Almost as he answered Tietjen was sliding into the car. When his hip hit something hard he looked down and saw the gun.
“I
am
armed,” the man said conversationally, and stuck the pistol back into his coat pocket. “Just so you know. You can keep an eye out for the Guard. And for refugees.”
They rode in silence for the first few miles. Tietjen let himself relax into the seat, weak with the pleasure of sitting. His leg muscles buzzed with fatigue. He had never known this particular kind of exhaustion, stress and panic on top of physical exertion. He felt unable to make conversation, but at last, feeling that some gesture should be made, he asked, “Why did you stop for me?”
The older man smiled. “Anyone foolish enough to be walking
toward
New York this time of the morning in the state things are in … must have an interesting story. Anyway, you wouldn’t be a refugee, and they’re the real danger now.” He gave Tietjen a curious sideways look. “Which brings me round to asking why you
are
walking into the mess. I’m Corliss, by the way. Frank. And there’s coffee in a thermos somewhere back there,” he cocked his head toward the backseat. “Help yourself.”
“John Tietjen.” As he poured coffee into the thermos lid—lukewarm, too sweet, delicious—Tietjen tried to think of something to tell the driver. “My family is in Manhattan: my ex-wife, our kids.”
“You plan to single-handedly go in and rescue them, astounding the world?” Corliss’s tone was very dry. “Sounds fine, John. You have any idea what it’s like down there?”
Tietjen ignored the sarcasm, swiveled in his seat to face the other man. “Do you? No one’s been able to tell me what happened.”
“I don’t think anyone knows all of it. It’s hard to get the big picture, and nothing much is coming out of New York except people, refugees. One woman told me that she and her kids saw a gas main blow half a block away; some sort of explosive, maybe, but she wasn’t sure there hadn’t been an earthquake. One guy—poor bastard swore he’d seen dragons in the street, but the state he was in … Supposed to be fires all over the city, looters, flooding in the south end of the city, Manhattan and Brooklyn. Hurricane winds, earthquakes. God knows what-all else. The news said that Washington’s set up a task force, but they’re waiting to send in the Guard or the Army until Sovereign New York asks for help, and no one knows where the city governor is, no one’s heard anything from the city government since this-all began. A city as big as New York has a delicate balance; one thing happens and whssst!—” Corliss made a flourishing gesture with his free hand. “Everything goes. I’ve seen some people who’re leaving the city. I would think more than twice before trying to get back, myself.” The dry note returned to the old man’s voice. Something about his manner galled Tietjen.
“Why the hell
are
you going back in, then?” he snapped. “You don’t look like a hero.”
Corliss smiled wryly. “I’m not. Not much of one. Margaret—my wife—and I set out to leave Tuckahoe yesterday morning, but our daughter-in-law had to get out, and there were a few neighbors who couldn’t get out of Westchester on their own. Suddenly Margaret was organizing a damned car service. I made one trip to Bridgeport, and when I got home she’d already talked to other people, kept saying she could wait. I made four trips from Tuckahoe to Bridgeport yesterday—our daughter lives up there—and Margaret is still home, holed up in our house there. This time I’m taking her with me and we’re getting out of the salvation business. I’m too old for this.”
Tietjen nodded, his anger gone. Images of fire, of quake, ripped pavement and shattered buildings, were starting up again in his head. The rising panic squeezed his chest; the blood rushing in his head made a ferocious buzzing noise.
He swallowed a few times, rapidly.
“You okay?” Corliss was asking from a distance. “John? Damn. Look, pull yourself together. We’re going to have to do a little bulling and hope that they don’t recognize me from yesterday.” Corliss jabbed his chin forward, pointing. Ahead, Tietjen saw a roadblock and the familiar uniforms of Guard officers.
“Where’re you headed?” the Guard asked wearily.
“Down to White Plains to pick up my family,” Corliss began.
“I’m real sorry, sir. Traffic’s been restricted again. No one past the state line anymore, up about as far as Armonk and across to Tarrytown. Refugees have been coming out of the city, taking over pretty much everything from Purchase across to the Hudson. If your family’s down there I don’t think—”
“Frank.” Tietjen spoke quickly to cover the other man’s shock and paralysis. “Margaret said if she needed to she could make it to Greenwich, remember?” He forced the words out of a dry mouth. Did terror show? “She’ll have heard about the block past the line. You know Margaret, Frank. She’ll meet us in Greenwich.”
The officer leaned down to check Tietjen out. “Who’s Margaret?”
“His wife. My sister.” Tietjen smiled stiffly. “Hate like hell to have my sister in the middle of all that, sir.”
“Yeah, well.” The Guard checked over Corliss’s license, the vehicle permits, their IDs. At last he waved them on. “Good luck,” he called, but as if he doubted they would find any luck at all.
Corliss let out a gust of breath that kept time with the car’s acceleration. “Nice, John. Nice. You’ve earned your passage, so to speak. The state line.” Another exhalation. “Jesus, I hope Meggie’s okay.” Then, smiling curiously, “You didn’t seem fazed by that Purchase-to-the-Hudson business.”
“I don’t know where Purchase is. Is it bad?”
Corliss laughed. “Damn, yes. Basically everything from the Connecticut–New York border across to Tarrytown and the Hudson, down into Sovereign New York. I’m glad you said what you said to him—I couldn’t think that fast. Where in the city is it you mean to get?”
“Manhattan. As far in as you’ll take me, and walk the rest of the way unless I can find another ride.”
Corliss shrugged. “If we can get across the border I’ll bring you down to Tuckahoe with me, but then—I left Margaret with an old .32. I think she’d use it, but I hope she doesn’t have to. Purchase to the river. Jesus H. Christ.”
But Tietjen was sinking into his own panic, hearing the bravado of his plans, wondering how he was going to get to the city and what he would find there. Not who, he realized. What. He felt a dim anger at himself; what about the boys, what about Irene? What the hell was wrong with him?
But everyone seemed to think them as good as dead. There would be time to mourn later. Now he had to know.
The keening voice under all thought insisted: Home.
For a while the two men rode in silence.
“We’re getting close to Greenwich,” Corliss said at last. “Looks like we’ll have to run the line on one of the small roads. Hell, they can’t have this whole area covered.”
“You know it well?”
“Grew up around here. Hope I remember what I think I do.” Corliss smiled a mirthless smile, ridges of white stubble bracketing his mouth. “We’ll get off the parkway here and maybe I can find one of them.”
“Is that what this was? A parkway? Doesn’t look like much.”
“The Merritt Parkway. Turns into the Hutchinson once we get into New York State. One of the few roadways they kept open when the second fuel crisis hit. It’s suicide going faster than fifty on it, and there’s only two lanes. Designed by Mickey Mouse in the late nineteen-thirties, expanded in the nineties and contracted right back again in ’07. Used to be pretty when I was a kid: all green, lots of trees.” Talking in a reassuring historian’s voice, Corliss guided the car off the parkway and began to cut and weave down a series of narrow roads, making lefts and rights without any apparent reason. Tietjen knew they were still headed vaguely west by the slant of the sun, but that was all he was certain of. “Before they cut the big private tracts around here into development lots—ahh.” A note of guarded satisfaction. “I think we’re in New York, John. No sign of the Guard anywhere?”
There was no sign of anything at all. The silence was eerie. Certainly there was no sign of mass hysteria. Maybe it was all crazy, Tietjen thought. Maybe everything would be okay after all.
Corliss took the car left, right, then left again, kitty-cornering southwesterly. Tietjen was relaxed in his seat, watching the small, carefully tended houses as they passed them; a SCHOOL CROSSING sign that shone in the midmorning sunshine. The taut plane of Corliss’s cheek was beginning to relax. They turned a corner and another. Then Corliss brought the car to a slamming, violent stop.
Three cars had been overturned and were on fire in the middle of a crossroad. The fire fed on itself in bursts of smoke, gusts of flame that plumed upward in the clear daylight. Worse was the bedraggled crowd of people that stood, mesmerized by the gouts of flame.
“Jesus God,” Corliss whispered.
“Floor it,” Tietjen ordered, low in his throat. “Frank, for Christ’s sake, floor it. They’ll turn us over too—” He did not finish. As the crowd turned toward their car Corliss stepped on the gas and the car tore a hole in their ranks, people scattering before it. Corliss had seen the arm that dangled, burning, from the window of one of the cars.
“Jesus God, Jesus,” Corliss was whispering like prayer. “Meggie, Christ, all alone. Meg.” His foot was pressed flat to the floor on the gas pedal; the car was taking curves on luck and inertia. “Christ, let me be home soon.”
Tietjen was possessed by the voice; his terror welled up and choked him.
Christ, let me be home soon.
He would never see home again. Without thinking, without hearing what he said, he asked, “Frank, take me to the Bronx. To one of the bridges.”
Corliss let up on the gas pedal a little, snapped out of his own trance. “What?”
“The Bronx. Take me to the Bronx. I’m not asking for Manhattan.”
Corliss looked at Tietjen sideways with a sad half-smile. “Son, your family isn’t alive in there. If they made it out they’ll find you. Look, you can come out to Bridgeport with us, we’ll find you a place—”
It was too late for Tietjen to explain about the howling voice in his head that drove him on, about Irene and the boys and the locks on their doors, about the city. Even if he had the words. Too late to allow himself to be affected by Corliss’s offer. It doesn’t matter, the voice howled.
Nothing
matters.
He repeated, “The Bronx, Frank.
Please.”
Corliss shook his head. “I can’t. I’m not a hero, John. I’m scared to death. I want my wife and I want to get out of this, as far away … look, I wish I could help you. I’ll take you—”
The action was begun and completed almost before the thought had formed: Tietjen reached for the gun and in a moment had it, warm from its resting place by Corliss’s hip, in his hand. “The Bronx, Frank. It won’t take you long. I’m serious. I’m desperate.”
“Yes.” Corliss let his eyes flicker from the road to the gun to the road again. “If that’s what you want, John. You’ve got the gun. But think about what you’re walking into.”
Tietjen thought about it, clenching his hand around the gun, feeling its weight.
“Your family can’t be—”
“I know. Just drive, Frank. Please.” Tietjen’s voice was weary. Corliss drove and there was no more conversation.
Corliss drove with steady attention, as if he had made his agreement and meant to stick with it. Tietjen watched him, then the gun, then the road, then Corliss, then the gun, back and forth, feeling the cold weight of the thing in his hand, imagining what it would have been like if Corliss had forced him to use it. The image of that cluster of upended cars, of the one ghastly burning arm extended, played in his head. Looking down, Tietjen hated the gun, hated the voice that had driven him to use it as a threat.
“Frank.”
Corliss did not turn his head.
“Look, Frank. I’m sorry.” He stopped, looked down at the gun again.
Corliss relaxed the slightest bit. “I wish I could figure out what it is that’s driving you. It’s something more than your kids you’re worrying about?”
Tietjen kept his eyes on the gun in his hand. “I don’t know that I can explain it. I have to get back, that’s all. Since I heard about this thing. It’s crazy.”
“John, you know the city’s gone.” Corliss made it a statement. No avoiding it. “Is that what you’re going back for?”
“How do you know that? You said yourself, no one knows what’s happening.” Even to his own ears he sounded naive.
“And you’re going to save the city.” Corliss’s voice was gentle. This time the older man looked quickly at Tietjen; the glance was half pity, half assessment. Surprisingly, Tietjen found he did not mind the look or Corliss’s tone, the unveiling of his fears. The old man’s face was sharp in the sunlight, features and expression clear. Tietjen looked at the gun in his hand; it seemed to have no reality at all.
“How old is your wife, Frank?” he asked at last.
“Sixty-three.” Corliss did not ask why he had asked.
Tietjen thought a little longer. “Look, where are we now?”
“Far side of Saxon Woods, a bit below Scarsdale. Maybe twelve miles from Manhattan if you make it over to 9A and cross on the Henry Hudson Bridge.”