Harry inspected his. ‘A Colt Automatic.’
‘Ten years old. Kicks like a mule. Some day I’ll give ’em back to the Army. Here’s a couple of clips each.’ He eyed them. ‘I’m going to assume you both know how to handle a gun.’ He showed them the basics, reloading, the safety. ‘I got no plans to kill any Americans today. Think of it as a magic wand that you can wave when you need to get people out of the way.’
Marigold said, ‘You seem prepared.’
‘Hell, no. Making it up as I go along.’ Before he left the car he carefully locked it, and left a US Army parking permit in the window. He winked at Harry. ‘Won’t save it from a Martian Heat-Ray, but you never know, I might yet be back to collect it.’ Harry noticed that as a final preparation Woodward tucked a tyre-iron into his jacket. ‘OK, come on, we’re going to get over that damn bridge or die trying.’
So they pressed into the urban landscape of Queens, which struck Harry as a tangle of warehouses and factories and blocks of rough housing, fronting onto the river. And, today, the refugee flow from at least half the length of Long Island, all the way back to Stony Brook where the cylinders had landed, had poured into a suburb where the local population was already looking to flee. There was chaos, panic, crushing, the streets blocked by abandoned or burning vehicles, or by shoving masses of people.
They steadily made their way west towards the bank of the East River. Woodward tried to keep them away from the worst of the big blazes. You could see where the fires where, from the plumes of smoke that rose up into the sky. Both Woodward and Marigold proved smart in finding ways through, by ducking down alleys, even climbing over walls and hurrying through empty yards – once they even cut all the way through a house, through an open front door and out the back. To Harry’s relief, they avoided confrontations; better to evade than to pick a fight.
And Harry’s journalistic eye picked out details: the old woman fumbling to lock a door as smoke billowed around her; the little boy sitting with a toy wooden battleship on a stoop, crying his eyes out; a woman who seemed to be going into labour, right there in the middle of the street, with a few folk gathered around her, trying to help, and others pushing impatiently past. There was an old man who just died, clutching his chest, right in front of Harry, almost without warning, fell down and died. Harry wondered who he was. Maybe he was old enough to remember when Manhattan still had farmland, so young was New York. And now he had died on the day the city itself, it seemed, was going up in smoke. Harry was sore tempted to dig out the notebook and pencil that sat in the breast pocket of his jacket, but every time he stopped to stare Woodward or Marigold shoved him in the back. ‘Keep moving, you ass!’
And then Harry saw a glint of bronze, high in the air. It was the hood of a fighting-machine, high above Queens. Already, the Martians were here. He would tell me that the sight gave him an extraordinary thrill, as if of exhilaration; none of it seemed real, as if it were all a huge movie set. That’s youth for you.
At last they broke through to the river front, and by a miracle of Woodward’s navigation right at the entrance to the Queensboro Bridge.
Harry, coughing from the smoke, was dazzled by the sudden brilliance of the open panorama. There was the bridge, below it the river on which lay the low grey profiles of warships, and smaller specks that looked like ferries, bravely hauling off handfuls of refugees from the Island. And there ahead of him was Manhattan, a great reef of buildings that poked like broken bones at the sky. As far as he could see the air above the city was clear – no sign of smoke, not yet. Looking back, though, he could see that over in Brooklyn an immense, smoky fire burned, and Harry heard the crump of a distant explosion; he knew that Brooklyn was dense with heavy industries, refineries and shipyards, which would no doubt be targets for the Martians.
And the Queensboro Bridge itself was a solid, unmoving mass of vehicles and people.
‘The Martians haven’t crossed yet,’ Marigold said. ‘So we’re still ahead of the game… All we need to do now is get across that bridge. Shit.’
Harry grinned. ‘Hey, language! You’re not in Menlo Park now, you know.’
Woodward pressed forward. ‘Come on. And now’s the time to use your magic wands.’
He led the way, pushing through the crowd by main force, and Harry and Marigold did their best to follow. Woodward’s revolver was indeed only a back-up, a symbol; he made most of his progress through firm shoving, and snapping out orders that people obeyed without thinking – he got through, Harry thought, mostly by showing a kind of unswerving belief in his own right of way. And, inch by inch, yard by yard, they crossed that bridge.
The bridge passed over Blackwell’s Island, on which stood grey, utilitarian buildings: hospitals, a prison. As they crossed Harry saw that people were decanting there, apparently exhausted, or maybe thinking that this mid-river scrap of land might provide a safer refuge than Manhattan itself. But the island was already full, and what looked like prison guards were lined up with nightsticks and revolvers to turn people back.
Beyond the midstream island, on they went, shoving, clambering over stalled vehicles, until at last they reached the Manhattan side. People spilled off the bridge and out into the neighbouring streets, which were crowded but nothing yet to compare to the crush on the Queens side, or the bridge itself.
Woodward drew his party together. They were all three breathless, dishevelled. ‘Everybody OK? Now we go find the US Army.’ And, boldly, he led them north, along East 60th Street.
11
CENTRAL PARK
The Army, it turned out, along with units of the National Guard and the state militia, was bivouacking in Central Park. Woodward left Harry and Marigold waiting at the corner of 59th and Fifth Avenue while he went into the Park to find an officer and figure out what was going on.
Around Harry, Manhattan still felt like Manhattan. Traffic still flowed, if heavier and faster than usual, and with more military trucks; there were still cops at the interchanges. Harry, breathless, dishevelled, felt like a vagabond who had just wandered into the city. But even here there were people hurrying along the sidewalks with suitcases in their hands and rucksacks on their backs – little kids being dragged along, bath chairs for the elderly, just like on the Island. And they all seemed to Harry to be streaming north.
From here Harry could see the Plaza Hotel. He sighed. Marigold raised an eyebrow. ‘What’s your beef?’ He looked down at the ruin of his dress suit. ‘Look at me. I haven’t changed since I got ready for the Bigelow party, oh, twenty hours ago. I sure could use a couple of hours in one of those suites in the Plaza, a shower, a glass of champagne, a cigar, a heap of newspapers…’
Marigold, by comparison, looked at ease in her riding habit, practical and serviceable, which seemed to show barely a mark. She shrugged. ‘Good luck with that. As for the papers, we came here running from the news; we know it better than any editor in town.’
‘Ain’t that the truth?’
Harry spotted a phone box, and on impulse ran over to make a call to his parents; it felt odd to find change in his pocket – and odder still to find the lines working. His family, in the heart of the continent, were safe but concerned and following the news; Harry promised he would come home as soon as he could, and he meant it. When Marigold tried to follow his example, the line went dead. It would be many days, he would tell me, before Harry was able to make another call.