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Battery Park. Jesus—that’s the southern tip of Manhattan—miles from the hospital! How the hell did they get everywhere so goddamn quickly? Then the broadcast cuts again—this time zombies milling around a deserted subway station. Your stomach turns as you realize that if just one infected person gets on a subway or on a bus or in a cab—shit,they could get anywhere. God, these things could be on a plane and off to Antigua or Timbuktu or who-knows-the-fuck-where.
    You’re having trouble breathing now. Chest tight.
    You catch your reflection in the mirror behind the bar. You look like you just caught a sucker punch from Mike Tyson. Everyone else wears a similar look—like maybe Mike Tyson ran around the bar real quick and sucker-punched everybody. Even the old vets, the seen-everything-and-drank-their-way-through-it-all guys—just stunned looks on their rough, withered faces. Staring at the mirror, you start to zone out—hypnotizing yourself almost. Anything to not have to look at that TV or hear the news or think about what’s happening outside or imagine the nightmares the future holds.
    Someone bumps into you and brushes you aside, snapping you out of your trance. A bony, thin guy, late twenties, in a slick suit with slicker hair. Wall Street, all the way. You wonder what he’s doing up here during work hours, everything financial is below Fifty-ninth—maybe his doorman caught him on his way out of his fancy, prewar apartment building, told him something was going down. Or maybe his coke dealer’s in the neighborhood and he’s chasing a Monday morning high.
    He pushes past you and edges up to the bar. Raises a wad of cash in the air. “Hey—honey!” he calls, waving the cash at the bartender.
    You notice the bartender for the first time. She’s a knockout. Petite—five feet at the most. Natural blond hair. Tiny Derek Jeter shirt hugs a pair of gotta-be-fake tits. She walks the length of the bar and eyes Wall Street, unimpressed. “Yeah?”
    He drops two crisp hundred-dollar bills onto the bar, flashes her a toothy smile, then announces loudly: “World’s ending. Drinks are on me, kiddies.”
    If you want to stay at the bar and take Wall Street up on his offer of free drinks, click here .
    If you’d rather forget the bar and try to figure out a way out of the city, click here .

LONG-ASS CAB RIDE
    You turn your back on the bar—if it’s good news, you’ll find out about it later. And if it’s bad, you don’t want to know.
    After a half hour, a cab slows to a stop at the corner of Eighty-fifth and Broadway and an older woman gets out. You hear her on her phone: “Of course I heard—I’m going upstairs right now and locking the door.”
    You run for the cab. Three others do the same. You get there first, though, and you don’t give in. Everyone argues. You tell the other three guys to take a hike and you get inside. “Brooklyn Bridge. And step on it,” you say, like you’ve turned into some badass. But there’s nowhere to go just yet, so the cab just sits there. And the three guys are right outside your window, glaring at you from the sidewalk. You flip open your phone and pretend to talk on it.
    You’ve got a friend in Brooklyn—it’s the best plan you can think of at the moment. You check your phone for his address and yell it out to the cabbie. He pulls out into a gap in the traffic—blabbing on his Bluetooth in a language that definitely wasn’t available for study in high school.
    â€œCan you put the radio on please?” you ask him.
    He doesn’t. Either doesn’t give a damn or can’t hear you over his stupid Bluetooth. You wonder if he has any idea what’s happening right now in the city.
    â€œHey! Radio!” you shout, annoyed.
    He shoots you a look through the rearview mirror, lets it linger for a second, then reaches down