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“American citizens were just, just gunned down in a field?” Cruz demanded. “My God, what is happening?”
“Fear. Panic,” the mayor said. “And it’s not without reason. We are pretty sure that at least one of those who survived has acquired powers.”
“What makes you think that?” Shade asked.
Mayor Chaffetz sat back and let go of a long sigh. “You’re going to need to see it. One or two of you, we have a helicopter with room for two passengers in addition to Detective Williams . . .”
“Why Detective Williams?” Shade asked.
“He’ll be your liaison with me and the NYPD. He has full authority to keep the Feds off your backs and make sure you have any city resources you need.”
“You won’t be coming?” Cruz asked the mayor.
The mayor looked down. Her whole body signaled weariness, but this was more than that. Armo saw that she clasped her hands together to hide a shake. “I went earlier. I saw.” Chaffetz shook her head, and when she spoke again her voice was low and quivered with emotion. “I don’t need to see that again. I don’t ever need to see that again.”
CHAPTER 11
Kill Us
TEN MINUTES LATER, Dekka and Francis—chosen at Malik’s suggestion—were in helicopter jump seats. Dekka sat in front beside the pilot; Francis and Detective Williams were just behind them. All wore can headphone sets with microphones curving around beside their mouths.
As they flew over the city, Dekka had a spectacular if depressing view that included scenes of devastation, buildings shattered, their makings and their forlorn contents blocking streets. Smoke hung over Central Park, and the still-billowing smoke of active fires could be seen all the way from downtown to Harlem.
Soon they were across the river, past miles of urban sprawl, and skimming at treetop level above a seemingly endless forest of identical pine trees, interrupted by marshes, by meandering streams, by small ponds reflecting a sun that failed to spread cheer over the gloomy scenery.
They came to a wide clearing that had been scorched black and scarred by earthmoving equipment. They hovered there for a while, rotors churning the air above futile ambulances and fire trucks, New Jersey State Police vehicles, and the ubiquitous black SUVs.
Then the helicopter swiveled and advanced a few hundred feet to an eerie, chemical-green pond. Beams of slanting sunlight revealed the ramps and deep gouges of an abandoned gravel quarry.
They landed near the edge of the sickly-green quarry lake. They got out and the detective led the way down a long ramp still marked with the deep ruts made by heavy trucks. Dekka felt Williams’s hand on her shoulder.
“Prepare yourself,” he said. “It’s not good.”
Dekka was tempted to shrug off both his hand and his warning, but she recalled the stricken, gray face of the mayor and allowed that maybe there really was something she needed to be prepared for.
The narrow gravel beach had been cordoned off with yellow crime-scene tape, and three policemen stood a distance away, smoking and looking at the new arrivals, or at the pond, or nowhere at all, anything to not look at what Dekka thought looked like a tangle of burned bodies.
I’ve seen burned bodies. Unfortunately.
Williams’s face was grim, his jaw clenching. Dekka had learned that he was a murder cop, a homicide detective, not a job that sheltered you from horror. Yet he was visibly steeling himself for something. Dekka followed him with Francis at her heels. Their feet crunched gravel, too loud in the silence that followed the helicopter powering down.
Dekka felt before she saw. A tingling on her arms and up her neck.
Not burned bodies.
Not corpses.
Dekka stopped. The stink was awful, and for a moment she told herself it was that the quarry lake, but no, this was not a chemical smell. This was the stink of putrefying flesh. She knew this smell too well. In the early days of the FAYZ it had taken them a while to realize that every home needed to be searched for . . . for what they eventually found: infants, abandoned by disappeared parents, trapped in cribs, unable to do anything at all, but cry and starve.
She breathed hard, inhalations like sobs.
“Oh, Jesus. Oh, Jesus, no.”
“What is that?” Francis cried, and instinctively grabbed Dekka’s arm for support.
Four men stood—at least, their feet were planted on the ground, like they were glued or nailed down—but they slumped and sagged, and one lay on his side, legs twisted at an impossible angle.
Their bodies were emaciated, thin, their black tactical gear in tatters, the exposed skin red and black, entirely corrupted. Rotten.
