At the heart of the abandoned city, a woodland had taken root, flowering to massive dimensions. She was on Lenox Avenue, in the 110s, when a wall of vegetation rose in her path. The stench of the city itself, death’s temple.Įvening came on. She was aware of the tiniest sounds and movements: pigeons cooing, rats scurrying, water dripping down the walls of the buildings’ interiors. The island’s sheer density astounded her. Never had Alicia been in such a place, nor even imagined one like it. In some places the streets were flooded, dirty river water bubbling up through the manholes. Eventually the factories gave way to blocks of apartments and brownstones, interspersed with vacant lots, some barren, others like miniature jungles. She headed south, along the backbone of the island she had no map but didn’t need one. The first ramp was impassable, but the second guided them to street level, into an area of what appeared to be warehouses and factories. The sun was behind them when they reached the far side. How strange, she thought, to fear nothing but this. Step by step, gelid with dread, she led Soldier across. The river was bad enough the thought of the ocean, had she indulged it, would have paralyzed her completely. Beyond the edge lay a swallowing maw of death. The feeling was automatic, like an allergy, a sneeze barely held in abeyance. The height was irrelevant it was the water that stoked her fear.
A narrow ledge along the guardrail, four feet wide at the most, presented the only viable pathway. Cars lay in a twisted heap on the deck below. Mid-span they came to a place where the roadway had collapsed.
Crossing the bridge was not as bad as she feared she had only to keep her eyes forward, to put one foot in front of the next, to hold her apprehension at bay. Alicia dismounted and led Soldier through the wreckage. The upper deck was choked with the carcasses of automobiles, painted white by the droppings of birds. The usual barricades, gun emplacements, military vehicles stripped bare by a hundred years of weather, many overturned or lying on their sides: there had been a battle here. The smallest notch of reluctance in his gait. The thought of crossing it filled Alicia with a profound anxiety she could not let herself show, though Soldier sensed it anyway, demonstrating his awareness with the smallest notch of reluctance in his gait. It was late afternoon beneath a clear summer sky when she reached the bridge she’d been looking at for hours: two massive struts, like giant twins, holding the decks aloft with cables slung over their shoulders. The rain stopped, started, stopped again. She picked her way north, hopscotching through the detritus, searching for a way across.
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