chapter 16

Monday, December 5

Alex decided he'd give Kevin fifteen minutes to show before going back inside. If the apartment had any kind of heat, he would have stood by the front door of his building for five, but since it was just marginally warmer indoors, he opted for fifteen.

He would have needed only the five-minute deadline. Kevin showed up at 7:03.

"You're crazy, you know that," Alex said. "How'd you even manage to get here?"

"It wasn't that bad," Kevin replied. "They've done some shoveling and plowing in my neighborhood." He looked at the sidewalk in front of Alex's building. "Nice job," he said. "You pay a kid to do it?"

"I wish," Alex said. "You really think we're going to find anything?"

"I wouldn't be here if I didn't," Kevin said. "The pickings should be really good. Lots of new bodies by the park. Some suicides; the storm was just too much for them, I guess. And people are dropping like flies. One of the doctors in our DRU says there's a mean flu bug going around."

"Great," Alex said. "Just what we need."

Kevin laughed. "We're lucky it's not plague," he said. "Harvey says there's an uptick in the market for jewelry. So we need to start taking wedding rings and engagement rings and earrings and anything else we can find. I guess they realized nobody's going to be mining for a while."

Alex hated taking wedding rings off bodies, but they needed food for one more week. He'd leave a note for Kevin when they left so he wouldn't worry. He'd be gone soon enough himself, maybe even to the same town as Alex.

Alex followed the footsteps Kevin had made going to his apartment. They were the only footprints in the snow. If there were still people living on the Upper West Side, they hadn't left their apartments since Saturday.

It was hard walking and the boys kept mostly to themselves as the walked east. The city would have been beautiful if the snow were white. But everything was corpse gray. No matter where Alex ended up, he wasn't going to miss New York. He'd be sorry to leave Kevin and Vincent de Paul and St. Margaret's and even Father Mulrooney, but that was it. Anyplace would be better than this.

He thought about Chris Flynn in South Carolina. Maybe it was warm there, or at least warmer. If there were still colleges, Chris would be sure to find one. A year ago, it would have driven him crazy to think of Chris getting into a good school somewhere while he didn't even know if he'd be going to college. Now, what difference did it make.

"Do you ever think about Chris Flynn?" he asked Kevin.

"Muhuhmhm," Kevin said. He'd wrapped his scarf around his mouth, and between that and the wind howling down Central Park West, it was impossible to understand what he was saying.

Not that it mattered. Chris had his life and Kevin had his.

The only important thing was getting Alex's sisters and himself to a place of safety.

He looked ahead and thought he saw the glint of a diamond about a block away. Maybe a fluicide, he thought, and he began to laugh. He trudged ahead, trying to maintain traction on the ice-crusted snow. If a ten-thousand-dollar lottery ticket could buy a can of pineapple, who knew what a diamond ring was worth.

Alex wasn't sure what caught his attention first, the odd crackling noise or the funny sound Kevin made or even the silence that followed. But something made him stop and turn around.

He wished he hadn't. He wished he'd kept on trudging toward the diamond ring that might have brought his family a can of sliced peaches. He wished he'd kept on walking until he'd walked out of New York City altogether to someplace warm and safe.

Instead he turned around and saw Kevin lying on the sidewalk, an ice-laden tree limb across his neck, pinning him down.

Alex retraced his steps in the snow. Kevin was lying facedown, and Alex's first thought was that he would suffocate in the snow. He tried lifting the branch oft him, but it was too large and too heavy with snow and ice. Alex looked up and could see the fresh torn gap in the tree where the limb had fallen from.

"Help!" Alex screamed. "Someone help me!"

But of course no one did. No one had helped Julie when she'd cried out a few weeks before. New York was more dead than alive, and those people who were still around didn't help anyone but themselves.

Kevin's head was twisted and Alex could see his right eye, looking more startled than scared or dead. He pulled off his gloves and tried to find Kevin's pulse. Then he decided that was a waste of time; what he needed to do was get Kevin out from under the branch. If he couldn't lift it, he'd tunnel Kevin out. Without even bothering to put his glove back on, he began digging the icy snow under Kevin's head and under the tree branch, so he could pull Kevin out. Kevin wasn't breathing, and Alex realized he needed to unwrap the scarf around Kevin's mouth. It was caught in the branch, and Alex had to yank at it, making Kevin's head jerk. Alex screamed in horror, and that was when he knew the only friend he'd ever really had was dead. If Kevin had been alive, even if his life were just a flicker, he would have laughed at scaring Alex so effectively.

But Alex kept digging. Eventually he created a pocket big enough to wiggle Kevin out from under the limb. He grabbed under Kevin's arms and pulled. It took more strength than he knew he had, but Kevin was finally freed.

Alex's heart was racing, but he didn't know if it was from the exertion or from seeing Kevin lying there. It didn't matter. He turned Kevin over so he was lying flat on his back.

He felt for a pulse again. He put his ear next to Kevin's mouth. He pounded on Kevin's chest in some vague imitation of CPR.

"Wake up!" he screamed at Kevin. "Make him wake up!" he screamed at God.

Kevin's eves stared at the sky. His mouth was half twisted, almost smiling —the red of the blood that had dripped out of his nose and mouth the only color left in New York.

Please, God, Alex prayed. Cherish this soul. He didn't mean half the things he said.

With Kevin staring heavenward, Alex pulled off his watch so he could give it to Kevin's parents. Then Alex realized he had no idea where Kevin's parents were. He didn't know the address of their DRU, and he didn't know where Daley Trucking was located.

It seemed unlikely that Kevin would have carried ID on him, let alone up-to-the-minute ID, but Alex had to make sure. Almost apologetically, he went through Kevin's pockets. All he found was the gun.

Alex pulled it out. He recognized it right away, from that first day they'd gone body shopping. Funny to think Kevin carried it around and Alex hadn't known. He knew more about Kevin than about almost anyone else in his life, but apparently he hadn't known nearly as much as he thought he had.

Alex took off his other glove, then fumbled around trying to unclasp the cross he always wore around his neck. He was shaking so hard it took a minute or more before he could undo it, but when he did, he kissed it, then put it over Kevin's heart. Then he closed his friend's eyes.

At some point Kevin's parents would worry about him, he realized, as he walked toward the diamond ring and the body wearing it. Maybe they knew where Alex lived and maybe they didn't, but it was unlikely they knew which apartment the Morales family had taken over. Most likely they'd check at Vincent de Paul to see if Kevin had shown up for school.

Alex twisted the diamond ring off the dead woman's finger. He'd take Kevin's watch to school and give it to Father Mulrooney, he decided. It was a priest's job to comfort a family. Alex's job was to keep his sisters alive and safe.

With the ring and the gun and the watch in his pocket, Alex began the long journey back uptown. Maybe, he thought, the diamond ring and the gun could buy Bri a safe way to get to the convoy. Kevin would like that.