Explosions of midday sunlight flashed through the metal framework of the Third Avenue Bridge as my yellow taxi rattled and rocked across the Madison Avenue Bridge upriver. Black spots appeared before my eyes, forcing me to squint, but I couldn’t look away from the mundane setting of the worst night of my life. How many tires had rolled right over all the bloodstains my family had left behind? Thousands? Hundreds of thousands? Millions? I’d lived in New York City my whole life, and I still couldn’t wrap my head around just how many humans we shared the Five Boroughs with.
We didn’t bother them. That had always been the first prong of the two-pronged Rule. We didn’t bother them, and we didn’t become them. For as long as any of us living could remember, we had kept to ourselves and our own s
