by Mark Tufo
“My man, get your ass up. This isn’t funny, what the hell is the matter with you?”
As the smaller man stood over him, Blake’s eyes began to cloud over. He swallowed hard and fought to stay coherent. The ringing in his ears was now loud enough that all outside sound was nearly muted.
As he continued to drift toward unconsciousness, Blake slowly rolled onto his back and placed his hands at his side. He figured that any movement was progress and would keep his mind in the moment. And again he attempted communication as the man standing above him looked away.
“Dwight…please… I can’t.”
The smaller man looked past Blake and was again shouting, although his words came through as a whisper. “I don’t know; he just dropped.”
There were other voices too. They were coming from somewhere else. Blake recognized the tone, but the words wouldn’t come.
And now Jesse stepped around Blake, his hands in the air and his mouth moving more quickly than before. “No I didn’t do anything to him. He just dropped to the ground and started talking nonsense. I don’t know what the hell’s the matter with this guy, maybe he’s sick?”
Again Blake pushed his hands into the cool wood flooring and attempted to sit. He was caught from behind as a pair of extra-large hands reached under his arms and began dragging him toward the interior cabin.
“You’re not leaving us again.”
Dwight’s voice was a welcome distraction as Blake attempted to extricate himself from the grips of his downward spiral. He was pulled backward and placed in a chair as Dwight patted him on the back and moved in around him. Having his friend there gave him a familiar base from which to try to focus on the world around him. And as he stared back at the five men now gathered in front of him, his head began to steady.
The large man he remembered as Victor walked to within a few feet, bent at the waist, and stared into his eyes. He shook his head and then looked back at the other men.
“Can you get him up?”
Brian was standing with his son, alongside Dwight. “You can’t do this, we helped you.”
The smaller man stood a few feet away, again at the edge of the deck, now holding tight to Brian’s shotgun. “Yes we can.”
Dwight finally stepped forward. “We can work this out, there’s plenty of room here for all of us.”
“No there’s not,” Victor said. “Get you friend up, and get the hell off my boat.”
— 11 —
The sky opened up and light rain began to push the blackened ash back to earth as Blake and his friends were led to the lower deck with guns at their backs. Twenty feet from where East 42nd Street dead-ended into FDR Drive, the luxury yacht sat on the eerily quiet water not quite three miles from the Manhattan Bridge.
Brian was the first to reach the lower deck and holding Jordan’s hand, he attempted to restart the conversation. “We can work this out; there’s no reason why we can’t.”
Victor placed his weapon against Blake’s back and forced him out into the center of the deck. He motioned for Dwight to follow him and then pointed out over the darkened night. “Listen, you had the chance to offer help when we first came to you, but instead you told us there wasn’t anything you could do. And now that the shoe’s on the other foot, you really have the nerve to ask for the same thing you denied my friend and I?”
Brian looked around at the others and then back over his shoulder at the devastated city. “You know there’s nothing out there for us. You’d be essentially sending us out there to die. You don’t want that, I guarantee—”
“Yeah, I get it. It’s gonna be rough out there. Those things are definitely not something I’d want to run into, and that’s why I’m going to give you a thirty second head start. Hell, you don’t even have to go into the city. You can follow us or you can head back in the other direction, but either way, you’ll be getting off here.”
Victor looked over his left shoulder and pointed at a grouping of three forgotten boats that had gathered at the center of the East River, not more than fifty yards away. “You can take one of those, well that is if you guys are good swimmers.” He pointed to Blake. “And if Mr. Concussion here can keep it together.”
The smaller man moved to the edge of the aft deck and waited. He looked toward Brian and his son, then over to Blake and Dwight, motioning toward the water below. “Let’s go guys, it’s gonna be really cold, but at least he didn’t shoot you and then throw you in. You should be thanking—”
Jesse’s words fell off as he noticed what the others had only seconds before. It sounded as though every truck in the New York City Department of Sanitation was headed for their exact location. The thunderous roar shook the railing at the outer edge of FDR Drive and rippled the water near the edge of the river.
Blake furrowed his brow and as the pain in the back of his head surged, he looked toward 42nd Street. Placing his right hand over his eyes, he tried to focus on where the sound was coming from. He landed on a spot between the UN Headquarters and the park directly across the street.
His vision was still only seventy percent at best, and through the soft rain and the falling ash, nothing in the distance was clear enough to offer a clue. The moonlight danced off the windows of the UN Building in intermittent bursts that offered a strobe effect, as whatever it was moved closer.
“Oh my God!”
Jesse leaned over the edge of the deck and was the first to realize what the others were about to find out. His hands shook and as he stepped back he turned to Victor. The men stared at one another, unable to put to words the unimaginable scene playing out less than a hundred yards away.
Their translucent skin—peppered with damp flakes of black ash—glinted the silvery moon as they galloped along 42nd Street toward the turn at FDR. Those leading the pack—that numbered in the hundreds—made quick work of the short retaining wall and charged across a short greenbelt.
Victor raised his pistol, pointed at the former biology teacher, and motioned toward the water. “Go.” He stepped backward quickly, moving to the stairs, and fired off a single round that nearly clipped Brian’s right ear. “I won’t ask you again.”
He wouldn’t have to. It was already too late. The first few Variants had leapt the railing at the end of 42nd and were moving at a speed which seemed improbable, given the awkward jerking gait with which they moved from one stalled vehicle to the next.
Blake took a deep breath and shifting his weight onto his right leg, pushed Dwight toward Brian and his son. In the same motion he moved left and reached out for the collar of Jesse’s jacket as the smaller man tried to follow his friend up the rear stairs.
He missed Jesse’s collar, but as he followed through he was able to swipe at the smaller man’s feet and upend him halfway up the staircase. To Dwight, Blake said, “Get them to the wheelhouse.”
As Victor reached the second level and Dwight, Brian and Jordan climbed the stairs on the port side, and Blake pulled Jesse back to the lower deck. The much smaller man got free, kicked Blake in the right side of his head, and both men tumbled to the hard wood decking.
The younger man was thin, but quick. He got to his feet first and scrambled back to the edge of the stairs, retrieving his nine millimeter. He smiled at Blake and shook his head. “I told Victor one of you would end up doing something stupid. He figured it would be that idiot with the kid, but I told him it would be you. And by the way, I still hate football.”
Jesse raised his weapon, but paused as Blake gripped the side of his head and waited for the inevitable. The smaller man looked to the deck above just as the luxury yacht listed right. He began to speak, but stopped as the clicking and popping filled the air around them.
Craning his neck back and to the right, Blake watched as dozens of Variants leapt the four-foot barrier and splashed down into the frigid water of the East River. Most tumbled over one another, their dirty translucent skin glowing as they struggled to maintain buoyancy.
One by one, they slowly dipp
ed beneath the surface of the blacked out water and faded into obscurity as others piled in from above. These monsters were of little concern to Blake or any of the others as it didn’t appear they could swim. Not one had surfaced since careening into the water less than ten feet from where they stood.
Their concern, and specifically the small man standing five feet from Blake, were the few more agile Variants that were able to make the jump from the roadway to the one-hundred-fifty-foot super yacht. There weren’t many; however, the first one that did now sat perched ten feet above the lower deck, its yellow slits focused on Jesse as it slurped a thin line of blood from its sucker lips.
Jesse momentarily forgot about Blake and quickly moved the pistol to the deck above. The beast hunched on its rear legs, growled at its much smaller adversary. It beat its chest and raised its right arm, extending a hooked claw in the smaller man’s direction.
As Blake pushed back into the shadows afforded by the starboard side stairs, Jesse squeezed off three quick shots.
— 12 —
The beast seemed to float in the air and time stood still as it moved toward the three rounds fired from Jesse’s nine millimeter. The first two went wide to the left. And the third tore away a two-inch chunk of the Variant’s right shoulder, exposing a dense layer of pearlescent muscle fiber, interlaced with a network of deep blue veins.
As it crashed down on top of the small man, it rose onto its hind legs, pinning him to the deck, and cut its angular chin toward the moon. It howled with the unrestrained anticipation of an animal about to feed for the first time in days. And as it dripped blood from its round swollen lips, Jesse begged for mercy.
“PLEEEEEASE!”
The Variant peered back at its much smaller adversary, as if attempting to understand, or maybe it was simply savoring the moment. Either way, as it began to lower itself, the hook-like claws extending from its back feet dug into Jesse’s upper arms, spilling blood out onto the light colored wood flooring.
“KILL ME… JUST KILL ME ALREADY!”
The Variant snorted and locked eyes with Jesse. It watched as a thin trail of blood escaped its victim’s body, sniffing at the air in short bursts. And again leaning forward, it quickly looked from right to left and then drove its meaty right hand into the smaller man’s chest, its hooked claw eviscerating skin and bone alike.
Blake could only watch as Jesse slipped from this world into the next. The monster perched over him quickly began tearing away pieces of wet sticky flesh, consuming the scraps one handful at a time. It lowered its head and forced its popping sucker lips onto the dead man’s subclavian artery, slurping the warm blood that appeared black under the night’s sky.
Blake gripped the back of his head, and from the shadows, prayed that his body would cooperate at least for the next few minutes. He slid slowly up the wall at his back as another terrified voice rang out from somewhere above. It wasn’t Dwight and it was too throaty to be the boy, but he couldn’t be sure it was Brian.
As the beast ten feet away continued to feed, Blake got to his feet and started for the stairs. Turning, and taking the first three steps, the Variant hunched over Jesse cocked its head. It didn’t look in his direction. Instead it turned its wet nose toward the sky, closed its yellowed eyes and just listened.
Blake stared at the creature, his heart pummeling the inside of his chest and the pressure building rapidly at the base of his skull. He raised his right foot to take another step as an anguished cry for mercy came from above, quickly followed by a thunderous explosion.
Another two steps and the deck above came into focus. His best friend stood six feet from the door to the interior cabin, shoulder to shoulder with Brian. The young boy—tears flooding down both cheek—stood behind them trembling as he cut his eyes from one side to the other.
One the opposite side of the deck, two large Variants fought one another for the rights to the man with the jet black hair. Victor was still gripping his pistol as he was being lunged at from both sides. However, he was unable to get his arm up in time and fired two quick shots from his hip. Both went wide right, and without finding a target, raced off into the night sky.
Blake quickly turned and looked over his right shoulder toward the city. He could see that they had drifted far enough away from the river’s edge that they no longer had to be concerned with taking on any new passengers. Those piling in from behind the railing at the end of 42nd Street came to an abrupt stop, although a few continued to follow their fellow Variants into the East River.
With the beast on the lower deck continuing to focus on Jesse’s lifeless corpse, and the two much larger Variants having cornered Victor near the overturned table on the port side, Blake’s mouth went dry. His hands shook and the pain at the base of his neck returned with a vengeance. He had maybe another thirty seconds, maybe less, probably less.
The nausea also came flooding back. He dropped to his knees and braced himself against the stair above as he began to dry heave. Looking up between the excruciating waves of pain torching his midsection, Blake locked eyes with Dwight.
His friend quietly began guiding Brian and Jordan toward the darkened doors of the interior as the two massive Variants finally descended on a cowering Victor. The pair pushed the screaming man’s body into the corner and began the process of pulling him apart.
Victor’s incessant wailing lasted less than ten seconds as the Variant on his left ripped into his neck and pulled away his throat, from chin to clavicle. Blood splatter rained down over the deck, as well as large chunks of tattered flesh and splintered bone.
Dwight used the diversion to rush Brian and Jordan inside, but waited at the door and turned back. He waved frantically, calling for Blake to follow them inside, but Blake knew that even if he made it inside and to the halfway secure wheelhouse, those things would eventually get in. There would be no denying them; they would never stop.
He could make a run for the upper deck and hope that somehow those things would follow, and at some point throw them off balance and in turn off the yacht. But that was pie in the sky, and Blake never operated on pie in the sky—he was more into certainties. That plan wouldn’t have worked under the best of conditions and tonight wasn’t that night.
Blake was also a guy that wasted little time coming to a decision. Years of being chased down by three-hundred-plus pound men looking to tear your head off will do that to a person. And tonight he felt that same pressure. Only now those three-hundred pound men were all well over six-feet tall, wore a thin translucent skin, had rounded sucker lips, and teeth that looked like they were shaped with a buzz saw.
Blake wasn’t going to be able to outrun these opponents. Not here on this boat and not on the decimated streets of New York City. He was sick and there was no going back. This was a condition brought about by the game he loved and the way he played it. Those four concussions over the last several seasons brought him to a place he’d have a hard time escaping, even in a perfect world.
This was it. He actually looked forward to not feeling this pain another second, not having to fear its return and not having to rely on the sympathy of others just to make it through the day. It was time to turn the tables. Time to do the only thing left to do.
Blake stared back at his friend, wiped away a tear, and nodded.
“GO!” Blake shouted. “GET THEM OUT OF HERE!”
As the Variants hovering above what remained of Victor turned toward him, Blake took a deep breath, prayed his legs would hold up and started back toward the lower deck. As he reached the bottom step, he could feel the one-hundred-fifty-foot super yacht beginning to move forward. Brian must have reached the wheelhouse ahead of Dwight and had a similar plan in mind.
Out onto the deck, Blake sidestepped the thick pool of blood surrounding the Variant that fed on Jesse. He turned to look back over his shoulder, and as expected, the other two had taken the bait. They had decided that the opportunity for another kill was more enticing than simply continuing to ravage their moti
onless victim.
Blake planted his right foot as a wave of pain shot from the back of his head and into his eyes, nearly taking his vision in the process. He spotted his target pulling away from Jesse as the hulking Variants that leapt from the railing above crashed down six feet behind.
He dug in, shifted his weight forward, and lowered his shoulder as the pair coming from behind shrieked in anger. Their heavy footfalls were running a close second to the popping and clicking of their joints as they nipped at Blake’s heels.
The yacht again lurched forward as Blake made eye contact with the Variant now standing over Jesse’s limp body. Its yellow slits blinked twice—not unlike the shutter of a camera—as if it was attempting to make sense of this massive human doing the unthinkable.
Blake took one final step, placing his left foot in the only spot on the wood decking not flooded with Jesse’s blood. He dove forward, but was caught from behind by one of the two at his back. His forward momentum carried him and the beast on his back into the surprised Variant that had dismembered the small man only minutes before.
As the three bodies tumbled one over the other toward the edge, the trailing Variant, the last to join the chase, slammed into the pile at full speed. The bone-jarring collision forced the three Variants, along with Blake, off the end of the deck and into the East River.
Blake fought to get to the surface, although the three Variants pulled and scratched at him, also fighting to stay afloat. As he kicked and pushed at hooked claws thrashing nearby, he felt a warm but painful sensation radiating from his right calf. Twisting away, he attempted to focus through the murky, bloodstained waters.
A parade of tiny bubbles passed over his face and then cleared the area around his body. The smaller Variant, the one that had attacked and disemboweled Jesse, was attached to Blake’s right leg. It stared up at him from the depths, again blinking its yellow shaded eyes, and sank its jagged teeth into exposed flesh just below his knee. It wrapped its swollen lips around the meaty muscle of Blake’s lower leg and began to feed.