“Let’s hope it stays that way,” she replied.
As luck would have it, it did. And thanks to the bikes, we made it back in less than half the time it took us to get there on foot. As soon as we reached the bathroom, Emery jumped off her bike and hurried to check on her parents.
“Mami? Papi? Luis? We’re back, open the door.” Emery looked at us nervously when the door didn’t immediately open. She raised her fist to knock again when the door swung open.
“Sorry,” Luis said sheepishly. “We fell asleep.”
“Well, time to wake up, sunshine,” I replied. I held the door open to let what little light there was into the dark room.
“Everything went ok?” Luis asked.
“I’m surprised you didn’t hear the explosion all the way over here,” Emery replied as she helped her parents up and began refolding the blankets and stuffing them into bags. “Genius here blew up a gas truck.”
“I would be the genius,” I clarified, “and it was awesome.”
“I’m sorry I missed that.”
“But at least you got some sleep,” Nico commented.
By his expression, he wasn’t thrilled that Luis had fallen asleep, but wasn’t willing to outright say it and cause more problems, especially after our chat on the way to the park. Once I had explained myself, he’d calmed down quickly. Said heunderstood where I was coming from and realized we couldn’t approach our relationship with Emery the same way we had with everything else before the apocalypse. I hoped he meant that because I wouldn’t blindly take orders from him anymore, especially if I felt there was a better way. Emery was too important.
Luis noticed his displeasure as well, but he was far more levelheaded than I was and ignored it. “Right?” he chirped. “Now I’m refreshed and ready to pedal us to safety.”
We packed all of the bags into Emery’s cart, ignoring her protests that she could take a heavier load. Luis would pull Emery’s parents, and I would hop on the back with Nico. We would take point and eliminate any zombies we came across.
“Time check?” I asked Emery before we took off.
“Two hours,” she replied solemnly.
“That shouldn’t be a problem now that we have wheels,” I replied. As we took off, I considered that all of this would have been much faster if we had hotwired a car, except that driving through the streets was impossible, the path we were on wouldn’t always be drivable, and a car would be heard for miles around in the dead city. Pedicabs were slower, but a much more viable option.
We made good time, and it was a fun way to take out zombies. It felt like I was jousting and Nico was my loyal steed. I had a private chuckle over that and made a mental note to work it into conversation when we had made it safely out of the city. We didn’t hit our next roadblock until we neared the bridge. We had about twenty minutes to get across, which shouldn’t have been a problem. It wouldn’t have been a problem if the Army hadn’t dropped concrete blocks around the damn thing.
“This must have been another evacuation point,” Emery said.
“Let’s lift the bikes over and go as far as we can with them,” Luis suggested. “Then we’ll hoof it the rest of the way.”
Instead of replying to his suggestion, we sprang into action. The damn things were a lot heavier than I thought they would be, but we managed the task easily enough. Unfortunately, when you only have twenty minutes to spare, every one of them is precious.
“We’re not going to make it,” Nico growled quietly as we continued toward the bridge.
Looking ahead, I had to agree. There was another concrete wall to get past, zombies milling around, and a bridge full of cars to navigate. Fuck. “We have to try,” I replied. I glanced back at the others and saw the same understanding in their eyes. What choice did we have?
“Wait! Do you hear that?” Emery suddenly screeched.
We all stopped to listen to whatever she thought she heard. At first, I didn’t hear anything until the steady roar of an engine drawing closer reached my ears. “Where?” We all looked around for the source of the sound and our possible ride off this rock.
“There!” Felix shouted, pointing downriver. Sure enough, in the early morning light, we could see a boat speeding up the Hudson.
“The flare gun!” I called at Emery.
She got off the bike and dug through the bags until she found one. She pointed it at the sky and pulled the trigger. This was our only chance. If the boat didn’t stop, we’d have to get in the water and swim for it, because every zombie around would be headed our way in a matter of minutes.
“Head to the river,” I ordered. “Either we’re going in the boat, or we’re going in the water.” I grabbed the bags out of Emery’s carriage as she and Luis helped her parents out. As we lined up along the edge of the walkway by the river, I thought for a second the boat wouldn’t stop, but then I heard the engine throttle down.
The boat drifted toward us, and I could see a man at the helm and five other people aboard. “You folks need a lift?” the man asked when he was within earshot.
“We’d appreciate it,” Nico responded. “We were trying to get over the bridge.”
