The Shades Page 9

  "We're in a mode that requires us to wait for the storm to pass," he says firmly. "Then we need to re-establish contact with the boat and complete as much of our work as possible. We can still get through this, but only if we remain calm and focus on the tasks at hand."

  Hearing a noise nearby, I glance back across the gloomy ticket hall and see Lacey carefully picking her way through the water. Even dressed in a full haz-mat suit, she seems so dainty and delicate, it's hard to believe that someone thought she'd be an appropriate person to send on this mission, but evidently the company wanted some eyes on the ground.

  "This is disgusting," she says as she reaches us. "Can you smell that smell? It's coming up from the tunnels. It's like the foulest thing in the world."

  Glancing over at Cooper, I can see from the look in his eyes that he's thinking exactly the same thing that I'm thinking.

  "What?" Lacey asks, staring at us both with wide-eyed confusion.

  "If some kind of disaster struck the city two weeks ago," I say cautiously, "maybe people took refuge in the subway system..."

  "But they wouldn't stay down there," Cooper replies. "They'd have come up eventually. There'd be no reason for them to stay underground all this time. Besides, you can't fit eight and a half million people into a subway system all at once, even if they lined the tunnels ten-deep."

  "Then where did they go?" I ask, starting to feel slightly annoyed by the way Cooper seems to knock down every single suggestion that I come up with. "If eight and a half million people couldn't hide away in the subway system, where could they hide away, because I sure haven't seen any sign of them so far."

  "We haven't checked all the buildings," he points out, clearly struggling to remain calm, "and there's also the possibility that they left in some kind of mass exodus. Maybe they decided the city wasn't the right place to be. Maybe there was a threat here, or maybe they were just scared. You were talking about superstitions earlier. Isn't it possible that people decided to get out to rural areas? Maybe they felt that whatever was happening, it was intrinsically linked to the urban environment. For all we know, maybe they were right!"

  "Aliens," Lacey says suddenly.

  We both turn to stare at her.

  "Aliens would explain everything," she says, looking as if she's close to tears. "Aliens came and took them all. They sucked everyone up into a spaceship and flew them off to some other place, and now they're doing experiments on them." She pauses for a moment. "It's not necessarily a bad thing," she continues after a moment. "I mean, they might bring them back eventually."

  "Aliens took everyone from the United States," I reply, struggling to see the logic in her theory, "and left the rest of the planet behind?"

  "Well..." She pauses. "Yeah?"

  "There's a logical explanation for all of this," Cooper says firmly. "It might take us a while, but we are going to find that explanation. I have no idea whether we'll find any survivors, or whether things will ever get back to normal, but at the very least we're going to find out what happened to all those people."

  "And if we don't?" I ask.

  "Of course we will."

  "But what if we don't?" I continue, enjoying the fact that I'm annoying him. "Think about it, Cooper. What if we never solve this? What if all these people, all eight and a half million of them, have just vanished, and we never, ever find out where they went?"

  "That's impossible," he replies.

  "Is it?"

  "They had to go somewhere," he continues. "Purely in terms of body mass alone, that many people can't just disappear from the face of the planet. There'd be... something left behind."

  "I didn't say they'd disappeared from the fact of the planet," I reply calmly. "I simply said that maybe, whatever happened to them, we might never get to the bottom of it. Can you handle that, Cooper? Can you deal with the thought that we might never find out what happened?"

  He stares at me, and I can tell that he's struggling to find an answer. Cooper lives for logic and rationality, and I'm quite certain that he'd go stir crazy if we never came up with a solution. At the same time, that same love of logic means that he can't dismiss my ideas out of hand; he knows that there's a chance we'll never get an answer, and the prospect terrifies him.

  "Aliens," Lacey says again.

  "It's not aliens!" Cooper says, raising his voice as he turns to her. "Can you get that through your thick skull? Aliens don't exist, and if they did, they wouldn't come here and just suck up all the people!" He pauses. "Jesus Christ, I can't believe we're even having this conversation..."

  "I don't hear any better ideas," she replies, turning and splashing across the ticket hall.

  Cooper glances at me, as another rumble of thunder hits the city, followed by a flash of lightning.

  "It's almost biblical, isn't it?" I point out, enjoying this rare moment of power. Cooper always relies upon knowledge and hard facts, and right now he has nothing. It must be driving him crazy. "A biblical storm," I continue. "Maybe that's what's going on? Maybe this is the end of the world, maybe..." I pause, fully aware that my next suggestion is going to piss him off no end. "Maybe it's the rapture," I add. "I mean, maybe all these people just... ascended to heaven?"

  "You believe in that crap now, do you?" he asks.

  "I like to keep an open mind," I reply. "It'd be illogical to ignore certain explanations just because they don't fit with your belief systems. I think we should keep everything on the table for now. After all, whatever happened, it's clearly something that doesn't fit with our established understanding of how the world works."

  "I'm going to go up and take a look," he says bitterly, clearly pissed off by my suggestions. "Maybe the storm's easing a little."

  As I watch him climb the steps, I can't help but feel a little bad; after all, I probably pushed him way too far. Still, Cooper always thinks he knows best, and it's fun to see him floundering in this situation without any kind of logical, rational explanation. Science is his religion, providing all the answers he ever needs in life, and he's always believed that any event can be explained; something like this, however, is so huge and so bewildering, he's struggling to cope with the feeling of helplessness.

  "Jesus!" he shouts suddenly, stopping as he gets halfway up the steps.

  Seconds later, I see that something large and bulky is being washed down toward us, carried on the flow of water. I barely have time to step out of the way before a human corpse is washed straight past me, carried by the water until it lodges next to one of the old ticket barriers. As Lacey screams, I turn and look up at Cooper, and I can see the relief in his eyes now that we've finally got something to examine. Just as someone with faith waits from a sign from God, Cooper has been waiting for something, anything, that he can analyze and prod, and this dead body is the first indication we've had so far that there might be anyone else still in the city.

  Caroline Jones

  Fifteen days ago

  "Maybe we should just leave him here," Chloe says eventually, after we've been sitting on the bench by the bus stop for a couple of hours. A few meters away, Reed is sitting on the stoop of his ex-wife's building, with his head in his hands and no apparent idea as to what he's going to do next. "I get why he's just sat there," she continues, "but don't you think we should try to get help?"

  "From who?" I ask, keeping my eyes fixed on Reed. The truth is, I share his desperation. Right now, it feels as if there's no way out of this situation.

  "The police!" she says, her strong British accent making her sound eminently reasonable. "They have to do something about this, right? I mean, we're three people, so it's not like we're mad or imagining this!"

  "Isn't it?" I ask, turning to her. "How do I know that you and Reed are real?" I pause, watching as she realizes that I've got a point. "How do you know that we're real? What's more likely? That the whole city has suddenly, for some reason, forgotten all about us, or that we've just gone mad? People go mad every day, don't they? Every single day, a few more people los
e their minds. Maybe it's just our turn this time."

  "We can't all have gone mad at the same time," she replies cautiously. "Not in the same way..."

  "No," I reply, realizing that she doesn't quite understand yet, "but what if just one of us has gone mad, and the other two are just hallucinations. You seem real to me, but..." I glance over at a guy who's walking past us. "He didn't make eye contact," I continue. "He didn't look at me. Maybe, from his point of view, I'm just talking to myself. Everyone steers clear of crazy people, don't they? Maybe something happened and I just flipped out, and everyone walking past can see it."

  "Then what am I?" she asks. "I know I'm real!"

  "But how can I be sure?" I reply. "You might be existing entirely in my head."

  "Well... how can I be sure that you're real?" she continues. "Maybe I'm the one who's gone mad, and I'm the one who's sitting here talking to myself!" She pauses. "I have been under a lot of pressure lately. My sister's getting married next month and I'm supposed to be going back to England for the wedding, but I don't think I can get the time off work, and I haven't told her yet, and..." Her voice trails off for a moment. "I never thought I was the kind of person who'd go mental," she adds eventually. "I thought that was other people."

  Glancing over at Reed, I see that he's got the expression of a man who's been totally beaten down. He looks lost and confused, and I'm finding it hard to believe that I could have imagined him. I hope not, anyway; I really hope to God that I'm not sitting here alone, talking to two imaginary acquaintances.

  "Hey!" I call out. "You want to grab a coffee?"

  "With what?" he asks, his voice sounding dull and tired. "My ATM cards don't work."

  "I have some cash," I continue. "Enough for three coffees, at least. Maybe we can work out what to do next."

  "There's nothing to do," he replies. "I'm just going to sit here and hope that when the sun comes up, this whole crazy night is just going to be washed away. Maybe..." He pauses, seemingly lost in thought for a moment. "I keep trying to work out what caused all this to happen, and the only explanation that even slightly makes sense is that I've lost my goddamn mind, except..." He pauses again, staring straight ahead as if he's momentarily lost in some kind of trance. "I'm not insane," he says eventually. "I just know that I haven't lost my mind. This is real. It's happening. For whatever reason, this is absolutely, definitely happening."

  "I guess we have to proceed on that assumption," I say, turning to Chloe. "We can't just sit around and assume that we're nuts. We have to come up with a plan."

  "You got some coins I could borrow?" she asks. "I've got an idea."

  Reaching into my bag, I pull out my purse and find some coins for her. "How much do you need?" I ask, suddenly aware that I'm getting low on cash.

  "Just enough to call home," she replies, looking over at a payphone at the end of the street. "I want to call my parents in Bristol, in England, and see if they..." She pauses, and it looks for a moment as if she's on the verge of tears. "I mean, they've got to remember me, right? They're my parents, so it's not like they can forget the past thirty years, can they?"

  Although I know I should hold onto the coins, I give them to her. After thanking me, she gets up and heads across the road, leaving me to turn back to Reed. Once again, he seems to have fallen very still, as if the enormity of this whole situation is weighing down on him with crushing intensity.

  "We can't sit here forever," I tell him. "We can't just sit and wait. What are you going to do when daylight comes? She's not going to remember you. Whatever this thing is, it's not going to be magically reset at the end of the night." I pause for a moment, trying to work out where the whole mess started. "John Lydecker," I say eventually.

  "I don't care about John Lydecker," he replies.

  "But he's what we all have in common," I point out. "This is basically when the whole thing started, right? You, me and Chloe were all sent out to find Lydecker. We met at his apartment, we were together in that coffee shop, and then it's as if, when we were done, all the crazy stuff started to happen." I pause as I realize that this is the first time all night that I've actually managed to string together anything approaching a reasonable explanation. "I don't know how," I continue, "but Lydecker has to be connected to this. It can't just be a coincidence that it started as soon as we found out about Lydecker basically having three separate identities."

  Sighing, Reed pauses for a moment. "So how does that work, exactly?" he asks eventually. "Did some magic dust fall on us in Lydecker's apartment?"

  "It's not the apartment," I continue, my mind racing to put all the pieces together. "Chloe didn't come into the apartment, remember? And..." I pause again. "As far as we know, no-one else showed up looking for Lydecker, did they? So it was just the three of us, and then the three of us were apparently the only ones who got affected like this." I wait for him to respond, but he doesn't seem to have bought into my theory yet. "Don't you get it?" I continue. "Whatever's going on, however it happened, it has to be linked to Lydecker. I know he's just a weird, annoying little man, but somehow he's at the heart of it!"

  "But how -" Reed starts to say, before something seems to catch his attention on the other side of the road. "Huh," he says after a moment. "I don't think that phone call's going too well."

  Turning, I watch as Chloe puts the phone down. Tears are streaming down her face, and she looks as if she might be able to collapse. Getting up from the bench, I hurry across the street and immediately put my arms around her. She doesn't say anything; instead, she just rests her head on my shoulders and sobs. Looking down at the phone, hanging down from the payphone box, I realize that her parents must have told her that they don't remember her. It occurs to me that maybe I could try to call home to my family, but the way things are going, it's pretty clear how things would turn out, and I'm not ready to go through that just yet.

  "It's going to be okay," I tell Chloe, even though I have no idea what we're going to do next.

  "You don't know that," she replies through a wall of tears.

  "This can't just happen to three people in New York," I continue. "This is the twenty-first century. Three people can't just stop existing like this!"

  "But we have!" she replies, pulling away and staring at me with tears in her eyes. "Don't you get it? You keep saying it can't happen, but it has happened! We're standing here right now, and it's happened to us! So stop saying it can't, because..." Her voice trails off and she starts sobbing again, but she pushes me away when I try to comfort her. Instead, she goes and sits on the sidewalk, in the doorway of a shop.

  "Damn it," I mutter as I take the phone and place it back on the hook. Glancing over at Reed, I realize that both he and Chloe seem to be losing momentum. It's as if, faced with the enormity of everything that's happening, they're starting to freeze up. I guess they're hoping that some kind of miracle is going to come along and resolve everything, whereas I'm filled with determination to go and find someone who can help us. The only problem is, I don't know where to start.

  "You got some water?" Chloe asks eventually.

  I turn to her.

  "I'm thirsty," she says, her tears having apparently stopped for now. "You got a bottle of water or something?"

  "Sorry," I reply.

  "I'm sorry I used your coins," she continues. "That was dumb. I should have known they'd..." She pauses, and she seems much calmer now, as if somehow she's accepted what's happening.

  "It wasn't dumb," I tell her. "It was worth a try. You had to -" Suddenly I stop speaking as I happen to glance along the sidewalk and spot a man walking toward us. He seems fairly unassuming, and with a flat cap on his head it's hard to make out his face properly, but something about him seems familiar. With a growing sense of unease, I watch as he steps down off the sidewalk and hurries across the road.

  "What's wrong?" Chloe asks.

  "Hang on," I reply, starting to follow the man. I make sure to keep back, so as to avoid spooking him, but there's something about
the way he walks, and the hint of an expression that I saw on his face despite the shadows. My heart's racing, but I'm not going to let myself believe it, not yet. I keep telling myself that it can't be true, that I'm just imagining the whole thing, but at the same time I know that it's real.

  "What is it?" Chloe asks, hurrying after me.

  I stop as the man slips past Reed and makes his way up the steps to the door that leads into the apartment building. It's hard to believe that this could be happening, but I swear to God, I recognize him. I've seen him so many times at work, and now he's right here.

  "That's John Lydecker," I say, watching as he unlocks the door.

  "Are you sure?" Chloe asks, standing just behind me.

  "Hey!" I call out. "John!"

  The man turns to look over at me, and finally I see that I'm right. It is him. He's staring at me with a look of confusion on his face, and it's clear that he doesn't recognize me at all, but it's definitely him. After all this insanity, we've finally found John Lydecker at last!

  Dr. Stef Grant

  Today

  "It's male," Cooper says, crouching next to the corpse. "Definitely male."

  I breathe a sigh of relief. After the initial shock of seeing the body being washed down the stairs, I'd begun to worry that by some huge coincidence Gretchen's body might have been carried here by the flow of water. I guess her remains have probably been washed away by the storm, which is still raging above ground, but at least we don't have to see her again. This body, bloated and rotten, is a stranger, and in some strange way that's much less disturbing.

  "He looks like he's been dead for a while," I say, staring at the yellowed, bruised skin of the man's face.

  "Hard to give an exact time of death," Cooper continues. "We don't know what kind of environment he's been in since he died. Still, there's no sign that he's been consumed by any kind of rodent, which is odd." He turns to me. "You'd think that a body, left somewhere outside in New York, would have been chewed to pieces by now. It's as if humans aren't the only creatures that have abandoned the place."