The Last Survivor (A Wilde/Chase Short Story) Read Free Page A

it doesn’t come to JFK.’
    She blinked in disbelief. ‘But this is the biggest airport. How can there not be a train to the city?’
    ‘Welcome to America!’ he said with a laugh. ‘Come on. Let’s find a cab.’
    Mulberry Street in Little Italy was the home of New York’s annual Feast of San Gennaro. Nina had barely started along it before her mouth started watering. Both sides of the thoroughfare were lined with food stalls, selling anything that could even remotely be considered Italian, and quite a lot that couldn’t. She absorbed the delicious aromas as she ambled through the crowd. The cravings from the early stages of her pregnancy had died down as she entered the second trimester, but right now she had a definite urge to grab a plate and start eating.
    A pang of regret as she saw chocolate gelato on a nearby stall; it was one of Eddie’s favourites. She wished that he was there with her, but at the same time she still felt a residual anger. She had attended Macy’s funeral, mourned her friend, wept for her; she
wasn’t
in denial. He was making assumptions based on her book – her
unfinished
book, at that. She wasn’t in denial.
    Was she?
    ‘Get yer calzone!’ shouted a stallholder right beside her, jolting her back into the moment. ‘Hey, lady? You wanna calzone? Funnel cake?’
    ‘I’d love one, but … I probably shouldn’t. I’m pregnant,’ she told him with regret.
    He gave her a cheeky grin. ‘Hey, I got four kids. My wife never stopped eatin’ my food the whole time. C’mon, babies need calories.’
    Nina laughed. ‘Okay, you convinced me. Give me a ham and pecorino.’ He beamed and reached for one of the stuffed dough crescents.
    The blond man who had followed her from the apartment and on the subway journey to Little Italy stopped twenty feet behind her, pretending to check the produce on another stall. The moment she left with her purchase, he set off again too, trailing her through the crowd.
    Natalia’s face was practically pressed against the cab’s window as she gawped at the towering skyline of Manhattan. ‘Wow!’ she gasped. ‘That is so incredible!’
    ‘It’s a bit bigger than Ly Quang, innit?’ said Eddie, remembering her little Vietnamese hideout. They were crossing the East River on the Queensboro Bridge, giving them a spectacular view of the island. He pointed at a tall green glass tower on the far bank. ‘That’s the United Nations, where me and Nina used to work. Thought I was shot of it, but we got dragged back to the International Heritage Agency a few months ago. Although if we hadn’t been,’ he admitted, ‘we wouldn’t have found the cure for what Nina had – what you’ve got.’
    She turned away from the view to regard him with a mixture of hope and worry. ‘What you found … do you really think it will work for me? It will cure the eitr?’ Natalia’s grandfather, a Soviet scientist, had conducted secret and illegal experiments with the toxin, using his own family as test subjects – and infecting them with a cancer that had been passed down through the generations.
    ‘I hope so. I really do,’ he replied. ‘It worked on Nina, and we know it cured stuff for the Nazis who were after the spring.’
    ‘But I was not poisoned by the eitr – I was born with the infection in my DNA. This water, it may not work on me.’
    ‘We’ve got to try,’ Eddie insisted. ‘If there’s a chance, you’ve got to take it.’
    A hesitant smile. ‘You are right. Thank you.’
    He smiled back. ‘No problem.’
    They crossed the river into Manhattan, the cab turning north towards 78th Street. ‘Nina told me in Vietnam that she was going to write a book about all the things she has done,’ said Natalia. ‘Has she finished it?’
    ‘Not yet. We got a bit sidetracked with the whole bunch-of-Nazis thing, but she’s been working on it since then. It’s pretty much
all
she’s been doing, actually.’
    She tipped her head quizzically. ‘And you are not