Red Zone Son

Chapter 45

The next morning, Solomon saw movement in the tent city further south, people walking toward them with their collapsed tents in their arms or shoved into their carts if they were lucky enough to have one. He asked a woman who seemed cleaner than the rest what was going on, and she spat and told him some important people were here to look at them.

That was enough to send his heart rate through the roof. Had someone hacked into his email account? Did they know Wilson and he were here? Or did this have nothing to do with them? Solomon tried to pump her for more details, but she turned away from him, and he was left with nothing but a cold knot of fear in his stomach.

Manal’s email had told him to hide. He felt so paranoid that he was now questioning whether it had been sent by Manal or someone else, but there was nothing else he could do. He looped his arms under Wilson’s armpits, grimacing as the pressure intensified the pain in his left hand, then started to drag him.

Each passing figure felt like a potential threat, their disheveled silhouettes casting long shadows that merged with the gray dawn. He kept his head down. He avoided looking toward the aid workers in blue uniforms, ousting people who had taken up residence on the street that cut through Central Park, barking at them to move onto the grass. Every rustle of a tent flap had him turning, every curse directed at an aid worker made him flinch.

His arms started to shake. He wasn’t as strong as he’d used to be; he had managed to pull Wilson twenty feet, maybe. He saw a partially collapsed tent, its fabric torn enough to reveal that it was empty. Getting to his knees, he half-rolled, half-pushed Wilson toward it, then with one final, desperate effort, he jerked him inside, his breath coming in ragged gasps.

He pressed himself into a corner, his eyes fixed on the ripped tent wall, every muscle tensed. The thought of being found sent waves of panic coursing through him, each beat of his heart as loud as a drum in his ears. But he was at the end of his rope.

Surely they couldn’t force all of them to leave the park. Where else was there to go? The aid workers were clearing the street, that was all, and they weren’t on the street. There were other tents around them. They would be okay. Please, let them be okay. Please, please, please let them pass over us.

The laundry basket. He’d left it behind.

Solomon closed his eyes. Don’t risk it, he told himself. Just let it go. You’re not going to die if you don’t eat today. As for Wilson, well, midnight tonight, if Wilson could make it until midnight tonight, then he had a shot at coming back. Solomon had nothing left to give him. He kept his eyes and ears open for anyone approaching them, and went back to praying.

***

Somehow the rest of the day passed. Somehow they weren’t found. Somehow Wilson was still alive by sunset. Solomon had no idea how to tell if it was midnight or not, so right before it got too dark to see, he propped Wilson up against the side of the tent and crawled over and through the ripped flap. He traced his steps backward, but there was no sign of their laundry bag.

Pointing himself southwest, he began walking. He was hungry, but he’d managed to sleep some inside the tent while the sun was out, so he found he only had to stop a few times on the way to the Chief of the Lenape Circle. The benches were all taken up, but rocks and grass were good enough for him.

Despite his exhaustion, there was a gnawing thought that he couldn’t shake off: was he walking into a trap once again? The familiar burn in his left hand was flaring up, clouding his thoughts even more. He wanted to assess the risks, assign percentages to the different scenarios in front of him, but all he could hold in his mind was to put one step in front of another. Just one more. Just one more. Just one more. Until the park opened up and he saw ahead of him the Chief of the Lenape Circle, the statue of the Chief rising above the traffic flowing steadily around it.

The soft glow of bioluminescent lights hanging in lanterns at the base of the statue bathed the area in an otherworldly aura. They looked like ghosts to him. Further out, towering skyscrapers stood like silent guardians, their illuminated windows studding the night with light.

Solomon didn’t cross the street. He sat down next to a tree within the park, close enough to be able to see the cars driving down the avenue in front of him. Occasionally, he stood to check the time on a large, octagonal clock at the top of one of the westward-facing buildings. The backlit hands crawled forward. Wilson was dying back in the tent city, waiting for him to pull this off. He didn’t know yet if he would, but he did know that one way or another, things would be over, midnight, tonight.

The two hands were almost overlapping when Solomon saw a red car with an open top, its sleek design cutting through the night. A driver, focused on the street ahead of him, guided the vehicle while a woman in a hooded purple cloak sat in the back. The car moved smoothly amid the steady flow of traffic, its bright color a stark contrast with the muted tones of the cityscape.

He leaped to his feet, his heart in his throat. Manal’s eyes were going back and forth, but they slid right over him. The car circled the Chief of the Lenape Circle, the bioluminescent lights casting reflective glimmers on its polished surface. He forced himself forward to catch the car on its return. Then he found himself almost hesitating, almost wanting to fall back. His face flushed. He could feel the torn clothes on his body, his body itself broken and starved, his hair long and dirty. An acute sense of shame flashed through him. He didn’t want Manal to see him like this.

But that was what he needed. He needed her to see him. Mustering his last bit of strength, he strode through the ornate blocks of stone marking the entrance into the park. Each step drew him closer to the street’s edge. He positioned himself strategically, timing his movements to intersect with the car’s anticipated return around the circle. A current of anticipation shivered down his spine. Right behind Manal’s car was a newer model cybertruck with tinted windows.

Wait. Was the blue zone tracking him down through her?

Manal’s convertible was coming back around. Solomon was close enough to see her fingers gripping the edge of her car door. Her eyes blinked, then locked on his. Without breaking eye contact with him, she pulled out a phone. She was calling someone. She was nodding. She was gesturing, as if to someone behind her. She was only a few feet away from him. Her gaze was fixed on his – and then the red vehicle flashed past him and he was left alone on the sidewalk, staring at the ghosts blinking around the statue on the other side of the street.

He didn’t have time to wonder what just happened. The cybertruck was pulling up next to him, and the door nearest him was opening upward like a wing. “Get in,” he heard the driver say.

Get in? Was this – who –

The brown-skinned man in the driver’s seat looked back at him. “I’ll take you to the safe house.”

Still Solomon hesitated. But the cars behind the cybertruck were starting to honk their horns, and even though he couldn’t think clearly enough to be able to tell what was going on, he knew he could trust Manal. He slid in under the wing-shaped door and with trembling hands buckled himself in. The car lurched forward, then stopped, then lurched forward again. Solomon winced as his left elbow banged into the seat back, the pain in his hand reverberating through his body.

“We have to pick up someone else,” he said out loud. “I had to leave him in the tent city.”

“Where?” the driver asked.

It was hard for Solomon to shake off his paranoia. He had to force himself to tell the driver where Wilson was.

The driver took the newly cleared road through Central Park, then parked when Solomon told him they had arrived. He stumbled as he rushed to get to the ripped tent where he had left Wilson. Would Wilson still be there? Had someone moved him? Had the blue zone found him while Solomon was gone?

His questions were answered quickly: yes, no, no, but Wilson had shifted so that he was lying flat on his back and his face was stiff. His heart pounding, Solomon checked Wilson’s pulse. It was so faint he could barely feel it.

He was glad the driver was healthy and young and could carry Wilson in a fireman’s hold back to the car. “He’s very sick,” Solomon said as soon as they were inside and the doors were shut. “He needs a doctor right away.”

“We’ve got one waiting,” the driver replied, starting to drive. “There’s food and water in the pocket in front of you, help yourself.”

There was an electrolyte drink Solomon forced into Wilson’s mouth. He was able to angle Wilson so he wouldn’t choke, but even so, it was as if he was trying to feed someone in a coma; he wasn’t even sure if Wilson was swallowing.

After he’d had as much as Solomon thought he would take, he drank the rest, then began opening with one hand the protein bars tucked into the pocket. He was still feeling fine, but after what had happened to Wilson, he found himself eating slowly. He couldn’t help but keep looking out the window. Was he actually finally safe? Could he let go of looking over his shoulder? He trusted Manal, but a year of imprisonment had given him habits that were hard to shake.

The windows were tinted enough to mute the night lights of the city outside. Solomon didn’t think anyone was following them, but that didn’t stop him from spending the next hour peering at each car beside their cybertruck or at the people walking on the sidewalks underneath the towering buildings hemming them in from all directions.

He wasn’t able to relax even when the driver had the car park itself while he walked them up into a dingy second-story apartment. A robotic nurse was speaking to a woman whom Solomon assumed was the doctor. When they carried Wilson in, the woman broke off talking to the robot and helped them place Wilson onto a couch in the main living area. She lifted Wilson’s arm, and the robot angled itself so that his arm could fit into the cuff it had in front. At the same time, the doctor began asking Solomon questions. He answered them as best he could. He told her his thoughts about refeeding syndrome. She nodded, then asked about his hand. “It got crushed by a sealing door,” he explained.

“When?”

It took Solomon a moment to work it out. “About two days ago.”

“Good, I might not need to rebreak it then. Don’t worry, we’ll get that hand all fixed up, we do it all the time.”

She turned back to Wilson, which Solomon was happy about because between the two of them it was obvious whose situation was most urgent. But then she glanced back at him. “Go get clean, there are clothes for you in the bedroom. Take off the bandage before you shower but be careful with your hand, don’t use it.”

The man who’d driven them there pointed at a door in the apartment. Solomon went through to see new clothes laid out on a bed. There was another door inside the bedroom, and it led to a bathroom. Outside, he heard the driver tell the doctor he was heading out, but Solomon was so focused on getting into the shower that he didn’t pay attention to anything but shedding his filthy clothes and turning on the hot water.

Once inside the shower, Solomon found himself thinking, This must be what it feels like to die and go to heaven. He took his sweet time. He had just finished washing his long hair when he heard a knock on the door, and he was struck by the sudden anxiety that Wilson had died out on the couch while he was in there.

He turned off the water at once, grabbed a towel, and wrapped it around himself. “I’m coming,” he told the doctor. He opened the door, but it wasn’t the doctor.

It was Manal.