The menthol smell was strong. People looked strange wearing face masks, like a convention of surgeons had accidentally assembled in front of the ballpark. Alex thought of when Mami had shown them a face mask and told them she'd be expected to wear one as an operating room technician. If she hadn't been ambitious to improve her family's lot, she wouldn't have gotten the training and the hospital in Queens wouldn't have called for her to come in because of an emergency and she wouldn't have taken the 7 train to Queens and Alex wouldn't be standing in front of Yankee Stadium with menthol-scented gel rubbed beneath his nose.

"Remember to stay in line at all times," a voice over a bullhorn called out. "If you see someone in need of physical assistance, inform the next available officer. Do not leave the line. Leaving the line will result in your ejection. Keep walking. Only leave the line if you can identify the body of the person you're looking for. Look at the person ahead of you in line and the person behind you. Don't ever stray from those people."

Alex did as he was told and looked at the man ahead of him and the woman behind him. The woman behind him wore sunglasses. The man ahead of him was balding.

The door opened. "Stay in line! Stay in line!" the officer shouted. Everyone shuffled forward, staying in line. They walked through the entrance, down the corridor, and finally down the flights of stairs that led to the playing field.

The noise was what attacked him first, a cacophony of screams and sobs. He could make out some cursing, some praying, but mostly the noise was just the sound of agony.

Then came the smells, unlike anything he'd ever known, a sickening combination of vomit, body odor, and rotting meat. The menthol covered, the stench slightly, but still he gagged, and he was relieved that he hadn't eaten all morning. He could taste the smell as he inhaled the scent of decomposing flesh.

It was a scene unlike any Alex could have imagined. If he looked up, it was Yankee Stadium, filled with empty seats. But if he looked at eye level, it was hell.

Alex made the sign of the cross and prayed for strength. All around the playing field were corpses, lying head to toe in neat rows with just space enough for one person to walk between. How many bodies were there? Hundreds? Thousands?

Some of the bodies had clothes on; others were nude. The naked ones were covered with sheets. All their arms were out, their hands prominently displayed, their rings gleaming in the sunlight. Their faces were swollen, many to the point of being unrecognizable. They were covered with flies, millions of flies, their buzzing providing a white-noise background to the screams and the wails. His hell was a fly's heaven, Alex thought.

"Stay in line! Stay in line! Leaving the line will result in your ejection!"

Alex longed to be ejected, to be bodily lifted from Yankee Stadium, from the Bronx, from New York, from Earth itself, to be slingshotted into the soothing void of space. He focused instead on looking for the Police Identification Booths. There were dozens of them, with police officers and medical personnel stationed there. He saw priests, also, and people he assumed were ministers and rabbis and Muslim clergy.

Staying firmly in line, Alex began the death stroll. Most of the bodies couldn't possibly be Mami. They were black or white or Asian. They were too young or too old, too fat or too thin. Their hair was gray or white or blonde, too short or too long. One woman, hardly more than a girl, had green and purple hair. One was chemotherapy bald. Another was pregnant. Their eyes were usually open, and they stared up at the moon that had killed them.

Sometimes the line stopped short, when someone ahead of them needed to check a face, a body, a piece of jewelry. A scream would pierce the air as a loved one was found. A woman several people behind Alex cried, "Holy Mother of God!" and he assumed she'd found who she'd come to look for, but she stayed in line until they made the next turn, when she went off to the nearest Police Identification Booth.

Alex felt a sharp sting he was stunned to identify as envy. He hated himself for feeling that way. No matter what, it would be better not to find Mami there. As long as she was only gone, there was a chance their prayers for her return would be answered. But if she were lying there…

"Stay in line! Stay in line!"

Twice Alex saw women he thought might be his mother. Something about the shape of their faces, the tone of their skin, stopped him short. But one woman had a diamond engagement ring, and the other wore a Jewish star pendant. When he looked more carefully at them, he realized they looked nothing like Mami, not really. Mami would laugh if she knew Alex had mistaken a woman with a Jewish star for her. He tried to remember the sound of her laughter, but it was impossible. He told himself he'd hear her laughing again, that it was all right not to be able to remember what the sound of her laughter was like just then.

By the time he'd finished the march around Yankee Stadium, two other people from his bus had left the line to go to the Police Identification Booths. The rest walked out in the same order they'd come in. They tossed their sickness bags and face masks into the appropriately labeled bins.

No one spoke as they showed their tickets and boarded bus 22. Eventually the bus pulled out. One woman had left her Bible on her seat, and she picked it up and began reading it, her lips moving silently. A dozen or more people wept. A man mumbled something Alex assumed was Hebrew. One woman laughed hysterically. The woman sitting next to Alex pulled tissue after tissue out of its packet, tearing each one methodically to shreds.

God save their souls, Alex prayed. God save ours. It was the only prayer he could think of, no matter how inadequate it might be. It offered him no comfort, but he repeated it unceasingly. As long as he prayed he didn't have to think. He didn't have to remember. He didn't have to decide. He didn't have to acknowledge he was entering a world where no one had laid out the rules for him to follow, a world where there might not be any rules left for any of them to follow.

Friday, May 27

Danny O'Brien dropped a crumpled piece of paper in the first-floor hallway, as the boys began leaving Vincent de Paul for the day.

"Pick it up," Alex said. "You heard what Father Mulrooney said."

"You pick it up," Danny said. "I pay tuition to go here." He began to walk off when Chris Flynn came up to them.

"You heard him," Chris said to Danny. "Pick it up. And then apologize."

"It's all right," Alex said, bending down to pick up the paper. "I should have done this in the first place." It enraged him to think of Chris fighting his battles for him.

"I'm sorry," Danny said. "I really am, Morales. Blame it on the moon. It's making me crazy."

"Forget it," Alex said. He tossed the paper into the nearest wastepaper basket and headed out. He didn't have time to waste with people like Danny O'Brien.

But the incident continued to bother him that afternoon as he walked to St. Margaret's, and he couldn't get it out of his mind as he waited in the office for a chance to talk to Father Franco. He and Danny were friendly. They were on the debate squad together. He'd even been to Danny's home when they'd worked on a history project together.

It had to be the moon, Alex thought. It really was driving everyone crazy.

After an hour's wait, he was allowed in to see Father Franco. The priest looked exhausted, far worse than he had just the week before.

"I was wondering if you'd heard anything more about Puerto Rico," Alex asked.

"Not much," Father Franco replied. "Conditions are very, very bad. No one's heard anything about the fishing village your father was in, but from what little I've been able to find out, all the villages and small towns on the northern coast were decimated. I'm sorry. I know you want more specific details, but information is very sketchy. I'll continue to ask. The archdiocese is used to my questions by now."