Primeval (Werewolf Apocalypse Book 2)

by William D. Carl

  A voice came over their radio, deep and authoritative, “This is the US Army. You have entered restricted air space. Please turn around and fly back to Brooklyn.”

  Burns grunted, said, “Hell, they’ve been watching us since before we took off. Probably since you flew over to the hotel, Tommy.”

  Hemmer swung the bird into a right turn, heading farther north, moving past Soho.

  Nicole glanced down as the helicopter swayed during a turn. One of the Lycanthropes was standing on top of an overturned car, lashing out at a crowd of people running by. It grabbed a woman by her long hair and pulled her off her feet, lifting her throat to its mouth and biting down. All around the scene, people writhed on the street, halfway through the transformation. Others ran screaming, looking for a safe place to hide. A man roared by on a motorcycle, speeding past the scene and disappearing around a corner into a cloud of white smoke from a fire in a series of garbage dumpsters.

  The helicopter zoomed up Broadway, passing the Woolworth Building just as the structure was struck by one of the passing F-15s that got a little too close to the parapet. Jet fuel exploded, and a large chunk of the top five floors crumbled toward the sidewalks below. The helicopter swung toward the other side of the street, narrowly missing the enormous mass of concrete and steel rods. The four sidewinder AA missiles loaded onto the F-15 fired upon impact, launching in four different directions. Two hit the ground near the base of the Chrysler Building, detonating and blasting huge holes in the bottom two floors of the construction; several people and cars went airborne, flipping end over end. It tilted toward the building next to it.

  A third missile went up into the air and exploded like a fireworks display over the top of St. Peter’s Church. The fourth went straight north up Broadway. Hemmer dropped the helicopter until it was hovering just above the street. An eight-foot-tall beast leapt from its perch on a theater marquee, trying in vain to grab the helicopter out of the sky. The sidewinder sped over the top of the Sikorsky Medical Helicopter. Trailing a plume of smoke, it smashed into the side of the New York City Courthouse, blasting the western side across the park.

  “Close one, Tommy,” Burns muttered.

  “Yep.”

  The helicopter got itself back on track, heading to the middle of the street, passing City Hall Park. Pieces of the courthouse were still falling from the sky.

  “Identify yourself,” came the gruff voice over the Sikorsky’s radio. “Identify yourself or we will be forced to shoot you down.”

  Burns looked back at Nicole and raised his eyebrows as a new F-15 shot over the tops of the buildings ahead of them.

  “Can they do that?” Nicole asked.

  “Probably,” Hemmer said. “Just look down. It’s a fucking mess out there. A couple of sidewinders wouldn’t hurt much of anything.”

  “Then get us out of here and get the hell back to the hotel,” Burns suggested.

  “Aye aye, skipper,” Hemmer said and laughed.

  He flew north, but taking a winding road, turning left then right, then left again. He explained that this maneuvering would help shake their tail.

  “Those F-15s are damned fast,” he said. “They can fly over, but there’s no way they could take these curves like this old bird. They’d fly straight through the buildings. Plus, they can only see down, so they are getting quick views of us but we lose them for a few seconds every time we turn.”

  Nicole saw another building topple over, a victim of a gas explosion near its base that jeopardized its structural stability. This one fell like a tree, at a forty-five degree angle, taking out a parking garage as it landed. More explosions followed, with flames shooting out from several areas of the fallen structure. Automobiles plummeted from holes in the sides, crashing to the pavement.

  “Look over there,” Hemmer shouted, pointing toward a huge bloom of black smoke. It was so large, Nicole couldn’t see what was causing it, but it was as dark as night in its shadow. Hemmer directed the machine downwards, and they saw the fire originated from a huge oil spill, probably from the large truck that had overturned into a corner grocery. Barrels lay all around the truck, oozing black liquid. The Sikorsky flew through the cloud of smoke, then it spun around as the trio heard the jet zoom overhead again.

  “I’m going down to land in the smoke,” Hemmer told them. “You won’t be in a building, and you’re a couple blocks south from 42nd and Broadway, but this is as close as we can make it. Plus, the smokescreen won’t hurt. It’s hiding us for now. That bastard in the F-15’s probably wondering where we went.”

  The helicopter landed with a bump, and Nicole and Burns grabbed their respective guns and bags and popped the passenger door. The noise that greeted Nicole’s ears was deafening. Crashing explosions, screams, roars, and the ever-whining sound of the jets flying overhead combined into a cacophony of noise that was enough to make her want to add her own screams to the symphony. Everything smelled of smoke or gasoline or blood. As she slammed the door shut behind her, Nicole saw Times Square several blocks ahead. The tourist attraction was almost unrecognizable. Several of the billboards were burning, and the flat iron building at the corner had flames sizzling in its windows, torched from the inside out.

  Hemmer raised the helicopter, and it ascended up through the black smoke. Burns gave it a jaunty salute, and he flashed Nicole a big shit-eating grin. The man was thrilled to be back in action again, right in the heart of everything.

  Nicole knew her blood was racing through her body. She could hear the thumping of her heart in her ears, and she was getting an adrenaline rush like she’d never experienced, even in the worst combat situations.

  This time, it was personal.

  Chapter 27

  2:15 p.m.

  Michael Keene seemed to know exactly where he was going. At least, John Creed hoped and prayed he did. He exuded just enough confidence, making deliberate turns in the tunnels, heading left or right without stopping to think about which route took him in which direction. Sometimes, they climbed more rungs or descended into another dank subbasement or sewer channel, but he didn’t even pause when the rooms got alarmingly dark. He merely waved his headlamp around a bit and continued. It was as if he had the sonic abilities of a bat, but it was really because he’d experienced many years in the various tunnels.

  “When there’s nothing else left in your life,” he explained to John as they arrived at a juncture, “you do what you can. I explored the world underneath the city. There are some amazing things down here – architecture that’s been deemed old fashioned, whole subway trains from bygone eras retired to side tracks, even an entire town. Must have been two hundred, three hundred people living in this tarpaper shack area.”

  “I’d like to see that,” John said, reporter instinct overcoming his terror for a moment. “Not right now, you understand, but…”

  “No you wouldn’t. It was a sad, ugly place full of pathetic beings you could barely call human. I always made a point to get aboveground every once in a while, just to keep my priorities straight, keep my head in the right place. You stay too long underground, you start to change, become more like some kind of subterranean animal. There were people down here who hadn’t emerged from the tunnels in ten years, and you wouldn’t want to see them up close. Scary little eyes, practically blind, teeth falling out, grossly skinny. They looked like the zombies you see in those movies they used to show at the grind houses.”

  “Or like the Lycanthropes?”

  “Sort of,” Michael agreed, whipping around another corner and walking through a gaping hole in a brick wall. “All animal. All instinct. Nothing compassionate or caring left in its soul. Just the urge to get its next meal or its next fix. Sadly, it’s more common than you might think.”

  “Yet you managed to avoid becoming like this?”

  “I wouldn’t allow myself to sink to that level. Watch out for this step here. Now, we’re going to wade through some water. Hope your shoes aren’t too expensive.”

  “Who
gives a damn?” John said, thinking of the chaos erupting aboveground.

  “I always had it in the back of my mind, what I was, what I had been before I went underground. I had a good job, a great apartment, a beautiful girlfriend who had an amazing little daughter. I know I’ve been down here for years, but I’ve never stopped thinking about the life I had. And how to get it back again.”

  “You ever see them? Your girlfriend or her kid?”

  Michael glanced backwards, the question interrupting his single-minded progress. His eyes were wide and white in the flashlight’s glare.

  “I’d sometimes go to her school, where she worked as a teacher. Second grade. She loved those kids like her own. I would wait by the playground to get a glimpse of her. Her name was Margo, after her mother. She was so beautiful, long dark hair, blue eyes. She wore glasses, and I thought it made her look like some hot librarian. I … I couldn’t approach her. Not like this. Not dirty, filthy, monstrous. I couldn’t scare her like that. Finally, she disappeared. She’d gone to a different school. Transferred or quit. I don’t know.”

  “You could still find her.”

  Michael shook his shaggy head. “They’re better off without me – Margo and her little girl. You never saw me when I was drinking. The things I did to them, what I put them through. Jesus, even I don’t want to remember any of it, but I do. Every night, I relive those times, and I wonder what if… What if I had married her? What if I hadn’t started on the booze and the drugs? What if … it’ll drive you crazy. It’s easier in a lot of ways to just let them go. To let that whole life go and disappear underground. Like a troll.”

  “I’m sorry,” John said.

  “Well, yeah, so am I,” Michael said, and he turned and started leading the way out of the tunnels again. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

  In the distance, echoing along the dampened brick walls, something roared. It made Michael move faster, and John had no trouble this time keeping up with him.

  Chapter 28

  2:20 p.m.

  The mutant lions had been lying on a small platform by the tracks for ten minutes now, their five-foot-long tails twitching, their eyes blinking and finally closing in slumber. The male laid his head on his massive front paws and heaved a loud sigh. The female looked around for a while longer before also succumbing to sleep, stretching out parallel to her mate. Their snores could be heard across the lanes of tracks and inside the subway car.

  Sandy felt the entire car heave a sigh of relief. She had been tensed up, ready to fight off the monsters should they attack the subway train, but the beasts merely seemed to want a nap. Blood surrounded their mouths, matted in the brown and beige fur, so she figured they had recently eaten something … or someone. Otherwise, she was certain they would have been pouncing upon the car, tearing the doors open with their black claws and their horrible teeth.

  She sat down, placing her homemade weapons next to her. Her arms were sore from standing stiff as a board for so long of a stretch. She rubbed them as Howard slumped down across the aisle from her. She could see the sweat running down his bald scalp. A few feet away, Craig flopped onto one of the seats, his long, sharpened metal railing gripped tightly in his right hand as though for security. He leaned forward, looking down at the prone, sleeping figure of Alice. Beth sat on the floor with her feet stuck out, Alice’s head in her lap. The girl snored softly. Sylvia rested on the other side of the train, away from everyone. Sandy thought she was sleeping, taking her usual afternoon nap, but she didn’t want to let anyone else know. She was probably a bit ashamed of her exhaustion.

  Sandy, keeping her voice extremely quiet, whispered to Craig, “Would you have done it?”

  “What?” he answered sotto voce.

  “Would you have hurt Alice to keep her quiet?”

  The man shrugged. “If it came to her or me, I pick me. I got a wife at home … hopefully she’s still there, still alive … in Queens. I look out for myself.”

  “I wouldn’t have let you, you know.”

  “I don’t see how you would’ve had a choice in the matter. Girl was getting loud. She needed to shut up. She got damn lucky she fainted before I had to take care of her.”

  “That’s what they would do,” Beth added, nodding toward the slumbering monsters outside the car. “Those beasts. They don’t give a shit if they hurt someone as long as they take care of themselves.”

  “Hey, I got a wife...”

  Beth looked up, and her voice rose a bit. “She’s a goddamned sixteen-year-old kid.”

  “Shh, be quiet,” Howard scolded.

  “I’m just saying,” Craig said, raising his hands defensively in front of himself.

  “And I’m just saying that you won’t lay a finger on this child,” Beth added. “What are we? Are we still humans? Or are we turning feral, just like those evil things out there? I’d like to believe that as people, as human beings, we can still hold on to a little bit of humanity.”

  “Not much humanity when it’s your ass on the line,” Craig said. “You want to live in your fairy tale palace with Santa Claus, then you be my guest. In this world, the real world, you do what you have to do to survive. And I’m going to survive this here disaster.”

  “Even at the price of a teenage girl’s life?” Sandy asked.

  “Whatever it takes, baby. Whatever it takes.”

  “You’re a real piece of work, Craig Chew,” Howard said, shaking his head.

  “Like you wouldn’t knock her on the head to get her to be quiet?”

  “No. I don’t think I would. She’s a kid.”

  Sandy looked at Craig with a steely gaze. “It’s unanimous. You touch that little girl, and you’ll be sorry.”

  “Screw all of you,” Craig muttered, and he stepped away from the group, heading for the back of the car to be alone with his anger. “Bunch of self-righteous hypocrites.”

  He turned his back on the group, pouting.

  Sandy shook her head. “Fucking savage. That’s all he is. A fucking savage.”

  Howard shrugged, said, “This is New York. We’re all a little savage. Helps us endure the day to day.”

  “Hey, lady,” Beth said, “thanks. This girl’s my responsibility. If I’d have known…”

  “How could you?” Sandy asked, slipping down beside the Latina woman. “Like anyone could’ve predicted this? I got me a girlfriend who shoots these monsters down for a living. She didn’t see this coming, so how could anyone else?”

  Beth looked up at her. “You guys…you been together, um, long?”

  Howard backed away, looking uneasy and restless. He tiptoed over to Sylvia and sat next to her, but he was still listening to Sandy.

  “You aren’t real comfortable with this, huh?” Sandy asked, grinning.

  “I don’t know. It’s not something I’m very…well, I’m not really exposed to it, you know?”

  Sandy raised her eyebrows. “You’re a gym teacher and a volleyball coach and you haven’t been exposed to lesbians?”

  “I also coach golf.”

  “Jeez, you must be wearing blinders or something.”

  “I suppose I’m just not looking very hard.”

  “Do you disapprove?”

  “Not really. It just doesn’t matter a whole lot. Especially now.”

  “It’ll matter if Nicole can get us out of here alive,” Sandy said. “And if I know my girl, you can bet she’s on her way right now.”

  Sandy peered out the window at the two sleeping monstrosities a hundred yards from her. Shivering, she saw the doors were slightly ajar, the rats having eaten away some of the rubber that separated them when they were closed. If those huge beasts got it into their heads to enter the subway car, there would be very little any of them could do to hold them off. The weapons they had created from the metal pieces in the cabin suddenly seemed terribly ineffectual.

  Alice stirred, smacked her lips. Beth stroked her hair, murmured something in the girl’s ear. She settled down, became quiet ag
ain.

  Sandy wondered how long Alice could remain calm and asleep. Eventually, she would wake back up, scream or shout or panic. Then, Sandy would not only have the alerted Lycanthropes to worry about.

  She’d also have to concern herself with the savage reactions of Craig Chew.

  Chapter 29

  2:24 p.m.

  As the helicopter took off, leaving behind the two soldiers, its rotors swept away much of the smoke from the burning oil on the street, and Nicole got a better look at the surrounding area. She’d been watching through the Sikorsky’s window, but her thoughts had been on reaching Sandy, not on her immediate surroundings. She’d taken in all the stunning chaos and destruction that was tearing New York City apart, but she’d lost the smaller picture: the things within reach of her weapons, the things she could affect. This was something she never did. Her mind was always on full alert, watchful and observant. The Lycanthropes could attack you from anywhere, so you needed to ascertain every place they could be lurking. She blinked, the smoke irritating her eyes even as it wafted away. Her concentration was now on full alert. She hefted the M-4 assault rifle into her arms and scanned the world around her.

  General Burns was on her right-hand side, his own M-4 loaded and ready, held in his muscular arms while he puffed on a cigar. The helicopter disappeared from view, and she wished Hemmer a safe return to Brooklyn. Then, she returned her thoughts to location surveys.

  The first thing she noticed was the way the streets were completely clogged with cars, either wrecked into each other or into buildings. The drivers must have been abruptly swarmed with creatures, probably the rats, and in the ensuing panic they had driven their cars blindly, madly. Many of the vehicles still contained partially eaten corpses. One yellow taxi cab had a body hanging halfway out of the door, the head and shoulders gnawed down to the bone. One car had actually driven up on top of another, its front end pointing at the blue sky. Blood streaked all along the sides of many of the vehicles, smears and desperate handprints covering doors and windows. There were also partially devoured bodies scattered in the street, stuffed in the small areas between cars and buses. They had probably been placed there by the Lycanthropes for consumption later, stored like canned meat in a cupboard.