Child Zero by Chris Holm

Author:Chris Holm [HOLM, CHRIS]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2022-05-10T00:00:00+00:00

27.

When the young men slowed to intercept her, Hannah set her jaw, lengthened her stride, and held the sick child she was carrying a little tighter to her chest.

Hannah had been watching them amble north along the Hudson River in the shadow of the West Side Highway since she and Zoe reached the pedestrian ramp that passed beneath the elevated thoroughfare. Because the lengthy ramp descended northwest from West 68th Street and Riverside Boulevard to the water’s edge, she’d realized their paths would intersect, but she’d been praying they’d ignore her and continue on their way.

Instead, it seemed that she and Zoe had piqued their interest, probably because they looked so out of place. These days, few New Yorkers dared avail themselves of the city’s public parks, and even fewer were foolish enough to bring their children.

Shame, Hannah thought. This place must have been beautiful in its prime.

Riverside Park South owed its existence to an unlikely collaboration between a future president with grandiose plans to develop the defunct 60th Street Rail Yard—then the largest tract of unused land in Manhattan—and the wealthy Upper West Side denizens who opposed him.

For decades, Donald Trump believed transforming the old railyard into “a city within a city” would be his legacy. Aghast at the artless cluster of skyscrapers he envisioned, local residents—including feminist icon Betty Friedan, actor Christopher Reeve, and comedian Jerry Seinfeld, as well as future Trump administration gadfly Jerry Nadler—organized against him.

Eventually, Trump capitulated, scrapping his outsized ambitions in favor of a more palatable development plan that included ample waterfront greenspace. The West Side Highway was relocated. Riverside Park was extended south. The railyard’s decrepit pier was rebuilt for public use.

At the time, the park was hailed as a triumph of urban planning, but since 8/17 it had fallen into disrepair. Its paths were uneven and overgrown. Its athletic fields were patchy and strewn with litter. Its pier—once host to fairs, concerts, and outdoor movies—had been surrendered to the criminals and indigents.

These three were almost certainly the former. Though they appeared to be in high spirits, jostling one another playfully as they walked, Hannah took no comfort in their exuberance, because she recognized their kind.

They were Endtimers.

Soldiers of Gaia, to be precise.

Hannah guessed that they were in their early twenties, although their emaciation made it hard to say for sure. Two had shaved heads. One had dreadlocks held in place with a bandanna. All were pale, greasy, and unbathed. Even from a distance, they stank of body odor and patchouli.

Their clothes were a baggy mix of thrifted items and army surplus, which they’d customized with myriad patches, pins, and buttons celebrating everything from antinatalist philosophy to animal liberation. Their jackets bore a stenciled image of Earth strapped into an old-timey gas mask. Bedraggled canvas sneakers, mended with duct tape, graced their feet.

Ten months ago, an adolescent male of the same description was wheeled into Hannah’s ER with severe head trauma, multiple fractures, and acute respiratory distress. When she attempted to treat him, he went berserk, hurling himself off the gurney and sinking his teeth into her calf.

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