Two months I’ve been traveling this way, and there’s no end in sight.
This is not the best way to open this story. I don't know if the "no end in sight" is a good thing or a bad thing and we don't know what "this way" is. Try to open with a sense memory, something to catch the reader. This is called "a hook".
I’m reminded of this when she asks me if I can buy us some chocolate for the fourth time in the past hour.
This sentence makes no sense in context with the rest of the story. What nine-year-old is going to ask to buy something when it's patently obvious that the world has gone to shit? Nine-year-olds aren't that stupid. You walk them through "hellscape NYC" and they're not going to wonder if we're going to Disney Land.
We have no money, and it wouldn't matter if we did, because it has no value to it anymore, I think bitterly to myself, wondering in the back of my mind how I can word that to a nine-year-old.
This is a run-on sentence. Also it's pretty easy to explain that money has no value to a nine-year-old when you're living in a wasteland.
We have three weeks to travel one hundred and eighty miles, and so far it’s looking like we’re still stuck traveling on foot.
Here we have an introduction of a goal and an arbitrary deadline without any context. Where are they going that's 180 miles away? Why does it need to be three weeks? Like, we don't even know the characters' names yet, or have a handle on who they are as people before the "level completion requirements" are being laid out for us in internal exposition.
We have dwindling amounts of food, water, and ammunition.
Show. Don't tell. She has a backpack. Have her open it and take stock of what she has during the downtime. Also the way you phrase this is "a dwindling supply".
I have to watch every flickering shadow and every dark alleyway we pass on the off-chance that someone tries to kidnap you, you turn darkness into a rushing flood of water and/or a horde of monsters because you’re afraid of it, or both at the same time. And you’re worried about chocolate.
Run-on sentence. Also what?
"someone tries to kidnap you, you turn darkness into a rushing flood of water and/or a horde of monsters because you’re afraid of it"
The bad grammar is getting in the way of what you're going for here. I don't know who is turning into what or what is happening.
“Chocolate isn’t going to help us,” I end up saying.
See that could be a good opening line. Hell it would be a great way of introducing the girl's reality bending powers by having her make something into chocolate.
She looks up at me with her dark gray eyes, the gross wetness of the New York night refracting off of her oily brown hair. “Chocolate helps everything,” she says in her squeaky voice, reaching for my hand
Format your dialog properly. Separate that quote from the paragraph or start the paragraph with that quote.
She rolls her eyes and looks at her dirty blue Converse. “Not the candy store,” she mumbles. I give a half-hearted snort and look out at the dimly glowing horizon line, and then at my watch. It’s 4:35 AM. God, I hate this.
What is with this girl and candy? They're in a blasted-out NYC hellscape and that's all she can think about? I don't think the author has ever had to deal with kids in stressful situations.
“Where are we going?”
8 seconds ago the Victoria said "Grand Central". This kid is either really dumb or some kind of caricature of what a kid is.
I blink tiredly and tilt my head up to the smoggy sky, trying to think up some answer that she’ll actually believe permanently.
Cut the "permanently". Nobody is going to believe something permanently. Also you use way too many adverbs. It takes the starkness and punchiness out of your prose.
surreptitiously check the strap of my bra for the Foundation ID card I don’t like carrying but need to. Even after the apocalypse. It’s still there, and probably always will be, given that I constantly feel it scratching my skin, but the risk of her finding it is too great to just assume it’ll stay attached. “Elsa, I’ve told you many times…”
Another run-on sentence. It starts with "It's still there"
“I don’t get it!” She yanks her hand out and crosses her arms. “I don’t even know you!” She sits down on the wet, filthy pavement, making me cringe. We’re both covered in grime.
I don't get it either. In spite of all the exposition and aching and sighing I feel no closer to understanding this pair. Everything is apparently dirty? Is nothing else wrong with NYC? How is that different from NYC in the 70s?
I stop walking and crouch down in front of her, slinging my AK-47 back over my shoulder.
Weird gun for an American to have. Weirder still for a Foundation person to have.
I frown and my mouth becomes a taut line. “Um…” I look around the area. It’s really not a safe part of the city yet, and thus, I need my gun out. Of course, nothing is safe with the world in this state.
This all reads like I'm reading the subtitles in a foreign movie translated with Google Translate. Lines like "Of course, nothing is safe with the world in this state." make me wonder if the author is deliberately using strange prose to alienate me.
"safe with the world in this state"—-> Is this supposed to be like… "state" as in New York State or "state of" as in the way something is? Also you don't say "safe with the world". You'd say "the world isn't safe".
So far, we’ve run into two gangs, five members each, one of which immediately attacked us.
It's a good thing the gangs hang out in easily parceled groups. Did one of the members immediately attack or did one of the gangs immediately attack? Also why did they immediately attack? What did they want? Was it your AK?
My gunfire drew the second group to us, but we were able to get to a different street before they found us.
Gang members are like zombies in the movie version of WW Z.
I argued within myself for a while before deciding that it was going to help more than hurt to go back and search the body of the guy I shot. I searched him and found two 9mm pistols with only a few rounds each; I took the one in better condition and all of the ammo.
So none of the other gang members took the guns and ammo? Not even the ones who came later? Also good job making your protagonist into an RPG character.
The fat one, who ran away, dropped a multitool, luckily enough, which I’ve used countless times since I took it five days ago.
Run-on sentence. Also why do we need to invoke a version of the "fat idiot" trope here? Why does she care that the one that ran was fat?
“But I’m tired!” Tears begin to gleam in her eyes. The fence beside me starts heating up.
It looks like things just randomly happen when she is like… irritated or… uh… happy… or really anything? It doesn't give me a clear framework to work with as a reader. Do her tears have to heat a fence randomly?
Try carrying a seven-pound rifle on your shoulder and a thirty-pound backpack for two months on foot, I think. Well, at least I’m not on my period right now. God’s on our side with that. “I know, I know. I am, too. We’ve only got a few miles left, okay?” I say, trying to calm her back down.
Somebody's a worse complainer than the nine-year-old.
She stands there and stares at me. I sigh and look down the alleyway. There doesn’t seem to be anyone around, but she’ll make God-knows-what horror out of the shadows if she doesn’t get settled again.
Will she? Or will fences randomly get warmer?
“H-hang on,” I say quickly, snatching it back. Its form snaps back to normal. I remind myself not to hand her anything important, lest it transmutes into some fantasy object because of her powerful imagination.
And yet you're going to let her grab onto part of you? While you're carrying her? I don't think you're being logically consistent.
She smells horrible. I probably do, too. Times Square isn’t far from here, and the layout of the water lines means there’s a good chance there’s still enough city water around there for us to take a shower or something.
You're sorta obsessed with showers aren't you? It's more likely that the characters will have the opportunity to "wash" rather than "shower". Also what did the girl fall in to make herself smell gross? Why do they both smell "disgusting"? Is it just roughing it?
“Elsa, you sure you won’t let me shave your head?”
Why would you ask this if you were trying to keep the kid quiet?
“I’d like it, too, if it didn’t look like a horse slept on it for a week.”
She squirms around. “Ugh!”
“Can I at least cut it short? I carry a trimming device, after all…”
Again, this kind of language makes me think that this is translated from something. "I carry a trimming device" is really stilted and awkward. Also nobody would ever say that a horse slept in a child's hair for a week. That's such a weird way to say it's messy. Also if you want to keep quiet how about not talking?
“Those are very different objects.”
"Shapes" not "objects". Seriously the word choices in the dialog make me question everything about this story. I don't believe this is taking place in America.
We walk out of the end of the alleyway having encountered no issues. I look left and right down the murky streets, the morning sun only striking the very tops of the buildings.
Many of the streets in NYC run East/West, meaning that the sun will most certainly be striking more than the tops of the buildings. Like, every block or so you're going to run into an East/west street and get the full sun right there. Not much room for "murk".
I have to be more watchful, as it’s easy for attackers to hide among the skeleton of the traffic jam that once crowded the street. Something could follow us for the length of the entire road and we might not hear it over the creaking metal.
Why would the metal be creaking? The cars are literally just sitting there. Also "skeleton of the traffic jam" is a metaphor that makes no sense. Traffic jams aren't, like, entities that could be said to have a "structure". You could talk about skeletal car wrecks, skeletal buildings with expose beams, skeletal remains of people… but a traffic jam would be like… a graveyard of cars, not a skeleton of anything.
I look down Lexington to get my bearings and see several figures pacing in the street, a few of which are circling each other and waving long objects around.
Obviously pool noodles. They are waving pool noodles.
“Look, we both smell awful,” I go ahead and bring up. “So after we see what’s going on down in Grand Central, I’m taking us to Times Square to take a shower.”
What kind of shower facilities do you expect to find in Times Square, lady?
There’s a hotel I know that’ll probably have running water.”
“What if there are people in it…?
There are dozens of hotels in and around Times Square. They could all have people in them. Then again if there's no power in the city why does she expect that there's going to be water pressure? If there's widespread powerloss the water system is not going to have active pumps. If the country has collapsed and it's all roving street gangs nobody is going to fix the water main breaks. You get like 7000 water main breaks a year in NYC. How can she expect water anywhere at all?
though I can probably find out, if Mil left the radio equipment in Grand Central as planned
Grand Central Station is big. Really big. Like… I don't know how she expects to find the radio if the it's in a location that generic.
the isolated nature of Manhattan island and the wall of brick apartment complexes near Brooklyn are bound to keep out most of the danger.
What. Manhattan is not isolated. There are tons of bridges between Manhattan and The Bronx. Unless all those bridges were destroyed… but then how did the characters get to Manhattan? Magic? Also the Harlem and Hudson Rivers aren't insurmountable barriers and Brooklyn is certainly not going to keep skips away by being full of brick buildings.
The front doors are locked
Grand Central station is the size of a small mall with dozens and dozens of doors and means of egress. Like… in what universe does this take place?
http://www.grandcentralterminal.com/pdfs/directoryMap.pdf
my cargo pocket
Your redundantly described pocket.
and pull out the multitool, sticking the screwdriver through the glass.
Uh… you could just use a rock. Also why have none of the roving gangs tried to take Grand Central yet? Why has nobody else thought of this?
I reach through the broken hole, being careful not to cut my hand. I pull the door handle down with great difficulty, pulling the door back toward me. I stagger back and quickly place my foot in the door.
This is how you might break into a house or glass-fronted store. Grand Central station does not have locks that work that way.
http://bombasticinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/BMB_Getty_NYC_GC_Frontdoors_v01-600x403.jpg
^ That's what the doors actually look like. Google is your friend.
“Aww.” Elsa reluctantly hops down from my back, though she clearly understands why she needs to get off now. We walk in quietly.
She should have gotten off when you approached the doors to jimmy them open. Also you broke the glass so walking in quietly isn't going to protect you.
Grand Central’s lighting is off, but I see a faint glow over the staircase. The trains might still be running, which lifts my spirits a little; faster transportation would be a godsend. If they aren't running, Grand Central will have backup generators in storage. I’ll check the schedules after we get the equipment.
The generators in Grand Central would have kicked in the moment the power failed and used whatever diesel they had on hand for as long as they needed it to power the rail lines. If it's been weeks the generators would be out of fuel. These would also not be generators you just "keep in storage" they'd be installed and ready to go at all times.
Also who would be running the trains according to a schedule after the apocalypse
“She put it under the big clock.”
Under the clock… like literally? That thing is huge and bolted to the floor.
I scan the room for any possible threat.
Victoria is a Cylon.
I see nothing, though it’s barely light in here because it isn’t fully morning yet.
http://i.dawn.com/2013/02/17.jpg
^ Grand Central Station in the morning. Note the giant windows and streaming curtains of light.
70 propagates the same at night
Uh… I can't tell if this is Engrish or not.
far down the tunnels, only come if you make a shitload of noise.
Like if you were to be dumb enough to try to run a train through them.
Be very quiet, and we’ll go get some food.
Let's go into the basement dining concourse to get some 2-month old food that's been sitting out without refrigeration.
“Can we find food?” Elsa whispers.
“That’s what we’re here for, isn’t it?” I reply. I lead her over to the far wall, where I remember a few coffee shops being last time I was in the city.
Jesus… there are literally full restaurants down there. Unfortunately they're going to be full of spoiled shit. You want to be looking for canned goods. Also the gangs in town would know this and would have tried to loot this place earlier
She gasps and looks over her shoulder. Bad idea. Christ, I’m not trained to be working around bixbies, and this is why.
bixbies.
because she’s sure to be extrapolating on the concept now.
Google translate again… "she's sure to be thinking about that now"
We walk toward it and I frown at the contents: muffins, scones, the works; all months, even years old. Some of them are rotting. We need stored food, probably in the kitchen in the back.
What did you expect? Seriously?
“What?” she mumbles through a mouthful of bread. “They were always like that.”
See this is where I seriously question Victoria's survival skills. You have a magical child with you and you didn't think to ask her to do something helpful? Like maybe turn the bloody lights on?
I chuckle slightly.
How do you chuckle slightly? You either chuckle or you don't.
I remember, a few years back, a friend of mine – a researcher – was telling me that kid reality benders can change their world a lot more easily than adults and teenagers simply because they’re clueless.
Kids are not clueless. This author is contemptuous of children or ignorant of how children actually are.
It was something about how the fact that even a normal child doesn’t understand concepts like, say, food going bad, means that their minds just automatically factor it out of the reality they perceive and create.
What kind of dumb kid has never heard of food going bad? This kid is nine! Surely she's encountered mold on bread? Smelly milk? Seen an apple turn brown?
The downside is, of course, that a child is more irrationally fearful and impulsive than an adult or teenager, so that factors in.
Stop using "factors out" and "factors in".
In the smaller section, there are 7.62 rounds, 5.56 rounds that I insist on carrying because I’m determined to find an AR-15 after we get out of these few states, a Kant counter that I’m sick of carrying because it’s dead, a Geiger counter that luckily has a ten-year battery but has had no use yet, and the assorted bobby pins, paperclips, pieces of wire, and other lightweight things I’m sure will have some use or other.
7 .62 rounds or 7.62 rounds? Put a damn space between the number of rounds and the size of the ammunition. Also another run-on sentence
A sudden epiphany hits me and I inhale sharply. My eyes widen and I stare blankly at the dark wall ahead of me. “Elsa…” I drawl.
“Yah…” She’s hopping around in circles on one foot behind me.
“How… many water bottles do we have left? Um… four, right? The normal-size ones?”
“I don’t know where you put them.”
I jerk my hand away as the backpack’s fabric sucks at my finger. “Ah… are they in… the main compartment, right? Help me remember.”
“Um… yeah! You put them there, I think.”
At this point I realize that the main character is suffering from artificially induced stupidity so that we can like, have this little moment.
“But… she’s…”
“She’s what, Elsa?” We’re almost back to the stairs.
“I don’t… I can’t figure…”
“What’s confusing, Elsa?” I try to keep my voice non-aggressive. I don’t like waiting for information.
“You don’t get it… it’s like two… things in the same place.”
I frown. “Things?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know. I saw her dead.”
“You’ve never met Mil.”
“Yes I have!” she yells, her voice shaking and desperate.
“Shh!” I look worriedly back into the dark for a few seconds.
“You don’t get it!”
I don't get it either. Who the fuck is Mil? Why do they matter? Are they Schrodinger's Cat? What is the point of this exchange?
“Can you read minds?” That’s the only way to phrase it.
She smiles. “I wish! You’re pretty weird on the outside, so there’s no telling what’s in your head!”
I try to hide my sigh of relief. “Oh, ah, okay. Good.”
The answer is "yes".
…message repeats. This is Turray, Eta-ten, attempting to contact Rocky, Eta-10. Our coordinates are fifty-nine point six-two-three-two-eight-five break minus sixty-BLANK point two-seven-six-five-two-five…
I tune out the rest of her message while I scribble down the coordinates. There’s something… wrong with them…
…”and we’re sorry that we couldn’t stay, but we had to get moving. Meet us there, Rocky. We aren’t there when we’re setting up this transmission, but we know for certain there’s a Site at those coordinates and we’ll be stable and safe for at least a year there. You better be able to make it in a year. I damn well hope so. This message repeats. This is Turray…”
Yeah. These coordinates don't have any units attached to them. No minutes North, South, East, or West. No degrees for lattitude and longitude.
That’s when it hits me. She’s making every number one digit higher than the coordinates actually are, which means that “blank” was nine, because ten would’ve been two digits. We used to use that coding system in the field several years ago. She’s probably doing it in case someone else might have been listening in on her transmission.
That's an awfully big assumption predicated on exactly nothing.
(account deleted) 04 Nov 2014 19:53
