Battery Park

Battery Park, a twenty-five-acre green space at the tip of Lower Manhattan, becomes the setting for a sharp reversal from civic calm to predation. Its gardens, monuments, sculptures, and harbor promenade make it a place for an ordinary evening out; after dark, its brush conceals five Sliggers, and the waterfront leads others toward the city’s sewers.

Setting and Evening Calm

The park is introduced through the return of Willie and Berta from a day spent at Snug Harbor. After taking the Staten Island Ferry back to Manhattan, they walk along the harbor to Battery Park and sit near the sandstone fort known as Castle Clinton. As daylight fades, the waterfront remains inviting: boats cross the Upper Bay, and the lights of Ellis Island, Liberty Island, and the New Jersey shoreline are visible beyond the couple.

Their conversation and affectionate teasing give the scene an unguarded, domestic ease. Berta thanks Willie for the day and suggests repeating it; he replies that work and bills stand in the way. The couple watches the boats and holds hands, while the park’s brush rustles behind them. The disturbance is too loud to seem like a squirrel or raccoon, but they do not see what caused it. Their joking guess that it might be a serial killer registers the danger only as a familiar human threat, not the creatures already hiding nearby.

The Attack in the Park

Once Willie and Berta leave, the rustling resumes. A dark, glistening figure pushes out of the greenery, followed by four more. The five spread across the lawn: three take the concrete walkway north along the Hudson River, while two search the park’s wooded areas. Moving quietly among dogwood, locust, and maple trees, the pair find a man asleep on a steel bench.

A sulfuric odor wakes him. Its apparent source is a cluster of maidenhair ferns beside the bench, but a long, slender appendage lashes out from the vegetation. The man, Jerry, initially thinks a snake has bitten him; when the appendage catches his ankle, it pulls him off his feet. One Sligger leaps from the brush and attacks him, holding, ripping, and biting him, while a second joins in. The park’s foliage, moments earlier part of a pleasant waterfront scene, has become cover for a coordinated ambush.

From Waterfront to Sewer

The attack is only one branch of the creatures’ movement through the area. About a hundred yards up the waterfront, the other group of three finds an opening into the city sewers and slips into the large concrete tunnel. They wade through high-tide water, brushing past eels carried in with the surge. The passages continue through a vast tunnel network into smaller brick channels, giving the creatures a concealed route onward from the waterfront.

Narrative Significance

Battery Park’s role depends on the contrast between its public, cultivated character and the hidden routes running through and beneath it. The setting is first defined by gardens, memorials, harbor views, and a couple’s peaceful evening; the same landscape then shelters a fatal attack and an unnoticed departure into the sewer system. The sequence turns a recognizable urban amenity into part of the infestation’s terrain: greenery offers concealment above ground, while tidal water and connected tunnels provide access below it.