by Adam Baker
‘This place is killing us,’ said Lupe. ‘We’re dying by degrees. Every minute we sit here shooting the shit a little more radiation seeps into our bones. Admit it. The mission is a bust. Send for the chopper and get the hell out of here.’
‘No.’
‘You guys volunteered for this kamikaze deal. Jumped at the chance to pull on your boots and run into the flames. But I wasn’t given a choice. I was dragged here in chains. What gives you the right to throw my life away? Answer me that.’
‘Do you understand what’s at stake?’ asked Nariko. ‘Humanity reduced to a few pockets of survivors. Little outposts. Humans are an endangered species. We’re on the edge of extinction, about to join the fossil record, our time on earth reduced to a geologic layer, a vein of compacted garbage. We’re ready to bequeath the world to rats, roaches and scorpions. Get the picture? Maybe Ekks was full of shit. But research teams around the world studied this virus for months, with no sign of a vaccine or cure. If Ekks made progress, if he came close to understanding this fucking disease, then we have to roll the dice. We have to find his documents, his research, whatever the cost. It’s our last chance.’
‘And why should I give a shit?’
‘Flesh and blood, aren’t you?’ said Nariko. ‘Not exactly immune. You might be a hard-ass in the prison yard, but right now you are nothing on your own.’
‘And when we are done here?’
‘We’ll take you back to Ridgeway. That was the deal.’
‘And then what? Think your Chief will shake my hand and send me on my way? His guys will keep me as some kind of pet. A slave. Someone to mop the floors, empty out the latrine bucket. Tie me to a bed and set up some kind of fuck rota.’
‘Not everyone is as sick as you. Some people try to do the right thing.’
‘Unchain me. Let me go. I’ll take my chances outside.’
‘There’s no way off this island. No bridges, no tunnels, no boats.’
‘I’ll swim, if that’s what it takes.’
Nariko stood and began to walk away.
‘I can help you find Ekks,’ said Lupe.
‘You know where he is?’
‘I know exactly where he is.’
‘You can take us to him?’
‘I’ll show you on a map. If you want to chase after the guy, it’s up to you.’
‘He’s close by?’
‘Yeah. He’s real close.’
‘Tell me where he is.’
Lupe held up her ankle chain.
‘Uncuff me. I’ll give you Ekks if you set me free.’
‘Fuck you.’
Lupe shrugged. She leaned back, head against the pillar and closed her eyes.
‘Come on,’ demanded Nariko. She kicked Lupe’s foot. ‘Enough games. Where the hell is Ekks?’
Lupe smiled. A gold incisor.
‘Can’t say I know much about radiation. But you guys are on a clock. All of you. You’ve taken on a shitload of rads already. Few hours from now, you’ll feel the first effects. Few hours after that, the sickness will take hold for real. The longer you stay, the worse it will get. How long before the damage becomes irreversible? How long before you shit yourself blind? Puke your entire digestive system over your shoes?’
‘You’ll get sick too.’
‘Then I guess we’ve got ourselves a standoff.’
‘Want me to talk to Galloway?’ asked Nariko. ‘Maybe I could arrange some time alone, just you and him. Pretty sure he could engineer a little attitude adjustment.’
Lupe smiled and shook her head.
‘You won’t do shit. Haven’t got the cojones. Face it, girl. I’m holding all the cards.’
14
Cloke’s watch beeped.
‘Meds,’ he shouted.
He distributed potassium iodide and anti-nausea capsules. They passed round a bottle of mineral water and knocked back pills.
He reset his watch and started a four-hour countdown.
Nariko unzipped a backpack and shook out the contents. Toiletries, fresh underwear, fresh T-shirt. Each member of the team had brought personal possessions, stuff they might need for the duration of the mission.
She took out a battered leather fire hat. She polished the captain’s badge with her sleeve and set the helmet on her head.
‘Nice hat,’ said Cloke.
‘Belonged to my stepdad.’
‘They’ll burn it, once we get back to Ridgeway. You know that, right? They’ll have us strip naked for a decon shower. Probably shave our heads. And while we get hosed down, they’ll scrub down the chopper and incinerate our clothes. Torch everything. Your watch, your earrings. They won’t let you keep a thing.’
‘I’m going to wear this hat into the shower. If they give me any shit, I’ll break their arms.’
Cloke crossed the hall. He shouldered the fire exit door.
Jammed.
He kicked until he forced a six-inch aperture, then shone his flashlight into the stairway. Steps and door blocked by massive chunks of concrete.
‘How the hell did you make it through?’ he asked.
‘Whole lot of squirming.’
‘Got to be six, seven tons of debris.’
‘This whole place is a death trap.’
Donahue climbed the steps to street level. She unzipped a backpack. She unfolded a tripod antenna and set it facing the curtained entrance. A mesh dish supported by a skeletal rod frame.
‘Hey, babe.’
Tombes watched her work.
‘Bitch to get a signal down here,’ said Donahue. ‘Schist bedrock capped with reinforced concrete. Smothers any transmission stone dead.’
‘How did Ekks and his team get coverage?’
‘I heard they used steel cable. Ran it out the gate into the alley. Tethered it to a fire escape, turned the ladders and balconies to a big antenna. Ingenious.’
‘Maybe we should pull the same trick,’ said Tombes.
‘You want to go out there? Take a plutonium shower? Be my guest.’
Rain crackled against the opaque polythene sheet lashed across the entrance gate. They could hear ragged fingernails rake the plastic.
‘Check it out,’ said Tombes. ‘It’s got our scent. Trying to force its way inside. Tough motherfucker. Must have absorbed a dose strong enough to kill ten men. Just won’t quit.’
‘A few of these infected fucks might crawl from the rubble,’ said Donahue, ‘but they won’t last long. They might be tough, but nothing can survive that level of radiation. Anything out there in the street will slowly dissolve in the toxic rain. Fallout will burn away their skin, strip muscle from bone. The bomb is doing its job. It might take a while, but a few weeks from now, there will be nothing left. A dead city. Jumbled bones lying in the street. Ribs. Skulls. Tufts of hair.’
‘Fine by me.’
‘I don’t know how these things communicate,’ said Donahue. ‘I can’t figure it out. They seem dumb as rocks. They don’t talk. They don’t gesture. Ever looked one in the eye? Nothing there. Not a glimmer of awareness. No thought, no memory. Maybe they’re telepathic. Maybe they release some kind of pheromone. Soon as one of these bastards senses fresh meat, every infected shithead for miles around perks up and joins the hunt.’
Tombes inspected the gate, checked the bolts that anchored the iron frame to cement.
‘Is this one of Galloway’s handcuffs?’
‘Cadmium steel. It’ll hold.’
‘Not sure about the frame. The ironwork is pretty corroded. If enough prowlers show up and try to force their way inside, it might give way. Better keep watch. We might need to cull a few, keep the numbers down.’
‘Wish we had those SWAT guys.’
‘No use wishing.’
Donahue spooled flex down the steps, across the tiled floor of the ticket hall, to the IRT office.
She sat on a metal folding chair and unboxed the radio. A military transmitter with a resin case. US ARMY SIGNAL CORPS. She flicked an on switch. Green light. Intermitte
nt power-up hum. She turned a heavy black dial. She tapped glass. A signal-strength needle twitched and rose.
The stars and stripes lay bundled on the floor. Part of the old office decor, along with a framed Ten Commandments in gothic script: a reminder to any IRT employees summoned to the Super’s office that his brass-buttoned, chest-puffing authority was backed by God and state.
Tombes picked up the pole. The flag had faded pale pink and lavender, like a winter sunset. He slapped webs from the braid fringe. Thick dust swirl. He straightened the brass staff over his knee and twisted it into the floor stand.
‘They bombed Washington too, you know,’ said Donahue. ‘The Constitution. The Declaration. The First Lady and her damned Chihuahua. All that history up in smoke.’
Tombes shrugged.
‘Politicians. No one will miss them. If we beat this disease, maybe the world can start over. A second chance. Maybe we can do it right.’
‘Is that the daydream? A ranch? A nice little farmstead?’
‘Always wanted to be a blacksmith. I’ll pound horseshoes on an anvil.’
‘What the hell do you know about horses?’ asked Donahue. ‘You’re from Bensonhurst.’
‘There’ll be a book on a shelf, somewhere. Old knowledge, waiting to be found.’
Tombes pulled up a chair and rested his boots on the table. He turned his Zippo over in his muscled hand, knuckle-skin melted tight by an old burn. He clicked the lid, an instinctive ex-smoker fidget. Shamrock insignia. No Irish need apply. He gazed at the flame, then snapped the lid closed.
He shivered.
‘Jesus. Freezing down here.’ He huddled deeper into his turnout coat. ‘Maybe we should break a couple of chairs, start a fire.’
‘Never thought I’d be reduced to rubbing sticks together.’
‘Where the hell did you get that trash?’ he said, pointing at the radio. ‘Dug it out of landfill? Bunch of GI junk. Looks like someone stormed the beaches at Normandy with that thing strapped to his back. Liberated fucking Paris.’
‘Yeah. Well, every communication satellite is drifting dead in orbit, so cell phones aren’t much use right now. Got to make do with scavenged crap. It’s like someone stopped human history and hit rewind.’
‘Better believe it. Fucked up roads, sour gasoline. Couple of years from now you’ll be riding place to place with a six-shooter strapped to your hip.’
Donahue pulled on headphones and gripped a metal microphone big as a showerhead. She scanned wavebands.
‘Extraction to Ridgeway, do you copy, over? Come in Ridgeway.’
Washes of interference rose and fell like breaking waves.
‘Anything?’ asked Tombes.
Donahue slid the headphones across the table. He held them to his ear.
‘…This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. The broadcasters of your area in voluntary cooperation with federal, state and local authorities have developed this system to keep you informed in the event of an emergency. If this had been an actual emergency the Attention Signal you just heard would have been followed by official information, news or instructions. This concludes the test of the Emergency Broadcast System…’
‘Plenty of channels still on air,’ said Donahue. ‘All of them automated.’
Tombes slid the headphones back across the table.
‘People used to believe the final image a person saw before they died was retained in the eye. I guess America ends with a bunch of test signals and channel idents.’
She retuned.
‘Ridgeway, this is extraction, do you copy, over?’
It took ten minutes to raise a reply.
‘Ridgeway to extraction, go ahead, over.’
The Chief. Clipped intonation.
‘What’s your status?’
‘We are in position. The site is secure.’
‘Have you located the Bellevue team?’
‘There’s nothing down here, Chief. The station is empty. No sign of Ekks or his team. Not a trace. We’re not sure how to proceed.’
‘Twenty men. A lab. A camp. All of it located at Fenwick Street Station. Multiple eyewitness reports. No ambiguity.’
‘They’re gone, sir. They cleared out.’
‘What’s left of the city?’
‘Pretty much every building sustained major structural damage. Secondary fires put a ton of fallout in the air. The place is a wasteland, utterly hostile to life. It’s like someone lifted Manhattan Island and put it down on Venus. If Ekks and his boys headed outside, they’re already dead.’
‘What’s your current exposure?’
‘Tolerable, as long as we stay below ground, but we’ll need immediate evac once we have completed our sweep.’
‘What about the prisoner? What does she say?’
‘She’s holding back, sir.’
‘Make her talk. You have my authority to use any method you see fit to secure her cooperation, understand? Extreme measures. Ethics are a luxury. Do whatever is necessary. You are to locate Ekks. You are not to return without him.’
‘What’s the situation at base, Chief?’
‘We have a crowd of infected massing at the fence. They showed up at first light. More every hour. There must have been a refugee camp somewhere in the forest. A steady stream stumbling out the treeline. Too many to shoot. I’ve set men to patrol the perimeter with searchlights, checking for a breach. We can hold out for a couple more days, but sooner or later they’ll break through the wire and we’ll be overwhelmed. It’s hard to understand. We kept quiet, kept out of sight. But they sniffed us out. Maybe they heard the choppers.’
‘Damn.’
‘We may be forced to abandon Ridgeway. We’re making urgent preparations to hit the road and find somewhere more remote.’
‘Understood.’
‘And I’m worried about the fallout plume. Madness to stay this close to Manhattan. If the wind changes direction it could bring a blizzard of radioactive ash our way. We need to reach a safe distance, and ultimately head out of state.’
‘Where do you have in mind, Chief?’
‘I’ve checked the maps. There’s a lodge in the Adirondacks, near Avalanche Lake. It’s deep in the forest, easy to defend. A good staging base. Somewhere to regroup and figure out our next move. We’ll patch up the remaining helicopter and send it out. They’ll overfly the place, take a look around. Night, but that could work to our advantage. Infrared will let us know if anything is moving around in those woods. If the place seems inviting, we’ll box our equipment. Airlift our gear and personnel in stages.’
‘Well, don’t forget about us, sir. You folks are our lifeline. If that chopper clips a pylon or runs out of gas, we’re stranded. We’ve got no way off this damned rock.’
‘The plan still holds. Stay below ground. Complete your mission. Exfil in twenty-two hours.’
Donahue shut off the radio and sat back.
‘You caught all that?’
‘Some,’ said Tombes.
‘They’re sending the chopper upstate. They’re scouting for a new base, trying to find somewhere more secure.’
‘About time. We can’t beat these bastards. Best to put some distance.’
‘Just got to find Ekks.’
‘And what if we don’t?’ said Tombes. ‘Reckon they’ll still come get us? Sounds like they’ve got a battle on their hands. What if they can’t spare the manpower? The Chief might decide we aren’t worth the time. Expendable assets. We’re not shooters. We’re no use in a combat situation. He might leave us to die.’
‘He wouldn’t abandon us.’
‘Hope you’re right,’ said Tombes. ‘Looks like we’re stuck here for the duration. No chance of an early ride home. Shit. Should have brought a deck of cards.’
15
Nariko and Cloke descended the steps to the platform.
Nariko struck a flare and held it above her head. The cavernous rail tunnel was lit by red, sputtering flame light.
A mildewed sign pasted t
o the wall:
No Smoking
No Spitting
Thank You
‘The water is rising,’ said Nariko. ‘A couple of inches in the last hour.’
‘Inevitable. The subway system lies beneath the water table. Constantly pumped to keep it dry. Millions of gallons every day. The moment the city lost power, it began to flood.’
Cloke crouched by the water’s edge. He held his Geiger counter an inch from the surface. Warning beep. The LCD screen flashed a threshold alert.
‘Jesus. Off the scale.’ He powered down the handset. ‘This stuff is a mix of groundwater bubbling from bedrock and run-off from the street. Fallout settled over the city and got washed into the drains. Rain tainted with radioactive ash, lethal isotopes cooked up in the blast. My equipment isn’t military spec. It’s from a power plant. It’s built to measure minor leaks, fractional deviations from background. But these are the kind of heavy contaminants found near a ruptured reactor core. The counter isn’t calibrated to measure this level of pollution.’
They listened to the hiss of the burning flare, the distant trickle of water and the whisper of the tunnels.
‘Awful stench,’ said Cloke.
Nariko pointed to the corpse floating in far shadows.
‘Rot gas.’
She inspected the tunnel brickwork.
‘When was this place abandoned?’
‘Nineteen fifty-four,’ said Cloke. ‘The platform was too short to accommodate the new ten-car trains. They mothballed Fenwick when they built more capacity at Wall Street. Simply shut the station at the end of a working day. Waited until the last train left the platform, killed the lights, chained the doors. The place has been deserted ever since. Frozen in time.’
Nariko pictured trilbied businessmen waiting for a trolley car. Flannel suits, umbrellas, attaché cases, rolled copies of the Times and Post. America at the height of empire.
A deep, thunderous rumble. A groan of shifting masonry. The flood waters shivered and rippled. A trickle of dust from a fissure in the tunnel roof settled on the water, forming a white crust.
‘What the hell was that?’ murmured Nariko.