CyberStorm Part 23

How does a kid from Louisiana, who goes to school in Boston, end up a surfer?

I sighed. When I put my jeans on this morning, I had to do up my belt one notch tighter than usual. On the bright side, it looked like I was going to lose some of that weight Lauren had been bugging me about. On the other hand, I was hungry, starving in fact.

Starving.

With a sinking feeling I realized I may get firsthand experience of what starving really felt like.

Tony, Vince, and I got dressed, while some of the EMTs dragged the sleds over to the two badly burned people we were taking up to Penn. Despite the m.u.f.fled cries and whimpers from the injured, they began bundling them up against the cold and doing their best to secure them in the sleds.

Opening the back door, we scampered our way up to the top of the snow piled outside. The sky was a flat gray, and it felt warm. It was amazing how quickly the body adjusted to the cold. Just two weeks ago I would have been complaining about this temperature, s.h.i.+vering, but now, with it hovering a few degrees above freezing, it felt almost tropical.

Standing on the snow pile, our feet were even with the heads of the people standing inside the lobby. One person propped the door open, while the rest carefully pushed the sleds carrying the patients up the steep incline of the snow.

It was awkward work, and each jolt of the sleds earned a cry of pain from their occupants.

Soon we had our skis on and were heading down the middle of Twenty-Fourth in single file with Vince bringing up the rear. The two-lane ski and foot trails down the streets had become well worn, with openings cut into the s...o...b..nks lining the streets.

Our pace was quick.

Rounding the corner of Ninth, we stopped to look down the street. The building on the corner of Ninth and Twenty-Third that had originally caught fire was now a burnt-out husk, but the fire still raged in buildings further down the avenue and around the corner onto Twenty-Second. Thick, black smoke smudged the gray sky.

Continuing onwards along Twenty-Fourth, the foot traffic became steadily heavier, with people going in all directions, dragging and carrying what they could.

The trash that I'd first noticed appearing two days ago had now become heaped along the edges of the street, and with the warmer weather each breath of wind brought the reek of human excrement that was seeping up through the melting snow. At the larger heaps of trash near the intersections, rats competed with gangs of human scavengers, combing through the garbage, searching for food.

As if in a trance, I slid through this landscape of urban decay, watching people, their faces, inspecting their bags, fascinated with the things they'd decided to carry: a chair here, a bag of books there. Someone was carrying a golden birdcage in the distance.

Peering in through the smashed windowpanes of shops, I saw people huddled inside around oil barrels with fires, smoke pouring out of the windows, blackening the sides of buildings. Despite it all, it was mostly quiet, just the soft shuffle of feet on snow and the hushed muttering of the displaced.

"Hold on a second!"

Looking back over my left shoulder, as we rounded the corner of Seventh Avenue to start the trek up to Penn, I saw Vince crouched at the side of the intersection next to a pile of garbage bags, using his phone to take a picture of someone sitting there.

What is he doing?

This wasn't the time to start fooling around. I slackened my pace slightly, not wanting to leave him behind. In a few seconds he was back on the trail with us, jogging to catch up and then running ahead of us and darting off into the snow at the side of the street again. Poking through some bags, and not finding what he was looking for, he ran back to walk beside me.

"That guy back there was dead," he explained, out of breath.

He began fiddling with his phone, typing something, while he walked in step with me.

There are going to be a lot of dead people, and if they're dead, there's nothing we can do for them anymore.

Unimpressed, I didn't say anything.

"We should be making a record of what happened. That could be somebody's loved one," continued Vince, finis.h.i.+ng typing and putting his phone away. "I created a mesh address, connected to my laptop back at our place, for people to send pictures and add text and explanations of where and when and what. When all this is over, maybe we can help piece things together, bring some resolution."

Taking a deep breath, I realized I had it wrong. Maybe there was something we could still do for them if they were dead. We could give their loved ones some closure.

"That's a great idea. Could you send me the address?"

"Already did."

Something else caught his eye, and he ran off.

"Smart kid," said Tony from behind me.

Up ahead, the crowd around Penn Station was much larger than two days before.

The snow was black and tramped down, covered in litter and waste, and thousands of people thronged the entranceways. Soldiers in fatigues had replaced the NYPD officers manning the barricades, their weapons plainly visible, with a sandbagged command post hiding heavier weaponry just behind.

As we approached, a low murmur grew into a roar of voices, sirens, and shouted instructions over megaphones.

Slowing up, we stopped and stared at the crowd.

"No way we're getting in there," said Tony. "Maybe we should try Port Authority or head up to Grand Central or Javits?"

"They'll be just as bad."

Pulling out my phone, I had an idea.

"I'll text Sergeant Williams. Maybe he can send someone out."

While I sent my message, Vince and Tony detached our harnesses, checking on our pa.s.sengers and explaining what we were doing. Within a few seconds of hitting the send b.u.t.ton, before I'd even put the phone away in my pocket, it pinged an incoming message.

"He's sending someone out to us," I said.

This mesh network is a lifesaver.

Tony looked up at me and nodded, adjusting the blankets on one of the sleds, whispering that someone was coming.

Vince stood beside me.

"Did you get any incoming messages about-" I began to ask, but was cut off by a shriek in the crowd just ahead of us.

"Give me the bag, b.i.t.c.h!" yelled a large man, pulling a backpack away from a small Asian woman.

The man's blond hair was braided up in dirty dreadlocks, swinging around his head as he pulled and tugged. The woman clung desperately to one strap of a bag, and he dragged her through the dirty snow while pulling a handgun out of one pocket.

The crowd dispersed around them.

"I'm warning you," he growled, pulling the bag with one hand and pointing the gun at her with the other.

The woman looked up at him, screaming something in Korean or Chinese, but she let go, falling into the snow.

"That's my bag," she wept in English, her head bowed. "It's all I have."

"G.o.dd.a.m.n c.h.i.n.k b.i.t.c.h, I should shoot you right now."

Beside me, Tony stood up and pulled out his .38, holding it hidden between us. Glancing at him, I shook my head and put a hand out, holding him back. With my other hand I brought my phone up, thumbing the camera on, and took a picture.

The man stared at me, smiling.

"You like that?"

I took another picture and clicked a few b.u.t.tons.

"No, I do not. I just took your picture and e-mailed it to the NYPD sergeant coming out here."

His smile evaporated, replaced by confusion.

"There's no phones working."

"On that you're wrong, and what you're doing is wrong."

His confusion turned to anger.

"You defending this Chinese wh.o.r.e?"

I wasn't much for confrontation, and had never been in a fight in my life, but right was right. "Just because we're going through a bad time is no excuse to start hurting people."

The man straightened up. He was a lot bigger than I'd thought.

"You call this a bad time? Are you kidding me? This is the end of days, brother, and these Chinese b.a.s.t.a.r.ds-"

"What you're doing isn't going to help," I said simply.

"It's going to help me," he laughed.

"People will know what you did. You committed a crime, and I've recorded it." I held my phone up. "This will be over one day, and you'll have to answer."

He laughed again.

"With all this c.r.a.p going on, you think someone will care that I stole a bag from some Chinese b.i.t.c.h?"

"I do," said Tony, still holding his weapon concealed. A small crowd had gathered around us.

"Does anyone else here care about this b.i.t.c.h?" yelled the man, looking around at the crowd. Most people stared dumbly, but many nodded, agreeing with Tony.

"It's not right," yelled someone from the back.

"Give the lady her bag back," said another person in the front.

The man shook his head. "Screw all of you."

He began walking off, away from us, and Tony started to raise his weapon, but the man threw the bag back at the woman after grabbing a few things from it.

"Let him go," I said unsteadily, holding back Tony. I was shaking. "It's not worth it."

Tony grunted, obviously not agreeing, but put his gun away just the same. The crowd began dispersing, with two people coming to help the woman up. Several people walked over to us.

"Is your phone really working?" asked a teenage girl.

"Sort of," I replied, motioning toward Vince. "You'll have to talk to him."

Within a few minutes, a large crowd had gathered around Vince. Most of them still had their phones, but they were uncharged. He started by explaining ways they could charge them, and then began taking out the memory chips from some of their phones to copy the mesh software onto them.

"That was a good idea, taking that guy's picture," said Tony.

We stood and watched Vince tutoring the crowd on mesh networks. He was like a cyber-Johnny Appleseed.

"With no police, people think they can get away with anything," said Tony. "Taking pictures might make them think twice."

"Maybe," I sighed. "Better than nothing."

"Much better than nothing, and better than shooting each other."

In the ma.s.s of people near the Penn entrance barricade, I saw some commotion, and then Officer Romales' face appeared, bobbing through the crowd toward us. In a minute he was pus.h.i.+ng through the last of the crowd, with two other NYPD officers in tow. He was shaking his head.

"We can't take any more," he said immediately.

I motioned toward the sleds.

"These people are from the fire last night. They're going to die if they don't get help."

"A lot of G.o.dd.a.m.n people are dying," muttered Romales, kneeling down beside one of the sleds, pulling back some of the blankets. Seeing the extent of the burns, he winced and closed his eyes, standing back up.

"Okay, guys, grab these sleds," he said to the other officers with him. Turning to me, he added, "We'll take these two, but after this, no more. It's as bad or worse inside there."

He pointed toward Madison Square Garden.

"Understand?"

I nodded. Is it that bad already?

"One more thing," he said as he turned to leave. "That guy Paul you brought in?"

I nodded.

"His brother died last night of his injuries, and we may have to let Paul go."

"Let him go?" I remembered Sergeant Williams's heads-up, but I still couldn't believe it.

Romales shrugged. "They released all the medium-security prisons today. We got nowhere to keep them all. We're keeping everyone we bring in for a day or two, taking statements, but we need to let them go until all this is over."

Rubbing my face, I looked skywards.

My G.o.d, if Paul's brother died, and they let him go- "When?"