The Coming Storm

by Mark Alpert

  Once they were clear of the crowd, he headed for the Stryker parked in the middle of Bay Parkway. As they rushed toward it, Jenna stared at the machine gun on top of the personnel carrier and wondered why it wasn’t firing at the crowd too. The ramp at the back of the Stryker was down, and Derek dragged her inside the vehicle. Then he pushed a red button that raised the ramp and closed the rear hatchway.

  Jenna looked down at the vehicle’s floor and saw the bodies of two FSU officers, each with a bullet hole in his forehead. But instead of horrifying her, the sight of the corpses just left her numb. She’d already seen so much death tonight that she was beyond horror. She wasn’t even surprised. Derek had followed a perfectly logical strategy. He’d eliminated his enemies and seized their best weapon, the Stryker.

  He stepped over the bodies and sat down in the vehicle’s driver seat. The Stryker had a steering wheel like a truck’s, but the dashboard was like something out of a jet cockpit, with lots of dials and switches and a big navigation screen. Derek flipped one of the switches and the screen came to life, displaying a wide-angle view of Bay Parkway, probably transmitted from a video camera at the front of the vehicle. Then he looked over his shoulder at Jenna. “Why did you leave the truck? Were you trying to run away from me?”

  Before she could decide how to answer, a barrage of bullets clattered against the Stryker’s hull. Jenna jumped at the noise, but Derek calmly adjusted his screen to display the sentry tower where the gunfire was coming from. “Don’t worry. We got plenty of armor around us.” He flipped another switch below the screen, and the Stryker’s engine began to rumble. “That son of a bitch in the tower is in trouble now. We got our own fifty-caliber gun on top of this vehicle.”

  The Stryker jolted forward. Derek steered it toward the elevated tracks while Jenna looked over his shoulder at the navigation screen. There was a clear path down Bay Parkway. Most of the refugees who’d crowded the street just a minute ago now lay in the floodwaters. Jenna felt nauseous again as the Stryker jounced up and down, trundling over the dead, crushing their bodies.

  Derek stopped the vehicle a hundred feet from the train station, and another barrage from the machine gun battered the Stryker’s armor. On the screen, the gun looked satanic, spitting fire from the dark tower above the tracks. Derek grasped a joystick to the right of the steering wheel and manipulated it until a set of crosshairs appeared on the screen, centered on the tower. Then he pressed the button on top of the stick.

  The Stryker’s gun rattled above them. This time, Jenna didn’t jump at the noise. She stared at the screen and watched the bullets hit the sentry tower, sparks flying everywhere. And she felt an emotion that was new to her, a grim, deadly satisfaction. She cheered on the bullets, celebrating each impact. She couldn’t see the gunner in the tower, the murderous bastard who’d massacred the crowd, but she hoped the gunfire from the Stryker tore him apart. God help her, she wanted him dead.

  Then she saw him on the screen. The murderer’s gun fell silent, and a large ghostly figure fell from the tower. It was silhouetted against the night sky for a moment, and Jenna felt a bolt of terror. She remembered the stories her mother used to tell of Azrael, the Muslim angel of death, who flew above the city at night, collecting the souls of the dying. The figure hung above the horizon, huge and angry, even darker than the midnight sky behind him. Then it dropped out of sight, onto the elevated tracks.

  Derek kept firing the Stryker’s gun for another fifteen seconds, first pocking the sentry tower and then scoring the whole train station. Then he let go of the joystick and leapt out of the driver’s seat. “Get moving. You’re coming with me.” He leaned over one of the corpses on the floor and wrenched a semiautomatic pistol from the victim’s stiff hand. “We’re gonna make sure that all the assholes in that sentry tower are dead.”

  Jenna backed away from him. She didn’t want to go up there. She’d seen enough. “No, I’ll stay here. I promise I won’t go anywhere or try to—”

  He pointed the pistol at her. “You’re gonna follow right behind me, you hear? If you try to run away again, I’ll shoot off one of your fingers. Maybe two.” He stepped past her and pushed the red button that lowered the Stryker’s ramp. “Let’s go.”

  He aimed his gun at her left hand. This was another logical strategy. Whatever he wanted Jenna to do for him, she clearly didn’t need all her fingers to do it. If she resisted, he’d just mutilate her hand and bandage it up. Then he’d tell her again to get moving.

  So she followed him out of the Stryker. She was still watchful, still waiting for a chance to get away. But now she had even less hope than before.

  They raced toward the stairs that went up to the Bay Parkway station. Derek held his pistol high as he climbed the stairway, and Jenna struggled to keep up with him. As soon as they reached the station, he ran straight for the sentry tower and leapt up its steps, taking them three at a time. The tower’s upper half was a wreck, gutted by the Stryker’s machine gun, but Derek made it to the platform in seconds. Jenna followed more cautiously, clutching the splintered handrail until she reached the top of the stairs.

  There were three bodies on the platform, two men in FSU uniforms and a third man in civilian clothes. But Derek barely glanced at them. Instead, he leaned over the edge of the tower and peered down at the tracks below. Jenna assumed he was staring at the gunner who fell off the platform, but when she looked herself she didn’t see a body on the tracks. The elevated line stretched into the darkness, rain-slicked and empty.

  Derek shook his head. “Shit. Look at this. I don’t fucking believe it.”

  His voice was different now—halting, uncertain. For the first time, he didn’t sound like a bullying asshole. Normally, this change in tone would’ve been a welcome improvement, but Jenna wasn’t happy about it. Derek sounded worried, seriously anxious about something. And if something could worry him, it had to be pretty damn bad.

  She pointed at the tracks. “It looks like he got lucky. Probably landed on his feet and ran off.”

  Derek kept shaking his head. “Impossible. He fell at least twenty feet. He would’ve broken an ankle at the very least.”

  “Well, maybe he crawled away then. But—”

  “No, he left the scene too fast. The son of a bitch must be in Palindrome. He’s a test subject. Like me.”

  Jenna’s stomach churned. She was a geneticist, so the word “palindrome” had a special meaning for her. It referred to a DNA sequence with a distinctive kind of symmetry. And those sequences formed the heart of a molecular tool that scientists had invented ten years ago, a tool that had revolutionized the study of genetics. But like any other tool, it could be turned into a weapon.

  She stared at Derek and noticed that the symptoms of his sickness had worsened. Tears of blood leaked from his eyes, and the wound on his neck was throbbing. Jenna wanted to turn away, but she forced herself to look at him. “How many test subjects are there? Do you know?”

  Before he could answer, she heard a groan from the other side of the platform. Derek spun around and pointed his gun at the bodies on the floor. The FSU officers were clearly dead—one of them had a bloody hole in his throat, and the other had a shattered skull—but the civilian rolled his head and opened his mouth. His face was pale and battered, and he seemed to be only semiconscious. After a second, though, he opened his eyes halfway and tried to raise his arm. He held something black and shiny in his left hand.

  Derek lunged toward him, aiming his gun at the guy’s head. “Drop it! Right now!”

  The civilian groaned again and dropped the shiny, black object. “Take it … please.” He winced. Talking was clearly painful for him. “I want you … to take it.”

  Jenna stepped forward and picked it up from the floor. It was an iPhone. She examined it, confused. Why did he want them to take his phone? To call an ambulance? Maybe he didn’t know there was no cell phone service in South Brooklyn anymore.

  Meanwhile, Derek bent over and stuck his pistol right in front
of the civilian’s broken nose. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

  The guy clenched his jaw. It looked like he was in agony. “My name … is Keating. I’m with … The New York Times.”

  Jenna knelt beside him. Now it was starting to make sense. The FSU officers hated the city’s newspapers. They also hated the TV news shows and the radio stations and anyone else who tried to tell the world what the federal agents were doing. She’d seen the agents arrest and beat up reporters when they tried to visit the district, and she guessed that’s what happened to this guy from the Times. Except in his case, the beating got out of hand.

  She leaned closer, examining his injuries. “The FSU did this to you?”

  Keating nodded weakly. “The big one grabbed … my other phone … and smashed it. But I always … carry an extra in my pocket.” He raised his left hand again and pointed a trembling finger at the iPhone. “I shot video … of what just happened. The shooting. The massacre. You have to … you have to give…”

  He closed his eyes and writhed in pain. Jenna looked over her shoulder at Derek. “We need to get him to a hospital. Can you carry him?”

  Derek shook his head. He was still pointing his gun at Keating’s head. “He won’t make it. He’s lost too much blood.”

  “So you’re not even gonna try?”

  “There’s no point. It would be kinder to put him out of his misery.”

  “What? Are you nuts?”

  Keating screamed. His back arched and his body convulsed. At the same time, he reached for Jenna with his left hand and grasped her wrist. “Give the phone … to Tamara. That’s … the safest way. Her address … her address is…” He faltered and let go of her. He seemed to be losing whatever consciousness he had left.

  Jenna wondered if she could carry Keating by herself. He wasn’t all that big. She shoved the iPhone into her pocket and was about to slip her arms under him when she heard a distant rumbling. Her throat tightened and her stomach twisted. She’d never heard this horrible noise before tonight, but over the past two hours it had become all too familiar.

  She rose to her feet and looked to the east. Three more Strykers sped down Bay Parkway, their searchlights silvering the flooded street. They were about half a mile away from the checkpoint and closing in fast.

  Derek stepped between her and Keating. Pointing his gun at her head, he pushed her toward the steps leading down from the sentry tower. “Time’s up. We need to go.”

  Jenna pushed back. Derek was at least twice her weight, but she held her ground. “No, I’m not going without him! Go ahead, shoot off my fingers!”

  Keating lifted his head a few inches off the floor and gazed at them foggily. “It’s 168 … Prospect Park West … just give her … give it to…”

  Derek frowned. He narrowed his bloody eyes and pressed his blistered lips together, as if steeling himself for something awful. Then he lifted his right foot and slammed it down on Keating’s head.

  Jenna didn’t look. The sound she heard was sickening enough. She was going to faint.

  Derek wrapped one arm around her waist and the other under her knees. Then he carried her down the steps.

  SEVEN

  Lieutenant Frazier knelt in the floodwaters, holding the boy’s mangled body. The kid had been trampled, his face bludgeoned almost beyond recognition. But Frazier recognized him. It was the moonfaced African boy, the one he’d tried to save.

  It happened right after the truck broke through the fence. The ragheads scattered out of the tractor trailer’s path, and Frazier spotted the boy wading across the street, turning his head right and left. He was only ten feet from the section of chain-link fence that the truck had knocked down. The kid was so close to the breach that, if he’d wanted to, he could’ve been the first person to escape the South Brooklyn District. But he didn’t run. He just stood there, facing the crowd that was stampeding toward the gap in the fence. As they rushed toward him, he kept turning his head, searching all their faces. He was looking for his mother.

  Frazier had shouted, “WATCH OUT!” from the sentry tower, but there was no time to do anything else. Within seconds, the shitheads at the front of crowd knocked the boy over, and the ones farther back scrambled over his body, stomping his chest and stomach and head. The mob was so thick that Frazier lost sight of the kid. But he spotted the boy’s mother in the crowd, running blindly with the rest of them, trampling her own son.

  After that, Frazier went berserk. His mind tilted and joggled, swinging back and forth on an invisible pivot. On the conscious level, he saw what was happening on the street below. He saw the giant ringleader of the scumbags jump out of the tractor trailer and attack the FSU team at the checkpoint, and he saw the Khan bitch come out of the truck too. But on a deeper level, he lay beneath the floodwaters with the boy, pressed to the asphalt by the mob’s pounding feet, his body jerking and twisting with each blow. Some of the ragheads must’ve seen the kid struggling under the water, but no one stopped to help him, no one even considered it. Because they don’t give a shit about anyone but themselves. Because they’re fucking animals who don’t deserve to live.

  So Frazier got behind the machine gun and started firing on the crowd. He wanted to kill all of them.

  But he made a mistake. His mind was jittering so wildly that he didn’t recognize the scumbags’ ringleader at first. It was obvious that the guy had superhuman abilities—how else could he have taken down the eight FSU officers at the checkpoint?—but Frazier was crazed and furious and not thinking rationally. He didn’t make the connection until the fucker grabbed the Khan girl and pulled her into the Stryker. And by then it was too late. The traitorous bastard had outgunned and outsmarted him. All Frazier could do at that point was run away. He jumped off the sentry tower and landed on the tracks and got the hell out of there.

  After a few minutes, though, his brain returned to normal. He stopped running and turned around and headed back to Bay Parkway. By the time he got there, another Stryker convoy was on the scene to repair the fence and recover the bodies of the fallen officers and start searching for the guy who’d killed them. But that fucker was long gone. He was a clever son of a bitch even before he took the Palindrome drugs, and now he was ten times smarter. They wouldn’t find him unless he wanted to be found.

  So Frazier searched for the boy instead and found his body floating in the muck alongside all the others. He cradled the limp, waterlogged corpse and stared at the swollen, mutilated face. He was thinking clearly now, and he knew the kid wasn’t Andy. But it didn’t matter. Frazier was full of the same rage he’d felt all those years ago. He’d taken his revenge on the fuckers who’d hurt his little brother, and now he was going to do the same to the inhuman bastard who’d turned against him. Frazier had known the man for a long time, had even respected and revered him, but now he was going to track down the motherfucker and kill him.

  First, though, he had to talk to Colonel Grant. He let go of the kid’s body, letting it slip back into the floodwaters. Then he pulled the secure phone out of his uniform and punched in Grant’s number. The colonel picked up the call, and Frazier gave him the news.

  “He’s still alive, sir. I just saw him.”

  “What? Who are you talking about?”

  “My old commander. From the Rangers’ Third Battalion. Captain Derek Powell.”

  EIGHT

  Colonel Grant was in an interrogation room on Rikers Island, waiting for the prisoners to be brought in. He sat in a metal chair that was bolted to the floor, next to a metal table that was also immovable. He smoked a cigarette while he waited, an activity that was absolutely forbidden for every other FSU officer. But he made an exception for himself. It was one of the perks of being the boss.

  It was late morning, almost noon, but there were no windows in this part of the prison. Rikers Island was a sprawling complex of buildings, situated in the middle of the East River between the boroughs of Queens and the Bronx. The island had formerly been the site of New York Cit
y’s jail complex, but the city closed it down in 2021 because of its long history of brutality. The next year, the Federal Service Unit took over the facility to support its antiterrorism operations. Grant thought it was a very appropriate place for his headquarters.

  He finished his cigarette and immediately lit up another. He had a good excuse for bingeing—the past twelve hours had been hellacious. While Superstorm Zelda thrashed New York, the thugs and illegals had busted out of the city’s Federal Service Districts. They broke through the fence at two places in the South Brooklyn District and at three checkpoints in the Bronx. Thousands of illegals scattered across the city, hiding wherever they could, probably welcomed by all the shit-for-brains Democrats who wanted to turn America into a Third World hellhole. The FSU asked the New York Police Department to help round up the scumbags, but the mayor refused. He said the NYPD wouldn’t arrest anyone who hadn’t committed a crime.

  That, in Grant’s opinion, was total bullshit. The mayor was an idiot, the king of all the shit-for-brains. The illegals who’d escaped were going to join forces with the Islamic extremists who were already planning attacks all over the city. There were going to be more bombings in Times Square and Central Park and Grand Central Station. But the mayor didn’t give a fuck. He was the best friend the terrorists ever had.

  Zelda finally let up at dawn, but by then half the city was without electricity and large parts of Lower Manhattan were underwater. Although Rikers didn’t suffer much damage—the Feds had built a seawall around the island when they took over the complex—the storm had disrupted Grant’s plans for Palindrome. He needed a shitload of laboratory supplies to prepare for Phase Three, and all the flooding and road closures had fucked up the delivery schedule. There were shortages of cell-culture dishes, centrifuges, aerosol sprayers, and vaccine doses. Grant was starting to doubt that he could get everything ready for deployment in just forty-eight hours. But that’s what he’d promised Keller, and the K-Man had no tolerance for failure.