by Jack Quaid
A red light bulb flashed above the bar. Norm peeled his attention from Jerry’s tall tales to look at the monitor by the cash register. It was rigged to a camera above the front door. Norm had a strict “Human’s Only” rule in his bar. After staring at the screen for a moment he pressed a button and the front door released.
A tall man paused at the stairs. He scanned the room, saw Shelby and Knox, and then made his way over. He was close to seven feet tall, wore goggles high up on his forehead, and a fishing jacket where all the pockets seemed to be filled with one thing or another. His face had deep canyons that hardly seemed to move. It was as if he died a week ago and had only just been told.
“They call me Happy,” he said.
“Really, why do they call you that?” Shelby asked.
His face didn’t budge. He just stood there and looked miserable.
“Forget I asked,” she said. “Please, sit.”
Happy slipped into the booth next to Knox and lit a herbal cigarette. “Where do you want to go?”
“To the top of the World Trade Center.”
“You don’t need a helicopter to go there,” Happy said. “It has stairs.”
“It also has three squads of battle droids in the lobby,” Shelby said. “We need someone to chopper us to the roof. Wait thirty minutes until we collect somebody and chopper us away again.”
“Who?”
“It’s none of your business who,” Knox said.
Happy blinked from Shelby to Knox, and with another blink his eyes were back again on her again. He was sizing them up.
“Listen,” he said. “I don’t put anything in my chopper that I don’t know what it is.”
He waited for a response from either Shelby or Knox, but neither gave one.
“Have a pleasant evening,” Happy said as he stood and made for the door.
“Wait,” Shelby said. Happy stopped and turned. “It’s my son. I need to find my son.”
He paused, gave a slight nod and sat back down again. “What’s he doing at the World Trade Center?”
Shelby drew in a shaky breath. “Do you know those shoes kids wear with the GPS chips in them?”
Happy nodded, not really knowing where she was going with this.
“On New Year’s Eve, my son Axel was taken in one of those yellow school buses.” She held up the GPS watch on her wrist. “We traced him to the South Tower of the World Trade Center, and now I’m going to go get him.”
Happy nodded very slowly. “It will cost.”
Shelby slipped her hand into her pocket, pulled out a shotgun shell, and put it on the table in front of Happy.
His eyes dipped to it and back up again. “It’s going to cost more than that.”
“That’s EMP ammunition. One round of that will take out a domestic droid. Two rounds will destroy a battle droid and there’s a thousand of them waiting for you after we collect my son.”
“I want half now,” Happy said.
Knox casually pointed to a case that sat a few feet away by the bar. “There’s five hundred sitting right over there.”
“When do you want to go?”
“Now,” Shelby said.
“I’ll need two hours,” Happy said. “To fuel the chopper.”
“Then we’ll leave in two hours.”
Happy took a folded-up envelope from one of the pockets on his fishing vest and slid it across the table to Shelby. “Follow those directions and meet me in two hours.”
Happy didn’t say goodbye. Shelby didn’t think it was his way. He took his case of shells and left the Comedy Cellar.
When he was gone, Shelby couldn’t fight off her smile. After all this time she was finally going to get Axel back.
Knox leaned toward her. “Don’t go getting cocky. It’s not over yet.”
The red light behind the bar lit up. Norm checked the security monitor, nodded an okay, and pressed the button to unlock the door.
There were footsteps. Lots of them. They cascaded down the stairs and almost stopped in unison. Five muscled monsters with zero percent body fat, low IQs and U.S. army uniforms wrapped around their Mr. Universe bodies. What was left of the U.S. military was the only real form of resistance against Tera Mach and her army. Shelby and Knox had encountered a unit in Utah who were collecting refugees and another in Iowa trying to collect information for the powers that be back in Washington. Shelby wasn’t impressed with what she saw. Since the advanced development of robotic technology, human soldiers had slowly been phased out and replaced by androids, all in the name of saving American lives. So when those very same American life-saving droids turned on the people they were meant to be saving, the entire U.S. military was unprepared and severely underpopulated. The military had responded by commencing the biggest recruitment drive since World War II. Of course they preferred the retired servicemen who were all put out of a job when the first squad of battle droids had rolled off the assembly line. But they couldn’t be terribly choosy, and would take any human who could fire a weapon. As a consequence, the U.S. military was now filled with old men and untrained teenagers.
The leader of the group at Norm’s bar wore his hair in a flattop, like Val Kilmer in Top Gun, only it didn’t look as cool on him.
“Who are these assholes?” Shelby said.
The leader took a step forward. He had a look about him as if he were constantly in a bad mood. “My name is Mad Dog McCall.”
“Oh, shit,” Knox sighed.
“You know him?” Shelby asked.
Knox nodded. “Yeah, I know him.”
“I’m with the United States Army,” Mad Dog continued proudly. “As you are aware, our country is in a state of turmoil. Your country is here, asking you, for your assistance, in reclaiming our land from Tera Mach.”
“They’re recruiting?” Shelby whispered to Knox.
“So if you have the guts, and if you have the balls,” Mad Dog grabbed his own balls so hard that it looked liked he would have done some damage, “we want you!” He pointed a massive finger at the five broken people sitting at the bar. His offer to join the war didn’t sound as much like a request as it did an order. “We’re getting our asses kicked out there by Tera Mach and the droids. We’re not gonna win this son of a bitch without you, people!”
The patrons of the Comedy Cellar all avoided eye contact with Mad Dog. Some stared straight ahead at nothing in particular and others just stared into their drinks.
“You’re all a pack of fuckin’ pussies.”
Norm shook his head. “No, they’re just scared.”
“Pussies,” Mad Dog muttered again. He was about to head back to the street when he caught a glimpse of Shelby and Knox and smiled a grin so big that it revealed each and every one of his gold teeth. He strode over the sticky, drink-stained carpet with his muscle following and stood over Knox.
“Have a look at who it is! Lone Wolf Knox.” He glanced to Shelby. “And cub.”
Knox didn’t even look up from his drink. “I thought they kicked you out of the army?”
“In light of recent events, they called ol’ Mad Dog up and asked him to return.”
“Things must be worse than I thought.”
Shelby watched the conversation bounce back and forth. “You two friends?” she asked.
“I slept with his wife,” Knox said. “And his sister. And his daughter.”
“So, not friends?”
“It wasn’t at the same time,” he said.
“Oh, that’s okay then.” She finished her drink and flashed a glance at her watch. “Is that the time? We really must be going. It’s our first night in the Big Apple and we’d really like to see the sights, maybe catch a show.”
She slid out of the booth. Knox waited a moment and then did the same until he stood eye to eye with Mad Dog. Neither one of them was going to budge and let the other pass. They were nose to nose, full of testosterone and pride, and Shelby could see it all going pear-shaped pretty quickly.
She inched closer.
“Why don’t you two just kiss?” Shelby asked. “Because it’s kinda looking like you want to?”
The two massive soldiers Mad Dog walked in with swapped a glance as if they didn’t understand the joke.
“If I were in prison, I wouldn’t even have him as my bitch,” Knox snarled.
The unmistakable CLICK, CLICK of a shotgun being racked sounded out in the bar. Shelby looked over to see Norm with a shotgun raised.
“I don’t want any trouble in here,” Norm said. “Play nice or get out.”
“Put that gun away, old man,” Shelby yelled. “Before you get yourself killed.”
Shelby turned back to Knox and Mad Dog who were about to go toe to toe.
“It’s time to leave,” she said.
“All he has to do is step aside, Shelby,” Knox said.
“Shelby?” one of the soldiers said with a mix of fear and admiration. “Shelby Black?”
She nodded hesitantly. “That’s right. I’m Shelby Black.”
Both soldiers caught their breath and didn’t look anywhere near as big as they did a moment before. They took a step back, opening a path for them to leave.
“What are you two faggots doing?” Mad Dog said.
“She’s a hero, boss.”
“I don’t care who she is!”
Shelby looked back at Knox. “Let’s get out of here.”
Knox still had his eyes locked on Mad Dog. “See you around,” he said and stepped off to follow Shelby to the exit.
“Hey Knox,” Mad Dog called out. “I’d sleep with that one eye open, because I will get you.”
Knox looked over his shoulder. “If you coulda, you woulda.”
Thirty-One
McDougall Street was empty and cold. The street lights were out but apart from that and the lack of people roaming to bars and clubs, it looked just the same as it did the year before when Shelby was in town to meet a realtor about purchasing a second apartment.
“Will we be bumping into any more of your friends on this trip?”
“What can I say? I’m a friendly guy.” Knox took out the envelope Happy had left for them and read the directions in the moonlight. “This is going to take a while,” he said.
Three blocks later they heard gunfire.
“That doesn’t sound good,” Shelby said.
Knox paused and looked around. “Maybe it was just the wind.”
They heard three more shots ring out and echo down the empty street.
“Doesn’t sound like the wind to me.”
Knox palmed his pistol and let it dangle by his thigh with his finger around the trigger just in case everything went to hell. “No it does not.”
The pair of them took a couple of steps out of the middle of the street and lent up against the dirty window of an old 7-11 and waited. For a couple of moments all they could hear was the sound of the warm breeze flowing down the street and the distant sounds of screams.
Then just as Shelby was starting to think that the gunfire she heard only moments before was just something her mind imagined, a soldier in an old, tattered U.S. Army uniform skidded around a corner about a block away. He was covered in blood, sweat and fear and running as fast as he could. Even at that distance, Shelby could tell that he couldn’t have been more than sixteen years old.
Hot on his tail were three battle droids and it was pretty clear, even at half a glance that no matter how fast he ran, he probably wasn’t going to outrun the metal on his tail.
Almost in unison, the left arms on all three battle droids transformed into machine guns. They raised up and zeroed in on their target.
The kid, swung his pistol back and fired off a few random shots but he was barely aiming and all over those shots missed by a long shot. But that didn’t stop him from yanking back on that trigger until the only sound that came out of that weapon was ‘click’. He was out of ammo and in one hell of a tight spot.
The kid tossed the weapon aside and dedicated all his energy into his escape but for every step he took, the droids took two and they were gaining on him real fast.
It was looking like it was all over red rover for that poor soldier when Shelby and Knox stepped off the sidewalk with their shotguns up and shouldered and their fingers around the triggers. They opened fire and within seconds Shelby and Knox turned those fierce killing machines into scrap metal.
“Just another day at the office,” Shelby said and as she holstered her weapon she turned to Ryder and was about to ask if he was okay, but all she had to do was take one look at him to see that he wasn’t. The kid dropped to the ground with a round in his belly. One of the droids must have gotten off a shot before they hit the dust.
“Oh, man. Oh, man,” the kid said. “This sucks. This totally sucks.”
Shelby crouched down and took a look at the wound on the soldier. “You’re right kid, that sucks.”
“You gotta help me out.”
“We just did help you out,” Knox said.
The kid pulled out a piece of bloody paper from his pocket and shoved it in Shelby’s hand. “You’ve got to get this to General Hardwood.”
“What?”
“Since the uprising, the droids have been trying to take Manhattan but the last of the U.S. military on the east coast has been holding on. There’s not many of us left but we’re the last thing standing in between the droids and the island. I’m a scout, Hardwood sent me into enemy territory to find out what’s going on.”
“What was going on?”
“Yesterday, I found out the droids have a H2O bomb. It’s set to detonate in the next ninety minutes.”
“Horseshit,” Knox said. “There’s no such thing as a H2O bomb. This guy’s full of horseshit.”
Shelby stood up. “Wait, wait, wait. What’s a H2O bomb, and please, don’t tell me it’s a giant water bomb.”
“It’s almost an anti water bomb,” the kid said. “If it detonates, it completely evaporates every drop of water in a twenty mile radius.”
“That’s it? So what?”
“The human body is over seventy percent water.”
“Oh,” Shelby said. “So that’s so what.”
“You need to go to the Port Authority, it’s where our base is and tell General Hardwood what’s happening.” He pointed to the piece of paper in her hand. “That there are the coordinates to where the bomb is.”
Shelby glanced down at the series of digits on the paper. “How long until the bomb detonates?”
“Ninety minutes,” the kid said. “Give or take.”
Knox shook his head and looked to Shelby. “You don’t really believe this horseshit do you?”
She shrugged.
“There’s one more thing,” the kids said. “This is absolutely crucial. There is one more thing, no matter what, that you must do. Avoid the…”
And before Ryder can get out his last dying words, he died. There was no last grasps for air or dramatic gesture. He simply just stopped being.
“What do you think he meant?” Shelby said. “Avoid the… the what?”
Knox looked at his watch. “Who cares, let’s get out of here.”
“We can’t just go. Did you hear what he said?”
“In my lifetime I’ve heard myself a great deal of bullshit, and to me, that sounded like bullshit.”
“We don’t know that.”
“We don’t not know that.”
“What makes you think he’s lying?”
“A H2O bomb? Please, they don’t exist.”
“Three months ago did you think domestic droids would be trying to murder us? That battle spiders existed or that I’d be a badass action hero?”
“You’re not an action hero.”
She put her hands on her hips. “How many battle spiders have you taken down?”
Knox grumbled.
“That’s what I thought,” Shelby said. “There’s nothing I want more right now is to go and get my son. But if that bomb goes off, he’s not going to make it and none of us are gett
ing off this island.”
“We can’t make it to the Port Authority in ninety minutes. It’s too far.”
Shelby held up the piece of bloody paper with the coordinates on it. “But we can get here and stop the bomb ourselves.”
Knox didn’t like it, not one bit and shook his head. “Have it your way. Lets go save Manhattan,” he grumbled.
Thirty-Two
9th Avenue came to an end. It wasn’t designed that way. Way back when the city plans were being drawn up, and then later when the city was built, 9th Avenue started at Ganservoot Street and ran through 12th, 52nd and 60th all the way up to Columbus. But Shelby and Knox were standing at the intersection of 9th and 7th, and the street had simply come to an end. In fact, it looked like every block from 7th to who knows where had not only come to an end but had been completely decimated. The roads were black, scorched and cracked in a million directions while the buildings that were standing were nothing much more than the skeletons and shells of what they once were.
“What the hell happened here?” Knox asked, looking around at the destruction.
“Whatever it was, it’s probably not going to bring tourism back to the city,” Shelby said as she stepped up to the line in the road where 9th Avenue went from being a regular street to a hellscape.
She was just about to step over that line when a voice spoke out behind her. “I wouldn’t go in there if I were you, girly.”
Shelby looked over her shoulder at the little old lady sitting on a step just outside of her apartment building. Despite the end of the world, her hair and makeup were perfect.
“What’s in there?” Shelby asked.
“Death, and pain, and anguish,” she said in one hell of a somber tone. “They call it the Dead Zone.”
“Sounds promising,” Shelby said. “What happened here?”
“On the night of the uprising, somebody set off a mini-nuke.”
Knox lit up a cigar. “Our side or theirs?”
“Does it matter?”
“Fair point,” Knox said and then spat a loose piece of tobacco from his lips.