“Starting on July 26, the G won’t run between Brooklyn and Queens for five weeks.”
—WNYC, April 4th
“Get ready to hoof it, Greenpoint. The MTA is cutting G train service for five weeks this summer.”
—New York Observer, April 7th
“The G train—the neighborhood’s main commuter lifeline—shuts down late July 25 for five weeks.”
—New York Daily News, July 17th
It goes by many names, but World War G, as it’s most commonly known, occurred in the summer of 2014 in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Greenpoint.
Famous both for its Polish food and for being the setting of HBO’s “Girls,” Greenpoint had been a popular destination for New Yorkers and tourists alike. By that summer, though, residents and businesses were bracing for a temporary partial shutdown of the area’s only subway line, the G. For five of the hottest weeks of the year, the Metropolitan Transit Authority would sever the connection between Brooklyn and Queens, between Greenpoint and the outside world—in order to repair "tube damage" from Hurricane Sandy.
What happened next is now all too well-known: the shutdown bred confusion, then panic and, finally, the first known zombie outbreak in history. Less well known, however, is the human dimension, the stories of the people who suffered through but survived the tragic event. It is these people who will be the subject of my account.
**
Peter Pan Donut & Pastry Shop (Manhattan Avenue)**
The outbreak is believed to have begun in one of the many new condominiums dotting the Greenpoint skyline. Greg Zola was superintendent of the building that many epidemiologists identified as being the home of Patient Zero. We shared breakfast one morning as he told me how the plague began.
"I get this call from one of the tenants up on eight. Something about a neighbor foaming at the mouth. Rabid, she says. So I go up there and immediately find people in the hallway, gathered around this guy but keeping their distance.
"What was he like?" I asked.
"Screaming about the G train. About how it never runs right, and now it never would, and what was he paying thirty-two hundred a month for? Honestly, he was scaring a lot of people the way he was talking, particularly the brokers. But some of the other tenants . . . I mean, it spread. Quickly. Soon a lot of them were acting the same way. You know, yelling about 'Why am I paying thousands every month for a view of a taxi stand?' Or 'Why are all these places built like airport hotels?' But yeah, that’s the first I saw of it."
**
Five Leaves (Bedford Avenue)**
Amanda Sullivan waits tables at the restaurant that the actor Heath Ledger helped open. She smoked a cigarette outside as we talked about the beginning days of the plague.
"We considered boarding up the place once it hit, but all these people kept showing up for brunch. It was amazing. Everyone knew about the outbreak by then, but they were willing to wait one, two, three hours for a two-top. Anything, really, to not sit at the bar. I mean, people were in line literally getting eaten and still asking how long the wait would be to sit outside.”
**
Wolves Within (Franklin Street)**
Schemes to make a quick buck off the plague were rife at the beginning. I met Natasha, a saleswoman who survived in the clothing store where she still works.
"These two young guys come racing up to our door, banging as hard as they can, asking if they can come in. The owner and I just assume one of those things is chasing them, so we unlock the door and let them in. They immediately say, 'Hello, how are you? How do you do?' ” Too measured and polite, I thought, considering the circumstances. That’s when we notice these large bags they’re both carrying.
"The guys open one of them up and proceed to pull out these T-shirts—red, green, yellow—done up in this drive-in-movie-theatre style, with pictures on them of churches, the waterfront, and a zombified Hannah Horvath. And at the top, on the marquee, where it shows the title for the main feature, they all say 'Z-POINT.' We weren’t exactly sure what was happening at first, until they said that they were selling them for forty bucks a pop, with a suggested retail price of eighty, and did we want to buy? My boss and I just stood there for a second, stunned, until finally she said, 'Uh, no.' They thanked us and left.
"I figured they were zombie food for sure, until months later, when I saw a picture of Drew Barrymore walking the streets of SoHo wearing one of their shirts."
**
East River Ferry, Greenpoint Terminal (India Street)**
Joe Ellison is a ferry captain who witnessed the panic at its height, when residents tried to flee en masse.
"I remember these young girls who hopped aboard once, about a week into this mess. I don’t know, probably early twenties. Flustered. Told me they'd tried to hold out but just couldn’t take it anymore, needed to get away. Said they didn’t care which way we were going as long as we were moving. 'Ferry’s headed north, I told them. 'We just got the two stops left.' I suggested that they get off at the next one, Long Island City, in Queens. But they didn’t like that. I think they saw all those new condos, you know. Reminded ’em of what they’d just left behind. I said, 'Trust me. There’s still safe places there.' I didn’t really care if they listened to me. I had other things to do.
"It wasn’t until we were docked at the last stop, Thirty-fourth Street, in Manhattan, that I saw them walking down the gangway all excited. Talking about how good it was to finally be in a place where they didn’t have to worry about some thing creeping up on them, pulling and tearing and trying to get a piece of them. Poor bastards. They had walked right into Murray Hill, the frattiest part of New York City, on a weekend night. 'Godspeed!' I yelled after them. I don’t think they heard me."
**
Warsaw (Driggs Avenue)**
I met outside the concert venue with Marshall Redeker, a band promoter and the creator of Plan Green, which helped save portions of the population during the plague but remains enormously controversial.
"I know what everyone thinks. To hell with ’em. Someone had to bring this nightmare to a close. So many died, though. And so many lived. We figured we couldn’t save everyone, regardless. So we set up this trap of a free concert, to draw enough people as bait that the zombies would follow. That way, everyone else had a chance to escape."
"But . . . Arcade Fire?" I said.
"We had to attract concert-goers somehow. And telling people there was a surprise Arcade Fire show was our best bet."
"But you actually got Arcade Fire to play. They’re all dead now."
"That was their idea. I mean, love ’em or hate ’em, you have to admit that they really go all in on the live stuff."
**
WORD (Franklin Street)**
Tracy Lovell manages this neighborhood bookstore. She says that she sees both the bad and the good in the aftermath of what happened.
"We lost a lot of good people in that war. A lot. Our book clubs were decimated. Still, I like to think of the silver linings too. It forced so many people who didn’t like one another to finally work together to survive. I mean, before the war, who would ever have imagined bicyclists helping pedestrians, or pedestrians embracing bicyclists? But supplies needed to be run. Bike lanes had to be approved at community-board meetings. And so it happened. It took a zombie war, but it finally happened."
**
Black Rabbit (Greenpoint Avenue)**
Half a block from the closed Greenpoint G stop, I met Dennis (who asked that his last name not be given). An actor and bartender, Dennis had a great many things to say about the G, about the plague that followed, and about the rebuilding. One remark in particular stuck with me.
"I realize a lot of you young people grew up in some pretty privileged circumstances. So let me show you something you may never have seen before. Maybe you can tell everybody else about it. It’s called a bus schedule.”
