“It’s easier going up,” Lucy promised, watching Aidan.
Del rolled over onto her stomach. “Oh no. I’m not going back that way. Plus, we’ll have the kids with us. We’ll go the long way around.” She raised her head. “The kids are the important thing.” She said this with force.
“Of course,” said Lucy, a bit surprised.
Aidan jumped down, brushing his hands on his jeans.
Lucy picked up her spear, checked to make sure the point hadn’t been damaged in the fall. It was still sharp enough to draw blood from the pad of her thumb. Then she walked a dozen feet to where the next part of the hill sloped down gently. She caught her breath. Her shortcut had taken them in a straighter line than she’d expected.
Below them and only a mile away was what had once been Lucy’s home. If she hadn’t known exactly where she was—the southern face of the Great Hill with the giant stone needle, tilted now, and pointing at them like an accusatory finger—she wouldn’t have recognized it. Mud was what it was mostly. An ocean of dry mud, strangely smooth and sculpted into drifts by wind and water. Edged with a white salt crust, like the frosting on a birthday cake. And in places were great troughs and gouges in the earth, where trees had been hurled like javelins by the wall of water. Broken limbs and bushes were tumbled together into rough fences, marking the highest points of the wave. There was an overpowering smell of brine and the stink of organic matter rotting in the sun.
Lake Harlem gleamed in the distance, and on the other side, flanking the land, pressing up against it, the Hudson Sea. Lucy shivered and drew her jacket close. She had never been scared of the water before. She’d loved it. It had fed her and it had offered her protection on two sides, but now she knew it was a huge living thing, and it could be merciless and unpredictable.
She was hardly aware of Aidan and Del as she made her way quickly down the long slope. Stumbling a little, bracing herself with her spear, she slid on the silted, sandy soil unfamiliar to her feet because it was fresh-laid, rootless, and as smooth as a cotton sheet. She stepped over a sodden mess of leaves, disturbing a cloud of small blackflies. This was where her doorway had stood. Two of Lucy’s trees had been uprooted and flung far away. Of the two remaining, one leaned over almost flush with the ground, still alive, though, with fresh green growth along the horizontal length of the branch. And miraculously, the calendar tree was still standing. Its bark was blackened and scoured. The small crown of leaves at the top was curled and shriveled. She ran her fingers over the notches carved in the trunk, counting them silently. Thirteen. It had seemed much longer. Caught in the exposed roots and the drifts of earth she found a few of her pots and pans, dented and crushed.
“Smells like dead fish,” Del said, kicking a saucepan lid.
Aidan shushed her.
“What?” she said, then followed his gaze to Lucy. “Oh.”
Lucy took one more look around, patted the tree trunk, and faced the lake. They moved faster now, and no longer in single file but spread out. Their boots crunched through the crusty mud and the dried leaves. A low-lying mist wreathed their feet. The hulk of the Alice statue looked black under the stars. The water lapped just below the stiff bronze lace of her petticoats. They skirted the grove of trees where Lucy had first met Aidan. The only indication that the sea had reached this far was the curving tide line of pine needles and the residue of salt. A few of the smaller saplings lay tumbled like pick-up sticks. Lucy felt a chill run up her spine and realized she was braced for the sound of dogs howling, the quick thud of their paws. But it was quiet except for the skittering of small animals in the brush and the constant sound of water. They began the long trek across the mudflats.
Aidan spoke in a whisper. “I can see the tower light.” He pointed. The red beam seemed to flicker through the tracery of clouds against the paling sky.
“If we head for that, we should end up at the bridge,” Del said.
“You lead,” Lucy said.
Del gnawed the tip of her thumb. “Last chance to back out,” she said, and then laughed. It wasn’t a happy sound, but forced. She adjusted her quiver so it hung within reach of her hand and tapped the string of her bow until it twanged. Feeling suddenly breathless, Lucy unzipped her jacket and felt inside, assuring herself that her knife was still in her pocket. Her grip on her spear was clammy. Her boots felt as if they were filled with concrete. The ground cover was almost nonexistent here. They’d be in the open. Dawn was coming, and the fog was starting to disperse. The red light blinked like the eye she’d imagined it to be. They should be crawling along the ground, not walking three abreast like this, as if they were on a Sunday stroll.
They reached the bridge. It joined up with the road to the left, and then rose out of the bank of mist and curved twenty feet above the lake at its highest point. That was where they would be the most visible even if they kept to the sides. It was wide enough for a vehicle, made of gray concrete with high steel guard rails and a box of welded steel at the end, which supported it. The fog made it appear as though it were a length of black silk unwinding in space. The three of them would look as if they were walking across the water, Lucy thought, peering ahead, and they would be highly visible.
The stone building, a low and squat block, and the tower, tall and angled, occupied most of the space on the island. A cistern dwarfed by the tower perched on the roof, and some thick pipes jutted out at the side. A whip of black smoke hung in the air. There were no trees, just vast half-moon parking lots in the front, completely empty of cars, and two narrow, rectangular lawns with a dozen park benches. Two or three tall streetlamps burned with a flickering orange light as if they were losing power. There were no lights on behind the windows. Lucy wondered where the white vans were kept. Maybe they were out on a sweep. She remembered the news footage from here. The hospital, with its gleaming floors, bright lights, hordes of doctors in white coats, and smiling nurses, had looked so different from the hospital her family had died in. That had been ill-lit, with gurneys crowded in the halls or pushed into alcoves, the smells of vomit and blood seeping into her nostrils, the floors filthy with soiled bedclothes and pillows piled in heaps in the corners, and rarely a doctor to be seen. Lucy had had to wander for hours searching for her parents, checking charts and toe tags, before grabbing a nurse and forcing her to help. The blood drummed in her head.
Del stepped onto the bridge first. “Let’s go,” she said. “We’ve got about an hour of dark left.”
“Keep to the sides. Watch for headlights,” Aidan said. “Once we’re across, we’ll make for the side entrance. Right, Del?”
She nodded. “That’s the way I came out.”
Lucy could hear the suppressed excitement in Aidan’s voice. Was she the only one who was scared? She put her foot down hesitantly, as if she were afraid the bridge would crumble under her weight. She had never felt so terrified. They were on their way to a place where people disappeared without a trace. All except for Del, who’d managed to escape, and Leo, who’d basically been murdered. She tried to swallow past the dryness in her throat. Aidan glanced back at her and smiled. She hefted the spear to her left hand, and then switched it back.
Lucy forced herself to move, sliding her hand along the guardrail. She watched the mist swirl around her feet like a net. It reminded her of a nightmare, glue or quicksand trapping her as she tried to run. She looked back. The grove was in shadow. The salt-poisoned pines looked like skeletal fingers. The mudflats were as barren and pocked as the surface of the moon. And still she would rather have been back there than walking across this bridge, the sound of their boots muffled yet loud in the silence. There was a soft, strangling quality to the air. It felt heavy and dank, and it suffocated her like a tangle of blankets wrapped around her head.