The Secret Runners of New York Read online

  Misty gave Bo a look. ‘My mom might get it because she knows about the tunnel, but what would everybody else say when we said: “Yeah, hi, we went to the future and saw what’s going to happen.” Good luck with that, Bo. We’d end up spending our last days on Earth in a mental asylum.’

  She was definitely pissed at him.

  Verity said, ‘Maybe we can try to convince our families to go to the Retreat early.’

  ‘Or maybe we can leave them to their fates and ride out the gamma cloud safely in the future,’ Griff said with a grin. ‘Just saying.’

  Misty threw a couch pillow at him.

  Griff kept grinning.

  ‘Are you guys kidding?’ he said. ‘This is so fucking awesome! I gotta see this. We’ve all gotta see this. We’ve only ever run at night and then only inside the tunnel. I say we check this out in the full light of day. Let’s all go for a run tomorrow afternoon.’

  And so it was decided.

  We would all meet at the conservancy garden behind the Met at 1:00 p.m. the next day, Sunday February 25, and run.

  I returned home with Red.

  As we walked across the park, he shook his head.

  ‘So, let me get this straight,’ he said. ‘Our two portals and our tunnel would seem to be a bridge between two different times: now and the future, but a future sometime beyond the imminent end of humanity.’

  ‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘And geographically, the two versions of New York appear to be overlaid on each other.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What I mean is, Bo and I didn’t climb out of the well and pop up somewhere in China. We went under Central Park in our time and we emerged from a well in Central Park behind the Swedish Cottage in the other time. So the two New Yorks are overlaid on each other.’

  ‘Right . . .’ Red said.

  ‘And on top of that,’ I added, ‘it would seem that, temporally, the two times are also overlaid.’

  ‘Now you’re just geeking out, Miss AP Physics,’ Red said, smiling. ‘Please explain for those of us who are not as academically gifted as you.’

  I returned his smile. ‘It’s a time-travel thing. If it’s 6:00 p.m. here, it’s 6:00 p.m. there. Bo and I left here around sunset and when we emerged from the well it was sunset there. It also means that if you’re inside that other world for an hour, then an hour passes here. The two times move forward together at the same rate.’

  Walking parallel to the Transverse, we passed the Shakespeare Garden and the Swedish Cottage. Both looked as they always did, well tended and normal.

  Red turned to face me as we walked. ‘You say the whole of New York was overtaken by vegetation and weeds?’

  ‘Yes. Roads like Central Park West and the Transverse were completely overgrown. The buildings, too. The moss and greenery had climbed up maybe ten storeys.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Red frowned.

  ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘I’m wondering exactly how far into the future that alternate time is,’ he said. ‘For vegetation to grow ten storeys up city buildings would take some time, I think.’

  He stopped suddenly.

  And turned, his eyes narrowing.

  ‘Come with me,’ he said. ‘I have an idea.’

  We backtracked to a stand of oak trees a short way from the path.

  Red scanned the area for onlookers. As he waited for two walkers to pass, he picked up a sharp rock from the ground.

  Then when the walkers were gone, my brother started hacking like a maniac with the sharpened stone at the trunk of one of the oaks, gouging out a triangular chunk.

  I was horrified.

  Then, to my even greater horror, he discarded the stone and took out his Zippo lighter and started burning the newly created void in the oak’s trunk.

  I tried to stop him. ‘What are you doing?!’

  He put his body between me and the lighter.

  ‘Chill, petal. I’m not going to burn it down. I just need to leave a visible wound.’

  Wisps of smoke began to swirl from the trunk of the tree as the exposed bark began to burn.

  I spun, sure that a passing cop would spot us trying to start a fire in Central Park. But we were alone.

  Red managed the little fire, blowing on it gently. When he was satisfied with his bizarre act of arson, he spat on it, putting out the fire.

  A sooty black splotch remained in the gouged-out section of the tree trunk.

  ‘There,’ Red said. ‘Now we’ll be able to tell roughly how far into the future our Future New York really is.’

  I frowned at him once again, and then I got it.

  ‘Very clever, brother dearest,’ I said. ‘Tree rings.’

  ‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘I may not be as book-smart as you are, Blue, but I have my moments. Now, during tomorrow’s run, all will be revealed.’

  RUNNERS ASSEMBLE

  It was a bright and sunny New York day when we all gathered at the conservancy garden behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art the following afternoon.

  We went down into the cavern.

  I wore hiking shoes and cargo pants and had brought a backpack with some water, snacks and a small first-aid kit in it. Having seen the world we were venturing into, I wanted to be prepared.

  Red had brought a rucksack, inside of which was a bottle of water, some protein bars and a small hacksaw.

  Misty, Chastity, Verity and Hattie all wore athletic clothing: yoga pants, sneakers and track tops. Misty’s sneakers were thousand-dollar Golden Gooses. Verity’s were Saint Laurent. Hattie’s tracksuit was a black Lululemon one with gold piping and a shiny gold collar. Misty and Verity had also brought along small handheld SABRE stun guns, while Chastity had some pepper spray.

  Dane and Griff also carried packs with water and food in them, and Bo had brought his grappling hook and rope.

  Red checked his watch. ‘Time is 1:02 p.m., local time.’

  Misty inserted her gem into the pyramid and the rippling light appeared.

  ‘All right, funsters. Time to rock and roll.’

  And with those words, packed and ready for an extended run, one by one, the nine of us entered the portal.

  A RUN IN BROAD DAYLIGHT

  We made quick progress through the tunnel.

  This was no carefree late-night sprint. This was an exploratory mission.

  We came to the trash heap and Bo hurled his grappling hook up into the well shaft. It caught on the second throw and we all climbed up its knotted length.

  Dane and Griff went first.

  I followed behind them.

  When I emerged from the well in the other New York, I immediately noticed that while the time of day was the same, the weather wasn’t. Whereas back in regular New York it was sunny and bright, here the sky was filled with dark storm clouds and a light rain fell.

  When the whole group had emerged from the well and gawped at the vandalised buildings visible through the trees, we made our way out of the thicket and past the ruins of the Swedish Cottage.

  When we came to the Transverse, Red hurried to the oak tree he had burned yesterday and pulled out his hacksaw.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Misty said.

  I joined Red as he sawed away at the oak and extracted a flat chunk of wood from it.

  ‘Figuring out just how far in the future we are,’ Red said.

  I peered at the flat chunk of tree trunk in Red’s hand. It was about the size of a slice of pizza. He had cut it out of the trunk right at the spot he had burned.

  Tree rings ran in fine curving arcs along the chunk’s flat surface . . . until they reached an ugly black distortion. At that point, they bent markedly to divert around it.

  ‘That’s the part I burned,’ Red said, pointing at the distortion.

  He counted the rings outside the bu
rn mark.

  ‘Twenty-two,’ he said, looking up.

  ‘So this is twenty-two years in the future?’ Hattie said.

  ‘The year 2040?’ Bo said.

  ‘Give or take, yes,’ Red replied. ‘Tree rings aren’t perfect, but these rings are pretty well defined.’

  Misty stepped forward. ‘So where do we want to go, people?’

  Verity said, ‘I want to see my old apartment on the East Side.’

  Griff grinned. ‘I want to check out the school.’

  Misty looked to Bo.

  He shrugged. ‘We went west last time. Happy to go east this time.’

  ‘Then let’s go,’ Misty said and away we went, our packs on our backs, into the overgrown park.

  We were halfway across Central Park when Hattie stopped suddenly and looked up, scanning the sky.

  ‘You hear that?’ she said.

  ‘Hear what?’ Verity asked.

  ‘I don’t hear anything,’ Griff said.

  ‘That’s the problem,’ Hattie said. ‘No birdsong, no chittering of squirrels. No animal noises.’

  She was right. The park was eerily silent and in the middle of the day, it shouldn’t have been.

  I searched the trees for movement—for squirrels or birds or anything—but saw nothing, no movement at all.

  Then suddenly a lone bird shot across the sky, a seagull, squawking loudly.

  But it was the only animal we saw.

  I found myself scanning the area for the one living thing that I knew for a fact was out there, the bald man, but he was nowhere to be seen.

  I said, ‘I don’t think the gamma cloud cares what species you are; so long as there’s electricity in your brain, it’ll kill you. The survival percentages for birds and mammals—squirrels, raccoons, rats—are probably similar to those for humans: less than 1%.’

  We pushed on.

  Since we were heading east through the park, we decided to stop at the conservancy garden behind the Met—the one that contained the entrance cave—to see why we couldn’t get out through it in this time.

  We all frowned when we got there.

  A taxi cab—a classic New York yellow cab—lay slumped over the hatch in the garden.

  The car was shot through with weeds and ivy. It had clearly been there a long time. Behind the cab, the conservancy garden’s gate and fence had been destroyed, evidently flattened when the cab had crashed through it. The broken fence was also covered by many years’ worth of plant growth.

  No wonder Bo and the others hadn’t been able to get out through the hatch.

  ‘Someone crashed a cab into the garden?’ Verity said. ‘How random.’

  Bo lay on the ground to examine the derelict cab more closely.

  After a few moments he said from somewhere down among the weeds: ‘It wasn’t random.’

  He rose to his knees and looked at us all. ‘The tyres have been punctured. Each has been stabbed with a knife, to make sure the cab sits right down on its belly and presses down on the hatch. Someone did this deliberately.’

  Disturbed but undeterred, we went to the Carlyle next to check out Verity’s apartment. We also went for another reason: to see the city from the building’s roof.

  As we came to the eastern side of the park and emerged onto Fifth Avenue, it quickly became clear that the Upper East Side had fared no better than the Upper West Side.

  Fifth Avenue looked like Central Park West had: it was now a field of waist-high grass that stretched away to the north and south.

  And the mansions and buildings here had been defaced, too.

  To the north, I saw the Met. It had been trashed. Most of its many windows were shattered. Priceless statues that had once stood inside it now lay out in the street, consumed by weeds and vines.

  The nine of us fanned out as we stepped across the grassy thoroughfare.

  Looking down the grand old avenue to the south was like looking at a pair of railway tracks receding to the horizon: the buildings on either side of the street stretched away into the distance, gradually converging.

  Halfway along it, however, I saw a very strange thing.

  The Empire State Building stood at an extreme angle, slanting dramatically out over Fifth Avenue like a supersized version of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

  ‘The water in the subway system must be causing rust and subsidence,’ Bo said. ‘The ground around the Empire State is subsiding. It’ll fall eventually.’

  I stared at the tilted skyscraper. It was a fitting metaphor. Here was the ultimate symbol of New York City, a steel-and-stone behemoth that testified to the city’s force of will, its in-your-face bravado, its corporate might, and now it was a half-fallen shell, empty and broken.

  We arrived at the Carlyle building.

  Since the power was out, the elevators didn’t work, so we schlepped up the fire stairs, all thirty-five floors of them.

  At length, we came to the roof, the scene of Verity’s birthday party nine days earlier (or twenty-two years and nine days earlier).

  The rooftop terrace looked awful. It was covered in a slippery carpet of greenish-black mould. The smell was revolting. Sprouts had grown from nearly every seam in the floor.

  But it was the view from up here that seized our collective attention.

  We all stared dazedly out at the panorama of New York City.

  Almost every building was damaged. They either had their windows smashed or showed evidence of fire damage. Black charring scarred many of them.

  Some, like the Empire State, teetered at precarious angles. Others had completely fallen. Quite a few had mossy growth high up on their summits, like here at the Carlyle.

  Against the grim grey sky, it all looked haunting, eerie.

  In perhaps a dozen places—on a few rooftops and on the ground at the northern end of the park—small fires burned, sending up wispy columns of smoke. It was the only movement in the otherwise empty city.

  ‘Fires?’ I said to Red apprehensively. ‘Who’s lighting them?’

  Red grimaced. ‘Survivors? Or maybe lightning strikes?’

  Misty pointed southward at The Plaza Hotel, with its distinctive Parisian roof. All the windows on its upper floors were shattered. A fire burned in one smashed-open room up there.

  There was graffiti on the front face of it, like on the San Remo:

  ‘Hey, Griff,’ Misty said wryly, ‘I don’t think they’re serving high tea at The Plaza anymore.’

  I looked at the once grand old hotel, remembering the afternoon tea I’d had there with Misty and Griff.

  Red shook his head. ‘You don’t get runaway plant growth so high up without a lot of rain. After the gamma cloud killed everyone, the city must’ve been hit by some hurricanes or superstorms like Sandy. I mean, look at the park, it’s gone wild.’

  That was an understatement.

  Below us, Central Park looked like a veritable jungle. Its various twisting drives and transverses had been completely reclaimed by nature. The forest in the park had started to consume the Met—like a snake slowly trying to eat a large animal, it had crept up the entire western side of the enormous museum. Within a few years, it would encase the whole thing.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ Hattie said. ‘The whole city. I just don’t believe it.’

  We descended as a group to Verity’s apartment.

  I lingered at the back, hesitant.

  ‘You okay?’ Bo asked, dropping back to join me.

  ‘We don’t know what we’re going to find in there,’ I said.

  ‘If you’re thinking about dead bodies, I wouldn’t worry,’ he said. ‘I think everyone here has a spot reserved for them at the Retreat. Knowing what we know, there’s no way any of us would’ve stayed.’

  The front door to Verity’s apartment had been forced open. Wind whistled
in through a bank of smashed windows.

  The place had been ransacked. The couches had been slashed, spraying goose feathers everywhere. The TV had been tossed, its screen cracked. Potted plants were shrivelled, dead.

  Cautious yet curious, Verity went into her old bedroom . . .

  . . . and froze. She stopped so suddenly, Hattie almost bumped into her.

  ‘What—?’ Verity breathed.

  I looked past them and saw Verity’s bedroom.

  It had been ransacked as well—all the drawers hurled open, the mattress thrown off the bed, the posters ripped off the walls.

  But it was the writing scrawled on the wall that seized our attention. It was written in thick black marker:

  VERITY,

  WE DON’T KNOW WHERE YOU ARE.

  WE HAD TO GO.

  THE POOR STARTED ATTACKING THE BUILDING.

  WE HAVE GONE TO THE RETREAT. FIND US THERE.

  WE’RE SO SORRY.

  LOVE,

  MOM & DAD

  I looked from the desperate scrawl on the wall to Verity’s shocked face and I saw the confusion in her eyes.

  Was this her future?

  One in which she was separated from her parents during the coming anarchy back in our time? One in which her parents fled from the city to the Plum Island Retreat without her?

  Verity blinked, trying, it seemed to me, to absorb the enormity of what she was seeing. And she was seriously struggling. This didn’t fit into any of her usual categories of cool, lame or embarrassing. This existed in a category all of its own and it looked like her simple mind had seized up trying to process it.

  I had feared finding dead bodies, but as I watched Verity practically shut down before my eyes, I thought that maybe this was worse.

  ‘You shouldn’t know this,’ I said. ‘We shouldn’t have come here.’

  SCHOOL

  After they saw the scrawl in Verity’s bedroom, a grim silence descended on the group.

  Red put his hand gently on Verity’s shoulder. Dane whispered, ‘That is not cool.’ Bo shook his head. Misty and Chastity said nothing. And Griff just shrugged. Either way, nobody wanted to linger in the apartment.