Empire's End by David Dunwoody Page A

day. Is that livin’? C’mon.
What if we could bring back more than some goddamn salt and paper?
What if we brought back books? Booze? Fucking juice! I don’t needa
get drunk, if I could taste apple juice just one more time—”
    “Don’t start,” Alex shook his head. “Just
don’t.”
    “Yeah, you hate to think about it, but what
if it’s really fuckin’ down there? What if, Alex? C’mon, we’re
otherwise basically wastin’ our time in this ghost town, why not
just go look? Jarrett, whaddaya think?”
    The smallest and youngest of the three,
Jarrett stared at the dead city with wonder. He still had dreams,
Alex knew, he still had an idea that life was more than breathing
and eating and outlasting the rotters. He had a concept of the
future.
    “I wonder what’s down there,” Jarrett
said.
    Keane slapped his knee and held the bat up.
“Let’s just poke around this block, huh? Just see what’s under this
block. Under this hill here, Caterpillar Hill. If we find somethin’
interesting, we’ll head back to camp and they can send out a real
salvage team.”
    Alex shrugged. “You know, there could be
rotters down there. Preserved somehow, away from the hot and the
dryness. It could be bad.”
    Jarrett suddenly looked pale. Keane popped
his neck with a snap of his head and sighed. “I’ll take point.
We’ll sweep every room before we start shopping. Okay? I’m not
gonna take any chances with you guys. C’mon.”
    “What the hell,” Alex said. “Might as well
make something of this trip.”
    “Wait!” Jarrett said. He pointed, hand
trembling, at something approaching the hill.
    It lurched forward, the gaunt, thin-limbed
thing, still partially hidden in the shadows of the buildings but
beyond all doubt a rotter. Its stilted, insane run, its head
thrusting downward with each step—it was alien and horrifying and
yet they’d seen it a thousand times before.
    But this one was a little different.
    It ran like a bird, its arms held behind its
back and its gray head making rude pecking gestures. As it came
into the light, Alex saw the reason for its bizarre posture: it was
handcuffed.
    They’d never know why. They’d never know if
this man had been some sort of prisoner, or if he’d been placed
under restraint due to infection. They’d never know why he, or it,
a starving scavenger just like them, was prowling the streets of
Old New York alone and in old-style police handcuffs.
    “Buzzard,” Keane breathed, following the
rotter’s movements. “I mean, we call ‘em that, the lone ones... but
never seen one that really was.” And with that, he descended the
hill and, with a powerhouse swing, decapitated the rotter. Its body
ran past him, scrambling halfway up the hill before collapsing and
rolling back down to the street.
    The head, its few teeth gnashing madly, lay
in the grass. Keane stomped it to dust.
    “Still want to go poking around?” Alex
snapped, heart racing, face flushed. He looked at Jarrett,
expecting to see terror in the boy’s eyes; but he only saw morbid
fascination.
    Alex knew he’d been outvoted.
     
    * * *
     
    “You feel that?”
    “What?”
    “Like a little quake. Just now.”
    “No.”
    They had gone into a corporate tower whose
windows were long gone and whose floors had been given over to the
local flora and fungi. Sunlight streamed in from all four
sides—high noon—and Alex watched as rats scrabbled down into their
burrows, going under the floor.
    “Think they’re infected?”
    “We can’t ask. Just kill ‘em if they get too
close.”
    “I feel bad for them,” Jarrett said. “They
don’t know. They’re just living, like us.”
    “It’s nature,” Alex said in an attempt at a
calming tone. “We have to protect ourselves. Nature
understands.”
    “The rats don’t.”
    “Ever hear of a rat king?” Keane muttered. He
was using his bat to clear a closet of debris. “It’s an Old New
York legend. Rats, they live under the city, millions of them.