Chapter Nineteen #4
“Okay,” I say, my voice small and content.
Happy at the thought of a future where Everett and I watch movies together.
And maybe my dumb, hopeful heart just wants to believe it, but right now, under these blue skies and in this crisp spring air, it feels possible.
Chicken hops into my lap, startling my hands upward.
Instead of circling until she finds the perfect spot, though, she sits tall and regal, staring up at me.
Ask him to stay together, her knowing kitty eyes seem to insist, and I swear I hear that high-pitched orphan’s voice Everett gave her in my head. You don’t have to let us go.
But how? I want to demand. What am I supposed to do?
I can’t abandon Gramps. No matter how angry he made me yesterday, all his words are rooted in a deep, loving concern for me.
And without his permission, I simply can’t bring Everett and Chicken with me to his bunker.
It’s not like Everett’s invited me to stay with him at West Point, either.
What if this is still just a weeklong fling for him? Survival with benefits?
You’re scared, Chicken accuses me with her eyes.
Yeah. No shit, cat. I stare right back.
What’s worse, being rejected again or living without us forever?
I suck in a deep breath.
Everett glances between us. “Am I…interrupting something?”
Chicken mreows petulantly, then crosses over into Everett’s lap instead, a clear rebuke of my cowardice.
“Do you ever get the feeling that Chicken is, I don’t know. Judging you?” I ask, wincing a little at how crazy that sounds. But Everett tosses back his head and laughs.
“Only constantly.”
Chicken narrows her little amber eyes and mreows again, like laugh it up, humans, but it’s getting late.
I glance up. The rolling ticker’s date and time are still accurate, though the news flashing across it isn’t.
One p.m. We decided we’d leave the city by two, two-thirty at the latest, just to give us time to get to our rig across the river where we left it and find a safe house outside town.
If we’re going to my grandparents’ home today, it’s now or never.
Everett picks up on the shift in my mood immediately. His arm curls around me protectively. “Is it time?”
I force myself to nod. Ten minutes later, we’re riding our bikes on the sidewalk beneath the open canopy of Central Park, the trees just starting to unfurl fresh, new leaves.
When it’s time to turn left down my grandparents’ street, I glide to a stop instead.
Without questioning me, Everett hops off his bike, too, and we lean them against a sign and walk, side by side.
The park is majestic, even this early in spring.
To see such lush nature surrounded by buildings, like an island in reverse, is surprising in the best way.
A delight sandwiched by city. Did Mom walk down this sidewalk, too, when she was a little girl?
Did she ride her bike through the winding paths into the green of the park beside my grandmother, looking at her with eyes that trusted instead of feared?
Or did she have reason to fear them, even then?
Were my grandparents terrible people Mom was right to hide from? When I walk through their front door, will I see rooms where she was hurt? Abused? The genesis of all her mental illness?
Will I even be able to tell?
It’s hard to explain to Everett the decision weighing on my heart right now.
The conflicting loyalties I feel to my mother, though she is long gone, but also the truth, which I’ve been trying to find ever since I walked out of our farmhouse ten years ago.
It’s hard to trust the woman who trained me to believe there was nothing beyond our farm but horror, but it feels like the ultimate betrayal to question her on this—her life’s biggest decision.
Leaving her family, our family, behind forever.
I pull the keys out of my pocket, running my finger along the ridges hard enough to hurt. One block away. We’re only one block away from discovering who my family is, or was, at least. Where I come from. I stop, dead in my tracks, unable to take a step farther.
“We don’t have to go, you know.” Everett pauses to slip his hand into mine, his gaze concerned.
“It’s the whole reason we took the risk in coming here,” I say, looking anywhere but his eyes. “So I could find out who I am. I can’t back out now.”
“No one is making you do anything, and that should include you. Besides, how could a house you’ve never seen tell you anything about who you really are, Maisie?
” He draws me to him. “Maybe you’d learn more about the people in your life who are gone, but who your family is doesn’t determine who you decide to be.
I know because I had to learn that, too.
” He gazes down at my upturned face with so much quiet understanding of how I’m feeling, it tightens my throat.
“I don’t know what to do,” I admit, my voice hushed.
“Listen, I’m here to support you and what you want, no matter what that is. But something is telling you not to go in there, isn’t it?”
After a second, I nod. I don’t want to, but it’s the truth.
Maybe it’s just the well-trained fear Mom cultivated in me responding to her still, but she taught me to listen to that fear.
To believe my instincts. And all those instincts are screaming that we shouldn’t be here right now. That we should turn around and run.
“Okay,” Everett says simply. “We’ve had a perfect day in New York City celebrating your birthday, and now we can go home, wherever that is for tonight.” He caresses my cheek.
“Okay,” I finally say, relief flooding my body at the decision.
“Come on. Let’s get our bikes and head back toward the waterfront.” Chicken mewls from his back side as if in agreement.
We pass by a street vendor’s abandoned wares laid out on a white sheet on the sidewalk.
Knit hats, shirts, purses, umbrellas, and souvenirs lie scattered about, kicked out of their neat rows by trampling feet.
Everett starts digging around in the pile of shirts.
The vendor’s gone, or perhaps he’s one of the former humans swaying listlessly around the tipped-over hot-dog cart halfway down the block.
It’s hard to say—both the zombies and the hot-dog cart are covered in cooing, pecking pigeons.
Everett stands up triumphantly, a couple of thin white T-shirts emblazoned I NY clutched in his hand.
“One for me, one for you.” He slips mine over my head, then uses it to gather me into a tender, sweet kiss. Chicken yowls, an urgent warning.
“Everett,” I murmur against his mouth, my eyes over his shoulder.
“Yes?”
“Is that pigeon…staring at us?”
He glances over his shoulder fully prepared to blow this off—I can see the nah forming on his lips—but he stops. Frowns. Pulls us a step backward.
“Um. Maybe?”
We stare at the pigeon. It stares back. It’s perched on top of a park bench, its gnarled, knobby talons blocking out the eyes of the personal injury attorney in the bright yellow ad below it.
A hot dog dangles obscenely from its beak, but its small, beady eyes are fixed on us.
They’re orange still, but they seem to glow from within.
“Are New York City pigeons territorial or something?”
Another pigeon joins it, then another, until the bench is lined with unnatural, staring birds.
“They’ll fight you over a pretzel, but generally territorial? Not that I’ve ever seen.”
The lead bird leans its head back and gobbles the hot dog, deep-throating it, never breaking eye contact.
“That’s…unsettling,” Everett says.
I tug Everett’s arm. “Let’s hurry back.”
“They’re probably just extra ballsy right now, thanks to all the zombies letting them get away with murder.”
Chicken hisses vociferously.
Slowly, I turn to look at Everett. “Animals never get the zombie virus, right? In the movies?”
“Well, they usually don’t, but there are some examples. Resident Evil. Zoombies. I Am Legend.” Everett swallows. “Poultrygeist.”
“Poultrygeist? So there’s zombie bird precedent?” I grab the Tasers at my sides, firing them up as the rest of the flock join their leader. There are hundreds, more arriving every second. I glance behind me.
They’ve formed a circle around us.
“If you count chickens, then yes.” Everett sparks his Tasers to life just as the birds begin slapping their wings together and stamping their feet, a strange preamble to whatever lies ahead. Suddenly, it stops.
Head Bird grunts, lifts its wings, then flies straight for us.
“Run!” I shriek, wielding my Tasers like swords at the onslaught of feathers and snapping beaks.
They’re faster than us, of course they’re faster, but at least we’re wearing the nigh-impenetrable flight suits.
Everett yanks his T-shirt over his head, and I do the same.
Together, we duck and race down the sidewalk, running blindly, with Chicken caterwauling from Everett’s back.
Electrocuted pigeon bodies rain down around us as we go.
Something sharp tears at my ear, and I scream. The shirts aren’t strong enough!
“We’ve got to get inside—now!” I screech.
“Anywhere?!”
“Yes, anywhere!”