we came across.
“Time check?” I asked Emery before we took off.
“Two hours,” she replied solemnly.
“That shouldn’t be a problem now that we have wheels,” I replied.
As we took off, I considered that all of this would have been much faster if we had hotwired a car, except that driving through the streets was impossible, the path we were on wouldn’t always be drivable, and a car would be heard for miles around in the dead city.
Pedicabs were slower, but a much more viable option.
We made good time, and it was a fun way to take out zombies.
It felt like I was jousting and Nico was my loyal steed.
I had a private chuckle over that and made a mental note to work it into conversation when we had made it safely out of the city.
We didn’t hit our next roadblock until we neared the bridge.
We had about twenty minutes to get across, which shouldn’t have been a problem.
It wouldn’t have been a problem if the Army hadn’t dropped concrete blocks around the damn thing.
“This must have been another evacuation point,” Emery said.
“Let’s lift the bikes over and go as far as we can with them,” Luis suggested. “Then we’ll hoof it the rest of the way.”
Instead of replying to his suggestion, we sprang into action. The damn things were a lot heavier than I thought they would be, but we managed the task easily enough. Unfortunately, when you only have twenty minutes to spare, every one of them is precious.
“We’re not going to make it,” Nico growled quietly as we continued toward the bridge.
Looking ahead, I had to agree. There was another concrete wall to get past, zombies milling around, and a bridge full of cars to navigate. Fuck. “We have to try,” I replied. I glanced back at the others and saw the same understanding in their eyes. What choice did we have?
“Wait! Do you hear that?” Emery suddenly screeched.
We all stopped to listen to whatever she thought she heard. At first, I didn’t hear anything until the steady roar of an engine drawing closer reached my ears. “Where?” We all looked around for the source of the sound and our possible ride off this rock.
“There!” Felix shouted, pointing downriver. Sure enough, in the early morning light, we could see a boat speeding up the Hudson.
“The flare gun!” I called at Emery.
She got off the bike and dug through the bags until she found one. She pointed it at the sky and pulled the trigger. This was our only chance. If the boat didn’t stop, we’d have to get in the water and swim for it, because every zombie around would be headed our way in a matter of minutes.
“Head to the river,” I ordered. “Either we’re going in the boat, or we’re going in the water.
” I grabbed the bags out of Emery’s carriage as she and Luis helped her parents out.
As we lined up along the edge of the walkway by the river, I thought for a second the boat wouldn’t stop, but then I heard the engine throttle down.
The boat drifted toward us, and I could see a man at the helm and five other people aboard. “You folks need a lift?” the man asked when he was within earshot.
“We’d appreciate it,” Nico responded. “We were trying to get over the bridge.”
The boat captain looked toward the bridge, then back at us. “You’ll never make it in time. Good thing you spotted me when you did and sent up that flare, or I never woulda seen ya. I’ll pull up down there, and you can hop on.”
We went over to the ladder he indicated and boarded his boat. “We appreciate this,” Emery said.
“Don’t thank me yet, we’re still in the hot zone.
Everyone, hold on!” Two teens moved so Emery’s parents could sit while the rest of us hunkered down on the boat’s floor.
The captain gunned it, and the boat took off again.
I glanced at Mr. Higgins’ watch on Emery’s wrist, and my stomach flopped.
There was only a minute or so left until Operation Night Night.
We passed under the bridge and didn’t stop until the Captain must have felt we were a safe enough distance away.
He killed the engine, and the roar of the approaching jets filled the early morning sky.
Emery took my hand and squeezed it as they flew overhead.
Several flew past the George Washington Bridge without dropping any bombs, but as the last jet passed over, explosions could be heard and seen as they all hit their assigned targets.
We all gasped, and Camila cried out as the GWB was blown up.
It was unnerving to watch. New York City was officially cut off from the rest of the world, and no one knew what the environmental impact would be.
The city that never slept would never wake up.
In silence, we continued to witness a moment in history that might never make the history books if the world kept falling.