Angie had kept these people alive all night—that had to be worth something, right?
Whitman had no idea what they were going to find. He didn’t know what was going to happen.
It didn’t matter. Just then he would have followed Angie anywhere.
As the dawn light came up, it showed them the soldiers. Warriors in full battle dress, carrying assault rifles. Lines of APCs and transport trucks and jeeps behind them. They stood to either side of the road, an implacable wall that blocked the way forward. There was no way to turn off, and if they tried to turn back now they would never reach the boats in time.
Whitman nearly cried out in rage. To have come so far, only to be scooped up now.
The soldiers moved to the sides of the road, falling back to let the cyclists through. Whitman stopped his bike in astonishment as he watched them make way. A soldier shouted at him, an order Whitman couldn’t hear.
“Just keep moving,” Angie said, coming up beside him. The baby was crying in its sling. “Whatever they say. Whatever they do, just get us as far as you can.”
He understood what she was asking of him. He knew he would do it, too.
But then the shouting soldier lifted his left hand. His unmarked left hand. He pointed at the back of it, then pointed down the road, toward the beach. “All positives this way,” he shouted.
Whitman just kept pedaling. The shouting soldier nodded in encouragement.
It was crazy, but—but maybe . . . maybe there were boats down there. Maybe Staten Island had filled up and they were going to move people to a new location. Maybe some place better than Staten Island. Maybe some place they could survive.
“Come on, you can do it,” Angie told him.
He steered the bike down the corridor of armed soldiers. Their honor guard. And up ahead, not a quarter mile away, was the beach. Ahead of him he saw the mechanic pumping his legs for this last little stretch, this last little race to make the rendezvous with the boats. Whitman’s legs burned, but he poured on more speed.
When they hit the beach, he jumped off his bike and ran stiff-legged across the boardwalk, down a short flight of stairs to the sand that glowed pink with the newborn sun. A crowd of people had gathered on the beach—no doubt they were waiting to board the boats. That had to mean the boats hadn’t left yet, hadn’t left without them. He spun around and looked at Angie and wanted to grab her, wanted to whirl her around in triumph.
“Where are the boats?” she asked.
He turned around and looked, for the first time, at the crashing waves. Listened to the sound they made, that perfect, thundering sound. It was mixed with something else, something like the high-pitched call of gulls.
There were no boats out there. Plenty of people waiting for them, plenty of people with marks on their left hands. But no boats anywhere.
So many people, all around them. People who must have been there before them, people in great crowds, pushing them, shoving them toward the water.
People were standing in the surf, up to their knees. Some up to their waists. Some of them tried to get back to the sand. Some of them staggered back, pushed by the waves.
Some of them were screaming. That was what he’d heard. Not gulls—screaming people.
“Where are the boats?” Angie asked again.
An amplified voice boomed out over the sand. “Keep moving into the water. You will not be allowed back onto the shore. Keep moving into the water. There is no room on the beach. Keep moving.”
“Wait,” Angie said. “Wait—are we—did we come all this way to—”
A big man came stumbling up out of the waves, hands and feet clawing at the wet sand, trying to get purchase. His mouth was a dark O sucking at the air. Whitman thought the man must be a zombie but no, his eyes weren’t red, his eyes were fine—
Shots rang out and blood erupted from the man’s chest. He collapsed into the surf and everyone started screaming, dropping to the ground, covering their heads with their hands.
“Keep moving into the water,” the amplified voice said again. “You will not be allowed back onto the shore.”
“No,” Angie said. “No. I won’t—I won’t just walk out there and drown. They can’t make me! I have rights!”
She had a plus sign on the back of her left hand.
“Reverse triage,” Whitman said. You treated those who had the best chance of surviving. The uninfected. Those who were already exposed, or even potentially exposed, you didn’t waste resources on them.
There had been a saying they’d had at the CDC. A mantra they repeated so they would never forget: Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.
“Keep moving into the water.”
The sound of the surf, the screams. Occasionally he would hear the stutter of machine gun fire. Not often. That was why they were pushing people into the water. It was why the military had, he assumed, started the rumor of boats landing at Brighton Beach. Because there weren’t enough bullets for all the positives, but it didn’t cost anything to force people out into the water and let them drown.
“Keep moving into the water.”
Whitman’s head throbbed with horror, with regret, with anger. But maybe—maybe there was still something, some hope . . . his ID card, his CDC credentials, were in a plastic pouch around his neck. He reached inside his shirt and pulled out his lanyard. He held his ID up over his head. “CDC!” he shouted. “I’m CDC! Get me out of here! CDC!”
All around them people stared. People looked at him with hate in their eyes, and he didn’t blame them. He tried to shove through, to get to the nearest soldier, but the people shoved back.
“CDC! CDC!” It wouldn’t matter, he was a positive too. They wouldn’t care, they wouldn’t make an exception. Somebody grabbed the ID and nearly strangled him as they pulled it away from him. He pushed the lanyard over his head, just to stop it from choking him. “CDC,” he said again, “I’m CDC.”
Then he saw who had grabbed the ID. It was a soldier in full combat armor, his eyes hidden behind light amplifying lenses. He stared at the card for a long time.
“You’re CDC?” the soldier asked. “What the hell are you doing down here?”
“You have to get me out of here,” Whitman said. “And my wife and our baby. You have to get my family out of here. He grabbed Angie and pulled her close. She was smart enough to bury her face in his neck, as if they were together.
The soldier grabbed Whitman and hauled him toward the boardwalk. A few positives tried to interfere, but the soldier knocked their hands away with his weapon. Nobody had the strength to fight back.
Up on the boardwalk soldiers were gathered in a line. Whitman and Angie were shoved through, into an open space beyond. Whitman’s ID was cut off his neck and taken away.
Angie clutched at him and he wished he could tell her what was happening. He wished he knew himself. More soldiers came bustling toward them. One of them, with the eagle insignia of a Colonel, had Whitman’s ID in his hand.
“Where the hell have you been, sir?” he asked.
Angie looked up into Whitman’s face. “Sir?” she asked.
“I, uh—I got separated from a reconnaissance group,” Whitman said. “I was looking for my wife and child, here. We found each other but then I couldn’t . . . I couldn’t . . .” He couldn’t finish the lie.
But the colonel nodded. “Emergencies like this, I’m surprised half my troops know where to be, much less the civilian staff. Well, thank God we found you in time. I’ll get a helicopter down here to take you back to Manhattan and the forward headquarters. We need every warm body we can get working on the evacuation. I don’t need to tell you what a clusterfuck this has become.”