Grim Reaper: End of Days

by Steve Alten

  By 11:06 A.M. EST, every Manhattan highway bridge and tunnel was stifled in endless gridlock, the cacophony of a thousand blaring horns the harbinger of the chaos still to come.

  VA Medical Center

  East Side, Manhattan

  11:07 A.M.

  On a patch of dirt and grass littered with spent bullet shells, in the shadow of a three-story building left in shards, a dozen young Iraqi children play soccer.

  Patrick Shepherd watches the game from the old church he and his fellow soldiers have been guarding during its renovation. The little girl he has come to know as “Bright Eyes” chases down the ball, only to be quickly overwhelmed by the pack. When the bodies clear, she is left on the ground crying, her right knee bleeding.

  Patrick hurries to her. Squeezing through the circle of kids, he squats by her side to inspect the wound. “Don’t cry, Bright Eyes, it’s not too bad. Let’s see if we can’t clean it up.”

  Through brown eyes magnified with tears she watches the American soldier push aside his assault rifle and retrieve his medikit. He sprays the wound. Dabs it with gauze. Then fixes a clean bandage and wrap—

  — earning himself a hug.

  Patrick holds on to the child for a long moment, then releases her to her peers.

  The game continues. He returns to the church — greeted by David Kantor. “That was nice.”

  “She’s like me, a runt.”

  “She’s a heartbreaker. Enjoying the downtime?”

  “Not especially. I didn’t enlist to guard a dilapidated church.”

  “This church happens to be a national landmark. Ever see the movie, The Exorcist?”

  “No.”

  “The opening scene was of a desert church — this church. The scenes were filmed in Iraq before Saddam took over, back when the country made good money from the movie industry. Once we restore it—”

  “I didn’t enlist to restore old churches used in old movies.” He removes his pistol from its holster, dismantles the gun, then uses an oily rag to wipe it free from sand.

  “Why did you enlist?”

  “To kill America’s enemies. To prevent another 9/11.”

  “Saddam’s regime wasn’t responsible for 9/11.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “What I know is that you’ve got some serious anger issues that won’t be resolved with that gun you’re cleaning.”

  “Ok, so why are you here?”

  “I’m here because of an Iraqi translator I met in Kuwait back in 1991. He was assigned to our platoon as a translator. During a cultural awareness class, he told us he had been a soldier fighting for the national army against the Bathists when Saddam took over. With tears streaming down his face, he described fighting on the steps of the palace in Baghdad. He told us how he had been forced to flee his homeland or be executed. He had to leave his family behind, some of whom were hanged. He told us about how the Bathist soldiers raped and tortured women under Saddam, and how his family had lived in terror of their own government ever since. After the class, he and the other cultural trainers, mostly interpreters who volunteered to help us, walked around shaking our hands and thanking every soldier there for what we were doing. These men were risking their own lives and the lives of their families back home to help us, yet they were thanking us. They were tough grizzled old men — men who had seen fighting far worse than any of us had ever seen, and they were weeping as they recounted the events leading up to the time Saddam and his party had taken over Iraq. I grew to despise Saddam, and I hated the fact that our own government had helped manipulate the dictator into power, then had armed him to the teeth during the Iraq-Iran War. From these men and many others like them, we gained a deep respect for the Iraqi people and their culture. Like most of us, they just wanted to live out their lives in peace without being in constant fear of their own government. To answer your question, Sergeant, I came back here to right a wrong.”

  Reassembling his pistol, Shep slams the clip into place and chambers a round. “So did I, Captain. So did I.”

  * * *

  Patrick Shepherd awakened with a start. Anxiety built as his eyes took in the strange surroundings. DeBorn. Private room.

  He sat up in bed, his pounding heart demanding his brain remember something far more important. My family… Nelson found my family!

  He swung his legs off the bed. This was big. Unexpected and sobering. His wife and daughter were in Manhattan. A cab ride away. Would they see him? Could he handle it? What if his soul mate rejected him again? What if she had remarried? And his daughter… no longer the curly-haired toddler. Did she have a new daddy? Would she even want to meet him? What would Beatrice have told her about her real father?

  “Beatrice.” He repeated the name aloud. It was definitely familiar, yet somehow still alien to him. “Beatrice Shepherd. Bea… trice. Bea Shepherd. Bea. Aunt Bea.”

  He slammed his palm to his right temple, frustrated to tears.

  What about your daughter’s name? First initial? Work the alphabet like the doctor in Germany taught you. A? Audrey? Anna? B? Beatrice… no. Barbara? Betsy? Bonnie? He paused. “Bonnie? Bonnie Shepherd? Something’s there… ugh, but it’s not fitting!”

  He used the bathroom, his nostrils greeted by the usual “patient scent” that inhabited every hospital. “C? Connie? Carol? Maybe D? Diana? Danielle? Debby? Deanna? Dara? Find a book on baby names… oh, wait — the library’s computer!”

  After rinsing his hands, he hurried out of the private room, nearly running over a fit-looking man carrying a long cardboard box and a laptop computer. “You Sergeant Shepherd? Terry Stringer. I’m your occupational therapist.”

  “My who?”

  “Your amputee tech. See? I’ve got your prosthetic arm. Real nice one, too. I’m here to attach it and train you how to use it. Your shirt… could you remove it?”

  “Why? Oh, sorry.” Patrick reentered his room with the therapist. Removed his shirt. “How does this thing work? How much strength will I have?”

  “Well, you won’t exactly be the bionic man, but with a little practice, you’ll be fairly functional. Lightweight steel core, with a spongy flesh-like outer coat. This one’s fabricated specifically for transhumeral amputees like yourself. It’s actually a hybrid, one of the new prosthetic models the Defense Department’s been working on to allow amputees to return to combat.”

  Shep backed away. “Get me an older one.”

  “An older one? Why would… oh, I see. Look, forget what I said. No one’s sending you back.” Stringer removed the flesh-colored device from the box, pulled off the protective plastic wrapping. “We slip it over your left shoulder like so, creating skin contact between the device’s electrodes. This will amplify the voluntarily controlled muscles in your deltoid muscle and residual limb. The signals act as switches to move the electrical motors in the prosthetic’s elbow, hand, and wrist. A little pinch… now we adjust the support straps. Okay, Sergeant, try moving your new arm.”

  Patrick raised the molded appendage but was unable to generate any movement in the arm itself. “It’s not working.”

  “It’ll take some getting used to. Let’s practice using the simulator.” Stringer opened his laptop, then connected a set of electrodes from the computer to several contact points located along Shep’s new artificial limb. “Okay, the object is to generate a spike on the monitor by flexing the correct muscle in your deltoid and triceps. Go ahead, give it a try.”

  Patrick gritted his teeth and squeezed.

  Nothing happened.

  “Try this: Close your eyes. Now visualize the muscles connecting to the new limb in your mind. Relax and breathe.”

  Shep calmed himself. Tried again.

  A tiny streak appeared on the monitor.

  “Excellent. You just opened your pincers. Try it again, only this time keep your eyes open.”

  Shep focused, managing to flex the mechanical wrist, but was unable to consistently find the right combination to work the pincers.
/>   “It’s frustrating.”

  “It takes practice. Remember the phantom pain… how long it took your mind to accept the fact you had lost something so vital to your everyday existence? Over time you learned to adapt.”

  “I still get the phantom pain.”

  “It’ll pass. Every amputee is different. The key is to retrain your brain in order to accept this new limb as your own.”

  Stringer worked with him another fifteen minutes, then gathered the trash and empty box. “I’ll leave the computer with you so you can practice.”

  “I’m not sure I can do this.”

  “Sure you can. You’re still an athlete — train like one. I used to wrestle in high school. My wrestling coach used to tell us fear is nothing more than false expectations appearing real, that the only limits are those we place upon ourselves by our own five senses. Look past what you perceive, Sergeant, and you’ll change your perception.”

  Tudor City, Manhattan

  11:10 A.M.

  Xenopsylla cheopis—the rat flea — is a parasite specifically adapted to survive on the backs of rodents. Bloodsucking insects, the dozen or so fleas that had been living on the rat colony inhabiting the East 46th Street alley had become infected with plague the moment their four-legged hosts had entered the trash bin, launching an epizootic event in Lower Manhattan.

  When it came to spreading plague, there was no greater vector than the rat flea. As bacteria proliferated in the insect’s stomach, they impeded its throat, starving the tiny creature. Desperate for food, the infected flea attacked its host, biting the rodent over and over, causing the rat to become agitated and aggressive. The animal’s increased pulse rate accelerated the toxin into its bloodstream, adding the rat as a plague vector even as its life ticked quickly away.

  At first overly stimulated, then weak and dying, each infected rodent secreted a pungent aphrodisiac that lured another rat to host its plague-carrying fleas while setting off a cannibalistic chain reaction among the other members of the pack. Healthy rats devoured the weak, only to become infected themselves.

  Having no use for a dead host, the infected fleas leapt upon the hides of the robust, creating thriving colonies of hundreds of biting, starving fleas that drove the rodents into a frenzy.

  The infected swarm raced through Lower Manhattan’s sewers like a frenetic army, moving southwest toward Chinatown and the Battery at a steady six miles an hour.

  Battery Park City, New York

  11:13 A.M.

  The two-bedroom apartment smelled of fresh paint and new carpets. The hallways were crammed with the last of the cardboard moving boxes.

  Beatrice Shepherd poured herself a second cup of coffee and sat in her favorite chair in the alien living room, looking out the bay window at the New York skyline. Life was moving fast again. Her decision to sell her stake in the independent publishing company she had helped start up four years ago had been a difficult one. Of course, working for a major New York publishing house was far more prestigious, and there would be no more worries about making payroll. Still, she was not alone in the decision; there was her daughter. Did she want to come north with her? Was she willing to leave her friends in South Carolina to begin life anew in the Big Apple?

  They had toured New York with a Realtor. The Upper West Side was her preference, but her daughter had liked Battery Park. A newer neighborhood. Tree-lined streets. Views of the water. Plus the building had a twenty-four-hour fitness club.

  And so they had made the move — her daughter never suspecting that her mother had an ulterior motive for wanting them to be in New York.

  Englewood, New Jersey

  11:26 A.M.

  The dark blue Lexus with the support our troops decal on the rear bumper turned into the southeast entrance of the JC Mall. Cars and SUVs and pickup trucks, their metal hides sooted brown from road salt and slush, monopolized every legal parking spot and every square foot of space not occupied by a mini-mountain of plowed snow. The driver of the Lexus selected a row and joined the game of “follow the shopper to their car” already in progress.

  Last-minute bargain hunters. Long lines at registers. Screaming infants and young children playing hide-and-seek while their oblivious mothers carried on lengthy conversations with female cashiers as if they were long-lost cousins. Thermostats set on eighty-five degrees pumped out the kind of heat reserved for a greenhouse in stores lacking so much as a single folding chair.

  Christmas week at the local mall. No place for men.

  There was a time that Dr. David Kantor would have scanned the crowded parking lot, turned his car around, and left. Sent his assistant with a credit card and a list. Five military deployments in twelve years changes a man. Three Christmas holidays spent in Iraq, and suddenly the worst inconveniences become cherished memories. And so David circled the lot with the patience of Job. Sang along with an old Temptations song on the radio. Offered his expertly scoped-out soon-to-be-vacant parking space to a mother of four in a van. Happily.

  The fifty-two-year-old physician and former Army medic no longer practiced medicine. The senior partner at Victory Wholesale Group had seen enough blood and guts and severed limbs and dying young men and women to last several lifetimes. The man who had enlisted in the reserves during the first Gulf War had no intention of going back to the endless second. Not even if they arrested him. Kantor had assured his wife, Leslie, that he already had a plan. The meniscus in his left knee was gone from playing pickup basketball. The anterior ligament hung by a thread. The former shooting guard at Princeton would pop the joint before he got on another transport plane.

  The Kantor family was Jewish. David’s four children had received their gifts last week during Chanukah. Today’s shopping list was more business oriented. Knickknacks for vendors and a few special thank-you gifts for his managers. Plus a promised portable DVD player for Gavi, his thirteen-year-old daughter’s reward for having earned straight As. David planned to visit one store and be out of the mall in twenty minutes.

  War changed a man, but not everything.

  He found another available spot next to a plowed mountain of snow and parked. As if on cue, his cell phone rang. He did not recognize the number. “Hello?”

  “Captain Kantor?”

  Mention of his military rank caused David’s pulse to race. “Yes?”

  “Sir, I’m calling from the Department of the Interior on behalf of the New Jersey National Guard. By order of the Adjutant General, you are ordered to report immediately to the—”

  “Wait a second, now you just hold on! Don’t tell me I’m being deployed again! I just got back from setting up a new medical unit eight months ago!”

  “No, sir. This is a domestic matter. What is your present location?”

  “You mean right now? Uh… Englewood.”

  “Stand by.”

  Beads of sweat drenched the back of his denim shirt. He flexed his left knee.

  “Sir, you are to report immediately to the Fort Lee toll booth on the New Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge. On the south side of the road you will see the 42nd Infantry Division Support Command. All duties will be explained when you arrive, all questions answered. You are to power off your cell phone following our call. You are not to discuss this matter with anyone else, civilian or military… is that clear, Captain?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  David hung up, then stared at the cell phone, unsure what had just happened.

  George Washington Bridge

  Washington Heights/Upper Manhattan

  11:34 A.M.

  The George Washington Bridge was a two-level suspension bridge that fed vehicular traffic across the Hudson River, linking the island of Manhattan with northern New Jersey.

  The taxicab inched its way north on Broadway through Upper Manhattan, stuck in a seemingly endless line of cars and buses, all waiting to turn left onto West 177th Street to access the George Washington Bridge. The driver cursed in Hindi, a language his three passengers all und
erstood.

  Manisha Patel was a bundle of nerves. Negative energy pulsated from the crystal dangling from her neck like the short-circuiting voltage from a single A battery. “Pankaj, why are we still not moving?”

  Her husband, dealing with his own stress, continued to speed dial the cell phone number given to him months earlier by the Tibetan monk calling himself the Elder. “Manisha, please. The traffic will subside, we still have time.”

  The driver pressed on his horn as another cab blocked the intersection. “Something must have happened… a terrible accident. Look, they are shutting down the I-95 access ramp.”

  “Pankaj, do something.”

  “What would you have me do? Part the traffic like Moses?”

  Ten-year-old Dawn Patel was in the backseat, squeezed between her mother and father. “Please, no more fighting. If the bridge is closed, then find another way.”

  “Our daughter is correct. Driver, turn us around. We’ll take the Lincoln Tunnel.”

  General Assembly Building

  United Nations

  11:27 A.M.

  Alpha Team commander Jay Zwawa stood in the moist heat of his cumbersome Racal suit in the evacuated chamber of the General Assembly Building and wondered if he were standing at ground zero for the end of the world. The bravado in him, instilled by a demanding father and an older brother in the military, said not on my watch. The intellect that graduated from West Point with honors pondered the Pandora’s box pried open by the lunatics at the Pentagon and prayed for a miracle.

  Members of the Centers for Disease Control, all wearing protective white Racal suits and working in teams of three, moved slowly through the aisles of the empty UN chamber. Each man was armed with a small racquet-shaped sensory device containing a nucleic-acid-based biochip designed to determine if toxic agents were present in the air.