Rage

by Matthew Costello

  Sewers? A subway? Underground tunnels?

  And all the time, while he navigated the streets, he kept looking left and right.

  He heard a sound.

  At first he took it to be the wind sighing through the open structures, creating weird whistling and groaning noises that cut through the skeletons of the buildings. And some of what he heard was definitely that.

  But then he heard other noises. Sporadic. Sudden. Like barks. Quick. Sharp. No wind was making that particular sound.

  It was made by something alive.

  He had the shotgun across his lap. His automatic rifle and handgun sat on the seat next to him.

  Each few yards deeper into this city made him feel more edgy. It got to the point where he had to remind himself to be steady. Keep your eyes open. Finally saying those words aloud, as he might to a squad trailing along with him.

  “Steady. Eyes open. Don’t rush.”

  No, rushing could be the worst. Wanting to get in and out without proper scouting, you made mistakes.

  He passed two cars, one a cab, the other an SUV. Both with their hoods open, their innards removed, paint vanished. He wondered if whoever came for the parts got out of the city.

  Then, barely recognizable… a store.

  God, he thought, a bodega. A few letters were still visible, and the faded sign advertised fruit, a few faint bananas sitting next to a faded apple.

  He stopped and, from the buggy, looked inside the hollowed-out inside of the building. Whatever it carried had long ago vanished. Now only the ancient signs remained, a reminder of what life used to be.

  He took a drink of water from the canteen Kvasir gave him. Then he ripped off a piece of the “bread,” its doughy texture a poor excuse for what he remembered.

  “Loaded with good stuff,” Kvasir had said.

  He thought: Will I ever taste real, fresh food again? He looked longingly at the pictures of fruit. He imagined that all those tastes, the smells, were gone forever.

  All gone.

  Raine started the buggy again.

  The way to the hospital was blocked, as though someone had piled up a line of smashed cars and trucks, half a bus, and a container car from a train to create a wall of metal.

  Odd, that they all just ended up here, cutting off the street.

  He’d have to leave his buggy, climb over, make his way to the entrance of the building.

  Raine looked up.

  Three stories tall, and Kvasir said the data room of the hospital was at the top. The Authority had run their experiments out of this building until they couldn’t anymore.

  He had heard sounds. Were there mutants here? And if so, where were they?

  It was an edgy feeling that he’d had before, patrolling dark city streets in Iraq.

  But never this bad.

  He killed the buggy’s engine and grabbed the pack from the back. The hard drive Kvasir described would be compact and not have much weight-the pack Kvasir had given him should be perfect for the job. And, despite how quiet it was, he put a few incendiaries into the pack.

  He got out, stuck the handgun behind his back and filled his pockets with shells.

  He’d like a free hand, but it would be wisest to bring both the automatic rifle and the shotgun. He looked into the buggy, seeing if he’d forgotten anything.

  He grabbed the tools from the back. The screwdriver. The hammer.

  The tire iron.

  You never know…

  Quiet wasn’t always a good thing, he told himself. He slid the iron into his pack, the handle sticking out over his shoulder.

  He started climbing over the wreckage that blocked the way to the abandoned hospital.

  The revolving door had been smashed, the rotating blades devoid of glass.

  A sign in the lobby said: BE PREPARED TO SHOW PROPER AUTHORITY IDENTIFICATION.

  The place smelled. A sharp metallic stench mixed with something like oil, as if pipes had burst here. To the right he saw stairs. They were behind two security doors, both now hanging off their hinges.

  Whatever-whoever-went through this building didn’t like doors.

  A sea of shattered glass glistened on the floor. A reception desk had been smashed in two.

  Would anything be left of their computers?

  Seemed unlikely.

  Holding the rifles at hip level, he took a breath, the smell still horrible, and started up the stairs.

  On the second-floor stairwell-in the darkness, with scant light coming from the corridor outside-he stopped.

  He heard sounds now. Nothing too loud. But there was definitely movement. A sound of steps. He tried to place it. On this floor, or below? Or maybe just above him?

  Fuck, he thought.

  He just knew one thing now: he definitely wasn’t alone. How many incendiaries, the handmade grenades Kvasir had given him, did he throw into the pack. Four? Had he taken enough?

  And though his pockets were filled with ammo, if there were muties here, you could go through bullets so sickeningly fast with them.

  You never had enough.

  The sounds stopped.

  He started up the stairs again.

  He walked past laboratories, the once gleaming metal tables turned over, cabinets with empty shelves ripped off the walls.

  And past the labs, what might have been patient rooms-save for the fact that the bed frames had leather straps all around. Whatever was put into these rooms… no one wanted them to get up.

  In one room, he saw walls covered with a dark, purplish crust. Like blood spatters, the type of thing you’d find after a firefight in close quarters. Except here the color was wrong. He thought back to his fight in the desert with the mutants and remembered something.

  They didn’t have the same deep red of human hemoglobin.

  He squeezed his guns tightly. His companions.

  Where the hell was the data center? So far he just saw rooms with echoes of whatever mayhem had taken place here.

  Finally, at the end of the corridor, he came to a room without any glass. Two heavy doors lay flat in the hallway.

  Something wanted in, and had ripped them off.

  He looked into the room. Without electricity, it was dark. But there were two high, narrow openings, the glass shattered long ago, sending in thin shafts of light.

  It would have to be enough.

  He had a moment’s hesitation at the entrance. The sounds seemed to have faded.

  Rats, he thought. Mice.

  Except he imagined that the rats and mice of this world were long gone.

  He walked into the room anyway.

  Raine ran his hand along the flat metal face of the hospital computer. Kvasir had shown him which section held the hard drive. And as he touched the metal, he felt indentations in the panel.

  Someone had tried smashing into this metal wall, denting it but unable to get inside.

  If it had been mutants, they probably wondered what might be inside that they could eat or use as a weapon. If it had been humans, maybe their thinking was that the stuff inside would be of use in trading. No matter who, they had moved on, never getting at the guts of the computer.

  He came to the third section of the machine’s casing, his hand still sliding over more indentations.

  Then he crouched down.

  Shit-hardly any light at all. At the bottom, the front face of the panel ended in a lip. And below that lip, three different holes with a hexagonal shape.

  He put down both his guns and dug out the screwdriver from the pack.

  Raine worked it into one hole-not a perfect fit, but tight enough so he could wedge the iron into the hexagonal hole, twist it to the left, and then begin to loosen the bolts holding the bottom of the panel.

  He worked on each bolt.

  And when the last one came loose, the metal panel popped open a few inches from the bottom.

  More bolts probably on the top. But now, with that opening at the bottom, he could use the tire iron as a wedge. He slid
it into the open bottom, and began to pry the metal panel open.

  He kept prying it until he could slide his arm in and up.

  The interior felt pristine.

  Undamaged.

  He felt along inside, running his fingers over the wires and chips that made up the machine’s brain.

  He felt for the hard drive-a flat, book-sized rectangle, Kvasir had said. One of many backups and redundancies.

  His arm buried awkwardly in the thing, Raine weighed getting something to stand on so he could get up to undo the other bolts on top.

  Just get the damn thing open.

  But then he felt it. Smooth. Firmly planted in a rectangular bay.

  The drive. Had to be.

  All the data from whatever they did here. Whatever the hell the Authority had been doing with the mutants.

  He grabbed it, his fingers barely able to close around the shape, because of the bad angle. He was hurrying. He told himself to slow down.

  He pulled on the drive. Nothing.

  And he didn’t want to pull so hard that it snapped. Or popped out so fast that it flew up and out of his hand, smashing to the floor. Useless.

  He gave it another controlled pull up, measuring the amount of strength he used.

  And then he felt movement. He adjusted the pull, and the drive popped free.

  Now, like removing a living creature, something being born from its mother, he withdrew his hand.

  He had it. For a second he looked at the prize.

  His gift to the Resistance. His ticket, too. Maybe.

  Now to get out and away.

  But in those seconds of looking at the drive, at the thin black brick in the shadows of the room… Raine heard the noises again.

  Louder now. On this floor. Steps.

  Mice, he thought. Nice try, Raine.

  Something was stumbling over debris. The sound of shattered glass being stepped on.

  Not too much stealth going on.

  He was deep in this hospital from hell-and he was trapped.

  He put the drive, the screwdriver, and tire iron into his backpack, slipped the pack on, and picked up his rifles.

  There was no point waiting here for them to arrive.

  Time to see what’s still alive in this “dead” city.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  A BIG PROBLEM

  Raine got to the doorway to see exactly what was coming.

  At both ends of the corridor was a line of shadowy figures, outlined enough so Raine could see the way they walked.

  The stumbling gait.

  He thought he even saw a few down on all fours. Crawling?

  Haven’t seen that before…

  A result of the Authority’s work here?

  As soon as he stepped into the hallway, the mutants started making their barking noises, some sending out high-pitched screeches.

  He wasted no time taking both guns in one hand and reaching into his pack for one of the grenades. Antiques. Handmade grenades. Would they even work?

  He pulled a clip on one, tossed it to the line of mutants to his left, and then quickly grabbed another. After wedging the second grenade under his arm to get the pin out, he sent that one down to the right end of the corridor.

  The blasts went off within seconds of each other, cacophonous in the closed hallway.

  The mutants responded with screams and shrieks. If this place had been bedlam when the Authority was doing its experiments, well… bedlam had returned.

  Now what? he wondered.

  He had three more grenades.

  It took seconds for him to see that they had done little damage. A scattering of dead and mutilated muties at either end, while a seemingly endless supply of mutants crawled over the bodies.

  Raine started to think of other possibilities. One thing was clear: standing here was pointless.

  He started moving left, since ultimately that was the direction of the hospital exit and his buggy.

  Light-years away.

  As he did, the smoke from the explosion faded, and now the horde of mutants, their heads tilted like a line of attacking bears, all holding things to smash, cut, or chop him up… kept coming.

  He grabbed another grenade and sent it flying ahead, then tossed another back behind him as far as it could go.

  One grenade left…

  He passed a room on the left. No windows. A box to die in.

  Move on.

  He was getting closer to the mutants at that end, an insane move, he knew, but he had no other choice.

  He now started firing his rifles, holding both at his sides. The automatic rifle sent out a spray of bullets. Moving, shooting, but without taking the time to aim at the dozens of them… his shots didn’t do much.

  The damned mutants could take hits.

  The shotgun was a bit better, hard for even them to move with a basketball-sized crater in their torsos. But after two shots it was useless. No time to reload it. He stuck the shotgun through the strap of his backpack, barrel down.

  He passed another room on the right.

  He stopped. A patients’ room. It had a barred window.

  Third floor.

  What was the building’s facade like? he wondered.

  If he went in there, he knew one thing-he wouldn’t ever come out the way he went in.

  Not in one piece.

  He raised his automatic and started taking aim. He brought down a few of the mutants in front.

  Give the others something to climb over.

  He spun around to the other end. They were getting close, too, racing their monster brothers to see which would get to him first.

  Raine could feel his own heart racing, adrenaline pumping, but also fighting an insane anxiety that screamed at him:

  It’s all over. This is how it fucking ends.

  He was out of options. He ducked into the room and moved quickly over to the glassless window. He pushed against the bars, still firmly in place. He looked down.

  The window below had a ledge, and if he could lower himself to it, he might be able to get to the ground safely. If he missed…

  Anything like a jump from this height would leave his legs broken.

  Again, though-no options. He pushed against the bars again. The mutants had to be only steps away.

  He aimed the rifle at the window ledge and fired. The shot made the stone around the bar blast away. A quick kick and the bar went flying. He shot out another, but it was still not enough room for him to get out.

  The mutant shrieks were now just behind him, tempting him to turn and fire at them.

  But his training kicked in, and all that experience that made him able to lead men into the hell of battle-the ability to stay cool under so much goddamn pressure, to stay on task-took over. He fired another quick blast, and he kicked a third bar away.

  He had room now.

  He lowered his rifles out the window and let them fall. Then he quickly climbed out, turned around, and-fingers holding onto the lip of the windowpane-slowly lowered himself out of the window, legs dangling.

  His upper body strength… not what it was. Not after a hundred years, no matter how good the cryo program.

  The pull of hanging made his clawlike fingers ache.

  He looked up.

  The first mutant face peered into his, eyes wide at the dangling prize before it.

  His feet had to land on the ledge below, on the second floor.

  And he had to do that now.

  The fall was only a few feet. But doing it blindly, knowing what he was in for if he missed-it wasn’t a good feeling. He struggled to slide straight down, feet flat, knowing he’d have only a few inches of purchase to catch his fall.

  He landed… but the weight of the pack and the way his feet hit gave him just enough of an angle so he tilted away from the face of the building.

  And suddenly, after that moment of arrested fall, he was sliding down again, the bars of a second-floor window passing him.

  He had one chance to stop t
his too-fast descent-and he made a quick grab at the bars of that window.

  One hand missed completely, grabbing air.

  But the other locked onto a metal bar. And after that hand slid down to the window base-despite aching fingers-it held.

  Raine quickly brought his other hand around and grabbed a second bar.

  He had stopped his race to the ground. But he knew he couldn’t risk moving his hands, one at a time, to the ledge.

  No, he’d have to fall from this height, and hope he could land well enough so he didn’t break bones… and more important, not fall backward and smash the hard drive.

  He counted down… three… two… one…

  And then he let go, mentally willing his legs to be as flexible as possible.

  He hit the ground, a good landing, the shock to his knees and upper legs not mind-numbingly painful; but he did stagger backward, about to roll onto his back. He quickly moved his legs-not the most graceful move, but it prevented the backward roll.

  The judge from Romania gave it a 6.7…

  He hurried over to his guns. He picked up the pump-action shotgun and quickly reloaded it. He slid it back into its makeshift holster across his back.

  Time to get the hell out of here.

  It was quiet on the street-probably since it appeared that most of the Dead City’s good citizens were in the hospital trying to get to him.

  He took a step.

  And that step was matched.

  By a vibration.

  The ground shook. Then again. Until standing there, his eyes wide as he tried to figure out what the hell was going on, he realized that the thundering noise, this shaking… were steps.

  He broke out into a run toward his buggy. At the same time, something came from behind a nearby building, right near his buggy, stepping over the neat barrier of destroyed vehicles that Raine had scrambled over to reach the hospital.

  Stepping over it all so easily.

  A mutant. Thirty feet tall. Holding a sharpened piece of metal girder in its hands.

  Raine went to his knees.

  He took aim at the thing as it came stomping and roaring toward him, so fast for something so big. He fired at its head, its eyes. But he could see that this thing-this monster that outdid all the other mutated monsters-bore the results of a lot of wounds.