by Nate Kenyon
Still unnerved, he looked down to see what Lowry had been looking at. The lid on one of their boxes had been flipped open, a shoe box within it rifled through. Hawke reached down and picked up a faded, slightly curled photo from the floor, held it to the light.
Robin as a little girl in twin braids, smiling gap-toothed at the camera.
* * *
The exit from the subway was an open staircase that rose out of the depths. A tree thrust up through the center of the opening, its leafy branches providing some cover. The three people reached the top of the steps and paused, like wary creatures testing the wind before emerging from their burrow.
Hawke peered over the top of the low wall that surrounded the subway stop where students used to relax on sunny days, across the open courtyard where an abandoned hot-dog truck sat silently, its colorful umbrellas drooping. A shifting wall of dust and soot had descended over the city, turning the air gray and lifeless, obscuring nearby cars and light posts like a foggy early morning at the beach.
Hunter College’s West Building had a wall of glass that fronted the street. A Staples delivery truck had shattered several of the giant panes and spread glittering fragments across the lobby like diamonds.
The dull thump of an explosion shook the ground; somewhere in the distance, they could hear people shouting. A gust of wind blew grit in Hawke’s eyes, and he blinked, resisted the urge to scrub at them. It would only make things worse and wipe away the foul-smelling grease he had found under a bench and spread across his cheeks and chin.
He glanced at Vasco and Young. They had smears on their cheekbones and chins as well. Weller hadn’t needed to remind Hawke; he’d read about the technique himself. Facial recognition software had trouble locking on to asymmetrical human features, inverted blacks and whites. It might disrupt Doe long enough for them to get away, or it might not. They had several blocks to go before they reached their destination, and during that time they’d be like fish in a barrel.
He had decided to get to the Lincoln Tunnel by crossing Central Park. The park held fewer people, fewer cars and trucks, and it gave them a better chance of keeping out of sight. It also had fewer cameras to track them. Down in the subway, the idea had seemed simple enough that it just might work.
He watched the courtyard and the streets just beyond. The idea of crossing any open space made him want to turn back, preferring the silence and closeness of the subway to this. Buildings no longer seemed like harmless, inviting places to seek shelter; now they were dark and threatening death traps. Other humans were dangerous, and what wasn’t human might be far worse. Cars and trucks still smoldered nearby, their collisions igniting fuel tanks after cruise control, brakes and navigation had all gone haywire. These days, most cars had over seventy computer systems in them and some kind of satellite connection. Hawke thought of Sarah’s SUV. Doe had turned cars into weapons, systematically taking out other, older vehicles, their human operators and pedestrians, creating traffic jams and roadblocks and more confusion.
But the streets were abandoned now. Nothing moved, but cops would be coming soon and would surely shoot to kill. They might not get a better chance.
Now or never.
* * *
Hawke left the stairwell first, Young and Vasco following him out of the subway and keeping behind him as he darted down Lexington, under the college’s enclosed walkways that spanned the street, their glass panes intact and obscured by the dust and soot that had settled everywhere. He felt totally exposed. The smell of fire permeated everything, getting into Hawke’s clothes, worming its way into his lungs. He choked back a cough, watching the darkness of doorways and alleys, interiors of abandoned cars, looking for movement. A man sat in the passenger seat of a crushed Subaru Legacy, head bloodied and bent backward by construction scaffolding that had hammered through the windshield like a blunt spear.
The Seventh Regiment Armory loomed at 67th Street. It was a national historic building that was built like a castle, complete with rampartlike protrusions like teeth along the tops of the towers that anchored the corners. The Armory was the size of a city block, the length of it nearly unbroken by windows or doors.
The building’s bulk and lack of windows actually made Hawke feel more secure, cocooned by buildings on either side and shaded by trees, as he took 67th toward Park Avenue. Central Park was close. But when they reached the end of the Armory building, a small electronics shop on their right suddenly erupted into life, everything in its windows blinking and blaring with activity: tablets and flat screens, phones and appliances. All the TV screens started showing security camera footage of people across the city who were trapped or dead.
Vasco stopped short and stared at the image of a woman in a dress who was pacing back and forth. The view was from a camera mounted above her. She appeared to be caught in an elevator. “What the hell is this?”
He didn’t see the footage that we were forced to watch in the hospital. “Don’t pay attention,” Hawke said. “We’re being taunted. She’s trying to break us down, get us to make mistakes.”
He didn’t know how much of his conversation with Weller that Vasco had overheard. But Vasco didn’t respond at all, just crossed the street and approached the shop window like a man hypnotized, watching the screen with the woman in the elevator. She turned to the doors now, pounding on them with both fists. The woman was pretty, dark haired and slim, but her face was ghost-white and terrified. “That’s my wife,” Vasco said, his voice tentative. He slammed his hand against the glass. The sound was like a gunshot. “Sherri!” He looked back at Hawke and Young, his face twisted with a mixture of fear and confusion. “Where is she?” he said. “What are they doing to her?”
Hawke glanced back down the street. He didn’t know whether to leave Vasco where he stood or try to get him to move. Since Hawke had landed the punch Vasco had kept his distance, and Hawke wasn’t sure whether he’d suddenly been granted a grudging respect or the man was biding his time.
“Doe’s found us already,” Young said. She stood in the shadows of the closest tree. “Why else would she show us his wife?”
Vasco slammed the glass again. “You son of a bitch! Let her go!”
Hawke made a quick decision. They were stronger with more numbers, more eyes on the street. He crossed 67th to Vasco’s side. The cacophony from the electronics cranked to full blast was deafening. He leaned in close enough to be heard. “You recognize the location?”
“I don’t know,” Vasco said. He was struggling with his composure, his voice strained, quivering. “Maybe the elevator in our building. I’m not sure—”
The screens flickered and cut out. The sudden silence was overwhelming. Hawke’s ears were ringing.
From somewhere deep inside the shop, muffled and faint, came a woman’s voice: “Jason? Help me!”
The effect on Vasco was swift and profound. A flush spread across his face as he turned back to the window. “Sherri!” He rushed the shop door and was about to go charging in before Hawke spun him around.
“That’s Sherri’s voice. She’s trapped. I gotta get to her—”
“She’s not in there, Jason. Remember Lenox? You go in there, you’ll never come out again. Think—how would your wife get here, to this shop in the middle of New York? It’s a fake, a digital reproduction played through a speaker.”
Vasco was breathing so hard Hawke was afraid he might hyperventilate. “No,” he said, but Hawke could tell he was coming to his senses. “Jesus, no, I heard her; that can’t be—”
“Jason? Please, honey!” The voice grew louder, and when Vasco didn’t move it changed, morphed into something deeper, more menacing, the sound of a synthesizer breaking up in anger. “Jason…”
The screens came back on and switched to the same real-time image of their own group, as seen from a camera mounted somewhere on Park Avenue. Hawke scanned the street and found it mounted on the traffic light pole. They were in full view now. It would only be a few minutes more before the cops arri
ved, or worse. He had to calm Vasco down, get him away from here.
Vasco had turned to look at the camera, Hawke watching him mirrored on the TV screens, the two of them side by side. “I’m going to track down who did this,” he said, struggling to regain his composure. “If you’re involved, so help me God, I’ll kill you.”
“I’m not involved, dammit. Why would I do this to myself? It’s a machine, code running a program.”
Vasco shook his head. “Weller knows more than he’s saying. I’m going to beat it out of him. If Sherri’s hurt, if she’s … if she doesn’t make it…”
“At least she’s still alive.” Hawke didn’t bring up the possibility that the footage had been recorded hours ago. “Calm down; think for a minute.”
“Hey, fuck you. What if that was your wife on-screen, huh? You think you’d be feeling so calm?”
“I saw things, too, back at Lenox. Blood on the wall of my apartment. We can’t accept these images as real. The best way to help Sherri is to get out of New York alive. You won’t be able to do anything if you’re in custody or shot. That’s what this is all about, don’t you get it? They’re trying to get into your head, use your emotions against you, force you to make mistakes.”
Vasco gritted his teeth, shook his head, tears in his eyes. “It’s gone too far,” he said. “Nobody’s safe. Nobody’s sacred.” He looked around, spreading his arms. “Where’s the army?” he said. “National Guard? Where are the goddamn troops?”
Hawke looked at the burnished-steel color of the sky, the plumes of smoke rising up across the city. Vasco was right; the sky should have been swarming with choppers, military aircraft, boots on the streets. But of course they wouldn’t be able to operate those aircraft or personnel carriers. Military machines had been commandeered, too.
And yet Doe had allowed the police who had shot at them to drive their vehicle. She was pulling the authorities’ strings, manipulating them into playing her game. But the rest of it still didn’t make sense.
Missile strikes against the bridges, isolating the city, cutting civilians down at every turn. Why?
She’s conserving her resources.
“It’s about power,” Hawke said quietly. The words came almost without him knowing it. “Energy. That’s the answer.”
Vasco was staring at him. “What are you talking about?”
“Never mind.” His mind was buzzing again, worrying at those puzzle pieces, trying to make them fit. He glanced at the screens, back at the camera, wondering if Doe had cut through their crude attempt to disguise themselves and truly made a features match and knew where they were or if she was fishing. It didn’t matter; their window was closing fast. “We need to move.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
4:19 P.M.
THEY CROSSED PARK AVENUE QUICKLY, and then Madison Avenue. The windows of the swanky chocolate shop on one corner had been smashed in; a taxi had been driven right through the display window of a Michael Kors store on another, its rear end half on the sidewalk, mannequins draped over its roof like broken bodies. Someone screamed inside one of the buildings, the shriek ending in a slow, chilling gurgle, but Hawke ignored it and kept going, feeling sick that he had been reduced to someone who would turn away from another person in distress. But he remembered how they had been lured into Lenox Hill Hospital by the screams of an infant, and he had no doubt that if Vasco had gone into the electronics shop he wouldn’t have made it back out. Nothing could be trusted anymore; everything was a potential trap.
Central Park loomed in front of them as they hit Fifth Avenue, a thick canopy of green sprouting through the concrete and metal of the city. Now that he saw it, Hawke wasn’t sure which was more threatening, this stretch of strange wilderness or the streets of New York. He’d been in the park many times, skating in the winter, sitting on the grass with Robin, bringing Thomas to the Victorian Gardens Amusement Park. But back then, it had been a welcome refuge. Hawke had never imagined it quite like this: shadowed, unknown and possibly dangerous. He wondered if this was a good idea after all.
“You sure about this?” Young stood on the corner next to him echoing his own thoughts, looking across the street into the trees.
“It’s the best shot we have,” Hawke said. “It gives us a chance to disappear, to get out before we’re targeted again. But we’ve got to take out any eyes on us, keep anyone from knowing which way we went.”
She nodded once. She seemed to have picked up a new resolve. Weller was close; if they could get to the tunnel, he would be waiting there. It seemed to give her strength.
Vasco was keeping his distance about twenty feet away. He had calmed down enough to leave the window of the electronics shop, but Hawke could sense his anger and fear simmering under the surface. He was terrified for his wife, and Hawke couldn’t blame him for that.
Hawke scanned up and down Fifth Avenue and saw an NYPD security camera on a light pole nearby. A delivery truck had jumped the curb and slammed into the stone and concrete wall that bordered the park, scattering debris across the cobblestone. He crossed the street, selected a good chunk of stone and hurled it at the camera. Young and Vasco got the hint, joining him in throwing debris until the camera shattered.
They followed Hawke down Fifth Avenue to the 66th Street crossover, where he took out another camera. It wouldn’t be too hard to figure out where they went from here, but disabling the camera might buy them some time, enough to lose themselves in the park. The road was jammed with abandoned cars, doors hanging open. Other vehicles had smashed through the walls and into the park itself, and several of them had mangled bodies slumped over steering wheels or against cracked glass smeared brown with drying blood. A motorcycle had slammed at considerable speed into the 66th Street wall, launching the driver through the air and into the arms of a tree, where he dangled white-limbed, head cocked at an impossible angle from a broken neck.
An unearthly howl echoed through the park, followed by a screech that tailed away like gibbering laughter. For a moment, Hawke could almost believe Doe had assumed some kind of physical, monstrous form, before he realized what it was. Central Park Zoo. Big cats and monkeys scream like that. Were they loose? He wondered if the zoo had upgraded to electronic systems for the cages and enclosures. Had Doe managed to open the locks?
More animal calls split the air. The occasional shouts and screams of people blended with the roars of the leopards and shrieks of the monkeys, the calls of the birds in the aviary. The sounds were chilling in the odd emptiness that engulfed them. The normal noises of the city were gone—no more rumble of big trucks and car horns blaring, jackhammers thudding into concrete. They had descended back into the Stone Age.
* * *
They took the crossover past the bird enclosure to 65th Street, clearing the bottleneck of vehicles quickly as they rushed through shadows. From what Hawke could tell, the animals were still safely in their enclosures. But he couldn’t see much through the trees.
As they approached East Drive, the road was clear. The sky had turned a deeper gray, smoke from the fires that still burned descending over the park like a fog. Despite the adrenaline that coursed through them, the events of the day were catching up to them all. Hawke’s lungs burned as he ran along the narrow sidewalk that edged the shoulder-height rock wall, keeping under the cover of the trees, his limbs shaking and threatening to send him spilling head over heels at any moment. Vasco was lagging behind, and the gash on his head had started to bleed again. Hawke wondered about a concussion. He felt a momentary twinge of guilt over punching the man, but at least it had appeared to make an impression.
They entered the short tunnel into shadows and cooler air, East Drive arching over their heads in the shape of a thick stone overpass. Graffiti had been spray-painted in garish orange and red that seemed to glow softly in the dark, and the ceiling was close, dripping with moisture. As they emerged from the other side and into the light, Hawke could hear a buzzing noise behind them. Something was coming, and it didn’
t sound friendly.
The backside of the Central Park Conservancy loomed on the left, a gray stone building with the look of an old English church. The wall edging the road was higher here, several feet above their heads. Two narrow windows and an imposing iron door were cut into the side of the building, the windows covered with metal mesh. Hawke shook the handle of the door and found it locked tight.
They were trapped between two thick walls that lined the road, the arching backs of the East Drive bridge on one side, an access path running overhead on the other. Sitting ducks. They had to do something fast. The buzzing noise was getting closer.
Hawke led them under the arch of the access path to where the wall dipped low enough to get a handhold, and hoisted himself up onto the brush-covered ledge, then turned to help Young climb up next to him. Vasco followed, grunting. The ground sloped upward to a metal fence at the top of the rise. There was a locked gate, but the fence was low enough to climb over. The three of them dropped to the other side, into the deeper cover of shrubs.
Hawke peered out through thick brush, craning his head and watching the skies. It was difficult to see back the way they had come; several large trees and the conservancy were in the way. A small black object eventually appeared through a break in the foliage, growing larger as it dipped over the treetops. It looked like a radio-controlled helicopter, only twice the size.
“Drone,” Vasco said quietly. “Probably military.”
It looked like a large insect, darting through the air with precise control. Four separate rotors whirled at each corner of the device. “You’ve seen one of these before?”
“My brother operated them in Afghanistan. We used to build model planes and helicopters when he was a kid. Came in handy later when he was a tech for the army.” He pointed at the drone. “See that thing underneath it? Camera tied to satellites and high-def screens at a home base that can pick up a penny at a thousand yards. Shawn showed me a video once of a thing like that in action. If it gets its eyes on us, we’re not gonna get away.”