by Adam Baker
‘Think I’m worried about prowlers? Least of my problems.’
‘I’ll make sure the Chief keeps his word. Help us find Ekks, and I’ll get you out of here in one piece.’
Cloke taped a map of Manhattan to the hangar wall. He uncapped a Sharpie and drew concentric rings. Each pen squeak delineated pond ripples of destruction.
He clapped hands for attention and began the mission brief.
‘Airburst over the refugee camp in Central Park. A five kiloton Sandman dropped from a B2 at dawn. Detonated at fifteen hundred feet.
The entire Red Cross tent city vaporised in the blink of an eye. The park itself is gone. Trees, topsoil and ornamental lakes seared down to bedrock. No one has surveyed the centre of the blast, no one has performed an overflight, but I guarantee Uptown Manhattan is now a crater a quarter of a mile wide throwing out lethal gamma radiation.
Surrounding buildings will have been crushed flat. MetLife, Citicorp, UN Secretariat. Everything in a two-mile radius of Central Park scythed by the blast wave. Nothing left but burning rubble.’
Cloke pointed at the tip of the island.
‘Our objective: the subway terminus at Fenwick Street. The station has been mothballed for decades. It is situated beneath the old Federal Building; headquarters of the Federal Union Bank. Built in the nineteenth century, six storeys high, limestone, steel frame. The site is about five miles from the detonation point. The structure will have suffered major damage, almost certainly burned out, but I’m hopeful it will be sufficiently intact to allow us to access the sub-level station.’
‘Where do we set down?’ asked Nariko.
‘The junction of Lafayette and Canal. Closer, if we can. The choppers won’t be able to hang around. They will both be operating at the limits of their weight capacity. Full cabins and a sling load of equipment. They’ll be flying on fumes by the time they get back to Ridgeway.’
‘We’ll be wading ankle-deep in fallout.’
‘Exactly. We will have to get below ground as quick as we can.’ He looked around. ‘Any more questions?’ None. ‘All right. Wheels up in five.’
Nariko made a final inspection of Lupe’s wrist seals. Galloway took the opportunity to slap steel cuffs in place and bind her hands.
‘What the hell?’
‘I see through you like an X-ray, bitch. You’re planning to bolt on touchdown. Well, you can forget that shit. Put it from your mind. I’m going to be riding you for the duration.’ He prodded her in the belly with the Remington. ‘Give me any crap, I’ll knee-cap your sorry ass and feed you to the prowlers. Itching to do it. So go ahead. Give me an excuse.’
9
Chopper roar. Rain lashed the cockpit glass. The pilot flew by instruments.
Lupe looked out the window.
The adjacent chopper suspended in grey nothing.
Fleeting glimpse of a highway, two hundred feet below. The Brooklyn-Queens Expressway jammed with incinerated cars.
She looked around the cabin.
Galloway sat beside her, shotgun laid across his lap, barrel pointing at her belly.
Nariko sat on the opposite bench seat, flanked by the remaining members of her FDNY rescue squad. Donahue: blonde, thirties. Tombes: heavyset, forties.
Lieutenant Cloke sat up front with the pilot.
Galloway unzipped the side pocket of his backpack and pulled out a Glock. He offered the pistol to Nariko. She shook her head.
‘Take it,’ he shouted. ‘Seriously. Take it.’
She took the weapon. She turned it in her hand, inspected the safety switch and magazine eject.
‘Headshot. Don’t waste bullets on the torso.’
She nodded.
Galloway kept talking, bellowing over the rotor roar, anxious to demonstrate some hard-ass wisdom.
‘Saw a couple of prowlers cut down by an M16. Took a full clip to the chest, kicked clean off their feet. Jumped right back up and kept coming, tripping over their own entrails. Relentless motherfuckers. They don’t get tired, don’t feel pain. Once they catch your scent, they’ll chase you down, night and day. They never quit.’
Byrne, the pilot, turned in his seat.
‘Check it out,’ he shouted.
They craned to look out of the starboard window.
‘Holy shit,’ said Tombes.
A gargantuan ghost-shape glimpsed through a curtain of rain.
The Brooklyn Bridge. A cyclopean ruin. The central span collapsed and sunk to the silted darkness of the tidal strait. Six lanes of fissured asphalt terminated just beyond the granite caissons of the east-side cable tower. A stump of snarled girders and splintered stone jutting into space. Catenary suspension wires hung limp and swayed in the wind.
Lupe looked across the river. An ebb tide. Refuse heading for the bay. A steady stream of detritus that would, in time, form garbage archipelagos off the Florida shoreline.
The ruins of Manhattan were hidden behind a veil of rain.
Nariko put on a headset.
‘Give me an open channel.’
The pilot adjusted radio frequency.
‘This is Fire Department Rescue Four, can anyone hear me, over?’
No response.
‘This is Rescue Four calling Manhattan on maritime one-two-one, anyone out there, over?’
No response.
‘Rescue Four calling Manhattan, is anyone alive?’
She took off the headset.
Cloke turned in his seat.
‘Time to mask up.’
Lower Manhattan.
They looked out the cabin window. Glimpses of the shattered metropolis beneath them. Rubble-clogged avenues. Flame-seared ruins. Exposed rooms and stairwells.
Byrne had a night vision monocular clipped to the rim of his helmet. Nariko tapped him on the shoulder.
‘What can you see?’
‘I can see the whole damned city.’
He gestured to a storage niche beneath Nariko’s seat. She found night vision goggles. She powered up and held them to her visor.
Mile after mile of luminescent ruins.
She looked north to the detonation site. A beam of ionised radiation projecting into the night sky. A pale column of light.
‘Jesus. It’s beyond words.’
Galloway nudged Lupe with the shotgun.
‘GPS is out. Find the Fed. Do your damned job.’
Nariko passed the night vision headset to Lupe.
Lupe looked out the side window and scanned the ruins.
Wrecked automobiles. Bomb-shattered office buildings.
‘Wall Street, right? Head for the Broadway intersection, then head north towards City Hall.’
‘Yeah?’
‘The Fed is on east Liberty.’
Lupe adjusted magnification. Streets lit ghost-green by UV. Grotesque, shambling figures turned and looked towards the sky.
‘Prowlers,’ she said. ‘They can hear us. They can hear the chopper.’
‘Hoped radiation would have sterilised the whole damn island,’ said Nariko.
‘They’re in bad shape, as far as I can tell. But alive.’
Lupe lowered the night vision goggles and sat back. She glanced round the cabin. She suddenly tore her mask off with cuffed hands.
‘Watch it,’ she yelled, pointing out the starboard window. ‘Watch out.’
The two helicopters were drifting together.
The pilot wrenched the joystick. Too late. Rotor strike. A blade struck the canopy. The cockpit window shattered. The cabin filled with typhoon wind and broken glass.
The chopper banked hard left. The pilot fought to keep control.
Lupe fought G-force and pulled the mask back over her head.
The chopper levelled out.
Nariko grabbed Byrne by the shoulder and shouted to be heard over wind roar and motor howl.
‘Are we going down?’
He checked instrumentation. Green lights.
‘We’re still Go.’
‘Get us to the drop site.’
&n
bsp; ‘Where’s the other chopper?’ shouted Lupe.
The pilot pointed down.
Lupe leaned forwards and looked down. She adjusted the ENVG focus.
A baleful glow in the mist below. A raging fuel fire.
‘Can we get close?’ demanded Nariko. ‘Ditch our gear, bring them aboard?’
‘The street is too tight,’ said Lupe. ‘Nowhere to land.’
A couple of crew pulled themselves from the burning wreckage. Shuffling figures converged from doorways and alleys. The crew were quickly overwhelmed and torn apart.
‘Survivors?’ asked Nariko.
‘No. None.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Yeah, I’m sure.’
‘Then guide us in, dammit. Do your job. Find the damned Fed.’
10
The storm-lashed roof of the Federal Building. Cracked bitumen. Pooled rainwater. Rotary air con vents. A shattered water tower.
Hurricane down-wash. The chopper nose light projected a shaft of brilliant white light through spray as the chopper began its descent.
The sling-load: rescue gear and trauma bags suspended in a rope net. Byrne tripped the hook release. The load dropped four feet and hit the roof, sending up a geyser plume of rainwater.
The chopper jinked left. Skids settled on the roof.
‘Sure you want to do this?’ shouted Byrne.
Nariko threw open the side-door and jumped clear. Donahue and Tombes followed her lead.
Lieutenant Cloke climbed from the co-pilot seat. He sprinted across the roof to the stairwell door.
Padlock and chain.
‘Fetch bolt cutters.’
Galloway pulled Lupe from the chopper cabin. Her feet were bound by ankle shackles. She slid from the bench and fell to her knees on the roof surface.
Escalating rotor roar. The helicopter rose, banked, and was lost behind a curtain of rain. They watched the nose light head east and dwindle to nothing.
Dancing flashlights near the equipment sling. Nariko and her crew retrieved rescue gear.
Galloway pulled Lupe to her feet.
‘Come on. Let’s get under cover.’
A sixth floor hallway. Shadows and dereliction.
Nariko kicked open the stairwell door. She dumped a heavy backpack on the floor.
Tombes and Donahue wrestled an equipment trunk down the stairs and set it down. They ran back up the stairs to fetch more gear.
Lupe descended the stairs. Tight ankle shackles forced her to bunny-hop each step. She reached the hall. Galloway kicked her legs. She dropped to her knees.
‘Stay down. Don’t move.’
‘Could you see much from the roof?’ asked Nariko.
‘Fire to the south,’ said Cloke. ‘Miles of it. Must be the petrochemical terminal on Staten Island. The storage tanks, separators and fractioning towers. The entire installation up in flames. Probably burn for months.’
‘We ought to call Ridgeway. Tell them we lost a chopper.’
‘Byrne will check in, tell them what they need to know.’
‘We just lost fire support. And if that second bird drops out the sky, we’re marooned.’
‘Nothing I can do about it,’ said Cloke. He turned to Lupe. ‘So how do we reach the subway station?’
‘How should I know?’ said Lupe. ‘We went below ground at 23rd Street. We reached Fenwick by tunnel.’
Cloke surveyed the hallway. Elevator doors. He pushed his flashlight through an inch gap and looked down. The brick shaft descended into deep darkness.
‘There’s an elevator. But no power.’
A door marked:
STAIRS
Cloke shouldered the door and leaned over the balustrade. He trained his flashlight. Jumbled rubble six flights below.
Nariko joined him.
‘You got three flights of stairs. After that, thin air.’
‘Let me see how far I can get.’
She pulled on a backpack and shouldered a coil of kernmantle rope.
‘Watch yourself.’
She descended the stairs. Three flights of concrete steps and an iron balustrade. The steps led nowhere. The stairs ended abruptly. A black chasm. She leaned over the edge and shone her flashlight downwards into darkness. The lower prefabricated sections of stairwell had detached from the wall and lay in a jumble of rubble far below.
Nariko tested the balustrade railing beside her. Firm. Anchored.
She buckled a harness and clipped a carabiner to the balustrade. She walked to the edge of the chasm and rappelled into black nothing.
She passed numbered doors in the wall.
3… 2… 1…
She switched on the flashlight hanging from her belt. The beam lit the pile of masonry beneath her.
She touched down, booted feet coming to rest on splintered concrete. She unclipped the harness.
She wiped condensation from the visor of her respirator. She blinked sweat from her eyes.
She scanned the walls of the wrecked shaft.
She unhooked her radio.
‘I’m at the sub-level.’
‘Is there a route below ground?’
‘Hold on.’
A wood lintel. She crouched and pulled rubble aside. Top of a blocked doorway. She hauled chunks of concrete until she exposed a narrow cavity.
She shone her flashlight through the gap.
Darkness.
‘I think I’ve found a way through.’
11
Nariko explored the darkness.
The beam of her flashlight washed across pillars and archways.
Silence and shadows.
An abandoned subway station built long before MetroCards, steel turnstiles and Helvetica signage. One of the derelict crypt-spaces of the city.
She crept through the sepulchral gloom of the ticket hall. Mausoleum hush. No sound but the grit-crunch of her boots, the rasp of her respirator and the rustling fabric of her NBC suit.
Her flashlight pierced the shadows.
A rusted Coke machine.
A smashed clock, hands hanging at half-six.
A phone booth. Screw holes and frayed cable where a trumpet earpiece would once have hung.
She examined a couple of panel ads. Faded paper curling from the station wall.
A cartoon bikini babe rode an eagle, coy wink like B17 nose art. ‘Driving is like flying, with Burd piston rings!’
A debonair guy reclined on a Riviera yacht. ‘Camel Cigarettes – Pleasure Ahoy!’
Nariko caressed the sunset with a gloved hand.
She wiped grime from wall tiles, revealed the mosaic letters of the station sign:
Fenwick Street
She crouched and examined a deep fissure at the foot of the wall. She probed split tiles, held a nugget of concrete in a gloved hand, and crumbled it to sand between her fingers. She traced the jagged crack with the beam of her flashlight, followed it up the wall and across the ceiling.
Radio crackle:
‘How’s it looking, Captain?’ Cloke’s voice echoed through the vaulted shadows, abrupt and metallic.
She fumbled for the yellow Motorola handset hanging from a belt loop.
‘Structural damage. Strong chance of subsidence.’ Her voice was muffled by the heavy respirator. ‘Give me a minute. Let me check the place out.’
She unhitched her backpack and dumped it on the bench. She pulled the Glock from a side pocket, slapped a magazine into the butt and chambered a round.
She wiped condensation fog from the Lexan visor of her mask.
She walked deep into subterranean darkness, Maglite projecting a cone of brilliant white radiance ahead of her.
Tickets
An oak-panelled ticket kiosk. Smashed teller glass crackled underfoot. She leaned through the window. Scattered tokens. A cobwebbed bar-stool chair, seat leather cracked like dried mud. A brass till with ornate lever keys.
The deep recesses of the station hall. The beam of her flashlight ranged across bone-white tiles.
She checked the Glock. She fumbled the safety and adjusted her grip.
She kicked open the door, the impact of her boot gunshot-loud in the oppressive chapel-hush of the deserted station.
The door swung wide. Assault entry. A swift sweep of the room, braced to fire.
A windowless office. A desk and a couple of toppled chairs. A wooden filing cabinet with no drawers. A gramophone next to a stack of 78s sheathed in paper sleeves.
She lowered the weapon.
She checked out the desk. She stroked a finger through dust. Rotary phone, inkwell, blotter. She turned the phone dial and watched it slowly grind back to zero.
She left the office and crossed the ticket hall.
Steps sloped downward.
A brass arrow:
To All Trains
Nariko cautiously descended the steps. Skin-crawl blackness. The long stairway lured her further from the surface world, took her further from help. She fought claustrophobia, the sudden, gut conviction that she was climbing into her own grave.
She reached the bottom of the stairs. Dark water lapped the foot of the steps. She stood at the water’s edge and shone her flashlight into the cavernous tunnel space.
ALL PERSONS ARE FORBIDDEN TO ENTER UPON OR CROSS THE TRACKS.
The track-trench and platform were submerged. Drifting detritus. A milky skim of rock dust. Street garbage swept down through the drains: soda bottles, chip bags, clamshell burger cartons, leaves.
The south entrance was blocked with crooked planks. The north tunnel mouth framed impenetrable darkness.
Something white in the water. Nariko trained the beam. A naked body, floating face down, hand locked round an empty whiskey bottle. Hard to tell gender. Bloated bruise-flesh marbled with livid veins.
She raised the pistol and fired a shot into the cadaver’s flank. Crack. Puff of muzzle smoke. Meat-smack as the bullet punctured inert flesh.
She watched the corpse, waited for movement. A couple of air bubbles broke water. She steadied her aim and fired a second shot. The round blew out the back of the cadaver’s cranium. The impact sent the carcass drifting in a slow and stately pirouette into deep shadow.